Sea ice area returns to 1979 level
Based on satellite observations, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center reports that the amount of sea ice on the planet is the highest in 29 years, when satellite record-keeping began.
Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC's Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt.Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979
the latest
latest episodes
It better stay cold so we sea ice again next year.
I guess the cold truth is (ouch), that we really don't know much about this place, do we?
It could also mean that as we keep adding energy to the weather systems through global warming our weather is going to become more violent and more difficult to predict.
Put a bucket of water into the freezer and wait until it's completely frozen. Get it out again, let it melt and measure the time until the last trace of ice has vanished from the surface of the bucket. Put the bucket into the freezer again and wait until the surface has frozen.
Take it out again and rave about how the ice has returned to its previous level...
Still makes Gaia moodswings dangerously unpredictable.
This article carefully ignores the fact that all the global warming models predict that Northern hemisphere ice will decrease, while Southern hemisphere ice will remain constant or even increase for a while. If you look at the original info in Cryosphere Today (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/), you see that Arctic ice still shows a strong downward trend. The Northwest Passage was open this summer for the first time in recorded history.
It only took three comments for someone to blame this on anthropogenic global warming.
I believe we have a record!
Summon the "see, global warming was a LIE!!!!!" tinfoil hat crowd.
Isn't it the multi-year pack ice that we're supposed to watch for? One season's worth of fresh ice isn't going to undo 30 years of damage.
As I asked my friend a couple days ago when he mentioned this to me (he didn't have an answer but one of you might), is this in part be due to the desalinization as freshwater melts into the ocean? (AKA Is this because less salty water is easier to freeze?)
This result is misleading. On the one hand, it seems promising that we will not all boil in a soupy haze or drown in rising oceans. However, my understanding is that the ice in question is what is called "surface ice," which is to say thin ice which melts seasonally. That is insufficient to replace the massive walls of ice - some the size of states - which are dislocating and melting into the sea. I hope I am wrong.
It's over? "An Inconvenient Truth" really did the job quick.
That's it people, WE DID IT! Resume polluting as you see fit, guilt-free!
That plot is global sea ice cover; Arctic ice cover is still well below normal. See the plots at the National Snow and Ice Data Center:
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
"Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC's Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region."
Really, more ice because it's colder? I never would have guessed. These climatologists are brilliant folks!
you mean I don't have to rush to shoot a polar bear?
I blame Bjork
If I'm reading the blue line correctly, it looks like EVERY year since 1979 has ended at the same level. I'm not understanding how this can't be seen as a cycle.
We'll never hear the end of this from the GW deniers...
Interesting note at the end of the article: the reason that there was more ice this year than expected was because there was less snow that expected. So it's hard to tell what model this proves...
Wasn't '79 when they were warning about the coming Ice Age?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttLBqB0qDko
The "conservatives" are going to be all over this one.
Weather, not climate. Don't confuse what you read in your paper that "scientists say that..." with what climatologists are actually saying.
@17: All that hot air oughta melt the ice again.
Um. Mark? That graph doesn't show that the ice is "the highest in 29 years". It shows that the ice is the same as it was 29 years ago.
I do seem to notice a slight downward trend over the past 5 years. Who knows if it's statistically significant.
Actually, the original article is slightly confusing, and the write-up above is completely misleading. Nowhere does it say that there has been a "substantial recovery."
The article is talking about the little red line at the bottom, and is noting that, contrary to some dire predictions, the ice level at the end of 2008 was the same as the ice level at the end of 1979. This is an interesting coincidence, but not surprising: every end-of-year has had ice at about the same level. Some years there has been less ice, and some year there has been more. Note the end of 2002, which had much higher ice levels than today.
So the article was noting that the dire predictions didn't pan out, and was noticing that we happen to be almost the exact same level as 1979, instead of slightly more or less as is usually the case. Aside from the coincidence, there's nothing new that hasn't been known. The "rapid growth spurt" merely refers to the growth between Summer and Winter, which, though faster than most years, looks like it was equal to several on record.
The "substantial recovery" is misleading -- there has been no recovery from this time last year.
So this might be good news?
I'll agree with some of you, especially since I still haven't heard the end of "you guys said Y2K was gonna be a big deal and it wasn't!" Uh...it wasn't a big deal because a.) people did their job and b.) there was a fair amount of hysteria surrounding Y2K. Same here, I suppose, but a much bigger problem.
