Ha ha ha, you skeptics (sad)

When a big Arctic storm hit the poles this summer, I predicted that skeptics, led by the arch fiend Marc Morano, would blame it for the worst loss of sea ice in the summer we've ever seen.  And I was right. 

Here's the prediction post:

I knew it, I knew it

and then the "See, I told you so" post:

And of course I was right again

But one might still ask, what was the ultimate scientific verdict on this storm and the sea ice loss?  Well, here we go with that:

Arctic CSI: Cyclone Absolved in Record Sea Ice Melt

Setting:
"The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012" arose in Siberia on Aug. 2 and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Canada, lasting an unusually long 13 days. The cyclone hit a pressure minimum of 966 millibars on Aug. 6, the lowest ever recorded for an Arctic storm. The stronger the pressure gradient, or difference in pressure, the stronger the winds associated with a storm."

Verdict:
"Not guilty.

The scientists conclude the cyclone reduced the final September ice extent by almost 60,000 square miles (150,000 square kilometers), an additional 5 percent. However, they point out that 2012's record loss was 18 percent greater than the previous low, set in 2007. [Video: Powerful Arctic Cyclone Wreaks Havoc on Sea Ice]

"Thus without the storm, 2012 would still have produced a record minimum," the authors report in their study, which appears online this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters."

 Thus, I was totally and completely and unalterably right.  Because what Morano said (quoting Anthony Watts, who was wrong too) was that the storm made the new record low possible (i.e., if it hadn't happened, the new low would not have been possible). 

But as we can clearly see now, that's not true.