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Antarctic Ice Bridge Finally Breaks Off
GreennMann writes "An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean."
that's certainly one way to break the ice in a tense situation like this.
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Given my SUV driving has yet to save me in a crash (I've not had one since buying it)... I'm glad to see it has contributed to something productive at least.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Now, I'm gunna drive my SUV 65 miles to work tomorrow and feel ok about it.
You may feel okay about it, but I feel bad for your gas card :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Once the ice bridge falls away, scientists will find one pissed off ice troll.
I'm waiting to see the live video footage of that scene where the poor sweet little baby polar bear is trapped on an ice floe which shrinks until he falls off to be eaten by sharks or some garbage like that *splash*
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So what? It hasn't been there forever. See, there's a natural progression on the planet. Warm. Cold. Warm. Cold. It's warming up, BFD. Now, I'm gunna drive my SUV 65 miles to work tomorrow and feel ok about it.
While you'll probably get +5 funny, your kids will one day give you -1 troll, my friend.
This is cause for alarm if you're concerned about iceberg free shipping lanes, correct?
Considering there's about zero shipping lanes near Antarctica I'd say this doesn't rank up there on the priority list.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Oh, and a few inches (or feet) of ocean won't bother me. I have no beach property, nor do I intend to. Last I checked, I'm about 950 feet above sea level..
From the FA: "While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating"....
More likely to be eaten by killer whales, but hey, it's the circle of life, it's the wheel of fortune, it's the leap of faith, it's the band of hope.
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GPS and satellite imagery tend to mitigate this type of issue. Fifty years ago it might have been cause for concern.
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You'd need to go back to a time when you can't blame humans.
I still blame Canada. They obviously failed to hold on to the ice caps when they had the chance.
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If you really, really wanted to save the polar ice caps, you'd create a time machine and travel back..say, 19,000 years ago. Back when the polar ice cap extended down into what is modern day Illinois. Which predates SUVs and industrialization by around...19,000 years or so.
You could also increase the number of pirates.
You presume that the ice will not float northwards into the shipping lanes. All that ice can travel a long ways before melting.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yes, but that still requires you to go around them, boosting costs as they need to burn more fuel.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
OMG!!! I'm off to the oceans!!! Otherwise boring day *sight*
Slowing your rate of approach works just as well as speeding up to overtake or bypass an object. Speaking from naval experience here...
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Thank god we have the average mook on Slashdot or I might have thought this were cause for concern. I guess all of the scientists who have agreed that there are man-made effects on climate are completely incorrect, but this website is the last bastion of sanity?
I'm waiting to see the live video footage of that scene where the poor sweet little baby polar bear is trapped on an ice floe which shrinks until he falls off to be eaten by sharks or some garbage like that *splash*
It would be quite remarkable to have video footage of polar bears in the Antarctic.
We've come a long(ish) way since the Titanic. We have, for example, RADAR which can see these things long before we smell the ice. I don't think ice in the shipping lanes is going to be a big issue, a minor annoyance perhaps.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
This isn't offtopic... The mods must not have known that global warming is inversely proportional to the number of pirates on the high seas.
yeah, I know. But my links was from Berkeley. Stanford mods.
So by your reasoning we Aussies should not be arresting arsonists who are responsible for starting about 1/3 of all our bushfires. We should let them continue with their bussiness as usual because we know that the other 2/3 of bushfires are started by natural causes.
BTW: This particular environmentalist doesn't care if you drive an SUV, a sherman tank, or a skateboard.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Speaking from naval experience here...
What does your bellybutton have to do with icebergs?
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
If you really, really wanted to save the polar ice caps, you'd create a time machine and travel back..say, 19,000 years ago. Back when the polar ice cap extended down into what is modern day Illinois.
Which predates SUVs and industrialization by around...19,000 years or so.
Did I pull my gun? Yea.
Did I shoot? Yepp.
Did I shoot second time. Sure!
Did I kill him? No!
I mean, come on, average life expectancy is 66 years, and he was over 70, that's waaay long before I bought this gun.
So, am I free to go now?
Now you've gone and ruined his nefarious plot to continuously drive his SUV until he's the proud new owner of oceanside property. In these uncertain economic times, how else is a fella supposed to increase his property value? Huh? Huh? Bastard.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
...a few more really big ice cubes floating around should help a great deal.
oh, and as the saying goes "Pictures, or it didn't happen."
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ohhhhhh...... *SNAP!*
-David
Not to argue the point, because it's always a holy war with folks, but there's some logistics to that, which you failed to see.
If the seas rise by 10 to 20 feet at the coastlines, coastal areas will flood. That means the ports will be under water, and nothing will come in by sea. International imports will be severely hampered. Pretty much, if you can't bring it in by plane, it won't happen.
If coastal areas flood, major highways, bridges, and train tracks will become unusable.
People will migrate from the flooded areas to higher ground (like, your 900 feet up), but food supplies will be very limited, and transportation will be very difficult without oil coming into the country.
So, even people living on high ground that won't be flooded will be affected.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
There was this one time when I was on leave, and an old girlfriend of mine had this ice cube, oh wait... I probably shouldn't go into that...
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This is it the season that it recedes. Its winter down there and only moving more into winter. Also, this shelf has been there for centuries, and now the whole thing is going to come unhinged.
Yes, because we have lost the technology to build ports...
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Can we really discount the possibility of ice having stealth technology?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
That means the ports will be under water, and nothing will come in by sea.
Sounds like an excellent opportunity for those in the business of building ports.
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I just had a conversation with my future children through my patent-pending Future Convo Iterator(TM), and they're actually pretty happy with the way society turned out. Of course, this is in light of major technological advances in completely unrelated areas... in other words, we're not going to destroy the frigging planet. Have some faith in humanity's relentless drive to outdo itself.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
We actively change our environment to our benefit. We light the night, warm our houses, deforest our countries, mine our resources...
The argument of "it's natural" is stupid. If it's natural, modify nature. We are constantly doing it.
Why? Because this change does NOT benefit us.
So, nature doesn't want to change (or we don't know how to coerce her)?
Well, at least don't help the change!
... or eat corn grown domestically.
That being said. 20 feet rise in sea levels and out boss will need to find a new office buidling.
Not so much. Winter is just starting in the southern hemisphere. The equinox was March 20 so in Antarctica the sun only went down a few weeks ago.
>...and provides further evidence or rapid change in the region. Not everyone agrees. For another spin on this event take a look at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Wilkins_Ice_Shelf_con.pdf which suggests that the evidence for rapid climate change in this area is missing and suggests that, at best, hyperbole is involved.
Can someone please convert that into units we can understand, like States of Delaware, or Long Islands.
"See doc, there's a natural progression to blood pressure. High low high low. It's going up,BFD.
Now, I'm gunna eat this bag of potato chips and get a big mac and feel okay about it."
You have to love it how some people cling to the first rationalization that allows them to keep doing what they want, from the time they're kids right up to when they die.
It would be quite remarkable to have video footage of polar bears in the Antarctic.
Go easy on him, FooAtWFU is a high school student from Wasilla, AK. He's special.
That is one of the global warming metrics, right? Save the shrinking polar ice cap, right?
Yes, you nailed it right on the head, it's all "ice melting = bad," no one has taken any nuance into consideration. You've singlehandedly bested every climatologist/whatever they call themselves.
The building of new ports takes years. They aren't something you can just knock up in a day.
You know, they say it was a clean break, but I think they're going to have a few rebound flings before calling it quits for reals.
That's the reason I'm fairly optimistic about that - humans as a race rarely solve any underlying problems but are very good at finding workarounds. So get ready to enjoy your hydrogen hummer!
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
There could be all sorts of cool stuff waiting to be discovered under the ice down there in Antarctica.. maybe atlantis (unlikely), or the fortress of solitude (slightly more likely), but more than anything it is really the last (mostly) unspoiled wilderness on the planet and it is a very big place!
I for one would quite like to go exploring there if it was just a tad warmer.. ;)
Sure - five years to build a port. Then start on the next for when that port is drowned.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
Having trouble visualising... Seriously guys, we've already established Libraries of Congress as the arbitrary measure of choice, why introduce the size of Jamaica now?
( Redundancy is ) ^ n
that there have been a number of Richter 5 earthquakes in the area in recent years that contributed a lot to the breakup of the ice.
Sure. Let's just let everybody think it's yet another indication of anthropogenic global warming.
