Six years ago this week, I agreed to a wager with Eli Rabett on the trend in Arctic sea ice extent from 2006-2026. Now we’re more than halfway to the finish line, it’s a good time to check on progress. Here’s how the Sea Ice Extent graph looks from mid 2006 to mid 2022. The trend is still towards less ice, but not by much. There’s no ‘climate emergency tipping point’ visible in the data.
The terms we agreed are detailed in the image of the twitter convo below.
Eli wins the bet if Arctic sea ice extent reduces by more than 0.06 million square km per year over the 2006-2026 period.
Tallbloke wins the bet if Arctic sea ice extent reduces by less than 0.045 million square km per year over the 2006-2026 period.
At the time the wager was agreed the mid 2006 to mid 2016 average rate of loss was 0.072 Mkm/yr. Eli was ‘winning’ when the bet was laid
As things stand now, over the mid 2006 to mid 2022 period, the rate of Arctic sea ice extent reduction is 0.028 Mkm/yr. This is less than half the loss rate Eli needs to win.
Eli needs to start saving up some dollars to honour the bet.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
[…] Gamblers update: Eli Rabett vs Tallbloke on Arctic Sea Ice extent […]
No matter who wins, we all win, these are necessary, self-correcting, repeated many times in history, natural cycles. The low sea ice times are when evaporation and snowfall rebuild sequestered ice on Greenland and in other places on land in and around the Arctic ocean, as it was when the Vikings lived on Greenland.
Once the land ice is rebuilt, it will spread and cause colder, as it did when it finally pushed the Vikings out of Greenland, as more ice pushed into the Gulf Stream, chilled it to the point that it rebuilt the sea ice that it had taken away. The little ice age years followed that warm period as ice pushed into the Gulf Stream chilled the northern hemisphere for several hundred years.
Now the Arctic Sequestered ice is depleted to the point that it is being rebuilt.
The process of the building and depleting polar sequestered ice must operate with alternating warm and cold periods.
In warm periods, tropical solar energy is carried into the Arctic Ocean to power the powerful ice machine that rebuilds polar sequestered ice.
Cold periods follow as the sequestered ice is pushed into turbulent salt water currents to chill them to form sea ice to silence the great ice machine until more ice is needed.
Ice core records are proof of this, ice accumulation is more than adequate in warmest times and ice accumulation is less than adequate in coldest times.
The ice is always flowing slowly and is thawing and falling off at the edges and tails of ice sheets and glaciers. The ice always depletes in coldest times and always is replenished in warmest times.
This is why there has been alternating warmer and colder periods since tropical currents were diverted into polar regions. There is no equilibrium medium state, temperature always changes rapidly from a frozen to thawed or from a thawed to a frozen state. Cold water from polar regions is always flowing to the tropics and warm water from tropical regions is always flowing to polar regions. The sea ice is removed every time the polar sequestered ice needs rebuilding. There is a thermostat for this, the temperature that sea ice freezes and thaws is the setting for the thermostat.
It is just like the thermostat in your house, if you have extra guests your AC runs more but the temperature stays in bounds.
We have less ice in the Arctic and in ice sheets and glaciers around the northern hemisphere because over the most recent ten thousand years, the orbit has moved the most solar energy to the southern hemisphere. As the sun moves north over the next ten thousand years, the sequestered ice in and around the Arctic will grow as needed as the sun powers the polar ice machines and runs them as much as needed and turns them off with sea ice when adequate ice is pushed into the tropical salt-water currents to chill them to below freezing as in the old hand crank ice cream makers we have used.
If CO2 does or does not cause warming, it will not matter, it does not change the temperature that the sea ice thaws and freezes and will therefore not cause any out of bounds temperatures or sea levels.
However this bet plays out, nature is self-correcting, and nature will win, this warm period will last until enough ice has been sequestered to cause the next little ice age, or similar colder period, as always in the past.
I’m pitching for five Wadhams this equinox
Abundant August Arctic Ice with 2022 Minimum Outlook
Posted 3 Days Ago by Ron Clutz
Over this decade, the Arctic ice minimum has not declined, but since 2007 looks like fluctuations around a plateau.
https://rclutz.com/2022/08/16/abundant-august-arctic-ice-with-2022-minimum-outlook/
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
I bet 100 Quatloos on Tallbloke!!
I struggle to see any actual trend in the data. The first half of the data appears to be pulled down by one very low minimum. The first bit of the second half has a clear dip but then a recovery. Looks more like one bad year – presumably a specific cause – and then a short dip and partial recovery.
Good News For Greta
Posted on August 21, 2022 by tonyheller
Arctic sea ice extent is highest for the date since Greta Thunberg was three years old.
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/08/good-news-for-greta/
The Bad News: Seven times faster than global average.
The Good News: Seven x Zero = Zero.
https://rclutz.com/2022/08/21/arctic-warming-bad-news-good-news/