We all cringed, then laughed when Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC first said it, then marveled about it as it got a life of its own, being the buzzphrase for every alarmist who wanted to shriek about declining Arctic sea ice.
In 2007 we heard him say:
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado.
So far, the “screaming” hasn’t kept anyone awake at night, and we have not returned to the low of 2007 in the last three melt seasons.
In 2008 Serreze made the bold claim:
The ice is in a “death spiral” and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze, an Arctic climate expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
And in 2008 we had the forecast from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze of an “ice free north pole”. As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.
With those failed predictions behind him, in an interview in The Age just a few weeks ago, Serreze pulled a Harold Camping, and changed his prediction date. Now he’s saying the new date for an ice free summer is 2030.
”There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral.”
Now from a most surprising source, Andy Revkin at the NYT, a strong statement saying he’s not buying it anymore:
On Arctic Ice and Warmth, Past and Future
But even as I push for an energy quest that limits climate risk, I’m not worried about the resilience of Arctic ecosystems and not worried about the system tipping into an irreversibly slushy state on time scales relevant to today’s policy debates. This is one reason I don’t go for descriptions of the system being in a “death spiral.”
The main source of my Arctic comfort level — besides what I learned while camped with scientists on the North Pole sea ice — is the growing body of work on past variability of conditions in the Arctic. The latest evidence of substantial past ice variability comes in a study in the current issue of Science. The paper, combining evidence of driftwood accumulation and beach formation in northern Greenland with evidence of past sea-ice extent in parts of Canada, concludes that Arctic sea ice appears to have retreated far more in some spans since the end of the last ice age than it has in recent years.
…
Michael MacCracken, a veteran climate modeler and chief scientist at the Climate Institute, noted on the Google group on geo-engineering that this new paper adds credence to proposals for an Arctic focus for managing incoming sunlight as a way to limit greenhouse-driven impacts. (Personally, I don’t see this kind of effort going anywhere unless and until climate impacts trend toward worst-case outcomes.)
He’s referring of course to this paper we covered here on WUWT:
New study suggests Arctic ‘tipping point’ may not be reached
I wrote then:
This is interesting. While there’s much noise from alarmists that we are on an “Arctic death spiral” the team for this paper’s press release today found evidence that ice levels were about 50% lower 5,000 years ago. The paper references changes to wind systems which can slow down the rate of melting (something we’ve seen on the short term, even NASA points this out for recent historic ice retreats). They also suggest that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely saying that even with a reduction to less than 50% of the current amount of sea ice the ice will not reach a point of no return (i.e. a tipping point).
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The first thing I look for in climate predictions are weasel-words like “might,”, “may,” “could,” etc.
Serreze does more for the skeptical movement than most of us commentators here. He’s really a funny guy. The only thing I can say, is “Go Marky go! Amplify from the highest chunk of ice screaming about the death spiral!
I’ve never understood this “death spiral” nonsense anyway. Are they saying that, if all the ice were to melt in the summer months, that the winter wouldn’t then go back below freezing and re-freeze the ice? Simplistic example, but if I empty my ice cube tray and refill it with water, it will still freeze. And that’s only at -5 degrees C. And, of course, we all know that the temperature is going to go way below freezing once the winter hits. So, what’s going to prevent it from re-freezing, even if the temperature/currents/whatever actually melt ALL of the ice in a given summer? Maybe one of our resident trolls can put away the snark and actually explain the logic on this, because it makes no sense to me at all.
Sometimes I think way too many of the leading Warmista mouthpieces must have received their PhD’s by mistake or they got lucky with a box of Cracker Jacks.
I mean really, they either think the rest of the world is stupid and will believe any silly story they make up or they actually believe the such crap and expect us to trust their word because they are know they are important people doing serious work.
The general technique is usually to reschedule the date of impending doom, calim that there were a couple of “minor” errors in the sums that led to the wrong date being quoted, then sit back & wait, again, & again, & again, & again &……………………………………………………….!
Good to see Andy moving a little closer to the sanity line. Wishing him well in his recovery.
The great thing about making predictions for some future event nearly two decades away is there is no accountability for being wrong. That’s the brilliance of the climate models which make
“projections” (notice projections, not predictions) for up to a century from now. Few will bother to verify the actual conditions and compare to the prediction or projections and if they do, various excuses will be made for the failure to match the real world.
Mark Serreze’s prediction of an ice free arctic in 2008 is one of the earlier ones and reality has called time on that one. The earliest I have found is by Bernt Balchen who made a prediction in 1972 that the arctic would be ice free by the year 2000. Mr.Balchen was described as a leading specialist on the Arctic at that time. He also said that the Northern USA would be 20 to 25 degrees warmer than it is now. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zmI0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=L5wEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5376,3200988&dq=ice+free+arctic&hl=en
National geographic went for 2012, and so they are still in with a chance – but fast running out of time.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html
..and the good old BBC predicted an ice free arctic by 2013. In addition it said, “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7139797.stm …but I think the BBC may discover that predictions are rather tricky things, ‘especially those about the future’.
