Has the Ice in the Arctic Ever Melted Before?

QUESTION: Martin,
Been reading you for years, starting when the SDNY wrongly jailed you and basically destroyed your constitutional rights, s/b a movie… what a great service you do for human kind…hope some of it sticks..lucky for all readers we have you for now to help us face the future,”thank you” !!!
Our question concerns climate change, all the nay-sayers who will not listen to any reasonable argument against their view…The big question that gets thrown at me all the time is: “has the artic ever melted before and has it happened several times over the course of time?
Thank you for all you do,
CL

ANSWER: The North Sea Passage opened in 1817 after the Little Ice Age. From a cyclical perspective, the Arctic freezes and then opens. Before the Little Ice Age, there is evidence that Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island, and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit and people. Modern explorers attempted to find a passage during the 15th century , and it was attempted again during the 19th and 20th centuries. We have this account from 1817 which discusses how the ice has melted to allow ships to pass and therefore proves that this is cyclical and the melting of ice has nothing to do with human use of fossil fuels.

THE ARCTIC IS MELTING

“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated….

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….. this affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.” A request was made for the Royal Society to assemble an expedition to go and investigate.

President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817, Minutes of Council, Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London. 20th November, 1817.(from) http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm