Hoaxes: New research shows that the world's greatest snow-capped peaks have lost no ice in the last decade and that polar ice is melting at a much lower rate than warm-mongers say.

The new study was conducted by scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, published in the journal Nature and based on satellite observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite.

GRACE, which was launched as a joint project between NASA and Germany in 2002, orbits the earth at an altitude of 500 kilometers (315 miles), so it sees everything from the highest peaks down to the mouths of glaciers. The satellite measures gravity, which is related to mass, and would be affected by decreases in polar ice, glaciers or mountain snow packs.

Before the amazing GRACE data, teams of researchers had to measure ice loss at a few easily accessible glaciers and then extrapolate it to the 200,000 glaciers worldwide. Measuring mountain snow packs, glacier mass and the thickness of polar ice was an inexact science prone to overhyping by climate-change enthusiasts with an agenda.

We recall that in its 2007 report the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed:

"Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of their disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate."

As it turns out, the earth hasn't been warming at all, at least not in the last decade or so, and reputable scientists have said it may continue to cool for decades to come. Even if it was warming, serious glaciologists insist the sheer mass of Himalayan glaciers made such a prediction laughable.

As noted by Bristol University glaciologist Jonathan Bamber, not part of the Boulder study: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero." In some quarters the "unexpected" result is an inconvenient truth.

The new study, the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers made possible by the use of satellite data, acknowledges some glacial melting at lower altitudes. But it also says that over the study period enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate — meaning no net loss of ice.

Some melting of the ice caps covering Greenland and Antarctica is occurring, but not nearly enough to put the world's coastal cities under water or make it possible to moor one's boat from the tip of the Washington Monument, as warm-mongers like Al Gore still claim is imminent.

Study member John Wahr reports that worldwide about 30% less ice is melting than previously thought and that sea levels, while rising, are doing so at the glacial pace, no pun intended, of only one six-hundredth of an inch per year.

Richard S. Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at M.I.T., has said "the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average" in the interior and that a "likely result of all this is that increased pressure is pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country," giving greenies ominous photo-ops.

Greenland was definitely warmer when Eric the Red settled there in 986. The climate then supported the Viking way of life based upon cattle, hay, grain and herring for about 300 years, predating the Industrial Revolution.

But then came the Little Ice Age, and by 1400 average temperatures had declined by about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and the advancing glaciers doomed the Viking colony in Greenland.

Doomed by global cooling.