Why is National Geographic publishing a fake map of shrinking Arctic ice?

I haven't been active on this blog for a long time, but now I just felt that I had to write a post about something that really upsets me. For years I was a subscriber to National Geographic and most of the time I thought they had some interesting pieces, and I really regarded National Geographic as serious publication that didn't doctor data. But that has all come to an end now.

On August 3, 2015 National Geographic published an article on their web-site titled "Yes, Mr. President, We Remade Our Atlas to Reflect Shrinking Ice", and in this article they show an animated map over melting ice cap between 1999 and 2014.

There is only one problem with the map - it's bogus. The map simply doesn't show the real ice coverage. Not only doesn't the map show the real ice coverage, but there are also some false statements made in the article by National Geographic Geographer Juan José Valdés who says - "After the publication of the atlas in September 2014, the ice has melted even further". This is simply not true.

The Arctic melt season ends in August, and if we compare the National Geographic map to the real situation today as published by NSIDC we see a very big discrepancy.

Comparison between National Geographic's 2014 map and the ice coverage in July 2015

 So, according to National Geographic Geographer Juan José Valdés - "the ice has melted even further" after the 2014 publication. This statement is simply not true, because the melt season in Arctic ends in August.

Another disturbing fact about the National Geographic map, is that it only shows multiyear ice or older according to National Geographic's senior GIS cartographer Rosemary Wardle. This fact is commented in the article by Walt Meier, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Cryospheric Sciences Lab who is also concerned that the map leaves out some important details that might mislead the public.

Meier says: "Personally, my thought is that it would be best to show the entire end-of-summer ice cover in white—which is how it generally would appear in a photo from above [without clouds]—with the multiyear area outlines or maybe offset in a different shade to highlight it. At the least, I think it would be good to put a clear line [to] denote the minimum extent. Ultimately, it is an editorial decision as to what to show and how."

"An editorial decision as to what to show and how" - really! To justify the left out information Rosemary Wardley says: "We do not show the minimum extent simply because there is only so much information we can put on the map before it becomes confusing to the user". Really!

What Wardley "forgets" to tell, is that after the September 2014 publication, the ice that was not shown on the map became multiyear ice and the ice coverage was in fact much larger already in 2014 than the map shows.

Is this a coincident or what?