(FAIRUSE NOTICE: This blog site may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'Fair Use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 USC Section 107 of the US Copyright Law.)
Thursday, September 5, 2013
NOAA uses rhetoric to hide the Arctic ice gains as global warming blush - Rowers can't believe their own eyes - ice everywhere still calls it warming - a common thread - money funds their attitudes
“The findings are striking,” Kathryn Sullivan, Noaa’s acting administrator, said on a conference call. “Our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place.”
The scientists were reluctant to point directly to the cause of the striking changes in the climate. But the annual reports are typically used by the federal government to prepare for the future, and in June president Barack Obama used his climate address to direct government agencies to begin planning for decades of warming atmosphere and rising seas.
The biggest changes in the climate in 2012 were in the Arctic and in Greenland, said the report, which is an annual exercise by a team of American and British scientists. The Arctic warmed at about twice the rate of lower altitudes, the report found. By June 2012, snow cover had fallen to its lowest levels since the record began. By September 2012, sea-ice cover had retreated to its lowest levels since the beginning of satellite records, falling to 1.32 million square miles.
That was, the report noted, a whopping 18% lower than the previous low, set in 2007, and a staggering 54% lower than the mark for 1980.