Climate Depot Analysis
AP’s Seth Borenstein ([email protected]) is at it again. Borenstein continues to serve in his role as chief apologist for the man-made global warming industry. This time, in an October 10, 2012 AP article, Borenstein is working overtime to explain away record Antarctic sea ice growth in 2012. See: Experts: Global warming means more Antarctic ice – (Headline via Tom Nelson’s website)
As man-made global warming morphs more and more into unfalsifiable science and “extreme” weather claims, expect more tortured spin from activists like Borenstein. (See: ‘Long sad history of AP reporter Seth Borenstein’s woeful global warming reporting’) (Also, The New York Times also has an activist badly posing as a reporter: See: NYT reporter Justin Gillis Antarctic ice claims called ‘a joke’ by climatologist — Gillis’ polar sea ice claims called ‘a total irrelevancy’ & ‘ludicrous‘)
In a prime example of how the warmists cannot get their story straight, Borenstein’s article turns former Vice President Al Gore’s Antarctic claims and 60 Minutes’ claims on their head.
’60 Minutes’ refuted by Borenstein’s article! Flashback 2007: 60 Minutes goes to Antarctica; World’s fastest-warming place — 2007: ‘Scott Pelley looks for – and finds – evidence of global warming in Antarctica where the bottom of the world is literally melting away’
What Borenstein ignores about the Antarctic in his latest article is very telling. The following are a few key studies Borenstein omitted while he was crafting his warming equals more ice narrative.
Flashback 2007: Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions Study: ‘No increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years’ — ‘Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet. David Bromwich, researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State U.: ‘It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,” he said. “Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there.’
Oops. NASA’s Hansen Predicted Peak Sea Ice Loss In Antarctica: ‘Antarctic sea ice is at a record high for the date, and close to an all-time record’
Model Fail on Antarctic: ‘Climate models say Antarctic sea ice should currently be in prolonged and substantial decline’ — Study in AMS’ peer-reviewed Journal of Climate: ‘The negative SIE (sea ice extent) trends in most of model runs over 1979 – 2005 are a continuation of an earlier decline, suggesting that the processes responsible for the observed increase over last 30 years are not being simulated correctly.’
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Seth Borenstein October 10 article excerpt: Climate change skeptics have seized on the Antarctic ice to argue that the globe isn’t warming and that scientists are ignoring the southern continent because it’s not convenient. But scientists say the skeptics are misinterpreting what’s happening and why.
Shifts in wind patterns and the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year — both related to human activity — are probably behind the increase in ice, experts say. This subtle growth in winter sea ice since scientists began measuring it in 1979 was initially surprising, they say, but makes sense the more it is studied.
“A warming world can have complex and sometimes surprising consequences,” researcher Ted Maksym said this week from an Australian research vessel surrounded by Antarctic sea ice. He is with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Many experts agree. Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado adds: “It sounds counterintuitive, but the Antarctic is part of the warming as well.” […] The Arctic ice responds more directly to warmth. In the Antarctic, the main driver is wind, Maksym and other scientists say. Changes in the strength and motion of winds are now pushing the ice farther north, extending its reach. Those changes in wind are tied in a complicated way to climate change from greenhouse gases, Maksym and Scambos say. Climate change has created essentially a wall of wind that keeps cool weather bottled up in Antarctica, NASA’s Abdalati says.
And the wind works in combination with the ozone hole, the huge gap in Earth’s protective ozone layer that usually appears over the South Pole. It’s bigger than North America. It’s caused by man-made pollutants chlorine and bromine, which are different from the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming. The hole makes Antarctica even cooler this time of year because the ozone layer usually absorbs solar radiation, working like a blanket to keep the Earth warm. And that cooling effect makes the winds near the ground stronger and steadier, pushing the ice outward, Scambos says. University of Colorado researcher Katherine Leonard, who is on board the ship with Maksym, says in an email that the Antarctic sea ice is also getting snowier because climate change has allowed the air to carry more moisture.
End Borenstein article excerpt.
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Update: October 11, 2012: More reactions to Borenstein’s Antarctic article:
Analysis of Seth Borenstein’s Antarctic ice article: Translation: ‘More Ice = Warming and Less Ice = Warming. Our scam wins either way!’ — Borenstein’s article: ‘But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be paying attention to it and shouldn’t be talking about it.’ — Translation: ‘We ignored the records in 2006 & 2012 & finally a few bloggers embarrassed us so much about 2012 that we had our buddy Seth Borenstein make up some crap.’ — Ozone? Translation: ‘We plan to ignore ozone hole over Arctic … which we never predicted either.’
