Dramatic confirmation that the sea ice in the Arctic has been stable for nearly two decades is contained in a recently published science paper from a team led by Dr Mark England from the University of Exeter. The finding is of course obvious to anyone who studies the data but it will inconvenience the activist cranks who continue to promote supposed reductions in Arctic sea ice as an important sign of their imaginary ‘tipping points’ and their fake climate crisis. Despite the data showing the ice has been stable over every month in the year since around 2007, Sir David Attenborough told BBC viewers in 2022 that the region could be summer ice-free by 2035. The climate hysteric Al Gore never quite recovered his authority when he said all the ice could be gone by 2014.
There is still an occasional sighting in mainstream media but the ice vanishing act is having to be retired. In fact the smarter scientists seem to be rushing to accept the ice data while moving the climate trenches back to more defendable lines. The England paper notes a “surprising, but not unexpected pause” simulated by climate models, “relatively frequently”. Old school to the end, the Guardian reported last March that “scientists say” that ice-free summers were possible in the Arctic within the next decade.
Here is the graphic evidence from the two databases consulted by the England team.
These scientists are not the only ones to spot something that appears to have alluded mainstream journalists, scientists and politicians, keen as always to promote the Net Zero fantasy. Recently, the Arctic scientist Allan Astrup Jensen noted that the summer ice had plateaued from 1979-97, and then fell for 10 years. Either side of the drop – manna from heaven for climate cranks – there have been losses, albeit minimal ones. In fact, evidence shows that 1979 was a high cyclical point in Arctic sea ice, a cherry-picked date that conveniently marks the start of more accurate satellite measurements. Sea ice extent was lower in the 1950s and observations stretching back 200 years suggest a 70-80 year waxing and waning cycle. In line with these findings, scientists suggest ocean currents play a large part in determining the sea ice extent.
Last year, the Daily Sceptic noted that Arctic sea ice had soared to its highest level for 21 years. The article noted this interesting and correct fact but made our usual point that ice trends can only be understood over a long, preferably very long term context. The BBC More or Less statistical radio programme referred to the article without putting the high in context. Rather it provided a case study in how alarmists counter the obvious lengthy pause. Professor Julienne Stroeve from UCL suggested the ice extent was thinner, although the presenter Tom Colls had to admit, “the data is not available yet”. What you see, claimed Stroeve, is that the trend is downwards for four decades. The overall decline in long-term Arctic ice is very easy to see, added Colls. A more statistically objective view, something the programme constantly tells listeners it aims to provide, might have noted the lower levels of the 1950s and the recent obvious lengthy pause.
Of course when you are in the climate alarm business, there is a frequent need to explain why the various scares and tipping points never seem to occur. One favoured approach is to simply ignore any unwelcome improvement such as the coral growing back in record amounts on the Great Barrier Reef, and hope nobody has noticed. The other favoured tactic is to state that the computer models that predict one thing are in fact still entirely correct when the opposite occurs. We might refer to this as the ‘global warming leads to global cooling’ explanation. Since computer models rely on inadequate human input of a chaotic and non-linear atmosphere that is impossible to fully understand, it is usually possible to claim with a tweak or two that they were right all along.
The England paper is to be congratulated for laying out the Arctic sea ice data but most of its work is seemingly designed to stay onside with those using computer models to provide what is sometimes called ‘evidence’ of a climate crisis. Rather than the multi-decadal pause being an unexpected event, the scientists note, “comprehensive climate models from CMIP5 and CMIP6 simulate such pauses relatively frequently”. According to these climate model simulations, it is noted, “this pause in the loss of Arctic sea ice could plausibly continue for the next five to 10 years”. ‘Plausible’ and ‘evidence’, it might be reasonably pointed out, are not words that always spring to mind when considering the output of climate computer models. It is of course only one small step that is needed for the crystal ball pseudoscientists to claim they can use models to attribute individual weather events to humans eating Big Macs and driving SUVs.
We can assume that the sea ice predictions of Gore and Attenborough were also derived from computer models – ever reliable to provide whatever scare you want to promote.
