Antarctica, that icy continent that encompasses the South Pole, has been a source of panic for the climate scolds for years. It was, only a few million years ago, covered in temperate forest. Now it's covered in ice, as the world is a chillier place than it once was. Yes, the planet's climate does change, and through most of Earth's history, it's been warmer than it is today.
Nevertheless, climate scolds love to loudly proclaim, "Antarctica is melting!" The problem is, it just ain't so. We have discussed this problem with the climate scolds' focus on the southern island continent before:
See Also: Don't Panic—Antarctica Isn't Melting
Now, Issues & Insights informs us that the body of knowledge on Antarctica's non-melting status has expanded.
Our southernmost continent is, we’ve been told, the suffocating canary in the global coal mine. The more ice loss in Antarctica, the greater trouble we’re in. So what do we make of a study which found that between 2021 and 2023, there was a record-breaking increase in the Antarctic Ice Sheet?
We mark it down as another in a long line of misses from the global warming zealots.
“Notably, four major glaciers in the Wilkes Land–Queen Mary Land region of East Antarctica reversed their previous pattern of accelerated mass loss from 2011 to 2020 and instead showed significant mass gain during the 2021 to 2023 period,” says an article in SciTechDaily summarizing the report from Tongji University researchers.
How could such an unanticipated event happen?
“The study points to anomalous precipitation as the primary driver, suggesting that natural variability plays a significant role in short-term ice sheet changes,” says climate site Watts Up With That? It also “underscores the complexity of Antarctica’s ice system and the pitfalls of oversimplified climate narratives.”
Now, this is an issue that's a tad more complex than just the amount of ice. It's also true that a slightly warmer climate in extremely cold places like Antarctica (and Alaska) can actually increase snowfall, from whence the ice comes. Look at records of temperature and snowfall, and you'll find that snow is generally observed at more moderate temperatures; the really extreme temps, minus 20 and lower, are often found on clear days when there is no insulating blanket of cloud.
But that's not the point. The point is that facts don't really matter to climate scolds. As Issues & Insights points out:
Climate science has been hijacked and weaponized. The media breathlessly report, with no evidence but plenty of speculation, that man is killing his planet with carbon dioxide emissions; politicians promise impending doom if their big-spending, liberty-violating legislation isn’t passed; celebrities bully the common people and elevate their status while doing the things they tell the rest of us we can’t do; activist researchers produce biased, agenda-based and corrupted work; and witless fanatics block productive citizens from getting to their jobs, hold up traffic, deface art and vandalize public property.
Fortunately, here in the United States, we have a new administration that isn't overly concerned about the climate hooraw.
See Also: Gabbard Removes 'Climate Change' From Intelligence Community's Annual Threat Assessment
While this is an issue that, at least, can be observed - Antarctica's glaciers are really big and we can measure them - too many of the failed predictions on which the climate scolds base their arguments are not observable or measurable. Why? Because they rely too heavily on garbage-in, garbage-out computer models.
We understand the weather enough to look at patterns and predict the weather 7-10 days out. But climate is a different story, as it is generally accepted that climate works on longer time scales, from tens to hundreds of thousands, millions, and even billions of years.
Climate is also a vast, utterly chaotic system. Deriving computer models to predict long-term climate changes is much like deriving computer models to replace animal testing in pharmaceutical development; the best computer models humans can produce are laughably crude compared to the natural phenomena they attempt to model.
So, “put not thy trust in princes,” or in politicians, nor guys in white lab coats pushing a political agenda, and especially not in loudmouthed, Hamas-supporting Swedish teenagers. They’re pushing an agenda, and it will not work out in your favor; meanwhile, regardless of what people do, the Earth will keep ticking along, following the old feedback loops and patterns it has followed for four and a half billion years now, regardless of what we tiny little humans do. And when we look at actual measurements - actual facts - we find, with routine assurance, that the reality is generally the opposite of what the climate scolds claim.
