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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."
Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.
(i read TFA)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?
So, the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator, and the glaciers are still retreating. This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate".
Something to keep an eye on, certainly, and something to look into the reasons why, of course, but let's not press the big red panic button just yet, ok?
Scientists -- or as the case may be, reporters -- out for a quick 15 minutes of fame is my take on this "rather frightening" story.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Ok, We've had Europe and lots of other land covered by glaciers only 10.000 years ago. The ice at the poles have melted quiet a few times in earths history. It's likely earth won't be doomed this time either.
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...
The earth is not fat, it's just big boned !
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
"seriously, the Kyoto protocol was a joke."
That may be, but it was a step in a direction.
"By most calculations it would have made less than a 1% decrease in total global warming"
'Most' calculations? How about the others?
The thing that's most annoying is the refusal to consider something because of calculations or 'hypotheses' without a willingness to experiment or test the bloody hypothesis, which is kinda essential is 'most' calculations give one result and a lesser number don't.
The actual reason for not signing up to Kyoto was the f**ing expense, not the science.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
... when a planet stops being a young planet. It starts getting thick around the middle.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.
Actually, what I complain about, really, is *what* the US thinks it's responsible for, and for what it doesn't think it's responsible for.
That is, right now the Bush administration is spending billions of dollars of tax dollars, some of which came out of my pocket, in order to fund these wars which supposedly are for my security and protection. But how many future American deaths are being prevented by this growth in military might? Isn't it possible that there's a greater threat coming from possible future environmental catastrophes?
I've heard that one possible result of global warming might be that the alps, which are made mostly of permafrost, might actually melt, causing landslides all over Europe. If water levels keep rising, island nations or low-lying areas will become covered with water. I'd say this is a greater threat to our overall well being. And yet the Bush administration seems hell-bent on increasing the use of fossil fuels, promoting fake forms of alternative energy (particularly so-called "clean" hydrogen powered cars; sure the cars are clean -- it's just that using fossil fuels to make the hydrogen fuel cells is somewhat counterproductive), and undermining environmental regulations left and right.
In fact, the EPA actually removed references to global warming in a report issued last year in response to pressure from the Bush administration. Their reason? Global warming does not present a national threat.
If you do a Google search on bush and global warmiing, you'll see scores and scores of articles detailing how Bush has repeatedly ignored the real threat that global warming poses.
For a long time I was saving money by purchasing US Savings Bonds. I'd still like to do it; from a financial perspective it's very appealing: it offers a higher rate of return than banks' savings accounts, it's very liquid, and requires no minimum investment.
HOWEVER, the money that I put into those bonds is essentially lending money to the US government to cover its defecit that comes from reckless spending in directions that I disagree with: increased national "security" in the form of increased police presence and the use of the Patriot Act; military spending; and to faith-based charities.
If possible, I'm going to look into purchasing bonds elsewhere. If not, I'll probably just save in a CD or Savings Account.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
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
It's not "just him", either. Nice way to try to marginalize his viewpoint, which is, by the way, shared by more than just a "niche". There are a lot of scientists (and not just ordinary citizens) that are going "ok, slow down, it's not neccessarily a catastrophe". As many people have pointed out in the past, the Earth frequently goes through changes like this for reasons that are unknown, and that predate the industrial revolution. And lets face it, this whole piece was about pointing a finger at mankind's evil technological ways and saying "see what we're doing to the Earth?"
The Earth's sea level has risen and fallen over the centuries many times, without any input from man. The previous poster was just pointing out that this happens, and that the article might be just a tad sensationlistic in order to promote an agenda (and we know THAT nevers happens in science or anywhere else, right?).
If you agree with that agenda, fine, say so. But when you try to make opposing views look like fringe nuts because it suits your purposes, you just end up looking like an ass.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Well, since Kyoto failed to address the largest producer of the most powerful greenhouse gas there is, it was smart not to ratify it.
Until the Kyoto treaty requires the oceans to immediately limit their levels of evaporation, it will never be effective at reducing the most dangerous of greenhouse gases.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
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.
