Posted on 02/21/2006 7:43:10 PM PST by naturalman1975
ANOTHER week, another global warming scare. And another case of doomsayers telling you only half the story.
This time the news was that Greenland, home of 8 per cent of the world's ice, was melting twice as fast as first feared.
Evacuate St Kilda now. If all the ice in Greenland slips into the sea, the oceans will rise 7m.
The headlines from Moscow to Melbourne were predictably alarmist: "Flooding fears as glaciers melt faster", "Island nations at risk from melting glaciers", "Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean" and so scarily on.
There was not a word of doubt or caution in any of the reports I saw. Man-made global warming is a religion after all, and to question is heresy.
But heresy is an overrated sin, so here's why there's no need yet to believe Greenland will soon be as green as its first Viking found it, or to fear Sydney will sink into the sea this century, as Red Cross once warned.
This latest spooking came from researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Kansas, who used radar measurements from satellites to work out Greenland's glaciers had been dumping ice into the sea at twice the "normal" rate over the past decade.
The researchers also used models to figure how much surface ice over the rest of Greenland was melting, then added the two figures to claim in Science that the oceans were rising by an extra .57mm a year, thanks just to Greenland. Scary.
So why won't I panic?
Because it was only last October that Norwegian and Russian scientists led by Professor Ola Johannessen reported -- also in Science -- that their own satellite data showed the ice over Greenland was actually getting thicker each year by more than 5cm on average.
Naturally, such reassuring news got close to zero publicity. Global cooling, after all, is still tomorrow's scare.
But less understandable is that the American paper did not mention this earlier report either, and this puzzles Professor Patrick Michaels, a global warming expert and past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.
"Why would Science publish this paper with no reference to Johannessen's earlier paper showing that Greenland is accumulating ice . . .?" Michaels asks.
"Johannessen even used data from some of the same satellites. What's more, Johannessen used real data and (the Americans) used a model of surface melt."
Michaels has since added the amount of ice actually growing on Greenland to the amount being lost by the glaciers as they meet the sea, and found the total loss is less than half what the American researchers said.
He also points out that the temperature swings around Greenland are a regular phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation that has occurred for centuries: "There is no need to invoke global warming for any of this."
And the bad news for fans of global drowning continues. Greenland is cooler than it was 50 years ago. Antarctica, home of 90 per cent of the world's ice, is getting colder, not warmer.
Too many facts for you? I'm sorry, I know how they get in the way of a good story. Especially this one.
Damn...and I already auctioned off all my sweaters on Ebay.
A glacial ping!
That's what I suspected - more ice is breaking off because more ice is piling up.
"That's what I suspected - more ice is breaking off because more ice is piling up."
WAAAYYYY too complex a concept for most Global Warmists. Just like the concept that the sun puts out different amounts of energy each year (it's about a 400 year cycle) and is about to enter a cooling cycle. So, as someone above said, global cooling will be the next scare. Of course, it will also be blamed on the US and capitalism. That's because the current environmental movement isn't about the environment, it's about anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. (Think watermellon: green on the outside, red on the inside.)
Actual this was the catch phrase of the late 70's and early 80's. Until todays scientists got smarter.
Of course the older scientists, of a couple of decades ago, think global warming is a bunch of hooey. And so do I.
Damn, those facts always get in the way.
Why doesn't Drudge post this after his alarmist link the other day?
I check Drudge daily, but he is obviously more interested in posting breathless panicked headlines than he is in informing his readers. I know I'm stating the obvious, but its annoying nonetheless.
"Of course the older scientists, of a couple of decades ago, think global warming is a bunch of hooey. And so do I"
could not have said it better!
It will be amusing to watch how the enviro-religionists manage to change their tune as more data emerges, but global cooling has a good deal of historical trend data to back it up, and were it not for computer modeling based on highly questionable premises we might already hear their bleating that yes, capitalism is to blame. It will come. And I don't think the weather will care.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:55 a.m. ET
Antarctica's harsh desert valleys -- long considered a bellwether for global climate change -- have grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s, scientists report, even while the Earth as a whole is warming.
