Fire And Ice
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, April 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: An ice shelf in Antarctica begins to break apart, and the global warming hysterics immediately blame human activities for the crackup. Is it possible that there is some other cause?
The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a 25-mile bridge that once covered about 6,000 square miles, has split off from the Antarctic coast. Floating untethered, the Connecticut-size ledge — a mere 0.39% of all Antarctic ice — could eventually melt as it drifts northward toward warmer waters.
Naturally, activists both in and out of the scientific community, the media and political figures on the left blame human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide for warming the Earth, particularly the Antarctic peninsula, where temperatures have increased 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 years.
Before we panic, there are a few things we should remember that will help us to put this less-than-catastrophic event in perspective.
First, the melting of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, or any other ice shelf, will not raise ocean levels. Antarctica has lost seven shelves in the last two decades and there have been no disastrous effects.
Ice displaces more volume than water because water expands when it freezes. There is no net gain in water when an ice shelf or iceberg melts, or, in other words, contracts.
Second, much of Antarctica, particularly near the South Pole, has been through a recent cooling trend.
According to NASA: "Although Antarctica warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole."
Satellite images show that between 1981 and 2007, there was more warming than cooling in Antarctica. But the warming appears to have been modest.
Third, there's an active volcano beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A little more than a year ago, the British Antarctic Survey noted, "Heat from the volcano creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow toward the sea."
That volcano is on the southernmost edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a chain of volcanoes that continue through the Antarctic Peninsula, which the Wilkins Shelf had been attached to, down the continent's west side.
Maybe the news is the fact that more Antarctic ice hasn't melted, not that a relatively small shelf has torn away from the coast.
The mainstream media has its global warming narrative, though, and it's not going to abandon its commitment to one-sided journalism.
Exploring the possibility that climate variations are beyond man's CO2 emissions is not a service they're willing to perform.
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