Michael Steele Dismisses Global Warming

Michael Steele joins the list of global warming deniers.

We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long.

The RNC chairman defeats his own argument by pointing out Iceland is warming.

There is no doubt about it: Iceland and much of the rest of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions are warming up.

Average winter surface temperatures in the Arctic have increased by two degrees centigrade during the past century, melting ice caps, glaciers, sea ice and permafrost.

During the past two years, researchers have concluded that:

-- Arctic sea ice shrank by 14,400 square miles per year from 1978 to 1998, a 6 percent reduction overall.

-- Sea ice thinned by about 40 percent in recent decades, from an average of 10.2 feet in the period from 1958 to 1976 to about 5.9 feet from 1993 to 1997. Current thinning is estimated at about 4 inches a year.

Greenland is another horrible example for Steele to use. The ice caps around the island havemelted to reveal smaller islands. Common sense dictates temperate increases melt ice.

In August, Mr. Steger discovered his own new island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, high in the polar basin. Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small island alone in the open ocean.

“We saw it ourselves up there, just how fast the ice is going,” he said.

I like to hear Steele explain away the ice melting around Greenlands coast. I need a good laugh. I even let Steele use "finger quotation marks."