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New Photos Show 'Devastating' Ice Loss On Everest
Simmeh writes "The BBC reports on new photos of the Himalayas taken from exactly the same position as ones from 1929 and compares the ice coverage. The Asia Society, which did the groundwork, are quoted as saying, 'If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be severely diminished by the middle of this century.' I guess the previous claim wasn't too unrealistic."
Yes, there are people who study these things, and who get research grants to do so. Grants that in NO WAY influence the conclusions of such research? Reducing use of fossil fuels is a noble cause, but using AGW as the reason is akin to telling a teenage boy to stop what he's doing because he's gonna go blind!
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
Conspiracy theories and scientific hypes aside, is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth?
Or, in other words, can we stop this even if we want to? Earth will continue changing as it will continue rotating, and we might as well take our minds off what we cannot change and work a little bit more on what we can, i.e. the misery of mankind.
You say that like you're thinking of "one man" affecting an entire planet.
Think of it this way, the surface area of the planet is 5.1x10E8 km^2, but there are 6.75 billion people alive today.
The real question is, can "one man" have an impact on their own personal share of 0.07556 km^2? That's only 7.6 hectares per person, of which only 2.2 hectares is 'land', which includes mountains, desert, and ice. This leaves about 1 hectare of productive land for each human being.
So the better question to ask is:
Are men capable of changing the properties of something as huge as 1 hectare each?
I'd say: YES
Please define the difference between "environmental change", and "environmental damage". Do you believe that the current environmental "stasis" (however incredibly brief it is, by any measure of geologic time) is somehow "good" and any deviation from this stasis is "bad"?
Do you believe that climate is static, consistent and invariable? (There are mountains of data to refute this).
Do you believe that changes in climate are inherently "bad"? Do you believe that it is possible to differentiate between man-made climatic shifts and naturally occurring climatic shifts? How? Do you believe that a man-made influence on the environment is "worse" than a naturally occurring climatic shift? Why?
Do you subscribe the puritanical view of causation whereby actions and causations which are man-made, are by definition 'evil'?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
> From the article it sounds as if the issue in questions is water supply and how changing the normal rate of glacial melt could change how people live.
They may be able to fix that:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4932332-indian-engineer-builds-glaciers-to-fight-climate-change
Quote: As of this year he has built 10 artificial glaciers, using a simple system of pipes and stone dams to pool and direct streams of water into heavily shaded parts of valleys above a given village. During winter the pools become thick ice masses - frozen water tanks for farmers who need reliable summer flows as a hedge against changing weather patterns.
Some people have done glacier growing for a long time:
http://www.umb.no/statisk/noragric/publications/master/2007_ingvar_tveiten.pdf
Quote:
People in the districts of Baltistan and Gilgit practice 'glacier growing' with the intention of
making glaciers that will enhance water availability. This is done by carrying glacier ice from
a naturally occurring glacier up to elevations over 4000 m a.s.l., where it is placed in a dug
out cave in a scree-slope. Apart from the ice, gourds containing water are also added to
interior of the cave. Then a layer of charcoal, and sawdust or wheat husks is put on top of the
ice. The workers close off the cave by piling up rocks to cover the entrance.
Lastly, by growing many glaciers, you can affect the albedo of a mountain, or even a mountainous region and thus affect local climate. Darker mountains absorb more heat and thus lose ice faster, reverse that by making more glaciers and other glaciers could appear without you having to make them directly.
Sigh. When the global warming people are able to explain just a couple of minor details, then and only then will I believe them. Here are a few little facts that tend to be conveniently omitted when global warming is mentioned.
1. Yes, there is a definite positive correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. Using ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc., this has been confirmed. But the fly in the ointment is that the CO2 levels *lag* the temperature changes by 40 to 50 years. Excuse me? The "cause" of the global warming happens "after" things warm up? That little datum all by its lonesome is rather hard to dispute.
2. The major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere isn't CO2. It's H2O. Yup, plain old water. The effect of the CO2 is about 1 percent of the overall greenhouse effect. And of that 1%, mankind is contributing a much smaller percentage.
3. There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland. Yup, the glaciers are melting and in the process exposing abandoned farms. Hmm. Seems to me that if there were farms where there's currently glaciers, that would imply it being much warmer in the past.
4. And finally, the polar ice on Mars seems to be also shrinking. Guess those probes we've sent there have had a massive effect on Mar's temperature as well.
Seems to me that the global warming crowd have a bit of a secondary agenda running that has nothing what so ever to do with actual global warming. When the above independently verifiable but inconvenient little facts are explained, then I will consider the GW crowd to have done due diligence and be worth listening to. But until then, it's a transparent attempted power grab and quite frankly they can take their propaganda and stuff it into the nearest fireplace. Should make 'em quite happy since paper is carbon neutral and no fossil fuels would be used.
I've seen a lot of proposals that could help against climate change, but I've never seen one that would turn people into peasants; quite the contrary, they usually involve a ton of technological progress. The countries who would mainly lose out are the ones that are basing their economy on oil—and those people are often already mostly peasants.
