From: Jay_Thomas@putnaminv.com
Date: Mon Aug 21 2000 - 11:32:34 PDT
Not that any of this will temper Gore's rhetoric from the left...
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/08/21/timnwsnws01008.html
Experts are poles apart over ice cap
BY NICK NUTTALL
SCIENTISTS were last night embroiled in an argument
over the extent to which ice is disappearing from the
Arctic as a result of global warming.
An American researcher claimed that the ice cap at the
North Pole had completely melted for the first time in 50
million years and that it had been replaced by a mile-wide
area of ocean. But a leading British Arctic scientist said
that the emergence of ice-free areas was nothing new and
that it had been happening for thousands of years.
Dr Peter Wadhams, director of the Scott Polar Institute in
Cambridge, said yesterday: "Claims that the North Pole is
now ice-free for the first time in 50 million years is
complete rubbish, absolute nonsense . . . What is
happening is of concern but it is gradual, not sudden or
stupendous."
He agreed that the extent of open water in the summer
months was on the rise, as was the thinning of the Arctic
ice.
The claim that the Pole is ice free for the first time came
from Dr James McCarthy of the American Museum of
Natural History and the director of the Museum of
Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. On a trip to
the Arctic, he witnessed the mile-wide ice-free cap and
put out a press release which was picked up by the New
York Times.
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