Now You See It, Now You....Don't---North Pole 'Lake' Now Gone, Vanished

CLIMATE NEWS: SHORTEST, COLDEST ARCTIC SUMMER ON RECORD
SATURDAY: DID WH LEAN ON CHATTANOOGA NEWSPAPER TO HAVE THEM FIRE AN IMPERTINENT EDITOR?

BACK TO ICE

OH DEAR, IT WAS JUST ENOUGH TO GET THE ECO-NAZIS---those who relentlessly declare man-made climate change---a little front-page coverage. Then suddenly, as if in a dream, the olympic swimming pool sized lake all went poof and all went away! This from Business Insider today:

GoneLike a politician whose peccadillos lead to "family time," the North Pole lake has had its fill of Internet notoriety. The stunning blue meltwater lake that formed on the Arctic ice disappeared on Monday (July 29), draining through a crack in the underlying ice floe. Now, instead of 2 feet (0.6 meters) of freshwater slopping against a bright-yellow buoy, a remote webcam shows only ice and clouds.

Though the North Pole lake's 15 minutes of fame focused worldwide attention on global warming's effects on Arctic sea ice, the melting is actually part of an annual summer thaw, according to researchers who run the North Pole Environmental Observatory. "The formation of these ponds and their disappearance is part of a natural cycle," said Axel Schweiger, head of the Applied Physics Laboratory's Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, which helps run the observatory. After the "North Pole lake" vanished into a crack.

The lake, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, started forming in mid-July, LiveScience first reported on July 23. The size and timing of the lake are typical for this time of year and location, the researchers said. However, scientists at the observatory and elsewhere are studying the Arctic's meltwater ponds to understand how global warming is changing their total extent. Please note, the scientists studying this assume that global warming is a foregone conclusion.