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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."
...as the unknown future falls.
The increased temperatures of west Antarctica are more than compensated by decreased temperatures elsewhere in Antartctica. It is especially interesting that there is so much growth inland of Greenland.
Qualitatively, what you'd expect from climate change is more precipitation (because there's more evaporation) and therefore thickening at high elevations where the snow stays cold, while lower warmer regions flow faster or even melt.
Let's start by an extremely rapid decline in habitat for a great many and varied species, that we cannot possibly begin to fully appreciate scientifically, let alone model with any accuracy.
Those who demand "proof" of climate change before we do anything to fight it will find some way to ignore this. They'll keep pretending there's "no evidence" and that it's a "librul conspiracy" until it becomes undeniable (I'm betting til the dams surrounding a port city fail) because they don't believe in doing anything proactive.
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.
if net effect was positive, that would be great surprising news. It seems, instead, situation is getting worse so quickly that we are heading towards geoengineering (desperate) solutions.
839*929
One thing we can be certain of, never will any blame be laid at the door of overpopulation. There is just no solution they can come up with for that that involves the hiring of immense armies of bureaucrats and trillions of slave taxes.
Irrespective of humanity's perceived impact, does this not happen throughout history in a cyclical fashion? I would look at this type of activity as the main source of evolutionary change. The species that are equipped to survive the conditions will prevail.
Sorry, I didn't mean the net effect of climate change, I meant the net amount of ice in Greenland and Antarctica. From the data provided it's not obvious that Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice. For example there are very large blue/green regions (gaining ice) that by eye could be bigger than the red regions (losing ice).
The other question is regards climate model predictions. One of the catastrophic outcomes of climate change are large sea level rises due to ice melt in the polar regions. Presumably there are models that predict how this could occur with global warming. So the question is, do these data agree with these models?
and I'm really annoyed that health care is currently distracting the Senate from an issue that affects the future of the entire human race.
Well, this doesn't help, but I can see why health care is the focus of attention: it is one thing the government can do something about. Climate change is a serious problem, but it is now too big to fix, since no-one has the will to adopt a policy amounting to more than "business as usual" and "let's have another toke on that big ole' oil-pipe".
A lot of political mileage is being made of proposed emissions trading schemes, but it's too late for that. They are just accounting exercises - like pushing food around on the plate to make it look like you're eating less.
I'm sorry if that sounds defeatist, but I'd be happy to hear an alternative. People will not change until they're forced to.
I've repeatedly argued that we need to start building as many modern nuclear fission plants as possible. Preferably pebble bed reactors, using breeder reactors and reprocessing techniques to turn the waste into useful fuel.
And as I've explained on my homepage, I think that cap-and-trade will make coal less profitable, and nuclear power more profitable. It's a very capitalistic approach to the problem of climate change.
Congratulations!! You just explained by analogy how melting ice pack (ice cube), that is ALREADY floating in the water, will have no meaningful effect on sea level.
Now try this, take that same full cup and put two chop sticks side by side across the top of the glass. Now place a few ice cubes on the chop sticks and watch them melt, what happens to the water level in this case?
What is worrying is ice that is currently NOT floating is showing signs of melting, which will have an impact on sea levels.
The climate is changing, it doesn't mater if its caused by humans or some natural cycle, we have to start thinking about how we are going to adapt now if we are going to survive long term.
Remember that what happens elsewhere in the world DOES have an effect on you, it may be slight but it does. Ever notice how milk costs more when petrol prices go up because of political unrest in the middle East?
Another POV... http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/09/25/lawrence-solomon-hot-and-cold.aspx
He points to a National Geographic report saying the opposite.
It is really simple. It all depends on how much kick are you getting out of the environment as we know it.
It is true that so far whenever cataclysms occured and species died out there was a subsequent re-population with new flora and fauna. It is also true that whenever such events have occurred, nearly all of the prevalent species have disappeared, and the subsequent re-population has taken millions of years to happen.
So, if you really, really don't care about your species disappearing in famine and diseases and other niceties those bring then yeah, life will eventually adapt to the new equilibrium that will prevail, and there is little to worry about in the long run.
If you are one of the neo-conservatives who want to keep living as we like it (a.k.a. tree-huggers), without disruptions and without need to die out and re-adapt, then you understand there are things that better be done sooner than later.
