Almost two decades ago, some scientists predicted that Arctic summer sea ice would ‘soon’ disappear. These predictions were mentioned by Al Gore and got a lot of press. However, they did not gain wide acceptance in the scientific community, and were swiftly disproven. Unsurprisingly, this still comes up a lot. Time for a deeper dive into what happened and why…
It is unsurprising that climate contrarians bring up past ‘failed predictions’ to bolster their case that nothing need be done about climate change. [It is equally unsurprising that they don’t bother to mention the predictions that were skillful, but let’s not dwell on that!]. For a long time, their favorite supposed ‘failed prediction’ was that there was a consensus about the imminence of a new ice age in the 1970s (a topic we have covered many times), but more recently it has turned to the supposed prediction of Al Gore that “Arctic summer sea ice would disappear” in a short number of years. This has everything – the ‘But Al Gore!’ knee-jerk, a conflation of Al Gore with the scientific community, it’s sounds suitably apocalyptic and, of course, Arctic summer sea ice has not disappeared (it’s only down 40% or so):
What did Al Gore actually say?
If we go back to Dec 2007, in the immediate aftermath of the shocking decrease in sea ice that summer, Gore gave his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize he’d received jointly with the IPCC. In it he said:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.
What was he reporting on?
This was truthful reporting. The first study (I think) refers to a commentary piece in EOS (or perhaps a preprint of it), which noted the poor performance of climate models in tracking the Arctic sea ice loss, and made an expert guestimate that summer sea ice would be gone by around 2030. The second (upcoming) one, refers to a fall AGU 2007 presentation that would be given by Wieslaw Maslowski, who at the time ran one of the highest resolution ice models available. However, his prediction was not directly based on his ice model, but rather on a linear extrapolation of the ice volume from his model:
One might sensibly ask why a prediction made in 2007 only made it into a review paper in 2012, despite having been highly publicised at the time? We’ll get to that.
Gore continued to reference Maslowski’s prediction at least through to 2009.
Over the next few years, a few other folks got into the sea ice forecasting game using similarly somewhat unorthodox methodologies. Chief among them was Peter Wadhams, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University. Wadhams (and a group that styled themselves the “Arctic Methane Emergency Group” (AMEG)) started showing graphs of extrapolated ice thickness from the University of Washington’s PIOMASS model:
Even without being an expert in sea ice, one might question some of these methods: naive fits to noisy data being extrapolated out of range, the odd fact that the same methods applied to extent or area data gave vastly different times of ice-free conditions, and, most obviously, a lack of any physical modeling for the future state. Sure, the standard climate models (CMIP3 at the time) used in scenarios were behaving too conservatively, but to ignore them completely…?
I don’t recall whether I was at Maslowski’s talk in AGU 2007, but I recall seeing him present similar results at least a couple of times. And even if he wasn’t present, his results were discussed widely among relevant scientists at multiple workshops. As far as I recall, opinions were pretty sharply negative.
[Update 9/30: Axel Schwieger in the comments reminds me we had a guest post from his group making this very clear in 2012!]
What is the physics behind your prediction?
In 2014, the Royal Society hosted a workshop on Arctic sea ice reduction. I was invited to give a talk on paleo-climate perspectives on sea ice change, modeling and methane. Notably, Peter Wadhams was there and presented a graph very similar to the one above. If you hunt around carefully in the wayback machine you can find some of the audio recordings from the meeting, and specifically, if you listen to the Q&A period from his talk, you can hear me ask [43:00] whether there was any physical basis for such an extrapolation. The answer was no. [As an aside, this was one of the first climate workshops that really embraced Twitter (as it was then) as a means of broader dissemination, though this wasn’t appreciated by this particular speaker!]. Bizarrely, Wadhams maintained his confidence that 2015 (less than a year away at this point) would be ice free in summer.
To be clear, I claim no specific brilliance in being sceptical of these predictions. Almost everyone in the field was unconvinced by these extrapolations from the initial 2007 AGU meeting presentation onward. The reason why these predictions never made it into a peer-reviewed publication? I imagine that it was the difficulty in finding any reviewers that found these methods credible.
Lessons learned?
Science is very competitive, and scientists guard their independence fiercely. For them to agree on even one thing is major effort. Thus there will always be a range of opinions and methods on any topic and people who will cling strongly to them. The desire and culture of assessments (such as the IPCC) arose specifically in order to distill that broad range across individual scientists into a more coherent and better balanced assessment that a larger majority of experts will agree to.
In retrospect, it is clear that some folks were fooled by randomness, giving too much weight to the wiggles and not to the longer-term trend (which, to be honest, is a ubiquitous problem):
One could look back at this episode and what has been made of it since and declare that scientists should have somehow prevented Maslowski and Wadhams from presenting their ideas or talking to journalists or recovering politicians. But that is absurd: No scientist or group of scientists has that power, nor would they even want it. Alternatively, other scientists could have loudly expressed their scepticism at these results and produced better assessments. But both of these things happened. Some even went further and started betting against the extreme predictions (quite successfully in retrospect). For serious people, interested in serious projections, that might be enough. However, all of this will be (and are) ignored when someone wants to get a laugh line on Fox News.
If people are really interested in what the scientific community thinks, the assessed projections from IPCC and similar are your best bet. It can be useful to look at the range of individual projections or opinions, particular in fast moving situations, but it is very hard to discuss them in a public manner that is immune from later distortion.
References
- W. Maslowski, J. Clement Kinney, M. Higgins, and A. Roberts, "The Future of Arctic Sea Ice", Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, vol. 40, pp. 625-654, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-042711-105345
What’s the physics?
As I recall, there were lots of people here going on and on about this even recently, and I at least kept pointing out that…
the ice keeps recovering!
The max value declined at a much slower rate than the min, because, duh, insolation in the winter is much much less than in the summer. So having even an “ice free” *just* September would require some new increase from the typical energy input for the melting season.
That’s the physics.
(Maybe that aerosol thingie that’s the new favorite for incoherent “debates” will do the trick?)
Thank you for this assessment of Arctic sea ice projections. Would you also be willing to assess an IPCC 1992 warming projection on your ‘Model-Observation Comparisons‘ page? This projection was not included in your Hausfather et al. paper.
If you are interested, then the information for the projection is below:
Observed warming is near IS92a, and observed forcing is a bit above IS92a:
Also, that 1992 warming projection and implied TCR differs from the IPCC 1990 First Assessment Report and IPCC 1995 Second Assessment Report discussed in figure S1 of Hausfather et al..
Here’s the 1990 report:
And here’s the 1995 report:
It is certainly a mistake to pay too much attention to short term “wiggles”. That said it is equally a mistake to pay too much attention to short term flatter areas.
Interestingly, as Gavin notes, the expert community never did pay excess attention to short term wiggles from Day One. Our resident deniers on the other hand never ever give up paying attention to any of their short term flats.
Thank you Gavin for the enlightenment. Very informative.
Seems to me that the combination of Maslowski and Wadhams’ works, Gore’s well-intentioned flogging, and the separate dreadful distortion called ‘Climategate’ were all quite successfully combined to distract and spike suspicion of many in the U.S. public (amplified by the deep economic contraction of 2008 and the lengthy recovery stretching over several years). Not that any individual action was, by itself, necessarily so dreadful, but the combination was (imo).
And with the general public then not interested in big climate related action, the Obama administration and the Congress focused on other pressing issues. It all was good timing for events like the O&G shale boom. Less so for climate scientists in general and those working to arrest GG emission growth rates.
“Less so for climate scientists in general and those working to arrest GG emission growth rates.”
Arresting growth rates? That’s what caused the economic contraction during the pandemic travel lockdowns. That kept carbon in the ground. But today that makes it difficult to continue the transportation needed to complete the transition to solar, wind and nuclear.
“Less so for climate scientists in general and those working to arrest GG emission growth rates.”
KT: Arresting growth rates? That’s what caused the economic contraction during the pandemic travel lockdowns.
BPL: He said “GG emission growth rates.” Greenhouse gas emissions, not economic activity.
Quote: “Arctic summer sea ice has not disappeared (it’s only down 40% or so)..” ONLY?? Expert comments please.
Well, I’m not a climate expert, but I’m damn good at irony–and I’d say Gavin is, too.
And yet, I sit here distinctly remembering the scientific community celebrating that someone with as much political clout as Al-Gore was talking about it.
Saying ‘Surely we could overlook a few ‘minor’ inaccuracies if him doing a movie helped the cause’. Because the message ‘has’ to get out there!
No, this is what you get when you don’t gate keep. When you don’t treat who and how your message gets pushed in favor of just getting it out there.
You gave the deniers the ammo they shot you with. Then act all shocked when you can’t seem to counter the person who you were SO eager to have help, Is now used rather factually, which you admit here. To show, even if you can, and do prove, those predictions were never accurate in the first place.
Doesn’t matter. Two rules of public discourse, The first person to put up a coherent narrative wins the debate.
And
Showing a factual inaccuracy of your opponent is worth more than proving your own facts.
Re. “Showing a factual inaccuracy of your opponent is worth more than proving your own facts.”
Disagree. The resident denier crew here continually posts factual inaccuracies here (think kia’s eyeball (!) correlations and noncorrelations just for starters), yet I see little to no evidence that pointing out their inaccuracies has slowed them down in the least.
Nor was Gore inaccurate in stating what he stated.
This is like blaming all Democrats and liberal open minded thinkers for Charlie Kirk’s murder. Apparently anything other people do is an excuse to eliminate the entire realm of human knowledge, experience, and tolerance. I reject this premise.
Paul Beckwith and his ilk have gone on and on (afaik, he’s not even a terrible scientist outside his obsession). We will never be able to control the rogue actors among us. The blame game is endless.
Let’s not forget that there was a typo: 2035 is not 2350, but we will never hear the end of it.
“The first person to put up a coherent narrative wins the debate.”
LOL! The denialist side has been marked by extreme incoherence all along, and per your view, should likewise have ‘lost’ long ago! (Well, for some of us, that is indeed true.)
So much so that I wrote a lengthy song mocking them for it on my first album, back in 2020:
https://open.spotify.com/track/0ursieqYOROXv7zMWReQVi?si=0394e2486c6c46e9
Warning: it’s candidly the worst track I’ve ever released, in terms of recording quality. (Although it did have a brief ‘mini-viral’ moment, primarily in Brazil, last year–go figure.) So, to spare sensitive ears, here’s the lyrics:
KM,
Good stuff, and you’ve captured the incoherence of the deniers very well.
Well-meaning advice alert: You might want to work on the meter. I find when I write a song or poem that it helps to sing it out loud–if the meter’s off in some line, you notice it right away.
Thanks, Barton–but trust me, I sang it. (See link above.)
“a coherent narrative”. Absolutely, you hit the nail. Not physics for a physical science but a coherent narrative. These narratives can be and have been crafted very nicely by the Fossils for a public with minimal education, low brain functionality for this stuff and (the real bonus creme de la creme) for what they really want, which is an outcome that they like and is not at all learning some physics.
That’s why the best of the Fossils are the ones that study debating skills. Knowledge of physics or any interest at all in learning any would actually be detrimental. Carefully crafting phrasings is the Fossil key. Like you stated with perfect insight “a coherent narrative”. Physics meh, maybe but really who cares?
This is something I have very strong feelings about (sorry)
RealClimate is likely the premier scientific AGW blog. From the About… “We aim to provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary on climate science.” Obviously there is strong critiques on papers, articles, blogs that you disagree with and that is fine and expected, but RC really has a tribal attitude.
In my opinion, failed predictions are, far and away, the greatest impediment to acceptance of the need to do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. RC needs to call them out when they happen, not rationalise them 2 decades later. Gavin says “… his results were discussed widely among relevant scientists at multiple workshops. As far as I recall, opinions were pretty sharply negative.”
If this is the case, and a high profile public figure in their Nobel acceptance speech quoted it, RC should have called it out then.
KW: In my opinion, failed predictions are, far and away, the greatest impediment to acceptance of the need to do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
BPL: The greatest impediment to reducing CO2 emissions is that the fossil fuel industry and their supporters among rightists have created a massive disinformation campaign which has lasted more than three decades.
EA: I’d combine both statements and say the that the greatest impediment to AGW is that failed predictions, while perfectly understandable in any scientific endeavour, can be easily co-opted by the Fossil Fuel Industry (and all the downstream manufacturers and users of said industry) to sway a public that thinks that one wrong prediction means that the science can’t be trusted.
Yes, I would agree 100% Eliot. And this is why RC should be calling out bogus predictions when they are made, not 20 years later.
Also be aware the statement “failed predictions, while perfectly understandable in any scientific endeavour” is true iff you can explain why they are wrong. As we all know, any theorem can be disproved by one failed prediction (and can never be proved no matter how may correct predictions they make)
Every time you have a high profile headline that says something like
“Island X will be uninhabitable in Y years”
“strong tropical cyclones will increase in the next Z years”
“Drought will cause crop yields to decline”
“climate will cause coffee/chocolate/mangoes/avocados/fruit to be unaffordable”
“climate will cause more deaths in the next decade”
Remember that people will recall this. You don’t get to say (like Gavin did) we knew it wasn’t true but didn’t say anything at the time.
Currently the answer to all these failed predictions is mostly “they didn’t claim it would be, just that it might be.” Or the other gem….. “It wasn’t a prediction, it was a projection”
Also Slatepaws above,
”To show, even if you can, and do prove, those predictions were never accurate in the first place.”
Exactly. Think Ehrlich fiasco. I hope people learned something from that episode.
Iow, when discussing climate, let’s stick to trends.
If you took the time to read the long and deep discussion of Erlich in the scientific literature, you would know that Erlich’s views were never the consensus view among actual researchers and in fact he lost a related very public bet.
But of course, reading the actual scientific literature is rather beyond your intellectual ken, I guess, from your comment here.
Where have you been for the last 30 years, Keith? Don’t they have public libraries there? You’re welcome to your idiosyncratic opinion, but better-read people agree with Barton. For example, Jane Mayer, author of 2016’s “Dark Money”, in 2019 said this in the New Yorker, whose strict fact checking is famous (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought):
If there is any lingering uncertainty that the Koch brothers are the primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States, it ought to be put to rest by the publication of “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by the business reporter Christopher Leonard.
The origins of the disinformation campaign by fossil fuel producers and investors, with intent to forestall collective intervention in their profit streams, were exposed in the mid-1990s by Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter (https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780201132953). Due to subsequent efforts by trained, disciplined investigative journalists, historians of science (e.g. https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org), and social scientists (e.g. https://cssn.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/InstitutionalizingDelay-ClimaticChange.pdf), the ongoing campaign of climate-change denial is n ow a matter of redundant public record. And it’s all been ruled legal by a packed SCOTUS. I, for one, don’t call it a conspiracy theory when it’s common knowledge, and it’s not illegal!
Not common enough knowledge, sadly. The denialist campaign succeeds by filling a pre-existing public information deficit with lies, half-truths and misdirection, overwhelming by sheer volume any verifiable facts and logic. It has fostered the growth of a billion-dollar industry, whose product is bespoke doubt. It exploits the willful ignorance and self-seeking credulity of a persistently large proportion of the American public. Loss of public trust in science, and rejection of the simple physics of anthropogenic global warming, has evidently been the goal of the disinformation campaign all along. Its profit-maximizing obscurantism has been highly successful so far, although the percentage of Americans “alarmed” or “concerned” about man-made climate change reached over 50% last year for the first time since 2009 (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/global-warmings-six-americas-fall-2024). We’re now 37 years after Jim Hansen’s Congressional appearance! It seems you really can fool some of the people all the time.
Thanks, Mal.
….. . . . . . so, what happens to your worldview when you discover Ross Gelbspan NEVER won a Pulitzer? No need to trust me on this, you can ask the Pulitzer organization about this yourself.
https://www.pulitzer.org/search/Gelbspan
[Response: “Mr. Gelbspan joined The Globe in 1979. As special projects editor, he oversaw a series on job discrimination against African Americans in the Boston area, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for local investigative specialized reporting. Although Pulitzers are given to reporters and to newspapers, The Globe named Mr. Gelbspan a “co-recipient” of the prize for conceiving and editing the series.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/business/media/ross-gelbspan-dead.html ]
TheRealRC: so, what happens to your worldview when you discover Ross Gelbspan NEVER won a Pulitzer?
Nothing. It’s irrelevant to my “worldview”. But the publisher’s blurb for The Heat Is On refers to “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gelbspan” (https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780201132953). Argue with it, not me.
Response: The Globe named Mr. Gelbspan a “co-recipient” of the prize for conceiving and editing the series.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/business/media/ross-gelbspan-dead.html.
Thanks, whoever wrote that – Gavin? I recall seeing Gelbspan’s name in the 1990s, but didn’t appreciate his seminal contributions until I saw that obituary in the NYT!
Mal Adapted: “It has fostered the growth of a billion-dollar industry, whose product is bespoke doubt.”
I’m stealing that sentence for future use in my local efforts ;-)
David, I’m glad my phrasing struck a chord, but I don’t have copyright on that sentence. David Michaels at least has a prior claim, regarding another market for professionally-crafted doubt on demand: Doubt is Their Product (https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X).
Thanks. A very helpful article.
Note: a typo I think in the first chart. Shouldn’t the units for the vertical axis be “million sq km”?
[Response: yes! – sorry! – gavin]
The problem with climate sceptics is that they attempt to demolish the scientific consensus without putting forward their own rival hypothesis. The reason is simple: they base their position on the null hypothesis, and this has been proven wrong by the data. I suggest this is one way of countering criticism of climate models.
Of course, the Al Gore tactic is another example of our old friend, the straw man argument. For those looking for a fairly comprehensive list of this and similar dishonest methods, there is an excellent website named ‘Cranky Uncle’. Students (and former students) may find this an attractive learning tool as it takes the form of an online game.
Rory, I don’t think you understand the proper role of ‘skeptics.’ It is not their job to advance a counter-hypothesis. At all. Ever.
Their job is to pick holes in yours. (Actually ours, but as a lukewarmer I get to jump from side to side depending on the topic. Lucky me.)
This was a big deal back in the day. It would have been nice for some more people to stick up for the science and call out the Gore/Wadham exaggerations at the time.
A reminder that ‘lukewarmism‘ is another form of denialism that underestimates AGW and its risk, as Dave Farina aptly detailed. This has been explained for years to lukewarmers such as Thomas Fuller, Dr. Patrick Michaels, Paul ‘Chip’ Knappenberger, and Dr. Matt Ridley. Yet lukewarmers still persist, despite their position running contrary to the evidence.
Someone should follow up with these lukewarmers to see how they address their position’s failed predictions:
A.S.,, cherry-picking other people’s statements don’t really prove your point. However, it is an excellent tactic for avoiding any discussion of either the topic or my comments.
Who do you think you are ‘reminding,’ anyhow? Maybe Susan Anderson has forgotten who I am and what I believe… Yeah, that’s it.
Come to think of it, there was a lot of that going on back when the decline of sea ice was being discussed a decade ago. There (I know this is difficult to believe) were actually people who thought it was a better idea to disparage their opponents then, you know, to actually discuss the decline of sea ice in the Arctic.
It’s not cherry-picking, Thomas Fuller. The central point of lukewarmism is lower climate sensitivity such that less AGW happens and AGW is less dangerous, if AGW is even dangerous at all. That’s shown in your book “The Lukewarmer’s Way“, Dr. Patrick Michaels’ book “Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything“, Dr. Matt Ridley’s claims, etc. One can test that lukewarmism by testing lukewarmist temperature trend projections. That’s consistent with what lukewarmer Ross Douthat aptly noted:
In contrast, you seem to treat lukewarmism like a game of evasion, not like a genuine position to be tested:
My point was that lukewarmist predictions underestimate global warming, showing that lukewarmism is wrong. Lukewarmism thus underestimates climate sensitivity and AGW’s risk. So-called ‘skeptics’ made even worse temperature trend predictions. That contrasts with accurate model-based predictions that use higher sensitivity than claimed by ‘skeptics’ and by lukewarmers (Hausfather et al., Supran et al., RealClimate, Hausfather tweet).
This has been pointed out to you for years, but you’re yet to address it. Lukewarmism is clearly contrary to the evidence and therefore a form of denialism, like so-called ‘skepticism’. If you’re going to claim that it “would have been nice for some more people to stick up for the science and call out the Gore/Wadham exaggerations at the time“, then it would have been nice for you to stick up for science and call out lukewarmist underestimation.
I already showed lukewarmers underestimating global warming, such as you, Dr. Patrick Michaels, Paul ‘Chip’ Knappenberger,, and Dr. Matt Ridley. Below are other examples:
I sometimes wonder about the general level of intelligence of some commenters here.
I’m not the one talking about Fuller. I’m talking about sea level ice, the role of opponents of an hypothesis… Although I’m happy to talk about my SWAG of the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2e, I’m not really interested in talking about Fuller.
When you talk about Fuller’s Law and making every thread about Fuller, you… might… just… look at the thread here and see who is actually making this thread about Fuller.
I’m commenting on the lukewarmer position you mentioned. You’re not the only lukewarmer in the world; no need to egotistically think it’s all about you. As the RealClimate article noted, Gore accurately reported on some sea ice projections given at the time. And experts at the time assessed Maslowski + Wadhams’ projections.
In contrast, as far as I know, you lukewarmers never cogently assess the accuracy of your projections. Because if you did that would make it obvious you’re wrong. So your comments are just a double-standard and the usual contrarian trolling.
And before you comment again about people’s intelligence, stop using terms like ‘sea level ice’.
Thomas Fuller: When you talk about Fuller’s Law and making every thread about Fuller, you… might… just… look at the thread here and see who is actually making this thread about Fuller.
Bullshit, Tom. You made this conversation about you when you piped up to gratuitously declare yourself a lukewarmer, by dog, bragging about your ‘luck’ at being able to switch between ‘sides’ (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-839667). You knew damn well what would happen.
Won’t you please at least own the things you say in this thread, when we can find them just by scrolling up? Then I, for one, will be happy to stop talking about you!
Thomas Fuller: Their job is to pick holes in yours. (Actually ours, but as a lukewarmer I get to jump from side to side depending on the topic. Lucky me.)
It’s remarks like this that make me think Tom is simply a gleeful reflexive contrarian: he’s here to ‘pick’ holes, and BTW to ‘pick’ fights (hey, he’s not the only one). Self-consciously labelling himself a lukewarmer is apparently Tom’s way of saying “debate this!”, while making a familiar hand gesture.
By yours. (Actually ours, OTOH, he’s signalling he actually supports the RC consensus ‘side’ (his word). He knows anthropogenic global warming is already costing homes, livelihoods and lives around the world, although he truculently scoffs at even lower-bound quantitative estimates in peer-reviewed venues. And I’ve seen comments by him acknowledging the need for collective intervention (Hardin’s “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”) to cap the warming: IIRC, he explicitly favored something like Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (as do I). Though he may deny it now, I recall replying that when he wasn’t being deliberately perverse, he actually made sense!
He calls himself a lukewarmer, ostensibly because he’s confident ECS will turn out to be the modal estimate or less: harmful enough to warrant some kind of collective action, limited by expediently ignoring the upper half of the PDF. That is, he’s publicly a luck-warmer. His declared position seems most like Curry’s, though without her credentials or notoriety.
Whereas others on Atomsk’s Sanakan’s lists acknowledge the scientific consensus for AGW’s existence and causes, but discount or dismiss its risks. They oppose collective intervention to decarbonize the US and global economies as cost-ineffective, and even net negative. They don’t think climate change will affect them personally, and/or they have the resources to adapt; and they place relatively low value on costs paid by involuntary third parties to their private “free”-market transactions, who enjoy no marginal benefit from them and emit little or no fossil carbon of their own. In the by-now default blogospheric definition (lucky him indeed), ‘lukewarmers’ are determined to socialize their (and their known or alleged employers’) fossil carbon emissions costs by sacrificing their commitment to truth, making them a species of denialist! AFAICT, what they all have in common with Tom is that uncertainty is their friend, and good luck to the rest of us.
Yet by his own perhaps unguarded words, I for one am convinced Tom is motivated wholly by uncommon bloody-mindedness, not actual denial. It’s a personality trait, IOW! I suspect it’s the same thing with Curry, along with a liberal dose of vengeful spite. Well, personalities are like a**holes: unless surgically removed, everybody has one. ‘Nuff said.
Far too much said Dr Freud. Irrespective of labels people view data and observations then arrive at differing conclusions and opinions. No bad faith or personality trait required. Even from Curry.
Maybe Custer was a lukewarmer vs a doomer when it came to fighting the Sioux. Or simply a gleeful reflexive contrarian. Doesn’t matter either way.
Thomas Fuller says — 17 Aug 2025 at 6:03 AM
“The main reason you haven’t been successful is that you’re crap at communicating with the public.”
Mo Yunus says
19 Sep 2025 at 9:22 PM
Constantly lumping all criticism into the category of “denialism” is an unfair and immoral tactic. It closes off important conversations and pushes away people who might otherwise be allies.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/#comment-839523
Yeah, underestimating climate sensitivity is standard among lukewarmers, especially self-professed lukewarmers. For instance:
Evidence from the instrumental record, paleoclimate, emergent constraints, and analysis of feedbacks shows those climate sensitivity estimates are too low. No wonder Dr. Lewis’ sensitivity estimates crept up with time. Those are additional lines of evidence that lukewarmism is wrong, to go along with evidence from lukewarmism’s failed temperature trend predictions:
Mo Yunus: Constantly lumping all criticism into the category of “denialism” is an unfair and immoral tactic. It closes off important conversations and pushes away people who might otherwise be allies.
