Reader Brian D sent over this 1971 National Geographic map, which shows that there is a lot more Arctic sea ice now than there was 42 years ago.
I remember seeing that map at the time. The next map overlays current ice extent on the 1971 map, with green representing ice present in 2013 that was not present in 1971, and red representing the opposite.
NSIDC likes to pretend that ice has been declining steadily, by starting their graphs near the century maximum in 1978.
But sadly for them, the 1990 IPCC report captured the growth in ice prior to 1979.
www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
NCAR mentioned the ice growth at the time
by Walter Orr Roberts Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, andNational Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
In February of 1972 earth-orbiting artificial satellites revealed the existence of a greatly increased area of the snow and ice cover of the north polar cap as compared to all previous years of space age observations.
www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull165/16505796265.pdf
As did the CIA
There was so little ice in 1969, that experts thought it would be ice-free “within a decade or two“