Peter Wadhams, who regularly predicts an ice free arctic, and infamously speculated that he and his friends might be the target of a big oil assassination conspiracy, has written a book titled “A Farewell to Ice”.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A Farewell to Ice by Peter Wadhams review – climate change writ large
The warning this book gives us about the consequences of the loss of the planet’s ice is emphatic, urgent and convincing.
Becoming a world authority on sea ice has taken Peter Wadhams to the polar zones more than 50 times, travelling on foot and by plane, ship, snowmobile and several nuclear-powered submarines of the Royal Navy.
Nonscientists who read his astonishing and hair-raising A Farewell to Ice will agree that the interludes of autobiography it contains are engrossing, entertaining and, when one submarine suffers an onboard explosion and fire while under the ice, harrowing.
Any reader should find the science of sea-ice creation and the implications for us all of its loss – explored and explained here with clarity and style – beautiful, compelling and terrifying.
…
“Our planet has changed colour. Today, from space, the top of the world in the northern summer looks blue instead of white. We have created an ocean where there was once an ice sheet. It is Man’s first major achievement in reshaping the face of his planet,” Wadhams writes.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/21/farewell-to-ice-peter-wadhams-review-climate-change
Sadly I haven’t received my reviewer’s copy of Wadhams’ new book, but if we want any insight into the contents, perhaps this gem of a Wadhams prediction from June this year will help.
“My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year,” he said.
“Even if the ice doesn’t completely disappear, it is very likely that this will be a record low year. I’m convinced it will be less than 3.4 million square kilometres [the current record low].
“I think there’s a reasonable chance it could get down to a million this year and if it doesn’t do it this year, it will do it next year.
“Ice free means the central part of the Arctic and the North Pole is ice free.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
UPDATE: (Anthony) It seems none of Wadhams professional and private peers who made sea ice predictions for the Sea Ice Prediction Network this year agree with his forecast:
Source: https://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2016/august
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Wadhams, absurd comment,
“My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year,”
He says an area of less than 1 million is the same as disappear. What a funny guy since I learned back in grade school that disappear means it is not there anymore.
I believe this is the dictionary definition of “hedging one’s bet”…
He has high waffling skills. Lots of “may well” and “very likely”. He does slip up on the ice-free bit by failing to qualify the claim that next year, for sure, will be under a million square kilometers.
Climatology has a high degree of uncertainty. Anyone actually interested in understanding it knows that.
Thanks, clearly the policy advocates don’t understand.
==========
Heh, Jim Y., closet skeptic. Once he yanks the cord and sees the light he’ll burst out of the closet screaming ‘What is being done to us?’.
Whoops forgot the ==========
Jim, you’ve stumbled blindly over the core of much of skepticism. Climate science has no clue on natural variability, in fact a case could be made that our curiosity about natural variability has been violently suppressed.
If we are false-footed into mitigating a warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to a cooling that is happening, then there will be Hell to pay, and the bill will be delivered by horses of many hues.
============
less than 1 million…
only in ice science can something the size of Egypt….or Texas and New Mexico combined
…not exist
Wadhams is full of it.
Even Gavin Schmitt called his claims “bollocks”
There was pseudo interview with him in the Guardian yesterday where he said there is a “clear trend to zero” . He then goes on to explain that zero = 10^6 !! Top expert scientist, totally illiterate and innumerate.
He does not say why his is fitting a linear trend or his justification for expecting it to continue. Just to add a sciency bit he does talk about albedo feedback. Unfortunately if that postitiive feedback were significant we would have seen a tipping point and runaway melting after the OMG minima of 2007 and 2012. In fact we saw the opposite: a notable rebound.
This suggests that the negative feedback like enhanced outward LWIR and increased evaporation ( which he chose not mention ) are dominant, not his ice albedo.
Or just maybe the temperature of the water in the major ocean to which the Arctic ocean is linked could be a factor?
The well known and studied AMO went from its cold extreme in 1975 to it warmest extreme around 2006: in exactly the period that we have been monitoring sea ice reliably and saw the “catastrophic” decline in NH sea ice.
Models to not reproduce the AMO and they under-estimated sea ice decline in the Arctic. Coincidence?
Maybe sea temperature has something to do with the amount of sea ice. Since the volume of melted ice is the integral of instantaneous SST influence , there will be a lag of something less than a quarter cycle.
