CONCLUSIONS WOULD BE PREMATURE

UPDATE:2/3/2015 & 7/25/2016 / Updated reports for the winter of 2018 are still being examined

GOOD NEWS FOR ARCTIC, AS SEA ICE VOLUME UP BY HALF

 BUT NAMAZU SEZ:

  "TREND AIN'T NECESSARILY DESTINY BY A LONG SHOT".
EDITOR's NOTES: 1/29/2017 We have been experiencing an exceptionally cold winter one of several predicted a couple of years ago based on sun spot activity. Ice reduction in the High Arctic continues to be slowing or reversing but we still view this as a short term trend and not a prediction of things to come.  7/25/2016 Summer ice melt so far has been comparatively fast versus recent past years. This of course doesn't tell us anything about winter ice formation except that there will be less multi year or "old ice" this winter.  2/3/2015: Since first published, the trend in increasing winter ice coverage in the High Arctic has continued gradually. Apparently while we still caution that trend is not always future; the Global Warming School / Climate Change Crowd seems poised to acknowledge the trend but now shifts the focus to the fact that this is new ice and aged "multi year ice". Of course this would be new ice since we had a melting phase that preceded the ice building phase. Of course old ice has greater density and a different salt content and is something of a different environment. But for some reason the idea of the ice cover going through varying cycles still is alarming to those who demand that developed nations immediately revert their economies to the late stone age. Why does none of the "Climate Change Crowd" see that multi-year sea ice was never thousands of years old. If there was no melting/rebuilding cycle there could be no open water in the High Arctic. Because we haven't been keeping records up there for hundreds of years doesn't mean that ten, twelve, twenty , or one hundred year weather cycles didn't and won't happen. As recently as 30 years ago we might have gone through one of these cycles and never noticed because no body was thinking about making new exclusive economic zone claims, drilling for oil, or starting new shipping routes. We weren't looking so we wouldn't have noticed. Now that we can observe such events the Al Gore crowd wants us to immediately jump to conclusions, assume the sky is falling , and deconstruct all Western economies. We think our post reprinted below in 2013 is just as valid a set of observations today as they were then. What's going on in the High Arctic?  We simply don't know and can't know until we observe long enough for cycles to manifest themselves.

According to an article published in BREIT BART.com Arctic sea ice for October was up 50% over last year , but still below long term averages. This year the thicker and more extensive sea ice is still the sixth lowest amount on record. Last year the ice volume and extent was also up from the year before. But the recent years of increasing ice still aren't up to the averages of say 18 years ago. So the proponents of man caused radical climate change maintain that anyone pointing out that these mere two years of a bit of decline in the overall warming trend is in the grips of climate change denial . To the liberal media, being in climate change denial or even exhibiting a healthy skepticism about both sides of the debate is immoral . However as a 3,000 year old catfish I have to take the long view. The first question I asked when these new ice statistics were published was where did they come from? The answer is from a European Space Agency Satellite system. Oh, so how did the bipeds measure the ice cover before Sputnik?  Frankly they didn't and they didn't right after Sputnik (1958). It was years after the first commie satellite orbited the earth doing little other than flying around the world at incredible speeds bleeping out a continuous signal useless for anything other than tracking the little silver colored spiked ball before we got useful satellites up and ice cover wasn't exactly the top priority the Great Biped Cold War.

 So my over worried , under served, government and media buffeted biped friends frankly there isn't a whole lot of data out there. We have very little idea what the "normal" 5, 10, 20, 100, and 500 year fluctuations in the High Arctic ice cover are. When we are told that the October 2013 level of ice cover is the sixth lowest on record we are perhaps at best talking about twenty plus years of actual records.

 Basically we are looking at some very recent and minute changes, with no idea what to compare the data with. Has global warming stopped? In any real sense did it ever begin or were we looking again at short term weather changes? I my two legged friends am not in climate change denial. Climates change that's what they do. They also run in cycles. Are we looking at some portion of a weather cycle or evidence of profound man induced weather change. If you are part of the American liberal media it would be heresy to question global, man caused climate change that can only get worse. If you are a Captain of Industry or simply a Republican member of Congress it is obvious that climate change is a liberal figment of the imagination. If you are a scientist you had better tell your sponsors what they want to hear. Seemingly "insufficient data" and "I don't know" are not acceptable as answers even when they are in fact true.

 Having seen 3,000 years of human and natural history I'm acutely aware that 3,000 years is just a heart beat in terms of geological time. The last ice age was 10,000 years ago so whatever is going on now started 7,000 years before I emerged from the collective human imagination. Proponents of climate change and those denying the change are both working from insufficient data. But what I do know I've shared many times and I'll repeat it again here. Climates change, that's what they do. They may well change due to man's activities but they also change and change rapidly due to any combination of solar flares, orbital irregularities, meteor or comet strike, and volcanic activity. Bipeds must prepare to survive the rapid and deadly forms of climate change which can happen with out warning. This means paying attention to food source security and that means decoupling food production from the outdoors to the maximum extent possible. It also means paying attention to building codes, and coastal protection and physical protection of port facilities.  Climates change its what they do, but so do average weather patterns, in cycles of varying duration. The measurable changes over a few years measured against 20, 30, or 50 years of decent weather records tell us little, predict close to nothing. Measurable trend is not long term destiny. But just because man's activities may or may not lead to serious changes in sea level and average global temperatures over the next century doesn't mean that we couldn't experience an orbital axis shift tonight and wake up in a new ice age. Securing our food supplies and shelters against such an event is something that we should be working on constantly. Really I was once known as "Namazu the Earth Shaker" back in my demigod days in Japan, but when the next "big one hits", don't look at me I'm writing blog posts for a pay check from OG (OG="Old Guy", the CFO.)