ICE Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning

xp65 writes "Researchers have used NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite to compose the most comprehensive picture of changing glaciers along the coast of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The new elevation maps show that all latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet are affected by dynamic thinning — the loss of ice due to accelerated ice flow to the ocean. The maps also show surprising, extensive thinning in Antarctica, affecting the ice sheet far inland. The study, led by Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, was published September 24 in Nature."

Comments

Re:Don't matter...

[BlackusDiamondus]

Then when the engineers say it's too late to do anything except build a 300 foot tall dam around every coastline in the world, it'll be their fault for not fixing it.

Wow, exaggerate much?

Re:Good-bye ice, it was nice knowing you.

[icebike]

Where is the massive coastal flooding that was promised to be caused by this?

I have beachfront property. Or I will have as soon as the much promised flooding arrives.

Re:Good-bye ice, it was nice knowing you.

[Anonymous Coward]

I say fuck the polar bears. Why? Because we need polar-bear human hybrids in order to survive the coming pseudo-ice-age warming period. Also when the magnetic field flips from north to south, our polar-human descendants can track the pole as it migrates over the period of M_PI years. I mean if anything can track that, it'd be a polar human.

Carbon Credits?

[retech]

I thought carbon credits would have someone parked on the poles with a couple of ice making machines (perhaps like they use in a hotel but not as loud) and they'd be scooping fresh ice out to keep it topped off... why is this not happening? Have we been lied to? Where did all that carbon credit money go to? Just when I thought for sure I could sit in my apt and do something really fucking meaningful from a distance to help save all those future generations by buying offset credit every time I got on WOW and played for two days... this just has destroyed my entire weekend and trust in humanity.

Re:Don't matter...

[Arker]

Well, with what is usually being proposed, like reducing carbon emissions by driving more fuel efficient cars, no leaving lights on everywhere, how is that POSSIBLY a bad thing?

Sure, more efficient cars (as long as they arent less safe or something) is a great idea regardless. But if we are spending time and money (and energy) on one thing that is still less to spend on other things.

But conserving energy cannot do that, as we are simply choosing to reduce the energy input into a system that had previously had a moderately stable equilibrium before we started burning all those fossil fuels.

"Moderately stable equilibrium" might be optimistic. Long term earth's climate swings between hot house and ice age. We would like for it to hold right in the warmer part of the ice age cycle forever, but that's not an option. It's easy to say human activity affects environment - but it's hard to predict exactly how. We cant just run the earth back and forwards through time running different scenarios, outside of computer models, which are only as good as their underlying assumptions. The agricultural age probably had affects too. About 10k years ago the last glaciation reversed. We are due soon for either another glacial (cold) period or else a return to a hothouse, naturally. Which is it? There are several logical possibilities:

1. A glaciation should be starting, but anthropogenic effects have delayed it. Mitigation could result in a resumption of glaciation. Not generally good for mankind.
2. A glaciation should be starting, but anthropogenic effects have resulted in a swing to hothouse instead. Might or might not be possible to reverse. If not possible then todays mitigation efforts are a waste of resources that will soon be even more precious.
3. A hothouse should be starting anyway, human emissions or not. In this case it's very likely that all mitigation efforts will be entirely futile as well.

We will find ourself on very thin ice

[Anonymous Coward]

It has already been in the news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI#t=1m21s

Re:Don't matter...

[coaxial]

But logically speaking taking action before you know the consequence of the action can be very bad. Many of the demands made to mitigate postulated anthropogenic global warming involve considerable expense, so all the things that we know for sure need doing (like feeding people) that might otherwise be done with the money constitutes the minimum opportunity cost.

Of course the irony is that the people benefiting from the status quo have always whined about the cost, even when at the time it was trivial. The sad fact is, that since AGW is a positive feedback loop, the longer we have delayed taking steps to slow/reverse the process, the harder and more expensive it becomes.

The maximum would be far greater - we might well cause one climate catastrophe as we seek to avert the other.

Yeah. It would be really a shame if more people took mass transit.

Re:What is the net effect?

[jamesh]

I'm with you. I'm going to wait until the sharks are swimming around my ankles here in central Victoria, Australia, before I stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

It has to be sharks too. Angry sea bass aren't going to convince me. There are plenty of non-global warming explanations for why sea bass could be swimming around my ankles, and so that alone should not be taken as hard evidence of climate change.

And once I'm finally convinced that the climate is in fact changing, the presence of sharks swimming around my ankles isn't going to convince me that my CO2 has anything to do with it. It could in fact be the anklesharks causing climate change for their own reasons.

Re:Good-bye ice, it was nice knowing you.

[peragrin]

yea but the stench will finally be out of NY city. I think that's worth it.