Holey Moley Arctic

Anthony Watts has another post up at WUWT protesting the declining ice in the Arctic by pretending that it's not unusual.  At least this time he left off the photo that was proven to be not of a submarine at the north pole in 1959.  He's jumped ahead nearly 30 years to 1987.

Holey Moley - From Neven:

Watts seems to have a renewed interest in the Arctic, now that we won't be seeing back-to-back records after last year's insane record smashing melting season. I prefer to ignore his sh*t, but his timing was so impeccable this time that I had to react: Hole.

If you've not been keeping up with Neven's excellent Arctic Sea Ice blog (eg on the grounds that this year may not be another record low), you're missing out.  As John Abraham wrote in the Guardian recently (my bold italics):

Neven, like many other armchair scientists has little formal training. But, he makes up for that with a doggedness that would impress anyone. While he describes his blog as basically weather reports, many publishing researchers turn to him for a comprehensive view of current conditions. Do you want to know what the short term ice conditions will likely be? Ask Neven. Interested in learning about impacts of current conditions on the atmosphere? Ask Neven.

Not only is he a great resource, but the commenters provide insightful thoughts as well. And very often, they are not in agreement with each other. It is refreshing to see people engage in polite yet candid discussions of various views of our Arctic.

Neven is fact-full and normally doesn't say much about disinformation from deniers, preferring to explore what is happening to Arctic sea ice.  But he is not unaware of Anthony Watts and others like him who are in the climate science denial business.

Go read his latest article.  While Anthony Watts is posting unconvincing BS with his "the holes now are no different", it looks as if there are real holes in the ice opening up near the north pole.  The holes will be considerably bigger (kilometers wide) than the little cracks shown in Anthony's August 1987 photo, which look as if they aren't much more than about 100 m or so in diameter from the photo. (The length of the longest sub in the picture, USS Billfish is 95.02 metres).

Here is Anthony's "evidence":

Credit: Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

The above photo, taken in 1987, is described as:

USS BILLFISH (SSN 676), CDR F. Terry Jones (Jeffrey Gossett), USS SEA DEVIL (SSN 664), CDR Dennis A. Napior (Douglas Shaefer), and HMS SUPERB (S 109), CDR James Collins (Don Stephens), conducted the first multi-national 3-ship rendezvous at the North Pole

North Pole not so trivial trivia

Incidentally, 1987 was the year that Australian Dick Smith became the first person to fly a helicopter over the North Pole!

And some more interesting bits of non-trivial trivia that I came across while researching this.  Who was the first person to reach the North Pole and when?  More on that here.  And how easy was it to get to the North Pole back in 1988?  What about trying on a sailboard?  Does anyone know if Stéphane Peyron made it? He did cross the Atlantic on a wind-surfer. Back in 1988 (glasnost era) a joint Canadian-Russian group tried crossing the Arctic on skiis to promote international cooperation, and they made it!

This article gives a thumbnail sketch of the Arctic with some historical context.

From 1958 to to 1987 to 2010

As for Anthony's wrong then corrected then repeated but uncorrected claim relating to a photo he wrongly attributes to a submarine surfacing at the North Pole in 1959.  While the Skate did surface at the North Pole in March 1959, Anthony's photo was not of that event.  Nor does it signal that ice cover today is anything like what it was back then.

Here is a comparison of Arctic seasonal sea ice extent over the years from 1900 to 2010. Click the image for a larger version.

Source: Cryosphere Today

1958 - First sub go under the North Pole (reportedly)

And here's an article about the first ever submarine to travel under the North Pole - or perhaps to admit to it.  The Nautilus.  In August 1958. But it didn't surface there.  Here is a paragraph:

The submarine traveled at a depth of about 500 feet, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 10 to 50 feet, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. At 11:15 p.m. EDT on August 3, 1958, Commander Anderson announced to his crew: "For the world, our country, and the Navy--the North Pole." The Nautilus passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing. The submarine next surfaced in the Greenland Sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland on August 5. Two days later, it ended its historic journey at Iceland. For the command during the historic journey, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decorated Anderson with the Legion of Merit.

Here is the New York Times reporting the same journey.  Some relevant extracts:

He recounted briefly how the Nautilus had cruised submerged on a northerly course past the Aleutian Islands and through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia toward the brittle fringe of the ice pack and then beneath it.

Above the Nautilus the covering icecap was plainly visible over the vessel's closed-circuit television, the sixth months period of Arctic daylight making visibility no problem. Now and then great holes appeared in the icecap but the Nautilus sped on....

