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Global Warming Exposes New Islands in the Arctic
circletimessquare writes "The New York Times has a sobering article about the rapidly accelerating pace of glacial melting across the arctic, focusing on the discovery of new islands and the fact that this is occurring far faster than climate scientist's models predict. What were called Nunataks or 'lonely mountains' in Inuit, trapped in the ice, only a few years ago, are now in the open ocean by kilometers. Off of Greenland, what was known previously as peninsulas have been revealed to be islands as the ice retreats. Dennis Schmitt, a modern day explorer and discoverer of one of these new islands and fluent in Inuit, has named it Uunartoq Qeqertoq: the warming island."
Can you really "discover" an island these days? I'm sure some arctic researchers in a lab somewhere saw these on recent satellite photos. Even more so, I bet the appearance of these islands was predictable, given melt rates and knowledge of what was under the ice.
When can we expect the announcement about Pirate Bay trying to buy one of the new islands?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Took a few minutes (the map in the article isn't really all that good), but I dug up a photo of the island in google maps:
, -21.726837&spn=0.209418,1.203003&t=k&om=1
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=10&ll=71.476542
Still shows it as connected.. but only barely.
Not to detract from the issue but is this not a good opportunity to go fossil hunting? Covered in ice there might be more than just fossilized bone as well (but we'd better be quick about it because once exposed to air there really won't be anything but bone).
Seeing as how this is the 10,000th time this sort of thing has happened, can we at least all agree that:
Seriously. Every year there's a new twist that the models missed by a mile. Most recently, it was the 2006 quiet hurricane season. Anyone who claims to predict planetary weather by studying past correllations and making guesses at future causations, is doing the academic equivalent of hunting for venture capital.
But, nevertheless, the planet is getting steadily warmer.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
There may be other ramifications. I can't find the ref, but one possible side effect could be the ocena floor and the island of greeland rising and putting less pressure and distortion on the surrounding sea floor. sort of like putting pressure on the outside of a dodge ball, if the presure is reduced, it could cause the sea floor to *drop*.
The sam, on an even more massive scale, could be true of Antartica. A huge mass of ice suddenly is no longer pressing down on the continent, distorting the earth's crust. The surrounding sea floor could drop.
Net effect? Unknown.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
We still lack a great deal of information that would allow us the ability to make sound decisions concerning global warming. There is strong indications that human actions are taking a toll on the climate, but to what extent is still up for discussion. While rising ocean water is a massive problem for coastal territories, dumping a tremendous amount of fresh water the ocean will change the salinity and with it the density of water potentially altering currents. This could be catastrophic because ocean currents are the worlds most efficient means of transferring energy from the equator to the poles. Interruption in this could change weather patterns around the world if altered considerably. Can't wait to see how this works out in a decade of two.
>I don't get why the "man has no effect" crowd are so vehemently against taking any action.
Easy: because they figure they stand to lose more than they gain by taking action: they either think it'll cost a lot (which it might) or that they won't be particularly affected by the result of no action.
I live in Colorado. I don't give two hoots about houses being designed for earthquake surviveability or tidal wave warning systems. Why should I pay for research into these areas? I'm in good health: why should I pay for surgery for someone who can't afford medical care? I'm young: why do I care about age discrimination? Same mindset.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
It seems that the two biggest gloom-and-doom scenarios these days (aside from global warming itself) is that the ice will melt causing the oceans to rise, and that we're going to run out of fresh water.
Anyone else seeing a way to kill two birds with one stone here?
Why not start creating man-made lakes, and towing icebergs into 'em? Yes it's a lot of work, but if we're going to need the water anyway, and we don't want to lose too much of our shoreline...well, why the hell not? It'd be extremely easy to do in north america, and much of northern europe and asia. And if we're feeling really charitable, we could start towing the southern ice-caps up to africa and the middle-east. They could certainly use some fresh-water.
What we argue (not deny) is how much influence mankind has had, and we call bullshit on people who think the climate would, right now, be different if only Bush had signed the Kyoto Accords.
So here's a question: if we stopped emitting burning fossil fuels entirely, right now, would the earth start cooling?
Nope. You need to define your "we" better though. Is we the US or the entire human population? If it is the entire human population, there is no telling what effects stopping or removing massive human influence would have on our environment. If it was just the US population? Pretty much the same thing. The only way to "fix" this issue is for someone to build some nuclear plant and use the energy from that to mine carbon out of the atmosphere and make oil out of it. The more that I think about it the more that the whole hydrogen fuel economy that Wired and others have been feeding us lately misses the point. Oil works fine. All we need though is to figure out how to remove the massive quantities of carbon in the air and use that to make oil, diamonds, or any thing made out of carbon. We need to research into that sort of thing rather than thinking just reducing or stopping our carbon emmisions. Why stop them? We need someone our there that will mine that carbon and sell it to complete the cycle.
Yes but adapting now is better for many reasons. For instance, zero waste manufacturing is more profitable than its peers that rely on dumping. For example, look at Honda and Toyota. At Honda R&D in the states they have rice fields. Why? So they can ship something back to Japan in all those shipping containers that brought cars over to the U.S. and recover money doing it. Toyota has streamlined and nearly perfected the Just In Time Manufacturing/Lean Manufacturing processes. Look at where they are now. No rational person could possibly bet against Toyota or Honda right now.
Wouldn't it suck to learn years later that we could have prevented the destruction of our home planet if only we had tried? It's not hard... we just have to try. And instead of having the bean counters decide everything, why not have a few engineers look at the waste problem. Yeah, I know, I'd rather watch American Idol and eat bonbons until I explode, too. It's a shame really. The neo-cons are really destroying everything that has made America great. Maybe the Information Age(tm) will come to the rescue, though I'm not holding my breath.