AMO is usually attributed 60y period so 10-15y after 2006 should see ice volume bottom out. That certainly seems to be the way things are going in the decadal trend analysis that I did.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
The most rapid melting was from 1997 – 2007: the rising quadrant of AMO. Now that AMO is in the falling quadrant of positive phase, ice melting is slowing down.
If Wadhams has spent 50 years studying Arctic ice as he claims and is a supposed world authority, he must know all this. The obvious conclusion is that he is being willfully misleading and alarmist.
No wonder he sees the need for action as urgent … before the canary in the coal mine wakes up and starts tweeting.
But Greg, we all know that the enthalpy in the ocean has gone into melting ice by the process of warmista enthalpy transport we learned about in thermo. [/sarc]
You’re right. Arctic ice either “is” or “is not”. But don’t get too comfy, it all depends on what your definition of “is” is. Aha!
In the same way that 2 + 2 = 5, for unusually large values of 2 ?
Thanks Hivemind. Keyboard needed cleaning anyway.
That’s the official definition of gone accepted by researchers in the field.
If you had a million dollars in your pocket, would you say you had no money?
It’s ridiculous Griff. No ice is no ice.
Any way, no ice is better, as I’ve said before.
“My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year”
It seems even when I translate this to something along the lines of “My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year”, I’m still stuck with those weasel words “may well have”.
These aren’t statements a scientist would make. We say the “model predicts” or “the expected value is” [some number] +/- [some other number] with [some probability].
As long as this sort of thing sells popular articles and books, people will do it. The sad part is some folks take it seriously, but polls show not very many. The dangerous one are politicians who’ve figured out they can make a buck off it.
That is a very important point I try to make time after time. When I read these global warming articles the language and the way they argue is NOT the way scientists argue or discuss things. They are never wrong nor have they ever been wrong. No prediction is too alarmist for them no matter how improbable. Random associations are made all the time and justified with specious made up statistics. They cherry pick data constantly but most importantly they don’t argue in a scientific fashion.
When confronted they almost always resort to “the consensus” instead of what real scientists do which is to pick up pencil and paper and show. If I say something flawed to a scientist he will just explain if necessary with formula why what I’m saying doesn’t work and demonstrate with some example how this doesn’t happen or does happen. Climate scientists NEVER do that. They always go into accusations, call to the consensus and if push comes to shove and you won’t give up will rely on computer models.
I know of no other profession or science which assumes a computer model is right and the data is wrong. Practically every climate article starts off with “the computer models predict this” therefore in 2050 this will happen. Even though the computer models are shown time and again to be fabrications of fits to selected data and don’t fit anything other than what they are fit to and even though the computer models have failed to predict anything and that the computer models have to be reset every year with new “initialization data” to even come close to matching historical results they blithely assume that 80 years from now these computer models will have correctly predicted some temperature or other condition which when extrapolated to some other natural correlation means consequences which are unavoidable and the death or cost of this or that.
It’s the most absurd thing that even a high school student can see the stupidity of but people around the world swallow it hook line and sinker.
You know AGW is just political science when no one other than fact checking skeptics call out these attention mongers who love to yell fire in a crowded theater. I guess there is no remorse among warmistas for the pathetic attention seekers among them.
No offense intended, but I have to correct your factional error. He loves to yell, “There MAY be fire”.
“There may be a fire, and everyone died.” There, fixed it.
current polar ice accumulations…
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
I think this ice accumulation is a little more accurate for Aug. 22nd, 2016:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
I wonder if Peter Wadhams has looked at this data – the temps are now falling in the Arctic, and is averaging -1.2 C as of today:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
That’s an extent chart – all areas with more than 15% ice…
Lots of that area has more than 15% ice, but a lot less than 100%.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/
It’s still ice Griff.
It’s refusing to go away, much to everyone’s chagrin.
Griff,
They used to use 30%, but it wasn’t scary. So now they use 15%.
It still isn’t scary to knowledgeable folks, who understand that:
1. We’re observing natural variability, and:
2. The original predictions of disappearing polar ice were flat wrong. So they began to concentrate on Arctic ice. But half right = wrong.
Here’s what’s happening, 1979 until now:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif
Global ice is the top graph. Does that scare you?
‘Ice Cold in Alex’ would be my preference. There was a sinister spy in that too although he redeemed himself before the end in time for a cold Carlsberg.
No commet, this guy is beyond absurd, (I guess that was a comment)
It sounds more like a commet 😉
Well, I don’t know. If he was a warmista it would have been hedged. So, it might be a comment.