But all can be forgiven in the climate Armageddon business, particularly if you happen to be a high-profile eco loon like Gore. It would have been a “rather brave person” to have predicted that a sustained slowdown in ice loss was just around the corner after the large losses of 2007 and 2012, states the England team. This despite the ensuing pause which many have shown was “entirely consistent with what climate models simulate”. What utter bunk. How brave do you need to be to understand past sea ice cyclical trends? How much intelligence is required to abstain from making ludicrous predictions of an ice-free Arctic on the basis of two years’ data? And why give a free pass to a redundant American politician looking for a role who has helped cause enormous societal distress and economic destruction by inventing a climate crisis primarily designed to impose a supra-national collectivist agenda?
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Professor Stephen Belcher, the Met Office Chief Scientist, recently said, “The latest planetary health check tells us that earth is profoundly ill.”
Decades of being on the receiving end of claptrap is getting deeply personal now.
Belcher of the Myth Office – Belcher by name, Belcher by nature.
Another state-funded windbag. Defund the Myth Office and start afresh.
It does seem that the governing classes are not particularly worried about child exploitation, they stood by when the young Greta was being exploited, they did nothing when rape gangs were exploiting children.
The ills of the planet are caused by political zealotry and the young are being exploited yet again. I suppose they will want them to go to war very soon. It’s not the climate that’s the problem it’s the politicians.
How could he say anything else and keep his job?
I was reading a very bad book by John Mortimer the other day (don’t ask), published in 1990, and in it he skips forward 10 years to describe the village where it’s set, and gives a description of how the world has changed: melted icecaps, areas of coastline vanished, polar bears drowned etc. in fact all the garbage we’ve been pumped with that has not happened in 35 years, but idiots keep believing will.
Millenia of advancing civilisation and we might as well all be Druids.
Scientifically and mathematically, most people have a similar level of attainment as a Druid. And that includes 99% of our politicians
You can take water to a horse but you can’t make it think.
More than true – nowadays people mock the mediaevals in the mistaken belief they thought the world was flat. In fact the average undergraduate in mediaeval times would not only know it was round, but how they could easily prove it. How many of us would know how to do that?
How would one go about proving that, just out of interest?
Without computer modelling this wouldn’t be happening.
It is computer modelling in the hands of inept politicians which is ‘climate & economic catastrophe’
Bring on rising carbon dioxide levels. The world thrives on it
“temperature in 2024 reached 1.6°C above the pre-industrial level (estimated 1850-1900) – if measurements are accurate”
A simple question, how do we know that this wouldn’t have happened anyway?
Temps have rose and dropped many times before we were even on the planet!
Notice the statement at the far right (no pun intended) of the graph: Start of data 1855…. just when temps were following the past dips and troughs!
There’s something else to notice about this: The difference between the labelled low and high points is just 4⁰C. Which means that temperatures are essentially flatlining and the illusion of something else is created by using a scale which makes no sense wrt human perception of temperature which is roughly every +/-5⁰C make a noticable difference.
Yes – the sense is very different if it’s expressed as “temperatures in 2024 reached 1.6C above Little Ice Age levels.” Yes of course, and…???
Ah the dreaded Null Hypothesis!
Dreaded by the zealots.
“Globally each of the past ten years were individually the ten warmest years on record.”
Can anyone extract what he was trying to say with this statement?
I notice from the MET Office dashboard that hours of sunshine have increased markedly in the UK over the past century. Is that a good or bad thing? And, how much does more sun hitting the earth raise temperature?
How can that be?
We orbit the earth just as we’ve always done, from approximately the same distance and with no change in the duration of orbit. The axis tilt is approx 23°, so the amount of sunlight hitting the planet per season will be largely consistent. Day length is also consistent, with sunrise and sunset also unchanged.
I wonder how they measure it?
They are referring to cloud cover. Goodness knows how accurate the measurement of that was before satellites
And PS the earth’s orbit of the sun is complex and subject to fluctuation, but that’s not what the article is referring to
Thanks for clarifying. I did say approximately.
If historical cloud cover measures go back one century then I’d be willing to bet they’re a product of modelling.
I suspect satellite measurements could achieve this, but I also guess that the early satellites wouldn’t have had the necessary sophistication for precise estimates, so the trend would likely be patchy.
It’s hours of sunshine by month, season & annual. Data goes back to 1910.
I assume it’s due in part in reduced soot & smog from domestic coal fires & the closing down of factories.
It’s very marked. It would be deliciously ironic if by ending fossil fuels we allow through more sunshine & hence warm the planet!
