The Global Warming Scam
by Nima Sanandaji and Fred Goldberg
by Nima Sanandaji and Fred Goldberg
The media portrays a dramatic image of how the ice is melting in the
polar regions as a consequence of global warming. We are warned that
the North Pole might become icefree during the summer months at the
end of this century and that the polar bears might become extinct
due to this development.
But is this really a realistic image? Sure, there is research that
indicates that the ice sheets are being reduced, but there are also
studies that show the complete opposite. An example of this is a
study in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letter where
the Swedish researcher Peter Winsor compares data collected by
submarines below the Arctic ice. His conclusions are that the
thickness of the ice has been almost constant between 1986 and 1997.
If you look at the South Pole there are studies that show an
increase in the mass of the ice. In a study published in the journal
Nature a number of polar researchers showed that they had observed a
net cooling of 0.7 degrees in the region between 1986 and 2000.
Another study published in Science showed that the East-Antarctic
ice sheet had grown with 45 million metric tones between 1992 and
2003.
Are the ices growing or melting? The simple answer is that there
exist studies that point to both directions, perhaps indicating that
scientists know relatively little about global climate. But what
counts to most ordinary people is what media is reporting, and media
is often highlighting the most alarming studies and seldom report of
studies that go against the notion that human activity leads to
global warming. To put it simply, the news is filtered through an
environmentalist view of the world.
An interesting example of how media sometimes gets it wrong is how
journalists reported that there had never been so little ice in the
Arctic than in 2005. This claim was based on satellite images by
NASA which showed that the geographic extent of the ice sheet had
never been so small since measurement began in 1979. One must
however keep in fact that about half of the ice in the Arctic melts
each summer and that two months before this measurment the extent of
the ice sheet was the same as the previous year. The problem is that
satellite images show the surface of the ice but not the thickness.
Capten Årnell at the summer expedition with the polar-ship Oden
could tell that he had never seen so much ice in the Arctic than in
2005. It was with great difficulty that he had passed through the
region. What had happened in 2005 seems to be that the ice had
packed densely against the Canadian part of the Arctic. The
geographical extent had been reduced but the ice was thicker.
As for polar bears, much points to that their numbers are increasing
rather than diminishing. Mitch Taylor, a Canadian expert on animal
populations, estimates that the number of polar bears in Canada has
increased from 12 000 to 15 000 the past decade. Steven C Amstrup
and his college have studied a population of polar bears in Alaska
and reported that the number of females had increased from 600 to
900 between 1976 and 1992. Even a report from the WWF which is
entitled "Polar bears at risk" and warns that the populations of the
polar bears might become extinct due to global warming, supports
that the number of polar bears is increasing. In the report the
polar bears in the world are divided into 20 populations. It shows
out that only 2 of these populations are decreasing, while 10 are
stable, 5 are growing and 3 are not possible to comment about.
Global climate is an important issue to debate, but it is sad that
what is communicated often has a clear shifting towards the worst-
case scenarios and the doomsday theories. There is no reason to
scare people by giving them only one side of the argument.
March 18, 2006
Nima Sanandaji [send him mail] is president of the Swedish think
tank Captus and the editor of Captus Journal. He is a graduate
student in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Fred
Goldberg is associate professor at the Royal School of Technology in
Stockholm and was on a Polar trip whilst writing this article.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
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