We’re warned that Antarctica’s adjoining Southern Ocean is caught in an irreversible descending spiral, where life is scarce and on the verge of collapse. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the choice is clear: Radically reduce fossil fuels over an aggressive timeline or be complicit in the planet’s destruction. This distortion and selective manipulation of data and its use of public shaming are the tools of inquisitions, not rational scientific inquiry.

Contrary to the incessant media barrage that predicts Antarctica’s demise, my personal experience during a three-week visit in November to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and the Antarctic Peninsula reveals a different and more optimistic story. The beaches and ocean are teeming with life as hundreds of thousands of penguins, seals, and pelagic birds compete for space on the crowded shorelines during this breeding season.

Visitors to the Antarctic region generally express a passion for wildlife and a religious-like devotion to the environment. Whatever the cost and sacrifice, something, anything must be done to avoid the catastrophe that they have been led to believe is inevitable. Spending trillions of dollars that disproportionately affect the world’s poor for no proven climatic benefit is justified as long as the intent is noble. It is not uncommon to hear the nihilistic claim that humans are inherently evil, exclusively responsible for defiling the planet, and deserve punishment.

Trusting one’s personal observations and basing judgments on the cyclical nature of climate, the historical events that provoked the decimation of marine animal life, and a few basic principles of physics would do much to allay apprehensions and develop more practical solutions to an overly political debate.   

Image: Falkland Island penguins by Ben Tubby. CC BY 2.0.

The abundance of birds, mammals, and fish is not possible without a robust food chain to support complex orders of life, and the foundation of the system begins with phytoplankton, a microalgae that depend on adequate sunlight, nutrients, and carbon dioxide. Without a plentiful source of phytoplankton, the Southern Ocean ecosystem would collapse, and yet today, it is thriving. Increased atmospheric CO2, now at 400 parts per million, has contributed to a remarkable greening of the planet in terms of increased agricultural output and expansion of plant species.

The primary threat to life in the Southern Ocean is overfishing of high protein food sources—krill and sardines. The penguin and bird populations indigenous to the Cape of Good Hope were devastated because, in the 1960s, the Namibian sardine fisheries begin to deplete them. Politicians were slow to intercede so, sixty years later, the region’s ecological vitality remains tenuous as the fisheries slowly regain vitality.

Although the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and the Antarctic mainland have not experienced this level of destruction, industrial krill harvesting threatens the abundance of zooplankton, a vital source of food for whales, fish, and birds.  Norwegian supertrawlers annually vacuum tons of krill to feed salmon that are artificially farmed in Norway.

Norwegians slaughtered whales and fur seals to the point of extinction in the 20th century. Now, the threat is more insidious, as this wealthy, sermonizing, environmentally conscious country threatens these species with starvation rather than the harpoon. Banning industrial krill harvesting in the Southern Ocean would immediately reduce the pressure on the food chain and protects wildlife at a fraction of the cost of the war on fossil fuels.

Antarctica, the fifth largest continent and the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest of all, is often portrayed as homogeneous. Profound variations are found throughout its 5.5 million square miles. Conditions causing glacial retreat that occur at low elevations north of the Antarctic Circle cannot be extrapolated to the continent’s vast interior regions.

The Transantarctic Mountains separate East from West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, which are distinct geographically and climatologically. Much of West Antarctica, which is only half the size of East Antarctica, lies below sea level or is composed of islands buried in snow and ice. West Antarctica’s glaciers are more vulnerable to effects from the sea, while much of Eastern Antarctica averages 10,000 feet above sea level and is home to an ice sheet 15,700 feet thick.

During winter, the Antarctic sea ice nearly doubles in size and then retreats the following austral summer. The extent varies constantly, and climate activists often ignore these natural fluctuations and use low ice years as evidence that the ecosystem is experiencing full collapse. Yet, for forty-four years, there has not been a downward trend in the average February summer sea ice area while, over the same period, the continent has experienced a slight increase in the average September winter maximum. Contrary to the narrative of unremitting warming, in 2021, Antarctica experienced its coldest six months on record and, last November, Concordia Station reported a temperature of < -60 в„ѓ, the lowest temperature during this time of the year since record-keeping began in 1978.

In June 2022, Professors Richard Lindzen and William Happer testified before Congress, noting that there is no climate emergency. They exposed the conflict of interest between the IPCC and the governments which fund it. The IPCC, which identifies fossil fuels as the primary cause of alarming climate change, is the world’s most frequently quoted resource on the subject, but its computer models cannot accurately or reliably predict temperatures.

The scientists noted that for the past 650 million years, there has been no correlation between atmospheric CO2 and ambient temperature. Starvation and malnutrition affecting millions of the world’s poor have been avoided due to enhanced plant growth and lower water consumption requirements resulting from higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Natural systems, as opposed to computer models that employ contrived, positive feedback algorithms, are based on negative feedback mechanisms that minimize extremes and are environmentally protective. The physics governing the electromagnetic spectrum limits greenhouse-generated temperature increases to progressively smaller increments as atmospheric CO2 concentration rises.

Due to this constraint, the influence of rising atmospheric CO2 on temperature diminishes exponentially. Doubling atmospheric CO2 to 800 ppm would increase temperature by less than 1 в„ѓ—about one-fourth of the IPCC model’s estimate.

The staff of our Antarctic expedition crew represented an international group primarily composed of young adults who are devoted to the polar regions. In the series of daily lectures presented during the expedition, they provided a fair-minded analysis, balancing climate change concerns with documented references that emphasized the cyclical nature of climate and its effects. They avoided the simplistic David Attenborough storylines portrayed in The Frozen Planet documentary, which are scripted to provoke emotional responses. They offered hope and called upon us to be vigilant, engaged, and ever-mindful that progress requires persistence and clear thinking.