CDN: Yes, that Arctic ice

Some people were confused by the claim in a recent CDN “Readout” video, based on a newsletter earlier this year, that Arctic ice was higher in 2024 than it had been for some time.

24 Apr 2024 | News Roundup Climate Discussion Nexus

 The specific claim concerned early January, which eluded some critics. But others said that now, in April it appears to be lower than 2012, which NASA’s National Snow & Ice Data Centre polemically highlights by default as the “Record minimum”. But that record, and it’s only a record since 1979, concerned the September minimum. In April and May of that year, 2012 actually had levels above average. Since the NSIDC chart in question allows you to decide which years to highlight, we’ve chosen to show just the last 10, with 2024 in bright blue, zooming in on the relevant portion as of April 23, 2024. Notice anything odd?

Right. So far this year we’re at a 10-year high, and have been for most of 2024 despite claims of 2023 being the “hottest year ever” and of relentless melting of the ice. As Tony Heller notes, 2024 is currently at the average for the last quarter-century. So where’s the relentless melting?

We have also been pestered by a few people who insist that sea ice extent is of no importance, that total volume of ice is what matters. Well, maybe. But if so it’s odd that you didn’t say so while sea ice extent appeared to be shrinking, only to put it forward as a shrill truism when it starts growing. Kind of a bait-and-switch there. And who knows, an increase in extent may presage an increase in volume.

Or not. As the case of 2012 illustrates, sea ice can fluctuate. We may see lower levels later in 2024 relative to the average (we will certainly see lower levels, due to a climate phenomenon known as “summer”). But we may not. As we mentioned, climate fluctuates. Which brings us to the other crucial point in assessing Arctic ice fairly in a sincere attempt to understand climate: that treating 1979 as the date when Arctic ice was invented is disingenuous.

True, it’s the beginning of the “modern” satellite era. But just because we have better measurements of the ice since 1979 does not mean there was no data before that date. Or no ice. Or that there was a whole lot of ice. You have to ask what other people saw.

You have to ask especially as any change in measurement ought to be cause for scientific caution not recklessness, especially if it coincides with an apparent change in data trends. And especially so here since we do know from various other kinds of records that 1979 represents a turning point for Arctic ice, a cyclical peak. It is not one of the surprisingly large number of facts that are in dispute when it comes to climate. It is absolutely clear.

As we mentioned a few weeks back, if you merely extend the Canadian data back eight years, a blink of the geological eye, then the entire trend toward shrinking ice vanishes. Instead, you see modest growth over the past half-century, with levels in 1971 so low that 2012 looks as if Elsa had shown up in an exuberant mood. The whole thing is a measurement artefact, and only of one kind of measurement. And if we had detailed records back to 1945, the apparent pattern would be even more dramatically cyclical, and with an even more pronounced apparent trend toward ice accumulating.

To act and speak as if it were otherwise is dishonourable. And we do not use the term lightly. But while we do not believe that climate alarmists are perpetrating a hoax, we do at this point want to quote the reflection of historian John Lukacz on a lifetime of striving for accuracy in a complex field:

“it is possible (and there exist, fortunately, examples of it) for a historian or a scientist or, indeed, for any thinking man to present evidences, from a proper employment of sources, that are contrary to his prejudices, or to his politics, or indeed to the inclinations of his mind. Whenever this happens, it manifests in his decision to present (which usually means: not to exclude) evidences not supporting his ideas or theses. Something – not merely by the external material evidence, but something internal and spiritual – compels him to do so. I prefer not to name this kind of intellectual (and moral) probity ‘objective’ (or even ‘detached’). ‘Objectivity’ is a method: I prefer the word honesty, which is something else (and more) than a method: within it there resides at least a modicum of humility (and in history, being the knowledge that human beings have of other human beings, even a spark of understanding, of a human empathy).” (John Lukacs, At the End of an Age, p. 85)

The behaviour of Arctic ice is not evidence that something unprecedented and man-made is happening. And honesty compels even a fair-minded alarmist to admit it. It also compels such a person to admit that if they’re convinced we’re approaching an ecological catastrophe and then some of the apparently central evidence of it turns out not to point that way, they should be relieved and happy.

Instead they get mad. Why?