Further scientific evidence has been produced to show that summer sea ice in the Arctic has shown no significant decline since 2007. The facts produced make a mockery of attempts by alarmists such as Al Gore and Sir David Attenborough to push the collectivist Net Zero agenda by stating that all the ice will be gone in just a few years. A leading Danish scientist notes a fall in sea ice between 1997 and 2007, but minimal loss in the 44-year satellite record both before and after this period. Furthermore, he concludes in a recently published paper that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of Arctic sea ice and the gradually increasing concentrations of the trace gas carbon dioxide.
Allan Astrup Jensen lays out the facts and states that “there is no indication that we should expect the Arctic summer sea ice to disappear, as predicted, in one or two decades”. Jensen is a distinguished scientist of long standing with over 300 publications to his name. He is the Research Director of the Nordic Institute of Product Sustainability, Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology, and sits on the editorial board of the Springer publication, Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
The facts are very clear, as the graph below shows.
The red bar shows the monthly average for the lowest extent of summer sea ice, invariably reached in September. The fall over 10 years from the 1979-97 plateau can be seen, as can the resumption of the minimal downward trend from 2007.
The September ice trend from 2007 onwards can be seen in the following graph.
Even with the lower extent in 2023, the author notes there has been no significant downward movement during the last 17 years. The figures for these graphs come from the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre where Mark Serreze predicted in 2007 that the sea ice would all be gone by 2030.
The decade fall to 2007 was catnip to many climate extremists, and remains so to this day. Declining Arctic sea ice has been one of the main poster scares of the climate catastrophists. Having lost coral on the Great Barrier Reef – two years of record growth – and polar bears – more wandering around these days than you can shake a stick at – alarmists seem loath to give up another old friend that has served them so well. In 2022, David Attenborough reported on the BBC’s Frozen Planet II that the sea ice could all be gone by 2035. Computer models rather than data were thought to be behind his claim. Jensen details other scaremongers including Professor Peter Wadhams from the University of Cambridge, who predicted in the Guardian in 2012 that there would be a final collapse of the ice within four years.
In 2021, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated: “The September Arctic sea ice is projected (by CIM6 model simulations) to be practically ice-free near mid-century under mid and high GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” The scare is also kept going with science papers like Kim et al. which predicted last year that the summer sea ice would be “completely absent” in one to two decades. Another author is said to have told the Guardian that it was “too late to save the summer ice”. The prediction was of course wrong, observed Jensen – “unsubstantiated, unscientific, absurd and alarmist”.
There is mounting evidence that Arctic sea ice is cyclical rather than linear, and owes a great deal to natural influences such as a powerful ocean current called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). Historical observations going back to the early 1800s suggest considerable waxing and waning of the ice over periods of around 70-90 years.
In the near record, there is evidence to suggest that the sea ice extent was lower in the 1970s and it peaked in 1979, the year satellite records are said to have began. Of course by starting modern records at this date, a lower trend can be reported from what is a particularly high year. Investigative science journalist Tony Heller notes that there were satellite records available in the 1970s, and he presents two IPCC sea ice graphs – one published in 1990 and the other in 2001.
In the first graph the IPCC plots the lower levels of ice in the 1970s with a peak shown in 1979. But by 2001, the IPCC had removed much of the increase of that decade and the chart showed the ice actually starting to fall from around 1977. Heller also provides evidence that the 1950s, which are not shown on these charts, had lower ice than the 1970s.
Quite what role human-caused carbon dioxide plays in all this is somewhat unclear. No obvious correlation with regard to this one, as Allan Astrup Jensen and Tony Heller clearly show.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The evidence of the two graphs seems to show that anthropogenic CO2 has an amazing ability to alter the past!
Yes, like the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly data which has twice now made the past get colder. (I think the TARDIS is involved.)
This has ensured the slope of the curve on the graph produced from it remains steep, despite the post-1996, 19 year period of cooling.
