A recent report says that ice in the antarctic is melting at an increasing rate. This leads to many worries about water levels rising since there is a significant amount of water stored down there. As expected, this news is being used to “prove” how global warming is ruining the planet. There’s only one problem, there isn’t an appreciable rise in temperatures down there.
This article in today’s Washington post is what alerted me to this. They mention that the temperature has not changed and they think that ocean currents are to blame for the melting of the ice. Shortly after that, the “scientist” says that they believe that CO2 forcing is what caused it. Umm, that’s not science, that’s conjecture. Hell, it isn’t even conjecture, it’s a statement of faith. There isn’t any evidence of warming in Antarctica, there isn’t any evidence of warming in the oceans in the southern hemisphere, but melting ice HAS to be caused by CO2 forcings on the “global” temperature…
Don’t get me wrong, rapidly melting antarctic ice is a big problem, I just wish that there was some science involved in determining the cause and any potential corrective actions that need to be taken. a similar situation in the arctic made people gnash their teeth about the plight of the polar bears and how warm things were. It turns out that the temperature had not changed significantly (so by definition, there was no warming) and with a little more analysis from NASA it was determined that changing sea currents are what caused the loss of arctic sea ice. It was also thouight that this trend would turn around soon. Before we jump to conclusions, we need to have some science done…