The Arctic Ocean is warming!

The Arctic Ocean is warming!  My brother Scott emailed me this:

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the Gulf Stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelt which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

Then his email casually mentions that this is a report published in the Washington Post, on November 2, 1922!

A quick look on Snopes (where would we all be without that wonderful site?!) told me it was real – but also that the story isn't quite as simple as it sounds.  No matter, it's still a fun story and a good example of the fallibility of prognostication...