“Huh. Perhaps if I make comments about 30 years as the minimum in climate studies, you might think about retracting this comment “
The 30 year norm defines the current climate state, it’s not a magic at line upto which everything observed is ignored. The Arctic ice has been “odd” for at least a decade which makes it a subject of serious study. Changes which come and go for a year or even a few years are interesting but not of note but changes which stay put are.
“Much like your arguement above about trends in arctic ice since 2003, how much traction would I get suggesting that surface temperature trends in some region the size of the arctic showed a negative trend? “
You’re the one who made the claim that it was being “overlooked” there was no change in the global trend. The obvious and negative change in the global trend was pointed out to you and now you’re crying foul with irrelevancies.
With regard to regional and global the issue is the what the preponderance of data shows and the likelihood of what future data will show. If you take three major regions of note (Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland) and 2 of the 3 are showing major decline that’s an important caveat regardless of how much region 3 compensates for the other 2.
The actual issue here and always is what is happening in the real world not what technicality can be invoked to ignore what is happening in the real world. Nobody even vaguely interested in the issue of glaciers or sea ice could say with a straight face it’s business as usual. The people who do say that are the same who would never accept anything as being odd, even when the ice caps melt it’ll be “Well if you just go back a few millions years….”
” before I’m prepared to commit to the sorts of actions being contemplated,”
Policy is completely and utterly irrelevant to what’s happening in the Arctic. You want to define reality in relation to your policy preferences such that you’ll only accept conclusions concerning Arctic ice at the same time as you’re prepared to accept whatever policies you think people are proposing if it were true.
The real world doesn’t care about your police preferences. It’s doing what it’s doing regardless of who you elect to Congress and whatever you read on blogs about the reds coming to steal your taxes.
“Just not convinced the level of certainty is justified”
You were and are pretty certain that nothing is happening. Your defence of this position spent a lot of time discussing your opinion of climate science and your policy preferences but very little time on the details of the topic you’re addressing. That strongly suggests your viewpoint is political or idealogical in nature and consequently you’re using the wrong information to form opinions on unrelated topics.