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NPR Airs Story On Melting Glaciers Without Explaining Why They Are Melting

NPR aired a story Wednesday about a “plant in the Canadian Arctic that started growing again after being buried under a glacier for 400 years.”

NPR explains why the research team led by Catherine La Farge found this ancient bryophite at all:

She and her colleagues had been looking at what the Teardrop Glacier was leaving behind as it receded. And it recent years it’s been receding rather rapidly.

Rapidly receding glacier? Apparently, for NPR, the only newsworthy part of that is they found some old moss. If only that bryophyte could be turned into biofuels….

The story ends:

As more glaciers recede around the world, La Farge says we are likely to see more bryophytes appearing and starting to grow again.

Yes, again, the big news about receding glaciers is that they might unleash more bryophytes!

The story never mentions carbon pollution or even global warming. Neither does the NPR’s blog post on the story, which has an even better ending: “In fact, as glaciers around the world continue to recede, we may be hearing a lot more about bryophytes.”

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But apparently we won’t be hearing more about why more glaciers are receding or speeding up — or what it all really means for humanity, like say, that whole sea level rise thing (see “JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050”).

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