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Comment by T-A | Hacker News Reader

Going through the three letters in AGW:

Anthropogenic: "there's more snow falling in Antarctica than ice melting" says nothing about humans being responsible one way or the other.

Global: more snow falling in Antarctica says nothing about overall global conditions, e.g. average surface temperature. Changes in circulation patterns can cool one spot and warm another.

Warming: more snow falling in Antarctica does not, by itself, even say anything about temperatures in Antarctica. It's not like raising the average there (-49C) by a few degrees would turn snow into rain. It could however increase the likelihood of precipitation.

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When ice sheets were recently found to be melting and breaking off faster than before, most of the media was relating it to global climate change. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. If you don't consider this as evidence against AGW then you also can't consider other isolated local phenomenon as evidence for it. I'm sure scientists know this, but the media and general pundits don't.

You can have your cake and eat it, when you have one cake at the edge of the antarctic continent (where ice meets liquid seawater) and another cake in the middle of the continent (where you could increase temperature by 30C and not melt anything at all).

I fail to see how "part of Antarctica sees increased snowfall due to raising temperature" is an evidence against AGW. At best, its an evidence against cartoon-version strawman AGW where every corner of the world warms up by an equal amount and every ice in the world starts to slowly melt away at the same pace.

That's why they call it "climate change" now, instead of "global warming". This way if it gets warmer - climate change. If it gets cooler - climate change. Bad weather? Climate change. Nice weather? Also climate change.

>It could however increase the likelihood of precipitation.

Right - because warming increases mass of water vapor that air can hold. Which there is plenty of in the ocean, so then all the slightly warmer air melting the exterior ice allows the air to pick up moisture. Then as the air moves over the interior, temperatures drop and snow falls leading to the accumulation of snow mass that has been observed.

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