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Large Ice Shelf Expected To Break From Antarctica
MollyB sends this excerpt from CNN:
"A large ice shelf is 'imminently' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday. Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said. ... The Wilkins Ice Shelf — a large mass of floating ice — would still be connected to Latady Island, which is also part of the peninsula, and Alexander Island, which is not, said professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ... If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say. Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse."
Fresh water from ice and salt water in the oceans have different densities. The volume of salt water displaced by 1000 kg of frozen fresh water will be less than the volume that those same 1000 kg of ice occupy when melted, since the salt water is denser.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I believe that if done correctly, cap and trade is a valid temporary solution however I think that the ultimate solution to the problem is to knock out any regulatory restrictions preventing a viable market based on the trade of carbon dioxide as a resource. It may be possible to start with a cap and trade system and ween the economy off of it and on to a market that stands completely on its own. The big problem as is being seen to an extent in Europe is that it is somewhat difficult to quantify CO2 offsets in many cases. Too many permits in the wild can also cause the system not to work as efficiently as it should however auctioning the credits may solve that problem. A green shift in taxation may also improve conditions. Shifting away from our current very complicated tax system toward one that both functions to discourage wasteful consumption and simplifies the tax code [eliminating many tax loopoles in the process] may actually offer an overall economic benefit outside of the environment its self.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have a burning question. Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"?
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin
The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of...
An error margin greater than 50%? Presuming that this is based on a typical 3 standard deviations...
...the chebyshev limit says there is still a whopping 11% chance that the actual value is outside the range...
I don't see any statistics experts mentioned in that link, so I gotta assume that we cannot expect a normally distributed error, that in fact they have no idea what the distribution might be.
"His name was James Damore."
"Are there some countries that are exempt from the global regulations? Is CO2 actually a "pollutant", and how do we define pollution? Has relatively recent human activity actually been proven to be the cause of something we can't even measure properly? What percentage of the atmosphere does CO2 actually occupy and what is it's molecular weight?"
No, Yes, A resourse out of place, Two incorrect assumptions in the question render it meaningless, Very small, Irrelevant.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is hard to get a sense for the scale and the magnitude from the article's pictures. So, I looked it up on Google Earth.
That "ice bridge" protecting the Wilkins Ice shelf is narrow, only about 2 km wide, or slightly more than mile. And it is that which is breaking up. The floating ice area behind it (i.e. to the east) is huge, about 100x100 km!
Once that bridge is broken, sea currents may more easily flush that ice into the high seas. And, what the effects will be then, we don't know I guess.
.
NASA?
The same NASA that went 7 years without ever noticing a problem with their methodology that was detectable with an open source statistics package?
The discovery of the real problem was made almost immediately after NASA GISS finally revealed their methods for public scrutiny.
The same qualities that makes open source good are the same reasons that all of these scientists should open up their work. We re talking about publicly funded science here.. its not supposed to be secret.
They dont get a free pass just because they are NASA, especialy because they've fucked it up before.
"His name was James Damore."
Speaking of taking things out of context, note that psuedo-skeptics have reduced the entire enquiry down to "our committee does not believe that the climate is warming".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
From your link: "Apparently a NASA team overestimated the average 1998 temps by 0.06 degree Fahrenheit, making 1934 the new hottest year title holder by a slim 0.04-degree margin."
I and NASA agree with the call for transparency, lets look at the "Heartland Instituite".
The fact NASA and science in general fucks up every now and then in no way implies you have anything more credible to offer.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
An error margin greater than 50%? Presuming that this is based on a typical 3 standard deviations...
Actually, reading the paper, it looks to me that 80 km^3 is just 1 standard deviation. (They say the GRACE errors were calculated as 1-sigma, and the ice volume error is obtained by sum-of-squared GRACE errors, so it too is presumably 1-sigma.) If so, a 95% interval includes the possibility of zero volume change (but barely).
I don't see any statistics experts mentioned in that link, so I gotta assume that we cannot expect a normally distributed error, that in fact they have no idea what the distribution might be.
Ah, the old "I don't like Mike Mann, therefore nobody in the world except a professional statistician knows what a normal distribution is" argument. Very compelling.
Anyway, if you want to know about the distribution of the errors, read this. They find that the aggregate residuals are normal, but the RMS errors — after standardizing against the spatial and time dependence of the residuals — are non-normal. They discuss the consequences of making a normal approximation. The normal approximation is what they used in the above Science paper.
Don't come here with logic and reason. These other people prefer to drive around around in chicken little costumes and scream "the sky's falling".