Please, BoingBoing, don't go down the "it's all a hoax" toilet along with Michael Crichton and El Reg... :(
A few facts. Arctic sea ice extent in 2008 did not recover: it was the second lowest on record. Only 2007 was lower. The current (7 January 2009) Arctic sea ice extent is essentially identical to what it was last year on this date, and well below the 1979-2000 average.
See the National Snow and Ice Data Center for a daily update on Arctic sea ice:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
So, no, the Arctic simply did not see a "substantial recovery" this year. Sorry.
The Y axis doesn't make an ounce of sense. The anomaly "red" part is clear: the red line shows whether global ice levels are above or below the thirty year mean. But the upper two lines? What is the unit? The scale? And why do they seem to be suggesting that we've lost less ice the past two summers than in the previous 30 years? This is in direct opposition to what colleagues of mine who work in the north are telling me.
As Ecologist and SamSam have pointed out, TFA is a complete misrepresentation and/or misunderstanding of what the data actually says. Sadly the myth's now gone round the world whilst we were getting our boots on :(
You know what? Earth's climate is very confusing, and I don't have the time to study it in depth. Perhaps we can hire some people who actually want to spend a lot of their time examining how the Earth's climate works over long periods of time using various different methods, carefully developed over several decades, if not centuries. After awhile, these people can provide us with a consensus that we, as individuals who are too busy doing other stuff could never create on our own. We can then assume, that over time, their consensus, while in detail, will not always prove to be correct, and their data will at times appear to be counter-intuitive, we can be safe to assume that if a large enough body of these people who are spending their time examining something so complex come up with a theory and present it with confidence, we should accept their theory as a possible truth, if not the truth. I wonder if such a system could ever exist?
The morality tale of global warming is finally starting to disappear. It fit the narrative of "man bad, pollute planet" which has a grain of truth, just as "strangers steal children" which lead to scores of bogeyman stories for careless toddlers. This is the "Y2K" Chicken Little story for the yuppie set.
A little late night reading that might amuse:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf
The arrival of global warming was announced in 1988 dramatically by James Hansen, a prominent climatologist. He predicted temperatures would rise by .35 degrees Celsius over the next ten years. The actual increase was .11 degrees Celsius (that's less than 1/10 of a degree folks). After ten years Hansen claimed that the forces which govern climate changes are so poorly understood that long-term prediction is impossible. Quote, "The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change." His prediction was off by over 300 PERCENT, proving that scientists don't know what they're talking about when it comes to predictions in this field.
(James E. Hansen, Makiko Sato, Andrew Lacis, Reto Ruedy, Ina Tegen, and Elaine Matthews, "Climate Forcings in the Industrial Era," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 [October 1998]: 12753-58)
Urshrew, I wish!
But unfortunately, your intrepid group (let's call them "climatologists") will be infiltrated and ultimately shouted down by others with political hay to make (let's call them "global warming researchers", "climate scientists", "meteorologists" and all-around "experts").
Here's NASA's explanation:
Record sea ice growth rates after a record low may sound surprising at first, but it is not completely unexpected. The more ice that survives the summer melt, the less open water there is for new ice to grow. When summertime ice extent hits a record low, on the other hand, large areas of open water provide room for the ice to grow once temperatures cool off enough. While summer warming of the upper ocean surface can cause wintertime sea ice regrowth to lag initially, as the fall season progresses and sunlight weakens, the rate of energy loss from the ocean increases. That heat loss coupled with a large area of open water creates ideal conditions for sea ice to form rapidly over large areas.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/arctic-sea-ice-47121205
This global warming stuff is nonsense. Yesterday was a record low where I live.
Um...a nation that once demanded seperate drinking fountains for people of different skin colors elected a black man to be their leader.
What we're seeing here is overflow from hell.
@32
Yes, you're right. A single instance of low temperature proves thousands of data points over several years, incorrect.
Of course, there is Chapman's response to the Daily Tech article:
"For example, the ice that is presently in the Arctic Ocean is younger and thinner than the ice of the 1980s and 1990s. So Arctic ice volume is now below its long-term average by an even greater amount than is ice extent or area."
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf
If someone is looking for support for their "global warming is a hoax" ideology, the Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois web site is pretty much 100% bummer, Dude.
@29 Wareagle:
1988 - Hansen did one of the first models of global warming, and his numbers turned out to be poor.
