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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It appears that the US Navy takes the possibility of a largely ice-free arctic quite seriously:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/documents/CCR.pdf
They’re the folks who will have to sail those waters eventually. No matter the cause, it appears that we are losing ice up there, and this is bound to lead to more shipping (Iceland is planning to become the new Hong Kong!), fishing and, eventually, clashes over resources. I seem to recall a Russian flag planted on the Arctic ocean floor close to the North Pole.
Latest North Pole cam shot depicts an iced over lens and what looks to be a decent recent dump of snow. Overcast sky,
Nuke says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:44 pm
R. Gates says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Do you understand the null hypothesis?
============================================
Yes he does, but like Trenberth, he has his own personal one.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/japan-tsunami-icebergs-antarctica_n_921659.html
Quite an interesting article if you can stomach Nature attempting to plumb new depths of idiocy:
“Nature speculated whether “‘glacial tsunamis’ be added to the list of future global-warming hazards”
Amazing what happens when you actually start reading scientific papers and putting things in historical perspective….not such a big deal after all.
Took a look at Cryospheres Arctic Basin chart. Current ice area in the basin is almost at last years mid-September level.
Nuke says:
“…a recurrance of past climate events does not necessarily mean they have the same cause.”
As Nuke points out, the null hypothesis assumes that a recurrence of the same events has the same cause, barring evidence to the contrary. Gates, on the other hand, assumes that the same repeating pattern has a new cause. And Trenberth knows the null hypothesis debunks his hidden heat in the pipeline conjecture, so he demands a new null hypothesis!
If any of these guys followed the scientific method, they would have to produce solid evidence showing “this time it’s different.” Since there isn’t any evidence that this time it’s different, they want to turn the scientific method on its head, and change the null hypothesis.
What they should be doing is to honestly admit that it is becoming clear that CO2 does not have the claimed AGW effect, and causes only minuscule warming at best – leaving natural variability as the best explanation for the very mild 0.7° rise over the past century and a half, as the planet continues its emergence from the LIA.
But that would require them to admit that they were mistaken, and they will never do that.
R. Gates says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:14 pm
“Also, I note with interest than many people seem to think that just because something happened in the past and it’s happening now that they must have the same cause. Obviouisly not true, nor logically must be true under any conditions. A similar effect need not have the saem cause nor would one expect it to have the same kinds of feedbacks.”
Nice try, but it remains up to the Warmista to show that present conditions are not just more of the same.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:57 pm
OMG, the military has contingency plans for everything. I am sure they have a recently updated plan for fighting their way out of Annapolis.
“New report just out:
ScienceDaily:
Titled: Large Variations in Arctic Sea Ice: Polar Ice Much Less Stable Than Previously Thought, Study Finds.”
Very interesting,,,but we know the warmists will rip the study to shreds, just as they did with Spencers latest study.
All I see out of the Arctic Sea Ice Area and Extent data is that, since 2006, a step down to a new normal occured. How long will it stay there? How big is the next step? Which direction will it step next: Up or Down?
Have fun watching and making bets/predictions, but don’t spend too long at the racetrack.
RE: Steve Mosher at 9.44 am
Thanks for your comments on my post. I accept your comments as being entirely valid, but that does not turn my statements into anti-science. As you say, as I scientist, if I see a dip in global temps coincident with a volcanic eruption I can postulate a mechanism, by science/physics as to how the temperature has been affected by the volcanic eruption. This is my natural curiosity as a scientist to explain the world around me and I entriely agree with your sentiments on this point.
But if I observe changes in nature which are well within the bounds of other historical events then it surely behoves me to search for common, plausible physcial mechanisms of a general physical form before I create special pleading and special circumstances that the latter part of the 20th Century is somehow special and requires a special theory and set of physiscs whereby man (and AGW) becomes the root cause of the phenomenom.
To formulate a physcial theory that the latter part of the 20th century requires the invoking of physics specifically involving mans actions when the changes observed appear to be no different in magnitude or form than previous, naturally associated events strikes me as possibly hubris and little different to the beliefs held by the population during less enlightened times.
As an example, I believe Phil Jones is on record as pointing out that the putative global temperature rise of the late 20th century is statistically identical to the rise in the early part of the same century and as two previous periods within the temperature record for Central England. Why therefore does the latter half of the 2oth century require a special theory all of its own to explain it? A simple glance at the last 10,000 years of the GISP2 ice core temprature proxy should be enough to demonstrate that the recent warming is hardly unusual.
The whole premise of tipping point warming upon which AGW was balanced got taken to political arena. There, while under watchful eyes, the economy turned far more sour than the planet warmed, so much so, that the real threat turned out economic, not climate warming.
It was then that the GOP made hay of the point, and AGW was forthwith tossed under the Bus as a bargaining chit. An expensive chit what with all the years and treasury expended. Deals are deals. Nobody wanted a baked potato gone cold and moldy. Nobody in politics is about to dig it out of the trash can, let alone try to warm & serve it. It’s dead, Jim.
ThinkingScientist,
Exactly. The climate alarmist crowd is trying to make the current climate something sinister, when in fact it is a “Goldilocks” climate: not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
There has been about a 40% increase in CO2, but the global temperature has only gone up a minuscule 0.7°C. And there is zero evidence that the rise in CO2 caused that 0.7° rise. It may well be a coincidental correlation. Without testable evidence linking the ΔT with CO2, Occam’s Razor says that CO2 – an extraneous variable – should be disregarded, because it is most likely not the cause of the mild rise in temperature.
