Hat tip the Daily Sceptic we learn of a recent news item on Sky News in the UK that was mostly about the bad Russians and the bad Chinese making moves on the Arctic and since the bad USA can no longer be relied upon Britannia will once again have to rule the waves. Which we admit to considering highly unlikely. But along the way the reporter presented a chart headlined “Arctic sea ice melting 12% per decade” and said the Arctic continent [sic] is warming 3.5 times faster than the global average, which will “push up sea levels around Britain’s coastline.” Calling the Arctic a continent when it’s an ocean is like a clock striking 13, calling into question all that has gone before and all that comes after, not least in this case because the ice is already floating so if it melts it won’t change sea levels. And then there’s the wee problem with the chart showing a 12% per decade loss of sea ice when in fact it hasn’t been going down at all for the past 15 years. Otherwise a splendid article.

No really, here is the Sky News chart:

The graph shows, not the annual average amount of ice, but the September minimum. Which did drop from 1995 to 2010 but after that it’s been holding steady. In fact a recent analysis shows the trend over the 20 years since 2005 is statistically insignificant.

The nations rushing to place their navies in the Arctic Ocean might want to spend less time looking at model extrapolations of an ice-free future and look at what the ice is actually doing. And those rushing to place their armies there might want to spend less time reading the press and more time looking at a map.