He did hold a picture of Antartica which clearly showed the shrinking ice shelf...
No he didn't. He held up a picture of the
Arctic and falsely claimed it was the the
Antarctic. If the Science Guy needs a refresher, basically Antarctica is at the South Pole while the Arctic is the North Pole. But hey, he was only off by about 12,400 miles! :-)
And while Arctic Sea Ice is approximately 5.25%
below normal, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is 27.4%
above normal as of the beginning of February, 2014.
Rocinante, you too should become more familiar with the subject before drawing conclusion on numbers you don't understand.
For starters that extra sea Ice extent is winter ice, that comes and goes with every season
Here check out this video:
Antarctic Sea Ice Growth Time Lapse from AMSRE 2002-2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLCfF7BLii4
There are several reasons for this recent enhanced ice growth and all of them are in line with global warming scenarios.
If you want to learn about it, here's a great introduction:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
What irritating (actually dishonest) is when "science skeptics" wave that meme around pretending that's the end of the story, they feel fine ignoring details such as
Warm Ocean Causing Most Antarctic Ice Shelf Mass Loss
June 13, 2013
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130613.html#.UwYedv1shg1
"The traditional view on Antarctic mass loss is it is almost entirely controlled by iceberg calving," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. Rignot is lead author of the study to be published in the June 14 issue of the journal Science. "Our study shows melting from below by the ocean waters is larger, and this should change our perspective on the evolution of the ice sheet in a warming climate."
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Rates of basal melt of Antarctic ice shelves (melting of the shelves from underneath) overlaid on a 2009 mosaic of Antarctica created from data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft. Red shades denote melt rates of less than 5 meters (16.4 feet) per year (freezing conditions), while blue shades represent melt rates of greater than 5 meters (16.4 feet) per year (melting conditions).
The perimeters of the ice shelves in 2007-2008, excluding ice rises and ice islands, are shown by thin black lines. Each circular graph is proportional in area to the total ice mass loss measured from each ice shelf, in gigatons per year, with the proportion of ice lost due to the calving of icebergs denoted by hatched lines and the proportion due to basal melting denoted in black.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/Columbia University
Ice Sheet Loss at Both Poles Increasing, Study Finds
November 29, 2012
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
We’re Still Losing Ice at the Poles
By Phil Plait
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/12/14/global_warming_ice_loss_continues.html