1998 - Hansen published a paper saying predictions were not reliable, and identifying what variables need to be quantified to make better ones.
2007 - Hansen said the maximum safe amount of atmospheric CO2 was something like 350 ppm, at least according to Gadget123's link.
This really proves scientists have no idea what they're talking about? It looks like it proves they learn more over time.
@27 --- yep, something very like that could exist. It is called the IPCC, and it is simply the largest scientific collaboration in the history of the world. Largest. Collaboration. In history. This is serious stuff.
@30 --- Don't you think it's pretty obvious where the political motivations are to be found? It's not within legitimate climate science.
@29 --- I hate to disabuse you, but this is how science works. Hansen made his prediction in 1988. The 1998 paper you cite takes a hard look at the factors that make predictions of climate difficult, and concluded that resolving uncertainties was the most important task facing climate science at that point. Fast-forward another decade to 2007 (Science 316:709) and he compares changes in global mean land and ocean temperatures with IPCC projections since 1990. The conclusion? "Previous projections, as summarized by the IPCC, have not exaggerated, and may in some respects even have underestimated the change..."
Far from proving that scientists "don't know what they are talking about", the history you cite parts of shows exactly that they do know what they are talking about, and are constantly trying to improve that knowledge.
@32 --- The cold temperature yesterday was weather, not climate.
Just to note that this is sea ice, which means that it has virtually no bearing on sea-level. It's the ice on land that will melt into the sea and have an affect of the ocean volume.
Also, just because the sea ice has increased at one point in time does not mean that the overall trends are the same. This is climate we're dealing with - a protracted process that cares very little of our inconsequential human time-frame.
@25 by Chorske
The Y axis is global sea ice in millions of square kilometers. Blue line is day to day number, 15 to 23 million sq. km. or so. Gray curve is the cyclical average over the years. Red is the difference between the two. All plotted on the same scale.
As far as the quality of the data, it may be interesting, but since it is global, it adds arctic ice and antarctic ice, which I'd expect are somewhat out of phase, and may well be hiding effects that might be apparent when taken separately. It's sort of like adding sine(x) with sine(180+x) and saying it's all constant.
hmmm. I'm sorry, but my attempts to relate my comment just above to previous comments has exhibited epic failure.
@27 should be @30 (Urshrew)
@30 should be @33 (Unusual suspect)
@29 should be @32 (Wareagle)
@32 should be @35 (Jimbuck)
If I knew how to fix this in my comment, I would. Sorry to those who are wondering "huh?" at my comment.
Is anyone else growing weary of this Us vs Them mentality when it comes to climate change? When else, in the entirety of recorded human history, can you find so much vitriol and so much politically loaded off-message tripe being slung around whenever it comes to simply examining and reporting facts and data about a subject as seemingly benign as the weather of the planet?
Analogies to previous Us vs Them scientific debacles don't really apply here, because in order to have those arguments you have to have conclusive data. This isn't a Round Earth vs Flat Earth argument, nor is it an Earth revolves around the Sun vs. Sun revolves around the Earth type argument, because in both those cases science could perform an experiment which would unequivocally prove one side correct.
Analogies to religious fervor are particularly poignant, because, quite simply the opposite of what Al Gore stated, the debate is not over. We don't really know what drives the climate of the earth to change, stabilize, super cool or super heat.. If we could accurately explain what caused previous Ice Ages we might be in a position to argue cogently about Global Warming.. but we can't on either front.
What people need to take from the argument is not that its a do or die situation (clearly, 3 years on from The Movie and we're all still in the same relative boat) but that there IS an argument. No matter how many times someone tells you there is no argument, you should look at all the arguing going on and decide for yourself. No matter how many times someone tells you that all the people who are arguing for the 'other side' are shills, delusional, 'not real scientists' you should investigate for yourself, look at the credentials, even the actual arguments, and decide for yourself whether or not this thing is settled.
@ Church:
Not sure about 1979, but, beginning in the 17th century and continuing through the 19th, there were small cooling events known as the Little Ice Age. It seems quite likely that we me have reversed the re-glaciation that was imminent due to the planet's relationship with the sun. You know, those "natural cycles" people are always talking about - the Milankovich Cycles.
The numbers attached to the comments change.
There's more than one reason for this but the most common one is that when an anonymously submitted comment is approved by a moderator, it gets inserted at the time submitted, not the time approved, bumping all comments made in the meantime downwards. Time zone reconciliations do it too, I think.
