Is Global Warming a Crisis?

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Need proof that the effects of global warming have been exaggerated?  Just look at Greenland. Al Gore asserts that the Greenland ice sheet is melting, due to global warming, and this is threatening us with a planet-wide flooding catastrophe. According to Gore, “Because of what’s happening in Greenland right now, the maps of the world will have to be redrawn.”

So exactly what does science say is “happening in Greenland right now?”
In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UK) correlated Greenland’s surface temperature readings and ice core data dating back to 1784.

They made a remarkable discovery. The past two decades were the coldest decades for Greenland since the 1910s. Average annual temperatures during the past two decades were colder than in any of the previous six decades. Greenland’s temperatures during the 1980s and 1990s averaged a full 1.5 degrees Celsius lower than average annual temperatures during the 1930s and 1940s.

Moreover, according to a 2005 study in Journal of Glaciology, seven scientists who had analyzed 10 years’ worth of data reported, “the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain.” I repeat, “a small overall mass gain.”

So how is it that Al Gore and global warming alarmists show striking photos of glacier retreat as “evidence” of global warming? Because they only mention the thinning at the edges and conveniently forget to mention the more extensive thickening of the glacier inland.

For the sake of intellectual honesty, we will note that shortly after Gore made his spurious claims, scientific measurements found that Greenland did, for a period of less than a year, have a slightly elevated rate of glacier shrinkage at its edges. Greenland actually began discharging slightly more of its snowcap than it was building. However, just last month scientists reported that the brief hiccup was nothing more than that, a short-term variable that has now ended – just like the so-called global warming “crisis.”