Slashdot Mirror
Earth Growing Due to Melting Glaciers
Dr. Shim writes "Some interesting (and rather frightening) news over at Space.com tells that the Earth is growing around the equator due to the fact that ice in the Antarctic (and other areas) is melting at an alarming rate."
(i read TFA)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Will this make days longer?
Just as figure ice skater retract their arms closer to their axis of rotation to go faster, and spread them out to slow down, won't this have the same effect on the earth's rotation? If so, it should then be measurable, proving or disproving the claim.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Yeah, it's definitely you. And a whole bunch of other people who have bought the "it's too early to tell" line.
I used to live on the shores of Hudson Bay, and the ice used to break up at the end of June/early July. It's happening a lot earlier now. The result? Polar bears are losing weight and dying more often because they can't hunt as long. Things don't look good for the Hudson Bay bear population.
Or let's look at another species - murres. Twenty years ago, they mostly fed on arctic cod they found under the sea ice. Now they are feeding more on capelin because the cod, apparently, are getting harder to find.
A few years back, my folks were some of the biologists on an expedition to chart the surface heat budget of the Arctic Ocean. The idea was to drive a Canadian icebreaker into the ice pack and freeze it in for over a year, then use it as a research platform. They expected no trouble finding thick ice.
Much to the surprise and alarm of pretty much all of those involved, they couldn't find ice thicker than about 2 metres. This is a hugely significant change.
Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality, and more evidence is showing up every day. And it's not going to be pretty for a lot of species, and a lot of fragile ecosystems, and ultimately - I suspect - for ourselves.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
The article you cite (which was published over a year ago) starts by saying, "Accelerated melting of Earth's glaciers in recent years has forced the planet to let a notch out of its belt as its midsection gains girth, according to a study released today."
The only source linked by the author of that article says, "They considered that ice melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit. Calculations showed, however, that 'you would have to drop a 10x10x5 kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years.' Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission don't support this scenario."
The article concludes by tempering its opening assertion. "Dickey cautioned that the study is not entirely conclusive, as the changes in sea level are measured in millimeters and represent a "daunting task" that requires numerous corrections to account for various known factors, such as natural short-term fluctuations."
So it is conceded that glacial melting cannot account for the few millimeter changes in sea level observed, and that they don't know enough to conclude that it is anything more than a natural short-term fluctuation. Once again, "journalists" are inflating the conclusions of scientists and alarming the public with no more justification than a desire to sell a weekly rag.
So tell us. Why are you bothering to bring up an article published more than a year ago as though it were breaking news?
ZZ
Or, so I heard from a friend of my cousin...
Okay, here's an article from the Guardian. In the article cited, seems like quite a few people could have been hurt by these avalanches.
The "friend" that I heard this from was someone not even really an aquaintance: one of the Green Party Candidates for President, Lorna Salzman, who has made global warming one of her key campaign issues. I don't agree with all of her issues, but I share much of her sentiment that drastic work to preserve the environment may be necessary.
I fear, however, that Americans will not be willing to make sacrifices until it is too late. The rise of popularity of the SUV, especially with some owners taking a "I won't take any crap from you holier-than-thou environmental wackos" stance, , and with environmental activists pasting demeaning bumper stickers on other people's SUVs, means that real growth on the issue just won't happen.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
This means the equatorial bulge gets larger as well. This bulge causes the precession of the Earth, and this in turn the period in which the magnetic poles turn around the geographic poles. In the history of the Earth, ice caps have grown and shrank many times. Have geologists taken this into account when they calculated the place of the magnetic poles in the past, relevant for many geologic phenomona? Or have they always applied actualism, e.g. assumed the precession of the earth is static?
Fallacy of overprecision. Of course we don't live under the water because we are air breathers, but we COULD if we had to.
We don't live on the poles because we don't have to. But we COULD if we had to.
Deserts barely inhabited? Have you looked at the middle east lately? The American southwest? The Mongolian Steppes? Please.
Let's see. Earth covered in ice. Creative, technological humans build nice, domed hot houses to live.
Earth covered in sand. Creative, technological humans create massive irrigation projects, water pipelines and desalination plants and turn said desertes into gardens (take some before and after looks at the Salt Lake valley).
Since I won't have to live like that, whether or not I want to is irrelevant.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
You may have a point regarding this specific article - but I have long stopped comforting myself with thoughts like:
u -Wi; as something would try to rush the weather with the next seasonal change in and something else would then try to delay the change and even contradict to the warming - with little success, though.
- last year's extremes are well within long-term records
- climate changes on Earth are frequent
- human action is too small to have any damaging impact on a global scale.
The last few years have been more than enough for me to change my opinion. I now consider the situation very serious, for example:
1. The snow - the skiing
- the average height of the snow cover in the mountains during the winter has risen for some, say 2000 feet. The country simply looks diferent. A photo of the mountains once taken in June is now similar to the one taken in March or April.
- the quality of snow while skiing deteriorated - there is no such thing as "powder" here in our part of the Alps - you either ski on frozen or soft, depending on the time of the day (where you even have any natural snow, that is). Furthermore, there is no such thing as "spring-skiing" in the spring nowdays. Once the high temperatures kick in, it's time to switch from skiing to watching spring flowers grow...
- we used to have the lowest lying glacier at 1900 m altitude near where I live that I could still ski on in the summer of 1994. Now it is GONE.
2. Wine vintages
We've had more than a dozen of excellent vintages in last thirty years when only, say, four to seven should be expected - and it's not due to heavy marketing exaggeration - the climate change seems to be doing some good to most of our wines for the time being.
3. Seasonal changes and temperature fluctuation
I do not wish to use weather extremes as my case,
since they happen too randomly and don't provide a solid set of data. Storms have happened and will happen. The fact is that seasons no longer change the ordinary way - Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn but there is a very vicious oscilating temperature cycle that makes a year look something like this: Au-Wi-(Au/Sp?)-Wi-Sp-Su-Sp-Su-(Au/Sp?)-Su-Au-Su-A
4. Air conditioning in my town went from a nifty luxurious gadget to a neccessity. Heating bills are lower and appartments, as they were designed, are too warm most of the time.
The fact is that the planet is warming nastily and that such changes will have a major impact on the global economy and everyones life. Therefore, governements should not only try to slow down or stop the warming by eliminating human causes for it (since we do not fully understand the climate machine and have only clues on WTH=going on), but should most of all try to provide for their citizens by preparing measures for each of the different scenarios of global climate changes that can be anticipated.
I have long adapted my vacation plans: I try to get a hold of any skiing I can since I may never have a chance to do so later in my lifetime (It would be too much to hope for that this warming is only a prelude to a new ice-age kicking in; not to mention the economically disastrous impact if that kind of theory would be true). I have hade a couple of very short skiing seasons in lousy conditions since I was not paying enough attention. As for summer and warm destinations, I've tried to limit that and moved my beach activites to spring and autumn since summers have been so hot lately that a typical vacation is no longer bearable.
My life has changed so dramatically due to the weather in last 15 years that I no longer dare call anyone alarmits. We have to make climate an issue, make the best of the changes and minimize the damages.