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NASA Study Shows Antarctic Ice Sheet Shrinking
deman1985 writes "A recently released NASA study has shown that the Antarctic ice shelf is shrinking at an alarming rate of 36 cubic miles per year. The study, run from April 2002 to August 2005, indicates that the melting accounted for 1.2 millimeters of global sea level rise for the period. From the article: 'That is about how much water the United States consumes in three months and represents a change of about 0.4 millimeter (0.01575 inch) per year to global sea level rise, the study concluded. The study claims the majority of the melting to have occurred in the West Antarctic ice sheet."
If you believe in global warming the terrorists win
What I don't get is how you can even identify a West Antarctic ice sheet? Isn't Antarctica roughly a circle centered on the pole? So, isn't every ice sheet the West one?
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It may be that we will come out in a world better suited to our soon to be 9 billion human population. It may be that much of the planet will become uninhabitable or no longer arable. What is evident is that the majority of people who bother to consider the possible outcomes seem to think there will be one diasterous consequence and that somehow we'll all pull together to get things under control. It's as if something like Katrina is envisioned, but it's likely to be very complex and detrimental on a number of fronts. The truth is our ability to maintain our existing infrastructure is very limited.
A washed out bridge can bring traffic to a halt on a major highway. Imagine a warming world with increased sever storms, washing out roadways and rail lines, while bringing down power lines. Ice storms could bring the whole eastern seaboard to it's knees because the existing powerlines aren't able to carry the weight of the ice.
The emergency contingency plans and resources in place were slow and sloppy in reacting to Katrina. Play whatif with three or four hurricanes or sever storms pounding on the Gulf of Mexico and turning to ice storms in the north.
In the late 90's the American scientist Edmund Wilson postulated that for the existing world population to enjoy the life style of America today on a percapita basis would require the resources of another 5 worlds. Recently a conservative thinktank worked out that for China and India to live at the level of America today we would require the resources of another two worlds. So we have a world awash in weapons with a population ontrack to hit 9 billion in a biosphere showing signs of undergoing radical systemic change.
You should ridicule the alarmists. You should make jokes because it looks like it's going to get ugly fast.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The last 5 yaers are the hottest in recorded history. I'm sorry, but how far back do our climate records go? Not that far in the grand scheme of things.
e rature_Comparison.pnga variety of different sources, from glaciers, to ice cores, to tree rings, but there is pretty good general agreement. That latest such study, putting together data from a wide variety of difference sources to cross reference temperatures for the last 1200 years showed the previous century was the warmest. For records going further back there are the Greenland ice cores with detailed data going back 120,000 years. Further back than that we have the Antarctic Vostok and DomeC ice cores which provide data going back 650,000 years. That gives a pretty good general picture of temperature historically at least over a large chunk of human history, and in the end its human history that counts: whether the planet continues on its merry way matters little to us - what matters is the impact any warming has on humans.
We have a number of temperature reconstructions going back about 2000 years. They do vary because they use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temp
Change is the natural way of things. I think it's pretty presumptious of us to think we're causing it.
Well there are the remarkable correlations between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, even over the 650,000 years spanned by Antarctic ice cores. Combine that with the present spike in carbon dioxide, which is verifiably anthropogenic, and the absorption spectra of carbon dioxide which makes it an effective greenhouse gas, together with the close correlation between the recent spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, and you have some good reasons to start thinking we may be causing it. Is that conclusive? No. But then there's plenty more evidence than what I can pack into a quick paragraph.
Volcanoes put out far more greenhouse gasses than anything humans do.
This one is just a bizarre bit of disinformation that keeps getting circulated. It is quite false. Volcanoes put out around 130 to 230 teragrams of carbon dioxide a year. The US alone puts out around
5844 teragrams. Atmospheric carbon dioxide from volcanoes is less than 1% of the amount from human activities. Please, put this particular myth to bed.
Jedidiah.
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Wrong. There is widespread scientific consensus on the existence of global warming, and that human activity is contributing to it. A 2004 Survey of 928 peer-reviewed research articles related to climate change from 1993-2003 concluded that:
"Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen."
Noteworthy is that none of the articles dissented with the consensus opinion. None of them. Not much of a controversy, at least among people who know what they are talking about.
Aren't they both really North Antarctica?
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!