Steel you ask for "citations and scientific papers" which is fair enough because we should start with our best information by trying to forget all the opinions. This is not easy. However, OLO is simply a forum for people's opinions based on some awareness of information. Awareness now is a unique characteristic of our lives, not so much because of how much knowledge there is and isn't, but because of how many people are becoming involved in its production. Interestingly with the evolution of the www, it's not just people finding information so much as it's about people finding people. For myself, I've found i'm starting to pay more attention to the illogics in information where there is a need to look at it consciously and try to drill down into it because one thing always leads to another.

In Geoff's article he expresses his opinion about alarmist arctic icemelts. i.e. Here we have a scientist who is demanding respect for the work of scientists but his one proof in this article for AGW is false and doesn't reference historical process. In fact, in these areas the ice extent is as much a measure of sea and wind conditions as it is temperature. The Arctic last year had a high pressure event that created a rather large patch of clear sky, hence more sunlight absorbed to heat the ocean and less ice. Not all that unusual as the complex systems in higher latitudes adjust to an eventual cooling phase. Meanwhile at the same time the antarctic had record high icecover. These are vast complex freezing systems that need to be understood historically and half a degree rise in global temperature would have no alarmist effect.
Go to these primary sources and check.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh

With a grain of salt:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48489/story.htm

Keiran, I'm going to focus on this as there is no discussion i've seen. From a logical basis, this part of your comment is flawed, for example. The people behind the research on climate change do climate *modelling*, using statistical, probability and mathematics, as well as field data. They use scientific method for asserting their claims. They do not simply watch the sky/pressure system and make a conclusion like a weatherman as you have apparently done.

Keiran>"The Arctic last year had a high pressure event that created a rather large patch of clear sky, hence more sunlight absorbed to heat the ocean and less ice. Not all that unusual as the complex systems in higher latitudes adjust to an eventual cooling phase."

And high pressure events have probably been happening for decades. For your comment to be worth something, the "high pressure event" and simultaneous dissipation of ice from the arctic to such large and rapid degrees should show some corellation and fit in with climate models.

Those graphs you provided are not scientific papers and you provide no explanation for them.

You also did not explain why you dismissed the hundreds of citations included in the wikipedia article i linked to (in another thread) with such foolish ease and arrogance.

Steel, we can all form opinions and OLO is interesting because it attracts a wide range of personal views or funny stuff to contemplate. In most respects i try to read into people's opinions to see where they are coming from because for all perceptual, emotional, and behavioral purposes, people in fact can live in quite different realities. It is not unusual for different groups to be psychologically unable to draw compatible conclusions from the same representation or fact.

However, because the state of existence is a logical one, intelligence of any type cannot develop without primary factual information. When i say find first and ye shall seek it means just state the role of bringing your mind and perception as close as possible to the apprehension of the physical reality we all inhabit ... i.e. the world that IS. When it comes to the nature of reality, if we want truth, we absolutely must not preconceive or follow opinions but just open our eyes, our minds and OBSERVE.

Before "citations and scientific papers" full of opinions i tend to want the raw data with its context to see for myself what is happening. I'm essentially a visual person with a bit of love for forensic investigation. Many of my bookmark urls are as reliable as i can find, data sources. Cripes, i'd be broke and penniless in the gutter if i simply was not able to do my own homework but relied like yourself on the mixed assumptions of tipsters, modelers, "researchers", con artists, spivs, propagandists, worshippers, even scientists, etc. The fact is that AGW is a paradox and you only get a paradox through incorrect assumptions.

Incidentally i did explain your wicked pedia worship as mere reinterpretations and as such biased.

Valid, Dr Davies, but my cynic says naive too. The hardest working AGW 'sceptics' well know their partiality and pretenses, yet show if anything renewed vigour as the disasterous evidence of warming accumulates. Who benefits from the market in denial - only some of the most lucrative businesses on the planet, mere shortsighted selfishness will see us done.

I must say I find it amazing that Geoff (Geoff who?) sees fit to give a patronising lecture on scientific method to Don Aitken, the foundation chair of the Australian Research Council.

Aitken's point is precisely that the science is not monolithic. There is a dominant group of scientists and another group who take issue with the dominant group. Every point in Aitken's paper is supported in the literature.

On Geoff's clincher, the extent of sea-ice, we need to look at the evidence without preconceptions. For example, the Southern Hemisphere sea-ice anomaly is currently at its highest level since 1978: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

Global sea-ice anomaly peaked in January and has now fallen back to the mean for the same time-period: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg.

So while the Arctic is still down, we need to look at the whole picture to see what is going on, and the whole picture doesn't support Geoff's alarm.