Are Volcanoes Melting Arctic?

IBD ^ | June 30, 2008

[Kaslin]

Climate Change: While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper.

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To the delight of Al Gore and the rest of the Gaia groupies, scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Colorado are predicting that the North Pole will be completely free of ice this summer. The apocalyptic headlines already are starting to appear.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important," says the center's Mark Serreze. "There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water."

From a media standpoint, this is another sign of the apocalypse — proof positive of man-made climate change. But we've heard this before.

In August 2000 the New York Times ran a piece claiming the pole was free of ice for the first time in 50 million years, long before SUVs roamed Earth. As earth scientist Patrick Michaels noted, "It was retracted three weeks later as a barrage of scientists protested that open water is common at or near the pole at the end of summer."

As reported in the June 26 edition of ScienceDaily, a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of massive undersea volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to the WHOI team.

[NathanR]

Because the ice on the Antarctic is on land and would raise the ocean’s water level slightly if it all melted.

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

But the ice in Antarctica is actually getting thicker. Only in the Arctic circle is the ice melting.