So it appears that Arctic ice isn't vanishing after all

[knightfisher]

By Christopher Booker

Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 04/02/2008

So it appears that Arctic ice isn't vanishing after all

There was some coverage of the chaos caused in central and southern China by their heaviest snowfalls for decades - but little attention was paid to the snow that last week carpeted Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman, none of them exactly use to Dickensian Christmas card weather.

Similarly, Saudis last month expressed amazement at their heaviest snow for many years, in Afghanistan snow and freezing weather killed 120 people and large parts of the United States and Canada have been swept by unusually fierce blizzards.

If the northern hemisphere's chilliest winter in a long time was bad news for the propagandists of global warming, they also had to face serious questions about some of the most iconic images used to support the claims that the world is hotting up towards disaster.

Last autumn the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left.

Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.

This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km.

A second graph, "Global Ice Area", shows a similar pattern repeated every year since satellite records began in 1979; while a third, "Southern Hemisphere Ice", shows that sea ice has actually expanded in recent years, well above its 30-year mean.

Still more inconvenient was the truth about an image that has been relentlessly exploited to promote this panic over the "vanishing" Arctic ice. It is the photograph of two polar bears standing forlornly on the fast-melting remains of an iceberg which has been reproduced thousands of times to show that there will soon be no bears left (ignoring evidence that their numbers have risen recently).

Now, thanks to a Canadian journalist, Carole Williams we can read the story behind the picture, which was taken in 2004 just off Alaska by a marine biologist, Amanda Byrd. As Ms Byrd is happy to point out, the bears were in no danger so close to the coast (they can swim 100 miles). She wanted a photograph more of the "wind-sculpted ice" than of the bears.

The image was copied by another member of the crew and passed on to Environment Canada. Then it was eagerly adopted by the warmist propaganda machine - above all by Al Gore, who used it to powerful effect as an emotive backdrop to his highly lucrative lectures.

"Their habitat is melting," he likes to declaim, "beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet."

As the old joke has it, it seems those famous bears were not drowning after all, they were just waving. But the BBC is no more likely to tell us that than it was to lead the news with last week's snow in Jerusalem.

[smerchly]

"Still more inconvenient about....." Think I've heard that line somewhere ....... Mr.Gores movie was quite impressive , & by using shock & emotion he was quite successful at getting the people to believe his story . Then a rebuttal movie came along & started the debate process . I've said before we cannot believe what you see on film or what you read in print . We can look at the satelite shots ourselves , I doubt they have been doctored , and then decide what is really happening & what the cause might be . Sure, they would like to stick us in tiny little cars that get 100 mpg......so they can get $3 for every litre of gas so the oil execs can get a few more million dollar bonus checks each month. Back to the drawing board Mr.Gore ........I will agree we shouldn't waste oil , we may need it to heat our homes during these cold winter nights .......

[knightfisher]

"Still more inconvenient about....." Think I've heard that line somewhere ....... Mr.Gores movie was quite impressive , & by using shock & emotion he was quite successful at getting the people to believe his story . Then a rebuttal movie came along & started the debate process . I've said before we cannot believe what you see on film or what you read in print . We can look at the satelite shots ourselves , I doubt they have been doctored , and then decide what is really happening & what the cause might be . Sure, they would like to stick us in tiny little cars that get 100 mpg......so they can get $3 for every litre of gas so the oil execs can get a few more million dollar bonus checks each month. Back to the drawing board Mr.Gore ........I will agree we shouldn't waste oil , we may need it to heat our homes during these cold winter nights .......

Sage words there Mr. Smerch.

Many people, sheeple... may not know this,

but Fox TV in the States won a law suit last

year, having to do with the fact, they the media,

does not have to tell the truth

Last year at my daughters school, she said she with

the rest of the class mates had to watch Gore's movie.

Talk about conditioning the next generation

The powers that be, the huge $$$ corporations, killing wildlife,

raping the lands for their riches, and charging the masses huge

$$$$ for life's necessities, obviously are not helping planet earth.

But this bogus global warming is just the tip of the ice berg, on totally

controlling the peoples of the earth.

Just wait for my next installment

It's not pleasant, and will be hard to accept, but it's the truth,

if one is willing to "look outside the box"

[Pope29]

Tell me, what is the reason for the propagation of the global warning "myth" ? Is it really hard to believe we are ruining our atmosphere? I mean, we ruin everything else we touch.

The most corrupt greedy administration ever is in the White House right now. Suppression of facts and research is a daily occurrence. Google " The Republican War on Science". You can't govern using the fear of God if facts get in the way.

I take everything I read and weigh it against my experience and research. I don't have a definitive stance on global warming but I'm always interested to hear the naysayers reasoning. I will tell you that the above article is a total fluff piece though. Is it a blog of some sort? A Google search for Christopher Booker turned up only a British author who seems more interested in espionage than the climate.

[knightfisher]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion

However your following statement

I will tell you that the above article is a total fluff piece though.

I differ with.

Did you actually check out the NOAA website.

Do you read the news from around the world and at home.

Reading the following information which is available to anyone, is showing

that this is the northern hemisphere's chilliest winter in some time..

Again this is the entire northern hemisphere, not just Canada.

From that can be very easily extrapolated that the artic ice is growing.

.

Deadly cold spell in Afghanistan

(posted on 11 February)

The worst cold spell in decades in Afghanistan has killed upwards of 750 people and nearly 230 000 heads of cattle, while heavy snowfall has destroyed over 500 houses and damaged more than 40 000, according to the National Disaster Management Commission. Snow has also blocked many key roads, hindering the delivery of supplies.

