Global Warmists' Sly Polar Disorder

Back in 2005, NASA attempted to excuse the failure of their climate models to predict continued southern ice expansion as an omission of the “snow-to-ice conversion” process in their programming. Once that algorithm was incorporated, they insisted, their models properly recognized the phenomena as completely consistent with warming predictions. Two years later, alarmists everywhere were screaming about what horrors the opening of the Northwest Passage would portend.

But as I pointed out then, while it was true that satellite photos had found an ice-free corridor along Canada, Alaska and Greenland and Northern Hemisphere ice at its lowest level since such images were taken in 1978, it was also true that Antarctic ice levels (Southern Hemisphere) were at record highs for that same period. And that fact was being completely ignored in the headlines.

Consequently -- all eyes were directed to the catastrophe looming in our northern waters.

Fortunately for realists, since the Northwest Passage hysteria of 2007, Arctic ice has made a rapid comeback, as you can see from this DMI Centre for Ocean and Ice graph, constructed from Ocean and Sea Ice, Satellite Application Facility data. In fact, the 2009 Arctic ice extent appears to be well on track to exceed the previous four years.



So why do we continue to hear warnings about receding Arctic ice? How is that possible when the extent is quickly approaching its 1979-2000 mean? Simple -- the rules have changed - again. It’s no longer the area of the ice that counts, but rather the volume. You see, thicker winter ice is better able to survive the summer and in turn help cool the planet while reflecting sunlight back into space. And, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), “This year, ice older than two years accounted for less than 10% of the ice cover at the end of February.”

So there’s a new metric in town -- The ice that has been forming at a record pace since the 2007 record low simply doesn’t count because it’s not yet as thick and “effective” as older ice.

And that nonsense somehow gives cover to a mainstream media (MSM) that, despite continually expanding ice, dutifully repeat the retrofitted analysis in headlines the likes of Arctic ice is thinner than ever according to new evidence from explorers and Arctic ice continues to shrink and thin and of course Arctic will be ice-free within a decade.

Pretty slick, huh?

[Again and again; lie, when time (and data) shows it to be so, change the story (lie) and run with that for another few years. It's a shell game of untruths, but when the major media supports it...]

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