Ahahahahaa.... This is similar logic to saying that drinking and driving isn't dangerous since you've never died doing it yet. Total falsehood. Just because we haven't all died yet doesn't mean we haven't been in danger. And to assert that is a complete logical fallacy.
BTW look up aerosols. They may have doomed us all, but luckily we stopped it in time, aerosols are used a very very tiny fraction now compared to what they were at their peak. Since we averted the crisis does it not count?
1) No, no scientists think this. It is changing more rapidly than it ever has in past. Except possibly for extinction level events which wiped out almost all life on the planet.
2) Dear god no, it will likely cause harm measured in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Perhaps the hundreds of millions of lives.
Do tell me the last time the entire scientific community united to 'cry wolf' over anything in past? Aside from aerosols which I mentioned. Give an example, impress me.
Whereas we can totally trust profit-seeking industry to give us the straight talk? Nuh-uh. Game/economic theory says that if spewing disinformation results in a net profit, it will happen, otherwise they are not treating their shareholders right. They're not supposed to be moral or ethical; they are supposed to turn a profit, on whatever timescale their investors think is appropriate.
Neither "side" is necessarily trustworthy, but one side has clear motives to be untrustworthy.
Note, also, that the power-seeking politicians generally tend to be motivated by more tangible graft, and not abstractions like "carbon tax" or "cap-and-trade". The stuff I am familiar with, is bribes for regulatory favors, sweetheart government contracts for friends and family, and (ahem) hikes on the Appalachian trail, high-priced call girls, and plain old nepotism.
Or is less than half truths. Most of Antarctica gets colder, some of it gets warmer. By reporting on the parts that get warmer, media tries to sell disasters just because it sells better than the whole truth and nothing but the truth. West Antarctica has according to climatologists always behaved differently from the rest of Antarctica.
Climatology news is starting too resemble a boxing match where only the strikes delivered by one of the boxers are being reported.
A significant amount of evolution is driven by mass die offs. That is, the population of a species reduced by 99% or more. We could evolve to be a species with average height of 7.5 feet very quickly...just kill off everyone except for a few hundred people who are taller than 7.5 feet. Let them have babies, and kill off any progeny who is shorter than 7.5 feet for a generation or two, and we would be a very tall species. Would you care to draw straws?
Do you really think that civilization can survive a significant reduction in the food supply? Do you have any idea what it is like to die of starvation? Your comment seems to show an implicit assumption that this would be somehow good for humanity, that having some competition would cause us to evolve, to become better, stronger, faster. It is easy to develop this detachment when staring at the fossil record. Wow, at the K/T boundary, the dinosaurs disappear, and the valiant rodents survived the asteroid/comet impact to evolve into us. Excellent, we wouldn't be here without that happening. Evolution is good. It resulted in us. Let the dying begin. Care to pony up your own grand-children first? After all, it's all in the name of evolution and progress.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The question is, over what time period are we seeing rises and falls in coverage? We have no proper data before the satellite age. So all we know is that there has been recent shrinkage. We have however no idea what the standard deviation is of gains and shrinkages over a period of centuries or millenia, so we have no idea whether we are looking at an event close to the mean or one that is several standard deviations away from it.
At this point people usually ridicule one for not being prepared to take action until there is proof, which is usually projected as being some natural disaster like New Orleans.
The argument is mistaken. It is quite reasonable to wait for proof, because 'doing things' in the absence of proof is a risky and expensive business. It could have quite dramatic and unexpected side effects depending on what the situation really is.
It would enormously help us figure this thing out if all the climate scientists would just publish their raw data and algorithms. That way we could at least verify their work so far. The ones that need to publish? Well, just about all of them. They supposedly have evidence that the present warming is a very rare event, but they decline to publish it. They just publish studies based on it, summaries of it, processed forms of it. We need this data, and we need the code that was applied to it.
Without that, its not science, its arm waving. There is probably nothing more important than to establish the climatic history of the last 2,000 years, and if we could establish ice coverage and density in some way, that too. Without the scientists publishing, I do not see how we take this debate any further. It is, to say the least, curious that the main workers in the field, the ones who find the present trend most alarming, are the ones who refuse to reveal the data that would prove them right.
Where, for instance, is Mann's algorithm, the one he refused to supply to the Wegman Committee? Where is the data underlying the HADCRU series? Where is Thompson's ice core data?
If we cannot see it, how do we even know it exists?