When you see an apparent contradiction like this, why do you stop there? Do you really think climatologists haven't considered this? Here's one theory: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716...
> As such, the behavior of Antarctic sea ice is not a paradox as some have suggested, but instead is consistent with the geophysical characteristics in the southern polar region that starkly contrast to those in the Arctic.
Of course we don't understand everything, we don't understand everything about any subject. When you see contradictory headlines, dig deeper. Don't stop and think "I knew it, these people don't know what they're doing".
No, it shows that you haven't been reading the minimum baseline material.
Antartic ice surface is spreading but the volume is decreasing dramatically. The surface spread is due to lower atmospheric temperatures given the transfer of energy from the atmosphere to the ice, leading to the melt in ice shelves that used to be stable.
There is no point of contention there and if you had actually done the research this should have come up easily.
Short summary: the study partly conflicts other results, and the mass loss seen in that study may be more due to the limitations of their measurement technique (radar altimetry) versus other techniques (gravity).
There's more at the link referenced above. (See also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...)
Claimer: while not involved in ice mass quantification, I talk regularly with people who do it full time, publish regularly, are leads on space instruments to measure it, etc.
And, like other commenters nearby, I want to caution you on your approach to "skepticism" and "keeping an open mind".
You seem to be selecting one press release from the hundreds released every year, and using its partial conflict with other information to call the whole hypothesis (significant ice melting caused by global warming) into question. That's not a valid mode of inquiry - especially when you don't have the training and time to keep up with current work.
It's like walking into an IC fab and asking why they are not using EUV lithography (it was in this article in Wired!) when you didn't even take a semiconductor physics class in college.
The right place to start, if you really want to get informed, is the IPCC AR5 report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/). Reading press releases only makes sense if you can put it into context.
Now to what you are saying. First of all, being critical of what the media writes about some scientific subject, is not the same as being critical of the scientist that did the research. Many times research is wrongly quoted or taken out of context.
Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.
Science makes progress from new facts and experiments that can't be explained by the current theory. If people would refuse to see those facts, progress would never be made.