HE IS 100% WRONG !
But he looks so nice that one is tempted to believe him.
If your taste runs to curmudgeonly geezers, I suppose, sure.
The dodo is still extinct. Other prophecies (forward and reverse) have been more circumstantial, less scientific, and more prescriptive.
Wadhams seems to be practicing what market traders call “averaging down”. The market is still going the wrong way to his predictions and he’s losing even more, but he can claim a lower percentage loss per trade.
The “need to be right” runs strong in this one.
Over educated nincompoop! He dirties the term “Scientist”.
Slightly pregnant, lol
The Guardian has in fact published three articles promoting Wadhams’s book in the last few days. Links and more comment here. In none of them does the so-called journalist think to get an opinion from another scientist. Kudos to Gavin for saying on twitter: “Wadhams says what other scientists will not” – mostly because they prefer to have physics behind their ideas.
The Guardian taking a slice of the sales revenue could explain
1) Why they need 3 articles about the book
2) Why no contrary scientific opinion is sought
3) Why below the line contrary comments are scrubbed.
Well, Gavin still calls Wadhams a scientist and not a silly old bugger. So I think praising kudos is not needed.
Prophets hate the internet. Someone can find their predictions that went wrong, and quote them being wrong.
I wonder what Wadhams’ explanation is for why the ice extent in the southern hemisphere isn’t disappearing. It is supposed to be “global” warming, isn’t it?
The CO2’s upside down in the Southern Hemisphere, so the dipole moment or something else sciency sounding is reversed …….
Simples, you can watch water swirling down the plughole in the opposite direction down there …..
And the constellation Orion is upside down d’an undah, as well. So his dangly bits don’t dangle at all, he sports a woody.
Orion upside down under?
Luftpumpe is right.
The conditions in the arctic and antarctic which influence sea ice formation are quite different…
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/icelights/2012/11/arctic-melt-versus-antarctic-freeze-antarctica-warming-or-not
But, but, but….!!
I thought it was GLOBAL warming? Oh yes, I forgot, in the warmists’ world more ice means warming.
If the Antarcitc sea ice was melting away your gang would be screaming “Global Waaaarming!” and “the Antarctic is screaming!”. You wouldn’t been saying, “oh no, that’s not right, the Antarctic should be gaining in sea ice”.
Warm is warm, apart from when it’s cold, It’s absolute twaddle Griff.
Since Earth has never been ice free before, this certainly is cause for panic.
Absolute rubbish.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826611-200-when-crocodiles-roamed-the-arctic/
Look out, Peter, someone’s out to get you! Look over your right shoulder: “Death by big oil”.
Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.
And, dear Peter, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Arctic ice is expensive. Why can’t we just save Antarctic ice?
Arctic ice is expensive. Why can’t we just save Antarctic ice?
– noone buys that extensive icebox, expensive you know.
Update: See his own collapsed forecast for 2015: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/22/professor-peter-wadhams-will-not-bet-on-his-own-sea-ice-predictions/#comment-2262941 !!
I’d like to see his early predictions in writing to see if the Clintonesque definition of “ice-free” was present.
Sorry, Mods. I seem to have fallen foul of you by quoting something that is written on Wadham’s own whiteboard….
So Putin gets another pass.
Of course, the idea that “Big Oil” gives a damn about power produced CO2 – we don’t use oil for making electricity anymore, and never used much anyway. Half our oil is used fro plastics, etc and doesn’t have anything to do with energy. Only cars, and electric cars that are practical will be the demise of gas powered jobs, something this clown has nothing to do with. Amazing how monolithic corporations would find it impossible to put out a contract on this Joe Palooka. He claims big oil a big, powerful evil but apparently isn’t actually worried that they will do something. In terms of sheer logic, this guy is a basket case.
