It has been a while since we have checked in on polar ice. I’m sure you remember the hysteria of a few years ago–Arctic sea ice is melting! Al Gore predicted, in 2009, that the Arctic would be “completely ice-free” by 2014. Far from having disappeared, there are still 1.8 million square miles of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean.
The annual Arctic sea ice minimum has arrived once again, and as usual, it provides far less drama than the media headlines would suggest. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice extent bottomed out on September 10th, 2025, at 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles).
That figure puts 2025 in a tie for 10th lowest in the satellite record, right alongside 2008 and 2010. But here’s the key point that gets lost in the breathless reporting:
* It’s been 13 years since the record low of 2012, and no new record has been set since.
* This year’s minimum is higher than the minimums of 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024.
* And despite Al Gore’s infamous prediction of an “ice-free Arctic” by 2014, here we are with nearly 1.8 million square miles of ice still in place.
To sum up: “[T]here has been no significant downward trend in September minimum extents over the past two decades.”
Meanwhile, ice in the Antarctic region has generally expanded in recent years.
Happily, the polar bears are doing fine too, as are the walruses.
Climate models are consistently wrong, as are climate predictions (not only those by Al Gore). Will there ever be accountability for the Left’s egregious errors with regard to climate? Only, I think, in the sense that most people have caught on and have tuned the hysterics out.
