On the "Deadliest Catch" home page is this link: SEA ICE SCIENCE...New! Is global warming changing the Bering Sea? Get the answers now. Curious for the answers, I clicked the link which brought me to Bering Sea Ice: Science Q&A by Helen Fields. The Q&A presents overwhelming evidence that the Bering Sea has been getting colder lately. The conclusion: global warming.
Amazing.
Let us first read the evidence that Fields presents demonstrating the lowering temperatures in the Bering Sea area:
The Bering Sea, where the boats of Deadliest Catch do their work, is not known for toasty warm weather. But still, some years are colder than others. The last two winters have been particularly chilly -- and they've been huge years for ice. The last time the ice came this far south was in the early 1970s, when scientists first used satellites to monitor the ice.
The first Q&A presents this question:
So where does all that ice come from?
And here is their answer:
Sea ice is frozen seawater. It's different from icebergs, which break off from glaciers or ice shelves. In the Bering Sea, the ice mostly forms in the north, starting in November or December, and blows south, toward the fishing and crabbing grounds.
As the leading edge of the ice reaches warmer water, it melts. But the melting ice cools the water -- like when you put ice in lemonade -- and the next batch of south-moving ice doesn't melt as fast. Eventually, as ice keeps blowing south, the water is cold enough for the ice to stay frozen, and the ice spreads across the sea.
Unlike the Arctic Ocean, the Bering Sea is always ice-free in summer. This year, the last of the free-floating ice melted on Monday, June 22.
Hmm... So it sounds like the fee-floating ice lasted in the Bering Sea until rather late in the year. The next question presented sounded like they read my mind:
Wait -- what about global warming? Shouldn't the Bering Sea be heating up?
And here is the stunning answer:
Here's the thing about climate change. Yeah, the average temperature of the Earth is going up, but that doesn't mean every spot on the globe gets warmer every year.
By getting cold again, the Bering Sea is just continuing the pattern it has had since people started keeping track about 90 years ago: a few warm years followed by a few cold years. From 2001 to 2005, the Bering Sea was really warm. The north winds that blow ice down to the southern part of the Bering Sea, where most of the fishing is, weren't as strong.
In 2007 things turned cold again -- and the next two winters, the ice came much farther south. So, yes, it's a lot of ice, but it's part of the usual warm-cold-warm-cold pattern of weather in the Bering Sea. "There is some global warming effect in the Bering Sea, but it's still dominated by the large swings from warm to cold and back to warm again," says Jim Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.
As the Earth's atmosphere continues to warm, the Bering Sea is expected to follow suit. On average, the ice will disappear earlier in the spring. But the pattern of warmer years followed by cooler years should continue.
Huh? So they admit the temperatures are cyclical but hold stubbornly to the global warming theory for which no evidence is presented. See, if it is getting warmer that is evidence for global warming. However, if the temperatures are getting colder, that is also proof of global warming according to this bizarre reasoning.
My suggestion to the Discovery Channel is to do what they are supposed to do. Discover the science behind global warming instead of blindly accepting it as established fact. Present evidence by both sides in the global warming debate. In fact, why not present a debate on this subject? Invite Al Gore, Heidi Cullen, or James Hansen to argue in favor of global warming versus members of the growing scientific community (as well as John Stoessel) who have become skeptical of that theory.
Meanwhile, I will continue to watch the crews the "Deadliest Catch" work in the increasingly cold weather of the Bering Sea where global warming seems to have left no mark whatever.