I was thinking there could be a smog effect as well – compared to earlier last century, the air is much cleaner now than it was. You’ve only got to look at old buildings post cleaning to see the difference
The definition of “sunshine hours” is the key here. There needs to be 1000 W per square metre for a sunshine hour, so it all depends on the cloud cover during daylight hours. That’s pretty variable year on year. After all, we’ve just had a month during which the sunshine hours were unusually high (and it was dry – but they’re not talking about drought yet).
The fundamental backdrop is that life on earth has adapted and survived through several ‘hot houses’ as they are called, with no ice, and several full ice ages, all without mans assistance. So yes there has always been climate change! So it’s absolutely mental to spend resources on trying to stop a grand natural cycle from doing this again, even if man is now affecting things a bit more, but not outside previous natural ranges. One should spend the resource on adapting to the tide, not trying to hold it back
In reality, it’s more resources being spent on snakeoil salesmen who claim to be able to hold back the tide despite there’s no empirical evidence that they actually can. The story of “man-made climate change” aka “global warming” is roughly The more we do about it, the worse everything gets.
This alone should be a sufficient reason to end this exercise immediately. The present story of the UN on this is All our past predictions were wrong! Because of our new prediction, we must … ! and I’m strongly in favour filling the … with stop listenting to these morons who openly admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They admit that they were completely wrong in the past. Hence, they’re, in all likeliness, still completely wrong.
Do they actually admit they were wrong in the past though?
More or less. The actual claim was that all climate targets must be pulled forward by ten years because the predictions which led to the Paris agreement were way too optimistic and everything is really Much Worse®.
But in plain English, this just means they had no clue what they were talking about back then and that all measures which were taken had no positive effect according to them, ie, keep on doing what we ask you do to because we didn’t know what were talking about in the past and what we asked you to do back then turned out to be wrong. Trust us again because we failed you!
Pretty absurd demand, really.
A good analysis. Regarding the fact that increased CO2 levels are good for plant growth, this basic fact has long been used deliberately in certain greenhouse farms, using some of the exhaust from gas fired heaters to ramp up the values rather then just chucking it out.
Another matter worth exploring is the political transfer of blame from one dodgy policy to another. E.g. the lack of progress into investment in features that can reduce the risk of high rainfall, such as flash flooding. Or the avoidance of expenditure in proper maintenance. Look what happened on the Somerset levels a few years back. Or the railway line breach between Exeter & Newton Abbot by storm damage from the sea. Don’t just blame “climate change”.
Published in 1871, by George Fleming (1833 – 1901), a Victorian military veterinarian and scholar: “Animal Plagues – From B.C. 1490 to A.D. 1800“:
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sjfhgnc6/items?canvas=134
Page 94: “A.D. 1325. A great drought in England. Here, in this and the following summer, there was so great a drought…
…In consequence of the drought, the great rivers of England were dried up, the springs failed, and in may places water had entirely disappeared. In consequence of this misfortune, great multitudes of animals, wild as well as domestic, perished of thirst.”
Source: Thomas Walsingham (“English Chronicler”, 1340-1422), Historia Anglicana.
No modern dams, no reservoirs, no electricity, no pumped water – just humanity and animals pitted against merciless nature for two summers in a row. Shades of 1975-76.
Green neophytes don’t know they’ve been born.
I’m happy to be corrected but my understanding is that the ‘official’ climate narrative is predicated on the assumption that atmospheric CO2 levels are the main driver of earth temperature. I would be assuming, therefore, that if this hypothesis is true and that human activity is the main ‘forcing’ factor, CO2 levels would be at unprecedented high levels. If this is not the case then the whole thing can be shown to be scam
Millions are waking up to the stupidity of Climate Change/crisis/emergency. The new US administration is leading the way. Our duty as parents is to tell our children it is hogwash, fabricated nonsense to make money and control.
Reform will abolish all Net Zero policies and the climate change act , leave the Paris accord and stop this scam and hoax.
Who could possibly believe that CO2, the basis of all organic life on earth, essential for the food that we eat and the oxygen we breathe, was a dangerous gas and an existential threat.
Answer: most of our politicians, which says it all above their level of insight and enquiry.
As Prof Ian Plimer has pointed out CO2 has been at far higher levels on many occasions in the distant past with no particular ill effects recorded. Recent researches have also suggested tharCO2 acts as an insulting layer in the atmosphere and that additional amounts have ever decreasing effects.