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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."

8 of 895 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Easier for denialists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    You have as much credibility as those who deny the fact of evolution.

    Seriously dude. What's it like to be so arrogantly ignorant, and so gullible that you swallow the same bullshit from the same bullshit artists that brought you (literally funded by the same people) that cigarette smoking is healthy and doesn't cause cancer (from the 50's)?

    The fact that tens of thousands of scientists the world over, across disciplines, examining independent data, all come to the same conclusion... you reject their findings as some sort of global, multi-national conspiracy of lies. Yet you belive hook, line, and sinker the conclusions of fossil-fuel-funded 'think tanks', and side with Glenn Beck on this issue? Really?

    That's just sad and pathetic. And really not something you should be broadcasting.

  2. Re:The Newest Wave of Warmist Alarm by hsthompson69 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Sceptic: I need to see evidence. A does not lead directly to C, show me B.
    Denalists: I dont believe in C therefore A must be some kind of conspiracy.

    Interesting definitions. I'll add two more for you:

    Warmist: The overwhelming weight of the evidence shows C, so any data that contradicts C must be wrong.
    Scientist: My fundamental hypothesis is predicated on C, so any data that contradicts C invalidates my hypothesis.

    All too often, we forget science is the ruthless application of skepticism to one's *own* ideas.

  3. Re:I am not scared by Bill+Currie · · Score: 0, Troll

    My fear is that nothing they come up with works as ultimately you cannot fight the Sun and Earth's natural cycles and all the blame will be set upon carbon.

    My fear is that we succeed in getting atmospheric CO2 levels to drop, accelerating the spread of the deserts. Or worse, the severe stunting of agricultural plants.

    CO2 is not a pollutant: it is food for all photosynthesizing organisms, and thus indirectly for us. Even though non-photosynthesizing organisms produce CO2, all are net CO2 sinks (exhibit A: limestone). CO2 is currently around 300ppm. It does not become a problem for humans until around 10000ppm (1%), and then it causes only drowsiness. 80000ppm(8%) is getting rather problematic, though (wikipedia). Atmospheric levels haven't been above 7000ppm for hundreds of millions of years.

    If CO2 causes global warming (this is in no way proven yet), then at worst we lose some coastlines. Glaciers melting might be a good thing: that's a lot of water locked up in ice that would be better off in rivers and lakes. Glacial growth is an interruption in the water cycle.

    I want my kids to be able to eat. If they have to move to higher ground and/or fight of other people to survive, so be it.

    --

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --
    Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak

  4. Re:Easier for denialists by daveime · · Score: 1, Troll

    Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that a single man can alter 13,7 football fields within his lifetime through farming, mining, driving, building, etc.?

    As opposed to the sun which has a surface area of 6088000000000 Km^2 ?

    That's 887 Km^2/habitant, or 164,377 of your "real international standards units" (football fields).

    Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that the variations in radiation from a superheated ball of gas at 5505C (9941F) might, just possibly, have some bearing on the situation ?

  5. Re:Easier for denialists by nschubach · · Score: 0, Troll

    Sadly, the world is run by people with "belief" in something they can't solidly describe/verify... so it's par for the course.

    --
    Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  6. Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed by mrcaseyj · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'd never heard of "Mike's Nature trick", so I looked it up. Here's what Google turned up:

    "Mike's Nature trick" refers to the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data.

    "Along with"? More like "instead of".

    ..."Hide the decline" refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960...

    Diverge in what direction? Downward right?
    Besides, whether it was a decline in temperature or decline in reliability, they had no business hiding it. They wouldn't accept such a practice if it had been done by an oil company. They should have just plotted the full proxy data including the known unreliable parts along with the thermometer data in a different color. Then we all would have known immediately of the unreliability of the proxy data. But they didn't because they knew that if we could see that the proxy data was unreliable and giving falsely low temps for the last 50 years, then nobody would have given the proxies any credibility a thousand years ago.

    One other thing: quoting only the "hide the decline" part of the email is rather disingenuous, since a lot of people will assume, without context, that it refers to a decline in temperature.

    I didn't have time to expound on the subject in depth. And I think it does refer to a decline in temperature.

  7. Re:Dear moron... by Lumpy · · Score: 0, Troll

    How do you know his house is not there on the left? Maybe that is is MOTHERFUCKING back yard?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  8. Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed by SmilingSalmon · · Score: 1, Troll

    Here is a list of many studies showing evidence of MWP around the globe. The wikipedia article you cite is biased toward Mann. It even prominently displays the MBH hockey stick graph! See this for an explanation of what's wrong with the hockey stick graph.