Antarctica Sea Ice theory triggers BS detectors! ‘The continued growth of sea ice in Antarctica has been in direct conflict with the ‘settled science’ climate models for years’ — ‘Without a shred of embarrassment & ignoring their previous prognostications, the climate Illuminati now say global warming causes more Antarctic ice using amazing mental gymnastics to prove their point. These are the same people who came up with a theory to prove that ‘snowmageddon’ in US was also caused by global warming…These people have been, are and will be an incredible stain on the name of science for generations to come’
‘In a move of Olympian audacity, Seth Borenstein keeps a straight face and shamelessly shifts to pretending that more Antarctic sea-ice fits their climate change theory’ — ‘Yet again climate models fail to predict things in advance, they only do the post modern type of prediction — the bury-my-bewilderment type, after the fact. Once more, nothing can disprove the theory of man-made climate catastrophe’
Borenstein’s article mocked: ‘The oceans are warming, but that now means less sea ice in the Arctic, and more sea-ice in the Antarctic. Of course!’ — In UN IPCC #15.4.4 ‘they discuss the impact of decreasing sea ice, but not of the possibility it might increase.’ — ‘Many predictions are about the ice shelves, not the sea-ice specifically…How did these predictions pan out? British Antarctic Survey: ‘A thaw of Antarctic ice is outpacing predictions by the U.N. climate panel and could in the worst case drive up world sea levels by 2 meters (6 ft) by 2100’
Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner on Borenstein’s Antarctic ice article: ‘Oddly, for years they dined out on talk of ‘melting polar ice caps’, always and clearly in the plural’ — Horner: ‘That’s what the theory and their models said. Just not what reality said. After confrontation with defiant reality became too much, Al Gore famously shifted his rhetoric to refer only to ‘the north polar ice cap’. Now the theory has evolved to match unhelpful observations’
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Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr. in 2009: ‘So a warming Antarctica and a cooling Antarctica are both ‘consistent with’ model projections of global warming. Our foray into the tortured logic of ‘consistent with’ in climate science raises the perennial question, what observations of the climate system would be inconsistent with the model predictions?’
Climate Depot presents a small sampling of studies challenging Borenstein’s take on Antarctic sea ice:
NSIDC Ignored Antarctica in 2006 Too: ‘Antarctic Sea Ice Extent set an all time record in 2012. The previous record was set in 2006…So what did the NSIDC have to say about it in 2006? Nothing.’ — In 2006, the NSIDC (National Snow & Ice Data Center) ‘mentioned the Arctic a lot. And Al Gore’s movie. And that there was going to be an open house. But they ignored Antarctica. If they were scientists and not propagandists shouldn’t they be interested in both poles and maximum records too?’
Arctic Melting Due To Global Warming, But Antarctic Ice Growth Due To Ocean Currents, NSIDC says — ‘Never has so much ice surrounding Antarctica covered such a large area at this time of the year since satellite measurements began in the late 1970s.’ — ‘Of course, we are told that the loss of the north polar sea ice is due to warming. So would it not be logical to blame the sea ice increase at the South Pole on cooling? No!…For the Arctic, it’s global warming. But for the Antarctic, it’s local phenomena!’