...Commander Anderson indicated a distinct lack of curiosity about the precise make up an penetration of the icecap below the surface of the sea. It ranged in thickness from ten to fifteen feet and loses about three feet of its winter depth in summer. But pressures caused by wind and tide, sent it to a depth of fifty feet in unchartered places and these were well above the submarine, he explained....

...A humorous note crept into the recitation as Commander Anderson gave the first public definition of what he called "longitudinal roulette," a passtime not to be indulged in while traversing the arctic sea for the first time in a submarine.

"A trip across the North Pole, where there is no opportunity to observe anything outside of the ship, no opportunity to observe stars or do any type of electronic navigation, presents a very formidable problem- or what has been up to now a very formidable problem," the skipper explained.

"For example, it would be possible for a ship equipped with conventional navigation equipment to become so confused at the North Pole that they might actually work themselves around in a slow circle, thinking that they were going in a straight line, and end up coming into perhaps the ice-locked coast off Greenland, or even more disappointing, back where they came from."

I doubt Commander Anderson would have imagined back then that not much more than sixty years later, the Arctic would not only be able to be traversed by submarines, there would be commercial shipping routes opening up - without ice-breakers or with only occasional help from them.

From the Wall Street Journal, ships transporting oil and gas through the Arctic, which is quite a worry, given the huge risks posed by commercial shipping in the Arctic, from Seatrade Global.

Now go and check out Neven's excellent blog for the latest on the Arctic sea ice.

They predicted 2030 was going to come and it hasn't yet! sez Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is gloating.  The scientists are all wrong.  They said 2030 would happen and it still hasn't arrived.  That proves that AGW isn't happening!

To be fair to scientists, I don't think any scientist actually said that 2030 would arrive before 2013.  Not one of them predicted that 2030 would arrive any time before 2029.  Or at least not that I can find.  Not a single one of them, I'll be willing to bet, thinks 2030 will arrive even one day before 31 December 2029.  Still, the fact that 2030 hasn't arrived yet despite the scientists' predictions that 2030 was on the cards to happen some time this century proves that climate science is a hoax, surely!

The background to the startling news that 2030 hasn't happened yet!

Today Anthony Watts posted an update to his Sea Ice News.  He is positively gloating that the most extreme predictions about Arctic summer ice decline haven't (yet) come to pass.  He dug out a BBC article from 2007, and  pronounced that a prediction of Arctic Ice made by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval PostGraduate School in Monterey, that the Arctic might be free of ice this year (2013) isn't likely.  I'd say he's right about that.

When Nick Stokes points out that in 2011 Professor Wieslaw revised his prediction.  Anthony replies:

REPLY: Right, moving of the goalposts, a typical tactic. Now it’s a vague “end of the decade” while others are saying 2030, 2040, 2050, etc. The point here is that none of these self proclaimed expert prognosticators has a clue. – Anthony

So Nick comes back and says the scientists aren't claiming to prognosticate:

August 18, 2013 at 3:03 pm I think they are just saying they are not in a position to expertly prognosticate. Here’s what Walt Meier said: "[Maslowski's] is quite a good model, one thing it has is really high resolution, it can capture details that are lost in global climate models,” he said. “But 2019 is only eight years away; there’s been modelling showing that [likely dates are around] 2040/50, and I’d still lean towards that. “I’d be very surprised if it’s 2013 – I wouldn’t be totally surprised if it’s 2019."

Doesn’t sound like a claim to prognostication.

Defending the indefensible - 2030 still hasn't come despite the prediction that it will

Anthony decides to proclaim that scientists don't know nuffin' and says he's going to go to sleep now.  He quotes from a NASA press release, in which Dr Serreze suggest that the Arctic might be free of ice in summer by 2030 and complains that it hasn't happened yet :

REPLY: Ah Racehorse Stokes, defender of the indefensible, purveyor of FUD. Nobody knows, nobody has a good handle on it, and even with the “good models” that purport to prognosticate what Earth’s complex systems will do, they are still reduced to guessing. 2012 2013? 2019? 2030?

“We may well see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes. The scientists agree that this could occur by 2030. Serreze concluded, “The implications for global climate, as well as Arctic animals and people, are disturbing.”

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html

Wake me up when something one of these guys predicts comes true. Not one of these alarming media tailored claims of disappearance of Arctic sea ice has come true yet. – Anthony

That's true.  Most of these "alarming media tailored claims" have been projecting the summer ice will disappear by 2050, or maybe 2030 and that hasn't "come true yet".  Anthony is just so impatient!

Do you think that means he is going to shut down WUWT and go to sleep until 2030?  No?

Indefensible WUWT - doesn't have a clue

Speaking of indefensible, here are some of the nutty ideas that Anthony Watts promotes.  What do you reckon is more defensible?  A prognostication that the Arctic will be "virtually ice free summer" in ten, twenty or thirty years from now?  Or that we're heading into an ice age?

