Study Claiming Rapid Arctic Ice Melt Refuted at Climate Summit
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 14, 2004
Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNSNews.com) - A researcher who predicts a rapid melt
in the Arctic region presented his findings to participants at the United
Nations climate change conference here on Monday, but many conference
participants questioned the validity of the science used in the study.
Robert Corell, the chair of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
(ACIA), summed up the findings of his group's report, saying, "We are now
experiencing some very rapid and severe climate change in the Arctic."
The study, entitled "Impacts of a Warming Arctic," concludes that climate
change will accelerate over the next 100 years, "contributing to major
physical, ecological, social and economic changes," Corell said during his
presentation to a packed conference room at the meeting.
Corell warned that the rise in sea levels from the projected melting of
Greenland's ice shelf could have major impacts on coastal areas worldwide.
But Myron Ebell of the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise
Institute (CEI) refuted Corell and his international commission's report on
Arctic melting.
"The temperature graph [of the Arctic used in the ACIA study] does not agree
with any of the known [temperature] data sets for the Arctic. In other words,
who knows where they got this data from," Ebell told CNSNews.com.
Ebell, who is attending the U.N. climate change summit, is the director of
international environmental policy for CEI. He believes that alarm over the
projected melting of Greenland's ice shelf is misplaced.
"It was warmer in 1000 A.D. than it is today, and Greenland had much less ice
cover back then," Ebell said.
But Correll presented his case for a quick and alarming Arctic melt with
confidence. "It's happening there and it's happening rapid[ly]... Places that
used to be frozen year round are now opening up," Corell said.
"The preponderance of evidence is that the observed warming on the planet and
most definitely in the Arctic over the last 30 to 50 years is due to increased
greenhouse gas concentrations," he added.
Rising sea levels, changes in animal habitats and possible changes in ocean
currents are some of the potential problems the Earth faces, according to the
ACIA report.
But Ebell questioned why rising Arctic temperatures are something to fear. "If
global warming in the Arctic is such a problem, why do 80 percent of Canadians
live within 50 miles of the U.S. border?" Ebell asked rhetorically.
"If Canada warmed up a bit they might be able to live in more of their own
country," he added.
'Did anyone notice?'
Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book that debunks
what he sees as flawed eco-science, also dismissed concerns about the
catastrophic impacts of rising sea levels.
"We are probably gong to see sea levels rise about 50 centimeters over the
coming century. Now that is a substantial amount, but what we don't remember is
that in the last century they rose somewhere between 10 and 25 centimeters --
and did anyone notice? I mean it is something we dealt with," Lomborg told
CNSNews.com.
Lomborg is in Buenos Aires trying to convince world governments to worry less
about climate change and worry more about what he considers the pressing
problems of AIDS in Africa, world poverty, and inadequate sanitation.
He said rising sea levels aren't going to be a big problem. "It's going to be a
challenge and it's going to cost us money," Lomborg said, "but it's going to be
something we will deal with."
Lomborg believes that focusing on the Kyoto Protocol to help ward off rising
sea levels is unrealistic.
"They are going to rise, but the point is with Kyoto, we are going to postpone
that rising for only about six years in 2100 -- that is it," he said.
Corell of the ACIA study did concede that there is not much the world can do to
stop rising sea levels.
"What would happen if we did in fact reduce C02 emissions over the next 100
years -- in a very concerted effort -- what would happen to sea-level rise? It
would take literally over a thousand years for the sea level to stop rising as
a consequence of what we have done over the last 150 years," Corell said during
his presentation.
Arctic report 'debunks itself'
Other analysts and scientists have debunked the notion that Arctic ice is
melting as a result of human activity.
Steven Milloy, who hosts the website junkscience.com, wrote an essay in
November refuting the ACIA report on Arctic melting.
"The report...pretty much debunks itself on page 23 in the graph labeled
"Observed Arctic Temperature, 1900 to Present," Milloy wrote.
"The graph shows that Arctic temperatures fluctuate naturally in regular cycles
that are roughly 40 years long. The Arctic seems currently to be undergoing a
warming phase - similar to the one experienced between 1920 and 1950 - which
will likely be followed by a cooling phase - similar to the once experienced
between 1950 and 1990," Milloy said.
Milloy also disputed the ACIA's claim that "global warming could cause polar
bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that
sustains them."
\ldblquote...the notion of a declining polar bear population doesn't square
well with available information," Milloy wrote.
"A Canadian Press Newswire story earlier this year reported that in three
Arctic villages, polar bears 'are so abundant there's a public safety issue.'
Inuit hunters wanted to be able to kill more bears because they are 'fearsome
predators,'" he wrote.
Milloy said that if polar bears are getting skinnier, it probably does not have
anything to do with climate change, but overpopulation as a larger bear
population competes for the same level of resources.
Despite the numerous critiques of the ACIA's report on Arctic melting, Arizona
Republican Senator John McCain, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Commerce,
Science and Transportation Committee, held a Senate hearing in November to hear
testimony from some of the report's authors.
Because the hearing did not feature any scientists who believed the Arctic
study to be scientifically flawed, McCain was criticized for not holding
balanced hearings on Arctic melting.
Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, the author of a new book Meltdown: The
Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the
Media, told CNSNews.com in November that McCain's hearing was probably "the
most biased hearing" he had ever seen on Capitol Hill.
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
