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100-Sq.-Mile Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland Glacier
suraj.sun sends word of a 100-sq.-mile (260-sq.-km) ice island that broke off of a Greenland glacier on Thursday. "The block of ice separated from the Petermann Glacier, on the north-west coast of Greenland. It is the largest Arctic iceberg to calve since 1962... The ice could become frozen in place over winter or escape into the waters between Greenland and Canada. ... [NASA satellite] images showed that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70-km-long (43-mile) floating ice shelf. There was enough fresh water locked up in the ice island to 'keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days,' said Prof Muenchow." The Montreal Gazette has more details and implications for Canadian shipping and oil exploration, along with this telling detail: "the ice island’s thickness [is] more than 200 metres in some places... [or] half the height of the Empire State Building." The NY Times has a good satellite photo of the situation.
No, this is a sign of AGW.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Yes, you can. The ability to do so was added back during the Jon Katz nonsense as I recall, so it's not like this is anything new.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
to lure settlers there. not because at anytime it was green and/or warm.
It is approximately the on the same scale, to the oceans, as that of a candy bar in a swimming pool.
And it will cause almost as much excitement.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm curious what technical challenges would have to be overcome to actually recover this frozen water. Many parts of the world are undergoing severe freshwater shortages. A very large block of frozen water seems like it could be very useful to answer that problem. Could getting at least part of it into into a reservoir be technically / economically possible?
Off the top of my head, I was musing about getting it into the Great Lakes, but the channels and locks in the Great Lakes Waterway are obviously far too small to move something this size. If it were eventually towed to a port, what could be done with it? How fast would it melt?
Oh, I just love this argument. It's based on the fact that arctic sea ice is declining to unprecedented levels according to studies using every piece of data and proxy data known, as documented in dozens of peer-reviewed studies, but at the same time, Antarctic ice is increasing, and at times, the combined average is higher than the previous combined average. Never mind that Antarctic sea ice increase is a *forecast* of AGW due to the increased snowfall and increase in flow rates of its glaciers, while Artic sea ice is declining, as expected.
The argument can basically be summed up as this:
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Well, we had this thing called an Ice Age and it put a ton of ice in places where historically there wasn't a ton of ice.
Over the last 12-14,000 some of that ice has been melting, then growing back, but generally melting.
Wrong!
The areas where the Norwegians settled were warmer than the rest of the area and forested.
"Interpretation of ice core and clam shell data suggests that between 800 and 1300 CE the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a relatively mild climate several degrees Celsius higher than usual in the North Atlantic, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. Barley was grown as a crop up to the 70th degree."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Norse_settlement
Ah, this old yarn! As another poster has already mentioned, it was named "Greenland" to lure settlers. But more importantly, there *were* places in Greenland that were green. Those same places are still there, and are even bigger today. Despite attempts to, the Vikings were unable to grow any crops on Greenland, and the only non-animal sources of food in their diet were wild berries, grasses, and seaweed. Today, Greenland cities can grow beets, rhubarb, and other cold-weather plants that the Vikings were unable to.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Right, because global warming predicts that all weather will cease to exist, right?
Seriously, what sort of idiot thinks that there will be no randomness from year to year? Climate is about *averages*. And the trends are clear.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
The average temperature at the peak of the last glaciation was 8-9C colder than the modern era. In one century, the "business as usual" scenario will lead to over 5-7C warming (our current rate of rise is about 2C per century, but not only are emissions rising, but we're currently having to overcome the planet's thermal inertia).
It's not *that* the temperatures are rising that's the problem. It's the *rate* that's the problem.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
But global warming is a lie by the liberals! It's all made up, Fox told me! How can this be happening?!
From TFA:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/vast-ice-island-breaks-free-of-greenland-glacier/
> Petermann is a sleeping giant that is slowly awakening.
> Removing flow resistance leads to flow acceleration.
Basically, this means flow acceleration would speed up erosion of the corners that "landlock" it relatively quickly. Pressure caused by the increasing flow on the parts that do the "landlocking" could also lead to the iceberg breaking into smaller parts thus making it easier to make it to the open water.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Global warming refers to a general trend. Even if there is global warming, it can still be colder one year than the other, even though the trend is upwards.
