Pole position

Well you can knock me down with a feather. It appears that the polar ice caps might not be about to melt with global warming, and that they might in fact be about to grow, according to 'Cool It' by Bjorn Lomborg. And he should know about ice, judging by the Scandinavian-ness of his name.

He maintains that the polar caps never get warm, and will not be pushed into defrosting territory by the predicted temperature increases. Instead, the shrinking is caused by the drought there (the poles are, apparently, the world's biggest deserts). Global warming will increase the vapour content in the air, which will increase precipitation. More precipitation over the ice caps, where temperatures are below freezing point, will cause more ice, and therefore growth, not shrinkage, of the polar ice caps.

Interesting thought. Perhaps I didn't need to make 'high enough to survive the Biblical deluge' part of my buying criteria for our recent move and we could have bought that riverside apartment after all...