Liar, Liar - More Climate Alarmist Fake News

The world’s left-leaning media have mastered the art of blowing details out of proportion to advance their ideological agenda. This is what happened recently when just about every climate change-loving media outlet announced that the Antarctic had experienced record high temperatures with claims of 65oF/ 18.3oC being recorded on Seymour Island.  

Some headlines that followed read:

• “Antarctica just registered its hottest temperature ever” CNN, February 7, 2020

• “Antarctica’s’ new record high temperature: Is it climate change?” USA Today, February 10, 2020

• “Antarctica registers hottest temperature ever at nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit”. CNBC, February 7, 2020

• “Climate change: Antarctica experiences record-high temperature of more than 18C”, The Independent, February 7, 2020

• “Climate crisis: Antarctica posts record temperature”. Vatican News, February 8, 2020

While many climatologists said, “hang on that doesn’t sound right,” the climate change alarmists ran off and claimed the Antarctic was melting and it was all more proof of climate change. Some like CNBC even used this “new record temperature” as evidence of “climate change accelerating across the world.” Well, maybe we should examine a few facts to see if their claims stand up.

• Seymour Island, where the temperature was registered, while technically a part of the Antarctic is actually a small island off the very northernmost tip of the Antarctica peninsula that juts out towards South America. (See map below) So it’s not on the Antarctic mainland at all. And being so much closer to the tip of South America in summer it can receive warmer winds from the north that occasionally blow over it. This was how the so-called warmer temperature was recorded on a day when warm winds came down from South America.   

• Secondly, there is a dispute over the actual temperature that was recorded. Scientists are trying to see where this “high temperature” originated from as other scientists, including those from the WMO (World Metrological Organization) only showed a high of 16oC for that particular day. So the 18.3oC is in dispute.

• Lastly looking at the official temperature charts for Seymour Island clearly show this was one day when the temperature went up, so this was not a trend. A few days before, the average temperature at the same research base was minus 2oC and a day or two after this “high” the temperature was under zero 0oC again. So this was literally a two-day spike with some warm winds and maybe in direct sunlight. (See chart below)

Of course, for most of the media, facts don’t really matter as much as being able to claim, “see we told you, climate change is real.” They don’t care if the temperature was accurate or not; they don’t care if it was an outlier or not, and they don’t care there is no change in the overall climate trend in the region or not. All they care about is perpetuating the hoax of man-made climate change knowing that most people don’t read beyond the headlines. It is dishonest but it’s the way they operate. 

The bottom line however is, the Antarctic is not melting. In fact, the very opposite is happening with an overall annual increase in ice. And man-made climate change is still a myth, rejected by the majority of the world’s leading scientists. The facts are clear once the lies are cleared away.