People send me stuff.
Today, just over two months away from the end of summer, when NASA’s Jay Zwally famously predicted (with an assist from AP’s Seth Borenstein): “…the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012″ and we are nowhere near that becoming true, I get sent a contest being solicited by the people who run “Vision Prize” in San Francisco. I had to chuckle at this.
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: When will the Arctic Sea become free of summer
floating ice?
Dear Climate Scientist,
You have probably already seen the cover story of last month’s Economist on the Arctic: The vanishing north. The Vision Prize [online poll of climate scientists](http://visionprize.com/) is currently asking this related question:
**When (if ever) will the Arctic Sea become completely free of summer floating ice?**
Please [Sign Up](http://visionprize.com/users/new) now to submit your prediction and join [more than 200 of your colleagues](http://visionprize.com/participants#expertise) participating in this new climate risk communication project. Participation is free and takes just a few minutes. Thanks in advance for your support.
Vision Prize is affiliated with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, and is strictly nonpartisan.
Vision Prize | Box 7775 #20915 | San Francisco CA USA | 94120
===============================================================
The bottom of the original email allows the recipient to forward to a friend, so by doing so they make this a contest open to everyone.Lest some of our vocal detractors cry “foul” I’ll point out this entry in their “roster of experts“:
Glenn Tamblyn
Skepticalscience.com; (Australia); Licensed professional engineer – commercial; Mechanical Engineering; Industry – Other;
Dana Nuccitelli
Tetra Tech, Inc.; (United States); Other scientific or technical – commercial; Environmental Science, Physics; Industry – Environmental Services; climate science
Apparently, they’ll take anonymous predictions too:
puffycloud
University of Washington; (United States); Graduate student; climate variability and change; Academia – Earth Sciences; atmospheric science
They want predictions, so let’s give them some, signup here:
Please [Sign Up](http://visionprize.com/users/new) now to submit your prediction
I signed up, and the confirmation email to activate my account went immediately to SPAM, so you may have to fish it out of your own account.
Even though they’ll let members of a blog that revises history on a regular basis and treats professional scientists with unprofessional attacks and anonymous grad students in, apparently, they don’t just let anybody in. Only the anointed perhaps? This is what I got:
They are heavily weighted with UW and other faculty, according to their online live profile:
It will be interesting to see if they are biased or open and whether I get to join the “players”.
I urge WUWT readers to sign up and report your acceptances or rejections below.
They may have exceptionally high standards, like the UCS… and may require a valid credit card for verification of Climate Scientist ranking.
I think “Visionprize” has been captured by denialists who are trying to force experts to reveal their lack of expertise. It will be interesting to observe whether any of the well known warmists dare to offer a specific forecast.
Would that be ice free or “ice free = less than 1 million square kilometers of floating ice”?
Wrong question. A better question is: why do CO2 molecules congregate only up north? The Antarctic is gaining ice. And the Antarctic holds 90% of the planet’s ice.
The plain fact is that wind and ocean currents are the reason for declining Arctic sea ice.
And we cannot trust the organizations doing the measurements. They certainly do not admit that the Arctic has been ice free in the past.
So relax. Even though the less than 10% of the planet’s ice in the Arctic, which has recently declined due to wind and ocean currents, the 90% of the planet’s ice in the Antarctic keeps global ice totals pretty much the same.
Personally I think that an Arctic that is/isnot ice free, will be the major turning point in climate science. Joe Public can understand that if the Arctic is ice free than warming has occurred, but he will also realise that if predictions have been made that say the Arctic will definitely be ice free by 2012, those who predicted it will have a lot of squirming to do if sea ice is still present. Joe Public will simply not believe anything else they say.
I think the jury’s out as to whether mohatdebos is right about denialists taking it over. I think it is warmists trying to regroup and rein in the nutters who have predicted an ice free Arctic within a period that people will remember, eg this year, because it ain’t gonna happen!
Please communicate this offer to Kenji… He’s a member of that concerned scientists bunch…
Looking at their pages – and mainly at the page with results from the previous round (http://visionprize.com/results) I actually believe they have no problems with openness. Looking at the answers, I find them surprisingly un-alarming. There’s even a funny discrepancy where most people believe earth will warm up by 2-3°C at 550 ppm CO2, most people believe 550 ppm CO2 will be reached around 2050, and yet most people believe Earth will warm up only 1.5-2°C till 2050. But that’s actually perfectly normal in the world of statistics.
I don’t like the selection of questions, in my opinion they could have picked better ones – but that’s actually not very important.
The purpose of this site is clearly not doing science by vote. I believe they will have no problems with publishing results of further rounds even if they were totally skeptical towards AGW (current ones are skeptical enough IMO although many people here won’t agree). Most probably they don’t actually care what selections people make, what they care about is how their opinions change over time.
Smokey, Smokey, Smokey… Everyone knows that heat rises, therefore all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans is rising to the top of the world and melting the Arctic ice.
I was “approved” in about 5 seconds. I wonder what their criteria are?
In reply to Smokey comment:July 19, 2012 at 10:25 am
“Wrong question. A better question is: why do CO2 molecules congregate only up north? The Antarctic is gaining ice. And the Antarctic holds 90% of the planet’s ice.”
