Antarctic Conditions
Data collections at the University of Illinois confirm summer sea ice in the Arctic reached a 30-year minimum in 2007, but they also prove the largely unreported fact that summer sea ice spread in the Antarctic reached a 30-year maximum the same year. Researchers agree about the summer sea ice spread.
However, here is where consensus ends. Although most scientists seem to agree that the Arctic is losing ice, there is little agreement as to Antarctic conditions. Some say the Antarctic is stable, and others say it is melting like the Arctic ice cap. NASA satellite readings show West Antarctica “has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002.” NASA scientists attribute the loss of western ice to a decrease in mass due to warming waters causing ice shelf collapse. They ominously report, “Not much is going on in East Antarctica — yet.”
Nothing is likely to. The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) recently measured the temperature of sea water there and found it to be around the freezing point “and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula.” NPI researcher Ole Anders Noest wrote, “This situation seems to be stable.” And, NASA scientists Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan published a report of satellite data in the journal Geophysical Research Letters charting a 30-year minimum snow melt in the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009.
Worst-case Scenario
Regardless of whether, where, or how much ice is melting, total global sea ice extent in the past 30 years shows practically no trend, with 2008 and 2009 peak sea ice seasons equivalent to the 1979-2000 mean.
But consider for a moment a worst-case scenario. What would happen if all of the Arctic sea ice melted? “Sea level would not rise by so much as a millimeter,” said Lord Christopher Monckton, former U.K. science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Just as melting ice cubes in a glass of water don’t make it overflow, melting sea ice does not affect sea level.
Monckton is not alone in claiming Arctic ice melt poses no threat. Roy W. Spencer, a former NASA scientist, points out glaciers have been retreating for more than 100 years, well before the dawn of the Industrial Age. “A few retreating glaciers are even revealing old tree stumps,” he writes on his blog. “How did those get there? Planted by skeptics?” Obviously, if retreating glaciers expose tree stumps, then these glaciers could not always have been there and are not shrinking to unprecedented sizes.
Spencer was among 170 scientists from around the world who signed an open letter to the UN Secretary-General prior to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, calling for “convincing observational evidence” to support claims of dangerous AGW. Among the itemized list of alarmist assertions they challenged was “worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions, is unusual and related to increases in human GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” In other words, 170 highly qualified scientists stake their professional reputations that melting polar ice caps pose no threat whatsoever.
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