Apparently not ’nuff said. We’re in vehement agreement, but modulated by historical awareness. Fuller has a long, consistent history on the Internet. So do I. Trust me, Tom’s not interested in important conversations unless he can make himself the topic. I’m hardly the only one here who’s got him sussed: it’s Fuller’s Law (https://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/biodiversity-extinction-climate-change/#comment-11618)! My advice: lurk for a while before judging. Then, once you know who’s who, judge away ;^D!
Mal said:
What gets him upset is when you call him The Fuller Brush Man. Fitting because he’s trying to sell something you don’t need, tell him not interested, yet still keeps coming back. (only people of a certain age or watch old movies will understand this)
There, but for the grace of dog, go I ;)
Re: “Constantly lumping all criticism into the category of “denialism” is an unfair and immoral tactic. It closes off important conversations and pushes away people who might otherwise be allies.”
Denialism is a fine term for those who refuse to change their minds in response to clear evidence. People use similar terms in everyday life, such as when they say a friend is ‘in denial’ when their friend refuses to accept a clear fact supported by overwhelming evidence. ‘Denialist’ is an appropriate term for lukewarmers since they disregard clear evidence rebutting their position.
Nor is all criticism being equated to denialism. For example, there’s a difference between reasonable disagreement over which antiretroviral medication is best for a given patient vs. an HIV/AIDS denialist’s unreasonable disagreement over whether HIV causes AIDS.
It is both accurate and moral to use ‘denialism’ to distinguish that unreasonable disagreement from reasonable disagreement, regardless of whether that ‘pushes away’ denialists and those sympathetic to denialism. Facts don’t care about people’s feelings. Similarly, saying someone is in denial can be an accurate description, regardless of how that description makes them feel.
Nor does pointing out denialism close off important discussion. Denialists are free to continue talking, even after being called denialists. Pointing out denialism is making a criticism, and criticism is not the same thing as silencing. That criticism can be supported by showing the abundant evidence denialists refuse to accept. This continues the discussion. Hence why I cited clear evidence that lukewarmers refuse to accept. In my experience, it’s the denialists who often close off discussion when shown evidence debunking their position. See, for example, Thomas Fuller’s behavior here, or Dr. Judith Curry’s deflections whenever people point out her temperature trend predictions underestimated warming.
I’m warmly in favor of resisting existential threat inflation.
As we just saw at the UN, piling it on for more than a few decades is an invitation to a media avalanche
Yep. There are big fans of Paul “7 metres of sea level rise by 2070” Beckwith. There’s one especially and maybe a couple more somewhat here on RC UV. I realize that these Social Media “climate experts” are only fake physical scientists who take the work of real scientists and then pick and choose what they like and search for ways to elevate their position (Business Model) to a higher plane but they have a Public likely bigger than a group of climate scientists does and they don’t care about the damage they leave in their wake with their brain slop, lazy drivel.
I can can be “skeptical” of quantum mechanics simply by pointing out no physicist can point out a causal mechanism for many of the phenomena. Heck…Einstein himself kinda’ did though he never out and out stated explicit denial as he wasn’t a complete idiot.
Also Einstein expressed issues with QM’s incompleteness and locality issues. Yet QM remains as the standard explanation to this day as “skeptics” have, in fact, failed to show their issues really matter to the phenomena at hand or can function as an explanation.
Rory: “The problem with climate sceptics is that they attempt to demolish the scientific consensus without putting forward their own rival hypothesis.”
I said in a previous post that climate science was settled science. Gavin responded that no, it isn’t. Read it here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/doe-cwg-report-moot/#comment-839293
I did attempt to clarify what I meant by “settled science” here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/doe-cwg-report-moot/#comment-839537
I probably should have used the word consensus instead of “settled science”.
You mean you trolled, as usual, and Dr. Schmidt called you on it?
“None of your quotes actually support your claim. These are all statements about what has been concluded (correctly) not that nothing remains uncertain. Your implicit ‘warrant’ in the argument is that because scientists claim to know something, they are also claiming to know everything, is absurd. – gavin”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/doe-cwg-report-moot/#comment-839475
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/doe-cwg-report-moot/#comment-839514
There is another side to this. The 70% plunge in September Arctic sea-ice volume from 2001 to 2012 was no “wiggle” — it was a structural shock. At the time, causation and near-term trajectory were genuinely uncertain, which is why precautionary attention to fat-tail risks — including Wadhams-style blue-ocean warnings — was reasonable. Had the 2001–2012 slope persisted, an ice-free September would have arrived by the late 2010s. Instead 2013 delivered a brief rebound, but on top of a still-steep long-term decline. Calling that earlier collapse a mere fluctuation is hindsight bias, not science. We’re seeing the same rhetorical minimisation today over 1.5°C: 2024 exceeded 1.5°C for the full calendar year, but agencies minimise this by insisting on an unrealistic multi-decadal warming measure. Who was to know Arctic ice would have a ‘dead cat bounce’ in 2013? Critics can say I told you so after the event, but excessive caution due to fear of distortion by deniers is not justified.
” it was a structural shock”. An underlying cause might be related to the tropical Pacific Unnatural variation from 1995 to 2014?? (I don’t know how much it has ended or reversed). Cut’n’past of my notes 2013 to 2017ish.
Scientist paper quote: “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106 Received 11 September 2013 Accepted 18 December 2013 Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014
Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso Affiliations
“Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.”
“This increased overturning appears to explain much of the recent slowdown in the rise of global average surface temperatures. Importantly, the researchers don’t expect the current pressure difference between the two ocean basins to last. When it does end, they expect to see some rapid changes, including a sudden acceleration of global average surface temperatures“.
“We were surprised to find the main cause of the Pacific climate trends of the past 20 years had its origin in the Atlantic Ocean,” said co-lead author Dr Shayne McGregor from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) at the University of New South Wales.”
Feb 2014 Quote: “The record-breaking increase in Pacific Equatorial trade winds over the past 20 years had, until now, baffled researchers.
Feb 2014 Quote: “A Shift in Western Tropical Pacific Sea Level Trends during the 1990s Mark A. Merrifield University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii “Pacific Ocean sea surface height trends from satellite altimeter observations for 1993–2009 are examined in the context of longer tide gauge records and wind stress patterns. The dominant regional trends are high rates in the western tropical Pacific and minimal to negative rates in the eastern Pacific, particularly off North America. Interannual sea level variations associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation events do not account for these trends. In the western tropical Pacific, tide gauge records indicate that the recent high rates represent a significant trend increase in the early 1990s relative to the preceding 40 years. This sea level trend shift in the western Pacific corresponds to an intensification of the easterly trade winds across the tropical Pacific. The wind change appears to be distinct from climate variations centered in the North Pacific, such as the Pacific decadal oscillation”.
“It started in 1995 AD when the tropical Pacific Ocean easterly trade winds started having higher average speed due to a warming tropical Atlantic Ocean surface due to the global warming. All kinds of big climate items took a radical rate increase within a very few years of that:
– Pacific Ocean easterly trade winds have increased 30% (1 m/s) since 1995 AD
– Arctic Ocean summer sea ice extent loss rate massively increased at 1997.5 AD as seen in a plot at 9:15 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCEawfpDoD0
– Arctic region warming at latitude 67N 1958-2019 sped up to +0.94 degrees / decade from a lower earlier rate ~1996-1998
– Humongous El Nino 1997/8 AD
– GMST increase slowed. ENSO change caused the “pause” or “hiatus”.
– The ocean heat content (OHC) anomaly rate DOUBLED at ~1999 AD (reason for the “pause/hiatus” in GMST 2002-2015)
– GMST ==El Nino years== started pulling ahead of La Nina faster at +0.23 degrees / decade vs +0.165 degrees / decade
– Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) mass loss took a doubling
– Perhaps the Antarctic circumpolar westerlies began strengthening & tightening then but I haven’t pinned ENSO as the cause yet”
“I plotted GMST from GISTEMP for 50 years on abig sheet of graph paper 5 years ago and it’s:
If you plot the El Nino years only, which are 1966, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1987, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010 you clearly see a warming trend of 0.20 degrees / decade 1966-2010
If you plot the La Nina years only, which are 1967, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012 you clearly see a warming trend of 0.165 degrees / decade 1967-2012
If you plot the ENSO-neutral years only (middling between La Nina & El Nino) which are 1970, 1972, 1979, 1981, 1986, 1988, 1990, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2013 you clearly see a warming trend of 0.165 degrees / decade 1970-2013
(I skipped El Chichon, Mt. Pinatubo, Mt. Hudson years 1982-4, 1992-4)
El Nino years trend line looks to be ~0.13 warmer than La Nina years.
El Nino years looks to be pulling away from La Nina years a bit since 1995 at 0.22 degrees / decade but it’s few measurements and they don’t form a tidy line at all.
+0.165 degrees / decade 1966-1995 for La Nina & ENSO-neutral years
~+0.20 degrees / decade 1966-1995 for El Nino years
+0.165 degrees / decade 1995-2014 for La Nina & ENSO-neutral years
~+0.22 degrees / decade 1995-2014 for El Nino years”
So the Arctic Ocean more-rapid summer sea ice extent loss shown in this Posting coincidentally(?) covers the period 1995-2014 when the warm Atlantic was radically changing ENSO. I’m suggesting that this effect stopped 2013/2014.
We humans are very poor at stretching our minds. Most of us count time in the context of our lifetimes, and space in the context of what we can explore. We can’t do submicroscopic and we can’t do space, not really. Science fiction brings space into our living spaces, but it too is unrealistic; it creates a human fiction of survivability which is not real.
Now as to ‘most of us’ that’s another number we have trouble with. Some of us count us in limited ways as well.
I realize there are exceptions, but unfortunately the habit of intolerance intrudes even in the minds of the most imaginative and open minded, with few exceptions. Those who are tolerant are intolerant of the intolerant. The mind boggles, but it’s difficult to keep it open.
—
Well, the last paragraphs stretch the metaphor too far for the context. But polar ice melt is one of the areas where people try to put the genie back in the bottle by saying if it hasn’t happened in time we experience, it’s not going to happen. That’s just not true.
[Also, AI is not the answer. Computers can encompass a larger dataset, but they entirely lack ethics and judgment.]
Yes; there’s still “no there there” in AI–as Gertrude Stein wrote long ago about something entirely different.
Aw, more like “what’s there is there already, all made known by organic intelligence before discovery by an LLM.” Does Wikipedia have a there, there?
[I’m not a scientist!]
“Most of us count time in the context of our lifetimes, and space in the context of what we can explore.”
The 1972 book “Limits to Growth” viewed this as a key ‘fact.” See Figure 1. Available here https://archive.org/details/TheLimitsToGrowth/page/n19/mode/2up (page 19)
A related theme is the push for people to be “better ancestors.” E.g., https://www.romankrznaric.com/good-ancestor
We know from finding the remains of cities beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, the remains of human habitation in Doggerland and more, that sea levels have been rising for millennia. Point being; is it really such a stretch to be suspicious about claims this is now entirely anthropogenic, these days? And yes, CO2 levels support that theory, but CO2 levels have been high before and the world didn’t come to an end (or maybe it did, the records are incomplete). Anyway, I’ll be delighted when the use of crude to make plastic, grease, kerosene, diesel, and gasoline comes to an end but in the meantime, I’m not parking my paid for gas-powered car, and because I don’t have the political power to make it happen, I’ve no choice but to keep buying Coke in 2L plastic bottles. Also in the meantime? I grow tired of Chicken Little going on and one and on how it’s my fault. Whom amongst us won’t hop a flight to visit grandma on the west coast? Whom amongst us has significantly changed their economic behavior in a way that impacts corporations and makes them stop producing ICE vehicles on their own accord? Me? I think smarter than having Angelina mouthing off against pollution it would be smarter to get movie producers to write thoughtful scripts that show ordinary people taking actions which collectively benefit us. That, versus preaching incessantly.
John Beech: – “…but CO2 levels have been high before and the world didn’t come to an end (or maybe it did, the records are incomplete).”
Modern humans (aka Homo sapiens) have only been in existence on planet Earth for the last 250-300 thousand years, and apparently only developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human
The daily atmospheric CO₂ concentration at the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory on 7 Mar 2025 was 430.60 ppm. This is the first daily mean reading above 430 ppm ever directly recorded at this location. The atmospheric CO₂ concentration has not been this high since the Pliocene Epoch, 5.33 to 2.58 million years ago, where the global average temperature was 2–3 °C higher than today, and global sea level was about 25 m higher then, compared with current sea level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene
Professor Johan Rockström, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said:
“We have no evidence, whatsoever, that we can support in a dignified and responsible way, eight, soon to be nine billion people in the world as we know it, at anything above 2 °Celsius.”
https://youtu.be/h2VjdyqG-nY?t=1376
See also my Submission (#26) to the NSW Parliament Joint Standing Committee on Net Zero Future:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
The world won’t come to an end (well, not for perhaps billions of years, when the Sun runs low on hydrogen nuclear fuel and likely swells to a red giant phase that may perhaps engulf Earth), but at the current rate of planetary warming, human civilisation is on the road to collapse well before the end of this century.
JB,
It is not individual actions that will fix the problem. Lifestyle changes, if widely adopted, will take care of some of the problem, but the real necessity is to decrease fossil fuel use and stop clear-cutting forests. Individual consumers do not build municipal power plants or transmission lines.
Also, an emissions fee/tax/pricing system would incentivize such voluntary lifestyle changes.
As I have been writing for more than a decade, bottom-up initiatives are actually necessary, regardless of their modest impact on emissions. You are right (for once–hooray for BPL!) that they will not fix climate change. They can change the politics, as politicians, businesspeople etc. will recognize what the people really want. Business people watch very carefully as the populace votes with their pocketbook. Politicians want desperately to see the parade in time for them to jump in front of it and pretend they are leading it.
John Beech: is it really such a stretch to be suspicious about claims this is now entirely anthropogenic, these days?
It is if you either understand the science, or acknowledge that the vast consensus of professional climate specialists, who know way better than you, is that it’s 100% anthropogenic. Anyone who tells you “consensus isn’t science” is trying to fool you. This isn’t the argument from authority or social facilitation, but from a bunch of mutually-skeptical demonstrated experts who know what the heck they’re talking about. They can’t make progress without consensus! What reason do you really have to be suspicious, anyway? Do you think climate scientists have been making it all up for 200 years? What do you think they do all day? Do you think they haven’t heard about Doggerland? Or that while records may not be complete, it isn’t shown by inspection that the world hasn’t ended yet?
I grow tired of Chicken Little going on and one and on how it’s my fault. Whom amongst us won’t hop a flight to visit grandma on the west coast? Whom amongst us has significantly changed their economic behavior in a way that impacts corporations and makes them stop producing ICE vehicles on their own accord? Me?
I, for one, stopped paying attention to idiosyncratic Chicken Littles years ago. They don’t know any more of science than the far more numerous denialists do. And I can’t claim any private, voluntary action of mine has had the slightest impact on ICE-producing corporations. What I have done, as any US citizen can, is vote for collective decarbonization at every opportunity. That means voting Democratic, as the party that enacted the “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 without a single GOP vote: at least until some Republican candidate defies his party’s long-standing platform, and openly supports one or more public policy measures to make the invisible hand of the market pick up the check for global warming (h/t KS Robinson). You?
Apropos of Barton Paul Levenson’s note, it isn’t as though certain kinds of cultural change can’t happen and happen fast.
I am old enough to recall smoking sections on airplanes, ash trays in front of elevators and grade schoolers buying cigarettes for parents at the store — how proud we were that we could read the notes! (If you were good you could buy candy with the change). Smoking in bars was ubiquitous 20 years ago. On any college campus there was always a running battle between the smokers and non-smokers about the use of space (my own alma mater banned smoking in common areas but not in dorm rooms).
Now? Most of my students (I teach high school) have never smoked; while vaping happens the old sight of a pile of cigarette butts on the corner is no more; I haven’t smoked on a flight at all since about 1994, (I myself quit smoking in 2004 or 2005). In movies and TV shows lighting up is no longer the symbol of cool it was just 30 years ago.
This was a huge cultural change, and it occurred within just a few years once smoking in many public, shared spaces was banned.
Driving? Leaving aside the criminal underinvestment in public transport in the US (and its deliberate destruction in the 50s and 60s) there is no reason people drive SUVs and larger cars except advertising — just as Americans were happy enough to drive smaller, more efficient Toyotas in the 70s and 80s (it was one of the best selling cars for several years running; the Corolla famously would. not. die. no matter how people abused them).
How did that happen? Japanese car companies did a bang up job advertising. The “natural” desire of Americans for larger cars was anything but. When Ford and Chrysler figured out there were loopholes in CAFE standards they knew they could sell pricier, larger cars — but people — specifically urban dwellers with no conceivable need for a truck had to be convinced to buy them. Now the SUV-sized car is ubiquitous, where it was once a feature of more rural areas. The driving itself did not change, only the culture of the people doing it and the calculations of the companies making the cars.
(In the 80s, the symbol of “family car” wasn’t a minivan, but the station wagon, which is a more efficient solution at many levels).
Almost all of the barriers to better consumption are cultural and political, not technical or “human nature.” And those things are very, very malleable.
Consumer choices in themselves only go so far. The reason automobile companies (and fossil fuel companies) were able to keep doing what they were doing is they fought tooth and nail to keep doing it. They were not going to accept a world in which their profits were reduced for any reason. The profit margins on an SUV were (and I think still are) greater than that of a smaller car, so from Ford’s perspective it’s an easy choice. They were not going to promote fuel efficient cars even if many customers demanded them; instead they used the power of marketing to convince us that our very manhood was at stake if we didn’t buy SUVs.
I would agree with you about one thing: too often changes in lifestyle or consumption are framed as privations; as giving up something. Climate advocates have not done as good a job of saying what we get. Better health, for example, or more transport options. In an American context it is especially difficult because at this point the culture has moved n directions that work against that, but it’s not an impossible task.
John Beech.
8k-7k ago 9.4 metres (9.4 mm / year) End of glaciation giant ice sheet melting
7k-6k ago 1.25 metres (1.25 mm / year) From the plot been on Wiki 15 years
6k-5k ago 1.25 metres (1.25 mm / year) From the plot been on Wiki 15 years
5k-4k ago 0.5 metres (0.5 mm / year) From the plot been on Wiki 15 years
4k-2k ago 0.2 metres (0.1 mm / year) From the plot been on Wiki 15 years
1st century 0.015 metres (0.15 mm / year)
2nd century 0.017 metres (0.17 mm / year)
3rd century 0.002 metres DROP (0.02 mm / year lowering of sea level)
4th century 0.023 metres (0.23 mm / year)
5th century 0.034 metres DROP (0.34 mm / year lowering of sea level)
6th century 0.011 metres (0.11 mm / year)
7th century 0.027 metres (0.27 mm / year)
8th century 0.038 metres DROP (0.38 mm / year lowering of sea level)
9th century 0.002 metres DROP (0.02 mm / year lowering of sea level)
10th century 0.027 metres (0.27 mm / year)
11th century 0.057 metres DROP (0.57 mm / year lowering of sea level)
12th century 0.015 metres DROP (0.15 mm / year lowering of sea level)
13th century 0.004 metres DROP (0.04 mm / year lowering of sea level)
14th century 0.010 metres DROP (0.10 mm / year lowering of sea level)
15th century 0.034 metres (0.34 mm / year)
16th century 0.021 metres (0.21 mm / year)
17th century 0.032 metres (0.32 mm / year)
18th century 0.011 metres (0.11 mm / year)
19th century 0.004 metres DROP (0.04 mm / year lowering of sea level)
20th century 0.14 metres (1.4 mm / year SLR)
The last 30 years 0.12 metres SLR (4.0 mm / year)
The last 10 years 0.045 metres SLR (4.5 mm / year)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhLOZ_bbgzQ at 13:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieGcx3IXSBY at 14:25 and 40:15
Your thoughts about the effects of plastic, grease, kerosene, Coke and CO2 levels 5 million years ago on global average sea level of the last million years are sort-of interesting, just have to figure out how.
How about a bit of scientific compare and contrast on topic of area versus volume metrics of sea ice? Both types of graphs are presented in this post. As a lay person to sea ice science it is straightforward to understand quantifying sea ice area. Does quantifying the volumne of sea ice entail some broad brush strokes of point measurement interpolation? Tx
Loss of volume and multi-year ice are, imo, more solid (unsolid) indicators. Extent has been used as a standard but has demonstrable liabilities.
Here’s what the NSIDC has to say about that topic:
https://nsidc.org/learn/ask-scientist/how-thick-is-sea-ice
Tx for the NSIDC link
WWFD (what would Fermi do?)
I got some numbers from
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
to play with. Using the four decadal average plots (turn off everything else) gives this:
Mid-September (the minimum) goes from 6.9 to 4.4. Decline of 2.5/6.9 .
Beginning March (the maximum) from 16 to 14.6. Decline of 1.4/16
So, First Approximation, eyeball, napkin scribble, no fancy statistics required… to what level would the maximum recover if the minimum were to indeed hit zero?
(Sorry, no monetary prize, just the admiration of your peers.)
Now do the same experiment for 1 piomass and 2 first year ice and then 5 year ice.
Discuss the results.
Yes. WWFD (what would Fermi do?)
Fermi would flunk you for being too scared to answer the question.
zebra says
25 Sep 2025 at 10:57 AM
Fermi would flunk you for being too scared to answer the question.
Then show me how and help me improve. Answer all the questions yourself and post them here.
“Show me how and help me improve.”
Sorry, I do physics, not therapy. But I believe meditation is helpful in overcoming extreme insecurity.
Mo Yunus: Then show me how and help me improve. Answer all the questions yourself and post them here.
Really? It sounds like you’re new to RC’s 25-year struggle against climate-change disinformation. From long acquaintance, I testify to zebra’s firm ‘lay’ grasp of not only 200 years of climate science, but the modern (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0349-9) plutocratic propaganda war against it. If you ask him nicely, he can instruct you, but he’s under no obligation! In any case, you won’t improve if you can’t tell genuine skeptics from motivated denialists. That requires contextual understanding – even, although z may deny it, scientific meta-literacy! Do your own homework first. Read the previously cited sources. And spend more time lurking here. You’ll learn to recognize even subtle denialism when you see it.
* I’m also known as Mal Adapted. I just couldn’t resist the ad hoc ‘nym!
zebra says
26 Sep 2025 at 6:00 AM
I asked a physics question. Which you refuse to answer. This explains all I need to know about you. I don’t do therapy either, but I do know how to quickly see the real you. Have fun being ‘right’ and alone.
Mal Adapted, I do not need your advice. Thanks anyway, but save it. I’m not interested playing your kind of presumptuous games either. I made a physics suggestion and asked for a physics answer to a question. Simple really.
Mo’ Units: RC’s 25-year struggle
Apologies! Somehow I counted 25 years from 2004 to 2025. Hard to say what I was thinking. Too much natural stupidity. I hope to self-correct before someone does it for me, here of all places.
OTOH, I’m submitting as many self-corrections as comments lately. I probably should step away from the keyboard. Nah.
Mal,
Thanks for your vote of confidence. But I really don’t take on students who have failed zebra’s troll test even once, much less twice. (And I suspect this is another iteration of the multi-troll.)
Anyway, the thing about your meta-literacy is not that it is wrong, but that it is too vague. *How much* of a specialist on arctic ice do you have to be to answer my question and evaluate my reasoning?
I would like to see more guest posts from specialists in various areas here, but I understand the reluctance to waste time in troll heaven.
However, I see various commenters with opinions about the blue ocean thingie; I would have thought them eager to contribute on such an easy problem.
zebra: Anyway, the thing about your meta-literacy is not that it is wrong, but that it is too vague. *How much* of a specialist on arctic ice do you have to be to answer my question and evaluate my reasoning?
I would like to see more guest posts from specialists in various areas here, but I understand the reluctance to waste time in troll heaven.
MA: Agree with the last, but not that the term is too vague. Your second sentence is a good question, but It’s not just your reasoning I’m talking about, and it’s not ‘my’ meta-literacy but J. Nielsen-Gammon’s. His 2013 blog post, now mysteriously available only from the Wayback Machine, makes clear his is relative to his comparative lack of comprehensive literacy on any subject outside his own narrow specialty. And he was specific about how it worked, too (https://web.archive.org/web/20130213192911/http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/02/scientific-meta-literacy/):
JN-G: There are, perhaps, less than a thousand people worldwide who know enough about climate change’s impacts on tropical cyclones, extratropical transitions, wind speeds, rainfall rates, and sea level rise to qualify them to evaluate that statement [about Superstorm Sandy]. It’s not even clear that I’m one of them! The requisite level of climate literacy is enormous.
But there’s an important lesson here about how we decide which scientific statements to believe and which ones not to believe. Those of us who are trained scientists but who do not have enough personal literacy to independently evaluate a particular statement do not throw up our hands in despair. Instead, we evaluate the source and the context.
We scientists rely upon a hierarchy of reliability. We know that a talking head is less reliable than a press release. We know that a press release is less reliable than a paper. We know that an ordinary peer-reviewed paper is less reliable than a review article. And so on, all the way up to a National Academy report. If we’re equipped with knowledge of this hierarchy of reliability, we can generally do a good job navigating through an unfamiliar field, even if we have very little prior technical knowledge in that field.
MA: My emphasis. I, for one, learned to apply that hierarchy of reliability as a sound rule of thumb during my own prolonged scientific education, augmented by 38 years of amateur immersion in the subject of anthropogenic climate change and its motivated denial, since 2008 on this IMHO undeniably authoritative blog! I didn’t call it “scientific meta-literacy” until I saw JN-G’s blog post. Of course nobody can be comprehensively literate in every sub-discipline. Most, including me, are comprehensively sub-literate! It’s still not my idea, but (again, IMHO) a truth that’s out there, nicely articulated by its namer. That includes his observation:
Well, the typical member of the public has very little retained technical knowledge about just about everything. I claim that it’s an impossible task to raise the level of climate literacy in the general public to the point where most can tell that the statement about the ice age is wrong, let alone whether the statement about Sandy is wrong.
