When Antarctica Grows Ice and Science Gets Cold Feet David Manney
The Ice That Wasn’t Supposed to Be
Imagine your mechanic swearing your engine would seize up in July, only to call you a year later, embarrassed, to say your truck is somehow running better than ever.
That’s the climate science community this month after NASA revealed a stunning twist: Antarctica has gained ice, yes, gained between 2021 and 2023, despite what every climate model said would happen.
This wasn’t a whisper.
It was a satellite-verified admission.
NASA reported that Antarctica experienced a net gain in ice mass because of unexpected and sustained snowfall, even as global temperatures continued to rise.
The scientists were stunned. Their models didn’t predict it.
They couldn’t explain it right away.
Their conclusion? A short-term fluke that doesn’t mean much.
Settled Science or Sinking Ship?
For years, we’ve been told the models are settled science. That every click of the thermostat was heading us toward glacial collapse.
Politicians invoked these predictions to regulate industries, tax carbon, and lecture us on our thermostats and SUVs.
But now, with ice forming where melt was prophesied, it’s suddenly a “statistical hiccup.”
This is where the analogy ends and the reckoning begins.
Dr. Roy Spencer and the Model Mirage
Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist and former NASA scientist, has made a career out of questioning the overconfidence in climate modeling. He has long argued that climate models consistently run hot, meaning they predict significantly more warming than we actually observe.
As he put it, “The models are not just off, they’re directionally off.” Like trusting a GPS that says you’re already at the grocery store while you’re still in your driveway.
This Antarctic development is precisely what Spencer and other skeptical climatologists have warned about: nature doesn’t obey models. It informs them. And when the models are wrong, it’s the models that must be corrected, not the reality outside your window.
From Doubt to Denial: The Language of Fear
Let’s also address the elephant in the igloo: for years, those who voiced such skepticism were branded “deniers.”
Not dissenters.
Not critics.
Deniers.
As if disagreement with climate dogma was akin to Holocaust denial. This kind of absolutist language doesn’t belong in science. It belongs in cults.
A few days ago, I wrote about society’s addiction to absolutes. Our refusal to consider gray areas. Climate science is no exception.
Related: Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes: How the Gray Became Conservative Ground
Too many scientists, bureaucrats, and headline-chasers have married themselves to a single narrative: that human activity is singularly responsible for Earth’s doom.
When data veers off course, they treat it like a typo, not a clue.
Short-Term Ice, Long-Term Arrogance
To be clear, no serious person denies that the climate changes. It always has. It always will. The debate isn’t over whether the climate moves, but how much of that movement is caused by man and whether the costs of “fighting” it outweigh the benefits.
The Antarctic ice surprise is more than a seasonal oddity. It’s a warning, not from the atmosphere, but from the arrogance of modeling an entire planet with the certainty of a crystal ball.
NASA’s own words admitted “surprise” at the ice gain, and as of 2025, levels have largely returned to where they were in 2020.
That still doesn’t answer the question: Why didn’t the models predict the gain?
And if they didn’t see this coming, what else have they missed?
A Climate of Accountability
We trust engineers to build bridges that don’t collapse. Pilots to fly planes that don’t stall. But we don’t let either operate on guesswork. If a plane’s computer failed to account for a sudden jet stream shift that reversed course, would we call that a harmless anomaly or a flaw to fix?
It’s long past time we hold climate science to the same standard. No more hedging with phrases like “most likely” or “the science is clear.”
No more shaming people who question thirty-year predictions that have failed to predict the next three.
No more calling dissent “dangerous.”
What’s dangerous is pretending that our models are oracles and that real-world data is an inconvenience.
The Snowball in the Room
Science thrives in uncertainty. That’s how we make discoveries. That’s how we adapt. And that’s how we protect future generations, not with panic, but with precision.
So, the next time someone tells you the world is melting, and the models say so, remind them of the summer when Antarctica made snowballs instead of puddles, and all the experts were caught out in the cold.
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