[ UPDATE : JOE ROMM OF CLIMATE PROGRESS IS ALMOST CAUSTIC : “Dreadful climate story by BBC’s Richard Black” ]
Richard Black has noticed that the Arctic sea ice is melting – bravo ! But I can’t help thinking there’s something missing in this report of his. I know he probably didn’t write the headline, but he could have included a discussion on record low volumes of sea ice as well as nearly record low extent :-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11322310
“16 September 2010 : ‘Rapid’ 2010 melt for Arctic ice – but no record : Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007. That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase. 2010’s summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era…Walt Meier, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, where the data is collated, said ice had melted unusually fast. “It was a short melt season – the period from the maximum to the minimum was shorter than we’ve had – but the ice was so thin that even so it melted away quickly,” he told BBC News…”
That’s right, Walt. And it should concern us.
The amount of older ice has dropped away – see graph at the top of this post – which suggests that the overall volume of ice could be much reduced as only older ice is thick.
But what does Richard Black focus on ?
“…computer models projecting a disappearance [ of summer Arctic sea ice ] very soon – 2013 was a date cited by one research group just a few years ago – seem to have been too extreme…”
Well that’s alright then. We can relax. The Arctic sea ice will be here for many summers to come. Or not. Who cares, really ? The important thing is that we have established by our cleverness that the whole Global Warming situation is not as bad as those alarmists/warmists say.
The Arctic is melting away and Richard Black needs to deny dire projections ?
The BBC : managing public perception for the benefit of a generally positive state of mind ?