From http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014827/posts?page=44#44 (may 2008)
Turns out your "actual scientific experts" were wrong. And from early this year:
I think Gore was a bit bold (for anybody reading, he's predicting the disappearance of the polar ice cap in SUMMER in five years), but I think that every following summer we are going to see a new minimum sea ice extent and volume, or values very close to the minimum, as happened this year.
from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2167349/posts?page=29#29 (jan 2009)
I will gladly admit that I glom onto the opposite in scientific hypotheses than you. And if someone predicts a decrease in ice for 2010, I will read their rationale and look for the koolaid stains. The only guarantee is that one of us will be wrong every year, perhaps it's my turn next year.
As a note, there are some actual scientific experts who expect that Arctic sea ice summer minimum to get close to, or surpass, the 2007 minimum, despite the cool La Nina year conditions thus far. The reason is the marked loss of multi-year ice that happened last year.
and
but I think that every following summer we are going to see a new minimum sea ice extent and volume, or values very close to the minimum, as happened this year.
When I assess that the sea ice minimum extents for 2008 and 2009 have only been surpassed by 2007 (thank you for the illustrative data on that point), then "close to" or "close to the minimum" is hard to construe as an incorrect statement. I'm acquainted with the concept of interannual variability -- as well as the unreliability of short-term predictions for a multidimensional system.
And I'm sure you've read this:
Satellites and Submarines Give the Skinny on Sea Ice Thickness
"To extend the record, Kwok and Drew Rothrock of the University of Washington, Seattle, recently combined the high spatial coverage from satellites with a longer record from Cold War submarines to piece together a history of ice thickness that spans close to 50 years. Analysis of the new record shows that since a peak in 1980, sea ice thickness has declined 53 percent. "It's an astonishing number," Kwok said. The study, published online August 6 in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that the current thinning of Arctic sea ice has actually been going on for quite some time."
as well as
"In 2008, Kwok and colleagues used ICESat to produce an ice thickness map over the entire Arctic basin. Then in July 2009, Kwok and colleagues reported that multiyear 'permanent' ice in the Arctic Ocean has thinned by more than 40 percent since 2004. For the first time, thin seasonal ice has overtaken thick older ice as the dominant type."
If I think this research might have a modicum of truth value to it, am I again guilty of uncritically accepting another estimate that merely suites my biases?
You know what, maybe I am. Unless JPL makes the actual article available for free, I probably won't be able to read the actual paper for a couple of weeks. So I included ClimateDepot.com for this reply. He's good at finding rebuttal articles. Maybe he could post a link to one here to keep us fair and balanced.
"He's intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."