“Global Warming Alarmists” Melanie Phillips rant.
Melanie Phillips’ diary carried a typical rant on climate change denial to sow doubts among those who do not yet understand the evidence.Predictably, climate change deniers seize on any bit of evidence that they naively think disproves the whole weight of scientific evidence. You could not find a better example of wishful thinking or is it manipulation of the public?
The rant is at: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1634
The quotation used in the rant has been widely circulated by U.S. sources -
“A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated. 2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and 80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years, entirely disappeared. The floods, which have the whole summer inundated all those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened “.
These are extracts from a letter by the President of the Royal Society to the British Admiralty, recommending they send a ship to the Arctic to investigate the dramatic ice reduction – in 1817. (Ref; Royal Society, London. Nov. 20, 1817. Minutes of Council, Vol. 8. pp.149-153.)
Editorial comment: This report can be accepted as a true account without it challenging the abundant scientific evidence for decreasing arctic ice or indeed, for climate change due to global warming. So what does this report show?
Firstly it refers to a comparatively small area off the East coast of Greenland, part of the Greenland Sea, citing the latitudes as between 74 and 80 degrees so the remaining 10 degrees north to the geographic north pole (which covers the main arctic sea ice) are not included. If the area reported was ice-free in 1817 that reduction tells us nothing about ice cover elsewhere in the arctic in 1817.
Climate scientists will provide the definitive explanation but it is obvious to anyone that an exceptional Gulf Stream warming might have affected that area, perhaps from an El Nino but local variation in ice cover is the norm anyway as anyone can see from the satellite pictures. We know that there are excellent records going back 800,000 years plus satellite pictures of the actual arctic ice cover covering each season since 1979 (recently with data published on a daily basis) showing not only a pattern of decreases year on year but decreases accelerating in amount, with some estimates predicting total loss of arctic sea ice in summer months by 2013 (see News List 12/12/2007 cf. previous estimates of 2070, 2110+ etc). Moreover recent measurements have recorded that the old ice (which is thicker and less saline) has reduced from 60% to 30% and this is less likely to be replaced. (see News List 18/3/2008)
A websearch will soon find abundant evidence, with comparisons and animations eg -
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/arcticice_decline.html
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20050928_trends_fig1.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/