here is a clue. Wadhams does not speak for the science
Ignore wadhams
“It is very likely that the Arctic sea ice cover will continue shrinking
and thinning year-round in the course of the 21st century as
global mean surface temperature rises. At the same time, in the
Antarctic, a decrease in sea ice extent and volume is expected,
but with low confidence. Based on the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble,
projections of average reductions in Arctic sea ice extent for 2081–
2100 compared to 1986–2005 range from 8% for RCP2.6 to 34% for
RCP8.5 in February and from 43% for RCP2.6 to 94% for RCP8.5 in
September (medium confidence). A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean (sea ice
extent less than 1 × 106
km2
for at least 5 consecutive years) in September
before mid-century is likely under RCP8.5 (medium confidence),
based on an assessment of a subset of models that most closely reproduce
the climatological mean state and 1979–2012 trend of the Arctic
sea ice cover. Some climate projections exhibit 5- to 10-year periods of
sharp summer Arctic sea ice decline—even steeper than observed over
the last decade—and it is likely that such instances of rapid ice loss
will occur in the future. There is little evidence in global climate models
of a tipping point (or critical threshold) in the transition from a perennially
ice-covered to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean beyond which
further sea ice loss is unstoppable and irreversible. In the Antarctic, the
CMIP5 multi-model mean projects a decrease in sea ice extent that
ranges from 16% for RCP2.6 to 67% for RCP8.5 in February and from
8% for RCP2.6 to 30% for RCP8.5 in September for 2081–2100 compared
to 1986–2005. There is, however, low confidence in those values
as projections because of the wide inter-model spread and the inability
of almost all of the available models to reproduce the mean annual
cycle, interannual variability and overall increase of the Antarctic sea
ice areal coverage observed during the satellite era. {12.4.6, 12.5.5,
Figures 12.28, 12.29, 12.30, 12.31}
” Based on the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble,
projections of average reductions in Arctic sea ice extent for 2081–
2100″
Well since models badly under-estimated Arctic melting so far why would we have any confidence in them being even roughly correct on such wild and unscientific extrapolations?
“here is a clue. Wadhams does not speak for the science”
Ignore wadhams”
Hehe. Brilliantly put.
May I give it a try?
“here is a clue. Mosher does not speak for the science”
Ignore Mosher” 😉
Andrew
The difference between Wadhams and Mosher is that Mosher is hated for saying things that are pretty factual, where as Wadhams is loved for not doing that.
when precisely did Mosher do that?
“Mosher is hated for saying things that are pretty factual”
Hugs,
What did Mosher say that was factual?
Andrew
Mosher did say that Gavin disagreed with Wadhams.
Mr. Mosher says things that are “petty factual.”
Mosher, please don’t break your sentences into lines, handhelds do that on their own behalf.
Otherway you produce broken language.
Cheers
Models.
Ho, ho!
Steven Mosher August 22, 2016 at 11:08 am
“here is a clue. Wadhams does not speak for the science
Ignore wadhams”
HAH! From his Wikipedia bio:
“Peter Wadhams ScD (born 14 May 1948), is professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge. He is best known for his work on sea ice.
He is the president of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans Commission on Sea Ice and Coordinator for the International Programme for Antarctic Buoys.
Wadhams has been the leader of 40 polar field expeditions.[1]
Wadhams advocates for the use of climate engineering to mitigate climate change.[2]
He has received the Polar Medal.”
So he speaks for the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge. IOW he speaks for a department Physics at he same illustrious university where Isaac Newton’s chair resides and was once occupied by Stephan Hawking! A university known for the greatest physicists.
Looks like y’all, at least at Cambridge, have the same problem with tenure as we do.
In the absence of Cambridge and the various institutions’ disavowing Prof. Wadham’s provocative statements/predictions, tenure or not, they are complicit.
I am honestly at a loss. IF it is true that Arctic ice has been thickening over recent years AND that variable wind patterns affect the distribution of ice, why would Prof. Wadham claim in June 2016 that this year, but surely no later than next year, Arctic sea ice will decline precipitously to 1 million square kilometers (gone)?
The 2012 minimum extent, influenced by a known strong weather pattern, was far above his estimation for 2016. Does he have access to data or analyses that others don’t?
dogdaddyblog
He’s the crazy uncle in the basement that the family wants you to ignore. But how can one ignore him when he screams so loud and has such credentials and continues to hold a position of repute?
I don’t claim to be a sea ice expert, but I can look things up. I predict the minimum sea ice extent this year and next will be about 4 million sq Kilometers. Let’s check back in October when it starts to recover and see who’s closer.
I’m gonna claim 3.9 million sq Km.
Let’s see who’s closer 😉
Anybody want to go for 4.1 million sq Km?
Whatever, we’ll all be closer than Wadhams.
I think you all may be going over. I’ll bid 1,000,001 sq km. 😉 #ThePriceIsRight
Well, he is qualified to run for state Attorney General.
It’s not that though is it. Leftybollocks writers at rags like the Guardian go out of their way to find people like this idiot to quote and push their agenda that phony-socialism is good for poor people (so that people will give them money).