The VENT

I’m not sure what will happen to the sources for news that mainstream media like the CBC and ‘Globe and Mail’ use when AGW gets some sophistication due to blatantly contrary evidence in a couple years but in the meantime the recent story about a chunk of the Wilkins Ice Sheet breaking off needs some clarification.

It is relatively well established that the penninsula reaching out toward South America warmed like the rest of the world up until 2006 or so unlike the rest of the continent.  Also, there is some recent work showing that volcanoes in this area have a huge impact on the calving of ice sheets in the region.

As Joseph D’Aleo notes in a May 25th post:

“The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered house.  And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere fall season and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.”

It may be frustrating when usually reputable news agencies can take such a non-event and distort its context so blatantly and massively, but in the politics that is Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is to be expected.  So the real concern is still that the sun is diminishing and Antarctica is growing quicker than usual.  If the Arctic follows suit in the next couple of years I’m not sure how that will be spun but it will be interesting.  Personally, I’m not hoping for a clear turn away from AGW.  I enjoy my short summers too much.  For all this stuff being generated by the AGW IPCC industry, the real threat is shown in the final scene in the movie ‘Sunshine’.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under comment, media, climate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.