Brrr! Antarctica is cold! Maybe not?
Antarctica, a fascinating place in my eyes. A continent that is not inhabited by many and leaves us with a plethora of unanswered questions. The thing is, apparently the temperatures in certain parts of the Antarctic are rising and this is causing glaciers to melt which in turn could cause parts of Antarctica to potentially disappear. In a recent article from a source called Common Dreams titled Record-Breaking Temperature of Nearly 65℉ Logged in Antarctica as Scientists Sound Alarm Over Rapid Ice Melt, talks about this exact fear of ice melting and record warm temperatures that scientists have never seen before. Readers might encounter this article directly through the Common Dreams website, on social media, or through a science platform of some sort. I found this article by going to Google and typing in “recent studies on Antarctica.” Once results came through, I clicked “News” underneath the search bar and it revealed studies on my topic of choice. In reading the article, I have decided to fact check a certain statement that is located within the article. The statement is “…Researchers…found that temperatures reached 64.9℉ (18.3℃)–the highest temperature logged since scientists began recording the continent’s temperature in 1961”(Common Dreams). Let’s take a look at what I discovered.
First, I dived into move one. This move involved a beginning search through Duckduckgo. I entered the name of the article and searched within Snopes and Factcheck.org, nothing came of this. Next, I tried pasting the actual quote into the Duckduckgo search engine. My first few results included sites that I am not familiar with, the site I got my article from, and Wikipedia. I clicked on the Wiki link and was taken to an article about Antarctica. Zoning in on the climate section of the article, I discovered a quote that mentioned, “The Northern Antarctica recorded a temperature of 20.75℃ (69.3℉), which is the highest recorded temperature in the continent on 9 Febuary 2020”(Wiki). This temperature is slightly higher than the temperature stated in the quote from the CD article and it also mentions a different date. The Common Dreams article claimed that it happened a few days earlier. Wikipedia received their information from two sources: BBC News and The Guardian. The second source, The Guardian, was also mentioned in my original article.
Now that I discovered some information on Wikipedia and the sites that they referenced, I can go upstream to move two and dig deeper into my statement. Since I am not familiar with The Guardian and I don’t know whether to trust it, I decided to take a snippet from their headline of their article since my article from Common Dreams mentioned them. The Guardian’s article is titled Antarctic temperature rises above 20C for the first time on record. I typed in “Antarctic temperature rises” into Duckduckgo and found a Washington Post article titled, Antarctica Just Hit 65 Degrees, it’s Warmest Temperature Ever Record. Knowing that there is an article from The Washington Post claiming similar information as my original statement, it brings my statement closer to the truth.
After finding some validation, I am able to move onto move three where I look a bit more closely at the website Common Dreams and the author of the article. I made way over to Google and searched www.commondreams.org-site:www.commondreams.org and discovered some information from Wikipedia. The Common Dreams website is a non-profit US based website that publishes news, editorials, and periodicals. Another source called Media Bias Fact Check states, “Overall, we rate Common Dreams left biased based on story selection and op-eds that typically favor the left. We also rate them high for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and clean fact check record”(MBFC). I also searched the domain name on ICANN but there was no impact factor listed. In searching for the author, I went onto Google Scholar and typed in her name- Julia Conley. There were no results there but in going back to the Common Dreams page, she is listed at the bottom as “key staff” and in her biography they mentioned some other platforms she has written for such as PBS Weekly News.
In conclusion, It seems that this statement is most likely true. The articles I did find supported the claim in some way, usually to the full extent. The source from which I found my article has no negative reviews but some positive ones from Wikipedia and a fact checking site. The biography on the author from the Common Dreams website holds some information on her but it is hard to trust that information because it is coming from the site that wrote the article. I feel fairly confident that this information is true based on the information I was able to find.
The Penguins might be moving…= (
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