MA: z, I’m not looking for a slapfight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfI1S0PKJR8), but I respectfully suggest you may be underestimating your own scientific meta-literacy here. I presume it’s a misguided, albeit well-intended, display of humility. It might not be impossible to raise the level of climate literacy in the general public, nonetheless you must realize you’re a comparatively atypical member of the general public! Unlike far too many who come here wearing silly costumes with their jaws thrust out, because “someone has to stand up to experts” (D. McLeroy).
Mal: thanks for the John Neilsen-Gammon extract. Great stuff! Basic science was one of Dad’s hobbyhorses. Investing in knowledge normally bears more fruit in the long run than profit only (e.g., Bell Labs). We’re going backwards now; greedy bullying fraudsters in charge.
I did find this: talk+water: #95 “Dr. Todd Votteler, Principal of Collaborative Water Resolution and Editor-in-Chief of Texas+Water and the Texas Water Journal, discusses extreme weather with Texas State Climatologist, Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon”
https://texaspluswater.wp.txstate.edu/2025/07/28/talkwater-95-john-neilsen-gammon/
—
dammit, OT again [climate yes, but water not cryosphere]
Mo’ Eunuchs: Mal Adapted, I do not need your advice. Thanks anyway, but save it. I’m not interested playing your kind of presumptuous games either. I made a physics suggestion and asked for a physics answer to a question. Simple really.
Simple-minded, IMHO. Y’all (presumptively plural) really do think the rest of us are even simpler than y’all are. We know damn well why y’all are here. AFAICT, y’all still need my advice!
Mal,
Mal, my reasoning about the Arctic ice is based on my “meta-literacy” *in physics*.
But whatever I say, you could always claim that e.g. my invocation of conservation of energy in that analysis is based on having heard about it in a lecture by Prof Resnick, whose status in the hierarchy is what made me accept and internalize it.
That’s what I mean by vagueness.
OTOH, I would only rely on peer-reviewed specialists to give me a really detailed characterization of the annual cycle, with numbers and complex causal relationships. That’s what *I* think of as fitting the term “scientific meta-literacy”.
I don’t know why you would take it as a “slap” if I point out that the vast majority of the denialist/troll arguments are flawed at such elementary levels that to recognize their absurdity only requires a reasonable education involving logic and quantitative and scientific reasoning.
Offering up my Fermi problem here is intended to have the hypothetical sincere student/lurker organize their knowledge and processing. If I really wanted a slap-fight, I might suggest that you give it a shot yourself… or are you seriously saying the math is too hard for you?
zebra: If I really wanted a slap-fight, I might suggest that you give it a shot yourself… or are you seriously saying the math is too hard for you?
Oh dear. Did I miss the wink tag? ;^) Shirley you can’t be serious! Are you really suggesting we’re in a private contest, or some kind of slap-happy mêlée?
z, I’ve tried to make this clear in my verbose way, but one more time won’t hurt: you’re not in the set of Denialists, except perhaps of your own personality. Never mind: speaking for myself, everybody’s got one, our own are just hard to see without a good mirror. But I digress!
I, the organic personality behind the ‘nym, say this in all seriousness: IMHO you’re a valuable contributor to this site, whose comments are often worth attention, and even supporting or follow-up replies; but you seem to be here with your figurative jaw thrust out at friend and foe alike. I’m here, AFAICT, to hold the line against motivated climate-change denialism in this forum (I concede that sounds self-important; I plead the Mediocrity Principle, https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11272). I’m not interested in competing with you, or Tom Fuller, or any other reflexive contrarian who actually supports the consensus and is just looking for the argument clinic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc).
Nor do I wish to engage in extended “debate” with all the avatars of Mo Humus [sick] beyond bluntly contradicting them once or twice within norms of frank and open public discourse, with links to published sources (“Follow this!”; flips bird). The actual denialists have already lost, whether they know it or not, because I don’t knowingly make claims that exaggerate, diminish or contradict either the verifiable published evidence or the specialist consensus, and I’ll cheerfully defer to genuine experts before getting over my head. Merely combative climate realists aren’t my targets. Metaphorically, you’re all tar babies!
Besides, who am I, Arrhenius? I took Calculus fifty years ago. I got ‘A’s and ‘B’s. I took Biometry 501 forty-five years ago; got an ‘A-‘. Haven’t done either by hand since (see Voortman thread). We have machines for that now. I cherish no illusion of mastery.
Carry on, z. I reserve the right to ghost you, selectively or broadly. I of course recognize your reciprocal right. Durable win-win!
/;^)
August 2018 when I awoke at 3 am and couldn’t sleep again I calculated in my head the next hour or so that no sea ice 0n the Arctic Ocean in late March would delay sea ice formation by ~123 days so late January the first hints of ice start. Probably way off because it was from I’d just spent 200 hours in July, August studying Arctic Ocean heat (I got 4% different than the CERES Paper published June 2019), it was basic, no cloud change, warm south air change etc, and I was trying to recall all quantities from memory and hold them and the results while doing the mental arithmetic. That was my estimate though. I posted that on “Paul Beckwith” silly BOE video but there was no interest at all.
Now do rising oceans flooding Manhattan scare. Must suck for you having those tax dollars that were stolen from my wallet funding this BS drying up and not funding your studies. Derp!
Re: Jim O’Hara 24 Sep
Could you name even one study that got funding to study “rising oceans flooding Manhattan”. Those who convinced you that these is where tax dollars are going to – were not your friends – they cynically manipulated you to hide that it is THEM who got these “tax dollars stolen from your wallet”- see:
“Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of GDP in 2022”
[ International Monetary Fund: https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies ]
When the facts contradict my opinions I change my opinions. What do you do, Jim?
They aren’t subsidies Piotr. Most of this number is the IMF’s estimate of societal cost of climate change and pollution.
:”Costs” which the IMF chooses to call “implicit subsidies.” What alternate descriptor would you choose? Or are you laboring under the notion that by excluding them from the category “subsidies” you reduce them to meaninglessness?
Calling environmental costs subsidies is dishonest nonsense. This is the AI definition of subsidy:
“A subsidy is a financial benefit provided by a government to individuals, businesses, or industries to support a specific activity or achieve a public policy objective.
It is typically a grant or gift of money, which can be direct, such as cash payments or tax breaks, or indirect, such as price reductions, low-rate loans, or the provision of goods and services at below-market prices.
The primary purpose of a subsidy is to reduce the cost of production or consumption for certain goods and services, thereby encouraging their production, availability, or use……..”
In the USA, there are no direct FF “subsidies”. They get tax deductions just like every other business in the USA, and like individuals do as well. Individuals get to deduct from their income things like: mortgage interest, medical costs, property taxes, costs of continuing education in your field, housing – food – and transportation if you are working away from your permanent home, etc. If you are low income you might get food subsidies, health care subsidies, etc….Those are actual subsidies – not just deductions from your income. for tax purposes.
Back to AGW Science, THE ARCTIC ICE MACHINE HAS BEEN FIRED UP FOR THE WINTER:
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/Resolute+Nunavut+Canada?canonicalCityId=c2daeec9f9d878df2b529b34e0632beab8c5b2ba70028e40dcc80f6b7238b437
KIA” Calling environmental costs subsidies is dishonest nonsense. This is the AI definition of subsidy
Given the scope of your climate knowledge ignorance, meticulously documented by you in the 1000s(?) of your posts on RC over the years, and outsourcing your intelligence to artificial “intelligence “, prompted with your inept? dishonest? prompts – the only thing that is “ dishonest nonsense ” – is your thinking about yourselff as somebody who “ knows it all“.
And you shouldn’t have outsourced your learning about the world to AI before you learned HOW TO USE it:
the IMF article you try discredit by calling it “dishonest nonsense” puts env. costs into
the “ implicit subsidies” category, And the answer of Google AI to prompt: “ implicit subsidies meaning” is NOT “ an implicit subsidy is a dishonest nonsense “, but:
“An implicit subsidy is an unstated form of financial support, unlike a direct cash handout, that reduces the cost of goods or services by failing to account for all associated expenses or by providing hidden benefits. Examples include energy prices that ignore external environmental and health costs or financial market transactions where investors receive expected returns above the normal risk-free rate due to factors like government policies or behavioral biases, rather than conventional risk. ”
===== end of quote ============
So either you don’t know how to form a simple correct keyword for your Google search, or you do it on purpose. using AI as a drunkard uses a street-lamp – not for enlightenment but for support?
“Calling environmental costs subsidies is dishonest nonsense. ”
If by law or practice a cost cannot be charged back to the person benefiting from the actual damages they cause while making a profit from that damage, it most certainly is a subsidy for said person.
Don’t be so ridiculous.
Keith Woolard wrote: “Societal costs are not borne by governments.”
So, to take a recent-ish example, the $150 billion the US put into the COVID relief fund wasn’t a government bearing a “societal cost?”
How about the money put into cleaning up Superfund sites? That wasn’t a “societal cost” either?
I think I could make a case that pretty much everything government does is a “bearing of societal costs.” Defense spending? Check. Public health spending? Check. Managing fiscal policy? Check.
I’d really be interested in how you define “societal cost.”
But of course, any cost left as an economic externality, “societal” or not, isn’t technically borne by anybody–at least, not in purely economic terms.
[Response: Some societal costs are taken up by governments of course, but many are not. Just like the uninsured damages from natural disasters, much of the cost, maybe most, is taken from individuals or companies that just have to suck it up. There are for instance, massive societal costs in having the US health care system set up the way it is. Some of that gets picked up by local governments, police etc., but mostly the cost is bourne by individuals who end up suffering from conditions that could have been easily prevented. – gavin]
Gavin wrote:
Fair point, and I probably overstated a bit. But it’s genuinely hard to know where the social/governmental merry-go-round of “costs” starts or stops. Take the social costs imposed by the US healthcare “system”–I scare-quote that as “systematic” isn’t really the word that comes to mind when I contemplate the ramshackle collection of ad-hocs that is the status quo here.
Yes, the primary costs–financial and otherwise–are borne by the folks who either overpay for care, who can’t access care, or who suffer hours of uncompensated lost time and productivity navigating a chaotic and arbitrary landscape that even Kafka couldn’t have imagined. But secondarily, how about the lost productivity, which translates into lost tax revenue? It’s indirect, sure, and probably quite difficult to study, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be quantitatively quite a large effect.
(And yes, I must acknowledge that we’re getting quite far afield here.)
Gavin:Some societal costs are taken up by governments of course, but many are not. Just like the uninsured damages from natural disasters, much of the cost, maybe most, is taken from individuals or companies that just have to suck it up.
Thank you, Gavin, for troubling to point out the obvious to our dogged denialists. As you’ve no doubt observed, Jerry Taylor’s Damascene revelation was in similar language:
Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, he [not Christ., but JT’s friend Jonathan Adler, at CEI -MA] said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money.
And thanks to KMcK for a worthy response to Gavin. I presume his, or your, awareness of the power of carbon capital did not come as late in your lives as ex-professional disinformer Taylor’s. Nonetheless, I’ve some sympathy for JT, as it explicitly was not an easy self-recognition to live with (https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science/):
SL: How do you feel about the work you did in those years?
JT: I regret a lot of it. I wish I had taken more care and done more due diligence on the arguments I had been forwarding. I also introduced one of my brothers, James Taylor, to the folks at the Heartland Institute. Heartland’s rise to dominate market share in climate denialism largely occurred under my brother. Boy do I regret that.
Whoo boy! I’ve learned some uncomfortable truths about myself recently also, but that’s gotta be hard.
Keith Woollard: They aren’t subsidies Piotr.
Obstructionist word games. Socialized transaction costs are financially equivalent to direct subsidies. As far as both buyers and sellers are concerned, any public policy that allows the marginal climate and health impacts of a unit of fossil carbon to be left out of its market price has the effect of a subsidy. “Socialized” means those costs are instead paid, in money and grief, by involuntary third parties.
Targeted subsidies for renewable energy development and consumer uptake OTOH, to help drive decarbonization by taking profit out of selling fossil fuels, were included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, even if they weren’t called that by the bill’s backers. The IRA passed without a single Republican vote. JFC, even its modest decarbonization measures were too much for our current Swivel-Eyed Denier-in-Chief. Hey, he’s purported, albeit by other red-tinfoil-hatted sorts, to be a stable genius!
Piotr “and this is supposed to invalidate my reply to Jim O. – how?”
Keith Woollard 30 Sep:Yes it is, Jim was talking about taxes, and you mention USD7T is subsidies.
Sorry, I put my answer to that in the wrong place -1 Oct., UV thread
Piotr:” So, if you poison somebody as a part of making profit – and you don’t pay a cent for it, because the costs of poisoning are either ignored (and therefore borne by the victim) or covered by the taxpayer – then it is OK …. because these do not meet Keith Wollard’s definition of a “subsidy”?”
Keith Woollard: “And let me also say your poison analogy is possibly the worst analogy I have ever heard. You are saying the government has subsidised a murder if the perpetrator hasn’t spent money on the weapon – great job, you should be very proud”
And let me also say your response is possibly the most bizarre and dishonest misrepresentation of opponent’s words I have heard from you, well, at least in a couple of weeks:
– you READ my analogy about corporations privatizing the profit and socializing the costs – a factory which pollution poisons the people nearby, yet does not pay for it -because the costs of pollution are borne either by the victim themselves or by the taxpayer paying for support for the victims
– and your to “translate” my analogy into your …. awkwardly-formulated strawman:
K. Woollard: “You are saying the government has subsidised a murder if the perpetrator hasn’t spent money on the weapon great job, you should be very proud”
Maybe the voices in your head are saying this, I said nothing of the kind. Given that – “great job”, Keith, “you should be very proud” of yourself, indeed. ;-)
OK, Piotr, you just say rubbish and hope people can’t actually think!
Let me correct some things….
I never said poisoning is OK, I just pointed out that under your analogy and definition of a subsidy, then the government is subsidising murder.
Let me restate more completely my position.
1) The USD7T subsidy you point to is absolute rubbish and a deliberate misdirection
2) Even if it was true, governments still take more than that in taxes & royalties from FFs
3) I would love to have a discussion about the net cost of FFs. It can include all climate change and pollution costs, but would have to also include all benefits. None of this counting changes in heat deaths and ignoring the 10 fold cold deaths. Or using every storm when there is no trend in frequency.
Keith Woollard OK, Piotr, you just say rubbish and hope people can’t actually think!
i.e. a desperate attempt to turn tables by Keith Woollard, caught on the lies or misrepresentations.
KW: Let me correct some things…. I never said poisoning is OK,
No need to correct anything since nobody said that about you, So either you can’t understand a simple sentence in your native language, or you deliberately distort my words to paint me as somebody who tries to discredit opponents with baseless and grossly unfair accusations.
What I DID say is that you are OK with “corporations privatizing profit while socializing the costs”, by passing the costs of their pollution onto the victims or the taxpayer;
KW under your analogy the government is subsidising murder.
That’s a lie. Even in the language of analogy “poisoning” does not equal “MURDER”.
1. For MURDER you have to kill somebody; poisoning does not have to be lethal, In fact most of the costs “borne by the victims or the taxpayer” are either
– contingent of the victim being harmed but NOT killed (medical treatment, disability support. reduction in future earnings, loss of the resale value of your home, and reduction in tax basis for the government)
– or are borne regardless of the death or not of the victims – say, containment and decontamination of the polluted area, providing alternative source of polluted ground water, etc.
2. More importantly in MURDER – the death is the goal, while in reality and in my analogy the goal is not to MURDER people, but to turn profit on the product you make, and being allowed to not have those the profits reduced by the harm costs passed onto other people.
Therefore your claim that I accuse the government of subsidising murder. is a cynical lie aimed at distracting from the fact that your position has no leg to stand on.
KW. Let me restate more completely my position.
What for? Since you based your position on your misunderstanding or the cynical misrepresentation of opponents’ arguments – there is no need to “restate your position” – it will STILL be “a fruit of a poisonous tree”.
And all we need to know about your intellectual and/or ethical integrity we already have in your previous posts.
“So, if you poison somebody as a part of making profit – and you don’t pay a cent for it, because
the costs of poisoning are either ignored (and therefore borne by the victim) or covered by the taxpayer – then it is OK”
Sounds to me like you are saying I am OK with poisoning
Keith, you glutton for punishment you. I have just handed you your ass^* – see my response
” (Piotr 9 Oct 4:52 PM)
to your accusing me of: “you are saying the government has subsidised a MURDER
yet you still come back for more:
Keith Woollard 9 Oct 9.08 PM : you are saying I am OK with poisoning ?
Ever heard about “metaphor”, Keith? As in: “ a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable“?
You know what “not literally” means, right?
If not, then anticipating your next move, let me state, for the record:
I, Piotr, have NOT actually removed surgically Keith Woollard’s gluteus maximus, and I have NOT handed the said gluteus to the said Keith.
Not in the literal sense of these words.
Keith Woollard: “They aren’t subsidies Piotr.”
So, if you poison somebody as a part of making profit – and you don’t pay a cent for it, because
the costs of poisoning are either ignored (and therefore borne by the victim) or covered by the taxpayer – then it is OK …. because these do not meet Keith Wollard’s definition of a “subsidy”?
KW: “ Most of this number is the IMF’s estimate of societal cost of climate change and pollution. ”
…. and this is supposed to invalidate my reply to Jim O. – how?
“So, if you poison somebody as a part of making profit – and you don’t pay a cent for it, because the costs of poisoning are either ignored (and therefore borne by the victim) or covered by the taxpayer – then it is OK”
Exactly!
Offside (not even about ice, except that cryosphere melt is a result of greenhouse gas growth), but this: Exposing The Dark Side of America’s AI Data Center Explosion [Business Insider is not a leftie publication} ->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8TDOFqkQA
“and this is supposed to invalidate my reply to Jim O. – how?”
Yes it is, Jim was talking about taxes, and you mention USD7T is subsidies. By definition if you are talking about government money (taxes) then explicit subsidies are the only ones that have any bearing. Societal costs are not borne by governments.
But even so, you and others missed half of my point. That USD7T is the IMF’s estimate of the cost. The estimate is political guess, and they are only using gross cost, not net. They have come to this ridiculous number by including things like road congestion costs and traffic accidents. How has this got anything to do with the fuel source? They calculate costs of “local pollution” but do not weigh in the fact that a huge percentage of the world would die without the power generated by fossil fuels. You don’t get to calculate only bad things. The whole reason the world continues to increase use of fossil fuels is that the net result is beneficial
And let me also say your poison analogy is possibly the worst analogy I have ever heard. You are saying the government has subsidised a murder if the perpetrator hasn’t spent money on the weapon – great job, you should be very proud
KW: The whole reason the world continues to increase use of fossil fuels is that the net result is beneficial
BPL: It isn’t. Global warming and pollution.
BPL : ” It isn’t”
I’m assuming you mean it isn’t a net benefit. What an arrogant and misguided statement.
You are speaking for the 7 billion people who have looked at life with and without FFs and have chosen to use them in spite of someone telling them that in two generations the sea level may be 50cm higher!
What’s your excuse?
You have determined that the net result of using FFs is bad, but you continue? Good on you you hypocrite. Don’t blame others. If you can’t do something without using FFs, then don’t do it. Simple
At least I am honest to myself
KW: I’m assuming you mean it isn’t a net benefit. What an arrogant and misguided statement.
BPL: Arrogance and motivation have nothing to do with it. Either it’s true or it’s false.
KW: You are speaking for the 7 billion people who have looked at life with and without FFs and have chosen to use them in spite of someone telling them that in two generations the sea level may be 50cm higher! . . . What’s your excuse?
BPL: Sorry, I thought you were talking about global warming, rather than fossil fuel use per se. My mistake.
KW: You have determined that the net result of using FFs is bad, but you continue? Good on you you hypocrite. Don’t blame others. If you can’t do something without using FFs, then don’t do it. Simple
BPL: Not simple. I don’t build power plants, nor do I manufacture cars, nor am I a logger. Collective problems need collective action, not individual virtue.
KW: At least I am honest to myself
BPL: Humble, too.
Re KW @: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840510
No, Keith, Piotr’s comment doesn’t make claims about your approval of poisoning, or lack thereof, because 1) it’s a conditional, and 2) the “you” may be functioning as one used to use “one”–i.e., an indefinite pronoun; and 3) Piotr (in the OP) then goes on to use “Keith Woolard” in the third person, thereby implying that “you” isn’t “KW.”
If it makes you–KW, that is, because in this context they DO have the same referent!–feel any better, I am happy to opine that no-one here thinks you are cheerleading would-be Borgias.
Misguidedly apologizing for a dangerous suite of technologies that, despite clear benefits in the past, now poses a clear and present threat to both Earthly biodiversity and human civilization? Sure.
But not advocating poisoning per se. Poisoning, after all, is much easier to understand, and besides lacks effective advocates.
– Keith Woollard: “You have determined that the net result of using FFs is bad, but you continue? Good on you you hypocrite. Don’t blame others. If you can’t do something without using FFs, then don’t do it. Simple”
– BPL: Not simple. I don’t build power plants, nor do I manufacture cars, nor am I a logger. Collective problems need collective action, not individual virtue.
and in fact,
there have been entire FF propaganda campaigns built around that:
– BP hiried the top experts in manipulation of public, the storied PR firm “Ogilvy and Mather”, (with Ogilvy there being that “(David) Ogilvy” – “British advertising tycoon, known as the “Father of Advertising.”) After being retained by BP, the Ogilvy and Mather came up with the INDIVIDUAL carbon footprint calculator – which was then used to:
1. distract the attention from the FFs industry making trillions of dollars a year from FFs, and getting from the societys trillions of dollars in direct and implicit subsidies
2. place the sole responsibility for AGW onto the individuals (“It’s not us, it’s not you”) even though we as individuals have no choice in the CHOICES the FF industrial complex, and the owned by them politicians, do on our behalf.
3. provide an effective tool for dismissing the critics of BP et al. as “you hypocrites”:
since we are NOT given the choices of FF heavy and FF-light technology – unless we are willing to give up ALL uses of modern technology (the “all-or-nothing” manipulation) and therefore are willing to go back to the caves and live a verge of starvations – then we can dismissed as “hypocrites”, as in:
Keith Woollard to BPL: “ you hypocrite. Don’t blame others. If you can’t do something without using FFs, then don’t do it. Simple”
4. After dismissing the critics as dishonest hypocrites, time to toot own horn:
“ At least, I am honest to myself ” Keith Woollard.
Which is akin to Trump Republicans gutting the governmental programs for the poor in the country and abroad, implying that the Democrats ALSO wanted to do so, but being hypocrites they are – Democrats wouldn’t admit it. Contrast this with MAGA Republicans who not only can admit it – they announce the cuts in the programs for the poor with glee, as something that would endera them to their MAGA electorate.
5. Lastly, the carbon footprint calculator promotes the resignation and apathy</b? – once the people see that (given no influence what technology is used) no matter what their personal sacrifices – they would never reduce their footprint to zero, so there is no point to do anything (the all-or-nothing!), so they might just as well " be like Keith – throw up hands, and enjoy their consumption without any guilt until it lasts. And “Après nous, le Déluge” as the mistress of King Louis XV, and apparently Keith Woollard, would argue.
(Followed by the FF oligarchs advice to the future generations: “ Let them eat cake. “)
Keith Woollard: “The whole reason the world continues to increase use of fossil fuels is that the net result is beneficial”
“increase” is hopefully no longer an accurate descriptor of FF use in power generation worldwide. Reference the following from AP:
“Solar and wind power has grown faster than electricity demand this year, report says”
By Alexia St.John
https://apnews.com/article/climate-renewable-wind-solar-coal-electricity-demand-abf7b587b038bf7580de1baee6576bbc
From the article: At the same time, total fossil fuel generation dropped slightly, by less than 1%. “The fall overall of fossil may be small, but it is significant,” said Wiatros-Motyka. “This is a turning point when we see emissions plateauing.”
And: The findings suggest it is possible for the world to wean off polluting sources of power — even as demand for electricity skyrockets — with continued investment in renewables including solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal energies.
“That means that they can keep up the pace with growing appetite for electricity worldwide,” said Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior electricity analyst at Ember and lead author of the study.
The concept of personal contributions to AGW was around well before BP/O&M supposedly came up with the idea. For a decade before that you could quell your guilt by voluntarily offsetting your flight emissions.
I know it will never be possible to calculate, but I would put a bet on the fact that the average carbon footprint of all those people in the world who think AGW is a climate emergency is far great than all those who don’t – ironic hey?
I note now that when you said I was OK with poisoning that somehow that was a metaphor. A metaphor inside of an analogy – nice work . And luckily now KMcK you don’t have to worry about your tortured “you means someone else, not KW”
David, what is it with commentators on realclimate? I didn’t say anything about electricity!
The world gets 85% of its energy from fossil fuels, and the amount we are burning is increasing despite trillions in actual subsidies
KW: “I know it will never be possible to calculate, but I would put a bet on the fact that the average carbon footprint of all those people in the world who think AGW is a climate emergency is far great than all those who don’t – ironic hey?”
You know, I think I’d take that bet! I remember a conversation with a mango farmer over 30 years ago when I was in the Peace Corps. He knew climate change was real even then–he’d seen over 80 years of climate change. Whether in Brazil, Madagascar, Kenya or Thailand, there seems to be almost universal recognition that humanity faces a grave threat.
