The American news network CBS has been accused of “lying” in a report on climate change in Greenland. The network ran an article claiming that Greenland has seen a whopping 62°F increase in summer temperatures over the last eight years; a claim easily debunked by glancing at temperature data for the region.
In an article that appeared on CBS’s website on the July 19, journalist Vinita Nair wrote: “The impact [of climate change] has been dramatic in Greenland, the huge ice-covered island between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
“Almost 8 years ago to the day in 2007, it was 35 degrees below zero on top of Greenland’s vast ice sheet. Strong winds and blowing snow were more the norm for researchers there.
“This summer, the sun is shining and the ice is thinning; it’s 27 degrees above zero – 62 degrees warmer. Researchers are trying to determine if the warming is a trend.
“Satellite images show that on the warmest day this month, half the ice sheet’s surface was melting, double the norm for this time of year.”
However, Paul Homewood, who blogs on climate at Not A Lot Of People Know That, has posted data taken from NASA showing the average summer temperatures and average July temperatures at two sites at opposite ends of the island from 1900 to the present day. The graphs clearly show that current temperatures are well within normal parameters – and may be a little under average.
“At CBS climate liars are hard at work,” he commented, adding “The CBS claim about a temperature of 27F at Summit is so naive that it barely deserves a comment. As anybody who has been skiing knows full well, when you are up a mountain and the sun comes out, it can get very warm with the sunlight reflecting of the snow.”
The CBS article goes on to quote University of Montana glaciologist Joel Harper, who asserts that Greenland warming up is a problem because “Greenland contributes about 40 percent of current sea level rise.”
Nair adds: “Over the past century, the world’s oceans have risen 4 to 8 inches. By the end of this century, scientists predict sea level rise will be the greatest environmental threat to coastal cities from Miami to Mumbai.”
Nair doesn’t give a reference for the assertion, but the statistic appears to have been taken from an undated National Geographic article which opens: “Core samples, tide gauge readings, and, most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80 years.”
Yet that statistic was long ago debunked. In 2011, Nils-Axel Mörner, a sea level expert with decades of experience in the field related how a member of the IPCC admitted to him that satellite data had been fiddled to fit the narrative.
“In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’
“This is a scandal that should be called Sealevelgate. As with the Hockey Stick, there is little real-world data to support the upward tilt. It seems that the 2.3mm rise rate has been based on just one tide gauge in Hong Kong (whose record is contradicted by four other nearby tide gauges). Why does it show such a rise? Because like many of the 159 tide gauge stations used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it is sited on an unstable harbour construction or landing pier prone to uplift or subsidence. When you exclude these unreliable stations, the 68 remaining ones give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1mm a year.”