Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "Study warns Arctic could be sea ice-free by the 2030s" video.

  1. As regards the melting of Arctic Ice, the records nearly always seem to start in 1979. Strange that, considering it was a year of record extent for Arctic Ice. Even so, data from NOAA (2022 Arctic Report Card) show winter (March) ice coverage has hardly changed since '79, and that the summer (September) coverage trend had stopped declining since 2007. How inconvenient! Didn't someone predict in 2007 Arctic ice free by 2010, or 2015, or 2013, or in 5 years? Or was it in 2008 the Arctic ice sheet would melt away. Also predicted in 2008 North Pole ice free in ... 2008 ... or in 10 years. 2009 prediction: Arctic ice free in 2014. 2012 prediction: snow will be gone by 2020. And 2013 star prediction: Methane catastrophe in 2 years because of ice free Arctic. 2018 prediction: zero chance of permanent ice in Arctic by 2022. The Arctic Ice is still there, and it's stopped shrinking. If you consider global sea ice cover, it was basically flat from 1981 to 2008, rose until 2010, stayed level until 2015, dropped until 2018, and then rebounded almost all the way back to the 1990-2000 average. Nobody predicted theses changes, nor can they explain them. The changes have no relationship to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The climate crisis/emergency/apocalypse is make-believe. Multiyear ice is an unproductive habitat as far as marine organisms are concerned: first year (seasonal) ice over continental shelves is the most productive and this is where the vast majority of polar bears, seals, fish, whales, and sea birds are found. Therefore the decline of extremely thick multiyear ice (>4 years old) could be seen as an unconcerning development with regards to the wildlife in the region, especially since 2-3 year old ice - that can be used as a resting/hunting platform for seals and polar bears - hasn't declined in summer since 2007. In fact, biologically, the Arctic is in good shape with all its regions showing a positive trend in primary productivity over an extended period (2003-2022). This has resulted in more food for seals, walruses, bowhead whales and polar bears, which are hence maintaining or expanding their populations. "Greenland ice sheet mass balance from 1840 through next week." (Mankoff et al., 2021). If you examine Fig.2 on page 5, you will see there would be no correlation with the exponential increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (280ppm to 420ppm) and the change in the annual Mass Balance Sum shown in the paper. Indeed there have been periods of increasing mass of the Greenland ice cap in the 1940's, 70's, 80's and 90's. (Remember CO2 was rising all the time.) More recently Greenland Total Ice Mass Balance rate of loss reached its maximum in 2012 but the trend rate of loss has been diminishing ever since. That's while we've added 500 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere (14% of total human emissions). The average annual loss is 0.005% of the total mass. That's neglible. Come back in 20,000 years. There's no "death spiral" in the region as some people have reported. In fact, there is, I think, no evidence of any crisis/emergency. That is silly nonsense designed to scare people.
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  2. Arctic sea ice is not declining. In September 2022, sea ice reached a minimum extent of 4.87 million square kilometers in the Arctic, and September 2023 was 4.23. Both of these are higher than the extent in 2007, which means the Arctic summer sea ice trend is zero for the past 17 years. It was almost as high as 1995. There is now a 90% probability that climate scientists predictions about the loss of Arctic sea ice are wrong. If the pause in ice loss continues until 2027, it will no longer be explainable by chance (Swart et al, 2015), or indeed human-induced global warming.
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