Telling Half the Story 100% of the Time
Filed Under: Environmental News on October 12, 2009
By now, I think most readers of this site have seen the asymmetry in reporting of changes in sea ice extent between the Arctic and the Antarctic. On the exact same day in 2007 that seemingly every paper on the planet was reporting that Arctic sea ice extent was at an “all-time” low, it turns out that Antarctic sea ice extent was at an “all-time” high. I put “all-time” in quotes because both were based on satellite measurements that began in 1979, so buy “all-time” newspapers meant not the 5 billion year history of earth or the 250,000 year history of man or the 5000 year history of civilization but instead the 28 year history of space measurement. Oh, that “all time”.
It turns out there is a parallel story with land-based ice and snow. First some background
As most folks know, melting sea ice has no effect on world ocean heights — only melting of ice on land affects sea levels. This land-based ice is distributed approximately as follows:
Antarctica: 89%
Greenland: 10%
Glaciers around the world: 1%
I won’t go into glaciers, in part because their effect is small, but suffice it to say they are melting, but they have been observed melting and retreating for 200 years, which makes this phenomenon hard to square with Co2 buildups over the last 50 years.
Read the rest at the original here.
