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Interesting that you would link a story with a picture of polar bears walking across the ice. Is that part of the science?

Sorry. Science Daily didn't have polar bears. I went to the source. JPL added the polar bears, I guess.

It's even more astonishing that the ice increased from the 1940's through the 1970's. Or maybe not so astonishing:

I assume that because sea ice extent was relatively constant up until the 80s, sea ice volume and sea ice thickness probably were, too. It's basically impossible to find out if that's true or not.

The way I see it, either this mostly natural variability, in which case we have about an even chance of it getting cool enough for the ice to add volume over the next few years, or it's being forced primarily in one direction, in which case the odds of continuing to lose ice volume over time are higher than the odds of continuing to add ice volume over time. It certainly won't surprise you to find out that I think this isn't all natural variability and we're headed in the warming direction. I'm sorry if that makes you classify me as a koolaid drinker, but that continues to be how I interpret the scientific results. As I've noted numerous times before, it would be wonderful indeed if the mainstream scientific viewpoint on this issue is wrong. I literally hope that they and I are wrong. But I cannot realistically believe that the science is wrong and that therefore I'm wrong.

However, I will definitely grant the possibility that the Sun is behaving peculiarly, and if that persists, that might cause some interesting effects. I still think that despite a quiet Sun it's possible to set a new global surface temperature record -- this year could seriously test that possibility. Out of curiousity, what do you think that would mean? What would it do to this "decade of cooling" concept that is so skeptically popular?

Can't resist quoting Patrick Michaels at this point: "Michaels pointed out that the surface records show average global temperatures increasing at a steady rate of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade since 1977. He also hastened to put the kibosh on recent assertions that "global warming stopped in 1998." While global average temperatures have been essentially flat since 1998, Michaels argued that natural variations in the climate mask any increases due to greenhouse gases. In particular, cooler waters in the Pacific ("La Nina") and lower solar activity have conspired to drop average global temperatures. When these trends reverse, average global temperatures will rapidly rise to reveal the established long term man-made warming trend of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade." (This was from the International Conference on Climate Change a year ago, as described by Ronald Bailey.)

Is Michaels drinking the koolaid too?

You can go back to the koolaid forum now. Making any progress over there with your "conservative" solutions to AGW?

Forgive me for not having any idea of what you're talking about here.

I'll end on this note:

Source: Cryosphere Today

What's your ‘take’ on the Mann Hockey stick that I think was featured prominently in IPCC AR1 (and has received very little attention since)?

Do you also accept a similar (but not the same as Mann's Hockey stick) the prominent graphic that Algore uses in his movie? (It may be referred to as Dr Thompson's Thermometer graph?)

Source: Cryosphere Today
Post #34

From the graph posted in #34 above, it looks like the trend has turned around ... no?

In any case, this was in the news just today (?):

NOAA Summer Temperature Below Average for U.S.
www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090910_summerstats.html

And, as we all should know, "weather, not climate". Integrate enough of this 'weather' over time, and you have climate.

BTW, how close are we to *any* of the several James Hansen 1998 model 'predictions' due to the continued increase in CO₂?

The worst case? The best case? ???

Has he tropsphere in the troics shown any warming?

Have the poles showed any warming?

Where was it the AGW crowd SAID the signs would show up first? It's been 11 years since 1998 ... we should be able to address some of these points by now ...

Nice hockey stick (cryosphere today graph). Do you know how they derived their hockey stick? Aircraft or ship measurements? Proxies maybe? No, they used a climatological model to derive ice extent measurements using satellite era data.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/arctic.historical.seaice.doc.txt

Sea ice extent data is provided by Kelly, et. al. 1988. The ice extent data is compiled for the months April-August for the majority of the period 1901-1956.

The Kelly 1988 data comes from the Walsh 1978 data

http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_WALSH_CHAPMAN_SEAICE.html

http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g00799_arctic_southern_sea_ice/index.html

1871-1900: A monthly climatology based on Walsh data for 1901-1930 was used, to which spatial variability was added using a 1979-1996 passive microwave bias corrected data set. A climatology based on the passive microwave data defined typical monthly concentrations. Where Walsh data grid cells had concentrations of 100%, and the passive microwave climatology showed concentrations of at least 90%, the climatological concentration was substituted.

1901-1978: Primarily the Walsh data set, with spatial variability added as above. Note that U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) charts weigh heavily in the Walsh data beginning in 1973.

In contrast

Here's some real world measurements from the Russian side of the Arctic taken from published papers explaining those measurements:

Russian historical records of arctic sea-ice extent and thickness extend back to the beginning of the 20th century. There are several distinct periods in the history of Russian sea-ice observations. Occasional ship observations of summer ice edge started in the first decade of the 1900s when the first Russian hydrographic surveys and commercial shipping routes along the Siberian coast began. These data have been analyzed by the Russian climatologist Vize (1944). Some data for this period have also been obtained from Russian navigation books. Starting in 1929, when the Soviet Polar Aircraft Fleet was created, aircraft-based observations began, which improved the quality of the data substantially. However, systematic aircraft and ship observations of sea ice from the Kara Sea through the Chukchi Sea began only in 1932, when the Northern Sea Route was created. There were information gaps during World War II (1942-45). The missing data have been reconstructed using statistical (regression-like) models relating atmospheric processes (SLP gradients and SAT) to ice extent (Kovalev and Nikolaev 1976; Yulin 1990). Aircraft ice-edge observations continued until 1979, when the satellite era began, but until recently a combination of satellite and aircraft summer ice-edge observations was used. Since 1990 all ice-extent observations have been satellite-based.

The choice is between hockey stick ice from a temperature-based model of theoretical ice extent, or non-hockey-stick real world measurements of the actual ice extent.

cooler waters in the Pacific ("La Nina") and lower solar activity have conspired to drop average global temperatures. When these trends reverse, average global temperatures will rapidly rise

That's got to be the longest La Nina in history. AGW koolaid drinkers were saying the same thing in 2007 when it was snowing in Baghdad and Buenos Aires; it's the latter part of 2009 and they're still desperately looking for warming to come back, like the little kid in Shane. "Come back, global warming, come back!"