Weather improves in China

(posted on 6 February)

Skies were clearer across most of the country today. A three-day rain and snow “severe alert” was lifted for the worst affected areas and temperatures had risen to above freezing in the south.

Scores of Chinese citizens have died in snow-related accidents in the coldest winter in 100 years.

Entire cities have been without power and water for than a week and livestock and crops have been destroyed.

China Meteorological Administration weather forecast

CNN.COM/Asia

Snow slams China; half million stranded at train station

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Chinese workers and army soldiers were racing to sweep snow-covered highways and unclog railway routes for millions of travelers trapped by cold weather.

More than 67 million people have been affected by the weather and economic losses are expected to reach as much as $3 billion, Chinese officials say.

Blizzards have snapped power lines and destroyed houses and farmland, prompting fears of food and energy shortages. Twenty-four people have died and some 827,000 people have been evacuated in 14 different provinces, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Monday.

In the past week, the snowstorms have hit the provinces in central, eastern and southern China -- places that are used to mild winters, not extreme wintry blasts.

"We've never seen such a cold weather lasting for such long a time," said Tang Shan, a man in his 70s in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. "The last time we had one here was over 50 years ago, and not this bad."

The snow and sleet have paralyzed roads, railways and airports, leaving tens of millions of travelers marooned, officials say. Many of them are bound for home ahead of the traditional Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, which falls on February 7.

Twenty killed by avalanches in Indian Kashmir

(posted on 11 February)

Twenty people have been killed by avalanches and 15 others are missing in Indian Kashmir during the heaviest snowfall in recent years in the Himalayan region.

More than 300 people have been rescued but many villages remain inaccessible.

Tajikistan cold snap causes humanitarian challenges

(posted on 1 February 2008)

Extreme cold weather and associated power cuts in Tajikistan are having a severe impact on families and children, UNICEF announced today. A UN inter-agency team, REACT, is conducting a rapid assessment of the situation in order to provide assistance.

Severe weather warnings in Europe

(posted on 31 January)

Several European countries have issued warnings as a very strong depression with a core pressure of 952 hPa continues to deepen and is moving from the British Isles towards the Channel, causing extremely high winds, especially in coastal areas

2008 to be cooler than recent years

(posted on 9 January)

According to the UK Mt Office, 2008 will be the coolest year on the global scale since 2000.

This curbing of the warming trend will mostly be due to a strong La Niña in the tropical Pacific Ocean, but other factors such as increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations, cooling influences of industrial aerosol particles, solar effects and natural variations of the oceans were also taken into account in the forecast. The UK Met Office issues such global surface temperature forecasts every January for the coming year.

This latest report by UK Met Office now states the contributions of people and natural

factors are causing a cooling effect.

So what is it. Global warming or cooling.

Yes we humans are contributing to the climate, but not enough to affect it as

the fools on the hill would want you to believe.

Good your not definitive on global warming. Means your looking which is

what each and everyone of us should do.

Check out the information.

[smerchly]

"Chilling "stuff Nightfisher ! In his book ,Scared to Death, Christopher Booker explains many other deceptions from the past from DDT , BSE , asbestos etc. & claims it was all false histeria to make us believe it was true:

Scared to Death culminates in a chillingly detailed account of the story behind what the authors believe has become the greatest scare of them all: the belief that the world faces disaster through manmade global warming. In a final chapter, the authors take on its proponents such as Al Gore in a devastating critique of the consensus on global warming and its consequences. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Another excerp from a British newspaper.....part of the write up pertaining to global warming.....

Sadly, such frequent infelicities are minor matters compared to the jaw-dropping outrages and abuses of authority revealed by the dogged research of Christopher Booker and Richard North. Scared to Death is a masterful and salutary account of the most costly misjudgments of the last 25 years. Written with painful clarity, here is an important study of the process by which sloppy science becomes a difficult to shift orthodoxy. In the process, Booker and North have produced a shocking but not remotely hysterical indictment of how government error is re-enforced — rather than held to account — by the media and special interest groups.

A common pattern unites these scandals. The scares that have done the most damage have concerned products — often food — that have the potential to affect the entire population. Usually there is a scintilla of truth behind the initial warning. Unfortunately, the zeal of the expert is fuelled by the gullibility of the media, complicit in the desire for a headline and spoon-fed by the promotional energies of pressure groups. The result is a panic in government departments staffed by people who lack the wit to ask the right questions and fear accusations of complacency if they do not act hastily.

True , he is just an author , but authors usually do a lot of research trying to get at the bottom line . I think this whole global warming issue is another ploy to keep us in the dark so they can empty your pockets. I do not believe it period !

[knightfisher]

Wow Bill, well done on the further research

The truth is out there.

The question is does one want to know or find it,

or settle for being entertained and/or wrapped up

by the various distractions the powers that be,

have set up for us, so we don't think for ourselves anymore.

[Pope29]

I said the article was fluff not the research he ...all he did was cite other sources and no I didn't fact check his work.

I agree authors definitely do a lot of research. Like I said before it is authors research that convinces me that Elvis is alive and well but Sir Paul McCartney is actually worm food right now . I believe NOTHING anymore!!!! Even truth is mostly fiction nowadays, people get paid huge money to twist and camouflage things. I wish I had that kind of imagination, especially since I'm looking for a job right now.