ALL RIGHT STOP! (the presses). Collaborate and listen. Climate change is a hoax! Ice is back with its brand new invention, most notably, its newfound ability to disprove scientific consensus.
Earlier this summer NASA released a report that detailed how between 2003 and 2008 gains in the Antarctic sea ice outpaced losses and therefore the overall amount of ice increased. The data that Antarctic sea ice was increasing has been swirling around for the past few years, a quick google search will bring up articles dating back to 2008 in the first ten hits, and climate change deniers have been using it as a defense of their beliefs for just as long.
After all, more ice means colder temperatures right? Well, actually, no. The Antarctic is still warming and this increase in sea ice was predicted within climate change models. In the abstract from the NASA article, the scientists hypothesize that a slow increase of snowfall, caused as the climate warms, is responsible for the increase in ice.
Trying to use this increase in Antarctic sea ice as a reason to ignore our ever warming climate is as scientifically illiterate as the person who posts on facebook demanding how anyone can believe in climate change when its snowing outside. (Although that is a rant for a different day). At some point, climate change deniers will have to realize that trying to cherry pick headlines of scientific articles and using scientific outliers to declare there is no consensus, is the Vanilla Ice of tactics. Popular in the 90’s. Out of date in the 2000’s and utterly irrelevant now. The debate has shifted from does climate change exist, to how we should deal with it and hopefully this distinction can be accepted by all soon.
Until then,word to your mother.
By: Stefan Hostetter