Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Why have we not heard about Arctic sea ice?
A few months ago the world's media were obsessing over the condition of the ice in the Arctic sea. Now, silence. Gee, I wonder why?
7 Comments:
By 
clint, at
Wed Oct 15, 11:34:00 PM:
Think anyone will remember this humiliating failure of a prediction when they make exactly the same prediction next spring?
By 
, at
Thu Oct 16, 12:05:00 AM:
Changed from second-worst recorded level of sea ice to third-worst.
In other words, still really bad.
By clint, at
Thu Oct 16, 12:43:00 AM:
Brian-
I'm curious about the value judgments you are making.
I see how you can say there's more ice or less ice, but where do you get 'good' and 'bad' amounts of ice?
Assume for the sake of argument that for the next thousand years the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice stayed exactly the same as it was this past summer. What harm would this cause?
Can you explain what you mean by calling it "really bad"?
By , at
Thu Oct 16, 03:19:00 AM:
They're silent for the same reason they replaced "global warming" with "climate change". The narrative is more important than the facts, and the narrative must not be falsifiable.
By , at
Thu Oct 16, 09:55:00 AM:
3rd worst? worse than 1950? worse than 1925? How about 1900? or 1800? or 1250?
Worst is a pretty sweeping generalization for a subject about which we have so very little data.
By , at
Thu Oct 16, 01:03:00 PM:
The History channel aired a segment last night that purported to show how "global warming" was going to cause a new ice age in Northern Europe.
Really! Complete with animations and lots of serious deep-voiced commentary.
When you're stuck on stupid, why abandon the narrative.
By , at
Thu Oct 16, 06:27:00 PM:
Clint - the trend line over the last 30 years, even if you exclude the last three years, is bad because it supports the theory and models predicting more-rapid warming in the Arctic and therefore more problems to come. If it stopped for the next thousand years (without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions) that would mean that climate change isn't really a problem, which would be excellent news.
RPD - Third worst since satellite monitoring became consistent, which I believe is early 70's. Prior to satellites it's harder to compare accurately. There was one warm period in the 1930s Arctic. This site:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm
says there's less now but I wouldn't put a lot of weight on it. If the 1930s didn't beat current records, it's unlikely to have been worse in the last 1000 years, although I think that would be very difficult to prove.
Note the rest of the globe in the 1930s wasn't as warm as it is now.
