Actual AP Headline: 'Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic Ice'

October 10th, 2012 5:11 PM

For many years, climate realists have pointed to expanding ice in Antarctica as a counter to the claim that decreasing ice in the Arctic is necessarily proof of anthropogenic global warming.

The folks at the Associated Press on Wednesday came up with an unbelievable answer to that in an article unbelievably titled "Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic ice":

While the North Pole has been losing sea ice over the years, the water nearest the South Pole has been gaining it. Antarctic sea ice hit a record 7.51 million square miles in September. That happened just days after reports of the biggest loss of Arctic sea ice on record.

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.

Author Seth Borenstein then predictably cited scientists supporting this truly amazing concept that anthropogenic global warming can melt ice in one hemisphere while creating it in another.

Real Science's Steve Goddard said in an email, "It is the new kind of ice which is created by heat, rather than cold."

Yes, the climate alarmists have once again concocted a "Heads we win, tails you lose" scenario.

Competive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner also weighed in by email:

"Oddly, for years they dined out on talk of 'melting polar ice caps', always and clearly in the plural. 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. As we are hearing in other contexts, 'things evolved'.

"In this case, that thing is their theory. Even if it means trashing all of the models they've sworn were really, seriously, credible, apparently this beats saying embarrassing things like 'there must be something wrong with the observations'. Which they actually said about uncooperative ocean temperatures.

"Here you see the sausage-making of 'science', though I use the term loosely. Now, I suppose it's time to scrub history to bring it up to date!"


Actually, the media have been doing that for years in order to elect liberal candidates and enact liberal policies.

As for the failure of climate models to accurately predict what alarmists presage, a study by Ohio State University in 2007 addressed this at it pertains to Antarctica:

A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed 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, professor of professor of [sic] atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.

"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. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth."

As Horner observed, "Now the theory has evolved to match unhelpful observations."

And the AP is right there to help the alarmists get the word out.

For more on this, please see Climate Depot's "Meet the New Consensus, the Opposite of the Old Consensus."