A Place to Stand

I heard this mentioned on Radio Scotland yesterday morning (God knows how it slipped by) & looked for more on either the broadcast media or a Google news search.

the discovery of microscopic bits of organic matter retrieved from ice 1.2 miles beneath the surface indicates that the ice fields of southern Greenland may be more resilient to rising global temperatures than has been forecast. The DNA could have been preserved only if the ice layers remained largely intact.

A scenario often raised by global warming specialists is that Greenland's ice trove will turn liquid in the rising temperatures of coming decades, with hundreds of trillions of gallons of water spilling into the Atlantic. This could cause ocean levels worldwide to rise anywhere from 3 to 20 feet, according to computer projections -- bad news for seaport cities like Boston.

But the discovery of organic matter in ice dating from half-a-million years ago offers evidence that the Greenland ice shield remained frozen even during the earth's last "interglacial period" -- some 120,000 years ago -- when average temperatures were 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are now. That's slightly higher than the average temperatures foreseen by most scientists for the end of this century, although some environmentalists warn it might get even hotter.

If the ice sheets aren't going to melt even at a temperature 5 degrees centigrade above current levels then the most serious part of the warming threat is completely broken.

That this can be buried at the bottom of a few papers & totally excluded from most is disgraceful but unsurprising.

Google News To be fair it is mentioned in the Guardian & Independent. To continue being fair this finding is buried even more effectively by them than by the Boston Globe.