If you look at Antartica, Ice is ACTUALLY increasing rapdily on one side. Warming? Hmmmmm
was just reading some recent research which suggested that the permanent Ice on the land mass has been protecting the floating sea ice from melting more , compared to the north pole
but the amount of floating ice on the whole has recently started to decrease
(there has been complete collapases of ice shelves around the antartic peninsular already, but as you say, other parts have had a bit of an increase in sea ice...but the antartic has a very strong polar vortex (hence the larger Ozone hole) and so keeps itself colder better...i.e its been more immune to warming)
the models did forecast that it was the sub polar regions that would warm up the most...and they have
the interesting thing is that people say its happening faster than ever before
but there is evidence that the earth warms up just as fast after an ice age finishes (and then cool down again just as fast (i.e overshoots sort of thing) before it settles
anyway, one thing, I reckon, is that there is still alot more we need to learn about the past and what will happen to the future
