Arctic ice scare seems to be history

Arctic ice scare seems to be history

There’s great news from the frozen North, reports Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. “The size of the Arctic ice cap has increased sharply, to comfortably reverse the ‘great melt’ of 2007, and extending coverage over a vast area of the Arctic Sea, to levels not seen since 2001,” he said.

“Scientists emphasise that the fluctuations of ice in the Arctic are natural variations in weather which have little relevance for long-term climate change. The principal driver is the Arctic Oscillation which usually set up a ring of strong winds circulating anti-clockwise around the North Pole.”

Mr Brill says that Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) has regretted the Centre’s 2007 conclusions that global warming had pushed the Arctic to a tipping point from which it might not recover – and said this was, in retrospect, an over-statement. “The lesson is that we must be more careful in not reading too much into one event”, said Dr Serreze.

Mr Brill said the news is even better when looking southward. “The earth has two poles. And for reasons which are not well understood, when one pole warms, the other pole cools. Looking at just the Arctic sea ice is like looking at someone who is pouring water from one glass to another and back again. If we want to see how much water there is, it is useless to observe just one of the person’s hands. We need to look at both hands to see what is happening with the water.

“While it is certainly true that the Arctic had been losing ice, over the past few years, the Antarctic has been gaining ice. And the TOTAL global sea ice has barely changed at all over a period of 30 years. It goes up a little, it goes down a little, it goes nowhere …

“And to cap it off, the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) conference held at Doha on 18 March rejected a US proposal to classify polar bears as an endangered species. Delegates from 175 countries heard that most polar bear populations are increasing, and they are not yet experiencing the predicted stresses of loss of habitat. With Arctic sea ice back to normal, the oft–mentioned threat to polar bears seems unlikely to eventuate,” Mr Brill concluded.

ENDS

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