The roots of the outcry about the dangers of global warming are political. If global warming is a crisis, government can exert more power over citizens. Government can choose winners and losers in the business world (e.g. subsidies to Solyndra or avoiding the Keystone Pipeline to increase the business on Warren Buffett‘s railroad, etc.), and generally those in power can consolidate their power by employing quid pro quo policies without being obvious about it. So what about some of the claims used to sell the theory that we are melting?
Yesterday WattsUpWithThat posted an article about some recent claims that the North Pole is melting. Good grief, what will happen to Santa Claus?
The picture below was posted on Facebook by the Climate Reality Project. The picture was described as a picture of the North Pole showing that the North Pole was melting. There’s only one problem with that–the picture was taken 300 miles from the North Pole. So how much difference does 300 miles make? Three hundred miles is the approximate distance between Boston, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anyone who has been in these cities in February knows that 300 miles matters.
In case you are still fearful that we are melting, the article at WattsUpWithThat included a few pictures from the 1960’s.
Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962 (US Navy Photo).
The article also includes a picture of the North Pole from the 1980’s when Time Magazine was proclaiming the dangers of global cooling.
The following video posted on YouTube with the explanation below to clarify what is actually happening:
Published on Jul 27, 2013
There was quite a bit of hype bouncing around the Instanet on a “lake” at the North Pole. This video tries to clarify what’s up. Ponds of meltwater form routinely on Arctic Ocean sea ice in the summer. The sea ice is floating on the Arctic Ocean and in constant motion. The webcam that took these images was placed on the ice a few dozen miles from the North Pole in early spring, but has since drifted hundreds of miles.
The North Pole Environmental Observatory Web site:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpo…
I went on the 2003 expedition to set up the same batch of instruments in 2003 and wrote an award-winning book about the project and the once and future North Pole:
http://us.macmillan.com/newyorktimest…
Andrew Freedman’s Climate Central post is helpful as well:
The Lake at the North Pole, How Bad Is It?
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/me…
More on my blog on Arctic climate change and sea ice: http://j.mp/dotPole
Before you purchase waterfront property in West Virginia in anticipation of global warming, you might want to look at the facts.