Re: Smokey at 3.47 pm
“There has been about a 40% increase in CO2, and global temperature has only gone up a minuscule 0.7°C”
Actually, if “corrected” GHCN is being used as the basis for the estimate of temperature rise in the 20th century you can probably subtract 0.25 degC from that temperature rise as this is the systematic “error” correction trend applied to that data since 1910. Not clear to me why the temperature correction across thousands of mercury thermometers over many decades of the 20 th century should be a systematic function of time.
Within days arctic ice extent should reach the 5.5 million sq. kilometers predicted on this site last November.
“The ice is coming back”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/23/joe-bastardis-2011-arctic-sea-ice-prediction/
Yes, the USHCN adjusts everything. Look at this basket of snakes: click
They adjust earlier readings lower so the resulting graph looks like temperatures are rapidly rising.
And here we see how they got away from simply reporting raw mercury thermometer readings on their B-91’s: click
Mark Fawcett, Thank you and Walt Meier for the clarification.
It is clear that no one suggested that the arctic would be ice free in 2008.
There is always discussion on the details of where when and how much with regard to the effects of AGW. Debate about precisely how many decades it may take for the arctic to become ice free misses the point.
Cherry picking years like 2007 in noisy data and saying 2008 wasn’t so bad is cr**p science. The long term trends for ice cover is shown in fig 1 of this paper:
http://www.ualberta.ca/~eec/Stroeve2007.pdf
“There has been about a 40% increase in CO2, but the global temperature has only gone up a minuscule 0.7°C. And there is zero evidence that the rise in CO2 caused that 0.7° rise. It may well be a coincidental correlation. Without testable evidence linking the ΔT with CO2, Occam’s Razor says that CO2 – an extraneous variable – should be disregarded, because it is most likely not the cause of the mild rise in temperature.”
The unfortunate thing is this smokey. Occams razor has nothing to do with this. There is known tested science that explains how C02 and other GHGs ( like water vapor) raise the effective radiating height of the atmosphere. That means that the earth will cool less rapidly. You have an effect, less rapid cooling that is predicted by science over 100 years old. Science so secure that we used it to design star wars and fighter aircraft. Science that has become engineering for people like me and jeffId and Ryan Odonnell. To be sure there are other factors that contribute both to warming and to cooling. But C02 or other GHGs added to the atmosphere will cause the temperature to be higher than it would be otherwise. No occams razor required.
Steven Mosher,
The evidence [or lack thereof] shows that the effect of CO2 is minuscule. Not non-existent. But minuscule. Joe Bastardi makes the case better than me: click
Frank K.,
That press release says ice free in 30 years, not in 2008 or in 2013 or whatever else people here think Mark Serreze said. I have not followed everything that Serreze has claimed, but I have found his predictions to be consistent: the Arctic may be ice free in the summer by 2030. I even checked some articles from Anthony’s recent “short research project,” and I read the same prediction from him each time he was mentioned. Even in relation to his “death spiral” quote, he mentions the year 2030: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080917-sea-ice.html .
I’m sorry, but I find Serreze’s predictions to be much more consistent than people’s interpretations of what he said that are presented here. I don’t think it’s that hard to comprehend what Serreze has said.
Alex the skeptic says:
August 9, 2011 at 4:22 am
“How many blunders must an ‘expert’ make before he is declared inept? at best?”
In the imminent doomsday racket being consistently wrong is not a liability.
Paul Ehrlich has been consistently wrong in his doomsday predictions for over four decades and is still frequently quoted as a supposed expert.
I find it amazing that as the main predictions that convinced non-scientists and scientists alike
of CAGW fail, they roll with the punches but remain steadfast. Would they remain so if all the predictions fail? Would R Gates still remain 75% convinced? Would Mosher just continue to grow more annoyed? Right now they are responding by stretching forecasts into the future, kicking up dust (aerosols?), changing the name of the perceived CO2 Armageddon to even remove the word warming….. As predictions fail. Having been given a 30-50 year respite and the halving or two thirds reduction in the expected temps, let’s at least take off the ‘C’ from CAGW (I don’t accept the desperate substitutes of c.c. Or c. Disruption). We live in interesting psychological times.
On the good development side, the NSIDC has started reporting the daily sea ice extent numbers (as Jaxa does) and the individual regions are also reported. The data only starts on July 8th, but hopefully someone will go back and reconstruct the historical numbers (so there might be less arguing and more discussion about what caused Y and what caused X). if not, at least we can start using the data in the future.
HomePage here. Data can be located on the right and through an FTP site in csv format.
http://nsidc.org/data/masie/index.html
Steven Mosher says:
August 9, 2011 at 9:44 am
If you want to understand or explain the current decline, then appealing to “natural variation” is no explanation whatsoever. Its an explanation without any predictive power. Its an explanation that can’t be falsified. Its the absence of explanation, it’s anti science.
Let me explain what is wrong with this train of thought. Terming unexplainable differences as ‘natural variation’ is the only way to describe them unless you prefer to ignore the fact that we don’t know everything. If a tree falls in the woods, you can see it on the ground. You may not be able to tell what fell that tree, but you don’t need to know what chopped it down to see it on the ground. What is anti-science is saying that just because none of the known factors can explain it, it must all be attributable to CO2. I have never seen a calculation that says, “If CO2 increases by [X], the effect on Arctic ice is [Y].” There are a lot of processes you’d have to follow to prove that out. Do you know of one? Otherwise, we are really just having a little argument about what the effect of CO2 on Arctic ice is. And that doesn’t really seem to be settled. In fact, to say that pointing out that it is not settled is ‘anti-science’ is disingenuous.