@Chris Biscan - don't be ridiculous, and there is no need to question people's intelligence. we know there is also a think called solar insolation. you do not have a unique understanding of what is going on. any prediction that is approximately in line with the decade-long downward trend is essentially as good as any other, because we don't know what the ultimate effects of the cyclone will turn out to be, or, as you admit yourself, what the weather will do for the rest of the summer. there is no point pretending otherwise

3.5 Mkm^2 approximate extrapolation of the downward trend, nudged upwards due to the slow start. @Chris Biscan: please just let people post their guesses. the last thing this thread needs is off-topic debate

... and apart from the reduced drag, 'blowing' bubbles in the eyes of the pursuing leopard seal won't hurt either :) every little helps

should have googled it first: [http://carinbondar.com/2011/06/biology-meet-physics-torpedo-like-emperor-penguins-can-show-us-a-thing-or-two-about-air-lubrication/] has more

Fufufunknknk, no idea, but that's no good reason not to speculate recklessly - I don't believe it's been photoshopped, could be air compressed and trapped between the feathers by water column pressure expanding and escaping as the bird rapidly surfaces?

right now there is a virtually perfect correlation between estimated extent and bin popularity (the higher the estimate, the more people like it) - watt is up with that, indeed

Peter Ellis just made the point that Hudson and Ohkotsk are also behind schedule compared to recent years, and they will make no difference to the final area/extent. We're approaching the cliff alright, the only question is how steep and high it will be

Yes, several people have commented on the possibility that colder than normal temperatures might partly explain the apparently slow melt. It's not that simple, tho - divergence is very obviously also happening

"I revise mine to 5.5 million + ( extent) and 3.9 million + (area)" ... ... ... an unusually large amount of the ice area is thin FYI. it will melt.

the slow melt so far is no surprise given the DMI 80N temp chart - this May has been quite a bit colder than other recent years (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php). weather is weather. well, and the less said about earlier predictions of a complete melt-out this summer the better - you know who you are

and welcome back A-team, you have been missed. nice to see you're not hoping to play the good guy in this years instalment of the franchise, as well :o)

yes I was going to mention that the other day. the comments section is a great read now :)

I don't think it's really true that deniers can get their message out in a headline, while realists have to produce a thesis - what is true is that deniers are much better at 'framing' and spinning, and are not afraid of telling barefaced lies. For example, you could rebut Solomon's article with a simple 'I see you've conveniently forgotten that last September saw the lowest amount* of Arctic sea ice ever recorded. Oh, and that the six biggest summer melts have all occurred in the last six years ... you do know the difference between summer and winter, right?' Well, and I'm not sure how effective his little piece of nonsense was, either. Unless you've already decided climate change isn't happening, you very likely know from news reports that the Arctic is melting. We know that environmentalists who start to cry wolf will soon lose their audience; if anyone read Solomon's article and wondered what the heck was going on, I assume they'll figure it out when they see the news report of this summer's record melt (assuming it does actually get reported, of course ...) *DON'T use words like 'extent' or 'volume'

I mean, it's a great article, but I'm not happy with the phrase 'how cleverly the misdirection is perpetrated'. 'how wilfully perverse and far beyond shame you would have to be to put your name to such complete and utter tripe', might have been closer to the mark. don't tell these people they're clever. they're not clever. well, and, possibly a bit too long for mr solomons target audience to read through to the end, as well, assuming any of them actually are genuinely misinformed

Paul, ship numbers won't jump from 60 to 1000s within a year or two. and even if they did, you know how big the Arctic Ocean is. the mixing due to shipping, compared to the mixing due to wind/wave etc action, will be somewhere between negligible and nonexistent

3.0 Mkm^2 WAG. there's no model which can predict this with half-decent accuracy, and that's before we get to the influence of random weather effects (tho at least we're guessing monthly extent rather than daily, when we might as well be playing pin the tail on the donkey). if the volume decline continues then it will be reflected in extent, but how that will work out exactly is anyone's guess

Remko Kampen, you've made a valiant effort, but it's probably about time to let this one be. there's eccentric, there's weird, and there's batshit crazy. it's not possible to reason productively with a true believer

well, I mean that people I know are in denial about an ice free arctic happening in the next few years, not sometime later this century. like I say, they think its something vague and remote. china's response to climate change will driven purely by their perception of their nationalistic self interest. economic concerns will always trump environmental ones. they have major historical grievances and think that developed countries caused the problem. they also point out that their per capita emissions are low, n that a lot of their emissions are driven by export demand (my research is in this area). they are trying to move away from coal but they won't be rushed or take kindly to international pressure. in short, it's not good

the few people i've tried to talk to about the arctic simply refuse to believe it, even after they see death spiral graphics. they all agree that climate change is happening, but they think it's slow and remote, and don't believe it could make any real difference in their lives. i haven't managed to persuade anyone to take seriously the possibility that the arctic might be ice free at end of summer before 2020 - it seems it's too much of a mental leap. what those conversations did bring home to me was how little interest 'normal' people have in science generally. the best response to 'all the ice in the arctic might melt in the next x years!!' was a vaguely distracted 'oh. right.', before they wandered off to do something else. i really don't think most people are interested in how things work or how one thing leads to another, because they're fully absorbed in their work and play routine

Steve Bloom, im living in china doing a phd on carbon management at the chinese academy of sciences. im perfectly well aware of the potential climate change impacts on china, and it's great that other countries would not be to resort to military intimidation, because, that's rarely a good thing. and china would be vulnerable to economic intimidation, which it seems you might not be aware of

no offence, but 'a country getting the worst of the warming impacts that has the technical capability to do the injection (i.e. China) indeed may just do it anyway (albeit badly since to be very effective the injection has to be done more or less evenly around the globe). And note they have nukes to defend themselves from anyone who objects. Messy.' is just a tired update of the old 'yellow peril' nonsense. it's difficult to know where to begin criticising a post which appears to seriously suggest that - well, i can't even begin to get my head around what the hypothetical scenario that ends in thermonuclear war is supposed to be, but it should be pretty obvious that a more appropriate and effective response by outraged neighbours to initial attempts at cowboy geoengineering would be the threat of sanctions, trade embargoes and overseas asset seizures. which wouldn't be pretty, either, but there's no need to invoke the apocalypse

i'm no fan of gummer, who was, and no doubt still is, an idiot, but this: 'UK ag minister who deliberately exposed his 4-year old daughter Cordelia to mad cow disease' is misleading to the point of being a barefaced lie. seriously not cool

AD you are very sure of yourself. but i will stop

AD, there is a difference between not having any idea what you're talking about, and trolling, and if NJSnowFan is simply not very well informed i think that 'spewing this kind of denialist claptrap' was a bit harsh. as more people visit this blog it's inevitable that some people will be simply uninformed, and the two posts in question were phrased as a simple request for information. which Villabolo provided. nuff said