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.
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.
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!
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.
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”.
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.
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).
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
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!
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
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.
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?