There was a very good article in Forbes recently from one of these scientists that the "chicken little" crowd hates, that disagrees with the notion that we know for sure that humans are causing the global temperatures to increase because CO2 emissions have increased.
He's one of the smarter scientists in the world (and actually a scientist, unlike 'ALGORE') who understands correlation does not equate causation. He also rightfully points out the bigger threat than this alarmist "global warming" mania is not some asinine theory that the world is warming but that the seas/oceans are absorbing massive amounts of said carbon, damaging sea life.
Global Warming is a fine theory but the debate is NOT over and proving that the world is warmer does not prove carbon emissions is the cause. Of course, it also does not disprove it either.
As as the parent properly stated, there isn't two camps on this of "I believe global warming" and "I don't believe in global warming". It's more like "I believe humans are causing global warming" and "I don't know what's causing global warming".
The biggest difference between these two camps? Only one of these two buses? Only one of them is being driving by politicians. Politicians with money to be made. The other one is still desperately trying to do science and come up with answers.
Everyone has reserved to simply accept Chicken Little's theory and slap more bumper stickers on their cars and pay some greedy politician his true blood money.
Seriously, the only reason we hear about these icebergs is due to people using fear to scare mankind into making costly measures to prevent some mythical disaster. Mankind has a remarkable ability to adapt to change. The creatures of this earth also adapt to change. If the conditions are not favorable, they die. Why after all these years of living on this planet do we think we have the ability to stop it? I have seen figures saying more will be spent to ATTEMPT to stop warming than will be spent adapting to the change. It is a SHAM we are trying to stop natural change and are AFRAID to adapt.
Get your Kicks on Route 66
Parent post is the first complete and succinct answer to "why sea level is not going to change" that I've seen. It looks like a good place to hang my question.
Background: As these 1,000+ year old ice shelves break away, the amount of icebergs calving from them is increasing as well. With the increase in icebergs comes an increase in high albedo reflective surface on the ocean. On first look, it would seem that this increase in surface area is quite a bit: break off a 10 meter wide by 100 meter long berg from an ice shelf that is 250 meter thick, and the berg that floats away is 100 meter wide by 250 meter long by 10 meter thick. The white surface area has increased 25 times. So a significant increase in reflective area. It seems possible that a free floating ice shelf the size of Connecticut could become a reflective surface the size of Pennsylvania before it melts away completely.
Has anyone done any modeling of the increasing density of Antarctic ice bergs, and whether the increase in albedo is sufficient to affect climate?
Dust is an areosol that has always been there, human areosols are also known to have a large negative forcing (ie: cooling effect) although as you can be seen by the error bars there are some large uncertainties with various forcings they are not enough to reject the overal conclusion in the net anthropogenic component.
"Note that more information isn't needed by those that claim irreversible HIGW afects."
Best effort says we stabalise at a doubling of pre-industrial levels by 2050, this means stabalising 2 degrees higher than now. It is true that it's not impossible to reverese that or the trend on Artic sea ice and see it back the way it was when I was born (1959), it's much more likely we won't meet that best effort target, either way the Artic will be open water in the summer of 2059, I'm unlikely to live that long but my newborn grandchild will have just celebrated her 50th.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
To achieve a balance between good stewardship and knee jerk "reactionism", we are required to hold off doing anything until more is known... ...if we don't, that'll be as bad as when rabbits were introduced in australia, termites in hawaii, zebra mussels in the great lakes, etc, etc, etc.
Folks just want to "do something" about the "issue", and that is a rallying cry to politicians... which are, in their own way, another bane to out existence we introduced out of ignorance.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?
While this question was not posed to me, I think I'll take a stab at it anyway.
I would say, "pretty damn good." Take THIS graph for example. It shows MORE ice in the southern hemisphere.
Which is the exact opposite of what THIS article states. So, the data doesn't back up the predictions. Strange. Maybe the predictions were wrong?
Then, there is THIS graph reporting the average temperatures in Antarctica. Hmmmm. It's going down? So, who is correct here; the predictions or the data? Are you one of these people who changes the data when it doesn't meet your expected results?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The ice levels of your childhood were extremely high.
1950-1970 is not an accurate depection of Earth's ideal climate, stop using it as an example.
if we replant the forests, what are the terrible, terrible consequences?
While I support stopping deforestation and support planting more trees, science is all over the park as to whether planting trees will actually absorb more CO2 than what is emitted do to their planting. Some research shows more CO2 is emitted from planting trees than the trees will absorb. I think more research should be done.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?