July 15 2013: Newsbytes: Sun’s Bizarre Activity May Trigger Another Little Ice Age (Or Not)
Anthony Watts promotes Benny Peiser's notion that we're heading for an ice age

June 17 2013: Russian Scientists say period of global cooling ahead due to changes in the sun
Anthony Watts promotes a spin misattributed to the Pulkovo Observatory that we're heading for an ice age.

December 29 2008: Don Easterbrook’s AGU paper on potential global cooling
Anthony Watts writes: Don sent me his AGU paper for publication and discussion here on WUWT, and I’m happy to oblige – Anthony  Here is what Denier Don predicted back in 2008:

In 1998 when I first predicted a 30-year cooling trend during the first part of this century, I used a very conservative estimate for the depth of cooling, i.e., the 30-years of global cooling that we experienced from ~1945 to 1977. However, also likely are several other possibilities (1) the much deeper cooling that occurred during the 1880 to ~1915 cool period, (2) the still deeper cooling that took place from about 1790 to 1820 during the Dalton sunspot minimum, and (3) the drastic cooling that occurred from 1650 to 1700 during the Maunder sunspot minimum.

The sun’s recent behavior suggests we are likely heading for a deeper global cooling than the 1945-1977 cool period and ought to be looking ahead to cope with it.

Here is Don's prognostication of a "deeper cooling".

Here is the same prediction using GISTemp:

Data Sources: NASA and WUWT

And what about Anthony promoting David Archibald's prognostications?  Here is what David Archibald prognosticates:

If you think Don Easterbrook and David Archibald make crazy predictions, how about this next one.  It is from someone whose opinions Anthony Watts promotes on his blog.  Pierre Gosselin predicted this in 2008 in a comment on WUWT:

There are many more where that came from.  Here are a heap from WUWT in 2008, a year after the 2007 prediction that Anthony is scoffing at.

When will 2030 arrive?  Are we there yet?  

And Anthony thinks the scientists "don't have a clue"!  At least the scientists are going with the flow when it comes to Arctic sea ice.  Unlike the science deniers at WUWT, mainstream scientists are not predicting a sudden plunge into an ice age. Take a look at the minimum Arctic sea ice volume decline over recent decades and speculate yourself which summer will be the first with virtually no sea ice:

Data Source: PIOMAS

You can place your bets here now - no money to change hands though, sorry.  I don't have a betting license.

Anthony Watts: Arctic Ice comes back in Fall and Winter

Climate science deniers do come up with doozies.  I've already posted one from a WUWT commenter.  Here is one from Anthony Watts himself, owner of the anti-science blog WUWT:

Of course one only has to look at the WUWT Sea Ice page to note that sea ice disappears every summer, and comes back in the fall and winter.

It gets cold in winter?  Surely not.

Source: Cryosphere Today

As for the sea ice disappearing in summer, it didn't always disappear.

Here's an animation comparing the 1980s in the Arctic in mid August to the same date this century, from Cryosphere Today.





Maybe Anthony is saying that that to prepare his readers for the fact summer ice will soon all disappear from the Arctic.  Or is he pretending it's not been disappearing as fast as this:

And this:

Videos from Andy Lee Robinson.

Flashback to 1972 - Scientists Fear for Arctic Sea Ice

The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995) Wednesday 2 February 1972

Scientists fear for Arctic Sea ice 

Scientists fear that man, voluntarily or accidentally, may melt the Arctic Sea ice, leading to irreversible climatic changes.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says in its latest bulletin that a group of 30 scientists from 14 countries have called for an international agreement concerning experimentation in the Arctic. The group met at the Study of Man's Impact on Climate held recently in Stockholm.

A report issued after the study singled out the Arctic ice as the feature on the earth's surface most sensitive to man-made changes. Once melting began in this area it was unlikely that it would stop, the report said. 

Several proposals had already been made to eliminate the ice, one suggestion being to spread soot or black dust on the frozen sea to absorb the sun's heat and increase melting in the summer and spring.

While these were only suggestions they pointed to the possibility that man could modify the global climate in a very substantial way if he chose to.

The melting would lead to large-scale modification of the climate but it would not affect the level of the ocean, the Unesco bulletin said.

However, if the Greenland icecap melted the sea level would rise 7 metres and a number of coastal cities would be under water.

Even without experimentation there was a possibility that global temperature increases produced by man's injection of heat and carbon dioxide into the environment could greatly reduce or even eliminate the Arctic Sea ice.

Additional reading:

Some background to the Study of Man's Impact on the Environment

Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, June 1972