betting

North to Alaska

by Gareth June 11, 2009

Interesting times in the Arctic, as spring turns into summer and the sea ice melts towards its summer minimum. Will this year’s minimum be a new record, or will the ice bounce back towards the long term (but still downward) trend? The first scientific forecasts of the season are expected soon from the Sea Ice [...]

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Melt away

by Gareth April 7, 2009

As winter turns to spring and the melt season begins, the Arctic sea ice looks to be primed for another bad summer. Multi-year ice is down to only 10% of the total extent — down from 40% during 1979-2000, and new work on ice thickness suggests that the ice cover is thinner than at any [...]

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Baby, it’s cold outside

by Gareth January 21, 2009

In the make-believe world of Climate Debate Daily, where there are two sides to a great “debate” on the reality of climate change (there aren’t), a great gulf is opening between the opposing teams. Cranks are investing a great deal of (wasted) time and effort into spreading the idea that the world is cooling, while [...]

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Bright future in sales

by Gareth January 10, 2009

iPredict, the NZ-based “prediction market” has offered two new contracts based on global temperatures: will 2009 be warmer than 2008, and will 2009 set a new record for warmest year? TV3 News featured the offerings last night. In iPredict’s market, buying and selling contracts — the equivalent of stock trades in a traditional market — [...]

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Santa’s blues

by Gareth June 28, 2008

What’s a Christmas icon to do, when all the ice at the North Pole disappears in summer? This startling question is posed by the latest flush of media attention to events in the Arctic. First there was a National Geographic story on June 20th speculating that the North Pole would be ice free this summer [...]

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Like takin’ candy from a baby

by Gareth June 12, 2008

Another day, another bet on sea ice. A few days ago, a regular reader of HT emailed to ask me if I could provide some support in a long series of comments to a post at Poneke! about the showing of Swindle. So I did (my contributions start here). And now I have another bet [...]

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Skating away (on the thin ice of a new day)

by Gareth May 2, 2008

A new forecast for this summer’s Arctic sea ice melt suggests that there’s a 60% chance that this year’s minimum will set a new record. Work by researchers at the University of Colorado’s Center for Astrodynamics Research shows that the current ice is much thinner than usual: “The current Arctic ice cover is thinner and [...]

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Here come the warm jets

by Gareth January 16, 2008

Hot Topic has devoted a lot of posts to events in the Arctic over the last northern hemisphere summer. The loss of sea ice was dramatic – there was 25% less ice in September than the previous record, set in 2005. The little graph to the left shows just far off the trend line last [...]

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More ice/less ice

by Gareth September 18, 2007

More on the Arctic melt: the National Snow and Ice Data Centre updates its commentary on this year’s record ice minimum. As of yesterday, the five day moving average of ice was still moving downwards, but slowly. Their comment on the North West Passage is interesting. The main, deep channel of the Northwest Passage (Lancaster [...]

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