"Arctic sea ice extent on July 16 stood at 8.91 million square kilometers (3.44 million square miles). While extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average of 9.91 square kilometers (3.83 million square miles), it was 1.05 million square kilometers (0.41 million square miles) above the value for July 16, 2007."

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Could it be the result of the absence of sunspots? It is a theory quickly gaining interest on the internet. It puts the solar physicists (some anyway) at odds with the vast majority of climatologists.

See my earlier post:

http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=220&topic_id=910

Buckaroo, John Warfen has returned from pergatory due to your meddling with
dimensional doorways. Check for John Warfen at the factory innna new jyersey.
There he is working on the new bombers with all those other silly johns.

From that imaginary factory in new jersey, they've restored the ice cap.
Thank god for secret DOD spending or we'd be toast.

n/t

I ran across this website for animations. http://www.cartoonstock.com/animation/animation.asp

This was the first animation that surfaced on global warming while bumbling around
<iframe src="http://www.cartoonstock.com/animation/viral.asp?catref=jfuv4" width="400" height="500" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Ya know how fucking tragic it is... goddammit. Here we are on the precipice of an
avoidable regression and descent in to a dark age. This new dark age is being caused
right in front of our very eyes, but we are distracted by images of far away threats from poor people.

Meanwhile our government is waving around nukes, threatening further extensions to its
occupation of asia as a corproate necessity and hollowing out the organically
developed local economies for corporate colonialism of unsustainable petro-chains.
A generation is born that has never lived during a modern nuclear weapons test.
Increasingly the cost of war is become abstracted behind "nuk'em" bumper stickers,
and the depraved bottom of everything we loathe in the culture is the mean basis of
the government.
We are divided on every freeway in to little boxes listening to hate radio of red white
or blue corporate mind candy for the miners. And on every suburb, the idyllic concept
of a 2 car life is not scalable, never will be, and is already dead. When a rail liked
micro-villiage wilderspace model works much better to create real societies that can
survive a petroshock. Then each villiage will be able to farm up enough food for
itself which will once again become the primary employer.

So, its like sitting in the finest restaurant in old atlantis, you and i, wearing
golden robes in a perfect temple of knowledge. We look out to the horizon as the water
pulls back and back and back until the whole sea bottom is dry. And then, we can see
in the distance a huge wall of water the height of the end of every sign that our
highly advanced civilisation ever existed.

You and I sit out there about 20 minutes before the swell on the horizon will wipe
out
everything we've ever stood for. Its too late to do anything; everything we've ever
stood for is about to be erased by the ferocity of the sea. Sit back, drink your
last glass of wine, inhale, and watch the rotting end of empire. Soon, a generation
will be jealous for the absurd profulgacy we once had. They'll be stupid enough to
go nuclear about it in the arctic, and all of western europe will perish from the
northern petrowar. How many lifetimes have we enjoyed the fine magesty of this planet;
but tonight, today, *now* it is very near its end. That industrial revolution that
spawned a new vision of the rights of man is left bankrupt whilst societies with a
revivable villiage living economy will be able to produce the food supply to survive
if the radiation does not kill them. Petro-dream, i will not miss you when you're gone.

Somehow, we have always pulled back from the precipice. A couple of times it might have been sheer luck.

Can we keep this up? I don't know.

For me things aren't as clear as your Atlantis metaphor. I wish I could see out on the vast horizon and know if the end is coming. But I just can't see that far. Poor old feeble eyes. I won't know what hit me.

The arctic ice is still holding up and the sun is still spotless.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

It has still recovered some from last year but in the last week or so it has declined significantly.

But July had only one tiny sunspot for about three days and August has had none so far.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/08/13/arctic_ice_comparison_8aug.jpg

carbon dioxide is not a causative factor, and they made it all up!

The arctic ice pack is not melting, and macdonalds fries protect you from global warming.

;)

I am coming late to this conclusion. You are going to tell me you knew all along, aren't you?

Good synopsis shows significant gains this year.

http://www.dailytech.com/Arctic+Sees+Massive+Gain+in+Ice+Coverage/article12851.htm

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18159

Last year was the worst and this year it improved by about 10%.

You need to become an avid reader of the blog:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

A lot more snow already this year:

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=23&fy=2007&sm=09&sd=23&sy=2008