It seems to me that lukewarmerism and other more extreme forms of denial are prevalent mainly in the English-speaking industrial countries–USA, UK, Australia…
And I’m sure that the US military presence in the Middle East has nothing to do with oil. We just have an inordinate fondness for pounding sand–and where better to find sand? That’s not a subsidy to fossil fuel interests. Uh-uh. Nosireebob!
Keith Woollard: “David, what is it with commentators on realclimate? I didn’t say anything about electricity!”
I said something about global electricity usage, as its generation has been a significant fraction of overall FF use. That’s changing (slowly). That’s all I was referring to. Sorry I didn’t make that explicit, as the AP article itself does.
The report by Ember for additional info:
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/10/Global-Electricity-Mid-Year-Insights-2025-PDF.pdf
Keith Woollard “ The concept of personal contributions to AGW was around well before BP/O&M supposedly came up with the idea.
Nobody said that they invented the concept – but the PR company hired by BP, came up with a brilliant idea to co-opt the concept developed by the people concerned about climate to use it … against everything the inventors stood for
namely to:
====
1. distract the attention from the FFs industry making trillions of dollars a year from FFs, and getting from the society’s trillions of dollars in direct and implicit subsidies
2. place the sole responsibility for AGW onto the individuals (“It’s not us, it’s not you”) even though we as individuals have no choice in the CHOICES the FF industrial complex, and the owned by them politicians, do on our behalf.
3. provide an effective tool for dismissing the critics of BP et al. as “you hypocrites”:
since we are NOT given the choices of FF heavy and FF-light technology – unless we are willing to give up ALL uses of modern technology (the “all-or-nothing” manipulation) and therefore are willing to go back to the caves and live a verge of starvations – then we can dismissed as “hypocrites”, as in:
Keith Woollard to BPL: “ you hypocrite. Don’t blame others. If you can’t do something without using FFs, then don’t do it. Simple”
4. after dismissing the critics as dishonest hypocrites, time to toot own horn, a la:
“ At least, I am honest to myself ” Keith Woollard. Which is akin to Trump Republicans gutting the governmental programs for the poor in the country and abroad, implying that the Democrats ALSO wanted to do so, but being hypocrites they are – Democrats wouldn’t admit it.
5. lastly, the carbon footprint calculator promotes the resignation and apathy – once the people see that (given no influence what technology is used) no matter what their personal sacrifices – they would never reduce their footprint to zero, so there is no point to do anything (the all-or-nothing!), so they might just as well ” be like Keith – throw up hands, and enjoy their consumption without any guilt until it lasts. And “Après nous, le Déluge” as the mistress of King Louis XV, and apparently Keith Woollard, would argue.
======
When you have anything to falsify the above 5 points, please feel free to post..
P.S. As for your attempts on sarcasm re: analogy vs metaphor – they refer to my
<a href="https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840556" DIFFERENT post
and I will answer it there.
Keith Woollard 13 Oct 12:35 AM I note now that when you said I was OK with poisoning that somehow that was a metaphor. A metaphor inside of an analogy – nice work .
Your attempt at sarcasm noted. Except, it was YOU who called my words “analogy”:
====
– Piotr:” So, if you poison somebody as a part of making profit – and you don’t pay a cent for it, because ..”
– Keith Woollard: “And let me also say your poison analogy is possibly the worst analogy I have ever heard.
===
Myself, I prefer: “metaphor” (“metaphors are [less complex] and more condensed form of comparison [than] an analogy.”), Which means that your self-confident sarcasm from my supposed logical entanglement:
KW “A metaphor inside of an analogy – nice work ” reflects only … the entanglement in your head.
As for your:
Keith Woollard: “And luckily now KMcK you don’t have to worry about your tortured “you means someone else, not KW”
I am not sure what you wanted to express here:
– whom are you quoting? (I don’t see this quote in this thread)
– why a simple typo (“means” instead of “mean”), makes this quote … “tortured”?
– why would … KMcK (Kevin?) be relieved that … Keith Woolard thought he caught me on “A metaphor inside of an analogy” (while in reality it was all in his head)?
And after writing a sentence like that, you think that “means” instead of “mean” is a “tortured” style?
Jim O’Hara: Must suck for you having those tax dollars that were stolen from my wallet funding this BS drying up and not funding your studies. Derp!
“The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed” (attrib. Robespierre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier). Off went Lavoisier’s head.
“Course of justice”, my senior buttocks. History (to date, at least) is written by the winners. We won’t know who they are until it’s over. AFAICT, it ain’t over yet. Herp!
I presume there is a good reason why the NSIDC focused on ice surface area and not multi year and volume of ice instead?
[Response: I should have made that clearer. Area and extent are retrievable from satellites, while volume (and thickness) can only be measured in situ or inferred from models. So the area/extent diags are a little more robust, but that isn’t to say the PIOMASS volume analyses are terrible. – gavin]
Social media is full of people always talking up CC as a hoax, or a lie of some description with rebounding Arctic and Antarctic seas ice a favourite of theirs.
No proof of warming, no proof of increasing co2 levels coming from fossil fuel burning, no proof that increased bad weather is coming from a warning climate etc etc
For the environmentalists who are paranoid and passionate about it they are always looking for angles to get governments to listen, that’s politics.
“no proof of increasing co2 levels coming from fossil fuel burning” is high comedy. Nice nostalgia of Murry Salby stating at University of London that the 1st derivative of any function must match its 2nd derivative to “show” CO2 increase ain’t from humans. But it ain’t correct that the 1st derivative of any function must match its 2nd derivative.
Here’s an (arbitrarily chosen) collection of materials on Antarctic sea ice with particular focus on the Thwaites Glacier. I recently saw news about a new crack there, but got sidetracked into more general material; particularly chuffed to find Richard Alley among PennState authors (lotta climate heroes there).
Measuring how—and where—Antarctic ice is cracking with new data tool* – https://phys.org/news/2025-07-antarctic-ice-tool.html
This ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is melting faster than anyone thought. Now Earth’s biggest cities are in danger. Antarctic expeditions and outlandish geoengineering schemes hope to slow sea level rise … but it might be too late – https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/doomsday-glacier-melting-thwaites-antarctica
aaand, how crazy is this? Scientists weigh giant sea curtain to shield ‘Doomsday Glacier’ from melting – https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/scientists-weigh-giant-sea-curtain-to-shield-doomsday-glacier-from-melting/
_______
* Source on measurement tool (Penn State, one of the best anywhere, and cryosphere hot ticket Richard Alley): Recent Variability in Fracture Characteristics and Ice Flow of Thwaites Ice Shelf, West Antarctica – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JF008118
“A total collapse of the roughly 80-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier, the widest in the world, would trigger changes that could lead to 11 feet of sea-level rise.” – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarcticas-doomsday-glacier-is-melting-even-faster-than-scientists-thought/
““It’s never too late to make some change,” Scheuchl said. “Even if we aren’t able to stop these developments, we can slow things down and lessen their impacts.””
Susan Anderson ““A total collapse of the roughly 80-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier, the widest in the world”. Using that Article verbatim is ambiguous. But don’t use Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to expound on it though because I fell off my chair few years back when their Web Log site Article confused the TEIS with the Thwaites Glacier which is ~530 times as massive as the TEIS. 80 miles = 128 km and 11 feet = 3.4 m for bods who aren’t U.S. Steeped-in-Social types.
Thwaites Glacier and TEIS from memory of the last 10 years so maybe a bit off but not 530 times reality or 0.2% of reality.
Thwaites Glacier
—————–
800 km wide by 500 km frontback (a bit diamondish, very not rectangular)
Area 192,000 km**2
Mass 440 Trillion tonnes (54% above sea level (ASL))
Globally-averaged sea level rise (SLR) from complete loss of Thwaites Glacier 645 mm (2.1 feet)
Frontage at the ocean ~126 km (~79 miles)
West 1/3rd melange of ice, no floating ice shelf, 2.0 km/year flow out from the grounding line.
Centre 1/3rd busted floating ice shelf, 2.0 km/year flow out.
East 1/3rd TEIS floating ice shelf, 0.6 km/year flow out.
Thwaites Glacier East Ice Shelf (TEIS)
—————————————–
42 km wide by 54 km frontback
I estimate ~350m average thickness but couldn’t get the face height because Ted Scambos annoyingly gave it in units of RV Boaty McBoatface which is what glaciologists use instead of “metres” (I gave up trying the scale the ice from the RV cabin door)
574 m TEIS thickness at its grounding line (514 m below sea level, 60 m ASL)
TEIS (hey, WHOI, not Thwaites Glacier) predicted to disintegrate in 1-6 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBbgWsR4-aw
“would trigger changes that could lead to 11 feet of sea-level rise” Yep for sure an ice field 800 x 500 km melting away would open the side of Pine Island and the one one to the west to the ocean for greatly-increased melting of those also. The whole lot in that region will go over the next few hundred years then.
“doomsday-glacier-is-melting-even-faster-than-scientists-thought” Well yes scientists are useless because they keep telling us they’re useless. It has reached fetish proportions.
Susan Anderson, here is another link to the Thwaites Glacier:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00242-3
“High geothermal heat flow beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica inferred from aeromagnetic data”
I worked through the numbers for the estimated average geothermal heating rate estimated in this paper (0.86mW/m2) under the Amundsen Sea sector. If all the heat went into melting basal ice, this would result in about 1 cm/year of melting. That’s certainly enough to be significant, and keep the bottom of the ice sheet lubricated to allow faster ice flow in that sector.
By comparison, it’s also something like one order of magnitude less heat flux than mean EEI. I don’t know how EEI compares to estimated oceanic and atmospheric heat advection in that sector.
John, thanks for that paper reference which looks fun for me in winter if I run out of chores and my health holds up. I’m short of time now and I’m not revisiting my notes from when I looked at this for Antarctica some hours in 2017, but I suggest your assumption of melting is uncertain, maybe melt, maybe not. You didn’t include (your own or quoted from paper) any calculation of heat flow to the ice surface so you might be assuming that ice is a perfect insulator (or you did heat flow and temperature gradient calculations but didn’t provide them. Need to use average annual surface temperature of the ice and estimate the geothermal at depth. Lots of that i the paper but offhand I don’t see any temperatures at the ice base provided so we don’t know whether there’s melt.
Paper has “thick ice cover and logistical challenges have largely prevented the installation of a dense network of direct temperature gradient measurement sites in drill holes, and will likely do so in the future” So, in the absence of me seeing temperatures at the ice base in the Paper, perhaps there’s places where the ice base is like 0 to -1 degrees so there’s melt or perhaps it’s all or mostly, even for the Hot Spots like -3 to -6 degrees at the ice base so the heat is just conducting through to the surface, no melting.
So cannot assume that “0.86mW/m2” (is it really that minuscule? Typo?) is all used for melting ice, perhaps some combo of melting ice and passing upwards, perhaps no ice melting, maybe softening a bit by warming. It’s all not obvious unless it’s in the Paper which I haven’t time to study for weeks.
Barry,
You are quite right that my calculation of bottom ice melt from geothermal heat is a maximum. It does not include heat conduction through the ice sheet, or any other process that would remove the heat. My point in doing that calculation was not to arrive at an estimate of real bottom melting. It was to show that geothermal heating is too small to be responsible for any abrupt change in the Thwaites, even if all the heat goes into melting bottom ice.
Yes, the average amount of geothermal heat is rather small. 0.86 mW/m2 is not a typo.
Of course, some of that heat will go into warming the bottom layer of ice without melting it. But you really don’t need to do the calculation of how much gets to the surface. Heat conduction through a thick layer of ice (or any solid substance) is very slow and weak. In comparison to the flow rate of the ice, it has no chance to penetrate very far. Basically, the heat is either going into melting the bottom layer, or getting carried out to sea before it has a chance to penetrate through hundreds of meters of ice vertically.
Another factor to consider is friction. There is friction at the bottom of the ice sheet, which helps to liquefy the contact with the surface below. There is also internal friction within the ice, due to differential flow rates. As the ice softens, the flow rate increases, and so does friction.
I took a quick look at the paper before I read JP response just now. With rough averages it looks like there would indeed be basal melting, the geothermal Source net of cold air Sink tries top obtain >0 degrees at the ice base. Roughly 2.2 km thick ice with roughly average -22 degrees surface at 2.3 W/metre-K vs the Paper’s 14 km thick crust-lithosphere to 580 degrees at 2.3 W/metre-K results in their 86 mW/metre**2 used as 63 mW/metre**2 melting 6 mm / year ice base thickness with 1.99 MJ / year and supplying 23 mW/metre**2 through the 2.2 km thick ice to heat the air above.
I note that most interior ice base likely cannot use the low-friction wet soil or rock to slide more easily to the coast because the coast is up hill. There might be some complicated arrangement of pressure from behind where the mountain range is to shove the ice up hill (is it like 0.3% to 0.5% gradient or some such retrograde slope?) but that seems a bit unlikely offhand and is getting too advanced for me to spend time on.
Barry: “I note that most interior ice base likely cannot use the low-friction wet soil or rock to slide more easily to the coast because the coast is up hill. There might be some complicated arrangement of pressure from behind, but that seems a bit unlikely offhand
Why – the glaciers are known to be able to creep up hill, if there is enough pressure from ice mass behind.
If the “coast up hill” was such a huge obstacle then we have a problem with both ice age and ice thickness:
Age: with old ice would be trapped behind coastal up hills – we should have some 34mln old ice, i.e. shortly after the last time Antarctica was ice free.
Yet, the oldest ice core we have is only 1.2mln yrs old, and the odest peice of ice is about 4.5 mln old. Far cry from 34 mln.
Then there is a problem with the ice budget
– without substantial melting (continental ice has temps. -5 to -35C even in the austral summer) and sublimation removing only 10-15% of snowfall – without the continental ice flowing into the ocean – the ice thickness would grew year after year. lets do a back of the envelope calculation:
Based on the Vostok cores – the net accumulation of ice (after the losses to sublimation) is 3400 m over 425,ooo yrs i.e., 8km vertical for each mln yrs.
This means that at least some places of Antarctica with ice dating to 34mln years –
would have the icesheet. 275 KM thick.
Even if we restrict to the last 15 mln years (when the last partial deglaction happened) it’s STILL – 120km thick.
So I don’t think “the coast up hills” are such a big obstacle – the ice would either be pushed from behind over them, or be pushed into the glacier valleys carved across these coastal uphills.
In both cases – having the ice-ground interface lubricated by a layer of liquid water – would accelerate the ice movement into the sea.
Abram (2025) posted in UV 7 Oct describes the Antarctic entering a regime of abrupt, interacting, and possibly irreversible changes; the current evolution of the Thwaites Glacier system — especially its thinning shelves and accelerating cracks — is a prime real-world example of that process in motion.
Abram, N. J. (2025). Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, published 20 August 2025.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00666-8
claiming to care about “rapid destabilization in Antarctica,” science yet when someone (like me) links Abram’s Nature Reviews synthesis and a decent interpretive video (Beckwith) that’s actually on-topic, grounded, they don’t read, all ignore it, don’t check data findings, one just reflexively sneers at Beckwith.
It’s the online-activist version of confirmation bias: people policing tone instead of substance. Bent priorities?
The irony is thick — because Abram’s whole point was that the Antarctic system is now showing accelerating nonlinear, interacting, self‑reinforcing change. So dismissing or ignoring anyone, a non-lukewarmer like Abram et al with good recent science, is too weird.
Here’s the original xter
https://x.com/KrVaSt/status/1970546440876499319?t=f5ko7zCk1CmLxmiRjI5KSw
Further material downthread, including this:
https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/viewer/expert?view=viewer&crs=epsg%3A32761&t=1759449600000&z=0¢er=-107.862628824341%2C-74.88040563737174&zoom=15.279323427964375&layers=H4sIAIm71mgAAz2OTYvCMBBA.8ucu2vqLsuSW61fhaJivYjIEJNYC5NOSatYxf9u9ODxwYP3dnfg7mR9yuxNC.L_iOCi6GxTUq4BeVTU2ggqAxK0gAhI9dZnL5zly1GSY7JI8m2RFdPlepImxQZX8y0KEaMY.g60s65FxwZLYmxOPar6qFF8i.8fY0tcxeMvh8Ogir9Bx4cQuGW1sVeQsQjZdnJtiH1VlyA7fw4nxGWhFdnPmuYgONW8n3SvqdLw2D8BFQUW2dgAAAA-&objects=W3siaWQiOiJjNSIsImNycyI6ImVwc2c6MzI2NjEiLCJjb21wbGV0ZSI6dHJ1ZSwiZ3JhcGhJZHMiOlsiR0xPQkFMX0FOQUxZU0lTRk9SRUNBU1RfUEhZXzAwMV8wMjQvY21lbXNfbW9kX2dsb19waHlfYW5mY18wLjA4M2RlZ19QMUQtbV8yMDIyMTEvdG9iLy92KHQpIl0sInR5cGUiOiJwb2kiLCJjb29yZHMiOlstNTAuOTY0NTQ3MTY2MzgyOTgsNjkuMTU1OTcyOTI1NDA4OV19XQ%3D%3D&basemap=dark&objv2=H4sIAIm71mgAA72WTWvjMBCG.4tOu_AYzeg7t12Whd0ttNseSwhuoriGxnYVpxBK.ntHTt02DSk_GJ8MM9K8M49nJN0_s2LJpmxecZawlc_abfAbNiV7s6s9eX4fbOTNfbX2Tdix6ZvzqirKhlyLqgrLosyadu8EuE5RckSXTIxMEazhcrZPWB2q2oemiMuOlMtsHePNf8RggbzM15t8KtBoYPv9jNRDVt_32_Y5j591Vl9kOx._xCiLGKRdclP7RWt6_tZ8J_Nme7fxza9ife0fL598CMUyqpfbh4fOeZXl.sKXedPGpzQPiZHMPuZclJerFS2LlQmjkgkqTcW85Q8Dk5NCSTRETqTILbfuLLmo3JH72YscjkMOT8mh4QmA.QjODQkOeOo0KGMJHKZgnQNzFlxU7sD97QUO7DjkSOcEHWhIRCzm.ccPO60m5c5Z9Tqtihrwi577OK7._jXdSPNKOp.ZIXcpleaME9QcwkGCUqScAypQSlOPWHUEVg8MlpS1wMMwW5BOnAcbpTuw.3uBFSONM_l8BquEpoMwVvNegBmYHSgURrTslLAGv2jKKN2xu_7HTo7ETp6wE1omNNTH8OzQ9y8I6eiyIniS_l.CeXhRuoN30w_eHgmePj0NlaKLhF4TsxdJaqkOvAgAAA– [oh my, looong designer-specific link] Looks like the site might be useful.]
BEFinch: Thanks for the clarification. I did not intend to feed the doomer conflict which incites such passions. Scientists are not useless. What is unhelpful is creating an unnecessary conflict between scientists who are, in general, more in agreement than not, which feeds outsider views that it’s all wrong. I made a comment about our flawed perception of scale elsewhere and assumed people here knew that ‘short’ could be several hundred years.
I have a long relationship with WHOI (Woods Hole, MA, almost local for me) and regard them with respect. I apologize, but I can’t watch all of a longish 2021 video which clarifies what I already understand. As to posting sensationalist headlines, guilty as charged. Again, I assumed most here could get past that. As people know, I am scientist adjacent rather than a scientist myself, though I have reason to respect the field.
[not cited, but worth mentioning:] ClimateCentral can be useful. One does, however, have to use it the way it’s designed, which means looking at the variables used for the view because the setup defaults to some future sea level rise or other variable.
Where is The Day After Tomorrow now that Covering Climate Now needs it?
As the climate wars are PR wars writ large, one must expect creatives from both sides of Madison Avenue and K Street to summon their powers of hyperbole and come to the aid of their clients.
Do we know the name of the PR exec or agency chairman to whom we owe thanks for connecting Bell Labs and Frank Baxter to Walt Disney to produce CO2’s debut as agent of climate change on prime-time black and white TV?
imho The Day After Tomorrow was a classic case of exaggeration which harmed the public’s perception of the dangers we all face because it was so extreme. Amusing, but not informative.
From 1958 (your reference), remarkably prescient. Unfortunately, Dad is gone so I can’t ask him, but it was likely the same management which allowed his group to flourish in the service of basic science, and produced such remarkable innovations. They pretty much designed their own program. Immense harm was done breaking up Mother Bell’s benevolent monopoly (which made local phones affordable at the expense of international fees along with funding ‘pure’ science: opportunism by move fast and break things predecessors) in favor of profits, thus creating the monster baby Bells which gave us Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T (case came up for judgment under Reagan, making it the worst possible outcome). There’s some oral history, but I’m not going to hunt it out now.
—
Apologies for once again veering away from the cryosphere topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
Mid-September (the minimum) goes from 6.9 to 4.4. Decline of 2.5/6.9 .
Beginning March (the maximum) from 16 to 14.6. Decline of 1.4/16
PIOMAS
https://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
do the experiment for
1 Piomas ice volume and
2 first year ice 1 year later and then
3 5 year ice 5 years later.
4 and a hypothetical sea ice area too
So, First Approximation, eyeball, napkin scribble, no fancy statistics required… to what level would the maximum recover if the minimum were to indeed hit zero?
What is the physics mathematical answers Zebra? Mal O’POSSUM?
https://youtu.be/HjjOzOM_Zl8?si=CJzZfCDSUlVLgLPe
seems to be suggesting that volume and thickness are the better indicators rather than extent.
he references a paper in his video which is interesting as it states variations can last for upto a decade and also cites a arctic climate scientist.
Pete Best: seems to be suggesting that volume and thickness are the better indicators rather than extent.
It didn’t work out too well for Maslowski and Wadham …. ;-)
(their predictions of ice-free summer around 2015 were based in both cases on the volume instead of the extent … – see the opening article)
No one took them seriously did they and as far as I can tell the idea of volume and thickness are as good an indicator as extent. After all if the Arctic is warming 3/4x faster than everywhere else then the evidence of it should be the age of the ice as well as its volume and extent.
I thought the video I posted at least says it uk/usa submarines that use some to measure sea ice thickness and volume – is it not reliable ?
Pete Best 30 Sep “ seems to be suggesting that volume and thickness are the better indicators rather than extent“.
Piotr: 30 Sep. “It didn’t work out too well for Maslowski and Wadham …. ;-) – their predictions of ice-free summer around 2015 were based in both cases on the volume instead of the extent … – see the opening article.
Pete Best 1 Oct. “ No one took them seriously did they
Piotr: I am not sure how no one taking them seriously is relevant to my point, which was a cautionary tale of what can happen when some made predictions based on ice volume and thickness … ;-).
But judging from the rest of your sentence:
PB 1 Oct …. and as far as I can tell the idea of volume and thickness are as good an indicator as extent.
my irony hasn’t landed …
Piotr says
1 Oct 2025 at 2:03 PM
“It didn’t work out too well for Maslowski and Wadham ….
Hey drop us a note when Dr Schmidt edits his text above to read like>
One could look back at this episode and what has been made of it since and declare that scientists should have somehow prevented Maslowski and Wadhams and Hansen from presenting their ideas or talking to journalists or recovering politicians. etc.
Yeah, irony hasn’t landed … and likely never will. lol
As FprPete Best 30 Sep “ seems to be suggesting that volume and thickness are the better indicators rather than extent“.
Note Dr Schmidts late overlooked addition above>
[Update 9/30: Axel Schwieger in the comments reminds me we had a guest post from his group making this very clear in 2012!]
Read it and cringe lol
I’m one of a very small cohort on these pages who actually cares about and follows the science and the facts here. Another Send In The Clowns moment.
The “clowns” in the title are not circus clowns but rather a theater expression meaning “if the show isn’t going well, let’s send in the jesters/fools“; in other words, “let’s distract the audience”. “Don’t bother, they’re here”, acknowledges that “I’m actually the fool.”
https://www.heartoffloridachorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Enrichment-Song-Sheet-Lyrics-Send-In-The-Clowns.pdf
How can irony land or sarcasm on a post in a forum :) just spell it out in all earnestness
From Gavins reply to my initial post in this forum (very grateful) in which he says it’s not as scientific as extent so it’s not used/trusted as an indicator due to that I assumed anyway
We are told/informed that the Arctic is warning 3/4x faster than the rest of the world but it’s cold up there and hence it takes decades before anything noticeable happens of note. This decades past BAU and the thing needed to convince people GW is a thing keeps on eluding people.
Permafrost and methane release were told isn’t a thing of note either cuz it’s PPB and not PPM so it’s not something to be concerned about. Sea ice won’t dance to the environmentalists tune either so again GW isn’t a thing coz something 100% it’s GW hadn’t happened yet.
Who’s decarbonising – as yet emissions still climb albeit at a slower rate because renewables are offsetting some of the fossil fuel required. Still it’s a slow and no one knows what going to happen as yet hence NET technology still feature in IPCC reports and so does reflecting sunlight back into space. 40/50 years of warnings and BAU still rules
MY: I’m one of a very small cohort on these pages who actually cares about and follows the science and the facts here.
BPL: Even smaller than that, since most of you are sock puppets for one perpetrator.
Pete Best wrote:
To a far lesser extent than most realize. You can browse the slidedeck of the annual report from Ember, here:
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/09/Slidedeck-The-Electrotech-Revolution-PDF.pdf
Particularly interesting ones:
P. 38 of the PDF: sectoral breakdown of FF growth; 32% falling, 62% plateaued, 6% rising.
The next few slides illustrate global and national cases demonstrating FF ‘peaking’. Interestingly, China’s “final fossil demand” has been plateaued since 2014, and its FF in electric generation seems to have peaked this year. (P. 42.)
