The most recent global warming misinformation being spread around the industry-friendly blogosphere is the claim that the massive Arctic sea ice loss over the last 30 years is due to abnormal wind patterns and not global warming.  

Case in point, Roy Cordato, “Resident scholar” at the John Locke Foundation, asks the question: “What’s really going on with Arctic and Antarctic sea ice?”

The answer for Cordato and the JLF can apparently be found at the Exxon-sweet Heartland Institute, who claims that the contracting of Arctic sea ice is due to localized wind patterns and “is unrelated to global warming.”

Heartland and JLF even quote a NASA press release as evidence:

“Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic.”

Impressive. Too bad it’s only half the story.

Notice that neither the JLF article or the Heartland article actually link to the NASA press release or the actual study. If they did, their readers might have gotten the full picture and the reality of what NASA scientists found.

You can read the full press release here. And even more importantly, you can read the actual NASA study that was published in the Geophysical Research Letters here.

Without a doubt, neither JLF or the Heartland read the actual research paper and I know that because the third sentence in states:

“Dynamic [wind] and thermodynamic [heat] effects appear to be combining to expedite the loss of perennial sea ice.”

In other words, wind is playing a role in that it is actually accelerating Arctic ice loss due to rising temperatures.

That’s some solid research by the John Lock Foundation’s Roy Cordato, who concludes his article by stating:

Of course organizations like Heartland that point out these inconvenient truths will draw accusations of “denier” and claims that they are being bought off by big oil, but the one response you won’t find is an article demonstrating that the Heartland article is wrong. Hmmm, I wonder why?”

Well there’s your answer Cordato, and if you’re truly concerned about “sound science” as you claim, you’re more than welcome to re-print this explanation on your site.