The fact that the temperature was warmer on average for several years in the past, could mean that there was more melting, causing ice to be more brittle, or more likely to break when ice re-froze.
In other words, damage could have happened to the glacier over time that caused certain regions to be less stable or less sustainable, even if the pattern for a later year had been colder.
It's not 2010 that matters alone, it's the group of large number of years.... 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
You can't just take one year out of all those, and use temperature or other changes during that one year to show that there IS or IS NOT atmospheric gas pollution causing global warming, or if global warming did or did not result in an event.
The mass might break off due to past global warming, even if it happened to be colder this year.
The mass might break off even if there is no global warming at all.
Global warming might effect the probability that large pieces break off of glaciers over time, rather than being a single cause of any deteoriation event.
So anyways, the fact temps cooled alone is no proof that global warming did not result in this.
Volume of a 15 x 2 x 3 cm chocolate bar: 9e-5 cubic metres
Volume of an Olympic swimming pool: 2.5e3 cubic metres
Volume ratio is 1 : 2.78e7
Total volume of the oceans is 1.3e18 cubic metres
Iceberg volume, in the same ratio as chocolate bar : swimming pool, would be 4.68e10 cubic metres
If the iceberg is 200 m thick, then the area is 234 square kilometres.
The area of the iceberg, according to the article, is 260 square kilometres
O.o
You, sir, have astounding powers of estimation.
You have an ID that clearly shows you have been around for a long time. Yet you post such an inanely stupid comment. It's like rationalizing that while humans are directly causing thousands of species to go extinct every year (true), everything will be OK because in a few million years they will just evolve again. Do humans have life spans of 1000s of years? We each live on this planet for a finite amount of time. We now find that we are causing changes to accelerate which will cause us great challenges. Where is my arranging deckchairs on the Titanic analogy, I need it again!
The majority of scientists in the world that agree that humans are causing climate change (some of which hopefully read Slashdot), or the FOX watching sycophants who lack a basic understanding of science and have the reading comprehension of a gnat? Or are you just one of those people who talk in the third person all the time?
As a reference:
The author, of course, conflates finding crops growing in modern Greenland to assuming that they could have grown back then, but notes the strong evidence that little, if anything, was ever successfully grown back then but hay and possibly limited amounts of flax (and the only evidence for that is pollen studies, which failed to turn up traditional food crops). Contemporary writings noted that most Greenlanders lived their whole life without ever seeing wheat, a piece of bread, or a mug of barley beer. The earliest settlers reportedly tried growing barley, but there was virtually no success.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
First off, the frog thing is just a myth. Second, life can adapt, but only with time.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
I believe that if we were to host an endless block party on it with 10,000 people, using the ice for drinks, martinis, and smoothies, we could do so far approximately 42 days.
Let's nuke the bastard. That'll take care of it. It worked in Armageddon.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
The extent of the ice cap is not the only way to measure the ice cover in the arctic. Probably more important is the quality and the volume of the ice at the polar cap.
By the way, ice 'extent' is different than the 'area' covered by ice. 'Extent' is what is often quoted, not 'area'. Extent is measured like this: If a grid square being examined has more than 15% ice then it is considered ice covered. So if you had two grids being examined of say 10 sq km each, one being covered 80% by ice and the other being 16% covered by ice, the measurements would say that the ice extent or extent of ice coverage is 20 sq km, when the area would be more like 9.6 sq km. Because this is measured by satellite, grids for study are normally more like 25 or more sq km. Argument can be made to use extent over area since sometimes melt water over ice can be interpreted by the analysis software as being open water. Not always but sometimes; so they use extent to be on the safe side.
What many leave out is analysis of data from satellites that provide measurement of ice thickness. The linked web site addresses this somewhat. I have read about and seen information mentioned more and more on this for at least the last five or six years (and to be sure, the real experts have been looking at this for years). It looks like even if the ice extent is greater this year than in 2007, it is still about 1.6 million sq km less than the 1979 to 2000 average; and more importantly, the current volume of arctic ice is the lowest on record.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
According to the article this is the largest iceberg since 1962, early 60's global warming?
Passionately Indifferent
I might be dipping my toe in very hot water, but... is it really true that the earth has never warmed this much, this fast in its entire recent history (meaning when large animals of some sort or another were around)? It seems pretty statistically unlikely, but that's just a guess.