The warming in the Arctic is due to changes in planetary cloud cover (less cloud cover). The albedo of the Antarctic Icesheet is greater than clouds so an increase in cloud cover in the Antarctic results in warming due to the greenhouse affect of water in the clouds. The phenomena where the Arctic warms and Antarctic cools is called the polar see-saw.
The following is link to Svensmark’s paper that presents an analysis of top of the atmosphere radiation data to support the above assertion.
P.S. There is a delay of 10 to 12 years from the interruption in the solar magnetic cycle and the start of cooling in the Arctic. I would expect to see some evidence of cooling in the Arctic winter 2012/2013
http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612145.pdf
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Satellite data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) are here used to calculate the changes in surface temperatures at all latitudes, due to small percentage changes in cloudiness. The results match the observed contrasts in temperature changes, globally and in Antarctica. Evidently clouds do not just respond passively to climate changes but take an active part in the forcing, in accordance with changes in the solar magnetic field that vary the cosmic-ray flux.
…temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent.Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!
There should also be vote for how fast will the melted ice refreeze after the summer melt. They DO realize that the ice melt refreezes, don’t they?? (I guess I should make any assumptions when it comes to climate scientists…).
I say it will be ice free in the summer some time in the next 1.5 million years +/- 250,000.
Larry
What does Kenji say?
Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!
Sure. There’s a link at the top …. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.
Now, he was writing at the end of the 2007 ice melt season, when the ice extent fell precipitously.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20071001_septembertrend.jpg
Zwally was observing that, should the summer ice cover continue to decline at that rate every year, then a nearly ice free Arctic was just 5 years off. We now know that the 2007 decline was an outlier, helped along by anomalous wind patterns and the rate of change has actually reverted back nearer to its long term trend, in other words the decrease has not continued at that rate, although last year’s minimum was within the error bars of 2007.
So Zwally included 2 conditions – IF the rate of change in 2007 was repeated Then the Arctic COULD be nearly ice free in summer 2012. His condition has not been met and so we will not see the second half of his prediction transpire. All reasonable stuff from a reasonable scientist, but my prediction is we will see a big and unjustifiable FAIL! around here come September …..
“How To Make Money Off Of Global Warming Fears”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/10/19/how-to-make-money-off-of-global-warming-fears/
“Sometimes you might get lucky and discover a deluded alarmist who has beat you to the punch and offered such a bet on his or her own volition. For example, I just stumbled across this blog post from Joe Romm offering to bet even money that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free by the year 2020. Talk about taking candy from a baby! I will be contacting Joe immediately. I urge all readers of this column to do the same.”
At the end of their Timeline page:
“VISION PRIZE
HYPOTHESIS: Incentivized polls that draw on Bayesian reasoning can be used to generate predictions that outperform consensus-based polls in domains where expertise matters – like atmospheric CO2.”
I wonder how they measure expertise on atmospheric CO2, so they know that it matters and that those predictions outperform. Or are they saying that expertise herds atmospheric CO2?
They describe their non-consensus-polling method here:
http://visionprize.com/faq#method
I haven’t seen mention of the source of their funding, nor what methods have been, or will be, used to study what this project is doing.
My guess on Kenji’s reaction … “You’re barking up the wrong tree”
2,225 years into the next Interglacial Period. What are the prizes again?
Funny that the Alarmists can no longer get away with their narrative concerning temperatures, tropical storms, vanishing winters. The Alarmists’ obsession with Artic ice will last only until it is obvious that Artic ice will not go away. I suppose the next obsession will be rising sea levels, or the mass extinction of bumble bees.
“Dear Climate Scientist”??? Really?
Something that Anthony and I have been requesting for some time is that the NSIDC has finally made available their daily sea ice extent data. Easy to use CSV format.
Use a five day moving/trailing average with this data to get to how the NSIDC is now recording it (I agree with this but would use a centred moving average which is then two days behind but more reflective of the proper date).
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/
I don’t know how long this has been available but I don’t think anyone has mentioned it before.
I signed up and now have 24 agonising hours to endure before I know if they accept me or not. Oh, the suspense….
“So Zwally included 2 conditions – IF the rate of change in 2007 was repeated Then the Arctic COULD be nearly ice free in summer 2012. His condition has not been met and so we will not see the second half of his prediction transpire. All reasonable stuff from a reasonable scientist, but my prediction is we will see a big and unjustifiable FAIL! around here come September …..”
I don’t think that qualifies as a ‘prediction’ at all, given the use of ‘could’. Use of ‘could’ in the outcome portion of the ‘prediction’ means that even if the precondition is fulfilled ( the 2007 rate of change is repeated), any amount of ice (or no ice at all) could be said to fulfill the ‘prediction’. so I don’t think it’s all that ‘reasonable’ personally.
FYI, I don’t believe that ‘could’, as used in that construct can rightly be said to be a ‘condition’. It’s part of the outcome of the prediction, not the conditions.
That and I’m not sure what the quantifiable value of ‘nearly’ is in this context.