Sea Ice Follies

Former Senator and US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2009 said, “Scientists tell us we have a 10-year window — if even that — before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible,” and further exclaimed, “the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free by 2013.” He or his scientist friends have never apologized for that massive and embarrassing gaffe.

In that same year, Al Gore told the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years." The global warming peddlers have infinite love and devotion for their manipulated and massaged computer models, which history, as in this case, and in every case, is proven wrong.

To produce these models, temperatures and other weather-related data are gathered from a multitude of weather stations. In the article “Whether or not the Weather - The Big Weather Station Failure”, I cite the deficiencies in US weather stations, which I feel are analogous to the rest of the world’s stations. Even though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) knew about these defects in 2007, 15 years later the situation was not resolved. Anthony Watts, director of the weather station studies, states, “With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.”

Global warmists start their trek to climate change in 1850, or 1880, when instrumentation measurements of temperatures began. The world population in 1900 was approximately 1.65 billion people. Today, it’s approximately 8.25 billion, and the majority of the advance in population has been in metropolitan sprawls. The USA has a current population of 345 million, while in 1900 it was 76 million, and again, the large majority of growth has been in populated urban areas. Urban heat islands (UHI) have falsely intensified temperatures as human expansion encroaches on weather stations. These stations have not been relocated away from the UHIs. The vast majority of weather stations are not located in rural, mountainous, and outlying areas or oceans, purposely expanding perceived warming and creating climate change graphs that the global warming advocates desire.

In a linked research paper, “How much has urbanization affected United Kingdom temperatures?”, it is stated that “Urbanization has significantly increased the daily minimum temperature in the UK by as much as 1.7°C, and that the effect is not exclusive to England. This is a poignant detail, considering that the climate change promoters want to lower global temperatures by 1.5°C.

One year ago, the British Antarctic Survey claimed global emissions are melting the Antarctic and, in particular, its western ice sheet, and it is accelerating. They state scientists ran simulations that show melt rates will increase 3 times the rate of melt in the 20^th century.

Yet the Science China Earth Sciences, in a research study published by Springer Nature reveals that the ice sheet in Antarctic increased significantly between 2021 and 2023. In a similar study conducted by both United Kingdom and United States researchers cited, “The loss of Arctic sea ice cover has undergone a pronounced slowdown over the past two decades, across all months of the year”.

Relative to the Arctic sea ice AI (CHATgpt) reports, “Arctic sea ice extent has shown fluctuations, with recent data indicating an increase from a record low. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), Arctic sea ice has increased, with about 90% of the growth attributed to the increase in multiyear ice, which is thicker and more resilient than first-year ice.”

While we are constantly inundated with the chaos of unproven or dubious claims of climate change, in terms of genuine pollution relative to air and water quality, in first-world, developed countries have improved significantly.

In the linked article,” Environment improves as more nations prosper — the greatest polluter is poverty”, author Bjørn Lomborg states, “Over the past three decades, death risk from air pollution has spectacularly declined by over 70%, while waterways have become cleaner and nations reforested”. As I wrote in an article entitled, “The Certain to Lose Debate”, “In the early 2000s, Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish author, and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center challenged the same Al Gore multiple times to debate on anthropogenic climate change. The one time Gore agreed to the debate he did not show up at the preselected location or time”.

It is the impoverished countries that indiscriminately pollute while their people live in squalor. I often cite Dr. Mikko Paunio, MD, Ph.D., MHS, a Finnish epidemiologist and adjunct professor in general epidemiology at the University of Helsinki, Department of Public Health who has said, “439,000 Africans die every year because they have to cook in their homes with wood and dried animal dung”.

Instead of the advanced governments in countries with political stability and economic prosperity, throwing taxpayer money at the unsubstantiated theory of climate change or other abstract ideological causes, it should go to improve the lives of citizens in these destitute situations.

Foreign aid thus far has failed Africa.