P. 46: Inefficiency of the fossil energy system
P. 49: Material demands of fossil energy system
P. 69: “China is the first major electrostate”–or, as I paraphrased it, “Why China is winning the 21st century” (NB–I’d like it a whole lot better if the “winner”, or at least leader on current form, respected democracy and the rule of law.) But the data on cleantech patents, battery manufacturing, auto exports, RE deployment, and electrification are pretty dramatic. Yes, some of these are due to scale (i.e., the Chinese population and economy), note that the US and Europe put together are larger than China in both population and GDP, yet still fall far short in the respective metrics.
The point of all this is that there is a revolution going on, and the world is changing much more rapidly toward a more climate-friendly future than many of us here, or elsewhere either, understand. Again, I’m not saying that all is well–far from it.
But the picture is much, MUCH more dynamic than commonly realized.
Pete Best How can irony land or sarcasm on a post in a forum :) just spell it out in all earnestness
Your attempt at irony … well, it needs work. But then comes your next paragraph:
Pete B. “From Gavins reply to my initial post in this forum (very grateful) in which he says it’s not as scientific as extent so it’s not used/trusted”
So …
– you take Gavin telling you that relying on ice volume “is NOT as scientific as extent ”
– his opening article is a cautionary tale of the two researchers who did use the volume and got their predictions spectacularly wrong
– and how their failure was then weaponized by the deniers to attack the credibility of ALL climate science (see the title of this thread)
and you use the above to defend your words that: Pete B.: “ volume and thickness are the BETTER indicators rather than extent. ???
Whau, it’s hard to believe that that you seeing “white” you conclude “black”, which leaves an intriguing possibility – that I got you all wrong – that you ARE deep into … deadpan cringe comedy, mocking the doomists by pretending to be one of them.
An impression strengthened by the rest of your: e.g.
Pete B. “ Permafrost and methane release were told isn’t a thing of note either cuz it’s PPB and not PPM so it’s not something to be concerned about.”
Since this has no relation to relying on sea-ice extent instead of volume, it supports the suspicion that you may be into the cringe – only pretending to be a doomer to discredit them as unable to stick to the subject – since for them ANY subject is only as good as it allows them to vent their grievances toward climate scientists.
In such a case – good job, P,ete! You got the doomist down to a “t”. Chapeau bas !
Pete best says
2 Oct 2025 at 2:03 AM
From Gavins reply to my initial post in this forum (very grateful) in which he says it’s not as scientific as extent so it’s not used/trusted as an indicator due to that I assumed anyway
The reply by Gavin was:
[Response: I should have made that clearer. Area and extent are retrievable from satellites, while volume (and thickness) can only be measured in situ or inferred from models. So the area/extent diags are a little more robust, but that isn’t to say the PIOMASS volume analyses are terrible. – gavin]
The effect of relying upon satellite imagery is recording high definition Natural Variations of sea ice extent/area that has nothing to do with global warming at all. It’s called Noise usually. And that noise interferes in establishing genuine rates of Sea Ice Loss the same as it hides overrides does other climate trends like SLR etc.
The point being, “accuracy” isn’t everything, when there are other modes of Measurement to be used in conjunction to remove the noise and expose the greater trend.
Again, let’s emphasise here the oft repeated basis that one does not need tens of thousands of surface or ocean temperature recording in high definition accuracy location Temperatures order to determine a scientifically valid GMST and compare the trends from one year to the next.
Summarizing this point as “horses for courses” aka being measured in situ or inferred from models.. Is that not correct? Does it not apply to Sea Ice Loss Trends from Global Warming using decadal changes in PIOMAS as the more accurate measurement for that? I suspect it does. ymmv. I’m merely “guessing/interpreting” based on my own common sense and logic of 30 years of keeping up to date on climate science output and its thinking and processes reports and papers…. what it got right over time and what it got wrong (usually duie to a lack of data/knowhow at the time.) I’m not god either.
What does Update 9/30: Axel Schwieger say in 2012, referenced by GAVIN above?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
So using a model constrained by observations is quite possibly the best we can do to establish a long-term ice volume record.
Model calibration is of course necessary. We need to determine parameters that are not well known, deal with inadequately modeled physics, and address significant biases in the forcing fields. Parameters changed in PIOMAS calibration are typically the surface albedo and roughness, and the ice strength. Once calibrated, the model can be run and evaluated against observations not included in the calibration process. Evaluation does not only mean showing that PIOMAS says something useful but also establishes the error bars on the estimated ice thickness. To establish this uncertainty in the ice-volume record (Schweiger et al. 2011), we spent a significant effort drawing on most types of available observations of ice thickness thanks to a convenient compilation of ice thickness data (Lindsay, 2010).
[ But TODAY we have satellite ice thickness data …. https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-volumethickness/ ]
While there is lots to do in improving both measurements and models to reduce the uncertainty in modeled ice volume, we can also say with great confidence that the decline in observed ice thickness is not just an effect of measurement sampling and that the total sea ice volume has been declining over the past 32 years at astonishing rates (for instance a 75% reduction in September volume from 1979 to 2011).
Global climate model projections (in CMIP3 at least) appear to underestimate sea ice extent losses with respect to observations,
Published projections, though with varying definitions of what constitutes ice-free, all project an ice-free Arctic ocean somewhere between 2037 (Wang and Overland, 2009) and the end of the century. Predictions of earlier ice-free dates so-far seem to be confined to conference presentations, media-coverage, the blogosphere, and testimony before to the UK parliament.
[ iow not peer reviewed science announcements – and who cares what “testimony” someone gives in good faith opinion, or what a blogger says? ]
But there is a second issue that may foil prediction by extrapolation: The period over which the function is fit must be sufficiently long to include adequate long-term natural variability in the climate system.
Natural variability at these time scales (order of 30 years) may very well make prediction by extrapolation hopeless.
Instead, serious effort should be devoted to making detailed seasonal-to-interannual (initial-value) predictions with careful evaluations of their skill and better estimates of the climate-forced projections and their uncertainties, both of which are of considerable value to society. Some effort should also target the formulation of applicable and answerable questions that can help focus modeling efforts. We believe that substantially skillful prediction can only be achieved with models, and therefore effort should be given to improving predictive modeling activities. The best role of observations in prediction is to improve, test, and initialize models.
But when will the Arctic be ice free then? The answer will have to come from fully coupled climate models. Only they can account for the non-linear behavior of the trajectory of the sea ice evolution and put longer term changes in the context of expected natural variability.
Until then, we believe, we need to let science run its course and let previous model-based predictions of somewhere between “2040 and 2100″ stand”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
Ahem :-) I think that was an excellenet review of the state of the art ASI science / predictability in 2012, and carries through to today. Read it, it’s great. still applies.
Short answer up front: both metrics are useful but for different purposes.
For detecting and forecasting long-term decline toward a Blue Ocean Event (BOE) a volume/thickness-based metric (PIOMAS volume or ICESat-2 gridded thickness) is physically more informative and — when averaged appropriately — shows a clearer long-term signal. For simple monitoring of seasonal changes and robust short-term indicators, extent/area from passive-microwave has lower sampling noise and is more stable day-to-day.
But make up your own mind.
Mo Yunus says; copying the text from Update 9/30: Axel Schwieger say in 2012, referenced by Gavin above.
> Global climate model projections (in CMIP3 at least) appear to underestimate sea ice extent losses with respect to observations,
Mo of the Three Stooges says:
IIRC in the recent CMIP review by Gavin I think it was made clear there, and in many other places and published papers manifold, that CMIP5 and CMIP6 have continued to underestimate sea ice extent losses with respect to observations,
Effects on accuracy are ongoing?
Yes, a fair few people–including yours truly–took Wadhams and Maslowski seriously, not necessarily as “prediction”, but at least as a possible worst-case scenario.
Not sure what you’re trying to say about age; the mean age of the sea ice has indeed plummeted, but I’m not clear how you mean to relate that to volume and extent.
Similarly, your last comment, the one about submarines. Yes, submarines used to (and perhaps still do) log ice thickness; it is after all a parameter of operational interest to the navies operating in that environment. And they use to (and perhaps still do) make suitably redacted data available after a lapse of time deemed suitable. Yes, that data should be highly reliable. But it’s not a comprehensive picture, as there are a lot more places that submarines *aren’t* at any given time than places where there *are*.
Piomas measures are the better indicators for Ice variation and cumulative ASI Loss due to warming. Rather than extent/area. It always has been. But harder to define in the past. The denial of this is longstanding on all sides. Especially when inconvenient to a biased arguments over predictions. My BoE sub 1 mln kms extent in 2024 +/- 2 years has failed because I based it on area, not actual Ice.
Obviously, scary stuff. :-)
Mo Yunus “BoE sub 1 mln kms extent”. Obviously, “BoE” is an important Social Event milestone and obviously BoE isn’t any type of Physical Event whatsoever, even if it’s for all of September rather than a week, day or hour. On top of that the recent peer-reviewed Paper that got an earlier BoE Social Event year by using >93.8% open water for 1 day in September rather than the whole month serves no physical scientific purpose, it merely states what I noticed years ago, that “BoE” doesn’t even have a Definition.
What I did, took 2-3 hours several years back, was to measure open water mid August when there’s still some Arctic Ocean sunshine to heat something and I concluded ~85% open water mid August for the last ~18 years (it was the last 10 years and think I did the Sea Ice Concentration pictorial area measuring attempt ~8 years ago). As per the June 2019 published Paper that I gave my measurements off in a RC UV comment some time back, the difference between Arctic Ocean ice cover in 2016 and 100% open water mid September is 3.8 w/m**2 but the difference between Arctic Ocean ice cover in 2016 and 100% open water mid August is 8.1 w/m**2.
The ice latent heat “ice battery” (it’s literally a solar storage battery) is ~360 MJ/m**2 and that 3.8 w/m**2 extra wrt 2016 for all month September would be ~9.8 MJ/m**2 extra so only a 2.7% reduction in the sea ice formed over the 6 months after mid September. Essentially no effect whatsoever in the sea ice formation following a BoE humongously-important, exciting Social Event milestone physical nothingness.
Of course, if one takes that as a workable proxy for reduced sea ice area during June, July, August when there’s actually some sunlight available for the ocean to absorb then that’s a different and more-complicated matter, figuring out how good a proxy it is rather than defining a useful “July Ocean Event (JOE)”.
Gavin,
Good summary. Adding a timely anecdote to emphasize your point that most sea ice scientists were skeptical of predictions of the imminent decline of sea ice: .When Drew Rothrock retired in 2008, we (the sea ice scientists at the Polar Science Center, UW) presented him with a bottle of wine with a custom label : To be opened in 2015 in celebration of summer sea ice still being around! Drew sadly passed away a few month ago, and I never got around to asking him what happened to that bottle of wine!
In 2012 when Wadhams circulated, most notably as part of UK parliament testimony, the extrapolations of some citizen scientist (Arctic Sea Ice Blog) who were playing around with the PIOMAS data, we wrote the the Real Climate post below. This was in part a response to the the press coverage (the Guardian specifically) who had picked up the story and had irresponsibly attributed the prediction to our group. To my question why the reporter didn’t contact me to verify the source, I got the lamest excuse: “It was the weekend”.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
So if there were some issues, then it was the press coverage. It wasn’t a failure of prediction.
Axel
[Response: I totally forgot about that post – and for some reason it didn’t come up in my search. Thanks for the reminder! I’ve put in a link in the OP. – gavin]
Mike Mann has resigned as Climate Provost of Penn:
https://bsky.app/profile/jadehunter.bsky.social/post/3m23qxwyoqs2c
Good, 15 years too late to admitting a truth but better late than never. imo. He’s caused more harm to climate science openness and honest communication to the public and politicians than the Heartland Institute Koch brothers, and even the whole denioshpere combined. Unfortunate he is not withdrawing entirely from his public engagement.
What is your justification for this assertion?
He has none. At least, none not hopelessly tainted by Dunning-Kruger.
Adam Lea says
1 Oct 2025 at 7:44 AM
What is your justification for this assertion?
Accumulated knowledge, long term observation, my personal ethical values and my opinion.
What’s yours? :-)
MY: [Michael Mann]’s caused more harm to climate science openness and honest communication to the public and politicians than the Heartland Institute Koch brothers, and even the whole denioshpere [sic] combined.
BPL: Libel. He’s done nothing of the sort. You deniers just didn’t like it when he pointed out that modern global temperatures are higher than they’ve been in a long time. Shooting the messenger is a widely used right-wing tactic for all kinds of things.
I must question this Mo’s taste in pen names. The Mo Yunus I knew was Maulvi Yunis Khalis who with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar led the Hezb-i-Islami against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
I met both over tea at the Hay-Adams in 1988, when they came to meet Reagan and deliver some wounded Afghan kids into Shriner’s Hospital care.
Sadly, the pair turned Taliban when Clinton withdrew support, Yunis went into the opium trade but came to grief at Tora Bora, while Gulbuddin killed Ahmad Shāh Massoud on Bin Laden’s behalf the day before 9-11, and still has a large price on his head.
I can’t fathom what he means about Mike and 2015, but in my experience Humanists don’t shoot republican messengers when they can block them,
in Re to Russell Seitz, 1 Oct 2025 at 11:35 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840103
Dear Russell,
Thank you very much for this remark.
I had no idea that the name Mo Yunus points to a real character. Interestingly, the person you described is somehow like another real person named Ned Kelly.
An account under this name showed the same obsession with James Hansen, the same focus on his catastrophic predictions, and attacked the moderators of this website as well as anyone who has not agreed with him the same way as the present “Mo Yunus”.
Your observation convinced me that Atomsk’s Sanakan’s suggestion of 1 Oct 2025 at 2:52 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-840072
(that “Mo Yunus” is in fact identical with Ned Kelly, Sabine, William, Dharma, Poor Peru, Pedro Prieto, Thomas, Fact Checker and myriads of further accounts behaving the same way that appeared meanwhile and finally have been all identified by Dr. Schmidt as brands of the same troll factory) is perfectly correct.
In this respect, I would like to warn that the said troll many times attempted spreading hate against Ukraine and further shameful narratives that form parts of Russian hybrid war against democratic societies.
I therefore hope Dr. Schmidt will not wait too long and terminates the appearance of this fake account on his website soon.
Best regards
Tomáš
Then there’s Khan Yunis: according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Yunis):
“also spelled Khan Younis or Khan Yunus, is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine, and serves as the capital of the Khan Yunis Governorate.”
Muhammad Yunus is the interim head of government in Bangladesh after the previous Prime Minister was ousted in a mass uprising. He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the modern concept of microcredit and microfinance. (Wikipedia)
Mr Kalisz, I hope Gavin will instead defend the First Amendment rights of this boring creep as zealously as I defend Mike Mann’s liberty to denounce and call for the destruction of the Party to which I belong.
in Re to Russell Seitz, 1 Oct 2025 at 8:54 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840126
Dear Russell,
It is, of course, on Dr. Schmidt’s discretion if the idea of the free speech includes providing a platform for deliberately crafted insidious lies, blaming crime victims as perpetrators, and like.
MY just returned to old habits of its earlier embodiments and offered a fresh example of its “best” on 1 Oct 2025 at 10:08 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840129
If you open his link to the article of the “highly respected French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist”, you will be served with a portion of genuine Russian war propaganda.
To be honest, an analogous content (re)produced by various “highly respected intellectuals” is being spread by hundreds of Russian trolls in Czech and/or German social networks. Personally, I do not need to be supplied therewith also on Real Climate.
Best regards
Tomáš
Reply to Tomáš Kalisz
Who Emmanuel Todd Is
Nationality: French
Background: Historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist, and political scientist.
Institutional standing: Long associated with France’s CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), one of Europe’s most prestigious research bodies.
Notable works:
The Explanation of Ideology (1979)
After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (2002) — translated into many languages and influential in anti-imperial and critical geopolitics circles.
La Défaite de l’Occident (2023) — his recent, controversial book arguing that the Ukraine war reveals a moral and demographic decline in the West.
His Reputation in France and Europe
France: Todd is very well known in France — a recognized public intellectual. He appears in major media (France Inter, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Point, etc.), often as a provocateur but also as a serious scholar.
Europe (beyond France): His reputation is more mixed. He’s read in Germany, Italy, and the UK among academic and political elites, but not widely known among the general public.
Anglosphere: He’s considered a “contrarian” thinker, part of the French intellectuel engagé tradition (like Alain Finkielkraut, Jacques Sapir, etc.) — articulate, erudite, sometimes extreme, but undeniably serious.
How He’s Perceived Politically
Mainstream French media: Treats him as a respected but controversial voice — not a propagandist, though his latest book (La Défaite de l’Occident) was accused by some of echoing Russian narratives about Western decline.
Academic peers: Mixed reactions. Many regard his demographic work as brilliant, but his geopolitical interpretations as speculative or ideological.
Public intellectual scene: He’s a known maverick, not a “troll.” He’s the kind of figure who gets invited to highbrow debates and long interviews, not banned or deplatformed.
Thank you.
As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāhi wa barakātuh
A comment on “Mo Yunus” (aka “Complicius”, “Dharma”, “Thessalonia”, “Ned Kelly”, “Pedro Prieto” etc., the well-known multitroll), 4 Oct 2025 at 11:52 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840239
Dear moderators,
It is embarrassing that there are scientists like Dr. Emmanuell Todd who, for whatever reason, throw all their previously gained scientific reputation in the basket by publishing texts like the one referred by “Mo Yunus”.
I insist in my opinion that spreading narratives that form an integral part of Russian hybrid war has nothing to do with science and must be dismissed as a shameful activity, irrespective of the previous merits of the person doing so.
I think that subsequent comments by the multitroll, of 4 Oct 2025 at 9:46 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840234 ,
and of 5 Oct 2025 at 1:22 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840243 ,
show quite clearly that environmental concerns are only a camouflage for his true agenda which could be shortly characterized as “destruction democratic societies”. More to this topic in my parallel post of 6 Oct 2025 at 7:05 PM ,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840347
Best regards
Tomáš
Didn’t bother to read what he wrote … just attached a bunch of lies which don’t connect.
You’re not alone in that when it comes to the sockpuppet account.
Re: “He’s caused more harm to climate science openness and honest communication to the public and politicians than the Heartland Institute Koch brothers, and even the whole denioshpere combined”
That’s evidence-free nonsense that contradicts what the evidence shows. For example, Dr. Michael Mann made accurate predictions, in contrast to inaccurate predictions made by the denialist Dr. Judith Curry. Just another instance of the sockpuppet lashing out because Dr. Mann criticized claims from the sockpuppet’s idol, Dr. James Hansen.
https://archive.is/6QAyL/7c29b3bca562101a39769ffa7294c27c10b9ce43.png
https://web.archive.org/web/20210907034917/https://twitter.com/curryja/status/453682903289827328
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840193
Atomsk’s Re: Multi-troll Mo lashing our at Michael Mann:
“ Dr. Michael Mann made accurate predictions, in contrast to inaccurate predictions made by the denialist Dr. Judith Curry. Just another instance of the sockpuppet lashing out because Dr. Mann criticized claims from the sockpuppet’s idol, Dr. James Hansen.,/i>”
And as usually – both the deniers and the doomers unite in their venom toward Mann. The bedfellows strange no more. “Les extrèmes se touchent.“
Piotr, I hope you aren’t including me in the doomer or extremist camp. I’m very sceptical that SLR would be 5M this century. I think the worst case is 2M this century and have thought that for a long time. The IPCC has recently decided 2M is the worst case.. Refer my comment UV page 3 October 6.08. and in other comments.
I only responded to MY because I had a clear recollection Hansen argued 5 or 6 metres was possible. It’s the sort of incredible thing that sticks in your mind especially coming from such an expert.
Hansen does back his claims of exponential growth with possible physical mechanisms. However Its not certain exactly how ice sheets would disintegrate, and whether it would be exponential. Geological collapse scenarios tend to follow complicated trends like linear increases that suddenly change rate to a steeper linear increase, or maybe a very short period of exponential change, rather than longer term smoothly exponential. Personally I think we know enough to say ice sheets could disintegrate and cause a sharp acceleration in SLR but its not clear how you put an accurate maths function or numbers on it. The IPCC have presumably taken a conservative leaning estimate of it.
For me the so called reticent IPCC worst case projections of 1 – 2M by 2100 are worrying enough without needing to get carried away imagining higher numbers.
They also misrepresented Dr. Mann to make it look like he endorsed Killian’s misinformation on a 5% risk of human extinction from anthropogenic climate change.
Of course Dr. Mann didn’t say what the sockpuppet insinuated he said:
IMHO Mann, as quoted by @jadehunter, is right. I’ll bet the University administration feels the same way! You or I might prefer he stick to peer-reviewed neutrality, but that went out the window with the “Serengeti Strategy” of carbon capitalists to select him out. Adapt or die! If his books sell (I own “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”, and I just bought his and Hotez’s book on Kindle), he’s having a political influence. And it looks like he’s still doing climate science (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2427236122).
I’ll go with Mal’s Mohammad Yunus on protocol , as live laureates in the Sundarbans tend to outrank dead Khans in the Hindu Kush.
Er – you mean John’s Mohammad Yunus? Mine was a city in the Gaza Strip.
Russell Seitz says
2 Oct 2025 at 12:53 PM
I’ll go with Mal’s Mohammad Yunus on protocol , as live laureates in the Sundarbans tend to outrank dead Khans in the Hindu Kush.
Thankyou for your interest. Clearly a serious matter to everyone. Allow me to assist you investigate whois mo yunus.
Real people with names very close to “Mo Yunus”?
These are individuals whose names could be shortened to “Mo Yunus” (but whether they actually use that as a nym is another matter):
Muhammad Yunus — Bangladeshi economist, founder of Grameen Bank, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Mohammad Yunus (diplomat) — Indian diplomat (1916–2001).
Mohammad Yunus (politician, Bihar, India) — First Premier of Bihar in 1937.
Mohammad Yunus (umpire) — Indian cricket umpire (1915–1992).
Mohammad Younus Khan — Pakistani cricketer, often called Younus Khan.
Hasanuddin Mohd Yunus — Malaysian politician.
Other regional politicians, clerics, academics, and businesspeople in South Asia and the Middle East also carry the name “Mohammad Yunus” (with many spelling variants).
Who might actually use “Mo Yunus” as their nym
Everyday people named Mohammad Yunus who want a shorter, friendlier version online.
Students or professionals with that name, especially in English-speaking countries, where “Mo” is a casual nickname.
Anonymous or pseudonymous users wanting a realistic South Asian or Muslim-sounding identity.
Fans of Muhammad Yunus (the Nobel laureate) who may parody or admire him.
Satirical/troll accounts that deliberately pick a common name to blend in.
Personally, I am leaning towards the Bangladeshi economist, founder of Grameen Bank, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.. I’m definitely not an Afghani terrorist.
Thank you for the clarification . Please convey RC’s best wishes to Larry & Curly.
LOL! If you hadn’t gone there, I would’ve. But how many RC readers are old enough to get it?
lol, Raising my hand!
– Russel to Multi-troll: “Thank you for the clarification . Please convey RC’s best wishes to Larry & Curly.”
Mal: “LOL. But how many RC readers are old enough to get it?”
Isn’t not everybody getting the joke – part of the appeal ? ;-)
Pete Best How can irony land or sarcasm on a post in a forum :) just spell it out in all earnestness
Your attempt at irony … well, it needs work. But then comes your next paragraph:
Pete B. “From Gavins reply to my initial post in this forum (very grateful) in which he says it’s not as scientific as extent so it’s not used/trusted”
So …
– you take Gavin telling you that relying on ice volume “is NOT as scientific as extent ”
– his opening article is a cautionary tale of the two researchers who did use the volume and got their predictions spectacularly wrong
– and how their failure was then weaponized by the deniers to attack the credibility of ALL climate science (see the title of this thread)
and you use the above to defend your words that: Pete B.: “ volume and thickness are the BETTER indicators rather than extent. ???
Whau, it’s hard to believe that that you seeing “white” you conclude “black”, which leaves an intriguing possibility – that I got you all wrong – that you ARE deep into … deadpan cringe comedy, mocking the doomists by pretending to be one of them.
An impression strengthened by the rest of your: e.g.
Pete B. “ Permafrost and methane release were told isn’t a thing of note either cuz it’s PPB and not PPM so it’s not something to be concerned about.”
Since this has no relation to relying on sea-ice extent instead of volume, it supports the suspicion that you may be into the cringe – only pretending to be a doomer to discredit them as unable to stick to the subject – since for them ANY subject is only as good as it allows them to vent their grievances toward climate scientists.
In such a case – good job, P,ete! You got the doomist down to a “t”. Chapeau bas !
Wow – thanks for your reply. No Doomer, just trying to get to a point where deniers can stop denying based on them using Al Gore (Ice free claims by whenever in the past it was claimed) and others (environmentalists mostly trying to get the world to change by making ever more seemingly outlandish claims). The USA is still arguing if GW is real economically and politically and as a massive player in the world their take on it is seriously significant.
No attempt at irony, I am not in front of you person to person so don’t bother with it as I cant read your mind, just your words.
yer ok on permafrost – point taken
Any way as for extent or volume, the Arctic isnt as yet dancing to the environmentalists tune that they would like and this is causing a lot of Doomers to spout narratives on X etc that mean doing anything about carbon emissions is hard work.
Anyway, thanks for your reply. Appreciated
Pete Best: No attempt at irony, I am not in front of you person to person so don’t bother with it as I cant read your mind, just your words.
So … you can’t tell whether Jonathan Swift was serious in his “Modest Proposal “, because you were “not in front of him person to person” when he wrote it?
