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Media Goofed on Antarctic Data Global Warming Interpretation Irks Scientists
Monday, February 4, 2002
By Keay Davidson
Chronicle Science Writer

Contrary to some news reports, "the ice-sheet growth that we have documented in our study area has absolutely nothing to do with any recent climate trends," Slawek Tulaczyk, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, declared, emphasizing those words in an e-mail to The Chronicle.

To most people, Antarctica is just a big, dumb block of ice swarming with penguins.

But to scientists, Antarctica is one of the emerging puzzles of global warming research.

Unfortunately, global warming is such a politically charged, complex issue that scientists have had trouble conveying the complexities through the news media. They complain that coverage of two recent studies seriously misrepresented the meaning and significance of their research.

One study showed that while other continents are warming, major parts of Antarctica are cooling. The other demonstrated that the glacial "ice streams" that feed the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica appear to be growing, not shrinking.

To the scientists involved, the studies suggest that the effects of global warming on Antarctica may prove harder to forecast than anticipated. But to their dismay, some newspaper editorial writers interpreted the reports as evidence that the global warming theory itself is in trouble -- even though that was the furthest thing from the scientists' minds.

The screwup offers a case study in "the difficulties associated with communicating information about climate change to the public," said Benjamin Preston, an environmental biologist with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Va., who wasn't involved with the studies.

One of the scientists involved in the two studies, Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the latest press misinterpretations leave him "increasingly frustrated" by sometimes-careless media coverage of the global warming issue.

Tulaczyk and Ian Joughin of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena reported in the Jan. 18 issue of Science that the movement of the glacial Ross ice streams appears to be slowing, allowing the ice to thicken.
(More: San Francisco Chronicle News Source)
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Dan