One side of the story

The BBC is trumpeting a UN report on the loss of ice from glaciers.

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, new data says.

Which begs the question of what has happened to the others. Has the rate more than halved? Or are they in fact growing. Helpfully, Biased BBC points out that Arctic Sea ice is back to normal and the world has endured its coldest winter for decades, so it's probably fair to say that global catastrophe is not yet upon us.

Ah, but the UN are talking about glaciers, not icecaps, I hear you say. Well, take a look at this report from the Washington Post back in 1922 (H/T Anthony Watts).

 

Here's the text in more legible form:

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

 Perspective is a wonderful thing.