Flashback 2005: Warmist model study tried to explain Antarctic sea ice: ‘Warmer Air May Cause Increased Antarctic Sea Ice Cover’ — ‘We used computer-generated simulations to get this research result…Our goal as scientists is to collect hard data to verify what the model is telling us’
Climate Depot Response: Which is it? Ice increasing due to humans or shrinking? Here is land-based ice claim:
Flashback 2007: ‘Antarctic ice thawing faster than predicted’
Don’t Panic! Arctic Ice Hits ‘Record’ Low!? Climate Depot Explains Arctic melting hype — ‘Current Arctic ice shifts are not ‘proof’ of man-made global warming, nor are they unusual, unprecedented or cause for alarm, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies, data analyses and experts’
Flashback: NASA finally admits it Arctic cyclone in August ‘broke up’ and ‘wreaked havoc’ on sea ice
Reality Check: ‘The Arctic record was broken on the August 24th & NSIDC waited 3 days to call a news conference for the media…The Antarctic Extent record was broken on September 24th…Did NSIDC hold a new conference on September 27th? No. No news conference. Obviously there was a media advisory on the 27th. Nope…Antarctic Ice Extent record is not mentioned until October 2nd, 2012.’ — ‘Justin Gillis and the NY Times owes a lot of bloggers an apology’
Warmist Justin Gillis admits that the Antarctic sea ice trend is ‘definitely opposite to the Arctic trend’ — Gillis then claims: ‘Far from hiding anything, mainstream climate scientists are all over that issue, and have been for years’
NYT’s Justin Gillis weighs in on record high Antarctic sea ice: ‘What does the Antarctic summer minimum look like? Well, the trend there is definitely opposite to the Arctic trend’ — Antarctic ‘summer sea ice is growing through time. But not by that much. And this past summer melt season [in Antarctica ] did not set any record; it was only the sixth-highest minimum in the satellite era’
NYT warmist Justin Gillis: ‘Perhaps the biggest single question about climate change is whether people will have enough to eat in coming decades’ — Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball rebuts NYT’s Gillis, notes endless eco-scares: ‘Chronologically, it was overpopulation, environmental collapse, global warming, climate change, catastrophic climate change. Now they are back to collapse of the food supply’
Don’t Panic! Arctic Ice Hits ‘Record’ Low!? Climate Depot Explains Arctic melting hype — ‘Current Arctic ice shifts are not ‘proof’ of man-made global warming, nor are they unusual, unprecedented or cause for alarm, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies, data analyses and experts’
Flashback: NASA finally admits it Arctic cyclone in August ‘broke up’ and ‘wreaked havoc’ on sea ice
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi: ‘The Antarctic increase is MORE IMPRESSIVE since energy changes of maritime air much harder than dry cold air over Northern Hemisphere’
Europe’s Media Goes Completely Silent When It Comes To Record High Antarctic Sea Ice — ‘When the Arctic set a record sea ice minimum back in August, the European mainstream media and government funded climate institutes howled in a deafening, days-long chorus of ‘global’ climate Armageddon’
Flashback 2007: Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions Study: ‘No increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years’ — ‘Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet. David Bromwich, researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State U.: ‘It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,” he said. “Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there.’
Former Virginia State Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger, a senior researcher with New Hope Environmental Services posted comments on Antarctica in 2008 on their website WorldClimateReport.com. Michaels and Knappenberger wrote a February 27, 2008, article titled “Antarctica Ain’t Cooperating”: “Another major article on temperature trends in the Antarctic has appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research by a team of scientists from Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, and the Goddard Space Flight Center; the research was funded by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Glaciology Program. […] That is correct – despite all you have heard elsewhere on the subject, the South Pole has been cooling over the past half century. The previous research team also reported that any warming in Antarctica has slowed and the cooling has accelerated in the more recent three decades. According to Monaghan et al., yet another team previously examined Antarctic temperatures and “noted that prior to 1965 the continent-wide annual trends (through 2002) are slightly positive, but after 1965 they are mainly negative (despite warming over the Antarctic Peninsula).” The truth from Antarctica is hard for the greenhouse crusade to accept, and in the long run, the truth from Antarctica might melt away the flimsy, well-publicized claims about global climate change—especially the concerns of a rapid sea level rise.”
