Rosen decried "selective representation" of global warming effects after letting his guest get away with it

Summary: Discussing global warming with his guest, author Lawrence Solomon, Newsradio 850 KOA's Mike Rosen allowed Solomon to evade a caller's question about "how the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is disappearing" and refer instead to Antarctica, which Solomon claimed is "gaining ice," according to satellite data. Rosen then asserted that "global warming alarmists" provide "selective presentation of ice melting" and "ignore ice cap expansion someplace else because it doesn't suit their agenda."

As a guest on the April 22 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show, writer Lawrence Solomon responded to a caller's question regarding global warming in light of a National Geographic article "about how the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is disappearing" by stating that in Antarctica some regions experience melting, and claiming, "The satellite data shows that, on balance, Antarctica is gaining ice." After allowing Solomon to evade the caller's question about ice melt in the Arctic, host Mike Rosen claimed that "global warming alarmists" provide "selective presentation of ice melting" and "ignore ice cap expansion someplace else because it doesn't suit their agenda."

Rosen and Solomon, who is the executive director of the Urban Renaissance Institute, were discussing Solomon's book The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud* *And those who are too fearful to do so (Richard Vigilante Books, April 2008).

Consistent with the caller's statement, in August 2007 National Geographic reported, "There is less sea ice in the Arctic than ever before recorded, thanks in part to a warm, sunny summer, a climate scientist said today. And the melting season isn't even over." The article reported the views of a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) that the Arctic might be completely free of ice by 2030:

Sea ice -- frozen, floating seawater -- melts and refreezes with the seasons, but some of the ice persists year-round in the Arctic.

The current rate of sea ice melt is much faster than predicted by computer models of the global climate system.

Just last year the National Snow and Ice Data Center's [Mark] Serreze said that the Arctic was "right on schedule" to be completely free of ice by 2070 at the soonest. He now thinks that day may arrive by 2030.

"There's talk of a tipping point, where we thin the ice down sufficiently so that at some point large parts of it can't survive the summer melt season anymore, so we see this very rapid decline in ice cover," he said.

"It's quite conceivable that that tipping point we talk about has already been reached."

Particularly warm and sunny weather in the Arctic this summer has helped speed up the pace of the melt, Serreze said. But the sea ice decline is part of a decades' long trend.

In the dark days of the winter, some sea ice grows back. Overall, however, the ice pack has thinned.

"It's really a reflection of what's been happening over the past 30 years -- this general pattern of warming, this general pattern of thinner and thinner ice, which makes it more vulnerable," he said. [emphasis added]

The NSICD, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, also reported on October 1, 2007, that "Arctic sea ice during the 2007 melt season plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979." The agency further noted that "Arctic sea ice receded so much that the fabled Northwest Passage completely opened for the first time in human memory."

Prompted by Rosen to respond to the caller's question about Arctic ice melt, Solomon instead referred to Antarctica, which he stated was "gaining ice" according to "satellite data."

From the April 22 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

CALLER: Hey, I take National Geographic magazine because I really like the pretty pictures inside. And in recent issues, they have a article about how the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is disappearing. And, of course, they're blaming that on global warming. Does anybody have any explanation for this?

ROSEN: Lawrence?

SOLOMON: Well, the ice in the caps of -- has always been melting, freezing, melting, freezing. It's been a natural process. There's only one way to tell, in the case of the Antarctic, whether overall there's more melting or freezing, and that's using satellites. Antarctica is such an enormous continent and so completely inaccessible -- except in very few locations -- that only satellites can tell whether on balance there's been a gain of ice or a loss of ice. We know that some areas cool and some areas warm. And we've seen all these dramatic pictures of calving in Antarctica. The satellite data shows that, on balance, Antarctica is gaining ice. So it's not melting on balance. It's melting in some areas. But not on balance.

ROSEN: And, of course, that's a natural phenomenon that long predates human activity on this planet. And what you tend to get from the doomsdayers and the global warming alarmists is selective presentation of ice melting or shrinkage here, and at the same time they ignore ice cap expansion someplace else because it doesn't suit their agenda.

Supporting Solomon's statement that in Antarctica "some areas cool and some areas warm" is the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released in February 2007. Among the studies it cited was one showing growth of the ice sheet in East Antarctica and losses in West Antarctica. In summary, the IPCC stated, "Antarctica appears to be losing mass at least partly in response to recent ice flow acceleration in some near-coastal regions, although with greater uncertainty in overall balance than for Greenland."

National Geographic reported in a January 2008 article that a more recent study by the University of Bristol "found that for Antarctica overall, the ice loss increased about 75 percent over the ten-year period, from 112 gigatons of ice per year in 1996 to 196 gigatons of ice per year in 2006." National Geographic further reported:

As to whether Antarctica will lose or gain ice as global warming proceeds, the measurements disagree with existing climate models that suggest "[the ice sheet] is going to get bigger because of increased snowfall with warming temperatures," [study co-author Jonathan] Bamber said.

"We don't see that. We see the ice sheet losing mass," he said. "So there's a bit of a paradigm shift in what the ice sheet has done recently and what it could do in the future."

According to the January 13 press release accompanying the study, which was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, "Over the 10 year time period of the survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass":

Over the 10 year time period of the survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75% during this time. Most of the mass loss is from the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica and the northern tip of the Peninsula where it is driven by ongoing, pronounced glacier acceleration. In East Antarctica, the mass balance is near zero, but the thinning of its potentially vulnerable marine sectors suggests this may change in the near future.

—E.B.