Lazy Gopher Pachyderm

The indispensible Planet Gore points out something I saw last night; NBC’s foray into a ‘Week of Green’ programming. No doubt the reportage will be akin to what I witnessed on their 5:30 news last night…worries about the North Pole. But Antarctica got some rare press as well. Seems things are getting warm ‘in some parts of the west’ there, causing unspoken worries about melting ice.

Except that doesn’t tell nearly the whole story, which is probably the intent. Truth to tell, Antarctica’s ice mass is increasing, which is why you hear so much about the North Pole and nothing about the South Pole, even though there are more permanent science stations in the latter than the former (tough to do that on shifting, floating ice sheets). And given the nature of Antarctica’s geography, including that ‘arm’ that sticks way out into the sea, regional variances can be huge.

Please note that when ‘warming symptoms’ are mentioned by the MSM, they usually say something like ‘Warming models predict that the North Pole will warm first.’ This, of course, is done to lend credence to the man-made warming models. But while true, it’s only half correct. The models don’t say just the North Pole, but both poles will warm first. Antarctica, though, isn’t warming, it’s cooling. To point that out would be, to borrow the phrase, an inconvenient truth.

# posted by Ricard : 9:36 PM