Posted 7/8/2014
If climate-change scientists ever want to put their global-warming predictions on ice, they can find plenty of it down around the South Pole. Antarctic sea ice has reached a new record high, with 2.1 million square miles more than usual for this time of year, the Daily Mail in England reported Sunday. According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, Antarctic ice now covers about 16 million square miles. The expansion means “an area the size of Greenland, which would normally be open water, is now frozen,” the London daily said.
“It is by far the highest level since satellite observations on which the figures depend began in 1979,” wrote reporter David Rose, who called the discrepancy between the expanding ice and computer-based predictions that sea ice would be receding from both poles “yet another mishap to tarnish the credibility of climate science.” Rose conceded that ice is receding in the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole, but added that the frozen area around both poles is one million square kilometers more than “the long-term average.”
“In fact, across the globe, there are about one million square kilometres more sea ice than 35 years ago, which is when satellite measurements began,” Rose wrote.