Yesterday, NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard marveled that Time magazine printed a “scare piece about the melting Arctic seas” “on the SAME DAY” that Britain's Daily Mail reported that scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) found that Arctic sea ice cover “dramatically increased last month.” Sheppard then commented on how the American media's coverage of global warming is “disgraceful” because it only reports what's convenient to the global warming agenda. Here's what Sheppard clipped from the Daily Mail article about the increased ice levels:

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased last month, reaching levels not seen at this time of year for nearly a decade.

Returning ice - after years of declining cover - has astonished climate scientists who blamed unusually cold weather over the Bering Sea.

Researchers said they recorded the most ice in March since 2001 - and that the cover is approaching long-term average levels for the first time in ten years.

Guess what Sheppard didn't tell you? The VERY NEXT SENTENCE of the Daily Mail article says the “scientists who released the data stressed that last month's rise was part of yearly variations in ice cover and could not be taken as a sign that global warming is coming to an end.” The article also quotes NSIDC scientist Mark Serreze as saying, “What this doesn't show is any indication that global warming is over. If you look at the Arctic as a whole we might get to average amounts of sea ice for the time of year. But the ice is thin and quite vulnerable and it can melt very quickly.”

Take a look at the NSIDC website. It says the same thing: “Yes, the data show that Arctic sea ice really is in a state of ongoing decline.” Or better yet, check out this April 1 The Canadian Press article, which quotes Serreze as saying the March ice data could be skewed because, “For the past several weeks, we've been under a rather unusual weather pattern, a cold pattern, that's given us this late spurt in ice growth in the Bering Sea. If you look at the rest of the Arctic Ocean proper, it is very warm.”

See, this is how it works. Global warming deniers who have a media platform will cherry-pick any data, any statement, or any factoid out of a report or news article and claim it's evidence that the Earth is not warming. They conveniently leave out what scientists say about what it means or doesn't mean for the big picture or they oversimplify an incredibly complex issue. They're either doing this on purpose to deliberately misinform, or they do not understand the issue at hand.

UPDATE: The Fox Nation proved my point. It's linking to the Daily Mail article with the headline, “Increase in Arctic Ice Confounds Doomsayers.”

That's the same as the Daily Mail's headline, minus a few important words: “Increase in Arctic ice confounds doomsayers - but does not spell the end of global warming, scientists warn.” [emphasis added]