By Dr. John Happs ~
One might think that all those failed predictions from so-called “experts” about the disappearance of sea-ice, ice sheets and glaciers, because of rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide connected to (imaginary) catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, would convince politicians and the media that such monotonous messages of climate doom should be ignored.
In 2007, we had palaeontologist Dr. Tim Flannery predicting that global temperature could rise by much more than the IPCC’s prediction of three degrees. He said:
“It could be worse than this – there’s a 10 per cent chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we’re looking at six degrees or so.”
He followed up on this nonsense by predicting that Arctic sea ice would be gone by 2012:
This is the same Tim Flannery, from the self-appointed activist Australian Climate Council, who advises politicians about climate change and weather extremes:
But Flannery isn’t alone when it comes to making silly, failed predictions about global warming and disappearing Arctic sea-ice.
In 2007, Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, predicted an ice-free Arctic Ocean by 2014.
It didn’t happen!
https://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s2117573.htm
2008 was the year of more dire Arctic ice predictions with Dr. Ted Scambos saying:
“There’s a group (of scientists) that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we’ll have an ice-free (summer) Arctic, as soon as that. It’s astounding what’s happened.”
Exactly what happened to astound us, he didn’t say, but we certainly didn’t see vanishing Arctic sea ice:
In 2008, Dr. Julienne Stroeve from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the Arctic seas may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years with Dr. Ian Willis, from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge going even further by questioning the ability of the ice to make a come-back:
“But now it’s so thin that you would have to have an exceptional sequence of cold winters and cold summers in order for it to rebuild.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7461707.stm
In fact, the ice rebuilt without any “exceptional sequences of cold winters and cold summers.”
In 2008, Dr. Mark Serreze, from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said:
“There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment. This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4728737&page=1
Undeterred by the fact that the ice didn’t disappear, Serreze introduced the dreaded “Tipping Point” now widely used by climate alarmists:
“We could very well be in that quick slide downwards in terms of passing a tipping point. It’s tipping now. We’re seeing it happen now.”
Actually, we couldn’t see it and it didn’t tip at all!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7585645.stm
In 2009, Al Gore pointed to the “always wrong” computer models, saying:
“New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in summer as early as 2014 and some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.”
Those “always wrong” computer models were wrong again:
Enter the prince of failed Arctic sea-ice predictions, Dr. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University. He was one of the “experts” who advised the Pope about the environment and global warming.
In 2011, Wadhams said Arctic sea-ice could completely melt away by the summer of 2015, destroying the natural habitat of animals like polar bears. He said:
“The ice that forms over the Arctic sea is shrinking so rapidly that it could vanish altogether in as little as four years’ time…”
It didn’t vanish and polar bears are doing very well:
In 2012, Dr. Paul Beckwith from Ottawa University’s Laboratory for Paleoclimatology and Climatology said:
“In all likelihood, for the first time in at least 3 million years, the ice cap will be completely gone by the end of 2015. Hold on because our weather patterns will be drastically destabilized.”
Completely gone by the end of 2015?
For the first time in at least 3 million years?
Yau et al. (2016) pointed to evidence from the base of the icesheet that showed central Greenland was vegetated 1 million years ago:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X16303405
Christ et al. (2021) also reported evidence of flora and fauna remains at the icesheet base, suggesting that the ice sheet melted and re-formed at least once during the past million years:
The ice cap is still there whilst the weather patterns continue to do what they have always done – change:
https://rabble.ca/environment/urgent-house-speaker-blocking-emergency-debate-massive-arctic-ic/
In 2012, Wadhams predicted that Arctic sea-ice would disappear – again within 4 years.
Ice thickness actually increased in 2013 and 2014 by more than 30%:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice?newsfeed=true
In 2013, Wadhams predicted that, due to the “methane emergency”, Arctic Sea ice would disappear within 2 years.
Wrong again Peter and whatever happened to that methane emergency?
