Russ Steele
I watched Scott Pelley on the CBS Global Warming Special and gritted my teeth as he misled the viewers. There is not enough space to go over all the problems I found, but the implication that Antarctica is melting was just too much. It is not melting, there is some warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, a small portion of the Antarctic which reaches above the Antarctic Circle. It has warmed 4 degrees in the region over the last 30 years. Since 2004 there have been several undersea volcano discovered in the area, that could be contributing to the warming. Or, it could be due to changing wind patterns, when the Pacific Ocean switched to a warm phase.
Pelley was at the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station, a research station on King George Island, off the coast of Antarctica. King George Island is the largest of the South Shetland Islands, situated at 62°23′S, 58°27′W, 120 kilometers off the coast of Antarctica in the Southern Ocean according to Wikipedia. Pelley claimed he was in Antarctica, when he was over 120 kilometers to the North in the Shetland Islands. The Chinstrap Penguins are found hear the Arctowski Research Station, and the glacier he climbed with the help of the staff at the Research Station was most likely near the station. We were not looking at a melting Antarctic glacier, but a Shetland Islands glacier well above the Antarctic Circle.
From the CBS Web site:
60 Minutes wanted to see the evidence of warming nearer the bottom of the world. So Pelley and the team set sail from the last city south, Ushuaia, Argentina, on a two-day voyage to Antarctica.
Here, 60 Minutes found there’s green where the white used to be; on the coast, in summer, there’s grass where the scientists used to ski. The area is called "Paradise Cove," and it is home to fur seals, lazy elephant seals and the Chinstrap penguin.
Paradise Cove is close to Demay Point on the map. Note all the ice free area on this map. This is are not the result of global warming as implied by 60 Minutes. Also, Wayne Trivelpiece said they lose 40 percent of the Chinstrap Penguins every years, most likely due to global warming driving away the krill which the Penguins eat. However, the Chinstrap's diet consists of krill and small shoaling animals, small fish and other roaming marine crustaceans. No mention they had other food to eat. It could be the volcano's warming the water that are driving off the krill, or changing wind patterns.
UPDATE: Article in the International edition of the Herald Tribune: Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting. Ooops, Pelley said it was AGW.
Although population changes have been detected among colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula, the overall Chinstraps population seems stable, according to the Antarctic Connection. If you listened to Scott Pelley and Wayne Trivelpiece they were about to be wiped out by human caused global warming. All those cute penguins killed by humans neglecting to control green house gases. No worry, they make up 70 percent of the penguin population in the world and most populations are stable.
If Scott Pelley has ever gotten to Antarctica, he would know that the main land mass, which is 1.5 times the size of the the US, is not melting only a very small portion on the peninsula. In fact the main land mass is cooling and in 2007 was a record year for sea ice extent, as shown on the chart below. It is in the middle of summer in Antarctica and the ice extent remains well above the 28 year average and an impressive 3 million square kilometers above last year in January. Once again CBS's credibility is on the line, Antarctic is not melting and the penguins are stable.
UPDATE #2. There have been some warming affecting mainly coastal regions between the Ross Sea to the Antarctic Peninsula, while net cooling has affecting the interior areas and most of the East Antarctic Plateau. Interesting that this is the region were the under sea volcanos have been discovered. The chart below exemplifies some temperature series from various sites in the Antarctic continent. Ooops, Antarctica is not melting as claimed by Scott Pelley.
More details here.
