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Is Glogal Warming Melting
The Arctic Ice Cap?
By John Coleman
The alarming headlines were everywhere during the late summer and early fall:
The Melting Arctic Melting Ice Displaces Walruses In The Russian Arctic Ice Melt Causing Death of Polar Bears
And there were the pictures of polar bears stranded on sheets of floating ice, accounts of their deaths "as a result of Global Warming" and even a documentary about the plight of the polar bears.
The emotional appeal was enormous.
And the stories on the ice melt made it seem certain that the chart in Al Gore's book and movie must be accurate.
Arctic sea-ice extent as depicted by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. (Source: An Inconvenient Truth, p. 143)
The constant urgent message is that Global Warming is happening now, and as the Arctic ice cap melts the climate disaster is beginning to unfold before our eyes. We were told that the ice is melting fast; it has melted far beyond anyone's predictions; at this rate the ice will all be melted by 2020. And we are told it is all a result of Global Warming; the result of our use of fossil fuels and their atmospheric by-product Carbon Dioxide.
How can I possibly convince you it is not true; that none of it is really true? I will try.
First, of all, may I ask you if you know what is the status of the Arctic ice cap at this moment? Is it continuing to melt away? Is it all most all gone? No, no.
After the long Arctic "Day" of 4,464 hours of constant sunshine at the North Pole, the long winter night is now settling in. Soon the Sun will totally disappear at the North Pole for 4,296 hours of darkness. So now the Arctic is freezing up . Ice is forming fast again.
The chart above from the Canadian government Ice Service depicts the extend of ice coverage in the Arctic waters north of Canada on a week to week basis from May to late November in 2007. The red line is all time average ice cover. As you can see the melt this season significantly exceeded the "normal", but as you can also see, by late November the ice cover had returned to normal. Typical of the media frenzy about Global Warming, the news was full of stories about the melt all summer but as the ice began to return to normal the news coverage ended. The general public is left with the impression that the Arctic is continuing to melt and climate change Armageddon is upon us.
The simple meteorological facts are that the melt happens every year. In the spring and summer some of the ice melts and in the fall and winter it reforms again. This year, however, more ice melted than had ever melted since the pole has been under satellite observation. But that satellite surveillance only began around 1976.
While we didn't have satellites to record it, we know from historical accounts that more of the ice of the Arctic melted on at least two previous occasions. One of those is medieval warm period when much of Greenland was ice-free and the Vikings settled there and established successful farms. But, as that warm era ended, the ice spread again to the coast of Greenland and the farms were abandoned. There is also evidence of a dramatic warm period on the northern perimeter of Canada, where as the ice retreated during a recent summer, an array of hundreds of large tree stumps was revealed. Investigation indicated that a forest of giant redwoods once stood there. Neither of these Arctic warm spells and the ice melt of those ancient times can be attributed to mankind and our fossil fuels. They stand as solid evidence that natural climate change has continued on planet Earth throughout its history.
A report published online by World Climate Report for the science and public policity institute says there exist historic observations, as well as currently active research efforts, that strongly indicate that there was a large sea-ice extent decline from about the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. Writing in 1953, arctic researcher Hans Ahlmann noted that “The extent of drift ice in Arctic waters has also diminished considerably in the last decades. According to information received in the U.S.S.R. in 1945, the area of drift ice in the Russian sector of the Arctic was reduced by no less than 1,000,000 square kilometers between 1924 and 1944.”
It is clear that Al Gore's Arctic Ice chart, like the infamous hockey stick temperature chart, is flagrantly inaccurate.
Here is the bottom line: This past summer's Arctic ice melt was neither unique nor unprecedented.
And as the for the reason for this year's Arctic ice melt, NASA and university scientists have detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decadelong time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming. While the causes of the influx of warm water will require further study, the latest observations from a research project underway in the Arctic suggest that the Arctic Ocean is moving toward a warmer state, a change that could have global implications. But any link with mankind's activities remains unproven.
By the way, Global Warming doomsdayers have tried to pretend the medieval warm period never happened. And when faced with the proof that it did occur, they dismiss it as "just a regional anomaly." My retort to them is that this season's Arctic melt could also be dismissed as a regional anomaly. After all, at the same time the Arctic was melting, the Antarctic Ice Cap at the South Pole was setting a record for the greatest extent of polar ice in observed history and at the same time South America and much of the Southern Hemisphere was experiencing the coldest and longest winter in at least 50 years. On a global basis, 2007 is falling far short of the doomsayer’s prediction that it will be the warmest year ever. It is now on track as of the December 1st to rank no higher that sixth. Satellite
Satellite composite image of Antarctica, showing the largest know ice cap ever at Earth's South Pole
And now about the Polar Bears, those stories and the "documentary" film about the death of a polar bear are not factual. Storms and an encounter with Walruses actually caused those deaths.
And here are the actual facts: Timesonline columnist James Delingpole reports that in 1950 there were about 5,000 polar bears and that now there are 25,000. It is reported that of the eleven tribes of polar bears tracked in North America, nine are increasing in number, and the other two are stable.
There are thousands of healthy polar bears prowling the Arctic at this moment.
The Arctic Ice melt media blitz in the late summer of 2007 was a classic example of how the media and environmentalists are virtually promoting Global Warming with religious zealotry. When the predicted Global Warming enhanced hurricane season failed to materialize, they turned their attention to the North Pole.
Here are some links utilized in researching this brief:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
And as always I rely on the website where you will find a constant supply of papers by scientists who debunk global warming at: http://icecap.us/index.php
All the while, the cornerstone of the Global Warming doomsdayer’s case for a global climate disaster, computer model that predict runaway Global Warming as result of "Carbon Dioxide Forcing" is crumbling. I will explain that in my next brief.
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