[tyrionsrke]

It's not really trickery then, if it's both dramatic and accurate. Where would you like the origin point to be? Starting at 0 would flatten the loss over the same time span and would be both misleading about the importance of the loss and might be used to temper the climate change argument.

The loss amount itself isn't even as important as what it means or how scientists are interpreting it. If the ecological impact of a loss of this magnitude needs to be represented, this chart does exactly that. If the impact were unimportant or negligible, the chart would be altogether unnecessary.

[jsilence]

Since an average monthly sea ice extent of zero is actually the physical reality this process is approaching, the Y-axis should be at zero.

Since the process started at something around 15.5 such a graphical representation would give the reader the chance to intuitively grasp that we lost somewhat about 15-20% of the ice extent.