I just want to point out that we all seem be, to some extent, getting seduced by the glamor of numbers.
We have wonderful charts and graphs that compare today's SIA and extent with past years, complete with anomalies, etc.
But we are measuring now, in most cases, something stunningly different than what we were measuring in the past.
I live in Minnesota, where lakes freeze over every year. If I were comparing two lakes the way we are comparing years, I would judge a lake with five inches of solid lake ice to be the same as a lake covered with a thin veneer of slushy (if we are talking about area and extent) or with five inches of slushy (if we are talking about volume). Anyone looking at the two lakes would laugh their a$$es off that I claimed to say anything of any significance about the relative conditions of the two lakes by making my careful measurements of their respective ice area, ice extent, and ice volume.
Yet this is what we do.
Maybe everyone is already perfectly aware of this. If so, please ignore.
But does anyone else get the sense that we are fooling ourselves a bit with our obsessions over numbers that are in fact comparing apples with...well, orange juice/banana smoothies?
Numbers can lie as easily as they can elucidate; indeed, much more easily.