The indefatiguable environment researcher Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University has collated the following recent examples to show that much science reporting simply ignores the evidence contradicting the claims made by global warming catastrophists.

Thus a correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald said:

‘The Antarctic Peninsula has sent a hard-hitting signal that climate change is real: most of its 244 glaciers are retreating. The changes to life and landscape are so rapid that within the past decade, entire iceshelves have broken up and flowers grow where the land was until recently frozen. The first comprehensive analysis of the peninsula's glaciers by British and US scientists, published in Science yesterday, found that 87 per cent of the ice rivers had retreated over the past 50 years, some of them spectacularly.’

A writer at Nature said:

‘Almost all the glaciers that flow into the sea off the Antarctic Peninsula are retreating. The discovery comes from an analysis spanning more than half a century of aerial photographs and satellite images.’

ABC Australia reported:

‘A comprehensive study of the history of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula indicates that the region is experiencing atmospheric warming at a rate up to five times the global average. The British Antarctic Survey found nearly all of the Peninsula's 244 glaciers have retreated over the past 50 years. If the trend continues, and there's no reason that the BAS says that it won't, sea levels around the world could rise and flood low-lying cities.’

But as I have already recorded in a previous post, Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London -- who does not dispute that global warming is occurring -- says this is untrue. Die Welt am Sonntag reports:

‘The West Antarctic peninsula only covers one tenth of the south pole's ice. There are rarely spectacular reports about the much larger parts of the continent. These do not provide a uniform scientific picture. In total, however, the ice masses of the continent, which hold about 70 per cent of the world's fresh water resources, seem to be growing. This conclusion was reported at the Earth Observation summit in Brussels in the middle of February by Antarctic researcher Duncan Wingham (University College London). Wingham presented new satellite data which show that the Antarctic ice cover is getting thicker. "To claim that the ice sheets are melting is rather daring," Wingham said in an interview with Die Welt.’

‘Daring’ is not quite the word I would use.

The Register amplified Professor Wingham’s remarks:

‘The high-profile collapse of some Antarctica's ice shelves is likely the result of natural current fluctuations, not global warming, says a leading British expert on polar climates… This is a contrasting picture to one based solely on the northern Antarctic Peninsula - a shark's fin of land jutting out from the body of the continent, and reaching to just 750 miles from Chile - where there has been a drastic increase in temperature, thinning of ice sheets and collapse of ice shelves. The Larsen A ice shelf, 1600 square kilometres in size, fell off in 1995. The Wilkins ice shelf, 1100 square kilometres, fell off in 1998 and the Larsen B, 13,500 square kilometres, dropped off in 2002. Meanwhile, the northern Antarctic Peninsula's temperatures have soared by six celsius in the last 50 years.

"A lot of attention and research has focused on this relatively accessible area of the Antarctic Peninsula, but satellites are giving us a picture of the continent as a whole," Wingham told the Register. This broader picture shows evidence of growth and decay from place to place, a picture more in line with natural variations in snowfall and ocean circulation. The Antarctic is to some extent insulated from global warming because to its north are zonal flows in the atmosphere and ocean, unimpeded by other landmasses. This insulates the continent from warmer events further north and leads one to suppose it is better protected from global warming… Change is undoubtedly occurring: in the collapse of the northerly Peninsula ice shelves, and elsewhere in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where the circumpolar current appears to reached the ice edge and is eating away drastically at the ice shelves. One cannot be certain, because packets of heat in the atmosphere do not come conveniently labelled 'the contribution of anthropogenic warming'.But the warming of the Peninsula has been going on for a considerable time, and the pattern of regional change is variable, and neither of these is favorable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming".’

Finally, World Climate Report rips into the biased reporting that has bamboozled the world on this issue:

‘The fact that a report that glaciers are melting over one extremely small portion of Antarctica that is showing warming, while the rest of the continent is cooling, grabs not only newspaper headlines but finds its way without a regional perspective into a prestigious publication like Science is troubling…The general cooling of Antarctica is highly scientifically significant because climate models run under increasing levels of greenhouse gases predict that the Antarctic continent as a whole, not just the Peninsula, should be rapidly warming. This is clearly a model failure and no amount of going on and on about the impact of warming in the Peninsula, is going to change that fact.’

And Climate Audit levels the same charge of cooked eco-books at the BBC, with particular reference to the recent demolition by Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre of the key ‘Hockey Stick’ model of historic global warming:

‘Here's a typical article about the Hockey Stick and the dismissal of criticism by skeptics is plain for all to see. The usual tactic is to get responses from the Hockey Team (usually Phil Jones) and allow no rebuttal or reply. All of this came into sharp focus when the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme interviewed Michael Mann about his work and the criticism of it. Despite repeated calls and e-mails no-one from the Today programme would immediately call either Ross McKitrick or Steve McIntyre or explain why not. To this day, no-one from the BBC can be bothered. Why? Because the BBC is right and you're a lunatic for suggesting otherwise (you have a bee in your bonnet about it - clear signs of obsessive and irrational behavior).

‘Skeptics are given extremely short shrift. Take the "Apocalypse NO!" conference organized by the Scientific Alliance. The article was posted mid-way through the morning of the conference itself (to prevent anyone who might be interested in going from being unnecessarily forewarned) and only sometime later was a link to the Scientific Alliance put on the article ( I had to google for it at the time). Note the title "Science sceptics meet on climate" as though anyone who disagrees with global warming must disbelieve science itself (ie they're lunatics). The conference a few days later organized by the Uk Met Office got the full trailer of scare stories before, during and after.’

This is, of course, in line with the BBC's general world view that anyone who departs from the Guardian/Independent line on any issue is a far-right lunatic. But more broadly, the way global warming is being reported by the science press is a scandal. In selecting only those claims that support a prejudice and disregarding evidence that these claims are false, it is betraying the basic principles of scientific inquiry and has become instead an arm of ideological propaganda.

Posted by melanie at April 25, 2005