It's not fair that these guys took the word "skeptical" which is supposed to mean "don't believe in Global Warming, Evolution, Keynesean economics or Obama's birth certificate and made a site that takes global warming seriously.
That's bait and switch right thar.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Gets used here.... alot.
Arguments both for or againsts a scientific problem should be framed as defendable proofs.
We know that the top of Earth's atmosphere receives 342 watts of energy, in the form of sunlight, per square meter. Note that 107 W/m2 of this energy is reflected or scattered back into space by clouds, the atmosphere, and high-albedo features on Earth's surface. So, only 235 W/m2 (342 - 107) of energy actually make it into the atmosphere, and shines down upon us giving me women in miniskirts and the ability to grow food (both of which are....awesome)
Furthermore, we know that 67 W/m2 of the incoming energy is absorbed by the atmosphere, and another 168 W/m2 is absorbed by Earth's surface. When energy is absorbed, it raises the temperature of the substances that absorb it (the atmosphere and surface of our planet, in this case); this causes those substances to radiate away that heat in the form of IR radiation. We can all agree that these are not simply my opinions right? For those of who are are unfarmiliar, these are called facts, lets keep going.
About 390 W/m2 of IR energy starts upward from the surface, this difference being caused by longwave radiation needing an atmospheric window that does not have a lot of water vapor or gas molocules containing three or more atoms (i realize this is incomplete, i am atempting to simplify). The more of these conditions present in our atmosphere, the harder it is for longwave radiation to escape. So when we spew into the environment, and what we need to agree on is that adding vapor and GHG's to the environment increases the GW potential... right? Keep your fucking anecdotes to yourself, Using these things called facts we can see that keeping equilibrium becomes more difficult when we insist on changing the atmosphere. So don;t tell me you got two colds last year and only on this year so we are getting warmer, or that your uncle your uncles garden got frosted early thid year so we are geting colder. Or about ICEBERGS, this is an atmospheric issue, give me meaningful data about that and i will listen. Anyone who thinks that chnging the composition of our atmosphere will not result in temp change needs to back to school.
sig loading.......
During the Younger Dryas periods we may have seen 10-15C shifts, warmer and colder, in 20-30 years
Sure, 2007 may have been unusual with arctic ice cover well below the trend line (which can be seen halfway down this page). This is hardly evidence of a reversal of the trend. GP is correct in describing the continuing decline in arctic ice cover as "unprecedented".
If it's about averages, then you have to set the bar for the average. You can say a 30 year average is significant, or a 60 year average, or a 600 year average, or a 6,000 year average. Which are you going to choose? The problem here is we don't have reliable data for the average that may be significant, so no conclusions can be drawn. And how are you going to compare and contrast the Medieval Warming Period (for example), with today's warming? What about the Little Ice Age? Why is your "average" today so much more significant than the averages of the past, which were if anything more extreme than they are now?
On point of the original post: ice shelves calve. There are momentous dynamic forces at play here. The surface air temperature really has nothing to do with it whatsoever. It would still calve in the absence of any atmosphere at all.
I'm not a loon, it really is an envirocommunist worldwide conspiracy to overthrow the illuminati oil-lords. That only seems far fetched to those who uses non-rectal sources for their news. Step back a bit, look at the situation as a whole, and forget about the day to day details (facts at a high enough rate are just noise), then pull out a theory. Your colon can come up with interesting patterns, and facts are unnecessary ingredients for their assemblage.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
"From the data he posted, it doesn't look like the 2000s, or even any multiyear period between 1980-2010 was exceptionally warm"
The Artic is warming at about 3X the rate of temperate zones, the phenomena is called Polar Amplification, it was predicted by one of James Hansens models in the 80's and has since been confirmed by obsevation.
"it would seem to suggest that a big iceberg calving in Greenland might not be global warming related"
Somewhat tautologically the trend that shows AGW is causing ice loss is composed of billions of individual events, none of which can be said to be caused by AGW. It's like thowing dice that are loaded in such a way that the odds of snake's eyes are 10/36 rather than 1/36. You can never say for sure that a particular occurance of snake's eyes was due to the loading, but you can be certain the dice are loaded.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
During the Younger Dryas, there were large amounts of extinctions throughout N. America, and forests in Scandinavia were replaced with glaciers.
