Summer sea ice is causing havoc for shipping in the Arctic. This is the same Arctic sea ice that climate change experts predicted would have vanished by 2013.
According to the Barents Observer:
It is late June, but the winter has not abandoned the Gulf of Ob. The shallow bay, which houses two of Russia’s biggest Arctic out-shipment terminals for oil and gas, remains packed with fast ice.
It has created a complicated situation, Rosatomflot says. The state company which manages the Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers, confirms that independent shipping in the area is «paralysed» and that LNG carriers and tankers are stuck.
Global warming? What global warming?
«The global warming, which there has been so much talk about for such a long time, seems to have receded a little and we are returning to the standards of the 1980s and 1990s,» says company representative Andrey Smirnov.
As the Climatism blog notes, all this summer ice rather contradicts what the “experts” have been telling us for many years.
North Pole could be ice free in 2008 | New Scientist
Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist | The Guardian
Meanwhile, in the real world, here is what Arctic sea ice is actually doing. As Steven Goddard says, “party’s over for the Arctic melting scam.”
June has finished with Arctic sea ice volume fourth highest in the DMI record, behind 2004, 2003 and 2014.
But the big story is the slowdown in melt rates since 2012. The average June ice loss since 2012 is down 17% relative to the years prior to 2012.
In three weeks, volume melt rates will slow sharply, giving Reggie not much time to make an honest man out of James Hansen.