If you go to the Cryosphere Today website and look at the sea ice anomaly time series you will see that despite the "record freezing" the level of sea ice is still below the median level of ice coverage from 1978-2000.

Since it's reasonable to assume that there was some global warming prior to 1978 then I would say that this winters refreeze isn't anything to crow about. Rather than being years old the ice present is months old and in some cases days old. It doesn't represent the thermal buffer it did in 1950.

Anybody who thinks this is a refutation of AGW should be asked if their willing to be ejected from a boat at the North Pole come September 15th. Within 10 years I believe the chances of treading water on that date will exceed 75%. In 20 years the North Pole should be ice free by midsummer if present trends continue.

We have no idea what this will do for our weather but we can safely assume that open water at the North Pole will be a bad influence.

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From that article:

While the Arctic sea ice is changing fast, the same is not true in Antarctica. Comiso said the amount of ice surrounding the continent is little changed over recent decades, although some ice loss has been occurring around the continent's peninsula and on some glaciers. Antarctica is significantly less tied to the world's weather patterns and is considered to be less subject to the effects of global warming so far.

And what about those oceans?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8852 ...

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

And any way, the "record" for these things goes back what? A hundred years or so?  How can we possibly know what it was like in Henry Hudson's day...he was searching for a "Northwest Passage" -- well, maybe it existed at a time like the Medieval Warming.   We're still well within the range of what's good and natural for life on Earth.

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -- Galileo

Even you aren't that stupid.

The physics of a water column dictate that the bottom of the column is always the coldest part (absent forced mixing) so that as long as there is any ice at the top of the column the temperature at the bottom will remain stable and therefore, cold.

That doesn't prevent water at the top of the column from heating up. So could you please stick to arguments that have some tiny chance of being valid?

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