I point this out fairly frequently, but people insist on using the numbers anyway, so any BoingBoing conversation older than a day or so has b0rked internal referents and can't be properly threaded.
Refer to the person or what they said and leave off the numbers, people, or you might end up agreeing with some moron you despise, or arguing with someone you agree with.
--Charlie, vox clamatio boingi
Come on, Boingboingers, do a little critical thinking about the graph for yourselves. For example, notice the blue line has two dips each year - a deep one for the Southern Hemisphere summer, and a shallower dip for the Northern Hemisphere summer. So clearly, the seasonal cycle in the antarctic dominates that in the arctic Now, also note that in the last few years, the Northern hemisphere summer dip has steadily dropped further and further away from the grey line (which just repeats the average cycle over the entire period). That's a clear trend: at the beginning of the graph, the northern hemisphere summer melt was hardly discernable. By the end of the graph, it's starting to approach the depth of the southern hemisphere melt. You can see this in the red line too (showing daily anomalies), which spends much more of its time well below the average in the last few years.
Forget what any journalist tells you, and concentrate on what the data itself shows.
Now add some domain knowledge. Sea ice formation is a non-linear system. You can pump additional energy into the system, and it will still exhibit a stable seasonal pattern, until you reach a tipping point, when it will flip to a new state. This is because the seasonal variation currently dominates the warming signal, but cannot do so forever. For example, single season ice is much thinner and melts much more easily than multiple year ice. If the ocean is steadily absorbing more energy that it used to, it will eventually reach a point when the seasonal variation can no longer do it's job of re-icing each fall. Oh, and dark sea water has a dramatically lower albedo than sea ice. So expect a positive feedback loop to accelerate it through the tipping point, as less sunlight is reflected back into space. Most experts now put the tipping point about 5-10 years away (which is a dramatic shortening from the predictions they were making just a few years ago - this wasn't supposed to happen for another century according to the best climate models).
There is no comfort to be found in this data.
ecologist,
Numbers change as anonymous comment are approved and move into queue.
@Rampant #44:
I assume you've seen this.
There's some hope. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was finally agreed upon on 16 September 1987 and now there appears to be an ozone recovery in progress.
No doubt there are still many who doubt the need for the ozone protection measures put into place, and maybe even they are right.
But it's most likely that international action based on good science made the ozone improvement. It will probably also work for global warming.
#44 - Good points and I wish there were more rational discussions of the mere facts of science and data. However, it really isn't hard to understand "Why the vitriol." That is, if the Global Warmers prevail, the economy will tank and there will be untold suffering, loss of income, way of life, etc. etc. We are seeing this already with taxes on "carbon" and enforced shortage-mentality, banning of products from cars to plasma TVs, and so on. The current generation is not being taught to "boldly go" but to not flush and don't drive and lower expectations. A pity. If the debunkers win, the planet bakes or freezes and we all die. Since the warming believers are saying "We must act now, the debate is over!" then what alternative is there but to try to shut the other side out of the conversation, as Al Gore has been advocating?
izzat spozed to be "clamatis" ? or does boingi change it?
It will be thin ice that won't last. The important measure is how much thick ice is present, it can withstand decades of summer warming.
The interesting part about that graph is the oscillations are obviously getting larger. However, it seems like a pretty small data set: 30 years.
This Michael Asher gentleman and I use that term loosely, took a single graph from the website, which is presenting different trend lines (significantly downward in the case of the Northern Hemisphere, and slightly upward in the case of the Southern Hemisphere). His case is rather weak.
He writes consistently against global warming. I couldn't discover any affiliations or credentials, big surprise there. His mix up of other data is often subsequently used and misrepresented by conservatives.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/11/72959/3572
That is, if the Global Warmers prevail, the economy will tank and there will be untold suffering, loss of income, way of life, etc. etc.
Yes we should discard the work of honest scientists based on fact-free ideological ranting like this.
Zinjanthropus: Think carefully about the statement "fact free ideological ranting" before you throw it around like a weapon.
#43 Ecologist
I think that was the point I was trying to make. Thanks.
#44: That is, if the Global Warmers prevail, the economy will tank and there will be untold suffering, loss of income, way of life, etc. etc.
