On Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Elizabeth Palmer proclaimed: “Climate scientists say the ice has helped keep the planet cool by reflecting the Sun’s rays. Once it’s largely gone, though, the sea will absorb heat more rapidly and global warming will speed up.” However, an October 6 New York Times article declared: “Over the Summer, a Spread of Thicker Arctic Ice.”
Co-host Russ Mitchell introduced Palmer’s report by fretting: “Scientists report today that the Arctic is melting so fast, the North Pole could be ice free during the summer within the next decade or two.” Meanwhile, in the New York Times story, Andrew Revkin explained: “The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of remarkable summer meltdowns.” The CBS report failed to cite such evidence.
At the end of the article, Revkin did acknowledge the fear of melting ice: “even with the current recovery — it’s hard to find a researcher probing Arctic ice trends who does not foresee open-water summers, and all that comes with them, in coming decades, as long as greenhouse gases keep accumulating in the atmosphere.”
Here is a full transcript of the CBS Early Show story:
8:03AM SEGMENT:RUSS MITCHELL: Finally, scientists report today that the Arctic is melting so fast, the North Pole could be ice free during the summer within the next decade or two. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer has more.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Climate Concerns; Study: Ice-Free Arctic Circle Summers]
ELIZABETH PALMER: The British exploration team walked and swam 280 miles across the Arctic ice of the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. Along the way, they drilled hundreds of core samples to measure the ice and found in some places it was only six feet thick. But more alarming, all the ice was formed this past year. That means this area, once covered with ice that built up year on year, will regularly now be open water during the summer months.
PETER WADHAMS [PROFESSOR, POLAR OCEAN PHYSICS GROUP, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE]: The summer ice will disappear within 20 to 30 years and it will be – a lot of it will be gone within ten years.
PALMER: Climate scientists say the ice has helped keep the planet cool by reflecting the Sun’s rays. Once it’s largely gone, though, the sea will absorb heat more rapidly and global warming will speed up. Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News, London.
—Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.





















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Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:04 ET by serfer62Artic? In the Summer? If so then Global Warming better hurry up before the Ice Age kills us all
O(r do they mean Antartic which is their winter during our summer...
An
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:10 ET by danboAn admission.
HAHAHAHAHA. HEHEHE. I didn’t even know about it. Um. So, you’ve got me at a loss. I don’t know. (Charles Gibson of the dead media.)
Polar Opposite
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:15 ET by dboCBS has it exactly wrong. Since Antarctic ice is at an all time high what we have to worry about is all that ice reflecting heat back to space and we start the next ice age.
Wrong pole
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 19:10 ET by richb313Your title is correct but it is the wrong pole. They were talking about Arctic Ice, northern Hemisphere, not Antarctic Ice, Southern Hemisphere. The reoported prediction will fial as sea temperatures are starting to decrease not increase.
That's my point. CBS could
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 19:24 ET by dboThat's my point. CBS could just as easily have done a story about record Antarctic sea ice extent and come to the exact opposite conclusion. From my link
Well, one good thing- at
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:27 ET by BKeyserWell, one good thing- at least Upernavik, Greenland's bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics is looking better...
LOL!
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:31 ET by B-townGiantToo funny!
Thank ya B-town, and welcome
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:35 ET by BKeyserThank ya B-town, and welcome to NewsBusters!
Good to be here, and hoping
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:41 ET by B-townGiantGood to be here, and hoping to join the pantheon of intelligent, creative, and insightful commentators such as yourself.
And, of course, join the troll-watch forces. That means you, "shawn." And you, "ILTK."
1998
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:30 ET by VengeanceIsMineThese dolts in the MSM can't see the nose on their face. What is the hottest year in the last 10 years? 1998.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
If these people at CBS had any frickin' clue, they would torpedo "Climate Change" and bankrupt GE and thereby help knock down one of their competitors (NBC).
"You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt." Daniel Hannan
CBS =
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:33 ET by B-townGiant"Completely Befuddled Socialists"
Every year for the past few
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:41 ET by deerjerkydaveEvery year for the past few years this prediction has been made. Every year it hasn't happened.
I wonder if these are the same scientists who keep predicting heavy hurricane seasons. This last year was ended up as the mildest in a decade.
