Has the number of icebergs changed in Al Gore’s lifetime? Experts say that their mass is very important

FACT: There are 130,000 glaciers in the world today, the same number as when Vice President Al Gore was born.

AP ANALYSIS: False. There is no way to know the extent of the glacier when Gore was born in 1948, as there was no global data available at the time, experts tell The Associated Press. The most detailed estimate of the global ice sheet was about 215,000 ice sheets on Earth as of the year 2000, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. Regardless, experts say the best way to measure changes in the world’s glaciers over time — and the effects of climate change — is to look at their volume, which has declined dramatically.

FACT: The glaciers are shrinking at risk climate change due to human-caused climate change. But some social media users continue to question this phenomenon, and share it as evidence that there has been no reduction in the number of glaciers since Gore was born 75 years ago.

WATCH: Video shows President Joe Biden publicly admitting to selling government secrets.

AP CHANGE: A rare issue.

AP ANALYSIS: False.

AP ANALYSIS: False.

AP TEST: Updated image.

The picture shows a picture of a Young Gore and text under the photo that reads: “The day Al Gore was born there were 130,000 ice caps on Earth. Today, there are only 130,000 left.” The photo was shared on Instagram and had more than 16,000 likes as of Thursday.

Gore was in office from 1993-2001, and since then has been involved in a number of environmental advocacy projects. He he spoke at the 2022 UN climate conference in Egypt and announced the details of the known sources of greenhouse gases.

Although the meme has been circulating for several years and has been reviewed by many outlets, experts tell the AP that the image is still fake today.

Scientists can’t tell how much ice was there in 1948 because there wasn’t enough information at the time, said Louis Sass, a glaciologist at the US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

“We’re not done calculating the amount of ice that’s available at any given time, especially trying to get a few points in time,” Sass said.

The world’s best data on the extent of the world’s ice is from Randolph Glacier Inventory, said David Rounce, a glaciologist and engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The Randolph Glacier Inventory is part of the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space nothing.

The study estimates the amount of ice and the area it covered in the year 2000, using satellite images. The latest version estimates that there were 215,000 pieces of ice covering 705,740 square kilometers that year, not counting the ice on Greenland and Antarctica.

Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Serviceit is believed that the figure of 130,000 could have come from World Glacier Inventory. The WGI was established in the 1980s and maps glacier extent using color maps and aerial photographs from the 20th century, rather than the satellite images used today. But the WGI is an incomplete historical database, and has been replaced by the Randolph Glacier Inventory.

Regardless, experts say that looking at the total number of glaciers is not a good way to measure the effects of climate change.

In summer, the amount of ice can decrease because it melts — but it can also increase because the larger ice cap breaks up into smaller pieces of ice, Zemp said. The number can also vary due to how a scientist defines ice and the size used to create different types of ice.

“The best way to measure changes in glaciers over time is to use their ice surface or volume,” Rounce said.

Zemp pointed to Research from the World Glacier Monitoring Service it is estimated that about 335 billion tons of ice was lost annually from 2006-2016. This corresponds to an increase in sea level of about 1 millimeter (0.04 inch) per year, which accounts for 25-30% of the global sea level rise, the project said.

Sass pointed to an area of ​​ice in Alaska that is a little more than 30,000 square kilometers – about the same area as Lake Superior. In the last 20 years, the area has lost about 15.24 meters.

“So you can imagine, if Lake Superior dropped 50 percent in 20 years, it’s hard to say that Lake Superior hasn’t changed,” Sass said.

In January 2023, Hinman Glacier, the largest glacier between Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak, melted. And a learning led by Rounce published the same month found that two-thirds of the Earth’s ice is expected to melt by the end of this century.

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This is part of the AP’s efforts to combat misinformation that is widely shared by the public, including working with companies and outside organizations to add facts to the misinformation circulating online. Learn more about AP fact-finding.