The truth is getting out more and more. Scientists like Willie Soon are very eager that ppl understand the reality of climate rather than the nonsense spouted by MSM. Willie has been fighting the fight for years for no great gain. Tucker interviewed him recently, well worth a watch here:
https://youtu.be/E7IdLzxzINw?si=_9d4-OtUOzVEBT3p
Well worth watching, particularly (IMO) for the first 6-7 minutes, where Willie Soon confirms the abiotic / abiogenic formation of “fossil fuels” (in addition to their historically-understood formation through decaying vegetation). This is the first time I have heard this from a fully credible and authoritative source.
Notice that climate change activists always claim certainty where none exists. This includes politicians, media, assorted NGO’s, pressure groups, Friends of the Earth, Just Stop Oil etc etc. They are absolutely certain of everything they say, no matter how absurd it is. But in reality there are huge uncertainties. ——– There is an old saying that “Fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves but wiser ones so full of doubt”. But if something is supposed to be about science then you are supposed to have doubts, you are supposed to question everything. But questioning things has you berated as a “denier” or a “delayer” and other silly name calling.—–Has anyone ever heard people called a “denier” if they have a different view on black holes? How about a different view on evolution? How about Quantum mechanics? infact on any scientific issue I can think of no culture of personal attacks and name calling. ———–So why do we get it with the issue of climate change? ——-The answer is really very simple. —–Climate Change isn’t only about science.———It is also about economics, moral and social issues and POLITICS. There are now 8 billion people in the world. Can they all live in a semi detached house with a BMW in the drive? Can they all have satellite TV and 2 holidays abroad? Can they all have air conditioning or/and central heating?—–So these are political, moral, social and economic problems. In order to control the worlds wealth and resources, which is what the WEF and UN attempts to do, it has been decided that the wealthy west really must lower its consumption patterns and have less of everything. To get away with this you need a plausible excuse. That excuse is CLIMATE CHANGE. But Climate Change in so far as it is a problem is a global thing. It is not going to be stopped by a small country like the UK reducing it’s use of fossil fuels and emissions of CO2, when huge countries like India and China emit 40% of the worlds emissions, and the USA, Asia etc all are emitting CO2. So all of the “fools and fanatics” need to understand that climate change is not just about climate, and that it is mostly about taking away fossil fuel use because it is a finite resource in the ground, and it is the use of those fuels that are directly tied to prosperity. But is there enough coal oil and gas to give everyone the same level of prosperity? That is what this issue is mostly about, because there is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. The “fools and fanatics” are barking up the wrong tree. There is no climate emergency .
“Al Gore and Sir David Attenborough to push the collectivist Net Zero agenda by stating that all the ice will be gone in just a few years.”
John Kerry stated in 2009: all sea ice at the North Pole will be gone by 2015!
Since doomsday 1970, every year is the new apocalypse!
Arctic Sea ice extent is area not mass. The area covered can change for a number of reasons without the mass changing.
Geological climate history shows the Earth had no polar ice for 68% of the time, outside that mostly just one polar cap, and rarely two.
We are therefore in an unusually cold period in Earth’s history.
Maybe.
Scott Adams made rhe very valid point that just as we have no idea what the “temperature of the Earth” because it’s just so variable from place to place and over such a vast space, the idea that we know the amount of sea ice there is is just as laughable.
Moreover we don’t have any idea what it is right now so to pretend that we can know what it has been hundreds or thousands of years before is just beyond comical.
Trying to talk about this with any sense of authority is silly.
A leading Danish scientist notes a fall in sea ice between 1997 and 2007, but minimal loss in the 44-year satellite record both before and after this period. Furthermore, he concludes in a recently published paper that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of Arctic sea ice and the gradually increasing concentrations of the trace gas carbon dioxide.
This could do with a bit of perspective. Jensen is indeed a reputable scientist but not in climatology. I couldn’t find a list of his publications but his main area of expertise seems to be chemical contamination of human milk.
