by James Bowles

Created on: June 28, 2009

In 1991 NASA conducted a symposium where they presented the latest climate and weather research findings. The attendees read like who's who in academic research, as it included, among others, representatives from the National Science Foundation, MIT, and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The minutes were written up in 1993 under the title, "Modeling the Earth System in the Mission to Planet Earth Era (see note 1,and Appendix I for a list of attendees)

The program objective was to make data available for computer modeling. One topic being the global atmospheric circulatory system that NASA described as one where winds carry warm moist equatorial air to the poles; where it condenses as snow and sleet, and compacts to ice (NASA p 9). This is not new discovery, as the same information can be found in most books on climate. One such book (published by the U.S. Government), "Aviation Weather, for pilots and flight operations personnel," describes the same process: warm moist air rises from the tropics and deposits snow at the poles.

The book includes text and detailed illustrations (note 2).

So it was with some dismay when an article appeared in U.S. News and World Report (among other sources) wherein scientists involved in an expedition to Antarctica (some from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) made it clear they didn't know where the Antarctic glaciers came from (note 3):

(quote) "it is unclear how Antarctica came to be ice-covered in the first place."

The same article, contained other statements of similar content:

(quote) "We think also that there's a strong possibility that the mountains are the birthplace of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The expedition was financed in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and included scientists from Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University, Washington University, University of Kansas, the U.S. Geological Survey, and others from Australia, China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom.

Given the well known (and oft published) origin of polar ice, shouldn't someone ask, "How could that many scientists not know where polar ice originates?"

The article, "Huge Mountain Range Should Not Be There" has some other points of interest, as it makes the statement, (quote) "One of the mysteries of the mountain range" (named after Gamburtsev Province) "is that current evidence suggests that it "shouldn't be there" at all."

The article is not clear

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