Well, this assertion also needs some serious critical scrutiny. Many of the prescriptions for mitigating climate change are more likely to provide to a massive econonmic stimulus. E.g. massive investment in building a renewable energy infrastructure, a smart energy grid, a new public transport network (think: high speed trains across north america!); huge effort to retrofit buildings for energy efficiency, etc. etc. Okay, so maybe it's a bit too Keynesian for many Republicans, but that's an ideological argument not a scientific one. Either way, untold suffering it ain't.
#55 and #58
I was trying to describe both sides position, not support either one. That is, to answer #44's question as to "why the vitriol?" Which is that from both sides, the "other side" looks to produce massive, destructive, and unwanted change. Since "debate is closed" we are down to shouting one another down, to prevent either economic disruptive reorganization for no reason (side a) or death by climate change (side b.) To both sides, the issue seems dire, and one side says we must decide now, soon, immediately, no more talk! So we punt the decision to politicians, not scientists. And we share our distrust of politicians, I believe.
As the linked article is inconsistent with the conclusion of the Polar Research Group from the University of Illinois, it'd be real sweet of Mark to include an update to this entry that reflects how wrong the Daily Tech article is. (see Gadget123's comment currently at #32 or go to http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf for the teams response to the article).
My two cents: If one values science at all they would go to the source, in this case an interest in accuracy should have led you to the the PRG's site where you could analyze the various graphs and model output yourself. A real hardcore type would have gone to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (the PRG's data source) or at least read the Climate Diagnostic Bulletin which this data is a very small part of. Just my two cents though.
Did you know that ice levels were up 500% for the year ending 1979?
If these trends continue... Heyyyyyyyyyyy!
That's nice about the sea ice. Now let's artificially raise gas prices to $2.50 a gallon and pocket the rest for Detroit, Larry Flynt or some worthy and troubled sectors.
"If the debunkers win, the planet bakes or freezes and we all die."
No, we aren't all gonna die, at least not everyone. However things will get very very bad and many millions of people will die around the world. For the UK it'll probably be a wash. The Atlantic conveyor will stop delivering warm water but the warming climate will counter that to some extent. Iceland will become a tropical island by the time it's over. For the US, oh... it will get very bad indeed.
This is the sixth great extinction and it seems like everyone wants to make Charlie's list. Welcome! Come on in, there's plenty of room!
#59, the whole thing is just an incomprehensible charade. Three years after An Inc. Truth and we haven't drowned yet, or been battered by endless hurricanes, tornadoes. Polar bears haven't swum up to our doorsteps.. Nothing much at all has really changed. A few scientists have measured some things and either pronounced their results as indicative of calamity yet to be seen, or as reassuringly benign signs of a planet naturally cycling. One side has been predictably lauded, the other side denounced as "denialists" or what have you.
Meanwhile I'm 10,000x more worried about these "little earthquakes" happening in a localized region of Yellowstone. Here's an Inconvenient Truth for you, one truly BIG volcano erupting will unquestionably kill almost all of us in a very short time. Where's the uproar over that imminent danger? Where's the hand wringing and global policy initiatives for that?
Palindromic - I don't recall hearing that the full impact of climate change would be upon us within three years of the release of "An Inconvenient Truth". I do recall each of the IPCC's technical reports outlining scenarios that have timelines of regional/global impacts of human-sourced forcing have an increasing influence. Perhaps you should view these reports and consider updating your opinion to reflect current understanding.
Though you are free to be as concerned about whatever you wish, there appears to be a lack of similar respect on your part for what a significant number of this planets population are concerned about. To help you understand why there isn't an uproar over Yellowstone outside of the conspiracy theorist circles, I refer you to the current state of monitoring and fairly capable predictive abilities we have. It also might help you to realize that while there is something we can do about our influence on global and micro-climates, there isn't a whole lot we can currently do about preventing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Pragmatic solutions reducince impact on a well defined and empirically proven problem tends to be of much more value than hysterical worry over an unsubstantiated problem we can do nothing about.
"Pragmatic solutions reducince impact on a well defined and empirically proven problem tends to be of much more value than hysterical worry over an unsubstantiated problem we can do nothing about."
If only you could hear yourself.
Are you serious palindromic? My sarcasm meter must be broke because I thought I heard you say GW must all be a hoax because in three years time not much has happened. Wow!
"If only you could hear yourself."
The shorter version would be: Stop worrying over crap you can't do a damn thing about. Do something about a real problem that you have some control over.