The recently published paper was published in https://scienceofclimatechange.org/ which is an on-line open access journal which has the appearance of being a pukka academic journal but actually the entire editorial board comprises six well known climate sceptics, only one of which has any qualifications in climatology. All of the published papers I looked at were sceptical. This a “journal” with a mission.
Jensen’s paper reads more like an extended blog post than a piece of research. It is very short and his point is like something out of a statistics introduction. For almost any stochastic time series it is possible to find ways of drawing lines that do not represent the overall trend. Just choose your starting point carefully and don’t make the line too long. His approach was to use 2007 as a starting point – which was particularly low. Had he included 2006 which was exceptionally high the line would have had a definite downward slope. In any case, summer sea ice extent is only one of many ways of measuring sea ice decline.
No doubt you would not be complaining if Jensen was part of the so called consensus of “scientists” that are supposedly fully onboard with there being a climate crisis, or whatever the alleged consensus of 97% is actually saying. This is typical of the climate alarmist community who will accept anyone’s opinion as valid if they agree with them, but not if they disagree. If they disagree they are either not a proper scientist or are not qualified enough or they are not experts in their field etc etc. But it is well documented that the IPCC wiil not listen to experts in their field if they don’t agree with the polemic. An example of this is Paul Reiter an expert in vector borne diseases who was not happy that the IPCC insisted malaria would get worse because of global warming, when infact malaria is not dependent on climate and Reiter pointed out that one of the worst outbreaks of malaria happened near the arctic circle when over 600,000 died. There was also malaria in the UK Holland and the United States. What stops malaria is wealth and good public health. Reiter is just one example, and there are many who left the IPCC because their views were not fitting in with the preconceived idea of human influence on climate. ——-Then as regards “starting points” we see time and time again that periods convenient to the climate change narrative get chosen as examples of a climate problem. The most glaring example is this insistence that there has been warming since 1860 to the present, when 1860 was at the end of a known colder period (Little Ice Age) and then it is implied that all of this 1C warming was due to humans, when in reality it is only after about 1950 when industry all over the world took off and goods started to be manufactured for global markets, like cars, fridges cookers etc that emissions from industry could have caused some warming. Half of the 1 C warming was most likely not attributable to humans. So we are left with only 0.5C of warming that could have been caused by human industrial activity and that assumes no natural influence on climate was taking place.
“not in climatology”: there are no serious ‘climatologists’. ‘Climatology’ is an impossibly wide-ranging area that has arisen in tandem with the political requirements of the population-control lobby over the last 50-odd years. There are no ‘specialists’ in the field, as Lindzen and others have pointed out, because it’s not a field in which anyone can be a specialist (without being a straightforward charlatan of the George Monbiot variety, of course). Is Happer a ‘climatologist’? Not really – he’s a physicist – but boy, he makes a lot of sense. Are Bjorn Lomborg, Judith Curry, Matt Ridley, Roger Pielke, Steve Koonin etc etc ‘climate scientists’? No, of course not. But again, they kind of worth listening to. By the same token, Marianna Spring, Justin Rowlatt et al – are not specialists either. “not in climatology” is not a criticism.
Correct. ——Climate is a multi discipline thing. Atmospheric science, Oceanography, geology, etc etc. ——–“Climate Scientist” is simply a catch all phrase. It is a bit like calling a football player a “Sportsman”.
You are avoiding the salient point:
‘There is mounting evidence that Arctic sea ice is cyclical rather than linear, and owes a great deal to natural influences such as a powerful ocean current called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO).’
I wonder why……not really…….
That’s the second half of Chris’s post based on Tony Heller’s blog. I addressed the first half about the Jensen “paper”. We can debate the Heller stuff if you want.
Nope.
It’s a quote from the Jensen paper
‘The facts are, that the Arctic Sea ice extent measured by satellites since 1978 expresses annual variations and it has declined considerably from 1997 to 2007.
However, before that time period, from 1978 to 1996, the downward trend was minimal, and in the last 17 years from 2007 to 2023 the downward trend has also been about zero.
