Why do they need to lie?
The ice is melting - 2
It’s the same story at the other end of the
world.
In a press release in December 2007, timed to have
maximum impact by coinciding with the tenth anniversary
of the Kyoto agreement and a climate change summit
conference on the Indonesian island of Bali attended by
world leaders, officials and environmentalists, the
Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned that the number
of penguins in the Antarctic was declining rapidly
because of global warming.1
Launching its report at the summit, the WWF said the
Antarctic peninsula was warming five times faster than
the average in the rest of the world and was affecting
four penguin species: the emperor penguin – the
world’s largest penguin; and the gentoo,
chinstrap and adelie ‘are struggling to survive
as melting ice destroys nesting sites and reduces their
food sources’, WWF said.
WWF’s Anna Reynolds said that sea ice covered
40 per cent less area than it did 26 years ago off the
West Antarctic Peninsula, and that ‘The
Antarctic penguins already have a long march behind
them. Now it seems these icons of the Antarctic will
have to face an extremely tough battle to adapt to the
unprecedented rate of climate change.’
This, WWF said, had led to a fall in stocks of
krill, the main source of food for the chinstrap and
gentoo species. They went on to warn that
‘Warming is fastest in the northwestern coast of
the Antarctic peninsula’.
Again this was emotive stuff which masked the truth
of the matter. What apparently went unnoticed was their
claim that the ‘Antarctic peninsula was warming
five times faster than the average in the rest of the
world’. This raises the question: If the rising
temperatures and melting ice in the Antarctic are
caused by global warming, why should a small area of
the Antarctic warm five times faster than anywhere
else?
The answer is, again, surprisingly simple: The
Antarctic Peninsula is volcanic, part of the Pacific
‘ring of fire’. The melting ice at one
part of the Antarctic is entirely natural; it has
nothing whatsoever to do with ‘global
warming’, man-made or otherwise. Apart from that
one peninsular, the Antarctic ice sheet is actually
getting thicker.
References
1. WWF. Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change. Press
release of Report to Bali summit, 11 December 2007.
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Last updated 20 February
2009
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