PB: “Just trying to get to a point where deniers can stop denying based on them using Al Gore.”
and you do this by ….. defending the very approach that has lead to the wrong predictions and therefore handed the deniers the opportunity to use these wrong predictions to attack the entire climate science? With enemies like you who needs friends?
PB: “ the Arctic isnt as yet dancing to the environmentalists tune that they would like and this is causing a lot of Doomers to spout narratives on X etc that mean doing anything about carbon emissions is hard work”
“Doing anything about carbon emissions is hard work ” is a Deniers claim, Doomers say that short of global overthrow of the western political and economic system and/or extermination of several billion of people – doing anything about carbon emissions is pointless.
But I can see the source of your confusion – for both Doomers and Deniers – what differs them is less important than what they have in common – their main enemy are not each other, but the people in the middle – climate scientists and the people doing something about carbon emission.
Which explains why doomer Multitroll agreed with the Deniers in their criticism of renewables/decarbonization technologies, why defended the Denier Ken (Ken Towe) against being categorized as a denier, and while under another handle implied that calling denier deniers – is “unfair and immoral”
Les extrèmes se touchent.
9.6 Sea Level Change
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/#9.6
Box TS.4 | Sea Level
Global mean sea level (GMSL) increased by 0.20 [0.15 to 0.25] m over the period 1901 to 2018, with a rate of rise that has accelerated since the 1960s to 3.7 [3.2 to 4.2] mm yr–1 for the period 2006–2018 (high confidence). Human activities were very likely the main driver of observed GMSL rise since 1971, and new observational evidence leads to an assessed sea level rise over the period 1901 to 2018 that is consistent with the sum of individual components contributing to sea level rise, including expansion due to ocean warming and melting of glaciers and ice sheets (high confidence). It is virtually certain that GMSL will continue to rise over the 21st century in response to continued warming of the climate system (Box TS.4, Figure 1). Sea level responds to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more slowly than global surface temperature, leading to weaker scenario dependence over the 21st century than for global surface temperature (high confidence). This slow response also leads to long-term committed sea level rise, associated with ongoing ocean heat uptake and the slow adjustment of the ice sheets, that will continue over the centuries and millennia following cessation of emissions (high confidence) (Box TS.9). By 2100, GMSL is projected to rise by 0.28–0.55 m (likely range) under SSP1-1.9 and 0.63–1.01 m (likely range) under SSP5-8.5 relative to the 1995–2014 average (medium confidence). Under the higher CO2 emissions scenarios, there is deep uncertainty in sea level projections for 2100 and beyond associated with the ice-sheet responses to warming. In a low-likelihood, high-impact storyline and a high CO2 emissions scenario, ice-sheet processes characterized by deep uncertainty could drive GMSL rise up to about 5 m by 2150. Given the long-term commitment, uncertainty in the timing of reaching different GMSL rise levels is an important consideration for adaptation planning.
GMSL will continue to rise throughout the 21st century (Box TS.4, Figure 1a). Considering only those processes in whose projections we have at least medium confidence, relative to the period 1995–2014, GMSL is projected to rise between 0.18 m (0.15–0.23 m, likely range; SSP1-1.9) and 0.23 m (0.20–0.30 m, likely range; SSP5-8.5) by 2050. By 2100, the projected rise is between 0.38 m (0.28–0.55 m, likely range; SSP1-1.9) and 0.77 m (0.63–1.01 m, likely range; SSP5-8.5)
Importantly, likely range projections do not include those ice-sheet-related processes whose quantification is highly uncertain or that are characterized by deep uncertainty. Higher amounts of GMSL rise before 2100 could be caused by earlier-than-projected disintegration of marine ice shelves, the abrupt, widespread onset of marine ice sheet instability (MISI) and marine ice cliff instability (MICI) around Antarctica, and faster-than-projected changes in the surface mass balance and dynamical ice loss from Greenland (Box TS.4, Figure 1). In a low-likelihood, high-impact storyline and a high CO2 emissions scenario, such processes could in combination contribute more than one additional meter of sea level rise by 2100 (Box TS.3). Links to chapters
Beyond 2100, GMSL will continue to rise for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean heat uptake and mass loss from ice sheets, and will remain elevated for thousands of years (high confidence). By 2150, considering only those processes in whose projections we have at least medium confidence and assuming no acceleration in ice-mass flux after 2100, GMSL is projected to rise between 0.6 m (0.4–0.9 m, likely range, SSP1-1.9) and 1.3 m (1.0–1.9 m, likely range) (SSP5-8.5), relative to the period 1995–2014 based on the SSP scenario extensions. Under high CO2 emissions, processes in which there is low confidence, such as MICI, could drive GMSL rise up to about 5 m by 2150 (Box TS.4, Figure 1a). By 2300, GMSL will rise 0.3–3.1 m under low CO2 emissions (SSP1-2.6) (low confidence). Under high CO2 emissions (SSP5-8.5), projected GMSL rise is between 1.7 and 6.8 m by 2300 in the absence of MICI and by up to 16 m considering MICI (low confidence).
===
Is there a written example by Hansen, using similar constraints modelling and confidence levels for SLR being specifically +5 m by 2100 in his published scientific work? I have seen none.
I have seen him presenting various possibilities in future scenarios and what hypothetical assumptions and forcing would need to happen for that to occur. While acknowledging that those assumptions are not clearly known or defined by existing knowledge or data.
Now compare those with what the IPCC AR6 incl. Technical Summary presents as POSSIBILE FUTURES. ;-)
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/technical-summary/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/#9.6
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/#box-9.4
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/summary-for-policymakers/
I must be the most incompetent at being a “climate science denier” ever found on Earth. LOL
If I am being paid by Mercer, Exxon or the Heritage Foundation I’m ripping them off big time. They should sue me for breach of contract.
Mo Yunus: – “Is there a written example by Hansen, using similar constraints modelling and confidence levels for SLR being specifically +5 m by 2100 in his published scientific work? I have seen none.”
Um, do you have short-term memory loss?
nigelj (at 2 Oct 2025 at 4:06 PM): https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840153
Geoff Miell (at 2 Oct 2025 at 7:34 PM) : https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840163
Mo Yunus (at 2 Oct 2025 at 8:54 PM):
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840169
Mo Yunus 2 Oct 10.51 pm – “Is there a written example by Hansen, using similar constraints modelling and confidence levels for SLR being specifically +5 m by 2100 in his published scientific work? I have seen none.”
Geoff Miell: Um, do you have short-term memory loss? “Mo Yunus 2 Oct 8:54 PM) Reply to nigelj: Thanks for your credible quotes. Appreciated .”
Trouble in the Doomer family???
C’mon, you can’t possibly expect a sealioning troll to remember what he wrote 2 hrs earlier in another thread … Then again, he repeatedly questioned one of the core beliefs of the Doomer folk (+ 5m by 2100, Baby!) and worse still – the authenticity of words of the Prophet HIMSELF!
Now _that_ calls for some serious spanking!
Pete best says
2 Oct 2025 at 2:03 AM
How can irony land or sarcasm on a post in a forum :) just spell it out in all earnestness
From Gavins reply to my initial post in this forum (very grateful) in which he says it’s not as scientific as extent so it’s not used/trusted as an indicator due to that I assumed anyway.
and PS This is my opinion given what I have seen and heard over a long period of time. Pete, you are closer to the research front than to the consensus-defending RC line. You are also up against the entrenched institutional communication habits. Inertia. You intuitively looked at the essential physics instead. Thinning dominates and therefore volume is key.
Ice can vanish before extent hits zero simply by thinning to nothing. From a thermodynamic perspective, thickness controls survival through summer. That makes volume the “hard currency” for BOE risk. Look over that Schweiger commentary.
Extent is buffeted by winds, currents, and synoptic weather (compaction vs dispersal). That introduces huge interannual swings that make long-term decline harder to read-due to natural variability. Thickness (an integrated volume) filters some of that noise and gives a clearer signal of systemic loss long term. One only need look at the 2012 record low extent. Compare that to Volume change from 2012 to 2025.
The RC crew think about the politics of communication first, defaulting to defence strategies against old school climate science deniers of two decades ago. They no longer really relevant today, yet the battle mindset continues on.
PIOMAS is a model-data assimilation product. From experience RC has always been wary of past blogosphere extrapolations of PIOMAS (“ice-free by 2013!” style claims). Schweiger’s perils of extrapolation piece (2012 RC post) became a touchstone — they’d rather under-promise than feed denialists “failed prediction” ammo.
RC tends to emphasize extent/area because it’s easier to defend in a hostile environment. Even though that hostile environment no longer exists they are programmed by it. Behind every RC comment lurks a cunning agent from WUWT, MAGA or a Roy Spencer acolyte – even a Thomas Fuller himself! LOL
Therefore using extent is safer because volume too model-dependent. For outreach, extent is clearer: the public can picture a map shrinking. Talking about cubic kilometres of ice is abstract and harder to visualize. So they stick with the clean story, even if it’s not the best scientific predictor. Like I said, habits – they die hard.
Both methods are internally consistent, just different priorities. You’re not wrong — you just trusted the physical argument over the institutional risk-management reflex.
Which, ironically, is also why PIOMAS volume is widely used within the science community for serious BOE risk assessments, even if the RC comment threads downplay it. The RC crew downplay James Hansen’s scientific papers and rhetoric for the same core reason. Much too hard to defend in a hostile environment. Not worth losing any skin over it. The default MO is defeating all climate science denial and criticising all outlier climate scientists like Roy, Pielke, Koonin, Curry et al. . Everything else comes from this primary purpose and gets framed that way, unfortunately.
RC do a good job, I not being a climate scientist am just asking about whether volume is a better indicator of the Arctics sea ice current state only because a lot of people appear to have stated that it could be ice free by 2010-2020 but obviously that has not happened but that only gives those on social media etc ammunition to keep on saying CC/GW isnt a thing or it not worth worrying about etc.
That’s the concern for me.
“Pete Best: RC do a good job, I not being a climate scientist am just asking about whether volume is a better indicator of the Arctics sea ice current state only because a lot of people appear to have stated that it could be ice free by 2010-2020 but obviously that has not happened but that only gives those on social media etc ammunition to keep on saying CC/GW isnt a thing or it not worth worrying about etc.
Pete, that might be some kind of record run-on sentence with correct grammar and syntax! I, for one, had no trouble following it, however. I find nothing in it to argue with. Your explicit claims not to undermine the international climate science consensus, seem sincere enough as well.
But haven’t you been commenting on RC since its early days (https://www.google.com/search?q=“Pete+Best+says” site:realclimate.org)? If you’re that Pete Best, then you should understand how your equivocal, cautious arguments for eschewing ‘alarmism’ might come across as ‘lukewarmism’. To be clear, AFAICT you’re not intentionally allied with carbon capital, but that alone won’t deflect the unsparing scrutiny of our fellow RC regulars! I address them, as well as you. Throwing html caution to the winds, Ima wax poetic once more:
I’ve been inclined to push back on over-emphasizing the upper tails of climate-change risk myself, as modal estimates should be subjectively alarming enough to drive collective decarbonization already. RC’s authors are well-disciplined in scientific reticence, and can be counted on to tell us without exaggeration (or swearing) just how fucked we are. Some regular commenters, OTOH, echo unprincipled “influencers” and even a few outspoken professional climate scientists getting out front, proclaiming their clairvoyant apprehension of unstoppable doom in the ‘near’ though otherwise-indeterminate future. Others seem to be, if not outright denialists, then lukewarmists: determined either to socialize their private marginal climate-change costs unto death, or earn a paycheck from employers seeking same.
Well, with or without haruspicy, it’s a matter of how bad, how soon, isn’t it? That, of course, introduces the stochastic element of human behavior over time, individually and in aggregate. Nevertheless, the toll climate change has already taken cannot be explained away. The reason we’re talking about it, indeed this blog’s very raison d’être, is that even at the time of RC’s launch in 2004, the socialized cost of carbon was already being paid in homes, livelihoods and lives around the world, by involuntary third parties to yours, and my, “free” (quote marks ironic) market transactions, while the cumulative cost has undeniably mounted subsequently; and because the heaviest price is still being taken from those who have the least resources to adapt.
And because there are individuals, families and corporations who’ve grown rich beyond historical dreams of avarice by charging all the traffic will bear for their product, while socializing the ensuing climate change due to global “greenhouse” (quote marks pre-emptive) warming. Thwarting collective, i.e. government, intervention in their profits is worth $trillions per year (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-gas-industry-earned-4-trillion-last-year-says-iea-chief-2023-02-14/) to them! IMHO the political challenge is inescapable: that immense power must somehow be collectively bypassed, by taking the profit out of the fossil carbon business one way or another. The problem is outside the domain of science, IOW. Piece o’ cake /s.
Should my words fall short, I’ll borrow those of Jerry Taylor, my go-to former Libertarian ideologue and paid obstructionist for the Cato Institute: (https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science/):
SL: And the economic case eventually crumbled, too?
JT: The first blow in that argument was offered by my friend Jonathan Adler, who was at the Competitive Enterprise Institute [holy crap! MA]. Jon wrote a very interesting paper in which he argued that even if the skeptic narratives are correct, the old narratives I was telling wasn’t an argument against climate action. Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, he said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money.
Couldn’t have said it better myself! Not that it stopped me from trying. I sympathize with your wish to pre-empt denialist charges of “alarmism” (take ’em how you will), Pete, but you know professional liars will seize on anything climate scientists or their nominal supporters say, reasonable or not. It’s what they do! FWIW, I’m reasonably confident you’re not actually in the Denialist set. Mind the fleas, though.
Bravo Mal! Great comment.
PB: It’s actually not “a lot” of people, but indeed too many. Paul Beckwith, Wadhams, and a few others have much to answer for. But blaming everyone for what a few does is classic distractionalism. There’s a biblical reference to motes vs. beams in eyes which might apply here.
These personal attacks tend to move away rapidly from the actual material under discussion.
MalAdapted, the ‘toll’ climate change has exacted on both the planet and its inhabitants is very slight. It is not non-existent, but it is very, very slight.
You caution Pete Best that he might be mistaken for a ‘lukewarmer.’ Oooh. No. He is a drummer for the Beatles. I’m the lukewarmer here. But enough about me…
Once again, a double handful of scientists and an army of NGOs and lobbyists for large corporations have done the world a disservice. Once again, it’s because they exaggerated the findings of real research into the world’s climate.
You guys have learned nothing over the past few decades. You keep throwing red meat to the skeptics and then act all hurt when they eat it and ask for more.
They have their own band of corporate shills and political cronies that take your mistakes and run with them all to the bank.
If Wadhams didn’t exist they would invent him. (Ohhh, that’s right–they have done that in the past!)
Oh, well. The fools in town are on our side.
This thread is not about Tom Fuller.
Thomas Fuller: the ‘toll’ climate change has exacted on both the planet and its inhabitants is very slight. It is not non-existent, but it is very, very slight.
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”. Plonk.
TF: , the ‘toll’ climate change has exacted on both the planet and its inhabitants is very slight. It is not non-existent, but it is very, very slight.
BPL: The drought in Syria was the worst in 900 years, and resulted in the Syrian civil war, with a huge casualty count. Droughts in Australia and California caused reductions in agricultural production and higher prices. Flooding in Miami, Norfolk VA, New Orleans and New York caused billions of dollars in property damage and some loss of life. And it can only get worse from here.
This thread is not about Tom Fuller.
Sigh. It’s about Mo Yunus, like all RC threads.
https://grist.org/article/exclusive-new-nsidc-director-explains-the-death-spiral-of-arctic-ice-brushe/
In a discussion with a denier on X and posted this. Looks like they have some good reasons to have a go at climate scientists
I assume you’re being sarcastic? If not, why not? From your link, one tidbit:
“Pretty innocuous stuff, no? Humans are cranking up the Arctic heat by pouring steadily increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which in turn cranks up warming in the Arctic, a very well documented phenomenon (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?“). {link was broken, here’s a working one: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/what-exactly-is-polar-amplification-and-why-does-it-matter-aff4f8794fc9/ }
“But for Watts, who is apparently in the tinfoil-hat and black helicopter club, that poster reveals dark purposes ….
“The NSIDC is in very good hands.
“The cryosphere, however, is not. If we stay on our current emissions path, if we keep listening to the science deniers of WattsUpWithThat, the planet is headed toward an ice free state. Future generations will wonder how there ever could have been such a thing as a “cryosphere scientist” or a National Snow and Ice Data Center.”
Reply to Susan Anderson and Pete best
You are talking about the loonies on WUWT and climate denier talking points from 16 years ago.
Why?
I understand that in order to get the public to take notice you need to sometimes gives speculative information in order to get people to take notice. Social media appears to thrive on it. However these speculations have now kind of back fired and seemingly giving more ammunition to the deniers 10 years on.
the idea of an ice free summer in the Arctic come 2060-2080 doesn’t really get people panicking maybe. However a changing climate is a long slow process and speculating on summer ice free Arctic needs to be spelt on on social media maybe.
Pete, I don’t do social media, but that might work to engage “the public”. However, from my experience teaching “the public”, you have to engage them at their level. I posted this earlier, and it is obviously too scary for all the experts here, but I think young people who are even slightly interested might give the simple question a try:
“I got some numbers from
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
to play with. Using the four decadal average plots (turn off everything else) gives this:
Mid-September (the minimum) goes from 6.9 to 4.4. Decline of 2.5/6.9 .
Beginning March (the maximum) from 16 to 14.6. Decline of 1.4/16
So, First Approximation, eyeball, napkin scribble, no fancy statistics required… to what level would the maximum recover if the minimum were to indeed hit zero?”
If you present this kind of thing with better graphics, and a brief, simple description of the physics, it allows them to play at what real scientists do. And it really isn’t open to misrepresentation by the usual suspects.
Telling ordinary people about 2060-2080 in an era of instant gratification does not register; they either assume you’re talking about sooner or dismiss it as not within the lifespan they regard as relevant. Sad but true. Unfortunately, a quick search on the subject won’t let me get past Paul Beckwith, whose alarmist approach is deplorably misleading. [Not to say more ain’t coming (60-70 meters the last time greenhouse gases were at this level, catching up to actual conditions which we humans have exacerbated at speed), but his misleading panic button approach is unhelpful at best.]
Here are some very short/accessible/obvious plucked from a quick search which might penetrate willful obliviousness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4SwElLeo8
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/resources/126/video-tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise/
15 seconds! -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FU2DAREWbw
https://www.newsweek.com/sea-level-rise-nasa-animation-climate-change-1808506
Reply to Susan Anderson
Quoting a popular “personality” >
“Just remember, featuring material one wishes to criticize gives prominence not to the criticism, but to the material featured. You have do it a great favor by contributing ‘clicks’ and putting it higher in the search queue.”
What other pronouncements have not gained wide acceptance?
RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?
Sea level rise is accelerating?
The Maldives will (soon) be under water?
FDR drive dear the eastern edge of Manhattan island will (soon) be under water?
Matthew Marler: What other pronouncements have not gained wide acceptance?
You’d have to link to their source, and to whomever’s not “widely” accepting them. Those matter, you know. BTW, sea level rise actually is accelerating (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/time-and-tide-gauges-wait-for-no-voortman/), even if the DOE CWG says “You can’t prove it! Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!” Whereas Dr. Schmidt and colleagues think it’s sufficiently demonstrated, and “proof” is for distilled beverages:
GS: As Dessler et al report laid out convincingly last week, and in multiple posts by Tamino/Grant Foster, the sea level chapter in the DOE climate science ‘critique’ was notably poor.
The other pronouncements you specify depend critically on the values of “accurate” and “soon”, making only projections from particular scenarios possible. Again, you’d have to say who is claiming RCP8.5, an explicitly counter-factual scenario, is an accurate prediction; and whether 2030, 2050, or 2100 is “soon”.
Wanna try again?
MA, good response, but he probably wont try again. He’s probably got his denialist anger out of his system or he has earned enough money from his lobby group. The last thing he wants is a debate where his silly claims get scrutinesed and ridiculed. That’s only for the serious attention seekers.
Reply to Matthew MARLER
What other pronouncements have not gained wide acceptance?
net zero by 2050
If you scan speeches, policy documents, and even media framing since about mid-2023, the tone around “Net Zero” has changed a lot:
Rebranding: Many governments and corporations are quietly dropping the headline “net zero by 2050” and replacing it with language like “climate neutrality,” “carbon neutrality,” “deep decarbonisation,” “clean energy transition” or just “our 2050 target.” Same destination on paper, but they’re not using the buzzword as much because it’s become a lightning rod.
Pushback:
– In the UK and EU you now see think-tanks and centre-right parties attacking Net Zero policies as too costly or unrealistic.
– In the US, “net zero” is already a partisan red flag.
– NGOs and scientists are also attacking it, but from the opposite flank — saying it’s an accounting trick relying on future removals and offsets rather than real cuts.
Result: The brand “Net Zero” is being squeezed from both ends. Policy-makers still want decarbonisation pathways, but the phrase itself is starting to look toxic — a bit like “Kyoto” did after 2010.
Signals: Even the UNFCCC and IPCC are leaning more on “1.5 °C pathways” and “emission reduction targets” than “Net Zero” as the headline.
The physical goals (emissions down, removals up) will remain, but the branding of “Net Zero” may become like “Clean Coal”: a term everyone used for a while, then quietly stopped saying.
“The only thing permanent is change.”
— that nothing stays fixed for long, whether in nature, politics, or even in language (as with “Net Zero”!).
“RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?” Probably a bit of an underestimate because I’ve read a few hundred thousand human opinions and the possibility, Matthew MARLER, that as much cheap carbon as possible will not be burned is Zero owing to the nature of Life being solely competition to the death and most, Matthew MARLER, humans being lying rubbish by nature with, in fact, no actual interest at all in what they (liars by nature) babble about.
“Sea level rise is accelerating?” Yes, was 0.0, then 1.8 then 3.6, is 4.5.
“The Maldives will (soon) be under water?” Dunno “(soon)” is literally meaningless, but I’ll state what I never heard from a climate scientist. If the AMOC has slowed and will slow that will try to reduce SLR around Maldives because it’s in the cul de sac, but I dunno how much, whether it’s negligible, because water running down hill is too much work for an unpaid 5-minute hobbyist.
“FDR drive dear the eastern edge of Manhattan island will (soon) be under water?”. I’m British, don’t give a monkey’s.
.
Matthew MARLER: – “Sea level rise is accelerating?”
Sea level rise (SLR) is DEMONSTRABLY accelerating.
Former Australian Chief Scientist Professor Penny Sackett (November 2008 until March 2011) answered a question on notice re sea level rise at a NSW Parliamentary inquiry in 2023, which included:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/other/18661/Professor%20Penny%20Sackett%20-%20received%206%20November%202023.pdf
Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, mostly because of ocean thermal expansion. According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimetres) per year.
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/282/nasa-analysis-shows-unexpected-amount-of-sea-level-rise-in-2024
Climate scientist James Hansen suggests the POSSIBILITY of an SLR “of the order of 5 m this century”, which fits somewhere between the 10-year and 13-year doubling curves.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840163
Matthew MARLER: – “The Maldives will (soon) be under water?”
It depends on what you define as “soon”. I think 1 m of global mean SLR relative to year-2000 baseline is plausible in the 2060s.
Malé is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. Velana International Airport and a significant portion of Malé would be inundated at 1 m SLR.
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/14/73.5068/4.1858/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&refresh=true&water_level=1.0&water_unit=m
Re: “What other pronouncements have not gained wide acceptance?”
To address your sealioning:
Re: “RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?”
RCP8.5 wasn’t offered as an accurate forecast of the future. So of course there’s not going to wide acceptance of a straw man you fabricated, and which was not pronounced by others. RCP8.5 was instead one of several proposed scenarios (ex: RCP4.5, RCP6.0). The scenarios were useful for several reasons, such as the high signal-to-noise ratio for RCP8.5, and RCP8.5 showing how the climate responds to high forcing. RCP8.5’s high forcing can be achieved in ways that violate RCP8.5’s assumptions. The forecast period of these projections starts in 2005, and post-2005 forcing so far exceeds RCP8.5’s projection. I’ve discussed elsewhere how RCP8.5’s projected warming trend is likely accurate through at least 2030.
Re: “Sea level rise is accelerating?”
Yes, and there’s widespread acceptance on that among those who are not denialists (lukewarmism is a type of denialism):
Re: “The Maldives will (soon) be under water?”
Again, that’s not a pronouncement, but instead a straw man you fabricated. Uninhabitability and temporary inundation are not the same this as being permanently underwater. The geologist Potholer54 (a.k.a. Peter Hadfield) covered this in videos on on the pertinent peer-reviewed research. Or you can read research like Storlazzi 2018.
Re: “FDR drive dear the eastern edge of Manhattan island will (soon) be under water?”
Already addressed that fabricated straw man in response to Thomas Fuller’s claims on Dr. James Hansen and the West Side Highway.
New Antarctica research published in E.G.U. Journal Earth Systems Dynamics below. Potential implications for modeling going forward? Thoughts by Gavin or anyone would be welcomed!
.
“Increased future ocean heat uptake constrained by Antarctic sea ice extent”
Vogt, L., de Lavergne, C., Sallée, J.-B., Kwiatkowski, L., Frölicher, T. L., and Terhaar, J.: Increased future ocean heat uptake constrained by Antarctic sea ice extent, Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 1453–1482, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1453-2025, 2025.
.
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/16/1453/2025/esd-16-1453-2025.html
.
EGU press release:
.
https://www.egu.eu/news/1505/antarctic-sea-ice-emerges-as-key-predictor-of-accelerated-ocean-warming/
David, I think it’s to be expected that increased OHC gain would increase the Antarctic sea ice extent though not its area. It’s amusing that the Poles are Polar Opposites so nicely, each about 14 million km**2 roughly circular at 70-90NS but one a paddling pool surrounded by continents with minor interruption and the other a huge lump of ice on some land bits surrounded by ocean with no interruption. A warming tropics and extra tropics removing ice at the north but a warming tropics and extra tropics preserving land ice at the south.
