Why do you think so many global warming doubters were wrong about Arctic sea ice recovery?

None of their arguments stand and they know it. they're just grabbing for straws and trying to use any excuse they can imagine to keep allowing this environmental destruction. They claim the arctic ice is growing. they claim that it's a seasonal cycle. they claim that it was warmer on neptune 10 billion years ago. and at the very end of it all, when there are NO more excuses, they'll just up and say "you know what? we don't give a damn about the earth so stop trying" I'm totally convinced that it's some kind of conspiracy. that these type of people are dead set on destroying this planet. as nuts as that may sound to many. there's just no other explanantion

I've said many times that I am not a scientist and everything I have opinions on about GW/AGW is from the layman's point of view, but here is what I DO know-some people are either clearly unable to correctly interpret the data and statistics, they cherry pick and/or use incomplete data to try to support their questionable conclusions-ice area vs mass is one of the most obvious examples-or they just flat out lie and claim that the lie supports their beliefs. Somebody asked earlier if interest in global warming was fading, and if so why. Well. Look at some of the ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about it here at Y/A and it is pretty apparent why the interest is dropping off. There isn't much debate of merit.

To answer Dana's question, it's simply failure to understand the significance of the data. They make common mistakes like "oh look, the ice caps grew so much in the winter last year" or "In this one spot in Antarctica there was actually an average anual increase in ice cap mass". Of course we know this to be irrelevant and the significance of the data is trends, but you can't stop people from seeing what they want. They also will only look at articles and data that support their belief... Martin M- Dr Jello blocked me too. I don't care personally, it just shows me he can dish the crap but not take the truth... I see it as a step to fixing his ignorance haha.

They also think that the Antarctic sea ice is growing in mass every year even though its extent has decreased in about half the years on record. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081123162853AAhWhQe Maybe they think up is down, black is white, and decreasing is increasing? Or maybe they're just in denial. When you're in denial, you're wrong about a lot of things. For example "I'm not an alcoholic" and "one more drink won't hurt".

They were correct however about the fact that mans contribution to global warming is insignificant and that global climate fluctuations are natural and continuous.

Okay I'll tell you where my mistake came from. The charts I was looking at this summer in regards to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) looked like it was also heading into a cold phase like the PDO Pacific Decadal Oscillation was doing, but I was mistaken. As you can clearly see on this chart: http://www.climate4you.com/ And if you look at the satellite images you'll notice that it's the North Atlantic side that's not refreezing as fast as the Pacific side is. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=11&fd=23&fy=1979&sm=11&sd=23&sy=2008 I see you couldn't help but think about me yesterday. Maybe subconsciously you realized it was my birthday. So even if you don't pick my answer as the best answer (even though we both know that it is the best one) please don't pick someone that completely ran me over the coals for making a miscalculation of the data I was looking at.

Well eventually as global warming gets worse, the cycle will just repeat itself and we will have well over the extent of ice there was in 1979. Of course that may cause a "little" iceage in Great Britan and Northern Europe, but us on the california coast will be alright, so i dont really care. Because the flow of the oceans will come to a virtual standstill, and it'll be so hot, more water will evaporate, rain down, and make more ice in the caps. It'll probably kill of a few dozen species of animals, but we dont need to worry about them.

I may be wrong but I thought the job of scientists was to observe, evaluate and report observable data. I thought making "predictions" was for circus magicians.