Therefore, there is no indication that we should expect the Arctic Sea summer ice to disappear completely, as predicted, in one or two decades.
Regarding the extent of the summer (February) sea ice at the Antarctic, the downward trend during the years 1979-2021 was very small but in 2022 and 2023 a considerable decline was observed, and a decline was also clearly observed for the whole period of 2007- 2023.
That was in contradiction to what happened in the Arctic. The pattern of the annual levels was not the same for the Arctic and Antarctic, indicating different drivers in the North and the South.
These data show that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of the Arctic and the Antarctic Sea ice and the gradually increasing CO2-concentrations in the atmosphere as proposed by NSIDC, IPCC and others, also for these areas of cold climate.’
Now you have me really confused. The paragraph on the proposed cyclical nature of artic ice is not in the Jensen paper. As far as I can see Chris wrote it himself (it is not in quotes).
You have copied an extended quote from Jensen’s paper which is all about whether the recent decline has paused. But that is not the same thing. It is the subject of the first half of Chris’s article.
As I say if you want a serious debate about the evidence for the cyclical nature of artic ice that’s fine – subject to my £5 expiring – but let’s not start by muddling it with what Jensen was on about.
Jensen says:
‘The facts are, that the Arctic Sea ice extent measured by satellites since 1978 expresses annual variations and it has declined considerably from 1997 to 2007. However, before that time period, from 1978 to 1996, the downward trend was minimal, and in the last 17 years from 2007 to 2023 the downward trend has also been about zero. Therefore, there is no indication that we should expect the Arctic Sea summer ice to disappear completely, as predicted, in one or two decades.’
Chris Morrison agrees:
‘There is mounting evidence that Arctic sea ice is cyclical rather than linear, and owes a great deal to natural influences such as a powerful ocean current called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). Historical observations going back to the early 1800s suggest considerable waxing and waning of the ice over periods of around 70-90 years.’
Heller notes:
‘….that there were satellite records available in the 1970s and presents two sea ice graphs
In the first graph the IPCC plots the lower levels of ice in the 1970s with a peak shown in 1979. But by 2001, the IPCC had removed much of the increase of that decade and the chart showed the ice actually starting to fall from around 1977.
Heller also provides evidence that the 1950s, which are not shown on these charts, had lower ice than the 1970s.’
The point that Morrison, Jensen and Heller all make is a simple one:
‘…what role human-caused carbon dioxide plays in all this is somewhat unclear. No obvious correlation with regard to this one, as Allan Astrup, Jensen and Tony Heller clearly show.’
Jensen:
‘The pattern of the annual variation was not the same for the Arctic and Antarctic, indicating different drivers in the North and South.
These data shows that there is no apparent correlation between the variable extent of the Arctic and Antarctic Sea ice and the gradually increasing CO2-concentrations in the atmosphere, as proposed by NSIDC, IPCC and others.’
I am confused as to which point you want to discuss. I see four possible propositions in your comments – all of which are open to debate:
While it would be interesting to explore any of these, I have no doubt you have a busy life and it would be very time consuming to tackle them all and even more time consuming to muddle them up.
It is a great deal simpler than that.
There is no evidence that ‘nut zero’ will achieve any observable change in the earth’s climate; not changes in arctic or antartic ice, not changes to the great barrier reef, the loneliness or otherwise of polar bears, extreme weather events, nada, nothing, rien du tout, sweet fanny adams………
Nut zero is nutty and ruinously expensive (though extremely profitable for some) nonsense, plain and simple. That is the point.
Please reference any evidence you may have to contradict that?
I am very happy to discuss a clearly defined proposition but you keep on changing the subject – now it is all about net zero! I give up.
How very unlike you…….or not really…….
The proposition could not be more plain: nut zero is just that.
You can run…..
Republican senator makes John Kerry look foolish. Priceless.
https://youtu.be/8DSi2gzIkHM?si=7rz01uT9vWWXxMek