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Again and again photos are being taken out of context and wild climate alarm stories are being fabricated from them. And once the pictures have made it around the world, those involved end up having to backpedal a few later. In June 2019 it happened again. This time it was a dog sled photo from Greenland. Now German public television

Hat-tip Die kalte Sonne.

“Underscores how thick the ice is”

Now NTV German public television reported on 25th June 2019 that a Danish researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute has since commented on the meltwater photo.

A picture with sled dogs in Greenland arouses emotions worldwide – because it supposedly illustrates climate change. And it does. But only symbolically, as the author of the picture emphasizes. The melt depicted is quite normal. The picture shows several sled dogs ankle-deep by meltwater off the city of Qaanaaq in northwestern Greenland. A Twitter post with the picture goes viral, has been shared more than 7500 times to date. […] In the meantime, however, Olsen from the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen has deflated the supposedly explosive message of his photo. He agrees that the picture has “more of a symbolic than a scientific value”, twittered the researcher. […] According to him, the photo in fact underscores how thick the ice is. ‘Because the ice is so thick, there are no holes through which the water can run out of the melted snow,’ said Mathiassen, adding that the water pictured, through which the sled dogs at Qaanaaq are scrambling, is not ice melt water, but apparently from melted snow.”

Water on ice in Greenland “entirely normal” in June

Also sharply criticizing the photo trickery was Björn Lomborg, a Danish statistics professor. A Twitter he posted:

Oops

Remember that viral sled-on-water picture showing "our ongoing climate catastrophe" (CNN)?

Turns out it is entirely normal, happened in the 1800s, will probably happen *less* with higher temps

But Al Gore wants permission to use it in his slideshowhttps://t.co/P980FR5wgQ pic.twitter.com/gv4jW49ZlC — Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) June 26, 2019

Greenland ice thickening?

Also recent reports now show that Greenland glacier melt has slowed down markedly. For example, since 2013 the ice at the terminus of the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier “has stopped decreasing in height and started to thicken”. Read here.

Moreover we reported here yesterday how Arctic sea ice volume has remained steady over the past 15 years.