The Arctic summer ice melt season came to an official end last week, and global warming alarmists are now eating crow after their predictions that the North Pole would be ice free this summer have proven miserably wrong.
After saturating the media and gaining global headlines with their predictions of Arctic gloom and doom this summer, official measurements showed that Arctic ice increased by 9 percent this summer, and ice-free waters never even came close to the North Pole.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/) declared an official end to the ice-melt season when it reported that Arctic sea ice has reached its minimum extent for the season, and that the snow accumulation season has begun.
Meanwhile, the University of Illinois Department of Atmospheric Sciences (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/), which maintains a Web site with daily Arctic and Antarctic ice photos and measurements from satellite instruments, clearly shows the North Pole ice cap has increased from last year.
CNN, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News, and Time magazine are just a few of the major media outlets that were duped into reporting the predicted likelihood of an ice-free North Pole this summer. Like so many other global warming false alarms, however, an ice-free North Pole was never a realistic possibility. (Specific links to coverage is provided below.)
“The ice-free North Pole scare takes its place among a long list of other global warming scares that were breathlessly reported by the media but subsequently debunked by sound science,” observed James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank.
He added, “Sound science has thoroughly debunked, for example, assertions that global warming is causing polar bear populations to decline; that global warming may cause a new ice age by shutting down the Gulf Stream; that global warming is causing the retreat of Mt. Kilimanjaro’s alpine glacier; that global warming is causing a retreat of the Antarctic polar ice cap; that global warming is causing more global drought; and that global warming is causing more hurricanes to form.”
Follow these links to see media coverage reporting that the North Pole might be ice-free by September 2008:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/06/27/north.pole.melting/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25419299/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology
/2008021462 _apscinorthpolemelt.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/27/eaice127.xml
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4728737
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,372542,00.html
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/27/north-pole-may-be-ice-free-september/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/19/2194829.htm
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=62a54b40-f7f8-43b5-83e0-d3a46d7502f0
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/science-on-shrinking-north-pole-ice/
