A new myth has cropped up that global sea ice extent is at the same level as 1979. If you've followed our Arctic sea ice discussion, your first reaction is probably "well that can't be right". And you'd be correct.
Michael Asher at DailyTech (who frequently writes misleading articles on climate change) among other conservative bloggers seem to have latched onto this myth based on this difficult to read graph from the U of Illinois' Arctic Research Center.
As far as I can tell, somebody eyeballed this and concluded that the level in 1979 was the same as the current level, wrote a blog about it, and then a bunch of other conservative blogs caught on (as tends to happen to global warming "skeptic" articles).
However, if you look at the northern hemisphere (~1.5 million km^2 ice loss) and southern hemisphere (~0.5 million km^2 ice gain, with large error bars) data seperately, it's quite clear that global sea ice has decreased overall over this period.
Nevertheless, as with any story which superficially seems to cast doubt on AGW, this myth has caught fire in the conservative blogosphere, and a couple "questions" have been asked about it on YA. So I asked my own question about it.