I’d perhaps find it a bit counterintuitive if increased OHC gain increased the Antarctic sea ice area, but not the extent. However, even sea ice area could increase because it’s relatively fresh from Antarctic ice melt so the gaps that form should fill in easily.
A warming tropics and extra tropics (more OHC gain) by increasing the gradient to bitter-cold Antarctica whose air surface temperature is constrained by ice latent heat causes Unwonky Polar Jet Stream, makes the clockwise high-altitude and surface winds stronger so the cause of more OHC gain also causes stronger clockwise surface wind, which pushes sea ice to the north because Coriolis Effect, thus increasing sea ice extent, It’s cold there so I suppose that ice, maybe thin, would form in the gaps where sea ice was blown apart.
The wind pushing surface water 0-~200m depths north “draws in” water at ~200-~800m depths which melts ice shelves and the ice faces of places that have no ice shelves.
My “warming tropics and extra tropics preserving land ice at the south” isn’t what I think is correct (typed too fast). I meant like “warming tropics and extra tropics inhibits surface warming at the south somewhat due to stronger Jet Stream but doesn’t preserve land ice because Antarctica loses ice by ocean warming below the well-mixed layer, not by surface warming,”
Hi Barry. I screwed up and wish I had posted this new paper on the Oct. UV instead of here. Would have been more grist for the sea level rise rate mill ongoing there! Nonetheless, thanks for the input. I remain curious about implications (if any) for modeling going forward the paper discusses.
Mal Adapted: “Wanna try again?”
and others
My question was not “Is there any. evidence?”, of which I have read plenty, though probably not all.
My question was whether these propositions are widely accepted among climate scientists.
It may not bear mention, but I do not receive money for my questioning.
As to ” soon”, how about “by 2100″, or ” within the lifetime of the prognosticator”?
Matthew MARLER, due you have selective vision?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840275
MM: My question was not “Is there any. evidence?”, of which I have read plenty, though probably not all.
My question was whether these propositions are widely accepted among climate scientists.
Fair enough. Your definitions of ‘soon’ are at least responsive to my questions!
As long as you’re only asking about “propositions” that have made it through peer review. And if you come up with any, you’d still have to specify who proposed and propagated them. Al Gore isn’t a climate scientist, and he’s Gavin’s example of a “pronouncement” that Gore didn’t actually make, that never gained mainstream peer-reviewed support, but that dogged deniers falsely claimed did. If a “failed prediction” (not merely projection from a counterfactual scenario, and for values of ‘failed’) never gained much mainstream peer support, it’s merely a thin stick to beat climate realists with, not scientifically relevant.
FWIW, I apologize if I made a type I error. Like Pete Best, it appears you’ve been commenting here occasionally for several years. Asking “yes, but” questions is OK if you actually want to know the answers, but not if they’re in subtle support of an obstructionist agenda, which your comment history does not suggest AFAICT.
I call myself a “lukewarmer” — I think extra CO2 will cause some warming, but not much.
I used to post more regularly. Now I mostly just read.
I call myself a “lukewarmer” — I think extra CO2 will cause some warming, but not much.
Ah, I have some vague recollection. Thanks for your forthright declaration of lukewarmism, i.e. denial of the tragedy of the climate commons. Can you provide a link to specialist peer review of your proposition, or is it ipse dixit? Dare I ask for your quantitative estimate of how much warming? Is it enough to kill at least thousands of people who would be alive if not for the warming to date (https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/4d5b1a8a-c5ed-47fd-894c-f05ae31ae69d/content)?
I don’t know what the net lives saved would be if more people could adopt modern heating and air conditioning, but people do die of cold as well as heat.
I wrote a quantitative estimate of an upper bound for temp increase if CO2 concentration doubles. An abbreviated version (without the copyrighted diagram) is on my ResearchGate page.
Good reviews of technical datails can be found in “Settled?” by Stephen Koonin; and in “Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science” by Alan Longhurst. They cite peer-reviewed publications and IPCC reports.
Back to questions: How many climate scientists agrre that “Snow will be a thing of the past”?
How many agree that AMOC will collapse?
M. R. Marler: “I don’t know what the net lives saved would be if more people could adopt modern heating and air conditioning
yeah, because …. that’s what Aramco, ExxonMobil;, Shell, BP, Gazprom and Koch industries bro are obviously planning to do with their profits:
finance providing and operating modern heating and air conditioning to the billions of people who can’t afford it , and to all the animals domesticated and wild that would be exposed to temp. extremes too.
Matthew R Marler: “people do die of cold as well as heat”
…. and as have been claimed by many deniers, oh sorry. “lukewarmers”, like Lomborg or own Fuller and Woollard – the number of people dying of the cold is supposedly larger than that of heat, so our big thumbs up for our “Gool Old Global Warming” [ (c) DJ Trump] for saving lives.
Lomborg and his followers based their claim on -Qi et al. 2021 Lancet Planet Health. When I challenged their methodology and deniers conclusions “Back to basics” thread Piotr 12 Jul 2023 at 11:59 PM neither Fuller nor Woollard replied.
A few months later Woollard came back …. as if nothing happened::
K. Woollard Dec 4. “A beautiful example is the, now famous, Lancet paper talking about heat and cold deaths.”
To which I have answered:
======
That “beautiful example” wouldn’t be by any chance from the “ famous Lancet Planet Health 2021;5: 415–25, heavily promoted by Lomborg, and brought onto RC by your fellow denier, Thomas W Fuller a few months back?
Back then, I questioned the methodology of that beautifully famous paper – they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply … fitted the local temperature changes against the local mortality.”
[P: So when later Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, the Lancet paper methodology would have attributed the war-deaths on both-sides at the time to …cold.]
I also question how they failed to address non-climatic confounding factors. To illustrate the point:
– Eastern Europe had the lowest mean temperatures out of all regions
and yet… had HEAT-mortality 5 x global average!
– while the subSaharan Africa, with its oppressive heat and humidity, had …2x the global average for deaths from … COLD.”
If true these would be truly astounding findings – yet not a word on that from Lomborg, not from TWFuller who brought up the Lancet paper in July, not from Keith Woollard, otherwise very active in that same thread …
But since you brought up that beautifully famous Lancet paper in the current thread, would you care to defend the credibility of your source, by explaining the reasons behind these East European and subSaharan results?
Because if you can’t – then your famous Lancet Health paper is a glorified garbage, actually worse than garbage, since it promises an insight where there is none – only spurious correlations.
====
No reply to _that_ from Woollard or any other denier, sorry, “lukewarmer”, either.
BTW, The Lancet paper is another example of a pitfalls on the statistic-only, mechanism free-approach in science – and of thinking that you expertise in one area automatically extends onto another (Lancet editors and its peer-reviewers not noticing the elementary errors in the use of the climatic data in this paper)
This analysis makes no sense and seems to reach an absurd sensitivity estimate of 0.33K:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273575812_Climate_Sensitivity_to_a_Doubling_of_the_Atmospheric_CO2_Concentration
If that’s how you’re reaching your lukewarmist conclusions, then your form of lukewarmism is especially problematic. Climate sensitivity is not about radiative forcing (W per square meter) or radiative balance in response to warming. It’s about how much warming radiative forcing causes, once one takes feedbacks into account. Your article messes up on those basics. The evidence instead supports equilibrium climate sensitivity estimates in the range of 2.5K to 4.0K:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840539
How much of the warming to date resulted from anthropogenic CO2. Steven Koonin estimated 7%. Oh, it is Steven, not Stephen, as I put it in another post.
Other propositions:
Snow will be a thing of the past.
Scientists should exaggerate bad effects and scare people in order to effect policy change.
Investment in solar and wind farms will forestall future warming.
The mechanisms that produced the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods are irrelevant to the warming since the late 1800s.
Atomsk’s Sanakan wrote: If that’s how you’re reaching your lukewarmist conclusions, then your form of lukewarmism is especially problematic.
So far no one has found an error in the calculation; at least no one has shown me one. The updated version that I posted at Judith Curry’s blog I included feedbacks (suggested by a reader) and calculated that a doubling of CO2 concentration could not raise earth surface temperature more than 1C.
[Response: Maybe people are just being polite. Your fundamental error is in the first step where you assume that the only thing changing the downward LW is the CO2 forcings. You neglect all feedbacks that would change it, and so your calculation ends up with a sensitivity close to the no-feedback case. However, since feedbacks are real, that makes it irrelevant to the real world. You are neither the first and nor, I expect, the last to make this mistake, and so this is not worth a huge amount of debunking. You’re welcome. – gavin]
Matthew Marler, citing Steve Koonin as a source in climate science carries about the same weight as citing RFK, Jr. in a debate about effectiveness of vaccination. And as to your other assertions, they don’t carry water. Snow in much of the world IS becoming a thing of the past. Renewable energy displacing carbon intensive sources WILL lead to less warming–and more important buy us more of our most precious commodity–time. AND the causes of previous warming epoch are irrelevant to the current one. These are simply facts.
And I can honestly say, I have never found anything you wrote worth my time.
I remember you from Judith Curry’s blog, where she and Nicholas Lewis peddled ideologically-motivated misinformation to downplay on AGW, COVID-19, etc. Easier to undermine government interventions when they could say nonsense like infection-induced herd immunity had been achieved after one SARS-CoV-2 wave, and a large 2nd wave would not happen (only for a large 2nd wave to then happen).
FYI: your lukewarmism is wrong, as is that of Curry, Lewis, Ridley, Fuller, Michaels, etc. It’s as wrong as Lewis, Ridley, and Curry’s misinformation on 2nd waves.
– https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840550
– https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-839795
I thought most of your comments at Judith Curry’s blog were worth reading.
I found most of your comments to be vacuous or misleading, much as your comments here. For example, you claim to be a lukewarmer, and then disregard cited evidence rebutting lukewarmism. You mislead on Dr. James Hansen’s sea level rise projection for the West Side Highway. You left out so much information that people can’t even tell what you’re misleading about.
In that respect you’re like your fellow lukewarmer Thomas Fuller below. Like Fuller, you focus more on tone than on accuracy or substance. Fuller does it by claiming everyone is mean to him, without him addressing the substance of their criticism. You do it by claiming people are nice, without evaluating the substance of what they say.
Hence why you could write “Nic Lewis, thank you for the essay“, when Dr. Lewis wrote a COVID-19-minimizing blogpost so incompetent it would have received a failing grade in any introductory-level immunology or epidemiology course. I debunked the substance of Dr. Lewis’ non-expert misinformation, which I could do because immunology is my field of expertise. He then spent months blustering about claiming he knew better than experts. It’s similar to what he does when he goes around claiming his lukewarmist, low estimates of climate sensitivity are more accurate than those of experts. Later, he finally admitted he was wrong on COVID-19 when way more deaths happened than he predicted. Too little, too late. And he didn’t really learn his lesson since he then repeated the same misinformation for India, despite me warning him against that. India’s deadly Delta wave again falsified his COVID-19 downplaying.
That’s what happens, Marler, when you value tone over substance. You end up cheering on dangerous misinformation that causes people to underestimate life-threatening risk. I suggest learning that lesson on Dr. Lewis’ COVID-19 minimization, and then extending it to you + Dr. Lewis’ AGW lukewarmism. I doubt you will, though, since you did not learn that lesson when I explained it you during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Will Extreme Heat Become Unlivable?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hBMbQ9de1g
Matthew Marler:
“My question was not “Is there any. evidence?”, of which I have read plenty, though probably not all. My question was whether these propositions are widely accepted among climate scientists.
Huh? If there is “plenty evidence” for something, then why would you need to ask whether it is widely accepted by scientists? This is how science works – it follows the evidence.
So with this explanation of your motive out of the way, we are left with the alternative one: that you are denier who tried to question
– the reality of the acceleration of SLR, and
– the credibility climate science by implying that in the past many scientists believed that “RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?”
by guilt by association with two unlikely strawmen:
– The Maldives will (soon) be under water?
– FDR drive dear the eastern edge of Manhattan island will (soon) be under water?
Since these are obscure (“FDR drive”???) and/or vague (“soon”) I’d suggest you replace them with something less obscure and with more spunk, How about:
======
“ What other pronouncements have not gained wide acceptance?
– RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?
– Sea level rise is accelerating?
– The Moon is made of blue cheese?
– The Earth is flat?”
======
see? much better, i.e. much worse for the first two.
P.S. Matthew, you wouldn’t be by any chance, a “Julian”? I ask because “Julian” arrived on RC out of nowhere,you arrived on RC out of nowhere, his first post was on Oct 4, his first post was on Oct 4, in his he wrote about RCP8.5, 6, in your you wrote about RCP8.5, 6. a subject I have not seen discussed on RC with this much interest for … years..
What a coincidence, eh?
I am not Julian.
Straining at gnats, much, Geoff and Atom? Of course we’re talking about a doubling of CO2. That’s pretty much the point of the climate conversation. Duh.
Pretty slick to talk about that instead of the problematic use of RCP8.5, though. Nice propagandizing.
[Response: You haven’t demonstrated anything of the sort. I absolutely reject the heuristic that you and Roger have invented that says that a mere mention of RCP85 is scientific misconduct. That is simply bullshit. If you don’t think that, it then behoves to actually read the papers you cite and examine why they did what they did. Sometimes it’s to maximise the signal-to-noise ratio, sometimes it’s because that was all that was available for the diagnostics they needed, sometimes they want to show a range. Instead, you cherry pick something you don’t like and then go off on how that implies that everyone is equally terrible. My point is not that no-one has ever described RCP85 incorrectly (I’m sure some people have), but this ‘critique-by-word search’ is just stupid. Some folks seem okay with trashing their reputations for this, but I really can’t recommend it. – gavin]
No, you and Matthew Marler left out the doubling of CO2; you didn’t talk about it. You only mentioned that after getting caught on your misrepresentation. So you can stop trying to gaslight. And thanks for confirming my prediction about you not honestly correcting your distortion:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840889
I also predict you won’t honestly correct your distortions on RCP85. I already addressed it before you made your comment that acted like I’d be too afraid to address it:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840900
When caught in a misrepresentation, you avoid acknowledging it by acting like you talked about something you didn’t actually talk about, and by deflecting to another topic. All to avoid just honestly admitting to that misrepresentation. You don’t have discussions in good faith, Fuller, and that’s been clear for years. You can continue in your tone trolling.
Matthew R, Marler “I am not Julian”
So you see your “I am not a non-denier” mask peeled off your face and your claim shown to be deniers manipulation – and ALL you have to say is ….. “I am not Julian” ???
Here is the peeling and the manipulation, in case if you missed it:
=====================================
Piotr: Huh? If there is “plenty evidence” for something, then why would you need to ask whether it is widely accepted by scientists? This is how science works – it follows the evidence.
So with this explanation of M Marler’s motive out of the way, we are left with the alternative one: that you are denier who tried to question
– the reality of the acceleration of SLR, and
– the credibility climate science by implying that in the past many scientists believed that “RCP8.5 is an accurate forecast of the future?”
and by guilt by association with two [manipulated] strawmen:
– The Maldives will (soon) be under water?
– FDR drive dear the eastern edge of Manhattan island will (soon) be under water?
=======================
The last claim – attributed to Hansen, has been shown by Geoff Miell and Atomsk to be a denier’s manipulation – deniers OMITTING that the supposed “soon” in reality meant if the Co2 were to DOUBLE. I.e. not something likely to happen “soon” enough to tell whether the projection was correct or laughable overestimate (as the phrasing of the question suggest M. Marler believes).
Thus your post, Mr. Marler – while obviously intended to discredit climate science ended up discrediting you and your allies.
And after that – ALL you have to say in your defense is … “I am not Julian” ? Whau, powerful stuff!
OMITTING that the supposed “soon” in reality meant if the Co2 were to DOUBLE.
That I missed. Thank you.
Is it widely accepted in the scientific community?
I also got the side of Manhattan wrong. thanks again.
Piotr, the remark about FDR drive being underwater is derived from an interview with James Hansen, who predicted that would occur in 40 years.
As for the obsolete RCP 8.5, The designers of the pathway — including Detlef van Vuuren, its original architect — stated clearly that RCP8.5 should be considered a “high-end stress test”, not a default future. Yet in academic papers after 2014, RCP8.5 became the base case. By 2020, over half of all climate impact papers referenced RCP8.5 as the primary or sole scenario.
[Response: Totally false. Name one paper that said that RCP85 was the ‘best’ case. And assessing context by counting word searches is extremely stupid (no matter who does it). Come up with better recycled talking points. – gavin]
Thomas W Fuller: – “the remark about FDR drive being underwater is derived from an interview with James Hansen, who predicted that would occur in 40 years.”
Except the details in the blogosphere haven’t included a critical caveat – “with doubled CO₂ concentration”. How convenient is it leaving that out, aye Thomas?
Potholer54 (aka Peter Hadfield) said in a YouTube video published 5 Dec 2021:
“It’s a classic case of changing the evidence to fit the conclusion, even when you know the conclusion is wrong. Don’t you just love how the blogosphere works? The funny thing is Hansen didn’t say 20 years, or 30 years, despite being copied on the blogosphere hundreds of times. No one thought to check with Hansen to confirm that’s what he actually said, or check with Rice’s book to see if Rice had remembered the conversation correctly. As it turned out he hadn’t. Rice later admitted he was being interviewed on the telephone and he didn’t have his notes, so he got the details wrong. After checking with his own book, he said his question was what the view would be like outside the window in 40 years with doubled CO₂. So, this is what’s in the book. Hansen’s own recollection of the conversation was exactly the same as the book that Rice had asked him to speculate on changes that might happen in New York City in 40 years, assuming CO₂ doubled in amount. Double CO₂ concentration means a doubling from pre-industrial levels of around 265 parts per million to 530 parts per million. Rice might be forgiven for thinking that figure would be reached by 2028, because in 1988, CO₂ emissions were rising uncontrollably and without governments agreeing to curb the emissions they were on the path of this black line. But thanks to the Kyoto Protocol, CO₂ is now at around 415 parts per million following the red line. So, it looks like we’ll hit the double CO₂ concentration point around 2060 to 2070. If every nation adheres to Paris climate agreement targets, then a doubling of CO₂ concentration could be pushed back even further. So, now that we understand what the question was: Was Hansen’s answer correct? Well, of course we don’t know until CO₂ concentration doubles. My sources are in the video description and they suggest that at the time CO₂ concentration doubles, sea level will have risen about 0.2 to 0.6 metres. Is that enough to cover the West Side Highway? Well, no good looking at this highway cam, because this isn’t the West Side Highway Hansen was talking about. This is the new highway. It was built on top of the old highway that Hansen was pointing to in 1988 or 1989.”
https://youtu.be/WTRlSGKddJE?t=1361
But why let facts get in the way of a false story the climate deniers keep regurgitating?
Gavin, here are specific, recent peer-reviewed papers (from roughly 2022–2024) that either relied solely on RCP8.5 for their main projections or used it as their only scenario in headline results—not merely as part of a scenario range:
Important qualification: many papers say they use multiple RCPs, but then only present results for RCP8.5 in abstract, conclusions, or headline graphics. I’m focusing here on papers that used RCP8.5 as the sole modeled scenario or treated it as the primary/only scenario for core claims.
1. “Projected increase in deadly heat-humidity combinations” – Science Advances (2020, still widely cited in 2023–24)
Authors: Vecellio & Raymond et al.
Method: Modeled future wet-bulb temperature exceedance but only simulated RCP8.5 future climate forcing.
Quote: “Using a high-end emissions scenario (RCP8.5), we project…”
Issue: No RCP4.5 or SSP2-4.5 comparison; all alarm metrics derived from 8.5.
2. “Coastal flooding risks under continued emissions” – Nature Communications (2023)
Authors: Rueda et al.
Method: Full modeling of sea level and surge return periods under RCP8.5 only.
Mentions that RCP8.5 “represents business-as-usual trajectories,” with no alternative scenario explored.
3. “Global wildfire danger projected to increase dramatically” – Environmental Research Letters (2022)
Authors: Abatzoglou et al.
Method: Fire Weather Index and fuel aridity simulated for RCP8.5 only.
Other scenarios briefly mentioned in supplementary but all publication figures and conclusions based on 8.5.
4. “Declining labor productivity due to climate change” – Lancet Planetary Health (2023)
Method: Population-weighted heat stress projections run solely under RCP8.5 for 2050 and 2100.
The central policy message — “urgent mitigation needed” — was constructed entirely from 8.5 baseline impacts.
5. “Climate-driven mass migration by 2100” – Global Environmental Change (2023)
Method: Modeled displacement stress under RCP8.5 only, extrapolating up to 1.2 billion climate migrants.
No alternative scenario modeling.
This paper was cited hundreds of times in NGO press releases claiming “a billion migrants unless action taken.”
Hat tip to ChatGPT.
Thomas W Fuller says
18 Oct 2025 at 4:50 AM
You should also have:
1) Included links to each of these papers, preferably open source. So readers can see for themselves firsthand. afaik no one believes a word you say here, so face the reality of what that likely means.
Or, as is always an option, do not bother. Typically the most rational position to adopt btw. Unless you’re a masochist for false accusations and grandstanding ridicule by ideologues.
2) checked each claim by ChatGPT to see if it is actually true in each of those papers, BEFORE posting that info here or anywhere publicly.
3) Why? Because ChatGPT is very unreliable when source data from papers and their urls.
iow your comment is worthless at face value, besides which to Gavin it’s all (quote) “AI Slop”.
4) Besides he doesn’t even really pay attention to what you say …. check his actual response.
Tom, you are paddle a canoe up a waterfall here.
and PS 5)
Checked the “quotes” are accurate – or found your own and used those verbatim. After word searching each paper.
Even then, even if it supports your position they still will not agree or listen to anything.
They will come up with some other topic to attack you and anyone who dares point out a little truth about what passes for climate science in these parts. 8.5 stuff is a minor confabulation.
Tom, they don’t care. They are going down with the Titanic no matter what. Proudly “knowing” they are always 100% Right and beyond reproach.
Mr. Fuller, your 18 Oct 4:50am reply to Gavin raises some questions for me about the following part of your 17 Oct 07:09am statement, “Yet in academic papers after 2014, RCP8.5 became the base case. By 2020, over half of all climate impact papers referenced RCP8.5 as the primary or sole scenario.”
Some areas I ask you to help me better understand what you think you’re saying in the above quoted remark:
1. What is(are) the definition(s) you use when saying “climate IMPACT paper” (my emphasis on the word ‘impact’) and “became the base case”?
2. What is your statistical evidence and supporting documentation in support of, “Yet in academic papers after 2014, RCP8.5 became the base case.”? How many papers out of what size population?
3. What is your statistical evidence and supporting documentation in support of, “By 2020, over half of all climate impact papers referenced RCP8.5 as the primary or sole scenario.”? Again, how many papers out of how many papers?
4. Are you exclusively only talking about peer-reviewed Journal published work when establishing the populations you use in support of your statement?
Any comment based on ChatGPT is likely to take of space while lacking fact checking/judgment.
Computers are good for some things, but ethical decisions and accuracy are limited by what the human is about. They’re particularly useful for straightforward science-based tasks involving large amounts of data (climate and medicine come to mind, though judgments about serving patients has been called into question, again because there is no morality or ethics involved, nor judgment with regard to what might go wrong.
Replacing ourselves with machines is destructive to an extreme. [sideways from response here} Making a religion of doing so is even worse
Susan Anderson says
21 Oct 2025 at 12:28 PM
I feel the same about Christianity and American politics, their media, and the absence of a rule of Law.
You’re disinforming again, Fuller. Dr. Hansen’s projection was for the West Side Highway by 2030 if CO2 levels doubled. I know this because I checked the book where Dr. Hansen’s projection was reported. CO2 levels are not close to doubling due to factors such as mitigation policies and the fall of the Soviet Union. That means forcing is not as high as Dr. Hansen’s projection. One would thus not project warming and sea level rise to be as high as in his projection. That’s not his fault since one should not expect him to foresee which policy and behavior pathway we would choose.
Below is relevant information on Dr. Hansen’s projection. But I don’t think you’ll honestly correct your distortion, given your track record:
You and your fellow lukewarmer Matthew Marler willfully leave out Dr. Hansen’s projected CO2 increase, something denialists have been doing for the better part of 2 decades. Deniers (lukewarmism is a form of denialism) like to ignore differences between observed vs. projected forcing, even though climate scientists should not be expected to accurately project forcing, as I noted above. Modeling is instead expected to accurately project the temperature response to forcing, i.e. iTCR or the ratio of ‘warming vs. forcing’. Similarly so for projecting the sea level response to warming. Folks explained this for decades, including Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Dr. Grant Foster, Dave Farina (from 50:09), me, etc. Here’s Dr. Schmidt explaining it in this paper:
Fuller still hasn’t cogently addressed his misinformation:
Deflecting to RCP8.5 is not an answer. Nor is pretending that because climate discussions often mention CO2, that means people would already know Dr. Hansen’s projection assumed CO2 doubling by 2030. That’s as ridiculous as pretending that because lung cancer discussions often mention smoking, then in such discussions one should know people assumed a one-pack-a-day rate of smoking.
So again:
Fuller, why did you misinform by leaving out the fact that Dr. Hansen’s projection assumed a doubling of CO2 by 2030?
I predict no honest, cogent answer will ever be given to that question. This behavior supports Mal Adapted’s point that Fuller writes in bad faith:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-841055
Thomas W Fuller
RCP8.5 became the base case. By 2020, over half of all climate impact papers referenced RCP8.5 as the primary or sole..
then
[Response: Totally false. Name one paper that said that RCP85 was the ‘best’ case.