But my favourite, although it doesn’t actually claim the arctic to be ice free, is the 1922 report from the US weather bureau that said “The arctic ocean is warming up, ice bergs are growing scarcer and the water is becoming too hot for the seals”.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0bVaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AlQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5277,376085&dq=too+hot+for+seals&hl=en
(Do these links work without me HREFing them?)
Revkin was on record that human activity had produced never-before witnessed, disastrous, and accelerating melt in the Arctic, which he strove to bolster by alluding repeatedly (as he does again here) to his trip to the Arctic (with actual scientists!).
This is a major climb-down, albeit without the man saying, “I was wrong.”
But we know.
Oh dear, the Promotion of Warmth will be jumping upon him something chronic. He’s verging upon being condemned as a heretic!
Revkin no least!! perhaps the jumping of ships is about to start??
Credit Serreze with the ability to learn from his mistakes. If you’re pimping a bogus theory, don’t make predictions that can be falsified. 2030 is more like it. Sort of like commercially viable nuclear fusion, keep it about 20 years in the future.
Once the ice in my glass of coke has melted it never comes back. There’s also CO2 in there.
As far as history is concerned, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A complete lack, however, can be even worse. Glad he finally thought to ask the obvious question.
OT. Only just found this.
did David Archibald’s hard line public speech get wuwt coverage?
At least 4 months old.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KptNjVx_gbM ]
REPLY: Yes VERY off-topic, please refrain.
We covered his speech here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/08/sydney-no-carbon-tax-rally-on-april-9th/
– Anthony
Isn’t it time you started publishing the Arctic Ice Volume graphs on WUWT alongside all the other data? It’s a glaring omission in an otherwise excellent resource page.
I don’t worry over when the sea ice will disappear, in fact, I’ll be happy when it is gone, then, in less then a couple of decades the same alarmists will worry over when the sea ice forms again, I’ll can LMAO for another decade or so. :p
The Arctic sea ice is really the only change in the climate that we can definitely point to.
Even accepting that, it is not that much of a change. The charts and graphs from the NSIDC are all exaggerated in that the Y-axis does not start at Zero (ie. no ice) it starts at 2 million or 7.5 million or what have you.
Here is the NH daily sea ice going back to 1972. It is going to take a long time for the minimum each year to reach Zero on the graph. The September 10th anomaly has to go to -6.1 million while it is only at -1.1 million right now. That is a lot of change and only a small fraction of that has shown up to date.
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6328/dailynhseaiceaug711.png
Bomber_the_Cat says:
August 9, 2011 at 6:19 am
Great post. Thanks.
“The main source of my Arctic comfort level — besides what I learned while camped with scientists on the North Pole sea ice — is the growing body of work on past variability of conditions in the Arctic. The latest evidence of substantial past ice variability comes in a study in the current issue of Science.”
So, what we see today is no more extreme than has been observed in the past. In other words, what we see today is within the expected range of climate variability. So therefore it cannot be distinguished from natural variation. So why do we need an AGW
theoryhypothesisconjecturefantasy?“So in other words the changes we’re seeing now are from a different source that past variability.”
Variability is variability. It doesn’t matter what the cause, what matters is the effect. Dead is dead, no matter what killed you.
The cause of natural variability is ASSUMED to be different, largely because it was ASSUMED that past natural variability was low. As more and more studies show that natural variability is HIGH then that means there is less and less reason to worry about current variability.
The polar bears didn’t die out in the past when it was warmer for a period of 3000 years, so it is illogical and thus unscientific to suggest that they will die out as a result of warming today. Those scientists that continues to suggest otherwise are not practicing science, they are engaged in fear mongering to try and drum up continued grants at the public expense. In other words, fraudulent utterances to obtain money.
Found this page on the BBC yesterday that WUWT reported previously:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14408930
The title is:
“Arctic ‘tipping point’ may not be reached”
Related Stories by the BBC are listed as:
New warning on Arctic ice melt 08 APRIL 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Arctic sea ice melt ‘even faster’ 19 JUNE 2008, SCI/TECH
Arctic losing long-term ice cover 18 MARCH 2008, SCI/TECH
Amazing how quickly opinion can change from “the worlds about to end” to “oh…maybe not “
Climate science 101. The world is going to end in (present day + 20 years) due to (choose: human activity/carbon/co2/pollution) unless we get a grant to solve the problem. All signs point to things getting worse otherwise.
Douglas Foss says;
It casts huge doubt on the theory that climate changes in the Arctic are related to greenhouse gas levels.
well,well, isn’t that what I said
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/what-was-that-what-henry-said
“even with a reduction to less than 50% of the current amount of sea ice the ice will not reach a point of no return (i.e. a tipping point).”
Yep, there’s always that seed ice that forms every winter when there’s no energy input FOR 6 MONTHS!