Unprecedented Melt? Not Exactly. Unprecedented Scientific Folly? You bet!

The Antarctic’s annual cycle is its own accordion-like expansion and contraction. But it is dwarfed by the larger expansions and contractions between glacial and interglacial periods during the present ice age.

As many of my readers know, the fact that Antarctic sea ice has steadily grown during the entire satellite record is something that I’ve alluded to frequently in the past. Some of you will know, too, that the temperature at the South Pole has gone down during the same period, as I’ve mentioned that here and elsewhere, including in my book.

Global warming alarmists have, meanwhile, made endless hay out of the fact that ice shelves have broken up during the last couple of decades. I mention in my book that if you could watch time-lase video of Antarctic ice shelves, as seen from space, over the last three million years you would see an accordion being played by a quite energetic player. Out they go, and in they come, out they go, and in they come. One feature that should convince people that climate is not changing outside normal bounds is precisely that ice shelves are continuing to do what they’ve done during the present ice age. This notion that until the last 50 years ice shelves were stable, in other words, is patently anti-scientific. And potentially manipulative and evil, but let’s worry about that another day.

But one thing that has been clear from the start: the falling temperature at the South Pole and the growth of sea ice have both been a problem for the AGW public relations machine. And you can smell that a mile away with a new paper published in Nature Geoscience, which carefully explains how the out-of-control Antarctic melting is causing the freezing of sea ice.

The authors have their logic, basically that volumes of melted ice shelf ice have lowered the salinity underlying the sea ice freezing zones and then rise in freshwater plumes to the surface to favor more rapid freezing. Do they consider the fact that the accordion freeze and melt process of the past three million years would have included the same dynamic? Not exactly. Do they presume that the overwhelming number of lay people and even some scientists will be overjoyed for an explanation for the horrifying reality that Antarctic sea ice continues to muss up the global warming narrative?

They precisely do.