Antarctica Growing, Not Shrinking, says NASA: Why Isn’t This News?

Antarctica is growing not shrinking, according to the latest study from NASA. Furthermore, instead of contributing to rising sea levels, the still-very-much-frozen southern continent is actually reducing them by 0.23 mm per year.

The study – by an organization [NASA] not hitherto noted for playing down environmental scares – will come as a major blow [to] climate alarmists. For decades, they have cited Antarctica as one of the bellwethers of global warming catastrophe and have claimed – as the IPCC’s most recent Assessment Report did – that its land ice mass was slowly melting into the sea.

But the satellite measurements used in the latest NASA report tell a different story. Unlike previous studies – many largely based on guesswork because the continent is so vast and inhospitable, meaning that data is extremely limited – they use satellite altimeters to calculate changes in the surface height of the ice. What they show is that the amount of ice lost by glaciers collapsing into the sea has been exceeded by the gain in ice mass from accumulated snow.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

This should be headline news; but it’s not.

That, right there, tells you something about the intellectual honesty and scientific credibility of those who advocate in favor of “climate change.”

Science is not advocacy. You do not “use” science to promote a certain outcome, as advocates of environmentalist legislation use scientific data selectively to promote a particular outcome.

It’s important to understand that those pushing climate change, from President Obama on down, are trying to impose more government control on the private sector and economy, using one-sided science as means of frightening people into doing so.

This is not science.

Here’s what real science would look like:

All factors are considered.

On the one hand, there’s evidence suggesting that the climate of the earth is changing. Name all the possible explanations and rule each one out.

On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence (this is only the latest) suggesting that the climate of the earth is not changing – or, if it is, it’s becoming cooler, which means that man-made “global warming” might be an asset, if anything.

The point is: We do not know for sure, and it will likely take decades or longer to figure it out. By that time, if nonpoliticized science and free enterprise are permitted to flourish, there may be major developments and improvements in technology and energy, anyway.

Real science is grounded in reason. Reason is sometimes tedious. In complex matters, it does not provide immediate gratification. It takes a long-range perspective.

This is probably truer with something like “climate science” than with just about anything else. It can take centuries of data to really establish what’s going on with the earth’s climate. Lots of intervening and confounding variables must be ruled out in forming, supporting or eradicating various hypotheses, of which global warming is only one.

“Boring,” say advocates of global warming who have recently repackaged themselves as “climate change” advocates, itself an acknowledgement that global warming is in serious doubt.

Reason is not always sexy. It does not always give you instant results, the way you get instant results from surfing the Internet on your smart phone or pushing a button to gain some other form of immediate gratification (gratification all made possible by the rigors of scientific technology, by the way).

Most of us are not scientists. Most of us are not experts in the fields where scientists actually disagree over the temperature of the earth and what’s actually happening to it.

However, any of us can evaluate the methodology – the cognitive methodology – being employed by people in the field of science. We can also evaluate the methodology of the politicians and others who, in the interest of expanding government control over the production and distribution of energy (coal, fossil fuels, etc.), selectively tell us what’s happening in that field.

The fact is that most of the media, most of the politicians and even some of the scientists only want us to focus on data that leads to the conclusion they have already decided they want to be true: The earth’s climate is changing in a dangerous way, over decades rather than millennia, and it’s all because of economic freedom, i.e. capitalism. As a result, government must take over all productive human action and manage it in the name of the “common good.”

In reality, there are only two things that will ever save us. One is scientific freedom, grounded in ruthless intellectual honesty and objectivity. The other is economic freedom.

Scientific freedom allows scientists to objectively pursue what’s going on with climate, and to give us rational conclusions once they are known, and not a second sooner. Economic freedom allows profit-seekers and profit-makers a chance to innovate, produce and distribute new goods, products, services (“cleaner” energy or whatever else) because the marketplace demands it.

You might feel like scientific freedom and economic freedom are not enough. Bill Gates, of all people, reportedly made comments along these lines the other day.

But what else is there? These two things constitute the freedom to know and the freedom to produce. These are the two things that have advanced human beings to this point.

In the Middle Ages, there was absolutely no freedom to know and very little freedom to produce. Human civilization stagnated during this time, for nearly a thousand years. Starting in the 17th and 18th centuries, and into the 19th and 20th, that trend completely reversed. America, most of all, was the place of scientific and economic freedom, on a scale never before seen. The results? The greatest advancements the world has ever seen.

What’s the response from advocates of climate change?

Among those alarmists trying to put a brave face on the shocking news is the report’s lead author Jay Zwally…“I know some of the climate deniers will jump on this, and say this means we don’t have to worry as much as some people have been making out,” he says. “It should not take away from the concern about climate warming.” As global temperatures rise, Antarctica is expected to contribute more to sea-level rise, though when exactly that effect will kick in, and to what extent, remains unclear.

In other words, he has no answer, other than to say: “I don’t care about this evidence. I care about the evidence that supports my theory of man-made climate change being an imminent danger requiring near-term, drastic government action.”

We do not need to be scientists to evaluate the lack of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity so rampant in what passes for science in this area.

It’s not just a matter of asking scientists, “What do you know?” It’s also a matter of asking them, “How do you know it?”

Politically motivated scientists attach different levels of weight to different kinds of evidence, based on whether the evidence supports or undermines their theory.

You do not have to be a scientist to know that this is not science.

 

Sources: Nasa.gov 10/30/15 and breitbart.com 11/3/15

 

 

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