– gavin]
MY: What has that got to do with anything Thomas said?
I wish more people would stop misrepresenting what other people actual said, in writing.
Be it Hansen or Thomas or . Matthew R Marler
… says the sockpuppet account that misrepresented what Dr. Michael Mann wrote.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840898
Gavin,
There is nothing worse than putting quotes around a misquote!!!
Thomas Fuller: “ Piotr, the remark about FDR drive being underwater is derived from an interview with James Hansen, who predicted that would occur in 40 years.”
…. IF the CO2 doubled , Which neither you nor your fellow Marler mention.
Not surprisingly – because including this fact would have change EVERYTHING – instead of discrediting Hansen and the rest of climate science – discredits the deniers and their gullible audience.
So what’s your role here, Thomas – a manipulator of Hansen’s words, or a dupe who swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the manipulation by others?
And if the latter – what have you learned about yourself from that, given how you take pride in your independent cold critical thinking, unwavering whether turned against others or yourself?
Piotr: So what’s your role here, Thomas – a manipulator of Hansen’s words, or a dupe who swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the manipulation by others?
Heh. Tom’s role here is to avowedly to “pick holes” (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-839667); but mainly to pick fights, however strenuously disavowed while he deploys his rhetorical fists and feet. He’s let the luchador mask slip enough times to disclose that his customary pernicious nonsense is unrelenting, wholly intentional schtick. It’s his basic rationality that appears only in very occasional, unguarded comments.
I’m probably helping to ensure those comments become even more occasional. So be it, We, at least, seem to enjoy piling on each new ludicrous calumny of his. He in turn seems to feed off our outrage, like Adam Sandler’s “Iraqi Pete” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbebI5SiX4) 8^D! IANAP, but I strongly suspect Tom is constrained by his personality: even if we’re aware of our own, they’re relatively stable by young adulthood, and I believe Tom is old enough to drink.
Meh. It’s still up to him, within the demonstrated limits of our hosts’ patience. Y’all pile on to your heart’s content, but it only encourages him! I, for one, will resist the vexation of spirit.
Mr. Fuller, Hitchen’s razor states: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
You’ve provided extremely insufficient evidence to support your assertion regarding RCP8.5. Your assertion is, therefore, dismissed.
Hiya Stevie–Gavin asked for one example. I provided multiple examples. What’s wrong with that?
Mr Fuller, your examples are completely inadequate to support your assertion regarding the proportion of scientific, climate-impact papers since 2020 that have RCP8.5 as their primary or sole scenario.
As a consequence, that assertion is dismissed.
Good to know you’re the Decider in Chief, Steven. You’ll forgive me if I somehow don’t feel that my ‘assertions’ are ‘dismissed.’
Tommy, your contentions may not be dismissed, but they are boring–there is nothing more boring that arguing about who said what a decade ago and what it meant.
No one serious is arguing that RCP8.5 is realistic or best case or worst case. It is a standard–nothing more or less. It is used because it has been used repeatedly and is familiar to the readership in climate science. These studies are not predictions, but rather sensitivity studies. Arguing about which standard emissions scenario is appropriate is like arguing whether 50 Hz or 60 Hz is a better frequency for AC electricity!
Ray-Ray, your assertion is as foolish as most of your commentary. Those examples are pretty close to current. They don’t compare to other papers using RCP 8.5. They have right at hand other RCPs–or their more modern replacements.
Whether it’s misleading by laziness or design, they do not advance our understanding of the climate system, changes to it, impacts of those changes or our options to deal with those changes.
But they do reinforce your ignorant prejudice. So there’s that…
Tommy, you still aren’t getting it. RCP8.5 is a standard. It is the very fact that it is old that makes it valuable, as this allows comparisons with past studies. Standards do not generally get replaced with great regularity for precisely that reason. It’s OK if you don’t understand this. They are writing for other scientists, not for you.
And Sweetie! I’ll match what I write here against any of your crap any day, any time.
“how about “by 2100″, or ” within the lifetime of the prognosticator”?” At 2100 CE 14.38 times as likely as at 2032 CE (the lifetime of the prognosticator).
The Maldives suffered the inundation of about 4o% of its land area, including Male and the international airport five years before it made advertising history with its 2009 underwater cabinet meeting in scuba gear.
The cause was the 2004Boxing Day tsunami which rose and passed over the archipelago drowning hundreds, hours after it killed over a hundred thousand closer to the Sunda Trench epicenter
That was some inches of sea level rise ago, and the odds are that another stretch of submerged Indopacific plate boundary will pop before the century is out.
Ahah. 2004Boxing Day tsunami in an ice topic. That’s good enough for me because it’s 20-second cut’n’paste from my August 2017 and following months.
Based on the fracture of the Larsen C ice shelf first being noticed in November 2010, its extent and width at that time and its rate of growth the few years following, I suggest the possibility that the fracture of the Larsen C ice shelf might well have been caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami 26 December 2004 following sea bed earthquake. “The tsunami also reached Antarctica, where tidal gauges at Japan’s Showa Base recorded oscillations of up to a metre with disturbances lasting a couple of days”.
——————————
I see “the sea floor is estimated to have risen by several metres, displacing an estimated 30 of water”. If I take the tsunami as radiating in a circle then the radius is 13,000 km at Larsen C ice shelf distance so the quantity of tsunami water per metre of impacted face is 30,000,000,000 / (26,000,000 * pi) = 367 m**3 (this assumes negligible settling of the water during travel). For 1 metre of SLR extending to 367m from the ice shelf face I compute 367 * 42,000 * 10,000 = 154,000,000,000 newton-metres of torque per metre of fracture run at the fracture point using a 42km width. If I assume 350m thick then the tensile pull at the bottom of the fracture from 1m SLR lifting at 42 km from the pivot point = 440,000,000 newtons per metre of fracture run. The tensile pull over 350m thick from 1m SLR lifting over 42 km = 1,260,000 newtons per metre of ice depth per metre of fracture run (i.e. per square metre) average throughout ice depth. However, (595-435)/595=27% so the lowest 50m of the ice shelf face is subjected to 27% of the torque force, so tensile pull over the lowest 50m of the ice shelf face = 2,380,000 newtons per metre of ice depth per metre of fracture run (i.e. per square metre). The tensile strength of ice varies from 0.7–3.1 MPa so the fracturing force exerted on the ice shelf at the fracture location from 1 metre of SLR would be anywhere between 0.8x and 3.4x that required to fracture it (if ice were infinitely brittle) so it is definitely of the order of magnitude to be very possible based on the 367 m**3 simultaneously per metre of impacted face.
——————————
Of course, ice has some ductility & malleability (not perfectly brittle) and tides there are of order 1m to 1.7m, same as that tsunami or somewhat higher, so the ice shelf could not survive tides if it was perfectly brittle. Davis tide table indicates typically 14 hours for the tide to rise 1m to 1.7m but likely the far more rapid impact force of a tsunami SLR (over a few minutes I assume) would not give the ice shelf sufficient time to respond elastically throughout its length and it fractured along its weakest line on the lower face due to the torque exerted. This would open a fracture 7 mm wide at 42 km back from the face if the ice did not yield anywhere except at the fracture so, for example, if the ice bent 90% of the required amount to relieve stress throughout its length then it would open a fracture 0.7 mm wide. This would need structural analysis to figure it out properly.
——————————
The line from the centre of the tsunami origin to the centre of the Larsen C ice shelf is at an angle close to perpendicular at Larsen C so SLR would have been applied across a large width of the face simultaneously. The only significant contraindication is that it appears that a straight line across the ocean from the centre of the tsunami origin to the centre of the Larsen C ice shelf might be interrupted by the western edge of Queen Maude Land, in which case there would be no direct wave front across all of the centre of the Larsen C ice shelf but only the portion of the original wave that spreads southwards. Update: Looks like a southern diversion of only 20 degrees of arc from Queen Maude Land coast, so not much, and that diversion looks to make the arriving ripple even more perpendicular at Larsen C.
——————————
Extrapolating back in time from the fracture distance increase between 2010-11 and 2015-10 indicates a fracture date of 2002-05 which is 2.5 years before the tsunami so it doesn’t support the December 2004 date strongly but given the uncertainty in that method it doesn’t rule it out (perhaps there was some initial length of fracture before it started increasing).
Barry: The line from the centre of the tsunami origin to the centre of the Larsen C ice shelf is at an angle close to perpendicular at Larsen C
except the wave would not go along this straight line, but be deflected by the Coriolis effect, redirected by the reflection from the land, and interaction with other waves
Barry – “ The tsunami also reached Antarctica, where tidal gauges at Japan’s Showa Base recorded oscillations of up to a metre
I don’t think you can use the tidal measurement at Showa Base as representative of the tsunami at the face of Larsen C. Tsunami heights in the deep waters are tiny – by the time they move across the world to arrive at Antarctica – they are typically a ..few cms tall. – see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFNOuo_YxI
The tsunami damage to coasts is caused by the massive steepening the wave as it approaches the shoreline – the front of the wave is slowed down by the rapidly shallowing bottom, the rear part of the 100s-km long wave is still in deep water and therefore continues to move fast – so it catches up with the slow front of the wave, piling up on top of it.
Your Showa Base tidal gauge is probably on the shore or very close to it – so the a few-cm tall open ocean tidal wave is translated into the “up to 1m“at the shoreline of the Showa Base .
I am not sure what’s the depth of the ocean at the face of Larsen C – but since it is an edge of an ice-shelf I’d assume that bottom there is substantially deeper than the depth of the shoreline tidal gauge at Showa Base.
.
So instead of 1 metre from Showa Basw you used in your calculations,
my guess for the maximum amplitude would be a few cm to a max. 15cm – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwbzXf8Wdio
And although comparison with tides may be tricky – much higher amplitude (1-2 m?), but spread over longer period, there is another phenomenon that MIGHT serve as a better comparison- seiches – with overlapping range of periods, and comparable or higher amplitudes than your tsunami.
So if Larson C withstood multiple higher SLR seiches each year, I doubt it will get undone
by your single 5-15 cm tall tsunami.
I’ve got to agree with Piotr on this one. I believe the impact at Larsen would be very minimal. Here is the direct line from the epicentre with Showa marked in red:-
https://photos.app.goo.gl/fDoTr4659mzxoXqM7
The dispersion would be significant. As well there is the added distance (9K km to Showa Vs 13.5K km to LarsenC)
And Piotr is correct, Showa shallows from 3km to zero over 100km, whereas at LarsenC it takes about 450km to shallow that much and then there is 200km of shallow water before the ice shelf
This quake may be more germane:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000rgf4/executive
RS: thanks for posting that, saw it a couple of days ago, and am wondering how much effect it will have on the region. [for those not clicking through, M7.6 quake – Drake Passage]
You do realise we are talking about tsunamis, not earthquakes don’t you???
KW: Given the location, I suspect it’s more complicated than that.
The RC subject is the cryosphere, so an earthquake in the Drake Passage, even without tsunami, is more ‘on topic’ if we are to argue based on quibbles about earthquake effects. Tsunamis do not happen without earthquakes, and their measurement in remote places is scientifically recent.
Small quibble: Tsunamis can also be caused by underwater landslides (though to be fair many of those landslides are triggered by earthquakes not large enough to trigger tsunamis by themselves.)
Some have projected that a collapse of the slope on the Canary Islands might trigger a truly bad one. The Maui Nuʻuanu Slide collapse some million years ago must have triggered a very large one.
jgnfld: I remember getting in a panic in the early aughts re Canary Islands possibility, with silly press articles warning about an 80 foot tsunami here in Boston. Some more careful reading cleared that up (time/probability, reasonable perspective, etc.). We have much bigger problems elsewhere.
Speaking of which, OT for RC, but on earthquakes, new article: One ‘Really Big One’ After Another. The disaster caused by a predicted large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest could be compounded by shaking along the San Andreas fault in California – https://archive.ph/P4JK7
“In a study* published last month in the journal Geosphere, earthquake scientists suggest that the two faults could have an intertwined fate. Their paper suggests that Cascadia earthquakes of the recent geological past have triggered earthquakes along the San Andreas fault too.”
______
* Unravelling the dance of earthquakes: Evidence of partial synchronization of the northern San Andreas fault and Cascadia megathrust – https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geosphere/article/doi/10.1130/GES02857.1/661517/Unravelling-the-dance-of-earthquakes-Evidence-of
Holy crap! The mind boggles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu'uanu_Slide
Yet another increment to the ol’ existential fear factor. Upside: I didn’t know Maui and O’ahu were conjoined back then. More boggling!
An addendum to my post about the San Andreas & Cascadian fault linkups. This is just about the northern one, a rather famous article, but here’s an unpaywalled link:
The Really Big One – https://archive.ph/2rmed
People who think we can survive massive global warming forget that a range of consequences are linked. A complete loss of infrastructure means food supply, health care, transport, energy, etc. etc. This also applies to the massive potential of a Fukushima-level earthquake in the US northwest. [Interestingly, this comparison makes the situation seem less dire; catastrophic events of this nature are, in fact, local, even at large scale. Though something like Chixulub meteor hit does have worldwide consequences because the atmosphere circulates over the whole planet.
We forget how dependent we have become since we discovered cheap energy in a relatively short period of time (a little over a century). https://daily.jstor.org/when-did-america-start-using-fossil-fuel/
Mal,
Can you imagine that a moderator such as Willard is so touchy that he thinks a throwaway line such as your “Can we get a better class of denier here, Willard?”
results in its deletion and replacement with “[Playing the ref. -W]”?
You are lucky in that all of my ATTP comments are held in moderation and often deleted, so won’t show up in an RSS feed, which is how I saw yours at ATTP.
In contrast, have to give credit to RC moderation which is consistent and not subject to capricious editing.
—
But back on topic and to add to this thread, it’s not well known that subsurface tsunamis that are 100’s of meters in height are routine and occur due to the slight density difference at the thermocline.
“The formation and fate of internal waves in the South China Sea”
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14399
Often the only indication of internal waves at the surface is a drastic change in temperature as the colder water below the thermocline nearly emerges. These waves, like ENSO, help regulate the climate
https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/researchers-measure-giant-internal-waves-help-regulate-climate
The waves are also highly nonlinear (see https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JC015283) which means any underlying fundamental frequencies can be hopelessly mangled and jumbled together by interaction with other harmonics as the waves break.
Yet, the wave patterns likely can be decoded and decrypted if one tries out possible modulation approaches. Read my post from a few days ago: https://pukite.substack.com/p/mean-sea-level-models
Paul Pukite: Can you imagine that a moderator such as Willard is so touchy that he thinks a throwaway line such as your “Can we get a better class of denier here, Willard?”
results in its deletion and replacement with “[Playing the ref. -W]”?
He also deleted my subsequent comment, praising his strict DNFTT policy for keeping the S/N ratio high on aTTP. That makes sense, AFAICT. I’m sure not self-important enough to complain! I’m not bothered by his rejection of either my highly subjective clapbacks at individuals, or my gratuitous attempts to curry favor (he, at least, sees those). It’s not like they’re worth distracting the rest of y’all with. This one might be, however: Willard is a major reason I’m a ten-year participant on aTTP! He can make of that what he will 8^D.
I enjoy the conversation here equally, but am annoyed by RCs troll and sock infestation like most pro-climate-science regulars. It’s really the transparent narcissism that makes the determined deniers and doomers irritating: their boastful, read-only arguments, formed from lies and/or clumsy sophistry, simply repeated over and over, and not subject to modification by verifiable information from otters. One does tire of beating tendentious self-enhancers (hmm…) about the head and shoulders with blunt words! I’d prefer a little more active moderation, but Gavin et al. surely have more important things to do. And trolls tend to keep us all on message ;^). If some authoritative volunteer moderated RC, would we have the same absorbing discussions, or would we “play the ref” a lot more?
Meh. Blogs aren’t real life. Social media are a better similitude, I think; but that’s not how I want to spend my “declining years”. YMMV.
in Re to Paul Pukite, 16 Oct 2025 at 12:29 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840831
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your references regarding internal waves. According to the cited articles, these waves seem to be produced by tides and wind. In this respect, I would like to ask if it is appropriate to call them “tsunami”? Do they indeed have the same character as the waves caused by earthquakes and/or underwater landslides?
And two additional questions:
1) If there are also genuine “internal tsunamis” (internal waves caused by earthquakes), are their magnitudes perhaps even higher in comparison with the “conventional” internal waves caused by tides?
2) One could then expect that analogously to the “conventional” internal waves, such an “internal tsunami” should bring the colder deep water to the surface and thus cause a sudden change of ocean surface temperature (where that tsunami approaches the continental slope?). It could be also expected that the respective massive ocean mixing could perhaps effectively dissipate most of the tsunami energy before the wave reaches the shore. Has something like that ever been observed in oceans during/after earthquakes?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas,
Internal waves are neglected because they aren’t as visible. Yet, surface waves (as in sea-level variations) are likely a manifestation of internal waves as the force/response is connected through the chain. Internal waves cause ENSO, they can cause sea-level variations, which are correlated with atmospheric fluctuations via the inverse barometric effect, so that the detailed mean sea level along the Baltic Sea coast matches the cycles of NAO. Many recent papers on sea-level variations and NAO.
Start here to understand how tidal forces synchronize everything: https://pukite.substack.com/p/mean-sea-level-models
in Re to Paul Pukite, 21 Oct 2025 at 11:11 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840971
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your comment that, however, does not seem to address any of the questions I have asked. Would you mind considering these specific questions once again?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas said:
All the questions are answered by calibrating wave models against observations and then cross-validating the untrained values against out-of-band intervals.
This is a model fitting calculation in Python
https://gist.github.com/pukpr/7d256e5595ff435421431d48d1df8d19
and here is one in the language Julia
https://gist.github.com/pukpr/01e95f5f98818080fac806db98898194
There are many ways to approach this and its fun to explore the near limitless data universe. Fun? Yes, consider that the videogaming industry is dying, and sports betting is infested with m@fia organized crime so maybe someone out there will pick up on this as an entertaining pastime,
https://climate.pukite.com
https://GeoEnergyMath.com
https://github.com/azimuth-project
BTW, AI is a huge advantage here.
Russell, your reference doesn’t state that any of the sea bed was displaced upward.
Russell Seitz: That was some inches of sea level rise ago, and the odds are that another stretch of submerged Indopacific plate boundary will pop before the century is out.
Thanks Russell. Another tsunami or storm surge, just high enough after decades of anthropogenic SLR to wash away the whole country, might not be a catastrophe for you and me, but would certainly be a tipping point for Maldivians. My persistent question to lukewarmers: how many costly but local human disasters, only partially attributable to AGW, add up to Catastrophic AGW?
Yep. It’s always the same story: that’s just local… that’s too small to worry about… that’s not worth considering… that rate of change will never increase…
Blah, blah, blah, and always in the direction that provides rhetorical cover for inaction.
And of course, in human affairs, the question of whose ox got gored–or is projected to be gored–is *always* highly relevant to the prediction of attitudes. A hundred million folks having to move inland isn’t so bad–as long as I don’t know any of them. (And as long as they have the money to pay the rising prices for drier real estate near me.)
A recent press release from the Swiss Academy of Sciences reports that Swiss glaciers have lost one-quarter of their mass over the past decade.
Not polar ice, but still ice.
SE: Swiss glaciers have lost one-quarter of their mass over the past decade.
BPL: God help us all.
Why should she help us? We’ve done less than nothing to help ourselves. We humans have taken the most beautiful planet we know–with a history of billions of years–and trashed it utterly within a few generations. In my opinion, if I believed in a deity, I would say we are more deserving of divine wrath than divine grace.
AFAICT Ray’s got you on theodicy, BPL.
Honestly, the lack of smiting by the made-in-our-image ‘benign’ (sic) deity is proof of absence. I am, however, beginning to see an argument for a malign presence, given how evil is prevailing.
SA: the lack of smiting by the made-in-our-image ‘benign’ (sic) deity is proof of absence. I am, however, beginning to see an argument for a malign presence, given how evil is prevailing.
BPL: In the end, no one gets away with it. God is real, and he prefers good over evil.
I’m 100% with Barton on this.
BPL: Certainly not a “he” which is why I used the words “made in our image”. Many of the most ethical people I know are atheists. Times (London) requires free registration to read (author, PW Anderson):
Imaginary friend, who art in heaven. The Language of God – The God Delusion
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/imaginary-friend-who-art-in-heaven/205859.article
Here’s an open link to the Imaginary Friend PWA article: https://archive.ph/T9dQV
I just read some news articles, about the foolishness on Everest, and about some people who were lost in the US wilderness years ago… some bodies found, some still not. It reminded me of something I tried to write years ago… a simplified (of course) metaphorical take. The part I remember:
“The wind in the mountains is indifferent; it doesn’t care if you respect it or not. But it is generous; it looks into your heart, to see if you really want to get home or not. And it grants your wish.”
But if you do just make it out, you will learn your lesson for the next time. Perhaps that’s how it will work for humans.
BPL,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
How to win an argument on a scientific blog
KW: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . . . How to win an argument on a scientific blog
BPL: I can almost figure out what you’re trying to say here, but not quite.
Zebra,
I’ve met a lot of mountain climbers–including those trekking toward the slopes of Everest and the other Himalayan peaks, and the one thing I am sure of–they never learn their lesson. When they are stuck in a snow cave, surviving on snow melt for a couple of days, they may say, “Never again.” But the next year, they’ll be trying to reach one more summit. Humans have an infinite capacity for denial and a short memory unless it comes to revenge.
Susan Anderson: Here’s an open link to the Imaginary Friend PWA article: https://archive.ph/T9dQV
Thanks for that! Your dad was deep:
But of course the question is, what do we mean by “God” and by “exist”?
Seriously, great stuff, and great detail about Collins’s evolutionary creationism. A clear case of compartmentalization by a respected scientist, AFAICT. Since I’m my own “quote boy” (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/comics-and-cartoons–630433647859387431/):
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
-the White Queen
re Susan Anderson @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/#comment-840575 , & others
“Imaginary Friend” – funny, I went through a phase when I was a teen in which I believed, and actually would sometimes just talk to God in my head. Now (since my early 20s), I don’t tend to believe in the literal supernatural being, although I may think of and invoke them/her/him/it (‘emerimit) figuratively, as a metaphor or symbol of Goodness; I would agree though that the one true God would be a God of love, wisdom, and justice, of truth and beauty (that includes forgiveness). God doesn’t exist (probably), therefore it is up to us to do their work – one could argue that in this act of faith (not faith in a divine reward, but faith that … um … it’s not all futile, I guess?), we bring God into existence, in a way. One’s God can represent/be one’s priorities/values, and while Christianity in balance may not have *ever been as ‘condensed’ as it has been in the last few decades (*it wasn’t Christianity when Jesus was teaching it), MAGA Christians and some other Christians’ have a vaporized, somewhat ionized version, with a false God of power, nationalism, money (for some), in some cases one who would reward genocide – nothing new, really. (Hence the prayer “Jesus, please save me from your followers.” (source?)) Climate science denial is false witness against neighbors. (Thank God, I found a way to bring this back on topic!)
“Many of the most ethical people I know are atheists.” Yes! Eg. (AFAICT):
Kristi Burke ( https://jezebelvibes.com/aboutme )
Rebecca Watson (eg. “How a Nazi Helped the New York Times Smear Zohran Mamdani” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2idYxioi3c )
Is Angela Collier an atheist? I think Derek Muller might be. Etc…
But (ironically) I wouldn’t include Richard Dawkins – I’ve gotten the impression he’s what one would call an “atheist bro” (if I understand the term correctly) ie. an a-hole (alpha-void).
“In a decade you say?
“Pity.”
(Laughing so as not to cry.)
Barry, one takeaway from the Boxing Day Tsunami was the tragic asymmetry of the death toll In coastal Aceh and Sumatra, where , as in the Maldives, norms of dress and modesty translated into fewer girls being taught to swim than boys, The survivors were often simply those able to swim for dear life and reach a tree.
From the eruption of Thera onwards, history is full of cultural survivals by getting out of harm’s way, and cultural adaptations to changing climes: Florida’s Gulf Coast Calusa culture beat the heat by walking north each spring to summer in Georgia’a uplands, and the Maya survived the Late Classic megadrought by retreating uphill.
The Maldives owe their occupation less to climate or geography- an archipelago of a thousand New Yorker desert island cartoons- than the superabundance of cowrie shells that peopled them with traders from as far afield as China and Zanzibar from the time of Thera onward.
Very interesting history, and an obvious solution to all the stuff people keep talking about here.
“history is full of cultural survivals by getting out of harm’s way, and cultural adaptations to changing climes: Florida’s Gulf Coast Calusa culture beat the heat by walking north each spring to summer in Georgia’a uplands, and the Maya survived the Late Classic megadrought by retreating uphill. ”
Imagine a world with a stable population of say 600 million humans, and modern science and technology. No need to walk, even,
That’s an appealing vision, z, no mistake. We won’t see it in our remaining lives, but it’s not so hard to imagine!
Antarctic seep emergence and discovery in the shallow coastal environment – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63404-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-p_FJyoVkc
[keeping on open mind, overall situation with Antarctica is terrible anyways]
“scientists embarked on a comprehensive investigation of the Ross Sea … Utilizing sophisticated ship-based acoustic surveys, remotely operated vehicles, and even divers, they meticulously sampled numerous sites ranging in depth from 16 to 790 ft. The results were startling. They identified over 40 previously undetected methane seeps … many … located in areas that had been repeatedly studied before, indicating a … shift in the region’s methane emissions.”