Just look up the USGS reports. Of course, so many people just don't want to bother doing that...
the country I live in, the Netherlands, has one fourth of the land below sealevel by as much as 48 feet already. I guess we can handle a few additional feet of water. More water spurs great engineering, and has done so since medieval times. That doesn't mean you can't leave your SUV at home and take your bicycle to work today, though.
and the seas will rise faster than the planning permission beuracracy can work its magic?
no, the question is, can we risk it. i mean safety comes first. what if your gps, radar, radio AND your eyes all stop working a the same time as this million to one iceberg appears?!?! jesus people just take such big risks. think of the children.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Now... If floating ice melts, how will this affect the water level? :)
(No liberal arts majors, please...)
The rising of sea levels of 10 feet will take years. Centuries even.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Idiot, first you claim to want to avoid politics, then put a crazy political barrow...
The very most aggressive estimates of sea level rise over the next hundred years is in the order of 3 feet, the average is closer to a foot, and those figures are from strong global warming proponents.
Also note that the figures used to show ANY unexpected sea level rise are from satellite, whereas the ground based (and significantly more robust..) systems do not show the same data.. oops.
Of course global climate change proponents are also now saying that cooling in the Antarctic is 'expected' as part of global warming, which of course would result in sea levels drops - luckily either way the figures are not high.
Of course, dont go letting facts get in the way of your fear.
Good point.
Ship captains might shrug it off with a "It's only an icebug, nothing to worry about" oblivious to the danger.
Sneaky bastards.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
That's what she said !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
If it were an oil field, Wall Street, Detroit or Silicone Valley, you could count on something being done about it right away. NSLIG (no such luck, I guess.)
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
I guess by comparison to dudes like Warren Buffett I'm pretty poor. It's kinda hard to really figure my relative economic value, though... I'm posting from a laptop I purchased in the last year, operating a couple of development servers connected to this broadband connection, in control of a few production servers in two datacenters, driving a 2006 Hyundai Sonata (hey, I like the car, lay off...), posting on Slashdot in my obvious spare time :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Just open the underwater port and use it as a water drain. If you do it smartly, you can remove the salt and presto, fresh water on Mars.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Most estimates don't account for melting of continental Ice (Antarctic). That is because most expect the antarctic climate to be stable. The observed melting of Ice is worse than the estimates suggested by climate models.
This causes concern that the antarctic climate could be much more dynamic than we think.
A change in the climate of Antarctica could lead to large amounts of continental ice melting, which would lead to sea level rises much more than a couple of feet.
That if global warming really will be a very bad thing, then our energy should be spent trying to deal with it when it happens, not prevent it. Why? Well because we are pretty sure that the Earth has been much hotter (and cooler) in the past than it is now. We are about as certain as we can be that there has been a long history of climate fluctuations. Thus it doesn't matter if the current one is natural or man made, because we are going to have to deal with one like it at some point. So that means the real focus should be how to deal with the eventuality, not how to prevent this particular one, if it is in fact preventable.
Unless we can get the ability to control the climate such that fluctuations like that won't happen again (and I seriously doubt that) then preparation is what we need. If we spend a great deal of effort preventing this shift, only to get screwed over by another one, then no good is done. Likewise if it turns out this shift is natural and nothing we can do will prevent it, again no good is done.
Now this all assume you accept the idea that a slightly warmer average temperature will lead to disastrous conditions. However that does seem to be what is claimed in general. Well, if that is in fact what you believe, then you really should be advocating focusing on how to deal with it, not how to prevent it unless you believe you can prevent it when it isn't a human caused phenomena.
It mentions that a lot of the dynamics of this situation are poorly understood. Whether or not you believe in global warming or what you think is causing it we don't know what the results are going to be.
There are so many possibilities with some scientific basis and the whole environment as a system is so complex that we can't predict details. We can paint broad strokes of the future but saying the sea level is going to raise 2.37 feet and believing that the sea will raise exactly 2.37 feet put blinders on you just like believing that a Divine Being created the universe in 6 days.
We have an idea of what MAY happen but there is so much complexity that we don't know what WILL happen. Right now it looks like shit is going to get warmer, ice is going to melt, sea levels will get higher and who knows the Gulf Stream may stop flowing causing Europe to get cold.
Some of you seriously need to stop beating the Global Warming Manifesto like it is a Bible.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
You laugh, but...
http://www.physorg.com/news5619.html
---linuxrocks123
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Con job and spin are the correct terms for that particular web site.
This is the second time this site has popped up in the last few days. It's run by one J. D'Aleo who is paid to do so by the "Science and Public Policy Institute", they are in turn backed by "Frontiers of Freedom" which is the lobbying brain child of this guy. They have a donate button on their site but their funding is otherwise obscured.
Older readers may recall the "Frontiers of Freedom" also backed the tabacoo industry in their anti-science campaign.
Disclaimer: I don't have anything against lobbyists or politicians until they pretend to be something they are not.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It ain't about the ice caps, some of us want to try and save the people.
Lowest point in the Netherlands is 6.76m (just over 22 feet) below sea-level, near Nieuwerkerk-aan-de-IJssel.
An iceberg displaces its weight in water (as all floating bodies do). That means that thawing of it won't change the water level at all.
Except when it has a truly odd shape: Think of a sinking ship. When it floats it displaces its weight in water. When it is sunk, then it displaces its volume in water. For a ship the volume is much less than its weight. Sinking a ship will actually lower the water level.
Iceberg don't (generally) have a lot of significant cavities, so the water level won't change much.
That, my friend, is an extremely informative post.
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Given that those who don't present papers supporting the orthodoxy are unlikely to get research grants or publication (at least it's very difficult to do so), I'm almost certain you haven't heard both sides of the argument with the required vigour in order to make any significant judgement either way. At the very least, we know one thing is true: more people die in cold weather than in hot weather. This, I submit, is incontestable.
I would also point out that sea level is rising and has been since the end of the last ice-age. The current rise has not accelerated beyond the background mean. In other words, despite 10 years of no warming whatsoever (even though CO2 has increased), sea level is no higher than it would be in any case.
My final point is one that's always missed. We have no idea at all whether or not these events are "natural" and if so at what frequency they happen. It seems to me that this is being pushed as "evidence of global warming", when in fact it's evidence of media gullibility in the face of environmentalist spin.
Do a bit of looking around and you will find more and more geologists are associating some earthquakes with climatic effects - such as weathering of the Himalayas. Did the earthquakes cause the breakup or are they simply associated? (correlation!=causation).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wait you mean it's not like filling a bath tub?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Don't worry, at the rate the RIAA is working we'll have the planet frozen solid in a few more years.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
(Disclaimer: I'm Australian, now living elsewhere) You don't really know what an SUV is, and I say this not to you in particular, but to the general populous. In Australia you've mostly only ever seen those big arsed SUV's on TV. Sure, you might think the huge 4x4 the MILF next door takes the kids to school in is massive, but really, it's a bitty little Toyota, and it is a fair chunk smaller than the obnoxious Fords, Hummers, and tricked out Escalades you get elsewhere in the world. Australian's never really got in to the whole truck as a car thing, most people still kick around in their limited edition factory mold holden or ford (just like everyone else.)
Other than this, I actually have nothing to add or take away from your post. Sorry.
A lot of airports around the world are on coastal plains, because the land there is flat and cheap.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ice is white and reflects a lot of heat back into space. If this ice melts it may cause ice elsewhere to melt faster.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm waiting to see the live video footage of that scene where the poor sweet little baby polar bear is trapped on an ice floe which shrinks until he falls off to be eaten by sharks or some garbage like that *splash*
It would be quite remarkable to have video footage of polar bears in the Antarctic.
Here in the southern hemisphere we call them Polar Koalas.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This is cause for alarm if you're concerned about iceberg free shipping lanes, correct?
Considering there's about zero shipping lanes near Antarctica I'd say this doesn't rank up there on the priority list.
Except the shipping lanes which service people in Antarctica.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I wonder if it would be possible to build floating ports, with a similar floating bridge to the mainland. I'm guessing it would be much more expensive, but definitely adaptable to changing sea levels.
Dude, you've come up with the solution! All we need to do is build loads of ships, then sink them. It will spur economic recovery (shipbuilding) and reverse the rising seas (global warming). You're a genius! It's foolproof!
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Perfect back story for a Cool Runnings 2...?
If an ice cube floating in a glass of water melts, the water will still be at the same level afterwards.
If a floating iceberg melts, it will add water to the oceans, causing the average water level to be the same.
However, there is still more water in motion, so the effect of the tide will probably be larger.
(Also, I was under the impression that the Antarctic ice wasn't floating? Or maybe this section was?)
