Kudos to Canadian Press for striving for balance in a global warming article!

The Canadian Press: Scientists link human activity to warming in polar regions for first time

But some in the scientific community disagree, adding to an already splintered array of opinion on the causes of climate change and whether the Antarctic is actually warming.

John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, has done studies on climate models and says they are extremely limited tools in trying to mimic what happens in nature.

He said they are unable to reproduce all of the naturally occurring influences and, as a result, give a false picture of what might be causing changes in the environment. Clouds, for example, can dampen warming in the real world, but he said models have been shown to amplify warming.

"They overstate the confidence of what they have in that result because we have too many examples of models that fail," Christy said from Huntsville.

"We have shown that climate models just don't have the variability that nature provides to us."

Christy too disputed whether the bulk of continental Antarctica is warming, saying that it is, in fact, cooling. The report looks largely at the Antarctic peninsula - which makes up two per cent of the continent - and the eastern and western coastal regions, where they have found warming.

The report focuses on temperature changes going back to 1900 and up to the present, but doesn't include earlier periods when areas in the Arctic were actually warmer than they are today and were not affected by man-made greenhouse gases, said Christy.

"Just 1,000 years ago the Arctic was much warmer than it is today so it's interesting that they would use the term conclusively," he said.

"Natural variability can account for warming since the Arctic has been warmer before."

(Via Marc Morano)