Environmental Talk

East is East and West is West . . .

Antarctica is one of the top areas of contention in the climate change debate. Global warming advocates consistently cite glacial melt on the West Antarctica Ice Shelf as evidence of the damage that greenhouse gases cause. Scientists on the other side of the debate include both Western and Eastern Antarctica in their observations and note that, in total, there is little evidence that the continent as a whole is losing ice mass.

Regardless of which view you subscribe to, discussions and maps of Antarctica generally refer to West and East Antarctica using the South Pole as the dividing point.

Enter Al Gore. Having invented the Internet, Gore is now inventing a new geographical division for Antarctica.

In a recent Charlie Rose interview, Gore refers to a NASA study that showed, as he described it, an area in Central Antarctica that was nearly the size of California that had melted in 2005. The conclusion we should draw, according to Gore, was that this was solid evidence that (all together now) global warming was taking place and that we need to act quickly.

As is often the case with Gore, the facts were stretched juuust a bit to fit the conclusion.

A politician distorting facts?! I know, I could hardly believe it either.

The facts as reported by NASA (italics mine):
- Increases in snowmelt, such as this in 2005, definitely could have an impact on larger-scale melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets if they were severe or sustained over time.
- Combined, the affected regions encompassed an area as big as California.
- No further melting had been detected through March 2007

Here is the NASA photo depicting the ice melt in question:

There’s just a little too much blurring of the facts here for me to be comfortable with.

First, there’s Gore’s invention of an area called “central” Antarctica. It is, at the very least, a stretch to place any of the warming in “central” Antarctica unless you use the South Pole as the “center” of the continent. Even if we allow a part of the eastern most warming area to qualify as being partly in the center of the continent, the region affected in the center is not the size of California. It is the combined areas of warming that are the size of California.

I don’t think it’s an accident that Gore choses to introduce the “central” designation into the argument. It is an attempt address the skeptics claim that ice melt is largely confined to the WAIS (West Antarctica Ice Sheet) and imply that the evidence of global warming is spreading to other areas of the continent.

Next, Gore conveniently leaves out the fact that studies have found no evidence of any similar melting in the ensuing years since 2005. If we allow any single weather event to be extrapolated into a conclusion about climate change, you could argue that global warming would always provide good weather on Memorial Day weekend.

Treating science as a political issue, in which facts are to be spun and manipulated to achieve a desired policy goal, is (to borrow the title of a recent book) an Assault on Reason.

global warming, climate change, Al Gore, Antarctica, Charlie Rose,