Yes, there have been periods of abrupt climate change in Earth's history that have happened without human involvement. Regardless of cause, they are invariably followed by a large list of bad things happening, with very few good things.
Not a typewriter
Following the Younger Dryas humans were able to develop civilization, cities and everything else up to and including internet p0rn, so I reckon alot of "good things" happened.
I really like your straw man attacks on someone's straw man attacks.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Here's a better graph of sea ice. It's actually greater now than it has been than in the past 30 years.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
+1 informative for the posting the link, -1 interpretation for implying the opposite of what the graph shows.
It's probably true, however unlikely it seems to you, but one of the best proofs doesn't come from animals. Plants don't wander around - Once a tree grows in a spot, it's committed. Some plants in particular drop heavy nuts or seeds that will only get transported as far as animals will move them at the very most, and some spread by runners or similar methods that mean the offspring will always be close to the parent and moving across large distances takes many generations. For one example that's been particularly useful to biologists, evergreens that live on tops of mountains above the deciduous tree line usually stay there unless the climate gets so warm that tree-line moves higher than the mountaintop. Climate change at one rate may let some of these species relocate, but at a faster rate will simply wipe them out locally. In the same way, some plant diseases may spread widely only if the tree-line becomes so low, the mountain peaks are all connected. That's a distinctive, temperature related effect. We can look at plant fossils and make some pretty good estimates of how long it took for prehistoric changes, in particular, there are formulas based on longevity and reproductive frequency that hold if species X stays viable in some area for Y time, the rate of change had to be slower than Z. I't's a pretty good argument if species are now going locally extinct at 10xZ or 50xZ rate, that nothing like that has happened in pre human times, or we wouldn't have living examples of those species. Because some of the currently observed rates can be tens or more times faster than the prehistoric rates, rather than just, say 50% faster, it's considered an unambiguous type of evidence.
To be fair, even this line of reasoning takes a lot of crosschecking. Plenty of legitimate scientific disputes exist over just how big a locale is meaningful, or how many different species should be checked before the results deserve a certain level of confidence, or whether the scars left by a particular plant disease are uniformly distinctive. For some cases, scientists do have to consider other events that may have happened that fast in prehistoric times (Dinos weren't the only thing clobbered by that asteroid 60 million years ago). So, it may be only fair to say, "unless the Cretacious extinctions were really caused by some sort of warming cycle and not a massive shield volcano super-eruption, asteroid impacts, or alien trophy hunters, nothing like this, this fast, has ever happened before." But, within limits such as that, the evidence is mounting.
Who is John Cabal?
Ooh, Watts -- everybody's favorite college-dropout electrical engineer who likes to play climatologist and who pretends to be a certified meteorologist!
What a great link -- is it Lets Cherry Pick Data And Then Pretend That It Overrides Peer-Reviewed Analysis time again already?
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
If it's about averages, then you have to set the bar for the average. You can say a 30 year average is significant, or a 60 year average, or a 600 year average, or a 6,000 year average.
No, that would be called "making things up". Statistical significance requires statistical evidence. And we have ample evidence that the planet's temperature is dominated on the inter-annual scale by ENSO, and to a lesser extent, by other factors, but is dominated by AGW on the multi-decadal scale.
We have tons of data on ice extent. Most people know that, back to 1979, we have a beautiful record of satellite readings with only small holes. But there's a lot more.
Before that, we have sailing logs and logs from Arctic cities for the arrival and departure of ice. A particularly good source of data is the records from the US and Soviet navies' submarine fleets, which has been made available to researchers. There's direct written records from sailors all the way back to the dark ages, although these progressively become much patchier and are usually only good for localized ice extent.
From coastal records, the data dates back as far. Starting in the late 1800s, it becomes very good, and is near complete starting in the 1950s. Iceland has a good 1,200 year record.
Probably the best long-term record we have is that of sediment cores, and just recently we've started getting an increasingly number of papers on the subject (due to the hostility of the region, only readily have many cores become available). Here's a good review. There are several types of sediment proxies.
The first includes the deposition of ice-rafted debris. Large grains of minerals don't just appear in the middle of the ocean. They're too big to blow and too heavy to float. We observe the process of ice rafted debris being deposited in present day. The debris comes in two types: smaller grains from coastal margins, and larger grains from icebergs. The size, shapes, chemical signatures, and surface characteristics of the grains bear hallmarks of their origins and of the type of ice conditions at the time.
