Melting Away Global Warming

How to Lie With Data

By Phil Plait
Salon.com

First, the truth:

After a summer of seasonal melting, on Sept. 17, 2014, Arctic sea ice extent* likely hit its minimum for the year. The official word is that it was measured at 5.02 million square kilometers (1.94 million square miles). This is the sixth-lowest minimum since satellite records began in 1979.

It also fits right in with the overall declining trend of Arctic sea ice:

Arctic sea ice minimum extents since 1979, when satellite measurements were started. This is the 2013 graph that I extended to add 2014's minimum. The blue line is a linear fit to the numbers. Graph from NSIDC.

As you can see, back in the late ’70s there used to be about 7.5 million km2 when ice hit its September minimum. That has dropped to about 5 million now, a decline of 30 percent. As you can also see from the graph, the past eight years have all seen lower ice extent than in the era previous.

This is due to global warming, overall heating of our planet due to human pollution. Dumping 40 billion extra tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into our atmosphere every year will do that to a planet.

(Continued here.)