Air temperatures recorded continuously over a 14-year period ending in 1999 declined by about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the polar deserts and across the White Continent, according to prominent researchers from 11 American universities and government laboratories.
The cooler temperatures are triggering a cascade of ecological consequences in the sensitive and barren region known as the Dry Valleys. They include a 10 percent annual decline in tiny soil organisms and a 9 percent annual decline in the biological productivity of a handful of ice-covered freshwater lakes, the study shows.
The report appeared Sunday in an online edition of the journal Nature.
The cooler temperatures defy a trend spanning more than 100 years in which average land surface temperatures have increased worldwide by about 1 degree Fahrenheit.
Nearly all of the warmest years in the modern climate record have occurred in the past decade; 1998 was the warmest yet, with 2001 coming in second, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
According to the report, Antarctica is the only one of Earth's seven continents that is cooling. Scientists concede they cannot explain the contradiction.
``This doesn't change the global warming scenario; the planet is still warming,'' said the study's lead author, limnologist Peter T. Doran of the University of Illinois-Chicago. ``But this is an unexpected twist. This shows we don't understand Antarctica as well as we thought.''
The Dry Valleys, ringed by jagged mountain peaks and glaciers, cover about 6,000 square miles. The area accounts for less than 2 percent of the continent, but represents nearly all the open terrain in an otherwise white expanse.
It is the driest place on Earth, with 2 inches of annual precipitation accompanied by subzero temperatures and howling winds. It's so bleak that NASA uses the Dry Valleys as a test track for Mars exploration.
Even small environmental changes there raise scientific eyebrows.
``The decline is alarming,'' said co-author Diana Wall of Colorado State University. The soil biologist studies the effect of climate change on microscopic soil worms that are the largest native life in the Dry Valleys.
These nematodes have rebounded before from environmental setbacks. The question is how long this cooling will continue.
Ice is growing thicker atop lakes, while freshwater flowing off the surrounding glaciers is diminishing and lake levels are dropping.
``These cooling repercussions may have a long term effect,'' Wall said by e-mail from a scientific outpost on the shores of Lake Hoare in the Dry Valleys. ``There is very little diversity here and the life cycles of these invertebrates is very slow.''
Some scientists who were not involved in the study complained it was too limited to draw such broad conclusions.
Imre Friedmann, director of the Polar Desert Research Center at Florida State University, said the study excludes the surrounding mountains. Friedmann described them as a ``totally different landscape'' than the valley floors, but still considered to be within the Dry Valleys region.
``I have noticed a slight warming in the mountains,'' he said. ``And there has been a heavier snow cover that is a result of the warming.''
Nor is global warming necessarily a uniform trend.
``Some short term reversals and regional variability should not be a surprise,'' said Benjamin Preston, a senior research fellow at the Pew Center for Climate Change in Arlington, Va. ``And, 14 years is a relatively short period.''
Doran, the study's lead author, said previous climate calculations that showed Antarctica was warming had been skewed by temperature data collected on the Antarctic Peninsula. Reaching northward toward South America, conditions on the narrow arm are heavily influenced by surrounding oceans
In the past 50 years, peninsula temperatures have been increasing five times faster than global average temperatures.
``Take away the peninsula temperatures and the vast majority of the continent is cooling,'' Doran said.
The next step is to determine why Antarctica is cooling. Calmer weather is one possible reason.
Said Doran, ``It seems the Dry Valleys have been getting less wind, and you lose the warming effect of the winds coming down off the mountains.''
Nature: www.nature.com
Dry Valleys:
http://huey.colorado.edu/LTER/
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Antarctica-Cooling.html?ex=1012587482&ei=1&en=e67e45a6452da88e
Look, I'm not denying the possibility of global warming, but it seems that too many enviro-wackos constantly need some "crisis" to give their lives meaning. All liberals need to have a crisis or crises to fill the void of their basically empty existences. The global warming "crisis" is only the latest and greatest lib "crisis". The fact that the fearmongers ignore evidence that contradicts or ameliorates their fearmongering only adds to the notion that it's all a leftist scam to weaken the U.S. This "we're all gonna die" shtick is getting old.
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