From JoNova

By Jo Nova

One third of all human emissions has had no effect on the Arctic

Since 2005, humans have emitted one third of all the emissions we’ve ever put out — some 600 billion tons of CO2. Yet the Arctic Sea ice is the same as it was twenty years ago. And even though the modelers cling to the excuse that this is “consistent with simulated internal variability” there was not one model that forecast this would happen.

For twenty years arctic sea ice was the Posterchild of Panic, and on the verge of disappearing forever, while Antarctic Sea ice was invisible. Now the Sea ice at the South Pole is at “a climate tipping point”, and the northern sea-ice is just a surprise.

Even when Sea ice does nothing, it’s dramatic:

As long as the buzzwords are there in the headlines, The Guardian readers may not even realize the scientists were completely, utterly wrong, and all the hand-wringing and tears about the polar bears was just a fundraising

Remember, bad news is due to man-made climate change, but good news is a natural variation, and it’s only temporary. The Prophets of Climate say disaster is just around the corner still.

The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005.   …they said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years.

It’s just how rampant Blob-media bias works, and the Blob-academics are fine with that.

This is what a dramatic surprise looks like:

It’s bad when the trend creeps up on you after doing the same thing for twenty years in a row.

nternal Variability is just the multifunctional excuse

There’s no climate force called “internal variability” — it is not hiding in a submarine trench, or riding a jet stream, it’s just the band-aid excuse modelers use when they should say “we don’t know” and “we were wrong”.

From the paper —  They say the trend will definitely end soon, unless it doesn’t. The Experts are so under-confident now, they are buying another five or ten years of time, just in case the arctic doesn’t start melting soon:

Analysis of ensemble members that simulate analogs of the observed pause indicates that the current slowdown could plausibly persist another five to 10 years, although the chances of a faster‐than‐average decline are increased in the near‐future.

These people don’t even know what evidence is. The think simulations are evidence:

The modeling evidence suggests that internal variability has substantially offset anthropogenically forced sea ice loss in recent decades. Overall, this observed pause in Arctic Sea ice decline is consistent with simulated internal variability superimposed on the long‐term trend according to the bulk of the climate modeling evidence

What they don’t say is that if the world is warming and the ice isn’t melting, then some other mysterious force they don’t understand must be keeping the sea-ice cooler.  It could be solar magnetic forces, changing UV, shifting geothermal heat, cycles in ocean currents, or algal blooms that pump out cloud seeding aerosols. But if the modelers add these in, there might not be any room left to blame CO2.

If we had climate models that knew what those forces were  – they might have seen this coming in 2005 instead of being surprised in 2025.

h/t Kenneth Richards at NoTricksZone, WattsUp, and  Tallbloke.

POST NOTE: Another paper by other modelers who also have no clue…

Kenneth Richards at Notrickszone talks about different paper (Stern et al) who found a flat line in the minimum ice each year from 2007.

The fact that September Arctic SIE shows no trend during 2007–2024 may at first seem hard to explain. The Earth continues to warm, and the Arctic is warming faster than the global average (IPCC, 2021). One possibility is that the recent period of no trend is just interdecadal variability. Baxter et al. (2019) found that “observational and model evidence shows that the changes in summer sea ice since the 2000s reflect a continuous anthropogenically forced melting masked by interdecadal variability of Arctic atmospheric circulation…resulting in the appearance of a slowdown over the past 11 years.”

They spend many paragraphs reviewing all the suggestions that might explain why, but essentially no one knows. It might have something to do with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, the Arctic Dipole, freshwater flushing, positive ice albedo feedback, pre-conditioned sea-ice, old ice,  triggering by the early spring snow melt, and the persistence of a cyclonic mode in the Arctic ocean. It’s a keyword mash of all the permitted variables and none of the solar, geothermal or space weather ones. (Don’t mention the sun).

Stern finish with the required liturgy:

Whatever the reason for the near‐zero trend during 2007–2024, Arctic SIE is predicted to continue declining due to increasing global average air temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Based on global climate models, there is “high confidence that the Arctic Ocean will likely become practically sea ice free in the September mean for the first time…before the year 2050” in all emissions scenarios (Fox‐Kemper et al., 2021).

Whatever is causing this, based on climate models that don’t work, the Arctic sea ice is finished, so there.

REFERENCE

England, M.R., Polvani, L. M., Screen, J., & Chan, A. C. (2025). Minimal Arctic sea ice loss in the last 20 years, consistent with internal climate variability. Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2025GL116175. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL116175

Stern, H. L. (2025). Regime shift in Arctic Ocean sea‐ice extent. Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2024GL114546.

600 billion tons of carbon – OWID cumulative human emissions of CO2

NASA — NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio – Trent L. Schindler, Jefferson Beck  — Wiki

Polar Bear photo: Image by Maximilian from Pixabay