I posted the following (verbatim) to Seth Borenstein's story, "Experts: Global warming means more Antarctic ice". Comments are moderated, and maybe this was a little strong. So this morning I reposted a toned-down version; we'll see if they accept that.
"It is so FREAKING funny that climate change skeptics, motivated to attack this article by ominipotents of obfuscation like Marc Morano and Anthony Watts, can't understand that there are feedbacks in a complex climate system that will result in trends that are at odds with what "common sense" tells them MUST be true. This is classic biased, self-confirmation thinking, as if your knowledge must be better than the experts and the models built to understand the details of these processes. Because if you were wrong, then your
whole belief system would collapse.
SORRY! There are several factors at work in the unusual and isolated Antarctic climate system that are causing this slight increase in sea ice coverage. Borenstein's article covers several of them, but misses the effect of increased oceanic stratification (subject of Zhang, J. 2007: Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions. J. Clim., 20, 2515–2529).
The Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves (NOT the same as sea ice) are shrinking and collapsing due to exposure to warmer Southern Ocean waters.
This article sums up all the processes that are affecting the Antarctic sea ice extent:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/
So yes, global warming can certainly cause increased sea ice extent in the Antarctic. Global warming can cause more ice, and more snow, in some locations (as may happen in North America this winter due to LESS Arctic sea ice). Just because global warming doesn't conform to your ideas about how it's supposed to work and how it's supposed to look doesn't mean that it isn't happening. But I know skeptics have an innate need for it not to be happening, or else their higher cognitive functions would get all snafued."
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