I see BoingBoing is not immune to what happens on the internet when you mention the weather.
But yeah, global sea ice isn't really relevant to anything much. Me, I'd look at glaciers.
I'm rooting for the giant alligator.
Aren't we globally in La Niña now? Couldn't that have a lot to do with a skinny bit of sea ice and some cold snaps?
http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/globalmwp.php
There is an interesting collection of notes on variability and the Mediaeval Warm Period, here.
Has anyone picked up a copy of the 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac? It has a really good article regarding "global warming" and climate change and it discusses two of the largest influences on our climate that are rarely discussed: the Solar Cycle and the Oceans.
I suggest it for reading. It doesn't say that man is totally responsible (Man may be for a small portion), but it doesn't lay all the blame on Man like Al Gore and politicized groups like the IPCC.
What bothers me more about the whole climate change scenario is ridiculous schemes to classify CO2 (a naturally occurring compound) a pollutant (Washington DC and the United Nations bldg. would be considered a wasteland for all the CO2 discharged there) and carbon credit scam.
So if CO2 was classified as a pollutant, then even our bodies exhaling would be considered as dangerous a polluter as cars. What if it was taken to the extent that we were able to reduce CO2 levels drastically to stop global warming, only to starve trees and plants, thereby reducing our oxygen levels? Just as much as Man may have caused some unintended consequences, we have to stop and think about what we do further may have more disastrous unintended consequences.
Our way of life (if we really can call it that anymore) has evolved since the beginning of time, whether the Earth experiences climate change or not, our way of living will evolve, for better or worse.
I think that many of us, including myself, are afraid that if we don't do "something" about climate change, we'll have to give up our technology, which has made life so much easier (and even more difficult at the same time). I'm sure there are those that would disagree, but that's from one's own perspective.
Please forgive my ramblings...
Maybe, just maybe the worldwide economy has tanked fast enough to make a real change on the planet. One can hope that some good comes from this ill economy...
This is both wrong and misleading.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html), the current level of sea ice is still well below the 1979-2000 average, and pretty much on par with the level at this time in 2006/07.
"One can hope that some good comes from this ill economy..."
Sadly, no. During good economic times a lot of particulates get thrown into the atmosphere. People drive more, factories produce more, power plants work harder. The soot and other particles tend to mask the effects of global warming. So I would expect that about six months after a significant economic downturn we'll see a rebound in warming, which may be a silver lining in itself.
Google "Broken Angels." Apparently linking is verbotten.
Can the original post by Mark be corrected?
It's been pointed out by several people in this thread that the line "the amount of sea ice on the planet is the highest in 29 years" is flat-out wrong, and is not remotely supported by the graph nor even the article that was linked.
I can see how a very cursory skim of the article might lead someone to post that, but a second look might normally lead an editor to cross that out...
I know most people on this thread have understood this fact by now, but who reads the entire thread? It's this kind of bad understanding of data that makes the web's echo-chamber much worse than it need be, and (as someone quoted above) lets these stupid misrepresentations go around the world before the truth can get it's boots on.
Where is the cost/benefit analysis? If we spend a trillion dollars in resources to reduce CO2 emissions, are we going to get a trillion dollars back in benefits? Who is doing this study and what does it say?
Is global warming even the most pressing of all of the world's problems? How about malaria, malnutrition, clean water, HIV?
Tamino at Open Mind - a statistical look at climate change - rips this myth to shreds with some cold hard maths.
The data is pretty damn obvious, and you'd have to be an idiot to mischaraterise it to present evidence against a strong trend of decreasing global ice extent.
There's a lot of things in life that I don't understand, but society's desire to believe the utter nonsense of global warming is probably the one that mystifies me the most these days. And it is absolutely borne out of desire to believe it, because there is no other reason to do so.
At least don't assume the NW Passage hasn't been navigable in the past. This from Wikipedia:
"Sought by explorers for centuries as a possible trade route, [the Northwest Passage] was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. The Arctic pack ice prevents regular marine shipping throughout the year, but climate change is reducing the pack ice, and this Arctic shrinkage may eventually make the waterways more navigable. However, the contested sovereignty claims over the waters may complicate future shipping through the region: The Canadian government considers the Northwestern Passages part of Canadian Internal Waters,[4] but various countries maintain they are an international strait or transit passage, allowing free and unencumbered passage." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama