[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Among them will be continued claims of a melting arctic. They will simply rely on reader, or viewer ignorance, and reluctance to double-check the claims. Why not? It's worked in the past.

You're referring to the sceptics, I presume?

[bootlegga]

I haven't read anywhere that the Arctic are ice free all summer long. The oly thing I've seen is that its ice free for a few days. There are predictions for ice free summers in the coming decades, the only question is who do you believe. The ones that say 2013?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

2040?

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories200 ... eaice.html

No matter which way you lean, sea ice shrank more than the average this year too, which indicates on some levels something is happening (warmer sea, air, or some combination of the two).

http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews ... d93d80bfa1

$1:

"While this year's minimum ice extent will probably not reach the record low of 2007, it remains well below normal," the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reports in its latest summary of Arctic ice conditions.

The all-time biggest retreat was recorded in 2007 at 4.13 million square kilometres, and the 2008 retreat fell just short of that record.

[N_Fiddledog]

If you average out for the years, I believe it's 1981 to 2000, the NSIDC uses, you can show a decline in sea ice. I imagine if you average out for the whole 30 year satellite record, which some believe they should, the decline would be a little less. Not much though. It doesn't really matter. The real hysteria concerns about a ten year dump ending in 2007. Without that there's no real cause for concern. There are peer review studies showing the period around the 1930s was warmer in the arctic than the period ending in 2006 (the 2007 melt was an anomaly not necessarily connected to temperature). The ice came back, just as it appears to be doing at present.

This year's regain of ice extent from the satellite record, September minimum of 2007 is about 23% of the ice present at that time, or roughly the size of British Columbia. Don't believe that out of hand though. I just heard it somewhere. Please double-check. I'd like to know for sure if that's correct. At present, just from looking at the graphs, it seems reasonable to me.

[BartSimpson]

The stats I'm really interested in are what funds were budgeted for monitoring sea ice in the Arctic for each of the past 50 years? I imagine and expect we'll find a correlation between funding and alarmist data.

[N_Fiddledog]

They've been racheting up the data manipulation with the coming of Copenhagen.

Here's what NOAA has been up to. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/17/noaas-august-global-record-is-the-result-of-one-data-set/.

Here's how they do it...

$1:

Icecap Note: to enable them to make the case the oceans are warming, NOAA chose to remove satellite input into their global ocean estimation and not make any attempt to operationally use Argo data in the process. This resulted in a jump of 0.2C or more and ‘a new ocean warmth record’ in July. ARGO tells us this is another example of NOAA’s inexplicable decision to corrupt data to support political agendas.

http://www.icecap.us/