Reference: Poznan only marking time, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2008

According to the newspaper you can trust, the volume of sea ice in the Arctic basin "fell to its lowest recorded level to date" this year and that reduced ice coverage is causing a non-linear acceleration in the loss of polar ice because there is less ice to reflect sunlight (Poznan only marking time, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2008). This scenario was sold to us in October of 2007 when the summer melt in the Arctic basin was more extensive than normal. Their theory predicted that due to the loss of sunlight reflection by ice, the Arctic ice extent would not fully recover in the winter of 2007-2008 and that the summer melt in  2008 would be greater yet and the ice formation in the winter of 2008-2009 lesser yet and so on and so forth until the artic basin becomes completely ice free. They said that the Arctic was the "canary of global warming" meaning that what happens in the Arctic is a harbinger of what awaits the rest of the world. It's all very scary except for the data. The ice extent in the Arctic basin fully recovered to well above 4 million square km that is considered "normal" for that time of year by December of 2007; and even worse for the scaremongers, the summer melt in 2008 was less than that in 2007, not more; and today in December of 2008 we find that the Arctic ice extent is back above 4 million square km. The Arctic ice melt scenario reported in the Bangkok Post editorial was postulated in the fall of 2007 and today, about 15 months later, we find no evidence to support it and if anything the data seem to be pointing in the other direction. I have attached the data for your reference. They were downloaded from the University of Illinois website.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand