Folks, I apologize for flogging a dead horse like this, especially since I know most of you probably already agree with me as to AGW issues. But I feel it is necessary. The denialist community has shown itself to be so ingenious and shameless at cherry picking, moving the goalposts, changing the subject, distraction, selectively misinterpreting numerical data and at taking facts out of context that I feel I have little choice.

This is the only way I can counteract their partisan propaganda with actual numerical measurements presented in an unambiguous graphical fashion, and to prevent them from creeping back onto this forum peddling their carefully crafted and totally bogus arguments. I believe I have been successful at meeting the latter goal--they don't come here any more. The former I will leave for you to judge.

This graphic compares the hump of the Sea Ice Extent curve for the winter of 2017 with the individual maxima of the previous quarter century. The location of each black dot indicates the amount of ice (y-axis) on that maximum, and on which day of the year (x-axis)the maximum occurred.

http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01b7c8e1e408970b-pi