Wrong:
Al Gore Predicted Arctic Summer Ice Could Disappear In 2013, by Barbara Hollingsworth, September 13, 2013 - 12:05 PM
(CNSNews.com) – A 2007 prediction
that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by 2013” that was cited by
former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has
proven to be off… by 920,000 square miles.In his Dec. 10, 2007 “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.
Gore said that on Sept. 21, 2007, "scientists
reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar icecap is, in their
words, 'falling off a cliff.' One study estimated that it could be completely
gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study to be presented by
U.S. Navy researchers later this week warns that it could happen in as little
as seven years, seven years from now."
Maslowski told members of the American Geophysical Union
in 2007 that the Arctic’s summer ice could completely disappear within the
decade. “If anything,” he said, “our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice
in summer… is already too conservative.”
The former vice president also warned that rising
temperatures were “a planetary emergency and a threat to the survival of our
civilization.”
However, instead of completely melting away, the polar
icecap is at now at its highest level
for this time of year since 2006.
Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August
2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet, more
than half the size of Europe, despite “realistic” predictions by climate
scientists six years ago that the North Pole would be completely melted by now.
Instead of shrinking, the NASA photographs clearly show
that the Arctic ice sheet is much larger than it was at the same time last
year. The thick layer of summer ice, which currently stretches from Canada to
Russia, is preventing ships from using the North-West Passage.
A Dec. 12, 2007 BBC article quoted Professor Maslowski and his team of
climate researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
explaining how they used “a high-resolution regional [computer] model for the
Arctic Ocean and sea ice forced with realistic atmospheric data" to make
their predictions. "This way, we get much more realistic forcing, from
above by the atmosphere and from the bottom by the ocean,” he said.
NASA spokesman Steve Cole told CNSNews.com that the space
agency is in charge of monitoring polar ice "as part of our Earth sciences"
mandate. "We have a number of different satellites orbiting the Earth and
observing the ice sheets and a lot of other things around the clock, and we are
funded to collect that data."
Source: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/wrong-al-gore-predicted-arctic-summer-ice-could-disappear-2013
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