Record Antarctic ice, on a planet warming due to human activity? Sound confusing? Sound “weird”? Sure, but only because it is.
We’ve been told for more than a quarter century that human activity is causing the Earth to warm, which would lead to a melting of ice everywhere and coastal cities under water. It was a foregone conclusion — it was “SCIENCE!”
As the old joke goes, “If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.”
Science, of course, is not faith. Or, at least, it didn’t used to be.
The Washington Post had a story Tuesday entitled, “Scientists explain why record-high Antarctic sea ice doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening.” With a title like that, you’d think it would contain, you know, an “explanation.” But it doesn’t.
Maybe they forgot to add the words “attempt to” in their headline…
They quote Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist with NASA, as saying, “There hasn’t been one explanation yet that I’d say has become a consensus, where people say, ‘We’ve nailed it, this is why it’s happening.’” That’s kind of the exact opposite of the headline, if you’re playing along at home.
The Antarctic has more ice than ever before (again, for those of you playing along at home, you don’t make ice cubes in the oven) and scientists are scrambling to figure out why. This scramble is doubly curious since we’ve been told repeatedly that we’re dealing with “settled science.”
Curiously, in a field where “the debate is settled,” debate rages as to why the opposite of what they said would happen is happening. Never fear, the Post says: “But while it might seem that this record throws into question the validity of global warming, scientists say this just isn’t the case.” Then they start one paragraph with, “One possible explanation” and the next with “Another possibility,” then quote Parkinson…
A journalism student would be embarrassed to write that, and this is the Washington Post.
“The increase we’re seeing in the Antarctic extent is a little bit of a mystery,” says NASA research scientist Walt Meier (in the Post’s video). He says the Earth’s poles are “kind of the canary in a coal mine of global warming,” which just adds to the confusion.
Never fear, the Post reports, “scientists say that more research is needed to understand the observations.”
Just so we have this straight, this is “settled science” which is “beyond debate,” and we are expected to relinquish even more control of our lives, money, and property to government because self-appointed experts on their payroll assure us something bad will happen in 100 years if we don’t. Meanwhile, the exact opposite of what our learned betters told us would happen is happening, but that does not cause pause, it requires more study (READ: money).
Science used to require proof — now it only requires a show of hands. It would be interesting to see what would happen if pro-lifers flooded the field of biology, then took a vote on when life began. It’s a near-guarantee the “science as majority vote” crowd as currently constituted would have a “come to Gaia” moment and commit heresy in the new Church of Science.
By the way, the planet hasn’t warmed in 18 years…