NASA Drives Fear Campaign

The end is near! The latest fear-inducing headline at The Huffington Post, “Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level” would have you believe so.

This is a classic example of a money driven campaign. NASA needs grant money and funding for programs from Congress. There is no better way than fear to get people up in arms, especially when there have been ongoing battles for NASA funding.

When you read the article it is full of frightening, exaggerated statements, describing NASA scientists as “stunned”, the amount of thawed ice sheet surface as “skyrocketed”, and ice melt that is “remarkable” and “extreme”.

There are even numerous ominous quotes from scientists which appear to support the scary tactics employed. NASA’s cryosphere program manager, Tom Wagner, “We have abundant evidence that Greenland is losing ice, probably because of global warming, and it's significantly contributing to sea level rise."

You have to read very carefully to find the parts which actually contradict and essentially disprove the scare tactics employed.

“In over 30 years of observations, satellites have never measured this amount of melting...”

Wait, isn’t a human generation approximately 25 years? So in one generation we can make assumptions about the geological, meteorological, and climatological lifetime of ice in Greenland? This is not a scientific approach. Science is based upon empirical and measurable evidence, not gross generalizations and conclusions based upon limited data sets.

It gets worse, much worse. Buried two-thirds of the way down the article is a statement which invalidates the entire purpose of the scare mongering.

“Goddard glaciologist Lora Koenig said that similar melting events occur about every 150 years, and this event is consistent with that schedule, citing the previous 1889 melt.”

There you have it. This ice melt in Greenland is part of a normal cycle. The current melt fits a periodic pattern and wouldn’t be cause for alarm if there wasn’t a religious fervor in parts of the media to blame climate change and global warming on humans.

Remember that the sun affects our climate, think the Maunder Minimum, volcanoes dramatically affect the global weather like Mount Pinatubo, and CERN scientists have proven that cosmic rays may be responsible for 50-100% of the warming last century.

Should this melt continue every year for multiple, concurrent years then there would be cause for this level of alarm. Call me back in three years and tell me if that has happened, I’ll be waving my arms and writing articles of this cautionary tale.

I am strongly in favor of reducing pollution, particularly the massive amounts of unregulated chemicals that are everywhere, but topics related to science should stay rooted in facts.