palmer, you had me scared there. I thought I'd actually said something erroneous!
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."
Interesting that you would link a story with a picture of polar bears walking across the ice. Is that part of the science?
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.
It's even more astonishing that the ice increased from the 1940's through the 1970's. Or maybe not so astonishing:
As usual the current decadal decrease (and current yearly increase) is mostly a function of natural variability.
well thanks for coming back and gracing us with your presence. You can go back to the koolaid forum now. Making any progress over there with your "conservative" solutions to AGW?