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Comment by tsaprailis | Hacker News Reader

a)Where are these data from? Why does this gentleman that defines himself as an environmentalist (possible conflict of interest?) not post the original source? I'm not saying these are false but it would be nice to know the source. The image reads NSIDC, where's the relevant link, and the relevant analysis from them? What's the chance of error?

b)What does this mean? Will we get some super-storm or something similar? A graph without the scientific theory that leads to an explanation is just an opinion at best.

Again I'm not trying to say that this is not happening but the way this is posted, to me seems to only grab attention, click-bait style.

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Re posting this from my comment at a higher level:

> "b) what does this mean?"

See here for an explanation of what is happening and why: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/11/sluggish-ice-growt...

Thanks for this!

You're welcome =)

Also see this FAQ item to understand how "ice extent" is measured:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent

A graph without the scientific theory that leads to an explanation is just an opinion at best

Erm, the graphs just shows facts, no? Whether there's an explanation already or not doesn't change anything about the observation. You are basically saying 'ok so an apple always falls down from a tree, but I cannot explain it, so it's just an opinion that it falls down instead of up'

As for a): the data likely comes from http://nsidc.org

No, because if you read the twitter post it says: "Something is very very wrong." Where is that derived from? What the scientific theory that predicts that such a drop in the global ice sheet is very wrong? I'm not saying that something could not be wrong, but giving a graph and claiming that something is wrong is not very scientific. For all we know this could be very wrong, mildy wrong, no wrong, good etc

EDIT: For a) I took a quick look at the site but couldn't locate the graph. Again I'm not saying it's falsified, but pointing to the original source is always nice. If nothing more we could get some additional details.

Ah I missed the part where it says 'something is very wrong'. Yes that makes not much sense (or is very vague), based on just this graph.

I think the nsidc site just provides raw data, creating graphs is up to the downloader of the data

It is not just opinion, all the models agree that once albedo drops enough, we enter a self reinforcing new climate mode, and all the measurements eg. ice cores from aeons past indicate that our 15'000 years "human civilization" and progress rode a freak very much not normal occurence of very stable climate.

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