Geneva - The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

New evidence of the trend was uncovered by wide-ranging research in the two areas over the past two years in a United Nations-backed programme dubbed the International Polar Year (IPY), they said.

"Snow and ice are declining in both polar regions, affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life in the Arctic as well as global atmospheric circulation and sea-level," according to a summary of a report by the researchers.

An assessment of the findings of the research was still being refined, said the IPY's "State of Polar Research" report.

"But it now appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing," it said.

"New data also confirm that warming in the Antarctic is much more widespread than it was thought prior to IPY."


Comment: Alarmist journalism at its best. This new data that confirms Antarctic warming is a complete mess, see this link here. This great evidence, even if there is a snowball's chance in heck of it standing up to scrutiny would show nothing more than a cycle in Antarctica just as has happened dozens of times in the past. But the new great evidence appears to be just another Michael Mann "Hockey Stick" piece of work where the authors chose the data parameters and algorithms for the specific purpose of generating warming evidence where none exists.

The effectiveness of the propaganda machine is evidenced by the very existence of this piece of info-entertainment journalism. It does however accomplish its purpose of spoon feeding the public that something never seen before in billions of years of the history of the planet's climate is now taking place which is utter nonsense.


More than 63 countries and some 10,000 scientists took part in the $1.5 billion programme, which began in March 2007 and ends next month.

IPY experts told a news conference that melting appeared to be speeding up, especially in the Western Antarctic region that stretches to near the southern tip of Latin America and which had earlier been thought stable.


Comment: More fear mongering! Cycles in the Arctic and Antarctic have existed for hundreds of millions of years. Whether there is or is not a speeding up needs to be put into a historical context so that the impression is not given that some new dire horrific thing is occurring.

The journalist also does not tell you that sea ice extent has increased around Antarctica, Nor is any data provided of the real behemoth of the continent, the interior ice sheet. If the interior ice sheet is growing and growing at a greater rate than any melting on the peninsula the net result is that sea levels will recede.

The same goes for Greenland. Independent studies have shown the Greenland ice sheet to be growing. (Link1) (Link2) And the glacial retreat in Greenland has stopped and recovered. (Link)


"One could expect to see quite dramatic changes in weather in Chile and Argentina as a result," said Ian Allison, a co-chairman of the programme's steering committee.

Such a trend would be felt around the world.

David Carlson, director of IPY's international programme office, said levels of salt in the sea around the Antarctic were growing, indicating that the continent's underlying ice shelves were melting.


Comment: Does that make any sense? If large amounts (billions of gallons) of fresh melt water were locally injected into the Antarctic seas wouldn't that result in a dilution of salts? Perhaps there is some explanation for this, but for the journalist to parrot this without an explanation demonstrates a great lack of respect for the reader. A fifth grader's understanding of chemistry and physics would make them question this statement.

Now it is very possible that the effect of cold fresh water plunging to the bottom of the local sea may cause upwelling of warmer waters and concentrating of the salinity of the local sea or something like that. Or the melt water is itself warmer than the local sea temp and therefore it can hold more salts. But the journalist should have caught this for the reader and explained why something that goes against common sense is just blurted out in this article.

If this is valid Mr. Reuters (and it may be) then explain it because the mechanism is contradictory to common sense and basic science.

Robot journalism. Does the journalist even know what he is talking about?


But the experts said the exact speed of these developments was difficult to measure, and the global effect they were likely to have impossible to predict accurately given the current research tools available.


Comment: The above paragraph should be the emphasis of this entire article.

But look how it is buried amongst:

"glaciers melting"
"expect to see quite dramatic changes in weather in Chile and Argentina"
"had earlier been thought stable"
"affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life"
"as well as global atmospheric circulation and sea-level"
"appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level"
"confirm that warming in the Antarctic is much more widespread"
"Such a trend would be felt around the world"
"the continent's underlying ice shelves were melting"


The overall global warming trend has long been tracked by another U.N.-sponsored body, the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The mandate of the IPY, which is linked with the IPCC, was to focus on what is happening around the poles.

Like the IPCC, the IPY experts said even a relatively small rise in sea-levels could threaten huge populations of cities in low-lying coastal areas, mainly in developing countries but in Europe and North America as well.


Comment: At least we got back on track with the fear mongering.

Info-Entertainment journalism.


The report said research under the IPY had revealed larger-than-expected pools of carbon in Arctic permafrost, or frozen terrain, which further warming could release into the atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gas.

But it gave no estimates of the size of these pools.

While the challenges to funding posed by the economic crisis, the report said governments need to keep pumping money into North and South Pole research in order to keep tabs on global warming pressures.


Comment: Yes. More money is the answer. More info-entertainment. More propaganda. More self-sustaining projection of alarmism.


It was the fourth internationally coordinated scientific programme on the polar regions, following previous efforts undertaken in 1882-83, 1932-33 and 1957-58.

The IPY was organised by the independent International Council for Science and the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).