Flashback 2005: Warmist model study tried to explain Antarctic sea ice: ‘Warmer Air May Cause Increased Antarctic Sea Ice Cover’ — ‘We used computer-generated simulations to get this research result…Our goal as scientists is to collect hard data to verify what the model is telling us’
Climate Depot Response: Ice increasing due to humans or shrinking? Here is land-based ice claim: Flashback 2007: ‘Antarctic ice thawing faster than predicted’
Sets Record: Antarctic Sea Ice Grows By The Size Of Texas Since 1979
‘Antarctica has quietly set a new record for the greatest sea ice extent ever measured at either pole’ — ‘It’s interesting that climate scientists are so alarmed by declining Arctic ice. The Arctic Icecap is only 1 to 2% of Earth’s ice, while the elephant, the Antarctic Icecap, contains about 90% of Earth’s ice’
Cold Hard Fact: Antarctic Sea Ice is at Record High — ‘We have record low ice extent in the Arctic and record large ice extent surrounding Antarctica’ — Meteorologist Art Horn: ‘Even though the amount of sea ice in the Arctic was at a measured record low amount this summer, it was an unusually large storm that generated pounding waves that broke up the ice and helped set the record, not excessive melting…Antarctic sea ice is increasing. Antarctic temperature is not increasing’
Record Sea Ice in Antarctica — The Canary in the Coal Mine!? ‘This is most sea ice ever measured at either pole, & is about size of US & Europe combined, or 335,000 Manhattans’ — ‘Antarctic sea ice now covers 19,454,000 km²…’The ice extends more than 1,000 miles off the coast of Antarctica. Emperor Penguins have to walk across the ice to get to the sea.’ — ‘Most of the ice is located between 60 and 70S, which means that it reflects huge amounts of sunshine back into space, dramatically cooling the Earth.’ — ‘The sun is currently about 30 degrees above the horizon at the ice edge.’
NOAA: Antarctic sea ice extent set all time record high — ‘Day 265 set an all time record, and then day 266 broke that record. Days 265 through 270 are now the 6 highest Antarctic Sea Ice Extent’s of all time! 11 of the top 15 are now 2012. Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?’
More data, studies and analysis on Antarctica:
Veteran Polar Scientist Heinrich Miller on Antarctica: ‘If anything over last 30 years we have a slight cooling trend’ — Miller: ‘Here almost nothing has changed. At least not near the surface. The average annual temperatures have remained the same. There are of course large fluctuations from year to year. If anything over last 30 years we have a slight cooling trend.
Inconvenient truth: Antarctica sea ice extent growing 1.43% per year — ‘A paper published today in Journal of Climate examines the trend of sea ice extent along the East Antarctic coast from 2000 to 2008 and finds a significant increase of 1.43% per year’
Antarctica sea ice shows accelerating increase over past 30 years: ‘Journal Climate Dynamics finds ‘Antarctic sea ice extent shows an increased trend during 1979–2009’– ‘…with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade’
Rumors Of Antarctica’s Demise Were Exaggerated: ‘Turns out there hasn’t been any polar amplification after all…Scientist Franzisca Nehring ‘feels global warming hasn’t really affected the ice’— Nehring: ‘It’s too easy to say that Antarctica is warmed by 1-2 degrees but, I’d infer, that is not really true’
NASA Research Reveals Antarctica Ice Sheet Melt Just A Fraction of Climate Model Predictions
More Blows to Warmists! New Antarctica Research: The IPCC ‘Consensus’ Science Is Turned Topsy-Turvy — ‘Scientists have been caught completely unaware of the substantial ice growth occurring below Antarctica, in addition to the obvious massive cumulative ice growth on the surface’
Study finds West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Not Be Losing Ice As Fast As Once Thought
No Trend In Antarctic Temperatures Since 1979
2007 study reveals Antarctica is not following predicted global warming models
Senate Report: Media Hype on ‘Melting’ Antarctic Ignores Record Ice Growth
Vostok, Antarctica Current Temperatures Still Significantly Below Roman & Medieval Peaks
Not Global Warming: Winds are Dominant Cause of Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet Losses – October 3, 2008 — Excerpt: Two new studies summarized in a news article in Science magazine point to wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through the glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, not ‘global warming.’
NSIDC Shows 2010 Antarctic Spring/Summer Sea Ice Above Normal For Two Straight Years
2008 Senate Report: Media Hype on ‘Melting’ Antarctic Ignores Record Ice Growth
Branson Says 15 Degrees Below Normal Antarctic Temperatures Are Due To Global Warming
Flashback 1947: Antarctic Oasis, land free of ice
Who is in Antarctica with Al Gore? Here is the list: Maggie L. Fox; Jill Bolte-Taylor; James Hansen; Kevin Trenberth; Hasan Mahmud; Richard Branson; Holly Branson;Sam Branson; Joan Templeman; Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson; Dorrit Moussaieff; James Cameron; Ted Turner; Christiana Figures; Tokyo Sexwale; Yao Tandong; Rosina Bierbaum; Judith Rodin; Juanita Constible; Petter Stordalen; Gunhild A. Stordalen; Sven Lindblad;
For even more on Antarctica go here.
