On global sea ice levels, the alarmists blow it again

2/20/09 update: The "deeply disingenuous stuff" (see #3 below) has now been removed from the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center site.
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1. 2/15/09: George F. Will - Dark Green Doomsayers - washingtonpost.com

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of [late] 1979.

2. Among the alarmists, this caused great gnashing of teeth--if Will's statement were true, wouldn't that make the global warming fraud more difficult to sell?

I think it's telling that so many alarmists clearly had no idea how to find an ice graph online in order to check Will's statement for themselves.

3. The folks at a University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center site responded by publishing this deeply disingenous stuff

February 15, 2009
In an opinion piece by George Will published on February 15, 2009 in the Washington Post, George Will states "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."

We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.

4. You can check the data yourself here [click for a larger version of the graph below].



Look at the red line in 1979 and 2009, and note that Will is correct--current global sea ice levels ARE equal to those seen in late 1979 (near the end of the last global cooling scare). Note that these are anomalies so that time of year shouldn't matter.