However, comparing the prominent S-curves in the foreground reveals a significant difference in perspective/foreshortening that makes it clear that the color photo is taken from a higher elevation. The distant shapes seem to match pretty well so I don't think it's an aspect-ratio fuck-up, although that would be all too common in this modern world where nobody seems able to notice that effect either.
The biggest problem with people who deny the massive amounts of evidence pointing towards a significant human effect on global warming tend to be those who are financially benefiting from the alleged destruction of our environment .
Out of 3,146 scientists surveyed as to if they believed human activity to be of significant contribution to the increase in global temperatures since the 1800's, 82 percent said they did. Interestingly out of the petroleum geologists asked in this survey (who's job is oil exploration) only 47 percent believed.
(source:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html)
Ice melt is one of the worst indicators imaginable of antropogenous warming. Glaciers, snow and ice are more influenced by the dust we produce than by temperature.
Up to as recent as the 80-es the industrialized countries have been producing immense amounts of soot from buring coal, diesel, etc.The developing nations (including India) are now the main polluters and they are producing more and more of it. I am not surprised that Asian glaciers are retreating. Considering the complete lack of pollution control in India and China I would be surprised if they were not.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
So your answer is to go "The sky is falling!" and then stand there? How is THAT supposed to help? Here is my own "inconvenient truth"...nobody ATM has even a half assed, much less a comprehensive plan for dealing with AGW. Instead what we have is a bunch of leeches that have figured out a way to cash in on others misery. The ambulance chasers of AGW basically.
Look, I'm not "for or against" either side here. What I AM against is bullshit and thievery disguised as "being green". ANY plan that is based on "Fuck the west" is doomed to failure, because the west is ALREADY in decline. The USA? We don't make shit anymore, hell I wouldn't be surprised if even our bullets had "Made in China" stamped on them. Europe? Wouldn't be surprised if the EU splits up with Greece and now Ireland circling the bowl.
And of course cap and trade ignores the twin elephants in the room...India and China, who simply will tell you where to stick it. And notice how old Al Gore and his fellow cap and traders have NOT ONCE demanded heavy tariffs or other protectionist measures to get China and India to comply with carbon caps, why? Because they make massive profits there, that's why!
So if someone comes up with a real plan, like closing down all coal fired plants and replacing them with a combination of nuclear, wind, molten salt solar, and other long term zero carbon energy sources? I'll be the first one on the bandwagon. But carbon trading is nothing but a scam, a Catholic indulgences scheme cooked up by the same folks that gave you credit default swaps to yet again bleed cash from what little the American people have.
There is a reason why old Al Gore and the other 1%ers have made 85% of the wealth since '75, while the rest of us get to scrabble over the scraps, and it ain't because they worked harder. It is because, thanks in part to SCOTUS saying "corps=people" and "money=speech" that massive corruption have allowed the 1%ers to bribe...err I mean lobby, the laws to be tilted into their favor time and time again. And now they seek to do the same with a very real problem. Don't let them. If you truly believe in global warming, not this weasel worded climate change bullshit (since when DOESN'T the climate change?) then demand REAL change, not the snake oil Rev Al Gore and his pals on Wall Street are pushing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yup most sane people understand that recycling at home is useless (in the separate your crap containers to feel good about yourself) Recycling in general IS effective. Lead recycling is hugely successful and has significantly reduced the need for mining new lead. Steel and metals recycling is hugely sucessful, almost all foundries use scrap metal in their furnaces. Plastics recycling makes us that horribly overpriced plastic decking that the rich people use to feel good on their new 6800 sq foot 8 bedroom home for 2, but there are other things that are real uses like fleece.. just don't get it near open flame as that crap goes up faster than gasoline soaked rags...
Composting at home is recycling that does work well.
Recycling works, it is that feel good, separate your trash, recycling at the curb that is fake. In fact more could be done to help the environment by having these feel good yuppie environmentalists STOP drinking bottled water. Bottled water is really bad for the environment as most bottling plants destroy the aquifer for the area they tap into for the real spring water.... The rest is just city water put in plastic bottles that are not recycled if you don't take the cap and ring off. because the makers are too stupid to make the cap and bottle out of the same plastic. Well not too stupid, it's on purpose... Cheapest price is far more important that recyclability.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nearly. I don't know how much Al Gore personally makes from polluting in China, but no matter how much it was it would be a small share of all the money being made by polluting in China. That money is hard to fight against politically, tempting politicans to choose easier paths.
By the way, there is at least one prominent climate scientist in this debate, who is railing against politicians like Gore for taking the easy path, and stating that the political influence of money is the largest problem in fighting global warming.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
The problem is everyone sees ice loss, and assumes melt. It's not melt, it is sublimation.
Sublimation - when solid goes directly to gas is to blame. This is like water ice on Mars evaporating (not melting) into the martian atmosphere. Here on Earth the increased sublimation is caused by land use changes. What was once moist forest at the feet of the mountains, has become drier farm land. This drier air then travels over the mountain and picks up moisture directly from the ice.
How else can you explain ice loss at below-freezing temperatures? You can't just say the "ice melted" unless you show that it is warmer at the peak. These pictures are proof that man is modifying the environment, but only locally, and has nothing to do with temperature.
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