A second source of data in sediment cores is that of microfossils. Different types of plankton have different habitats in which they can live (i.e., some can live under ice, others can't) and known sedimentation and preservation rates. A third, and similar, technique involves the fossils of bottom-dwelling organisms. This may seem odd, as they're not directly affected by the ice -- but they're *hugely* indirectly affected. Very little organic matter, which such organisms eat, is deposited beneath the ice sheet; however, vast quantities are deposited around the edges of the ice, and a normal amount beyond it. Their populations are shown to well correlate with ice cover.
A fourth technique, like the above, involves the amount of organic matter itself deposited. Beyond just quantity, you can look at chemistry -- for example, there are chemical biomarkers for diatoms that live in sea ice.
At the coasts, you have a lot more data, as sea ice has significant affects on the land when it touches. This affects everything from whalebone to large mollusks to driftwood to plant matter and so forth. Even arctic tree records provide significant data, as arctic trees do not survive along coasts perennially lined with ice.
Concerning driftwood: wood cannot pass through ice. Driftwood floats, becomes waterlogged, and sinks in open water. Driftwood entrained in sea ice collects in quantity at the ice margin, and corresondingly sinks in quantity at such locations. Massive quantities of driftwood fossils are available.
Various types of sea mammals closely correspond with the ice margins -- polar bears, various species of seals, walrus, narwhal, beluga, and bowhead. T
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
The "Younger Dryas" is only well defined and was only severe within a rather small region -- namely, the tail end of the Gulf Stream. The abrupt termination is likely due to a sudden drop in flow from the Gulf Stream due to a massive, catastrophic disruption of the planet's climate system caused by the draining of a lake holding more water than all of today's lakes combined, after a glacial dam burst. Current data suggests that there was no Younger Dryas event in much of the southern hemisphere, and most northern hemisphere signatures are weak and offset. But indeed, it was extremely severe for the areas it affected.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Which would be a valid argument if that's what scientists were actually doing. The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Not at all. The *reasons* for the warming involve a breakdown of the strength of dozens of different forcings factors, and then looking at them and figuring out why they're changing. I can go into more detail if you'd like.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
No, today's warming is faster.
The early 20th century warming is a combination of several factors -- first, a strong shift in the PDO, and then followed by not only a decline in PDO, but a rapid increase in global industrialization. The latter might seem like it would have just the opposite effect, but you have to remember that until the 1960s/1970s, there was very little regulations on power plant emissions. While CO2 causes warming, it has to accumulate for this to happen. Far more rapid is the cooling effects of chemicals like sulfur dioxide, which were emitted en masse until the first world started mandating scrubbers on its power plants. While SOx has a relatively short (compared to CO2) residency, so it's really just a masking of the real climate, its affects are quite powerful.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
You, sir, have astounding powers of estimation.
;-)
A more likely explanation would be that I did the same math. But thanks for double checking my work
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Humans, unfortunately, are not very good at evolving - esp. in modern societies.
Biologically we are not very good at evolving...
We breed rather late in life and we spend a lot of energy on each offspring - probably necessary as humans have so few multiple births. This means there are not that many "experiments" so the opportunity for mutations, both favorable and unfavorable to current or future conditions, are limited. Effective evolution relies on many experiments.
Human's have relatively long gestation periods - this limits the number of "experiments" even further.
Then we go and make human evolution even harder with social and "moral" constraints...
The more advanced the society, generally the fewer offspring each female has (i.e., less experiments per breeding cycle - with opportunity for both "good" and "bad" outcomes) and the later in life they breed (i.e., fewer breeding cycles per unit time). These factors conspire to further reduce the number of experiments and stymie evolution yet more.
Even worse, we interfere with "natural selection" and actually actively try to eliminate it. The more "advanced" the human society, the more likely we are to keep premature babies alive, mask over various genetic weaknesses with medications and treatments. This results in increasing weakness in each generation as these who avoided the brutal effectiveness of natural selection live to generate yet another even weaker generation.
