Reported By wattsupwiththat.com on 2012-03-01t
“Over at NASA, they have a press release about old Arctic sea ice disappearing since 1980, including a helpful comparison widget that splits the before and after for comparison…We don’t know what sea ice extent and age trends were before that, as there really aren’t any good data on the Arctic ice pack prior to 1980….You can plot, model, and visualize all you want, but theres just no good sea ice thickness nor extent data prior to 1980 when satellite remote sensing came on the scene, yet we do have anecdotal evidence of previous Arctic ice retreats.For example, this now famous report from 1922 that first appeared in the Washington Post [scanned image of article, describes warming and ice scarcity]….Now it could be argued strongly that since we are in the Current Warm Period (CWP) and Arctic Sea Ice is on the decline, and the rise of the machines in the industrial age coincides with that, that man has the greatest influence on Arctic Sea Ice. That may be, but we just don’t know. We have no good ice data prior to 1980. We do however have suggestions that much of Earth’s climate and responses to it (like Arctic sea ice) is cyclic….”