Monday, January 21, 2008

Antarctic, melting still (again?)

Last week, many MSM came out with news that, yet again, the Antarctic is melting. But is it really, indeed, melting? The Junkman says that "It’s quite possible that the reported Antarctic melting is manmade -- but the “man” may be Eric Rignot, as opposed to the term’s broader connotation.
Read the rest here.

Preface
Manmade Antarctic Melting, Indeed
Thursday, January 17, 2008
By Steven Milloy

A new study, much hyped by the media, blames humans for escalating ice loss in Antarctica. The media, however, seems to have no idea as to how truly manmade the supposed ice loss may be.

“Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica; Sheets Melting in an Area Once Thought to Be Unaffected by Global Warming” was the Washington Post’s front-page, above-the-fold headline last Monday (Jan. 14). The headline for the continuation of the article was “Antarctic Ice Loss Could Speed Rise in Ocean Levels.”

If true, it would be quite a worrisome situation given that Antarctica contains enough ice to raise ocean levels by about 60 meters, a deluge that would put every major coastal city in the world deep under water and uproot hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.

NASA scientist Eric Rignot reported in Nature Geoscience (Jan. 13) that increased melting had been detected in the ice sheets of western Antarctica, an area where surface temperatures have remained unchanged.

As warming surface temperatures could not be blamed for the ice loss, Rignot hypothesized that the cause may be the flow of warmer waters from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. “Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes,” Rignot told the Post. “We believe it is related to [manmade global warming]”, he added.

Rignot may indeed “believe” that humans are the cause – he is, after all, part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization founded on the belief that humans are causing catastrophic global warming. But the facts belie such beliefs.

No comments: