The science is settled unsettling. Comedian Lewis Black said it best on his White Album when he asked, “Do you know what Meteorologist means in English? It means liar.” It seems that we now have more science to settle atop the mountains of previous science which all purports to prove one thing or another. You can decide on the reasons for yourself, but the arctic ice sheet is back with a vengeance.

A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013. Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

Good news for polar bears, if nothing else. But talks of a clear Northwest Passage seem to have fallen by the wayside. In fact, a few people who were counting on it rather heavily are left sort of… stuck.

Only six years ago, the BBC reported that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by 2013, citing a scientist in the US who claimed this was a ‘conservative’ forecast. Perhaps it was their confidence that led more than 20 yachts to try to sail the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific this summer. As of last week, all these vessels were stuck in the ice, some at the eastern end of the passage in Prince Regent Inlet, others further west at Cape Bathurst. Shipping experts said the only way these vessels were likely to be freed was by the icebreakers of the Canadian coastguard. According to the official Canadian government website, the Northwest Passage has remained ice-bound and impassable all summer.

Some of the analysts currently scratching their heads over how the planet stubbornly refuses to do what they insist it must are apparently now reflecting on some much older data. Reports are available which indicate a massive melting of the arctic ice sheet in the 1920’s and 30’s, long before the era of global climate studies. But then, it crashed into another period of increased freezing and expansion. The current photo has a few of them wondering if we might be in danger of heading into another ice age, which would be disastrous for mankind.

This just in from Jeff Dunetz.