Antarctica Gains Record Ice Contradicting 95% of Climate Models; Alarmists Still Claim It is Consistent With Anthropogenic Global Warming

The Guardian reports:

While Arctic sea ice continues to decline, Antarctic levels are confounding the world’s most trusted climate models with record highs for the third year running....    

 Antarctic ice floes extended further than ever recorded this southern winter, confounding the world’s most-trusted climate models.

“It’s not expected,” says Professor John Turner, a climate expert at the British Antarctic Survey. “The world’s best 50 models were run and 95% of them have Antarctic sea ice decreasing over the past 30 years.”

The winter ice around the southern continent has been growing relatively constantly since records began in 1979. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), which monitors sea ice using satellite data, said this week that the year’s maximum was 1.54m sq km (595,000 sq miles) above the 1981-2010 average. The past three winters have all produced record levels of ice.

Actually not only has Antarctica ice grown, it's now at a 35 year record level.   Still despite the fact that 95% of the climate models wrongly predicted that Antarctica ice would shrink due to anthropogenic global warming (AGW), some alarmists were quick to claim the change is consistent with AGW.  In response to the news, Ian Simmonds, a professor in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne stated:

“It seems counterintuitive, but the growth in the Antarctic sea ice is consistent with global warming and the effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is strong evidence to indicate changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are leading to region-specific changes in climate,” Simmonds explains. 

“The greenhouse effect is strengthening the westerlies over the Southern Ocean and this could be causing the increase in the Antarctic sea ice zone. Ultimately ocean warming will counteract this but it may be a number of years before that takes place.”

One game with conspiracy theorists is that when part of the conspiracy is proven wrong, they simply move to another part of the theory. The climate alarmists do exactly the same thing.  With AGW theory undermined at the South Pole, other alarmists instead shift to trying to scare people about what's happening at the North Pole.  After ice increased in the Arctic Ocean, it's now melting again.  It may eventually be free of ice.  Catastrophe! 

Of course, the Arctic Ocean has been ice free before, before man ever began adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  In fact what is normal for the history of the Planet Earth is that the Arctic Ocean is free of ice during the summer.   Facts...they are inconvenient things.