Much Ado About Nothing

Antarctic Ice Shelf Breaking Up

We have started to hear the first warming up sounds of the banshees over the Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica breaking up. It's global warming. Proof positive. Deadly! Calamity! Thus the MSM frame the story. As do politicians.

Peter Garrett, the once were rockster, now Environment Minister in Kevin Rudd's government, wants the whole world to be in no doubt.

Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.

Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.

Sadly, the lead scientists in this case demur. Apparently ice levels in the Antarctic have remained stable, according to a Dr Allison, Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head. "Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica."

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.

"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

Oh, well, we should never let the facts get in the way of a legend. The neat thing is that these days the month by month data is readily available on the net.



Last year, 2008, was a doozy for ice cover in the Antarctic. It was well above the longer term average. This year is trekking up there as well. So, Mr Garrett it looks like those that are measuring the data are right, and you are wrong. The Antarctic is getting colder.

But, hold on. All that indicates is a fluctuating weather pattern. It does not signify that global warming is not taking place. A local blog, Adding Noughts, tells us that the global warmists have long accounted for the Antarctic ice expansion as an exception that proves the rule of global warming. Apparently, the climate models allow for "temporary" cooling in some isolated parts of the globe, particularly in the Antarctic, even while warming is occurring.

Adding Noughts refers us to the US agency the National Snow and Ice Data Center

Another important point is that the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent is not surprising to climate scientists. When scientists refer to global warming, they don’t mean warming will occur everywhere on the planet at the same rate. In some places, temporary cooling may even occur. Antarctica is an example of regional cooling. Even our earliest climate models projected that Antarctica would be much slower in responding to rising greenhouse gas concentrations than the Arctic. In large part, this reflects the nature of the ocean structure in Antarctica, in which water warmed at the surface quickly mixes downward, making it harder to melt ice.

So, everyone can disregard Antarctica. It's not important in the overall scheme of things. But the Arctic--that's another story. Noughts again refers us to the US Ice Agency to explain why everyone needs to focus upon the ice reductions in the Arctic, not the Antarctic.

Unlike Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice disappears almost completely during the summer, and has since scientists have studied it. Earth’s climate system over thousands of years has been "in tune" with this annual summertime disappearance of Antarctic sea ice. However, satellite records and pre-satellite records indicate that the Arctic has not been free of summertime sea ice for at least 5,500 years and possibly for 125,000 years. So Earth’s climate system and ecosystems, as they exist today, did not develop in conjunction with an ice-free Arctic. Such an ice-free Arctic summer environment would be a change unprecedented in modern human history and could have ramifications for climate around the world

Hmmm. "Unprecedented in modern human history?" It would seem that either some people have remarkably short memories, or they are just sloppy in their knowledge of the past. Does one sense a smidgin of special pleading here?

Once again, let's go to the actual data. Below is a graphic of northern hemisphere sea ice area over the past 365 days.


The line at the bottom of the graph provides the anomaly--which tells us that Arctic sea ice is below average. But it also shows us that it is not far below--and in fact right now it is very close to being right where the longer term average says it should be.

So, the Arctic is really critical in the evidential bulwark of global warming. And the evidence is that the sea ice is about average. Around about now, global warmists should be licking their wounds.

And, oh, one slight problem with the insistence upon the Arctic being the "real deal" as far as evidence of global warming goes--it was largely free of ice in the fifteenth century. And Amundsen navigated the North West passage in 1903 to 1906. Obviously the deterioration and declension of Arctic ice in those cases had nothing whatsoever to do with anthropogenic global warming.

And here is another embarrassing set of data: Anthony Watts reproduces the activities of US nuclear submarines in the Arctic in 1958 and 1959. They were able to surface right at the Pole. Ice was really, really thin, if non-existent. So for an event which allegedly is unprecedented in human history, the photographic evidence and the accompanying data is an acute embarrassment. Read the piece at Watts Up With That--but we will entice your taste buds with just one photograph:



But who wants to have facts get in the way of the thrill of being in a horror movie. Give me those spine-tingling banshee wails any day.