Perhaps Wadhams and other methane/carbon dioxide global warming alarmists need to do a little homework on absorption spectra involving methane, carbon dioxide and water vapour. This might help them:
As Dr. Tom Sheahen points out:
“Worrying about methane emissions is the greatest waste of time in the entire lexicon of global warming fanaticism. Converting methane to CO2 is done by the process of “flaring” — setting fire to the stack gas coming off from an oil well, as is done daily throughout the middle east, where the oil is valued but the CH4 is not…The number ‘Global Warming Potential’ is completely false, a nonsense calculation thought up by the IPCC to drum up more concern beyond just CO2.”
It’s also likely to drum up more research funding for alarmist scientists.
Back to those alarming sea ice predictions.
In 2013, Dr. Paul Beckwith said:
“For the record; I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer.”
Apparently, Beckwith doesn’t seem to know much about Holocene climate history since he went on to say:
“This is abrupt climate change in real-time. Humans have benefitted greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000 years or roughly 400 generations. Not anymore. We now face an angry climate. One that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick and awakened. And now we must deal with the consequences.”
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/03/huge-patches-of-warm-air-over-the-arctic.html
A stable climate for the last 11,000 years? Beckwith and a few other climate alarmists need to do a little homework and find out how the climate has shifted over the last 11,000 years:
So where is that 11,000 year stable climate?
Back to Dr. Peter Wadhams who, undeterred by his successive failures, predicted in 2014 that the Arctic would be ice-free in 2 years.
Wrong again!
In 2016, Wadhams promoted his book, Farewell to Ice, in which he claimed that there was a “greater than even chance” that the North Pole could be ice-free for the first time that year.
Wrong yet again!
In 2016, Dr. Peter Wadhams appeared to forget about his series of failed predictions, offering up another one, saying: “Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice.”
It’s still not ice-free Peter!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-summer-next-year
There are other scientists with vested interests in maintaining climate alarm via their predictions of Arctic ice disappearance.
In 2019, Harvard scientist Dr. James Anderson said:
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.”
Well, here we are in 2023 and so is the Arctic ice.
So how have all those expert predictions worked out now the summer ice melt season in the Arctic has ended? Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reveals the trend, showing that sea ice extent in the Arctic stands at a 12-year high:
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Climate alarmists ignore the fact (perhaps they don’t know) that it is not uncommon for the Arctic to be ice-free, only to bounce back. As far back as 1817, the Royal Society announced:
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated..”
And:
“This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
William Scoresby had noted how Arctic sea ice experienced substantial melting in the years prior to 1817, during 1817 and around 1820. The ice returned in subsequent years only to retreat and rebound again:
http://www.archive.org/stream/arcticgeographye00roya/arcticgeographye00roya_djvu.txt
A British expedition in 1818 reported:
“It has been found that owing to some convulsions of nature, the sea was more open and moiré free from compact ice than in any former voyage they ever made: that several ships actually reached the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, in which no ice whatever was found; that for the first time for 400 years, vessels penetrated to the west coast of Greenland, and that they apprehended no obstacle to their even reaching the pole..”
Greenland’s climate is clearly influenced by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, (AMO) and records show little difference between temperatures from 1920 into the 1940’s to temperatures over the last 20 years. These periods coincide with the warm phase of the AMO whilst a much colder period occurred, coinciding with the cold phase of the AMO:
Historic and more recent records show that Arctic sea ice comes and goes on a regular basis.
Here we see the submarine USS Skate surfaced at an ice-free North Pole on the 17th March, 1959:
Here we see submarines HMS Superb, USS Billfish and USS Sea Devil surfaced at a nearly ice-free North Pole on the 18th May, 1987:
Climate alarmists would have us believe that all the ice on Earth started to disappear after the Industrial Revolution because of the trivial increase in those life-giving emissions of carbon dioxide.
To dispel this myth, Diamond et al. (2021) used paleoclimate data to show there was less Arctic sea ice during the pre-industrial period than in modern times:
Allan et al. (2021) found that Greenland’s sea surface temperatures averaged about 12°C between 9,000 and 5,500 years ago and this is substantially warmer than modern temperatures of around 5°C for the same region:
Arctic sea ice aside, climate alarmists would have us believe that the trivial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is leading to the melting of the Greenland ice cap. They ignore (perhaps they don’t know) that, in 1942, two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightnings ran out of fuel and crash-landed on the Greenland ice cap.
