So we hear from the 2/12/13 entry in Watts Up With That?, one of the leading climate skeptic websites.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/12/sea-ice-news-volume-4-1-arctic-ice-gain-sets-a-new-record/

Arctic sea ice has made a stunning rebound since the record low recorded in the late summer of 2012.
With a few weeks of growth still to occur, the Arctic has blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter. This is only the third winter in history when more than 10 million km sq of new ice has formed.

Then follow some very compelling graphs, footnotes and statistics (you know the drill) that lead to the inescapable conclusion that the arctic sea ice is rebounding and our little excursion into warm, low-ice summers is only a temporary aberration and the planetary air conditioner is well on the way to a full recovery. Ergo, Global warming is a hoax. QED.

Let’s think about that for a moment. Between the fall and spring equinoxes, when the sun is below the equator, the North Pole is shrouded in perpetual darkness: a long night that lasts for half the year. Every point north of the Arctic Circle gets at least one totally sun-free day during that time, more and more of them as you go further north. The sun stays mostly below the horizon, dipping only slightly above it for half a year. It gets cold, so cold the sea freezes over.

The situation is reversed from March to September, when the pole gets six months of sunlight and the Arctic regions get more and more warmth from a sun that spends less and less time below the horizon as the season progresses.

The result is an asymmetry in sea ice accumulation and melt. Regardless of whether the world is warming or not, the Arctic Ocean will still freeze in winter. This is why the winter levels of Arctic sea ice are always around 14 million sq km, varying only a few percent over the last 30 years. Winter sea ice cover just isn’t all that sensitive to the global mean temperature.

In summer, slight changes in temperature have exaggerated results, with the September ice cover about half what it was thirty years ago. Since the ice tends to drop lower and lower every summer, but rebounds back to roughly the same place every winter, it stands to reason the recovery is going to be more dramatic in years of extreme low ice. It has to. It has to start from further down but it still must get up to the same level so it has further to go. This “recovery” is totally bogus. It is evidence of 2012′s record meltdown, not that the global climate machine is recovering, or rebounding.

You, of course, know this. So does anyone with the slightest ability to read a graph or add up a column of figures. I’m sure the people who put together this website know it perfectly well too.

They are not arguing a point. They are pushing an agenda.