In advanced societies, we also favor technological solutions over natural selection - if the climate gets colder and colder, we would build buildings and communities with thicker and thicker walls and more and more powerful fusion reactors to keep us warm rather than strongly favoring, via survival, those in each generation those who are most adapted to the cooling environment (by tending to grow fur for example). Societies whose survival is based on heavy infrastructure will eventually be unable to build enough new infrastructure to keep ahead of the environmental changes but they will probably die off due to political mismanagement before then (the Bureau of Fusion will fail to maintain the reactors because the Secretary of Fusion, reporting to some dictator in some 30 year period, will spend all the money on babes, booze, and partying instead on reactor maintenance and the reactors will eventually all fail leaving everyone in the community dead -- albeit, the dictator's favs will be the last to go as they huddle around the last working reactor - killing anyone who tries to shoehorn in on them).
The brutal truth... The cockroaches and ants (or their direct descendants) will be happily infesting the Earth long after all human lineages have become extinct on Earth and will be almost completely unaffected by natural and human induced environmental changes that wiped out all humans millions of years earlier.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The strongest effects were in Greenland and Iceland. Lesser but still major effects were in western Europe and northeastern North America. There were still lesser ripple affects all across the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the global average temperature decline during the YD is estimated at only 0.6C. It was a change in heat transport event.
I don't know about you, but I'd call having a veritable freshwater sea the size of California suddenly drain into the ocean to be a pretty radical event.
And was much slower and milder. IMHO, it's pretty hard to call it the same event.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
The "data quoted at the end"? What end? It's a looping image (really annoying, by the way). And it's still cherry-picking. Individual ice cores for a single location do not a planetwide temperature average represent; that's what peer-reviewed papers on reconstructions using *all* available data are for.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
Why do people always talk about whether the earth will survive, or whether it has survived something like this before? Who cares about this rock. Global warming won't kill the earth; it'll be here long after humanity has gone. It doesn't matter whether earth has gone through this before, because we're not trying to save the earth. We're trying to save us.
What matters is whether the current population of humans can survive a sudden, drastic temperature increase, not whether the earth can.
A recent article in Discover magazine pointed out that the rate of human evolution is actually increasing, and provided several examples. The main reason for his is that there are so many humans around. One example (from memory) was that all humans were lactose intolerant 5,000 years ago, but now only 20% are. And there was another pointing out how sperm had significantly mutated in the past 2,000 years. I know this seems to go against logic, but the author has the credentials and the proof. This was about four issues ago.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
This is quite a bit of bullshit. Evolution is slow, wasteful and undirected. Technology is rapid, efficient and directed. It's stupid to let people die from the cold for generations when you can simply put on a damn coat.
Even worse, we interfere with "natural selection" and actually actively try to eliminate it. The more "advanced" the human society, the more likely we are to keep premature babies alive, mask over various genetic weaknesses with medications and treatments. This results in increasing weakness in each generation as these who avoided the brutal effectiveness of natural selection live to generate yet another even weaker generation.
You make it sound like evolution has a goal, that generations get "weaker" (whatever the hell that means) because of lack of natural selection. Generally, diversity is good (especially if you want evolution as you claim). It should also be pointed out that evolution is not dead; people don't generally choose to procreate with weak/sickly people/people with horrible deformities, giving them less chance to pass on their genes
Clearly, you have never seen how much excitement a candy bar in a swimming pool actually causes. Think about it for a minute. It will come to you. If it doesn't, what else might one find in a swimming pool that is about the same size, shape, and color as a candy bar?
Rhapsody in Numbers
Sure -- here's one for starters, sort of a meta-analysis of other papers. That should be a good jumping-off point for you.
False. Here's a nice starter for you.
Actually, that's a very real thing. A never-before observed phenomenon occurred called the "Arctic Dipole", which encourages melt. We've now seen it repeat on and off for the past several years. It led to the major melt earlier this year. Several papers have since shown that under AGW scenarios, that pattern becomes increasingly likely.
Huh? How does a temperature graph that starts at -0.4 and ends up at +0.4 versus a PDO graph that starts at +0.2 and ends up at about the same place support your argument? There has been dramatic warming over the PDO signal. The PDO signal matches the 1910-1945 warming, but has virtually no affect on the most recent warming.
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi
you should be able to dispatch with his pathetic claims in a matter seconds
No way. That takes decades of studies.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com