In 1988, one P-38 Lightning was located using steam boring at a depth of 82 metres (82 metres of ice had accumulated in 46 years) and in 2002 the restored P-38 flew again.
Greenland’s ice cap cover varies from year to year with gains and losses shown here:
The 2021-22 Surface Mass Balance (SMB) having added over 100 Gt more than the 1981-2010 average.
Climate alarmists ignore the fact that the Arctic Ocean has been much warmer in the recent past without any assistance from atmospheric carbon dioxide. In addition to previous reports, the US Weather Bureau noted in 1922:
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up. Icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Reports all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic Zone. Expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, while at many points well know glaciers have entirely disappeared.”
Climate alarmists, including politicians, scientists and other vested interest groups deliberately ignore the climate history of the planet whilst demonising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Were Marcus Cicero (106-43 BCE) alive today, he would ask the question: “Cui bono.”
We should ask the same question today: Who benefits – in this case, from unwarranted climate alarm?
The alarmists ignore the fact that carbon dioxide has never driven global temperature at any time over the last 500 million years:
Climate alarmists also ignore the fact that, on the few occasions when atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature have tracked closely, it is rising ocean temperature that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to Henry’s Law:
Climate alarmists choose to ignore the numerous peer-reviewed, published papers that show how increase in temperature precedes rising carbon dioxide levels:
And:
And:
https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers.aspx?referenceid=2769892
The climate alarmist’s position appears to ignore the physics that explains why carbon dioxide is not a principal driver of global warming:
https://docplayer.net/20982822-The-lynching-of-carbon-dioxide-the-innocent-source-of-life.html
They also appear to ignore the more than 1,000 peer-reviewed, published papers that support skeptical arguments against catastrophic anthropogenic global warming:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/1350-peer-reviewed-papers-support-skeptics.2219086/
One would think that climate alarmists, especially those who claim to have a background in climate/paleoclimate, would know about the dramatic temperature swings that have taken place during the Holocene (the last 12,000 years). In fact, the Holocene followed on from a very cold period between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago known as the Younger Dryas named after Dryas octopetala, a pale, yellow wildflower, typically found in cold Arctic environments.
Temperatures dropped dramatically during the Younger Dryas with parts of North America and Europe returning to ice age conditions in less than 100 years. This Younger Dryas cold period ended with an abrupt warming at the start of the Holocene.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Younger-Dryas-climate-interval
Climate alarmists appear to ignore the fact that the relatively recent Little Ice Age (1300-1850) saw global temperatures drop by around 2oC with evidence coming from dendrochronology, ice cores and other proxy paleoclimatic indicators. There are many historic accounts of the human suffering throughout this cold period and there are direct meteorological measurements to support those written accounts.
Crops failed, resulting in widespread famine, disease and death as described by Fagan:
By the end of the 17th century, famine had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland and Estonia.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/01/how-the-little-ice-age-changed-history
During this time, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, covering farms and burying entire villages. The two large glaciers, the Aletsch and Fiescher grew significantly during the Little Ice Age and threatened the village of Fiesch. In 1678, the villagers prayed regularly to stop the glacier advance. Apparently, their prayers were finally answered, but they had to wait until the 19th century and a warming climate.
https://greenerideal.com/news/environment/0815-swiss-glacier-responds-to-prayer/
During the Little Ice Age, pack ice extended southwards well into the Atlantic Ocean with the River Thames, canals and rivers in the Netherlands and France freezing over. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607:
London Frost Fair
There were early snows, violent storms, torrential rain and recurrent flooding reported across Europe and evidence for the Little Ice Age is found in South Africa, South America, New Zealand and Antarctica.
The Earth is now recovering from the Little Ice Age so it is of no surprise that many mountain glaciers have retreated and high mountain passes in the Alps have opened up to reveal artifacts left by people who were once able to travel freely through these passes during much warmer periods.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503309/8-amazing-things-uncovered-melting-glaciers-and-ice
Such artifacts come from several different periods separated by hundreds or thousands of years demonstrating that the ice and snow in those areas have advanced and receded several times over the past 6,000 years. So much for a stable Holocene climate:
Various mechanisms have been proposed for the cause of the Little Ice Age including increased volcanism, reduced solar radiation and changes in atmospheric/ocean circulation. Not surprisingly, no links have been made between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and climate change.
