Rev.Milkbone,
I just watched Paul's first viedo. Do recognize his "2020 or sooner" forecast of less than 1,000,000 sq. km. of Arctic Sea Ice (ASI) ("ice free") is his guess.
He discounted the Gompertz curve showing ice free in 2025 (+/-), saying there was nothing that could cause that curve. However, much discussion on the threads of this forum (ASI blog = ASIB) this winter was about how much snow may have been falling on the ice due to the extra water vapor in the air and what consequences this would have, and we've been watching winter storms drop snow (because it is cold). (Historically, it is understood that not much snow fell over the 'desert' Arctic Ocean.) Fresh snow has a very high albedo (reflects 95% of solar radiation) so might delay ice melt once the sun rises. Thick snow may 'hide' melt ponds delaying their absorbing most of the solar radiation. These would be positive feedbacks (positive here being 'good for the ice'). But snow may have negative feedbacks as well: clouds (especially low clouds) in the winter will reduce heat loss to space (Paul showed how recent winters have been rather warmer than it used to be). Snow is a great insulator, so if it falls on the ice when ice is thin, it would cause less ice to grow during the winter. Countering this, if there is lots of snow on thin ice, the ice will be weighed down and sea water will mix with the bottom snow and freeze... Anyway, you can see that trying to figure out the consequences of a new phenomenon in the Arctic (snow) is not straight forward, but that there are both positive and negative consequences for the ice.
Chris Reynolds used to post 'really good stuff' in this forum. One of the things he kept bringing to our attention were positive feedbacks that we hadn't recognized. Thinking about Paul's video, he showed a graph that showed how third, fourth and fifth year ice was a smaller percentage of the ASI coverage in recent years than it used to be. He did not point out that the 'thinning' of these curves sort of stopped a few years ago. (Is this chance? Or is is due to Arctic realities [a positive feedback] we don't yet understand?)
Even as the average person on these threads is rather pessimistic about the survival of summertime ASI, only a handful think 'ice free'dom will arrive this year or next. Nonetheless, a first 'blue ocean event' in 2025 or 2050 (as some of Wipneus's graphs project) is not good news for humanity! I'm among the more pessimistic here, and I thought, back in 2012, an ice free Arctic would happen by 2019. Although I think it could happen next year, I won't be surprised if it doesn't happened in seven.
Just one more watcher, educated in earth sciences, but a neophyte when it comes to most aspects of ASI.