Ice sheet is NOT latest climate victim

The UK's ITV News is being misleading again. On 6 April, they reported that the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the 'left' side of the Western Peninsula, had finally cracked.

This follows a previous ITV News report on 25 March 2008 with the title,Ice sheet is latest climate victim which presaged the Ice Shelf's imminent demise.

The Wilkins ice shelf covers 5,000-square miles, so it certainly worth reporting - if anyone other than the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is interested in such facts. Having reported last year that the Ice Shelf was "hanging by a thread", the 6 April 2009 report was about that 'thread' breaking.

That's okay as far as it goes, but then scientists went too far when they claimed this collapse was evidence of climate change.

No it isn't!

It's evidence that the volcanic activity on the Antarctic Western Peninsular is being used inappropriately to scare us.

In March 1998, satellite images recorded a large breakup along the northern front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. A BAS press release, entitled 'Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World' misinformed us that climate change was to blame. But, of course, it wasn't.

The press release read: "In March 2008, the Wilkins Ice Sheet on the Antarctic Peninsula lost more than 400 square kilometers (160 square miles) to a sudden collapse. Following that event, the Wilkins continued to break up, even as the Southern Hemisphere winter brought frigid temperatures to the fragile ice shelf."

So, we are expected to believe that Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, where temperatures can drop to between −80 °C and −90 °C (−112 °F and −130 °F) in the interior during the winter, and would also be well below freezing point at sea level, could be so influenced by a one or two degree rise (to a temperature which is still well below 0 °C) as to weaken or melt several cubic miles of ice. The idea is preposterous. It is also mendacious when one considers that the Western Peninsular is the only part of Antarctica where this 'global warming' is taking place - and the only part of Antarctica where there are volcanoes.

Global warming? My money is on the volcanoes.

Wouldn't you expect the BAS and their colleagues to know about the volcanoes?

It seems they don't.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. The break-up is "characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups."

Professor David Vaughan of the BAS, who predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins ice shelf would be gone in 30 years, said in 2008:

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.

"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

"Climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula has pushed the limit of viability for ice shelves further south - setting some of them that used to be stable on a course of retreat and eventual loss.

"The Wilkins breakout won't have any effect on sea level because it is floating already but it is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region."

Well, it's nice to see he got that right.

Last updated 6 April 2009