'Nightly News': Antarctic Ice Changes Man’s Fault; No Other Possibility Acknowledged

January 15th, 2008 3:02 PM

The penguins soon won’t have a home and it’s all our fault.

You might get that impression after watching the January 14 “Our Planet” segment on “NBC Nightly News” about the ice shift in Antarctica.

In 2006, the Antarctic peninsula near South America lost 60 billion metric tons of ice; 132 billion tons disappeared in West Antarctica,” said Anne Thompson, NBC News chief environmental affairs correspondent. “Big numbers that could have a big impact.”

Thompson blamed mankind as the “prime suspect” for the changes – ignoring all other possibilities, despite some scientists that are skeptical of that theory.

“Like the warming scientists are seeing in Greenland and the North Pole, the prime suspect behind the melting at the South Pole is global warming,” Thompson said. “Manmade carbon dioxide and other gases trapping heat that may well be warming the waters in the coldest police on earth.”

But it isn’t a unanimous “consensus” the ice in Antarctica is melting or that man is contributing to any of the changes on the continent. Thompson ignored other credible scientists who have contrary views.

A recent report posted by Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, outlined the objections of 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on manmade global warming. One of those scientists had doubts about man’s ability to have a profound sudden impact on Antarctica.