You'll probably never hear this from the main stream media but the Arctic is not experiencing record high temperatures. Yet CO2 levels continue to climb. Since "record ice loss" only looks back to 1979 its highly likely that the ice loss we're seeing now has occurred many times before.

Climate is defined as weather over time. When you're talking about the climate of the earth you have to include all of the "weather" over a period of time that includes all of its natural weather cycles. Some of the known cycles are measured in 10's of thousands of years. There are many important cycles that affect the planet some as short as 10 years and many that span 50 to 1,000 years. We don't even know about all of them. So when you're talking about "climate temperature records" (remember "climate" is weather over time) you would think the "record" would at least span a period of time that included all of the cycles at least once. When you're looking at the affects of "record temperatures" on something like the Arctic ice you would again have to consider at least one period of all the cycles.

So when you watch the evening news and they talk about "record Arctic ice loss" over what period of time would you think they're talking about? Would you believe 29 years? That's right, they're talking about a period of time that doesn't cover hardly any of the natural cycles that would affect the Arctic ice. So where does 29 years come from? That's how long we've had satellites looking at the ice. It is like looking at the world's oldest book and determining that the earth is only 2,500 years old. Or if the only tool you have is a hammer all problems start to look nails.

So what is the likelihood that this short snapshot in time that shows Arctic ice decreasing proves that man is causing something that hasn't occurred before? I'm waiting to see one of these scientists bet their next paycheck that this ice loss is something new.

Though Mark Twain wasn't the first to say "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" he's often given credit for it. So lets play with the numbers a bit ourselves. For there to be record Arctic ice loss one would think there would be record Arctic temperatures. So we did a little digging and decided to compare the annual Arctic temperature for 2007 with the 10 weather station records that included the entire time period of 1951 to 2008. All but one of these weather stations had high temperatures warmer than 2007 (and that one station was within 2/100ths of a degree). All of the weather stations had a year before 1960 that was warmer than 2007. Most of the stations had several years where the annual average temperature was higher than 2007 (only the oldest temperature at each station that was warmer than 2007 is listed, there were other years that were warmer than both 2007 and the oldest year).

From the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

• Danmarkshavn, Greenland - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1957 (measurements started in 1951)
• Bjornoya, Norway - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1954 (measurements started in 1949)
• Vardo, Norway - 2007 annual temperature within 2/100's of a degree with 1937 (2008 is shaping up to be much colder)
• Tromo, Norway - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1930
• Jan Mayen, Norway - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1930
• Karesuando, Sweden - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1959 (measurements started in 1951)
• Murmansk, Russia - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1920 (measurements started in 1919)
• Bodo Vi, Norway - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1930
• Sodankyla, Finland - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1920
• Kanin Nos, Russia - 2007 annual temperature was lower than it was in 1937

Holocene Temperature Anomaly (current year is on the left)
Note how much warmer and colder it has been than today, just over the past 12,000 years.

If CO2 levels have been increasing every year since 1959 (and they have) and CO2 levels are suppose to be causing global warming thus Arctic ice loss, then how can we have so many Arctic "record" warm days before 1960? Do we know with any degree of certainty that Arctic ice extent wasn't lower in 1934? Going back even further (but still very much recent history on a geological time scale) what was the Arctic ice extent in the year 1250 AD near the end of the Medieval Warm Period? Ice cores don't help us with the Arctic because ice there is constantly churned and moves, so old ice can can get churned to the top and move to the edge where it melts (thus destroying any record). So we really have no proxy measurements for Arctic ice, all we have is human observations which only go back about 100 years (and are not at all accurate) and satellite measurements that only go back 29 years.

We have no Arctic "climate record" because we have no Arctic climate history.

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