<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">Every year ice melts on large stretches of the ice cap where it cannot drain into the ocean. It forms ponds, puddles, lakes, whatever you want to call them. This happens at the North Pole as well as at other locations on the ice pack. This is one of the reasons determining sea ice area is difficult. It's hard to tell ocean water from water-on-top-of-the-ice sometimes. Currently, both the sea ice extent and sea ice area numbers are higher than they were last year and higher than they were in 2011 or 2007. Here is a nice place where a lot of the charts are linked to from the same source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/ I must warn you that Ted hates this website, but since it's a bunch of links to data from official sciency-type places, I think it's OK to start
there.<br><br>I tend to watch the NORSEX SSM/I extent and area charts, since those are the charts I've been following for a few years now. There are also lots of other interesting graphs, as well as the webcam images from the north pole used in the article. If you go there and look at the two web cams right now, you'll see that only one looks like it's in a lake. The other one looks to be safely on solid ice/snow pack.<br><br>I don't say this out of some sort of effort to promote climate denialism in an attempt to wreak havoc on the framework of American Life and to lead your kids to rock music, I say it to stem the "OMG! The North Pole is a lake! We're all dooooomed!" hysteria. I have no idea how this year will turn out in terms of minimum extent or area compared to previous years, but I'd rather look at the pretty graphs than take all my information from a webcam
image.<br><br>Paul<br><div><span><br></span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1@frontier.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> viz <vision2020@moscow.com> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thursday, July 25, 2013 10:37 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Vision2020] Global Warming: The North Pole is now a lake.<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><div id="yiv9732930645">
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If ever there was any doubt in your mind about global warming,
consider this news:<br>
<div>The North Pole, that great bastion of eternal cold and barren
ice, is a lake.</div>
<div>It’s a shallow lake. It’s a cold lake. But it is, actually, a
lake.</div>
<div>According to the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/index.html">North
Pole Environmental Observatory</a>, the summer ice is melting
away at unprecedented rates. The sea of snow is now meltwater.<br>
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<br>
<a rel="nofollow" class="yiv9732930645moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://o.canada.com/2013/07/24/the-north-pole-is-now-a-lake/">http://o.canada.com/2013/07/24/the-north-pole-is-now-a-lake/</a>
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Ken
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