We were intrigued by a headline “Earth’s Most Dangerous Glacier Is Gaining Ice – And Scientists Can’t Explain Why”. And not only for the question how a piece of ice gets dubbed “Earth’s Most Dangerous Glacier”. We vaguely thought that title was claimed by the Thwaites “Doomsday” glacier whose long-predicted swoon into the Antarctic ocean will trigger fatal sea-level rises. We certainly hadn’t heard rumours that the Siachen glacier, Lolofond glacier, Teram Shehr glacier or all three held some kind of record for people tumbling into crevasses and not getting out again. But actually it seems to be that the Siachen is “Earth’s highest battleground”, between India and Pakistan, and has seen around 2,000 soldiers die, mostly from exposure to cold not munitions. But of course the big thing is the last: “And Scientists Can’t Explain Why”. Despite which journalists can, rushing to assert that “These glaciers, located in one of Earth’s most remote and contested regions, are gaining ice volume despite the warming temperatures that are threatening glaciers worldwide.” So in the wacky world of climate science, things nobody can explain are settled, and glaciers gaining ice mass doesn’t mean they’re not vanishing.

A classic headline, from the Daily Mail, was “Discovery at Earth's 'most dangerous glacier' sparks joy among climate skeptics”. Yeah. That’s the key thing, right? Well, evidently, and not in a good way:

“Scientists have made a startling discovery that may debunk global warming at Earth's ‘most dangerous glacier,’ sending climate change deniers into celebration.”

Boo deniers!

To its credit, this Daily Galaxy story does dig up various possible explanations for the “Karakoram anomaly”. To our irritation it does not dig up the name of the “one massive ice mass” it’s actually about. And don’t say “massive mass”. Buy a thesaurus. But focus on this passage:

“This unexpected trend is often referred to as the Karakoram anomaly, and although it has been observed for decades, scientists are still unsure of its cause. Some believe local weather patterns play a role, while others speculate that the dust and dirt embedded in the glaciers’ moraines might help to insulate the ice from rising temperatures. Despite these theories, no single explanation has been universally accepted.”

So it’s been going on for decades, thumbing its nose at CO2. Moreover, during those decades we’ve been bombarded with “settled science” claims based on computer models that, supposedly, capture the vast complex poorly-documented processes of the biosphere and its history so well that they can tell us to a tenth of a degree how warm it will be in 2100. But they cannot explain one particular well-known phenomenon that may not exactly be easy to go and study (look out for the bullets) but is also not locked away on the moons of Saturn. So what else don’t they know?

To hear journalists tell it, not much. Later this article says “Unlike most glaciers across the globe, which are retreating due to climate change, the glaciers of the Karakoram range are exhibiting unusual growth.” And as we’ve observed elsewhere, this statement is scientific nonsense.

For starters, “climate change” is a set of data indicating how long-term weather conditions are different now than they were then, if indeed they are. So it’s not a causal force that can do anything including retreat a glacier, it’s a description of effects something else caused. But our big objection here is that actually a lot of glaciers are growing even if journalists say experts say scientists say otherwise or something.

In fact the Daily Mail item pointed out that:

“In May, researchers in Shanghai discovered that Antarctica started to reverse its decades-long trend of catastrophic melting and has seen record amounts of ice forming since 2021.”

Catastrophic? On what grounds? But to their writer the lesson here isn’t that glaciers are growing so relax, it’s just weather. Instead:

“The latest development from Karakoram has set off climate deniers on social media, who have continued to claim that the alarmism over global warming has been nothing more than a hoax.”

Boo deniers! Boo stupid glaciers! Yay catastrophe!

The Daily Mail piece staggers on like someone with snow blindness dodging crevasses:

“To the climate deniers' point, scientists studying the Karakoram anomaly since the 1990s still haven't been able to pin down a clear reason why more ice has been forming and the glaciers are merging. One possible explanation could be that favorable weather patterns in the region have kept the ice from melting. That includes seeing cooler summers and more snow in the winter. A 2022 study in the Journal of Climate found that wintertime precipitation intensity (snow) in the Karakoram range rose by roughly 10 percent between 1980 and 2019. However, a 2023 study in Earth System Science Data claimed that the phenomenon likely wouldn't last due to rising global temperatures countering this short stretch of cold weather. ‘This may indicate a weakening of the abnormal behavior of glaciers in the Karakoram owing to the continuous warming,’ the researchers said. Despite the latest climate findings, the region has continued to show signs of unusual ice growth that have left geologists and climatologists stumped.”

Exactly. The real story is that scientists don’t understand even this basic local piece of climate science let alone the whole biosphere over centuries. It’s not what someone said on X or Meta, or a bunch of “could be” and “likely” and “might” from people baffled by “is”.

Certainly glaciers have shrunk since the depths of the Little Ice Age 300 years ago. But this process is, obviously, natural, since it began long before James Watt’s new improved steam engine let alone the internal combustion engine, to say nothing of humans adding measurably significant amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. (If we even are, another thing now in doubt despite the settled science.) If glaciers that were in pell-mell retreat in the days of Tsar Aleksandr I are now not in pell-mell retreat, it does not prove what these writers think it proves.

Nor, indeed, does the fact that science can’t explain basic climate events prove, as they think, that it can.