Atlas Takes Heat For Melting Glacier Claim

dtjohnson writes "The 'Times Atlas of the World' claims, while publicizing its newest edition, that global warming has turned 15 percent of Greenland's former ice-covered land 'green and ice-free.' Now, however, scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute say those figures, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, are wrong. 'Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands,' they say in a letter that has been sent to the Times. Others have pointed out that if 15 percent of Greenland ice cover had been lost, then sea levels would have risen by 1 meter... which has not happened. Perhaps yet another climate controversy is brewing." An update to the Sciencemag.com story pinpoints the probable source of the error: a 2001 map from the NSIDC illustrates Greenland's central ice sheet without showing any of the peripheral glaciers. The Atlas editors may have seen this map and misinterpreted it. Says the article, "Now glaciologists are left trying to figure out how not understate the importance of the extent glacial ice melt, while at the same time correcting the error."

Comments

An Inconvenient Truth Is It Not?

[TaleSpinner]

> Now glaciologists are left trying to figure out how not
> understate the importance of the extent glacial ice
> melt, while at the same time correcting the error.

In other and simpler words - how to continue claiming global warming is proven in spite of yet another failure of truth on the part of the GW believers.

Re:The problem with politics

[bonch]

They wouldn't have this issue if there wasn't an opposition that will shout it to the heavens every time a mistake or revision is made in relation to global warming but every statement made in support of it is ignored, even if the two are part of the same package.

Well, if global warming alarmists didn't appeal to the perceived authority of "scientific consensus," there wouldn't be loud shouting whenever a mistake in the supposedly unshakable research of climate scientists is pointed out. The left-of-center faction of the political spectrum has latched onto global warming because the solutions just so happen to coincide with their political beliefs (e.g., increased taxes, increased regulation of industry, etc.).

Unfortunately, there is a climate (pardon the pun) that shuns scientists who oppose the current view of global warming. That view is itself based entirely on computer simulations rather than recorded observations. The global temperature record hasn't risen since 1998, which is so contradictory to predictions made by computer simulations that climate scientists are using computer simulations to find explanations for the missing heat that was predicted by the previous computer simulations.

Welcome to climate science.