What happened to the climate before the Little Ice Age? Climate alarmists appear to ignore the fact that the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300 AD) enabled the Vikings to colonise Greenland when, by the 1100’s there were around 3,000 settlements. Those Norse settlements collapsed with the last one remaining until around 1550 AD when the local climate became erratic, and then consistently cold:
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/02/study-shows-that-vikings-enjoyed-a-warm-greenland/
There are many peer-reviewed, published papers showing that the Medieval Warm Period was also a global phenomenon with Grove and Switsur providing evidence to show that glaciers retreated globally during the Medieval Warm Period:
Soon and Baliunas have also provided more than ample evidence to show that both the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300) and the Little Ice Age (1300–1850) were global events:
We are left scratching our head about Dr. Paul Beckwith’s claim that we had “11,000 years of a stable climate.”
Margaritelli et al. (2020) studied magnesium/calcium ratios measured on the temperature-sensitive planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber and found a record of a distinct warm phase during the Roman Period. Their data consistently showed the Roman era to be the warmest period of the last 2,000 years.
They concluded that:
“This pronounced warming during the Roman Period is almost consistent with other marine records from the Atlantic Ocean.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67281-2
Climate alarmists typically play down or ignore the Roman Warm Period (250 BC to AD 500) since they need to argue that current global temperatures are unusually high, yet the Roman Warm Period was one of the warmest period of the last 2,000 years. The warmth contributed greatly to the expansion of the Roman Empire. It was warm enough for the Romans who occupied Britain to grow grape vines and make wine in northern England:
A map of England showing where the Roman’s grew wine 2000 years ago, when England had a warmer climate than today. (Manheimer, Journal of Sustainable Development; Vol. 15, No. 5; 2022)
Hannibal was a Carthaginian military commander and one of his most famous achievements in 200 BC was, at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, to march an army, including war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the relatively snow-free Alps into northern Italy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-hannibal-crossed-the-alps-180963671/ Yu et al. (2005) noted that:
“These observations add to the voluminous evidence for the reality and global extent of the millennial-scale oscillation of climate that has alternately produced, not only the Roman Warm Period and Dark Ages Cold Period, but the subsequent Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Modern Warm Period, all without any help from changes in the air’s CO2 content.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018204006273
Climate change has often been linked with the success or downfall of several ancient civilizations and may have been a contributory factor in the demise of the Minoan civilization via a series of unusually strong and long-lasting El Nino events starting around 1450 BC and lasting several centuries.
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age society which flourished from around 2700 to 1450 BC on Crete, Greece. The Minoan civilization slowly declined until it disappeared around 1200 BC as a result of drought conditions that have been identified between 1450 and 1200 BC. Minoans depended on water and agriculture and successive El Nino events brought the Minoans to a state where they could no longer survive.
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/6/525/2010/
The Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred from approximately 10,000 to 6,000 years ago and, where the most reliable proxies are found, it is estimated that the global temperature was up to 3oC higher than today. This led to the rise of agricultural development around the globe along with further growth of human civilization.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379106002393
Greenland ice core data show numerous warm periods over the last 10,000 years when temperatures exceeded those experienced today:
Homo sapiens appeared around 150,000 years ago with the most recent glaciation period starting around 120,000 years ago when substantial ice sheets up to 5 km in depth enveloped much of Europe and North America. The Laurentide ice sheet reached its full extent around 20,000 years ago. This, in itself shows that factors other than human activity have had a dramatic impact on global climate.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/laurentide-ice-sheet-facts-collapse-timeline.html
During this glaciation, the planet experienced periods of abrupt temperature rise over a few decades, followed by periods of cooling over longer periods. Around 11,500 years ago, temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet increased by around 8°C in the space of 40 years. These rapid warming events were described by Danish geoscientist Willi Dansgaard and Swiss geoscientist Hans Oeschger and are called Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/dansgaard-oeschger-cycle
In contrast to the Dansgaard-Oeschger events were lower-frequency cycles known as Bond Cycles that brought extreme cold weather to Europe. According to Mearns there is no evidence linking Bond cycles to carbon dioxide levels, rather those Bond Cycles correlate with cosmogenic 10Be suggesting that variations in solar and terrestrial magnetic field strength are linked to changes in atmospheric circulation and ocean currents. Mearns suggests that:
“The Little Ice Age was not unique and was but one of 10 similar cold events (Bond Cycles) of the Holocene brought about not by orbital geometry and its impacts on insolation but by changes to the solar magnetic field and attendant changes in solar spectrum.”