Nice one :)
No need to apologise I understand what you are saying, a big SUV to an Aussie is a Nissan Patrol, but I'm an older Aussie and can remeber when F-100's were popular. There is also a streched Hummer near where I work, it has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've seen on the road since the goggomobil went out of fashion.
I may be a 'greenie' but that doesn't mean I have tossed capitalisim out the window.
My point was that individuals are too...ummm...individual...to make much difference by changing personal habits out of the kindness of their heart. Carbon needs an internationaly agreed and enforced CAP on total emmissions in order to create an economically and environmentally sound market to TRADE it. This is no different in concept to many existing internationally enforced rules on trade, travel, the environment, space exploration, slavery, etc.
If the guy with an army surplus tank is prepared to pay for the damage it does to natural and made made infrastructure such as the road, the atmosphere, etc, (ie: willing to play by market rules) then he can knock himself out as far as I am concerned. Of course if CO2 emmissions, oil, ex army tanks, are all finite resources and everyone wants to drive one then it will become a very expensive proposition, matter of fact it already is. If he is not willing to play by the rules then he doesn't get the benifits of the market, it's quite simple really and has worked that way since humans started bartering Mamoth steaks for sex.
You could introduce a carbon market to Aussie motorists without changing the price at the pump, simply replace the very high excise on fuel with carbon permits. After all the excise was supposedly introduced to reduce fuel compsumption during the oil crisis in the seventies. I believe the UK are in a similar position. However if you have been following KRuddy's carbon market legislation you will know it's not so much the oil industry that are putting up roadblocks, it's the coal industry who are panicking about their own future survival.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Already done
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Relax dude, it's just Gilligan moving the stick out further to catch more crabs.
and the seas will rise faster than the planning permission beuracracy can work its magic?
It isn't called a bureaucracy for nothing.
Just wait until we form a committee to look into the possibility of considering a tendering process for the production of the guidelines for selecting a committee to look into the possibility of constructing a sea port.
Hell, this could take CENTURIES!
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Finally! Thank god we got rid of that damn bridge!
Wow! April is winter in Antartica? And you got modded informative???
Slashdot moderators seem particularly, well, stupid on this topic today...
P.S. You're right about your ice receding, but that's not because it's getting colder
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
What I want to know is the worst-case scenario. Say ALL of the world's ice melts. How high does the sea level rise? Has anyone done the definitive study? Links?
According to the RealClimate website, increasing ice is expected in the Antarctic according to the models, so all of these cretinous articles about "warming" causing the ice to melt are not in agreement with the alarmists. Or rather I should say the alarmists aren't in agreement with themselves.
"more people die in cold weather"? Wouldn't that depend on location? A mild warming of the average temperature would probably feel great for most rich nations (why are wealthy nations mainly rather cold?), but what about the extremes? How does 52,000 dead compare to very few?
It's expected that extreme weather conditions may become harsher with global warming. That's consistent with recent evidence.
Your final point is a cliche. I don't understand how you can claim it's "always missed"; people like you are a dime a dozen.
This is important because the sea level change will happen in a matter of days, right?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Aren't these case disjunct because the ice-shelf is well... a shelf and not a cube. Doesn't that influence the change?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If all the ice in the world were to melt, and the odds of this happening are virtually 0, then we're looking at a 200+ft rise in ocean levels. However, the higher probability estimates are for a 24 inch rise by 2100. Not a great source in itself but the references are not bad: http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
some one must of used the Antarctic stargate or the weapons platform there.
He was responding to a post that logically explored the consequences of a 10 to 20 foot increase in the sea level, if it happened immediately and we did nothing about it.
Sarcasm was appropriate.
I'm pretty positive that the reason this ice shelf broke off is that there is an over-abundance of ice and with all that new ice forming, some of it has to go somewhere. Here, do the numbers yourself : http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/bist/bist.pl?no_panel=1&annot=1&legend=1&scale=75&tab_cols=2&tab_rows=2&config=seaice_index&submit=Refresh&mo0=01&hemis0=S&img0=extn&mo1=01&hemis1=S&img1=conc&year0=2009&year1=1980&.cgifields=no_panel
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
ICEBERG!!!!
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
Of course we can't. And what's worse, they can fire while cloaked.
I am officially gone from
Speaking from naval experience here...
What does your bellybutton have to do with icebergs?
He was talking about oranges smart guy! Geeze!
If an ice cube floating in a glass of water melts, the water will still be at the same level afterwards.
If a floating iceberg melts, it will add water to the oceans, causing the average water level to be the same.
However, there is still more water in motion, so the effect of the tide will probably be larger.
(Also, I was under the impression that the Antarctic ice wasn't floating? Or maybe this section was?)
I read recently (i think it was on the naked scientist) that these large masses of ice have a small gravitational field. They pull water close to them. When the ice bergs break up, they lose mass and gravity. The article was suggesting that water levels will rise because the water that was pulled by the icebergs will now be in the ocean.
...in January we landed on it in a helicoptor and stuck a GPS unit into it.
I guess the GPS unit was hammered into the ice :)
Oriental Hero "I want to live in a city where the Police don't shoot you" Jean Charles de Menezes
Could you provide us with falsifiable predictions that global warming theorists have made?
Specifically, predictions which are measurable, have come true, are based on the underlying science, and aren't intuitive.
Something like "given x amount of C02 and y amount of sun activity the global mean temp will be z over this period of time."
I honestly haven't seen that. Until I do, I will continue to remain skeptical about the underlying science. There are way too many variables involved for me to have confidence that the scientific community has reached a definitive and correct answer.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So that means I (or anyone who gets there first) can go there and claim it's the National Republic of Icelanadonia and host porn and copyrighted material?
That's a bad analogy. A clear link between obesity, poor diet and high blood pressure have been shown; the same can not be said for Man made CO2 and global warming.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Keep telling yourself that.
No (obviously), but it would depend on how fast the water rises.
Besides just the pesky problem of the port, there's the infrastructure that goes with it.
For just one example, at 10', Manhattan would start looking like Venice. Tunnels, railways, and 3 major airports would become useless. There's a lot of infrastructure to rebuild elsewhere.
If you look around, a lot of airports and power plants are situated very close to sea level, on the waterfront. Airports use this for noise abatement (the planes can take off over the water to keep from annoying people). Nuclear plants require lots of sea water for cooling.
So, ports, sure they could be rebuilt. But have you ever watched what happens around the planning of new facilities? Years upon years of arguing points. People would argue about the environmental impact of the new facility, and the remains of the old facility.
I don't know what the thresholds are, but I'm sure once you reach a critical point (say 10'), more cities will have problems quicker. Say between 10' and 15', there could be not only one or two, but dozens of major coastal cities that would need to be rebuilt simultaneously.
Don't forget about fresh water reserves too. Water wells would start becoming contaminated with sea water too. You could rebuild the city near by, but can you restore their essential supplies like drinking water?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Here's a mash-up site that purports to show the effects of global sea level rising in increments of 1 meter, up to +14m. I make no claim as to the accuracy of the info it presents, I just happened to find it a while back while researching hurricane storm surge.
http://flood.firetree.net/
Personally, none of this worries me in the least - I live on a boat. :D Maybe that's something more people, especially global warming fanatics, should consider.
Wait, then they would be my neighbors. Ugh, scratch that. I can't stand fanatics. Except for the hot-nyphomaniac-in-a-bikini sort of fanatic. Those, I don't mind... ;)
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Er, I don't think the issue is about assigning "fault" or "blame", because it means we get a bad mark or something. It's about how messed up we're going to be due to climate change, and what if anything we can do about it.
Now can Man be flexible enough to survive it? That is the better question.
Which is, indeed, the question people are asking.
I was with you right up to the "...so does it really matter?" There is the crux of the matter, I guess. Does it matter? I am thinking "yes", obviously, not only for what may or may not happen to me after I die (a debatable subject, obviously, to some) but for what my life's effects are to other folks's lives. Positive, hopefully, for a similar reason, actually. Btw, in Southeast Asia in some Buddhist temples, some monks keep pictures of de-composing dead people to help them not get too attached (or to be become less attached, at least) to this life. Web sites, too. Interesting stuff. I could not find a link to any of the pictures, but, a bit ironically, instead discovered a paper on the medieval Japanese art form of painting the "9 stages" of decomposing bodies. (New to me, too. I think I'll go read it now. Later.)
:-)
My mom says I'm cool.
Sorry, meant to add the link to the post above. Medieval Japanese Art of Decomposing Bodies Paintings. A morbid read, indeed.
Well, most gas usage experts show that driving ~65 MPH is the sweet spot for optimal MPG. It's much better then 80 MPH, or 20 MPH in stop and go traffic.
If part a glacier gently calves off and just floats away, then it doesn't affect seawater volume. It is the equivalent of an icecube floating in a glass.
If it crashes into the ocean because it was being held mostly out of the water by the structure of the glacier it was attached to, it does add to the volume of the ocean. It is the analog dropping of an icecube into a glass of water.
In either case, it was evidenced in Greenland that the runoff of meltwater from inland glaciers is also finding it's way to the sea, accelerating glacier loss on the coast, and adding their own volume to the mix.
The inference is that little changes in climate may produce big changes in environment in a short period of time. My takeaway is that this may be a bad century to invest in beachfront property and that dike and canal building companies could become a serious growth industry.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
>Now, I'm gunna drive my SUV 65 miles to work tomorrow and feel ok about it.
This is the ugly side of fighting a war using an all-volunteer force... ... there will always be people flaunting waste instead. Or flaunting that they're above it all.
Conserving resources for the war effort is patriotic, although you'd have to read a history book to see wealthy people doing just that.
Sounds great. BUT...
"The people" are the problem. There are just too damned many of them. And *that*, my friend, is the elephant in the room that very few address.
When I see population control being a part of the discussion, then I'll know that the discussion is being real.
Instead, most of the folks that are famous for publicly gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair about saving the world go home in their private jets and limos and make more babies, more future consumers that will use an ever-increasing amount of the limited natural resources of this planet.
But hey, they feel better, so... {rolleyes}
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
You presume that the ice will not float northwards into the shipping lanes. All that ice can travel a long ways before melting.
You presume that the ice will be a negative resource. I could actually see vast amounts of money to be made off of towing these things to various coastal cities for fresh ice water.
i really can't believe how wrong you are
-Kz-
Also from TFA: "Separate research shows that when ice shelves are removed, the glaciers and landed ice behind them start to move towards the ocean more rapidly. It is this ice which can raise sea levels, but by how much is a matter of ongoing scientific debate."
There's also eustatic sea level rise due to the thermal expansion of sea water (less ice = warmer water)
Ice has a lower density than water, wouldn't that mean that it has less gravity then the water around it?
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Hey, you got your information all wrong! Everyone knows you can go to your local neighbourhood Tim Horton's and buy an Ice Cap for $2.99.
Perhaps Somalia will help curb the trend.
Carbon needs an internationaly agreed and enforced CAP on total emmissions in order to create an economically and environmentally sound market to TRADE it.
That will not produce a shortest path solution to the problem. The fastest, least expensive and most humane solution is to quickly get the developing world past the high-pollution stage of industrialization. There are essentially two ways to make cleaner energy sources cost-competitive with dirtier ones: make the dirty ones more expensive or make the cleaner ones less expensive. The latter will ruin fewer lives in the long run.
Yeah, they're a right bunch of goons. Couldn't agree more. But in all likelyhood, our population is going to reduce drasticaly. We can try to manage that, and ease the transition ... or we can horde all the food and stuff for ourselves, and leave the rest of the world to starve. I'm in camp #1, regardless of how ill-informed and thin-on-the-ground my company in that camp may be.
Waiting for *the famouse people* people to start acting sensibly is, as I'm sure you're well aware, a complete waste of time. And time is short.
Has there ever been less ice than there is today?
Mine is Good
Yes, I know that. And yet somehow I get a 'Score 1, Insightful' and you get the 5, Funny. There ain't no justice.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... save the people ... from comfort.
Mine is Good
Already done
You beat me to it.. I was going to mention WWII as a counterexample.
From Wikipedia:
Deployment
By June 9, just 3 days after D-Day, two harbours codenamed Mulberry 'A' and 'B' were constructed at Omaha Beach and Arromanches, respectively.
So yes, you could set up a port in 3 days (if you know beforehand about it)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Don't forget about fresh water reserves too. Water wells would start becoming contaminated with sea water too. You could rebuild the city near by, but can you restore their essential supplies like drinking water?
You could always build a desalination plant. I don't think that most cities get their water from wells, either. In my experience, at least in the Western USA, metropolitan water supplies come from large sources of groundwater, such as a reservoir.
you might think the huge 4x4 the MILF next door takes the kids to school in is massive, but really, it's a bitty little Toyota, and it is a fair chunk smaller than the obnoxious Fords, Hummers, and tricked out Escalades you get elsewhere in the world.
Surely, by "elsewhere in the world" you mean the US? I've NEVER seen an Escalade outside the US, and there are about a dozen Hummers between here (Uruguay) and Argentina (about 50 million people) and they're just curiosities, not something you expect to actually see or drive
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Oh no! Another iceberg source! *YAWN*
Get your Kicks on Route 66
an excellent point.
however i wonder if the difference in density due to salinity between iceberg ice and ocean water is the same as that between freshwater ice and the "concentrated saltwater" shown in the experiment.
also, glacier ice often contains small pockets of compressed air, which is why it fizzes and pops when put in a glass of water, and this may also affect its density.
Have you alrady decided on a methodology for considering the tendering process? I guess you are jumping some stages here, be carefull, so your project don't off-track later because of it.
Too bad I don't have mod-points today.
Rethinking email
Thanks to Google:
100 feet = 30.48 meters
24 inches = 0.6096 meters
Rethinking email
Didn't New Orleans had a port?
80+ proof is 80+ proof to this alcoholic.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Meanwhile temperatures still are subzero in Edmonton, Alberta, and there is still a foot of snow on the ground. I believe this whole 'global climate change' when I take my parka off.
Are you listening Mr Suzuki?
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
That really depends on where you are, and what is available.
I found This Reference at the USGS. Los Angeles uses groundwater (river), and I know they have reservoirs, but they also use groundwater to supplement the groundwater.
If you happen to be sitting on a nice mountain, with a good sized lake, fed by snow melt, and the snow level remain enough to keep the lake fed, then you'd be doing very well.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What isn't recorded are the annual deaths of people due to cold (perhaps poorer old folk who can't afford to heat their residence properly). These deaths happen usually in winter and are not related to any specific cooling event. I'm afraid the figure dwarfs the rather minor 52k (I can't find the figures right now, but will do so and post them later). Actually I'm rather surprised you're talking about extreme weather events, unless you're going to claim the 1998 El Nino was caused by man-made greenhouse gasses? Or like Gore, that Hurricane Katrina was an example? You might as well do as people like Fallwell did and blame it on Homosexuality - the amount of evidence either way is the same.
Historical records for the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) show that it is particularly prone to rapid climate change--change that occurs in cycles of ~200 years and ~2500 years. By studying major transitions in plankton productivity in the western Antarctic, scientists have shown that "spectacular" ice-cover losses have happened many times in the past. In other words, the "unprecedented rapid loss of ice" from parts of Antarctica that global warming alarmists make so much of are a normal part of nature's cycles. What else would you expect during the peak of an interglacial warming period? This is from a paper titled "Recent Changes in Phytoplankton Communities Associated with Rapid Regional Climate Change Along the Western Antarctic Peninsula," by Martin Montes-Hugo, et al, in Science. For more see http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/melting-antarctic-ice-part-natural-cycle
But in all likelyhood, our population is going to reduce drasticaly. We can try to manage that, and ease the transition ...
This is Slashdot. We're kinda the vanguard of zero-offspring population control. We are the future.
They have both been "shown" to the satisfaction of general scientific consensus, and both have their de jure and de facto deniers and skeptics.
Then by the same token, the argument of preserving nature and the environment is retarded.
Climate is changing.
It's changing slowly.
It's natural.
Outrage about humans contributing to it is about the same as outrage over the AIG bonuses.
Species will die out.
People will die.
There's nothing we can do about it.
It still makes sense to not do stupid things to the environment, like poisoning it (and us) with shit like mercury, drugs, and slashdot posts.
It never makes sense to ban/limit things that DON'T actually harm the environment, like CO2, DDT, or Chromium 6.
No, I'm not going to claim the El Nino is caused by global warming, and I'd appreciate if you could refrain from strawman attacks. It's not that hard. Really.
And I don't believe Al Gore has claimed Katrina was caused by global warming either. If he did, it should be easily proven. I've found that he's claimed that "the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming", which is correct: there has been reports making that claim. Not made more frequent, nor caused by, but made stronger by global warming. Perhaps you should try finding evidence against actual claims instead of debunking your own inventions.
Enjoy your riches after your beach front properties are destroyed after rising ocean levels and extreme weather caused by global warming, and the insurance companies all go bust.
Have fun.
The Internet is generally stupid
Don't forget the committee to redefine policies for environmental impact studies due to a modified ecological state. And of course, the committee formed to determine if such a committee would be necessary.
The Internet is generally stupid
It is, but in the way a toddler does it: using the water already in the tub.
That or a brand new business of building cargo carrying submarines.
The Internet is generally stupid
These guys are taking good care of that for ya'. Grow your own corn and fleece a company out of a buck will you, you commie bastard.
The upside of all the ice melting is that Kevin Costner will mutate and form gills.
The Internet is generally stupid
Now, we'll be able to utilise an multiple-targeting anti-avian geological-based projectile system.
Well, most gas usage experts show that driving ~65 MPH is the sweet spot for optimal MPG. It's much better then 80 MPH, or 20 MPH in stop and go traffic.
Given that wind resistance goes up as the square of your speed, and that rolling resistance is negligible at highway speeds, I am skeptical. Roughly, it takes 1.3 times the work (and 2.2 times the power) to cover a certain distance at 65mph than at 50mph. If drivetrains can be tuned to the tune of 30% just by fiddling with gearing, then cars would probably have more gears, or maybe CVTs. Also, this number is confirmed by my own very rough measurements in a few cars, when I actually have the discipline to drive 50mph over a long enough stretch of flat highway.
Of course, you stipulated "stop-and-go traffic" in which case a huge portion of your gasoline is used to heat up your brake rotors. Fair enough. But 65mph cannot possibly be a magic number given similar acceleration profiles.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Allowing ports to be an integral part of the perpetual economic stimulus plan.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Greenpeacers broke off that chunk in order to convince people that their fantasy "globular heating" religion is real. Or maybe it would have broken off anyways but humans aren't responsible--too many polar bears sitting around on an ice shelf for 6000 years are bound to cause some damage eventually. This might happen again if we don't kill all the polar bears. Actually, it's all a liberal pinko lie--you're so gullible, since the ice bridge is just fine, thanks very much. Scientists are out to destroy us all. Haven't you seen them in movies?
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Actually, the reverse is true. Recent scientific papers show that hurricane activity has decreased during the recent warming, not increased:
You are sadly mistaken in your attempt to exhonerate Gore from alarmism. Here is his speech to the Sierra Summit in 2005:
Al Gore Speech 9/9/05
This quote, from that speech (which was about Katrina), can be found about 2/3rds of the way down:
While telling me to check my facts you have made the error of not checking your own.
Obviously the answer is giant sea walls and desalination plants?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
In your small scale experiment, the ice cubes are floating freely, and already mostly under water. In reality, there is a significant amount of ice in Antarctica that resides above sea level, resting directly on terra firma.
Sigs are for losers
You forget that it doesn't matter if we are the primary/sole cause, or a tiny blip in the radar. We'll still be just as fucked if we don't learn how to adapt to the changes.
Now, I'm not saying the change will occur in the next 1, 5, 50, or 500 years. It could even be millennia from now. But let me posit this question, which I feel makes a good analog to doing something about climate change.
We know the Sun will go red giant in approximately 5 billion years, and at that point we will be fucked if we're still living on this mudball. How long before then should we begin looking into how we can survive out in deep space, and why did you pick the time that you did and not something closer to now?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
you know, there's a crazy theory out there that a huge crust-shift moved atlantis to its current location, the antarctic. This break away of ice could soon reveal that long lost civilization. And then the predators will move in.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Care to tell me which parts are wrong?
Actually, the reverse is true. Recent scientific papers show that hurricane activity has decreased during the recent warming, not increased:
Even if that was relevant, it would still be wrong.
1) "Why the record low ACE? During the past 2 years +, the Earthâ(TM)s climate has cooled under the effects of a dramatic La Nina episode. The Pacific Ocean basin typically sees much weaker hurricanes that indeed have shorter lifecycles and therefore â" less ACE." So: it's not related to warming. In fact it's caused by a natural cooling unrelated to global warming.
2) "Under global warming scenarios, hurricane intensity is expected to increase (on the order of a few percent), but MANY questions remain as to how much, where, and when."
3) "The notion that the overall global hurricane energy or ACE has collapsed does not contradict the above papers [about increasing hurricane energy due to warming] but provides an additional, perhaps less publicized piece of the puzzle."
This is all from the article you quoted, all in direct contradiction to what you're trying to make out of it.
While telling me to check my facts you have made the error of not checking your own.
Again, you're inventing stuff. I said: "I don't believe Al Gore has claimed Katrina was caused by global warming". You try to refute that by pretending I said something completely different, as if I made a general attempt to "exhonerate Gore from" a not particularly well defined accusation of "alarmism" that somehow popped up only after I was supposed to defend him from it. Well, I didn't.
I'll give you one thing: your intellectual dishonesty is extremely well developed. You should go into politics.
Well I sure hope it was a clean break. It'd suck to have to break it again just to set it correctly before the cast goes on.
I grow my own SUVs you insensitive clod!
So you think that all cooling events are natural, but all warming events are man-made? This is precisely the alarmist position as far as I can see. Before the negative PDO, there was a positive one, peaking in 1998. Is this a "natural" event or not?
Indeed, simply a statement of what is expected from warming scenarios. The actual reality is different. That is the point of the article.
There is nothing wrong with my English language comprehension. You contradict yourself. I have corrected you by showing you how he has attempted to link AGW with Katrina.
Actually, I was thinking more like better designed population centers away from the coastline, with more of an aim towards self sufficiency. With encouragement for people to move to the better nicer places, which could operate cleaner than our existing cities, we'd not only have a chance to fix a lot of broken things, but we'd be able to reduce our pollution output, so the ocean side problem wouldn't be one. But once the coastal areas are properly cleaned, they'd be a beautiful place to visit. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Serves you right.
Everyone knows penguins are cuter than polar bears.
Also, spend a few hours on Google Scholar on the polar bear issue. Record polar bear populations seen in a single habitat is a reasonable outcome of overall habitat reduction.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I did a quick look at Google maps of the peninsula, on satellite view. It looks to me like the peninsula is at one end of an under-sea mountain range that continues straight up through the South American mountains. Is that area tectonicly active? as in earthquakes or volcanos? Flex the ice tray, the ice breaks. Heat the ice tray, the ice melts.
"Less gravity" doesn't make sense. It has less weight than the volume of water it displaces - that's why it floats. Going further, a given chunk of ice will weigh as much as about 9/10th the same volume of water - hence why it'll float with 9/10 of itself below the waterline.
I am trolling
Yeah, but what he and Lex Luthor stupidly failed to realize, is that whether you set-off nukes to trigger the San Andreas fault to drop California into the ocean, or if you drive your SUV to crank up global warming; one undeniable fact remains:
You have just drowned all the people who even WANTED to live near the ocean. Your property values will NOT go up!!!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4khXkE5gEI
"Oh look, that was Wilkins of Finance!"
"Robertson"
"Wilkins"
"Robertson!"
"Wilkins!"
"....Oh, that was Wilkins"
"THAT was Wilkins"
Edith Keeler Must Die
This "ice bridge" was already floating, IIRC, so no change in sea levels here.
In any case, given there's an active volcano somewhat nearby, this one may be unrelated to global warming.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Okay, Bill Gates... just calm down.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Sure - five years to build a port. Then start on the next for when that port is drowned.
Well, yeah, if you're building serial ports. Try parallel ports for better throughput...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
So you think that all cooling events are natural, but all warming events are man-made? This is precisely the alarmist position as far as I can see. Before the negative PDO, there was a positive one, peaking in 1998. Is this a "natural" event or not?
No, and I didn't claim that. There are natural variations like there always have been. Some years will be warmer than the one preceding, others will be colder. Again, you choose to attack a convenient strawman.
Indeed, simply a statement of what is expected from warming scenarios. The actual reality is different. That is the point of the article.
No, that's not the point of the article, and it specifically says the drop in hurricane activity is linked with a recent cooling.
There is nothing wrong with my English language comprehension. You contradict yourself. I have corrected you by showing you how he has attempted to link AGW with Katrina.
No, you haven't corrected anything. You have yet to show where Al Gore said Katrina was caused by global warming. In your quotation, Al Gore spoke about a president who was unwilling to heed warnings, both when it came to global warming in general and to NOLA specifically, ignoring warnings that the levees would break, and then later claim that "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break".
Again, you have shown nothing but your own dishonesty.
Well, according to broken window theory it will stimulate the economy.
Then it's a sweet little baby penguin which is trapped on an ice floe which shrinks until he falls off... Damn! That thing can swim?! (so can polar bears too)
Again, it is asserted that the ice sheet has broken free from both islands, when a quick perusal of TFA says that it's only broken loose from one of the two islands, and is still firmly attached to the other.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Good try.
But in the broken window theory, the money the shop owner had originally could have gone to other needs. Instead of purchasing a new window (and the trail it follows), he may have bought a goat to provide milk to his family, in turn using the money he saved on buying milk to buy other things. (blah, blah, blah).
The whole broken window theory just forces money from one place, (the shop owner), and puts it somewhere else. The idea is driven by the idea that someone who can afford to own a business has more money than they need, and the people of lower economic stature deserve it. It's just about as economically sound as Robin Hood.
If Manhattan was overcome with water (say a 2' MSL rise, a 5' high tide, and an 8' storm surge, rather than the evil 10' global warming MSL rise), over a million people could be without power, transportation, food deliveries, and their housing may not be safe for months or years. Sure, it's good for the economy, if someone can afford to fix it. Look at how well New Orleans has recovered. It's been almost 4 years, and they're still far from "recovered". Please reference my previously linked article for more information on what could happen to Manhattan.
But hey, who cares, I live on high ground, right? :)
Right now, I couldn't see rebuilding one major metro area, either in situ or elsewhere. Besides the financial "how do you pay for labor and supplies", the new problem becomes, how do you get the supplies to where they're needed? If trucks can't come over bridges that no longer exist, highways and railroad lines are closed, and the ports are under water ... well ... A tarp and a few sticks make a nice lean-to.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
No actually the assumption was that the ice bridge that broke loose helped to hold back the land-borne ice from descending into the ocean; but I'm a damned denier so you can't believe anything I say.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Your missing a huge point. Global warming doesn't just mean that we'll all be a few degrees warmer. Entire ecosystems will collapse, especially colder regions where the life there depends on the cold. Ocean currents and hurricane activity could be drastically altered leading to a lot of unforseen changes in weather, including getting a lot colder in some places. If the ice caps melt the sun won't reflect off them anymore and the Earth will heat up at an even faster rate which has the ability to cause mass extinctions, lowering diversity, and leaving the possibility of endangering the entire human race. We know that burning fossil fuels isn't good for the environment. Even if you aren't sure that we are emitting enough to cause a problem don't you think it would be a good idea in this case to err on the side of not potentially annihilating our habitat and species?
Time makes more converts than reason
The increase in ice is expected over most of the continental shelf. The stuff near the coasts is fair game. Also, I believe the increased ice is expected to be temporary.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
There's some truth in there, but I think you're missing the fact that the two approaches can be tackled simultaneously. A cap and trade system would be a quick way to wring the inefficient CO2 use out of the developed economies.
You also miss an important trend: as the cap and trade focuses research on low-CO2 energy generation technologies in the developed world, those technologies will mature quickly, and be available for developing countries as well. It's not obvious that every country needs to go through a "coal phase", any more than they need to go through a land line phase on their way to cell phones.
Perhaps we could do a cap and trade system where only the developed countries participated directly, but they could get credit for subsidizing green tech in the developing world.
But the fact that most of the increase in CO2 output over the next 50 years will come from developing nations is hard to deny. They have the increasing population and they'll have the standard of living increases. We can't ask them not to develop. But we could be lucky, and they'll discover routes to development that lead to a more sustainable end game.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This meme again?
Yes, the Earth's climate changes. No, it has NEVER changed so rapidly. Ice ages happen over tens of thousands of years, anthropogenic climate change is taking place in a couple of hundred. Orders of magnitude, people.
sustainable living
There's some truth in there, but I think you're missing the fact that the two approaches can be tackled simultaneously. A cap and trade system would be a quick way to wring the inefficient CO2 use out of the developed economies.
I don't think they can be developed simultaneously because a cap and trade system slows economic growth, and growth funds technological development. Compound growth is so powerful that a small percentage difference adds up to a lot of resources over time. These problems won't be solved by slowing economic growth, they'll be solved by inventing replacement technologies.
Plus, the only way to create a global cap and trade system is by force, and I don't endorse going to war to convince China, India and others to participate. It is easier and more ethical to coax them to do what we want by making it profitable for them, and that will happen faster if we don't shackle our own economy.
Of course, you stipulated "stop-and-go traffic" in which case a huge portion of your gasoline is used to heat up your brake rotors. Fair enough. But 65mph cannot possibly be a magic number given similar acceleration profiles.
Did you do the math for 88mph, yet?
Large by what standard? Projected increase in atmospheric CO2 are on the order of a couple of percent or so. Predictions of the temperature rise are on the order of 4 degrees Kelvin. On the absolute temperature scale, the only one that makes physical sense, that's an increase of maybe 1.5%. That doesn't seem so large compared to the 37% increase in CO2 since the 1700's. The projected increase in sea level is a few feet, also a small percentage of the total ocean depth.
Unfortunately, small percentage changes in the natural world can sometimes have dramatic effects on people. Hardly surprising. After all, if your body temperature rises by 5%, you are pretty sick.
And you say that you are a scientist? In some nonmathematical field, I presume?
It would be quite remarkable to have video footage of polar bears in the Antarctic.
They only come out of hibernation when the sun is eclipsed by Mars. That's why you hardly see them.
In the real world, many things manage to be both effects and causes. Most of us learn this basic fact about nature in childhood, from contemplation of the the famous riddle, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
Those who understand this riddle don't find anything particularly remarkable about the fact that CO2 can either lead or follow, depending upon circumstances--it is possible for an increase in CO2 to cause an increase in temperature, and it is also possible for an increase in temperature to cause an increase in CO2. In the former case, CO2 leads temperature; in the latter case it follows.
The post was meant to be ironic, but thanks for such a detailed explanation :)
The problem with carbon caps and all is that it hurts the people who need it the most and it is totally arbitrary to begin with.
Anyways, so what happens when you have to make a couple extra trips to the store or decide to go on vacation, the rich will just purchase more credits and live life like normal, the poor, well, they will have to go to work, is it all the sudden going to cost the entire weeks pay just to go to work? They will have to do without trips to the store for food or medical supplies, have to do without trips to the pool in 100 degree heat or the public library, and you nor anyone wanting the power to limit people in this way have the ability to say that won't happen. Public transportation is non-existent in most places, it will burn way more carbon if it is shoved into place. Where I live, there would be one person on a 6 ton bus floating down the country roads for 5 or 6 miles or am I supposed to only do things when the government schedule says I can?
I don't think people understand the amount of freedom they are/will be giving up. I know this is because you and everyone else thinks your part or emissions isn't the bad ones, these rules and laws will only effect those idiots ruining the planet and not you. If Carbon is the problem, then why would anyone attempting to correct the problem not attack all carbon and just that emitted by the people you think are bad. Almost every government uses any excuse possible to increase a tax and most government politicians who want to limit tax collections end up in the minorities. It's all about power and the government's control over it's subjects and you think some detached international regulation is going to care about the poor or anyone not rich in the process.
That's the worse part about it, the rich are immune from carbon caps and carbon taxes. They will get to live life any way they want to. So what we end up with is poor people trying to decide whether to go to the store out of routine to get Junior medicine or to see a doctor or leave him suffer so you can go to work, get paid, and keep food on the table for him. The rich on the other hand, they will just toss another million on the fire and use that as an excuse for needing more profits from the businesses they own which is why your not getting your next raise.
The answer is, either create something that leaves our dependency on carbon, or at least carbon that has been stored underground for 2 million years or start preparing for global warming and make adjustments when it happens. At least then, the most people who will be effected will be the rich who own all the beach front property. Every thing effecting humans can adapt and evolve. That's what the damn theory of evolution is about and why we are the dominant creature on the planet. People need to get off this religious love story in that earth has to stay the same way it always has and face the realities of what they are expecting.
That's like a moron, such as yourself, saying that all brushfires are started by mankind.
Heh...if someone ever builds a submarine that you can drop containers onto like a barge I will poop my pants in awe :)
The people my actions are going to affect (both in the present and the future generations) will themselves die eventually. The whole universe will inevitably end with either heat death or a Big Crunch, rendering all personal actions futile. So, in a purely materialistic and cosmological point of view, do the effects of my actions really matter? No, it doesn't.
A Buddhist can look at pictures of decomposing remains and conclude that he must not be worldly. Yet he can also (if he chooses to) look a the same pictures and conclude that nothing hinders him from being worldly, for the worldly and the non-worldly alike will end up rotting in the end; one might as well do as he wishes, for everything is an illusion (ah, that inspired Buddhist phrase!).
For the record, I do not subscribe to the cynical philosophy I tried to illustrate in the above paragraphs. But given that we do not live in a perfect Christian society where such a philosophy would not exist, environmentalists will have to look for better arguments than "it's nice to be nice to other people" and "you can't take your SUV with you when you die". Because in a doomed, absurd, or illusory universe of atheists or Buddhists, "clinging to the first rationalization that allows people to keep doing what they want" is a perfectly rational thing to do.
- Francis Ocoma
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OK, here is a question, and seriously, I'm not sure how your implying it or if it is just a redundent setup that your not noticing.
Ok here is goes. The Co2 global warming model claims that the Co2 is absorbing the heat of sunlight instead of allowing it to reflect back to the sun. This is fine and all assuming that you believe the amount of gasses in the atmosphere is the problem and that such a minute amount can of atmospheric gases can have such a devastating impact. For the purpose of this question, we will assume it's close enough to be true.
So how is the ICE melting from global warming when the air temp rarely gets above freezing and the second part, if the Excess Co2 and carbon is already absorbing the heat. what is so different about the land absorbing a portion of it and reflecting it back? Granted, land warming will have an effect on ocean currents and weather patterns around the area and world, but at night, the heat reflects back anyways even if there are 6 months between day and night at the true poles, that isn't really the case in lower latitudes. It would seem that the heat from the land would make the night air warmer for a while but then all the stored heat would be lost/dissipated from time to time.
In sort, the possibilities for mass extinction seem no more then with the ICE but that doesn't even account for the existing land mass warmth around both poles (polar region) from volcanic activity that is present as we speak.
As for the rest of what you mentioned, well, global warming isn't supposed to collapse entire ecosystems for hundreds to thousands of years. In fact, the change is so slow that I'm not sure why the adapting new ecosystems aren't being considered. It isn't like we are going to wake up one day and find everything gone. If the theory of evolution is close to being correct, collapse isn't really the words we need, it would be more like shift/change/influence/positive/negative.
And for
Isn't good and bad for are two entirely different statements. Now, here is the point of contention I have. The not good could actually refer to negligent amounts of ill effects. Me sitting on the porch watching the sunset is not good for the environment, but it isn't harming it any more then the porch being there and me being alive anyways. So if it's not good, or even if it is a little (or a lot) harmful, then why is the focus on doing something all about taking money in the forms of caps and making things more expensive. It is actually about making things more expensive or off shoring them to countries without caps like Europe has done. But Solar and wind are more expensive (about 3 times at current US prices), Electric vehicles and plug in electric hybrids require investment up front not considering the useful life of existing vehicles let alone the reduced life of the hybrids and electric vehicles.
The problem isn't so much as doing something to err on the safe side, it's the costs in $dollars plus the loss of convenience and freedoms that all the current political solutions are coming with. If carbon is capped in a country, how are you going to open a factory and exploit your ideas to make money on them when all the existing factories have all the credits? If your allotted so much petrol for your car, what happens when junior gets sick and you have to make extra trips "off schedule" to get him to the doctors office or to purchase medicine, will you then hav
I hope you're not seriously suggesting that ICE isn't melting at the caps. As for why...It's quite simple actually. It's the warm WATER not the air.
A lot of things. First if the caps were gone... I hope you don't live in a coastal city because that would be under water. Second, ICE refects sunlight much more efficiently than land and just the change in where the heat is will fuck up the entire world's current ecosystem.
I don't feel like responding to the rest of the post because it's the same old garbage about how it will take years to happen and it could be a good thing...blah blah blah. None of it is scientific. You people always claim climatotlogists are fear mongering but in the same breath you fear monger how going green will bankrupt our country with absolutely no evidence. Pot...meet kettle.
Time makes more converts than reason
Again, this is a scientifically illiterate comment. The earth receives an immense amount of energy from the sun. So it is obvious that even a small change in either the rate of energy influx or energy efflux could make a substantial difference in the equilibrium temperature.
Suggesting that a "trace" gas can have little effect is foolish and unscientific. What matters is what it does, not its absolute level. A "trace" level of cyanide will kill you. The fact that atmospheric levels of CO2 make a major contribution to the energy balance of the earth has been known since the 17th century. There is no meaningful scientific dispute about this.
Since the Arctic completely melted in 2008; according to the Global Warming Scientists, who have a consensus and thus are never wrong; there shouldn't be that much more ice up there to melt. Thus any more rise in sea level should only be about what we have already experienced. I think most of the sea ports still exist above water, so I don't think we have too much to worry about.
Or do you think that the consensus is wrong, and the Arctic didn't completely melt in 2008? If you think they might have been wrong, then why do you believe them this time?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Lol.. No, I'm suggesting that it's not melting because Co2 is causing the atmosphere to warm up by 2 degrees F.
As for the warm water, there are many causes of that including the volcanic activity at the polar caps.
First, the catastrophic floods would be covered by the other crap like the weather changes and stuff wouldn't it? Second, the entire worlds ecosystem isn't static, it's continually evolving and adapting and changing. The worlds ecosystem would be different but fucked up would only be a relative term to an arbitrary point in time. The earth's ecosystem is fucked right now compared to 20 million years ago. Finally, the point I was attempting to extract from you was what will be so catastrophic about the ice caps disappearing that the entire human race is endangered of mass extinction?
I'm willing to bet that a portion of what your not realizing is that even with the polar caps melted, it isn't likely that we would see a terribly huge increase in temp from it. Without the ice reflecting the sun back, the moisture content in the atmosphere will be higher, but the nature of the polar caps which is evidence with the air rarely reaching above freezing will be that of a state of constant cloud cover and snow/ice storms. This right there will reflect a lot of the heat back and prevent it from even reaching the ground in the first place.
Well, if you payed attention to the rest of the post, you will see that it was about NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM in the first place while taking yours and mine as well as our children and their future generation's freedoms away. I don't have a problem with doing something, as long as something is at least as effective as the costs of implementing it are. I'm sorry that I'm not of the church of global warming and fall goo goo eyed in support of anything labeled green.
And yes, that's the only damn thing that can logically be deduced about people like you. Your more worried about implementing something at any costs just to say you did but you have no clue to if it will work at fixing global warming or not. I have heard all the hype that it will force people to invent new ways to create energy when the suffering is bad enough and historically, that has always lead to revolutions- not innovative solutions to perceived problems. But the bigger question is, why even wait? Why must we do all this loss of freedom in some maddening attempt to force the populous of the world (or should I say the rich nations of the world) to invent something that simply doesn't exist today when the proper solution is to have the governments of the world unite in the principle of finding less impacting energy sources by collecting teams of scientist and offering the results royalty free. Then we can skip all the bullshit about taking freedoms away, we can skip all the making the rich pay, we can skip all of the bullshit required to make people suffer enough to invent new processes for creating energy or improving existing processes and just get the damn job done in the first place.
This is where the government control comes in. Your
So volcanoes are responsible for the caps melting in both the north and south pole at the same time when this has never been seen before (in human history) on either pole? That sounds very unlikely.
It's true that the climate has changed in the past and the Earth itself will survive and I have no doubt that life itself will survive but drastic changes in ecosystems in a very short time has proven to cause mass extinctions. We should be very worried about this. It's extremely naive to think we'll survive just because of our resourcefulness as a species. This is a real challenge.
I already answering you question as to why humans will be endangered. A lack of diversity can have devastating consequences like a disease wiping out entire crops of food or animal species that are depended upon by another species in turn destroying that population. It is very likely that diversity will be diminished by global warming as it affects the Earth as a whole, altering virtually every ecosystem simultaneously. A good example of this is Nepal where some regions are seeing outbreaks of malaria where it never was warm enough for mosquitos to live before. Just think about how much disease a mosquito can spread and how much that can affect all mammals in that area. There are so many layers to the global warming problem that it's childishly simplistic to think that everything will stay the same except that your each front property in Maine is going to skyrocket in value because it's summer year round.
All I read was more speculation about the costs without any analyzation of the benefits economically. Personally it frustrates me that people are not behind green technology because any sane person knows that fossil fuels are not an endless resource and regardless of what you believe about human impact on the environment we are going to have to start worrying about our finite resources at some point and it might as well be now. Economically, for the US at least, I can only see this being a good thing for so many reasons. The United States' economy thrives on innovation and pumping money into green technology solves a lot of problems in my opinion is a good thing. If we don't start producing something new in this country things can only get worse. We have the worst trade gap of any country in the world. We might as well ride the green wave and start investing in green technology. Whether you like it or not that is the direction the modern world is heading in and we might as well capitalize on it.
As for cap and trade I don't know where you get the idea that I'm for it. I never even mentioned it. Most of your post seems to be based around something I never even mentioned. Cap and trade looks like it got cut off at the knees anyway so I don't know why you are still bitching about it. There are a lot of ways we can promote green, and more efficient technology without resorting to cap and trade.
Time makes more converts than reason
You are James Burke and I claim my five pounds. Or are you? And do I?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That doesn't answer the question.
The parent that I was asking the question to stated that icebergs had their own gravity and it actually 'pulled' water close to them, then as they melted it would loose the gravity and the water wouldn't be 'pulled' close.
My question is, if the iceberg has less density then the surrounding water, wouldn't the gravitational field of the iceberg be less then the gravitational field of the surrounding water?
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Oh, sorry, somehow managed to miss what you were replying to. Yes, and I'm pretty sure the gravitational attraction of water to the iceberg is negligible in any case.
I am trolling
I'm not willing to go to war with China either. Bribery would be the better course, as I proposed.
Every time I have this discussion, people throw out alarming rhetoric like "shackling our economy." Frankly, I don't see it. There are so many ways to *make* money off reducing CO2 emissions*, that I don't see the price of CO2 permits ever getting that high.
Case in point: Sulfur dioxide. Back in the 1990s, acid rain was a problem. Government implements a cap-and-trade system. Power industry screams bloody murder, offering up doomsday scenarios. They said the industry would be bankrupted, that the permits would auction off for an industry-killing $1200/ton. The country would go dark, and even the best of us would resort to cannibalism to make ends meet.
Government goes ahead with the auction. The actual auction price comes in around $300/ton. Emissions are down by 40%, and the program is now expected to cost about 1/4th what the government initially estimated (those estimates themselves being far lower than what industry was claiming). I expect CO2's story to follow about the same course.
Further, if we know that the demand for green technology is only going to rise, letting other countries take the lead assures that in twenty years we'll be a green importer, not a green exporter. We're still scrambling to catch up with the Danish on manufacturing wind turbines. When China gets rich enough to want to replace its coal plants with CSP, who do you want building it for them?
If the goal is to transition to green technology as quickly as possible, it seems obvious to me that slightly slower growth heavily directed towards the exploration and refinement of low-CO2 technology is going to get us there a lot faster than a strategy of maximum, undirected growth.
* Example: The Empire State Building is about to undergo a $20M refit, which they expect to save about $4.4M/year in energy costs, reduce energy consumption by 40%, and eliminate hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
As unlikely as changes in the atmosphere of less then .28% (.0028) of the total green house gasses in the atmosphere is going to cause catastrophic issues when it doesn't even bring the air temp above freezing? You seem to be wanting to claim one is absurd when ignoring that absurdity of your prefered explaination. When you consider the water vapor which is a greenhouse gas, man made Co2 makes up a tiny fraction of the total.
But considering that the recorded history of man is short, considering the ability to seek these places and return alive is a recent feat in the history of man, considering that the discoveries of volcanic activity at both poles, including in the oceans surrounding the poles (Antarctica actually has volcanoes under the ice shelf on land that has melted the ice and we have measured the depths of the pools of water related to it), do you really think that idea is more absurd then Co2? Or is it at least worth investigating- even if it is blasphemy? You know, god forbid that something other then those bastard man made Co2 gasses being behind anything right?
Now wait a minute, your getting a little presumptuous as well as alarmist here. Nothing has been shown to suggest that neither of us nor wildlife will_not_be able to adapt. From all the rational accounts I can find, the entire shift is going to take centuries if not more before it's all done. It will be a gradual experience, some life forms might not make it, but others will adapt and thrive. As for man, well, we can build levies, dams, bridges, we can irrigate fields, control the saline buildup of those fields, create compost, use chemicals to control diseases, pests, illnesses and many, many more things. Even without all that, we lived through the little ice age, watched the middle east move from a thriving garden to a wasted desert, survived plagues, drought, heat waves, cold snaps, diseases, and much more of what can be expected from the apocolyptic scenario you describe. We even have nuclear wastelands that are thriving nature troves with wildlife and plant life more then intact. To think man or nature can't or will not survive the polar caps melting is a little like ignoring the history of man, evolution, and everything else.
Genetically engineered crops, pesticides and the old fashioned mosquito netting, antibiotics, are all just a few high tech and low tech solutions. However
Every time I have this discussion, people throw out alarming rhetoric like "shackling our economy." Frankly, I don't see it.
Yeah, "shackling" is hyperbole. But cap and trade (at least as proposed in the US) would increase everybody's energy costs enough to notice, and that would have a ripple effect. It wouldn't force us all to start growing vegetables in our front lawns to survive, but everybody would spend a couple hundred dollars a month more, and that adds up to a lot across the entire country.
The reality is that energy costs are going to go up anyway. The economy will recover and demand from the developing world will increase, so there is still plenty of economic incentive to develop new energy sources even without cap and trade.
If the goal is to transition to green technology as quickly as possible, it seems obvious to me that slightly slower growth heavily directed towards the exploration and refinement of low-CO2 technology is going to get us there a lot faster than a strategy of maximum, undirected growth.
"Heavily directed" research is suboptimal because nobody knows what strategies will eventually work or where they'll come from. "Maximum" is good because a smaller fraction of a larger economy can be a larger absolute expenditure. "Undirected" is good because it minimizes the harm from bad direction and maximizes the number of solutions being actively pursued.
All of your points have been debunked time and time again or are unproven theories. Realclimate has an answer for all the bunk you have espoused so far, including the BS nugget you just crapped.
Maybe you should read up on the mass extinctions that have precedeed us.
At this point I'm going to stop arguing. It's obvious we are not going to agree. I just don't understand how you can call me an alarmist when you and people like you are fear mongering just as much about the economy. It's a bit hypocritical. There is literally mounds of evidence that support global warming and the damage it can cause but if you choose to ignore it for political reasons then so be it. It's just the nature of science. In ten more years or so no one will be questioning it. I guess turning a blind eye to the fact that the ice caps are in worse shape than they have ever been in human history is something some people are going to continue to do until their own house is under water.
Wow, another argument that I didn't make. You should stick to things I have actually said instead of continuing to make up arguments out of whole cloth, but then you would only be left with lame arguments that have been debunked years ago but true believers continue to cling to. Global warming deniers remind me of creationists. They'll find one otherwise credible scientist and hang their whole argument on his/her lack of understanding on the subject or their complete lunacy.
Time makes more converts than reason
Oh god, please refer me to something other then your holey site that uses the debunked works to justify debunking the work that debunks it. And no, none of my points have been properly addressed at all, and certainly not in the context I stated. I posit that your length in time to reply was because you were looking for links to such debunking that wasn't there.
You don't understand the entire point of my posting do you? You are claiming doom and gloom and ignore or brush aside anything that might mitigate that scenario or even calls to better understand them in order to make an open ended claim about something in the distant future that likely won't ever effect anyone alive today outside of the variances in storm strengths and such that we have lived with out entire life and claim that something has to be done about it right now. Then when that something directly effects you and me, and some of us look at how it is going to directly effect us, you call me an alarmist. But when given the opportunity to debunk what I claimed will be the effects of the political solutions being thrown about, you just ignore those effects and claim you don't support that approach without offering what you do support. And when asked the questions of why does it have to happen right this minute instead of when advances are actually present that will limit the harms to me and the economy I use, there is no answer, just a do something now. Do you seriously suggest that I'm as irrational as you? Do you really think I'm hypocritical or that our positions are equal in stature?
And those mounds of evidence all rest on one single point that has never been proven. The point that a shift in less the one half of one percent of the atmospheric green house gasses can actually provide the end game scenarios you describe and that man kind can do nothing about it except listen to you. And the worst problem about it is when I point out that the political solutions on the table do nothing to actually address the problems of pouring the GHGs that you claim are the basis for your doom and gloom scenario, you want to ignore that and claim I'm the bad guy for not heeding your warnings.
Is it really too much to ask or so unreasonable that if we have to give up freedoms and work harder to pay for things we already and normally use and can already afford, that we make sure the so called solutions actually address the problems and do something about it? For fucks sake, why is that such a spot for brain washed people like you? Why must we ignore any consequences of the solutions and not pay attention to if they will actually do anything and just accept them? I know that what you want with global warming- just accept it- don't question it- it's the one true religion, but your little game is more important when it actually effects us and not some mythical time in the future.
We are in the "in ten more years" stage of the last prophecy that hasn't panned out. By
Arctic Ice melts is a very dynamic system and much is replaced in the following winter. It doesn't matter much either way, because about 90% of floating ice's volume is below water, thus sea ice (arctic) only contributes 10% of it's volume to sea level rise. Continental Ice OTOH is a different matter.