Over at Planet Gore, the gremlins are hard at work trying to make the case that yesterday’s announcement that summer Arctic sea ice minimums are only the second lowest on record is actually a good thing. According to Edward John Craig, who approvingly cites a Tom Nelson post titled “Fraudsters at National Snow and Ice Data Center: This year's ice GROWTH "underscores accelerating decline", this new data is evidence of the polar bears “expanding hunting grounds.”
He even provides a graph, which does show a rise in minimum sea ice extent in 2008 compared to 2007:
Not surprisingly, this chart doesn’t really do justice to just how low today’s sea ice coverage is compared to prior years (represented by the dark gray line on top). Here’s another chart, helpfully provided by Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth and also from the government:
What was that about “expanding” hunting grounds again?