If they keep making these predictions year after year eventually they'll get it right and will claim, "see I knew it!" And CBS will be there to propogate it to the masses.
As it gets colder, more ice will slide off into the oceans.
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 17:58 ET by upcountrywaterThe strength of ice is a known constant. It will not stay put on land it will start moving faster and faster the thicker it gets.
The AGW gang will squeal, at all the increased glacier calving going on.
Ice up 32%
A summary of summer sea-ice
conditions released last week by the National Snow and Ice Data Center
reported a substantial expansion of second-year ice (ice thick enough to
have persisted through two summers of seasonal melting). Second-year ice
this summer made up 32% of the total ice cover on the Arctic Ocean,
compared with 21% in 2007 and 9% in 2008.
CBS Must Be Doing Some Kind Of Parody Or Something
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 18:11 ET by dboThe top 10 reasons why these clowns can't be trusted and why this story is completely bogus.
I doubt that
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 18:42 ET by jon_torlinI don't know, but given the lack of sunspot activity and its relation to weather on earth, which currently is cooling, how do they know the ice is going to melt during the summers to come in the Arctic when they were very wrong about this hurricane season's number of named storms?
Didn't some team from the UK try to go through the Arctic only to get frozen in and even get severe frostbite? Or some idiot in a kayak or something like that?
-Jon
The only thing on "thin
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 19:34 ET by jdhawkThe only thing on "thin ice" is the socialist propagandists at cBS. While our country is experiencing record breaking cold and nearly a non summer in our north east, the climate change idiots are just getting "warmed up."
Remember, the climate change crap isn't about saving the planet. It is about more government control and even more outrageous taxes in each of our lives.
This crap and tax legislation is key to obama's other initiatives. The reason that it is key is that if passed, it will bring in hundreds of billions of new taxes. Estimates are that it will raise costs of energy itself and the taxes on energy to the tune of $1700 per family per year.
The socialist propaganda media will "ramp up" stories like this one as the giant fraud fest date approaches in Denmark. In early December the IPCC meets there. There is a lot of pressure on this adminstration to pass the crap and tax bill before the meeting.
If we can stop and/or delay obamacare, it will hold up crap and tax. If obamacare passes, expect crap and tax will not be far behind it.
Once again, do your part and write, call, and/or e-mail your representatives and tell them you want them to vote no on crap and tax. Note, your representatives have already voted and the crap and tax has passed the HOR, but not your senators.
melting ice
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 19:38 ET by LorraineThis "expedition" was thoroughly debunked by Watt's Up With That? as the worst scientific boondoggle yet.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/15/top-ten-reasons-why-i-think-catlin-arctic-ice-survey-data-cant-be-trusted/
Excrement
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 19:59 ET by MCPO AirdaleAn unsubstantiated claim to prop up their cap & tax agenda. A steaming pile of bovine excrement.
Silver lining
Thu, 10/15/2009 - 21:22 ET by needleWell, in a perverse sense there is a silver lining in this:
For decades the alphabet networks all read the New York Times religiously every morning as received secular gospel. Lacking the the ability to think and act on their own, they used the NYT as a sort of lodestone for deciding what news to present that day and how to present it.
Now it seems that at least CBS has cut the umbilical cord, which is theoretically good, except that it appears now they are operating open loop (an engineering expression meaning out of touch and out of control).
- Relying upon the State Run Media for your information is like relying upon an embezzler for your portfolio management.
- I didn't leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left me.
looks the same to
Fri, 10/16/2009 - 01:49 ET by toneyukilooks the same to me
summer to summer, winter to winter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro0-7U8UtvI
Oblique angles
Fri, 10/16/2009 - 10:00 ET by CobraMan"Climate scientists say the ice has helped keep the planet cool by reflecting the Sun’s rays."
Someone should remind those "scientists" that water reflects sunlight as well, especially at the poles due to the oblique angles the sun's rays strike the surface. That's why the ice cover is there, and has been for millions of years.
Yes, the ice at the north pole does move away from the pole and melt at lower latitudes (it's moving over water, a perfect lubricant for ice, so there's nothing to slow the migration, to "bottle up" that ice and it doesn't accumulate to the extent of what we see at th South Pole), but more ice forms at the pole and migrates outward so that ice cover is constantly replenishing itself. This means that a large percentage of the pole will always have ice, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, all due to the curvature of the earth.
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