Ah, I got it. The articles doesn't say that the bulge has risen by .3%. The equatorial bulge has always been about 0.3% How much has the bulge increased recently? They don't give figures. But they do say that gravitational field changes usually attributed to the "post-glacial rebound" (the geological adjustment to their being less weight at the poles since the end of the last ice age) is twice what it was in 1998.
That's scary. Why? Well, sea level has been rising for the last 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. That rise isn't notice during a human lifetime, of course. But now it appears that the rate of melting has doubled in just the last five years. Still not a lot, but we're pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere faster than ever. Even if we could slow our rate of increase (and Dubya doesn't even want to do that), we'd still be looking at a big change in the ocean configuration.
Which could lead, ironically enough, to another ice age. If that happens the "junk science" pundits will doubtless insist that the whole greenhouse effect was just a myth. Oh well, I think I'll go fix a cold drink.
The plants got by just fine without us raising CO2 levels -that is before we cut down or burned a seizable amount of it.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm trying to remember where I heard or read this, but, supposedly, when asked about what they would do about the rise in ocean levels by as much as a meter in 50 years, one of the guys who is in charge of the dykes that keep the Netherlands dry replied, "We'll build the wall higher."
Let's not forget that humans are where we are in the planetary scale of things because of our incredible ability to adapt to our environments. It's not as if these changes will be immediate... you won't go to bed on the oceanfront and find your house flooded by a new meter of water. In fact, most people won't even notice anything, even over the course of a year.
You make a good point, though. There's lots of people who are running around, crying that the sky is falling... and doing nothing about it or not proposing solutions to the problems. It's truly annoying. I'm not advocating that we do nothing; there have been some "solutions" presented. Whether or not they'll "work" is another problem altogether (e.g. humans may or may not be doing ANYTHING to the climate system), but it's still a start. We have to ultimately accept that change, in many ways and forms, is inevitable and get over the whole "why can't things be the same as before?" attitude that's so prevalent in the western philosophy.
Okay, end of rant. *laughs.*
-Jellisky
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?
Think of the earth as a computer.
On this computer, there are many files (matter) which are used by programs (natural processes) which all work under the operating system (natural "laws"). We (humans) were clueless newbies who started putzing around on this computer. In the process we have edited files (built things). Now when one of the programs reads a file we have edited it does something different than it did before. Quite often we don't like the results.
Now that we have become fairly good computer users, we have realized that we have messed up our computer. Although we know what most of the programs do, we still don't know HOW most of the programs work (we're not programmers yet). Since we didn't make a backup before we started messing around (we were newbies then, remember?) we have very little knowledge of what our computer was like before we started changing things.
Sadly, we don't know any computer geeks who can come fix our computer, so we have to deal with the problem ourselves. We could try to fix the files we've edited, but since we don't understand the programs we don't know exactly what our changes will do. They might even make things worse. We could try not to mess things up any more while we study programming, but our computer might stop working before we learn enough. So we have to do what we can to keep our computer running by making only small changes to files while we study. In the process we'll probably make some mistakes, but hopefully we won't cause a BSOD.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
You're missing the point.
No, you are missing the point. The point -- and it's a sharp point indeed -- is that we have no idea. You're saying it takes longer than a day to clear the pond, I say it might take less than a day. None of us knows, since we don't know the size of the pond, the effectiveness of the cleaning method, the availability of alternative cleaning methods, or even if we really should clean it. We just don't know.
That is why your analogy was silly.
for a[ny?] given climatic/environmental issue, we know it's not an easily solvable problem.
No, we do not know that. This is what I have been trying to tell several people in this thread and in other threads. The heart of the matter is, we do not even know that the issue at hand is a problem. There's just too little research done.
I'm all for doing more research on the climate, I've stated as much on several occasions in this thread alone. I am not, however, willing to accept that every hiccup on the charts mean that we're doomed.
You, according to your last paragraph, seem to be willing to do just that.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley