Wilkins Ice Runway

Oct. 24, 2012

BBC, in concert with a number of media outlets announced today that global warming was melting the Wilkins ice runway in Antarctica.  This announcement lends itself to examination of the nature of media behavior regarding global warming--what is really happening and where?  First of all one might wonder, what season is it in Antarctica as I write this response?  Our October is equivalent to the South Pole's April.  Summer has not yet arrived, yet runway meltdown is announced.  And just a little digging brings up the source story, from January of this year in the Tasmanian "Mercury."  It turns out that last summer, nine months ago, the ice runway had its second season of extra warm weather, which prevented its use in January.

Australia spent some 40 million dollars on this asset, and so far only a few dozen flights have been made from Tasmania, thus costing about a million dollars per flight so far.  The fact that the runway is only four years old leaves us to wonder, how much has the planet warmed in the last four years, and didn't these planners know about global warming four years ago?  And are they absurdly blaming on global warming what is really the result of their own incompetence?  Or have they just had a couple of years of bad luck with the weather?  After all, we've had over a decade with no global warming to speak of.

So no, global warming is not responsible for the limited  usefulness of a nearly new ice runway, and no, this is not spontaneously generated news of a recent event.  Rather it  is the calculated propaganda of a consortium of radical environmentalists--who understand that there's a sucker born every second--and gullible or complicit journalists.  Take an old story, dress it up in the garb of long term climate change, and the media will eat it up.  And most of the people will believe it.  Shame on the fools!  --AGF