More BBC Alarmism

By Paul Homewood

 

h/t Joe Public

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25328508

 

So apparently, we’re all going to drown, (again). Well, until you check out the detail anyway.

 

1) ” In a recent major review of all satellite data, scientists concluded that ice losses from West Antarctica pushed up global sea levels by some 0.28mm a year between 2005 and 2010.”

 

In other words, a whole inch a century! It is generally accepted that global sea levels rose by about 8” during the 20thC, and melting of West Antarctic glaciers has certainly been a component of this. Indeed, the Antarctic has been melting, on and off, since the end of the Ice Age.

There is certainly plenty of scientific evidence that glaciers advanced on West Antarctica during the LIA, reversing previous trends. For instance, here and here. There is nothing to suggest we are seeing anything other than a natural rebound from the LIA, and a resumption of earlier melting.

 

2) “The dedicated polar mission finds the region now to be dumping over 150 cubic km of ice into the sea every year. It equates to a 15% increase in West Antarctica’s contribution to global sea level rise [since 2010].

 

A 15% increase? Wow, a sixth of an inch a century!

 

3) But wait, it gets even more ridiculous. Never mind the nonsense of pretending to measure long term trends over a 3-year period. The report then goes on to say:

 

“In a recent major review of all satellite data, scientists concluded that ice losses from West Antarctica pushed up global sea levels by some 0.28mm a year between 2005 and 2010.

The new Cryosat data picks up from the end of that period, and suggests the contribution has risen still further.

Cryosat’s double antenna configuration allows it to map slopes very effectively. However, the mission’s researchers caution that some of the increase may simply be the result of Cryosat’s exceptional radar vision.

With two antennas slightly offset from each other, the spacecraft’s instrument is tuned to sense not just the height of the ice but the shape of its slopes and ridges.

This interferometric observing mode, as it is known, makes Cryosat much more sensitive to details at the edges of the ice sheet – the locations where thinning is most pronounced.”

 

So, they don’t actually know how much, if any, of the increase is real. Furthermore, they don’t know what was happening prior to 2005, so cannot say whether the current rate of melting is any different to the long term trend.

To be fair, the author of the study, Prof Andy Shepherd acknowledges these uncertainties at the end of the article, but most people probably won’t have made it past the BBC headline and opening couple of paragraphs.

 

Meanwhile, GRACE satellite data shows that  “East Antarctica is gaining substantial ice mass”.