Is the Polar Sea Ice Really Shrinking?

One of the climate crowd's most invasive claims has to do with the purported shrinking of global sea ice due to the warming of the oceans, which will, they say, raise sea levels precipitously and lead to the extinction of all of the cute, cuddly polar bears. -- any of which would eat you the first chance he got. That last bit is reportedly what set-off a youthful Greta Thunberg. Except that it isn't true. As they well know, since they've continued to invest in waterfront real estate on Martha's Vineyard.

Welcome, Mr. President. https://t.co/Dj5Z7RG5Zv

— Vineyard Gazette (@vineyardgazette) December 4, 2019

Still, Gang Green's disinformation campaign has been remarkably successful, and it isn't always easy to counter each individual claim for the simple reason that news reports tend to parrot the preferred "climate change" harum-scarum. Enter the Climate Discussion Nexus, an invaluable resource for picking apart their assertions and discerning what's true and what isn't. As far as sea ice is concerned, here is a recent CDN post which compares the standard narrative to reality:

Scientific American, between bouts of wokery like claiming sex is not binary in mammals, tells us “Melting sea ice is opening new pathways through the Arctic such as the famed Northwest Passage.” And of course it’s terrible in every way including “Less ice means more fog, making it harder and more dangerous for ships to navigate the thawing sea.” More dangerous than what? Navigating intact ice? But the main point is that their claim that “Arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing as the world warms, opening up potential new shipping routes across the top of the world” is just plain wrong. The Northwest Passage was open in the early 20^th century and again in the 1940s, though not during the Little Ice Age when Henry Hudson went looking for it and didn’t come back. But since 2013 it has been rebounding, not “rapidly vanishing” as so often and confidently predicted. And if you make a prediction and it doesn’t come true, it’s not decent to assert that it did.

And here's another entry, which addresses the central issue head-on:

Connoisseurs of picturesque hostile landscapes will be pleased to learn that Arctic sea ice is at higher levels now than it has been in 13 of the past 15 years. According to Perspecta Weather, the North Atlantic flipped from a cold phase to a warm phase in the mid-1990s, which was followed by a retreat of Arctic sea ice which reached a minimum around 2008 or 2009. Since then both the extent and volume of sea ice have stabilized, and may be on the upswing. Seems the Arctic isn't done being cold just yet.

The South Pole has long insisted on bucking the warming trend, with its sea ice coverage holding steady or even growing in recent decades. So the more complaisant conduct of the North Pole, with the retreat of Arctic sea ice since the mid-90s, has been a point of pride among alarmists since it allowed their stopped clocks to be right at least once per day. But the picture does appear to be changing there too.

Give both posts a good read and keep an eye on the good work they do at CDN as well.