sure, but it is utterly meaningless. Whether there was further ice loss from 2007 or not tells you nothing about whether global warming has stopped. You need longer time scales for this. Think of a fatally ill person. Just because he feels better then two days ago doesn't mean that his illness is gone.woodchip wrote:However you slice it, there was a 26% increase and not a further decrease.
yes, but the baseline has to be meaningful and CONSISTENT. You can't compare surface temperatures against 1998 (because this was a record year for surface temperatures) and at the same time arctic ice with 2007 (just because it was a record year for arctic ice). The selection of a baseline has to be driven by prior principles, and it should be long enough to make any statistic inference. Both 1998 and 2007 don't allow this (yet).One has to have a baseline to compare with to see if GW is advancing, halting or reversing.
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Exactly.It will take more than a few years to see if a reversal trend has started so time will tell.
by the way, wood for tress now also has arctic ice extent. Look at this. I put a 12 month moving average on this to get rid of the summer/winter modulation.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/mean:12
the 2007 wiggle is nothing special, such drops and subsequent rises have occured before and will happen again; it tells us nothing about the long term trend.