https://euanmearns.com/bond-cycles-and-the-role-of-the-sun-in-shaping-climate/
So, what were the trigger or triggers that brought about abrupt climate changes during the Holocene? It clearly had nothing to do with atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and more likely to result from any or a combination of solar activity, Earth orbital parameters, planetary conjunctions, Earth’s magnetic field, tectonic activity, cloud cover, volcanicity, terrestrial and oceanic, aerosols, ocean and atmospheric circulation changes.
A number of glaciers are currently retreating whilst some are advancing. There is no evidence to support alarmist claims that modern glacier or Arctic ice retreats are unprecedented or even unusual compared with their states over the last 10,000 years.
A detailed record of Arctic glaciers and ice caps near lakes in Greenland, Alaska, Arctic Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, Svalbard, and the Russian Arctic were examined by glaciologists Larocca and Axford leading to a comprehensive record of their current volume and extent compared to past Holocene periods. Their results showed that past extents and volumes were smaller or absent, clearly pointing to lower temperatures today when compared with previous Holocene temperatures.
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/579/2022/
Petermann glacier advancing and calving
A number of glaciers that exist today were absent for most of the last 10,000 years as O’Regan et al. (2021) point out. The Ryder glacier in Greenland is now advancing over 40 metres per year and the 60 km Petermann glacier didn’t even exist during the Roman Warm Period:
Jostedalsbreen glacier
Winker (2021) reported that Jostedalsbreen, a southern Norway glacier, didn’t exist during the first several thousand years of the Holocene:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-52563-7_3
The notion that the Earth’s climate was stable throughout most of the Holocene is absurd, as is the claim that we are currently experiencing unprecedented global warming. Scientists from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have provided a construction of temperature from tree-rings located in Finnish Lapland pine trees going back to 138 BC. Their reconstruction gave a high-resolution record of temperatures during the Roman and Medieval Warm periods and the Little Ice Age. Their results clearly demonstrate that, despite some temperature up-ticks, a long-term cooling trend is evident for the past two millennia (2,000 years) and they concluded:
“Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1589
Northern Hemisphere snow extent data make nonsense of Dr. David Viner’s memorable quotes in 2000:
“Within a few years, winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting thing.”
And:
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
Another failed prediction:
We should bear in mind that failed predictions from climate models are giving credibility to prophesies from the astrologer’s crystal ball.
Suffice to say, we should ignore predictions of climate doom and remember that 97% of scientists are likely to agree with whoever is funding them.
*****
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
John has published the following books:
Climate Change: A Politicised Storm in a Teacup.
Climate Change: How Politics and Self-Interests Have Debased Science
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Jonathan Caswell
Sun 10/15/2023
This evidence is very hard to ignore, given a reference cited after nearly every paragraph or point made. Too bad the climate prophets don’t keep tabs on their own track records—they aren’t very good, are they?
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Nick Anaxagoras
Thu 09/07/2023
The GHE/CAGW BIG LIE depends on two erroneous assumptions:
1. that near Earth space is cold and w/o GHE Earth would become a 255 K ball of ice
2. Earth’s surface radiates “extra” LWIR energy as a near black body.
Earth is cooler w atmos/GHGs/30% albedo not warmer.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math and badder physics.
Surface cannot upwell/radiate “extra” energy as a BB.
GHE=bogus+CAGW=scam.
Weaponize these rebuttal points and GHE/CAGW are done.
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