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ICECAP in the News
Feb 14, 2010
Another arctic myth dispelled

In Trek to Northern Pole of Inaccessibility called off because of thin ice by Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service, February 12, 2010 we read:

“Citing the “perilous” frailty of the polar ice cap, a British team’s bid to trek from the edge of Arctic Canada to the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility - the most remote place in the Arctic Ocean - has been scuttled just days ahead of the planned departure from Nunavut’s Ellef Ringnes Island. Warned by Environment Canada that the High Arctic is experiencing the “worst conditions” for winter ice cover in decades, the leader of the proposed 1,100-kilometre journey said making the attempt would be “foolhardy” and “endanger lives unnecessarily.”

It’s the third time adventurer Jim McNeill has been thwarted in his quest to complete what’s been called exploration’s “last true world first” - a slog to the spot in the Arctic Ocean that lies the greatest distance from any point of land. In 2003, a bout of flesh-eating disease in his ankle ended the trip. In 2006, the attempt was aborted due to disintegrating ice and equipment problems. And the latest cancellation follows last week’s release of a landmark Canadian study that highlighted unprecedented expanses of open water in the polar sea and predicted ice-free summers in the central Arctic Ocean much sooner than previously forecast.” The story was carried in numerous papers includingt the Star Phoenix.

In actual fact the summer ice has recovered 26% from its 2007 minimum (below and enlarged here).

image

Professor Brian Pratt of the University of Saskatchewan posts in the Star Phoenix a rebuttal.

SP parroting nonsense
By Brian Pratt, The StarPhoenix, February 12, 2010
Re: Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than expected (SP, Feb. 6).

If you gave me $156 million in research funding to study something, you can be damn sure I will tell you anything to keep me on that gravy train. The StarPhoenix should have done some homework before running a story that parrots this self serving nonsense from a climate change study.

Satellite measurements only began in the late 1970s. This is a very short window of observation for appreciating a very dynamic natural system. Nonetheless, they show that sea ice has been increasing from its low in 2007.

Satellites have their limitations, not least of which is the difficulty in distinguishing new ice from multiyear ice (up to several years old); there is a big error bar because, if the ice cover is less than 15 per cent, it is invisible to the microwave sensors and surface melting shows up as open water.  Right now, the below-average ice cover is mostly in the Barents Sea, while above-average ice cover is present in the Bering Sea: The Arctic Ocean is frozen solid, as it always is in winter.

Many in the Canadian media and in government and academic science have more than just egg on their faces for participating in climate change chicanery.

Brian Pratt
Saskatoon

Anthony Watts adds the punctuation mark with this image with likely path below, enlarged here.

image

Hat tip to Susan for the story.

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