Ah ya gotta love the ABC of Australia, they’ll find a way to keep the meme alive no matter what, as reported in WUWT two days ago, they found this guy to give a “the warming is wot dun it” quote with their story about the record level of Antarctic sea ice:
CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.
“The extent of sea ice is driven by the winds around Antarctica, and we believe that they’re increasing in strength and part of that is around the depletion of ozone,” he said.
Warming doesn’t seem to be a problem when you look at the satellite data for the Antarctic continent, in fact, there is a slight cooling:
Source: Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) – Microwave Sounding Units (MSU)
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_southern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
(UAH data added to original story) Source: University of Alabama, Huntsville
There is some warming along the Antarctic peninsula, but that seems to be related to wind and ocean patterns there, along with possible waste heat from the little warm pockets of humanity where the temperatures are measured. The Antarctic peninsula has the highest concentration of people on the continent, mainly because conditions are much less harsh there.
That doesn’t stop some people from trying to claim (Steig et al. 2009, using Mannian math) that the entire continent is warming though. Fortunately, there are climate skeptics that have done published science to decisively refute such claims: