So which is it? Is there too much ice in the Arctic or not enough?

Last week, the Finnish icebreaker, the MSV Nordica, completed the earliest sailing of the Northwest Passage recorded in modern times.

The Nordica set off from Vancouver on July 5 and reached Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, on the 29th.

The previous earliest transit of the Passage occurred in 2008 and was completed on July 30 that year.

The Nordica’s breaking of the ’08 record would have been seen as an achievement for technology a decade or two ago.

“Look at how much shipbuilding has advanced, even in just the last nine years,” we might have marvelled had this occurred even as recently as the 1990s. “Isn’t it great that ships full of supplies for northern communities and scientists conducting Arctic research can get through the Passage earlier and for longer.”

But this is now the Age of Climate Hysteria in which every bit of weather news has to be interpreted as a disaster.

So the Nordica’s arrival in Nuuk was not greeted with bands and fanfare and grog for the crew (although knowing young sailors there were undoubtedly adult spirits consumed), rather the news was filled with handwringing about how this early crossing was a sign that devastating climate change is upon us.

Here’s an example of the breathless, fear-filled coverage from CTV:

“Sea ice that foiled famous explorers and blocked the passage to all but the hardiest ships has slowly been melting away in one of the most visible effects of man-made global warming.”

Huh!? How does the Nordica’s polar traverse “prove” global warming is man-made?

It may well prove the polar icecap is thinning. (Or the fact that the Nordica beat the Canadian Coast Guard ship Louis L. St-Laurent’s old record by one day may only prove the Nordica is a superior ship or got luckier with the weather this year than the St-Laurent got nine years ago.)

But even if the cause of the Nordica’s speedy voyage across the Arctic is climate change, there is nothing in this record that proves the change is man-made.

For me, there have always been three standards for determining whether global warming or climate change is a problem.

Is warming or excess change happening?

If it is, are natural or man-made forces behind it?

And, finally, will it be damaging?

The far-more-accurate satellite temperature records show far less warming than the ground-station records. And the incidents of extreme weather change from year-to-year.

One year hurricanes are worse, then it’s tornados, forest fires, droughts or lightning strikes. Reporters and activists focus only on the kind that is bad this year, which leaves the overall impression that climate change is accelerating and worsening – an impression that often isn’t borne out in the statistics.

Arctic ice grew by a third after a cool summer in 2013. And it grew again in 2014. Together the growth of those two years made up for the shrinkage in the previous three years.

But I bet you didn’t hear about that because it was neither sensational nor supportive of the climate hysteria.

You may not have heard, either, that the largest international Arctic research expedition of 2017 was postponed in June because there was too much ice in Hudson Bay.

Of course, that too was blamed on global warming, because global warming has become the latest “moral panic” that explains away every disaster and inconvenience, and because it justifies nearly every government intervention from imposing carbon taxes to installing bike lines on every city street.

It’s convenient that climate change can be blamed both for too much ice in the Arctic in June and too little in July.