Old Rocks
Diamond Member
Looking back to this summers melt, one can see that the predictions of the 'alarmists' were way off. The melt is far more rapid than even the most alarmist of them suggested.
Climate Change Panel's 2007 Predictions on Arctic Ice Too Optimistic? | Alaska Dispatch
The polar sea has been losing about 10 percent of its permanent ice every decade since 1980, with the 2011 melt season delivering the lowest volume seen during the modern age, and virtually matching the minimum record for the smallest extent set in 2007.
If the current trend continues, some scientists say, the polar ocean could become essentially ice free during summers within a decade or two. That outcome is about 80 years sooner than what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2007.
So what gives? It turns out those IPCC supercomputing climate models, which conjured the once-unthinkable possibility of an ice-free Arctic Ocean by summer of 2100, all fumbled a key calculation. They underestimated just how fast thinning floes could exit south to the Atlantic Ocean where they would melt into slushy oblivion.
Climate Change Panel's 2007 Predictions on Arctic Ice Too Optimistic? | Alaska Dispatch
The polar sea has been losing about 10 percent of its permanent ice every decade since 1980, with the 2011 melt season delivering the lowest volume seen during the modern age, and virtually matching the minimum record for the smallest extent set in 2007.
If the current trend continues, some scientists say, the polar ocean could become essentially ice free during summers within a decade or two. That outcome is about 80 years sooner than what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2007.
So what gives? It turns out those IPCC supercomputing climate models, which conjured the once-unthinkable possibility of an ice-free Arctic Ocean by summer of 2100, all fumbled a key calculation. They underestimated just how fast thinning floes could exit south to the Atlantic Ocean where they would melt into slushy oblivion.