The North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Arctic Summer.

[Stephen Wilde]

OOh, look, it didn't happen.

At present it is back within normal range. We are all safe again after all!!!

Arctic sea ice continues rebound « Watts Up With That?

The top chart is the one to look at.

[andykn]

Yet again, you don't post to the actual research, just a very selective interpretation of it and so miss most of the salient points:

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

this year’s annual minimum represented the second-lowest point observed in the satellite record, surpassed only by the 2007 minimum. However, if we look at the total extent of ice lost between the March maximum and the September minimum, 2008 set a new record for total ice loss over an entire melt season

Arctic sea ice and climate are behaving in ways not seen before in the satellite record—both in the rate and extent of ice loss during the spring and summer, and in the record ice growth rates and increased Arctic air heating during the fall and winter

It's not called climate change for nothing.

[Stephen Wilde]

Different sources, different emphasis. So much for 'consensus'.

We are within normal range of variability which your source does not define.

The next couple of seasons will resolve the issue but what is clear is that the hyped up reports of recent times were wholly inappropriate unless we get a bigger summer melt than in 2007 within the next couple of years. Not looking likely on current evidence.

If 2007 does prove to be the maximum melt before a change in trend will you grovel as necessary ?

I take a pragmatic evidence rather than faith based view so I do not anticipate a need for grovelling even if the planet surprises me.

[andykn]

Originally Posted by Stephen Wilde

Different sources, different emphasis. So much for 'consensus'.

The [US] National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC) is a source, "whatsupwiththat.com" is not a source. Their source is here:

Total ice area from 1978 to 2007 — Arctic ROOS

Look at the second graph.

We are within normal range of variability which your source does not define.

The next couple of seasons will resolve the issue but what is clear is that the hyped up reports of recent times were wholly inappropriate unless we get a bigger summer melt than in 2007 within the next couple of years. Not looking likely on current evidence.

If 2007 does prove to be the maximum melt before a change in trend will you grovel as necessary ?

Given the long term trend in reducing sea ice, shown by both NSDIC and NOREX, it could be some time. You repeatedly seem to fail to understand that this is about decadal trends, not single year to year stuff. The "next couple of years" will resolve nothing.

I take a pragmatic evidence rather than faith based view so I do not anticipate a need for grovelling even if the planet surprises me.

Your pragmatic view is only of very limited subsets of evidence as misintepreted by others who dislike the idea that their behaviour around the use of resources may have to change.

[andykn]

Originally Posted by Haizum74

Temperatures are falling, not rising
As Christopher Booker says in his review of 2008, temperatures have been dropping in a wholly unpredicted way over the past year. Last winter, the northern hemisphere saw its greatest snow cover since 1966, which in the northern US states and Canada was dubbed the "winter from hell". This winter looks set to be even worse.

Oh dear. Climate change is about decadal trends not one year compared with the last. Last year was still one of the hottest in recent times.

The earth was hotter 1,000 years ago
Evidence from all over the world indicates that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today. Research shows that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

Utterly irrelevant to the unprecedented rate of rise of global temperature over the last few decades. Everyone knows the earth has been hotter, it's just never warmed up so quickly and our economies cannot cope with the effects of such rises continuing over the next few decades

The earth's surface temperature is not at record levels
According to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis of surface air temperature measurements, the meteorological December 2007 to November 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. Their data has also shown that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

That's the US only. Yanks are pathetic enough to think of the US as being the planet, for a Brit to do so is sad.

Ice is not disappearing
Arctic website Crysophere Today reported that Arctic ice volume was 500,000 sq km greater than this time last year. Additionally, Antarctic sea-ice this year reached its highest level since satellite records began in 1979. Polar bear numbers are also at record levels.

Complicated patterns in deep ocean currents mean that the static nature of Antarctic ice in a warming planet was predicted in the 80s. The trend of Arctic ice is decreasing. Note the word "trend" does not mean every single year. The chart you kindly repeat from the other post about sea ice clearly shows a downward trend in Arctic sea ice.

Himalayan glaciers
A report by the UN Environment Program this year claimed that the cause of melting glaciers in the Himalayas was not global warming but the local warming effect of a vast "atmospheric brown cloud" over that region, made up of soot particles from Asia's dramatically increased burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
Temperatures are still dropping
Nasa satellite readings on global temperatures from the University of Alabama show that August was the fourth month this year when temperatures fell below their 30-year average, ie since satellite records began. November 2008 in the USA was only the 39th warmest since records began 113 years ago.

Again, figures carefully selected from one country out of the world are nonsense. Especially when global temps are rising:

File:Instrumental Temperature Record.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia