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Antarctic Ice Is Growing, Not Melting Away, At Davis Station
schwit1 writes "A report from The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research says that Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away. Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m. A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded."
The antarctic is supposed to be a desert because it is too cold to snow.
The fact the central area is now accumulating snow points to warming and accompanying increased precipitation.
The ice sheets have increased their outward flow. Also another indicator of increased precipitation and warmth.
One has to be very careful what one looks at for indicators of global warming/cooling.
Great data and interesting if it proves out. But all the "global warming doesn't exist people" are going to jump on this like every bit of news about cold weather to claim it contradicts the idea that there's global warming, which it doesn't.
Global warming is not a powerful enough trend to counteract all other factors- it still get colder in fall and winter in temperate zones, and it's often colder from one day to the next. While the majority of ski resorts have reported a trend of less annual snowfall per year for the past twenty years or so, some individual years buck the trend, and some resorts (like Holiday Valley in New York) have experienced the opposite trend. It's a hugely complex system with a lot of random variation and unknown factors. While the satellite data tells us that the average temperature of the earth is increasing every year, that leaves a lot of room for variation from the mean, and some parts of the world are actually getting colder. Due to the complexities of weather, some areas may experience more snowfall when the temperature rises. So don't make this out to mean more than it is.
But it is very interesting, and could force changes to models claiming rapidly rising sea levels due to global warming.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
To my knowledge, it is already known, that the ice thickens in West-Antarctica (News from 2002). Davis-Station seems to be located there.
I am interested, what new findings in West-Australia lead to Dr Allison's evaluation on the development of the whole continent of Antarctica. The posted article itself is a bit sparse on facts.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
That's not a bad point.
For the last few years, guys with the slightest connection to anything even remotely connected to the climate and weather are being called "climate scientists" or "climate change expert." Huh?
s/ego/reputation/g
Let's pretend that human activity has no effect on the environment.
With that in mind there is still no reason not to be more green.
Pollution shortens your life: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7946838.stm
Pollutionis linked to Pneumonia: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7347065.stm
Pollution affects birth weight: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7988619.stm
Pollution alters brain function: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7288176.stm
So why in the hell would anyone support polluting this planet?
Installing solar panels and using water butts and various other green things can save money so why wouldn't people want to save money?
You can't (shouldn't) drive while intoxicated so increased public transportation makes it better for me when I want to socialise with my friend with alcohol and what not. Riding on buses and trains I can sleep, read or use my laptop while going to work rather than just sitting behind the wheel stressing out. Those who insist on driving get the benefit of less traffic when more people use the train or bus So it's nothing but a benefit all around
My main concern is looking out for number one and looking out for the environment results in nothing but benefits for me as it does for most people. Ignorant people should realise this and stop focusing on just the planet. This isn't about tree huggers. This is about saving money and improving your life. So even if you have a "fuck the planet" attitude making certain change benefits yourself as well as the tree huggers.
... before you can reverse its slope. Can you point me to one? Not the lines presented in "An Inconvenient Truth", because inconveniently for Al Gore, those have already been thoroughly discredited.
So, where does your line come from? Show it to me, please. Credible data from one or more credible sources clearly showing this trend you claim.
By the way, according to your pet satellite data, the upper atmosphere has not been warming in the way predicted by any of the greenhouse-gas warming models.
it also tended to be wetter. The amount of arable land that could be used for growing crops was larger, not smaller.
For the record, I'd like to provider a short list of things that aren't cogent political arguments:
1) Television catch phrases
2) Proper nouns
3) Noises
5) Movie titles
> I think Carl Sagan neatly addressed that:
Except Dr. Sagan was an almost canonical example of a politicized scientist toward the end of his life. His greatest work, Cosmos (which I have a DVD set of on my shelf) was greatly flawed by his growing political leanings (which were garden variety peacenik/green of the most naive uneducated sort) instead of focusing on the science which he was an actual authority on.
> In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,'
That has probably never happened. The other guy having really good (and repeatable) RESULTS can change opponents into supporters in science. Hell, scientists would probably still be debating relativity and quantum theory had not the Trinity Test not settled the matter in such dramatic fashion.
But that not the same as the the problems when scientists get into political affairs, they expect the decisions to be made on purely rational arguments that can be solved as a math problem. But they often can't. Political decisions aremore often cases of competing interests or weighing risk/rewards. Then we get to AGW and the usefuless of the scientific method is really called into question. AGW has almost zero actual numbers, it's all computer models and measurements close to the error bars where both sides can make good arguments, thus both sides now field Nobel Prize Winners in attempts to win by appeal to authority. But one side has Al Gore and James Hansen and that settles it as far as this non-scientist is concerned. Gore isn't a scientist but is treated as one and Hansen might have been a scientist once but has been nothing but a fraud since his antics with the hockey stick chart were debunked and he escaped all consequences.
Democrat delenda est
What the big stink anyway...the earth has only had ice at its poles for about 30% of its existence. It comes and goes with or without humans and has for millennium. Some are being a tad arrogant to think the human can affect such a chaotic large system.
That's not a bad point.
For the last few years, guys with the slightest connection to anything even remotely connected to the climate and weather are being called "climate scientists" or "climate change expert." Huh?
Case in point: David Suzuki, a Canadian zoologist who has done all his professional work in genetics. Somehow, he became a climate scientist in the press. This is also the guy that said " climate change deniers", especially ones in politics, should be jailed for their "crimes".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
We also weren't trying to feed six billion humans last time it was seriously warm.
I would like to point out that if it gets warm enough we will have an entire extra continent to farm and live in, not to mention all the other land that is currently locked away under ice sheets.
And as has been pointed out extensively in the 'arctic snowfall' discussion here, atmospheric water content is related to temperature. Generally speaking, higher temperature == more rain.
I think increases in technology are more than capable of handling our food supply problem for the foreseeable feature, but in a desperate situation, perhaps increased global warming would be our best investment.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Yeah, and us humans have only been on Earth for 0.00002% of it's existence.... species come and go, mostly without humans. So why worry?
Except, there is a problem in your logic. We can understand what has caused the coming and going of many of the global glaciations over the history of the world.
For example, the glaciation that occurred in the late Devonian is linked to the spread of plants on land. Before this time, there were no trees. They captured a large amount of atmospheric CO2, triggering global cooling and glaciation. The result was one of the "big 5" mass extinctions on the planet, with about 50% loss at the genera level.
Guess what? Humans have spread all across the planet! Guess what? It's not arrogant to collect data that shows we are actively changing the system and try to make predictions based on it.
I'm not advocating any certain policy; but I am saying it is foolish to assume that we can't change the world, and that we can't understand complex systems.
"They are therefore the ones best positioned to come up with technical solutions and ways to meet lowered targets or at least flatten out production."
Except that is wrong.
"How can we possibly say to countries that are in the early stages of industrialization"
easy, don't do it that way. Countries do not need coal, they need electricty. Help them generate electricity a different way, and build their new grids intellegently. Not happhazzardly as was done when the moving of electricity was new.
It's better to show them how to generate electricity using solar thermal plants.
Add to that 'letting them' do it they was we did is very harmful and disasterus.
"somehow completely and forever off the hook. "
There is nothing in the agreement that says otherwise.
Considsering the amount of wealth China has, it's inexcusable to exempt them.
If everyone at that able suddenly found out the eating the rest of the pizza would destroy coastlines, displace millions, and wreck global havoc, then yes, they can say it.
Of course, they should help that person find a cleaner pizza.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have a more apt analogy than your pizza one.... just because Jack murders a dozen people doesn't excuse John from killing one.
Unless he kills jack.
Are you aware that Indira Gandhi is not the same person one usually refers to as simply "Gandhi"?
But I must say I agree with the rest of your comment, the US is the biggest polluter and owes the rest of the world some respect. We all share the same planet.
And going back to the article, this shows the typical tactics of people who don't want to do their part in fighting global warming. They try to imply that the enormous amount of evidence that has been collected demonstrating the anthropogenic influence in global warming is just a bunch of isolated data. Yet they want to use one single measurement as evidence that there really isn't something like a sudden raise in temperatures over the last few hundred years that's more abrupt than anything ever seen on earth.