Lies and Global Warming, by Gråulf

As mentioned in earlier posts, the man-made global warming crowd pays no attention to history, or to what is happening on the ground. Nothing points that out more clearly than an article I found in the Boulder Daily Camera. The article was from Earthweek, published nationally by Steve Newman. Here is the main portion of the article:

Arctic Meltdown

The Arctic polar ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate, opening up both the famed Norhwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route off northern Russia simultaneously for the first time on record. In a trend that began in the mid-1960s, 2008 was the second-warmest year in the Arctic, closely behind the record set in 2007, which produced the greatest Arctic meltdown ever observed.

The article is at best misleading when compared to a report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

Arctic Sees Massive Gain in Ice Coverage

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany.

With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring.

The data is for August 2008 and indicates a total sea ice area of six million square kilometers. Ice extent for the same month in 2007 covered 5.3 million square kilometers, a historic low. Earlier this year, media accounts were rife with predictions that this year would again see a new record. Instead, the Arctic has seen a gain of about thirteen percent.

William Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois, tells DailyTech that this year the Arctic was "definitely colder" than 2007. Chapman also says part of the reason for the large ice loss in 2007 was strong winds from Siberia, which affect both ice formation and drift, forcing ice into warmer waters where it melts.

Earlier predictions were also wrong because researchers thought thinner ice would melt faster in subsequent years. Instead, according to the NSIDC, the new ice had less snow coverage to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, resulting in a faster rate of ice growth.

Most concern has focused on the Arctic regions, rather than Antarctica. Recent research has indicated Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend, for reasons which remain unclear.

The Earthweek article about navigating the Arctic Ocean is not exact a lie, because of the wording used, but it is deliberately misleading. The Arctic Ocean has been sailed regularly for many years, as stated in an article from How Things Work:

Robert McClure traversed the Northwest Passage from west to east during 1850–54, but not entirely by water. His ship became icebound at Banks Island, and he and his crew walked the remaining distance to a rescue ship.

The passage was first successfully navigated by Roald Amundsen, aboard his vessel Gjöa. He entered the passage through Baffin Bay in 1903; passing by way of Franklin's route, south of Victoria Island, he completed the passage in 1906. The next successful trip was a 28-month journey made from west to east by Henry Larsen in his ship St. Roch , 1940–42; the return trip took 86 days. Afterward, many vessels, including United States submarines, navigated the Northwest Passage.

The discovery of oil in 1968 on Alaska's North Slope resulted the following year in the United States oil tanker Manhattan becoming the first commercial vessel to make the voyage through the passage. The trip was made to test the feasibility of shipping oil by that route. The possibility of using the passage for shipping touched off a dispute between the United States and Canada—the United States claiming the passage to be an international waterway, Canada claiming sovereignty over much of the route.

I find it very disturbing that man-made global warming has become a political issue, because the combination of politics and science is more toxic than air pollution. At this point the debate is being driven more by the quest for government funding than by logic and reason, and both sides are lying to the public. Personally I have an absolute adversity to being lied to, and that adversity becomes hatred when one side actively suppresses the views of the other side of the argument.

Gråulf.