Dos degelos

A notícia do degelo na Gronelândia (Greenland... green... land) tem feito manchetes não pela alegada observação inédita - este degelo superficial ocorre em média a cada 150 anos -, mas pela falta de rigor da própria NASA na headline sensacionalista:

"The news headline, in particular, is an example of media hype. There was no “massive melt“. The term “massive” implies that the melt involved large masses of the Greenland icecap. They could have written “Sudden Extensive, Short-Term Surface Melting On the Greenland Icecap“, but instead chose to overstate what is a short-term weather event.

(...)

There has been widespread media reporting of this melting (e.g. Fox News, MSNBC), but the real news story is the overstatement of this weather event by the media (and some scientists at NASA)."

- Roger Pielke, Sr.

Foto: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory