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Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half
bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."
Quick! Change the name!
CLIMATE CHANGE!
Yeaaah! Then we'll be able to claim we're right, even when we're wrong! woo!
This estimate change means climate change has once again been proven wrong! Right? Right?
(Hint: No.)
I think it just means that in reality, science hasn't got all the right answers, all of the time, and science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.
Scientists are wrong again, just like they were about magnets.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The ice caps are increasing. That's because the gulf stream current is slowing down because of global warming!! If the ice caps were melting that would also prove global warming too. When are you going to face up to the facts global warming deniers! Can't you see! Falsifiability is for republicans and oil executives.
Some bright researchers managed to refine a previous model and come up with better and more accurate predictions. You may want to note how, contrary to some "skeptics" beliefs this wasn't suppressed or refused publication or any other such shenanigans. In the word of a famous person "When I'm proven wrong I change my opinion, what do you do ?".
How can there be a "West Antarctica"?
"After ten years of study, we have determined that our prediction of the end of the world within five years may have underestimated the time remaining..."
I assume you mean Bert Vermeersen (http://www.beta-ambassadeursnetwerk.nl/?pid=26&paspoort=135)?
TFA says Greenland is subsiding due to mass moving to North America. I was thinking that due to the melting, the crust would be rising and thus hiding the apparent ice loss.
Very interesting...
So this must be fake, but if they'd instead said it's accelerating faster, it would be true - right? Because that's what you want to hear.
which is totally what she said
If they previously didn't consider the rising of the crust, but now they are considering it, then my logic says that the estimates for melting rate should have increased. Ok, it says in TFA that in some places the ground is actually subsiding, but it seems weird that this would happen in more places than rising of the ground.
Yes, that's some climatic revisionism right there. Next they will say climate holocaust will never happen or something.
It is time for the global cooling crowd to make a comeback and breathe some fresh air into the stale old climate debate.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
sponsored by B.P.
OK, so people are trying to argue that this paper supports one view or another in a trivial manner. I don't think it's that simple.
I can't even being to interpret what this means without a lot more reading. I'm not even sure I know all the questions that need to be asked. But here's a couple which occur to me immediately...
1. This is a new method of measuring ice loss, and from what I can tell is rather hard to interpret given the interacting phenomena. There are long established methods which are far simpler - most obviously measuring the speed of ice flow. Does this new paper bring ice loss estimates into line with estimates from traditional methods, or does it contradict the estimates from traditional methods?
2. Even ignoring that question, ice loss contributes to sea level rise, which is also being observed. If less sea level rise can be attributed to ice loss, does that therefore mean that more must be attributed to thermal expansion, thus increasing estimates the rate at which the earth is absorbing and storing energy? (I think the answer to this one is that the ice-loss contribution is minimal and so the change is also minimal, but it needs checking.)
Nothing would please me more than to find out that, in fact, we aren't screwing up the planet after all and that future generations will be able to enjoy a stable climate and SUVs. Really, I hope that everything turns out just great. However, it still doesn't look like it, I think we will face some very tough times. I don't know whether this new data is correct or not, just like I don't know whether the old data was correct or not. But 164 gigatonnes of glacial ice melt per year still sounds like a lot to me, even if it is less than 362 gigatonnes, so I'm not going to become complacent just because it isn't quite as bad as we thought - note that the word "bad" is still in the situation.
Also, all this means is that Greenland and West Antarctica are contributing less than 1/4 of the annual rise in sea levels rather than accounting for more than half. I guess we have to keep looking to find where the rest of the rise is coming from. None of this evidence contradicts the rise in sea levels, which is going to displace millions of people.
Nah, it will not happen overnight. We'll have a series of cases of revisionism instead.
Until, at last, when the ice age comes, someone at CRU will pick that last remaining "Time" issue with the global winter predictions, which are soooo out of fashion today, and wave it as proof.
That they were right all along.
Scientists, burn the whole bunch.
So we're NOT all going to die? To celebrate I'm going out back to burn that pile of old tyres :-)
Happy, happy, joy, joy...
Their estimation is still better than a Microsoft progression bar.
See this is typical climate change stuff..
It says "thousands of indicators" and people think "oh no!" but there are not thousands of indicators at all... It's pretty much all made up, speculation and FUD.
OMG I'm so citing you in my next paper to Nature.
Less fresh water in the North Atlantic means the thermohaline convection effect will be keeping Europe warm and wet for a while longer. In the short term, that's good. In another sense, though, I suspect it's not so good: it's going to take something dramatic to move climate change out of the "we'll worry about that when we don't have anything more important" category.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I no longer believe you, when you say that you would be "pleased" to hear that global warming isn't that big of a deal. If that were true, why are such stories buried and alarmist stories repeated even if based on incorrect data?
About 10 years ago, I also believed in global warming, however I stopped doing so. How is such a thing possible?
1. Climate Change
I had my first doubts about global warming, when they introduced the term climate change“ which the added claim that climate change“ may not just cause warming in some regions, but may actually cause cooling in others. So all of the sudden climate change“ may cause everything: Hot, cold, stormy, dry, wet, etc.
2. The first decade of the 21st century
If the “hockeystick” were correct, we should have experienced a record-breaking hot climate in every year or at least most years between 2000 and 2010, but that just didn't happen. Some people say that 2009 was the hottest year on the record and hotter than 1998, but even if that's true it does not really support the supposed runaway warming-scenario - at all. Now when from the 10 years following 1998 9 have been cooler and one has been warmer, that may show that the climate may be a little warmer than usual (after all 1998 has been the warmest on the record and 2009 may have broken that record), but it points more to a relatively steady climate that may be little bit too hot, but not at all to some runaway climate shift.
3. Alarmism
What also disturbs me a lot is the alarmism. The warm periods, no matter when we talk about humans (medieval warm period, little ice age, etc.) or life in general were always the better periods (where “better” means of course that more life can be sustained by the earth)
So the horror-scenarios don't make that much sense and are blown way out of proportion.
4. The “experts” opinion
It is always said that the “scientific consensus” is clear about global warming. Well, science is not a popularity contest and is also not democratic. The “scientific consensus” also said that therapy and short prison sentences would reduce crime, but crime rates in the US quadrupled in the 1960s. The “scientific consensus” said that big government will reduce poverty, yet the higher the taxes are and the more incentives is given to the poor to have large families, the more poverty there is. And of course the “experts” also worried about “global cooling” in the 1970s.
The experts have a pretty bad track record, especially when it comes to politically sensitive things.
5. Socialism
Socialism has always been marketed as rule by the scientists and experts. Everybody shall lose their “bourgeous” human rights like right to property and freedom of association (freedom of association is racist anyway, right?) and submit to “expert rule” because the experts know it all and know it better than us rednecks. Well, not only have the “experts” been very often wrong, the centralized rule from above by the experts has proven to be a bigger disaster than any global warming scenario. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Russia has always been a traditional food exporter and was turned into country where millions starve by the “experts”. And famine and widespread starvation has been the hallmark of socialism almost everywhere it has been tried: China, Cambodia, many african countries, etc.
The “experts” seem to be able to turn a fertile country into a desert not only much faster than global warming, but also repeatedly and in the real word (not just in a computer simulation). Warming may force a change of crops and maybe even a reduction in yield (that's a big “may” - far more likely is that it increases yields because warmer was usually better in the past) but there is no land on earth that cannot be utterly ruined by the advice of an “expert”.
When the “experts” want to create
1.1mm per year being the best available globally measured data? Outliers being 2mm? Worst case scenario being 4mm? That WILL displace people,eventually. 4mm per year means that in just under a century, sea levels will have risen a foot. This is the worst case scenario - it's more likely to be 150-200 years based on existing data (it's actually hard to measure exactly - between isostatic rebound, tidal variation, building, etc)
That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes. Flooding is more likely from heavy rainfall or really stupid building decisions such as building below the water level (New Orleans) or building on flood plains (everywhere else) than from sea level increases. Even the melting of ice causing sea level rises isn't a problem (work out 500Gt versus the amount of ice on Greenland alone), reduced salinity affecting currents is more likely to be a problem.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
It is time for the global cooling crowd to make a comeback
Pastafarianism holds that global warming is kept in check by the cooling effect of pirates. Yet the mass piracy perpetrated through the original Napster and its progeny (Gnutella, Kazaa, eDonkey, BitTorrent, etc.) has failed to halt global warming.
And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.
That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
...and much like the MS progress bar, the whole system will crash long before the bar reaches completion.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
>This year we are going to see a new record low for arctic sea ice --- surpassing even the dramatic 2007 decline. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
Another source, the Arctic News, differs with your conclusion. See link here: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png and the main site at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
It is still bad. This year will be the runner-up, not the new record low for arctic sea ice. Perhaps, as before, the moisture in the arctic air will swirl down and result in a good snow year for the northeast US ski areas.
That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes.
Except for certain low-lying island nations in the pacific, but fsck'em why should we care?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
"But 164 gigatonnes of glacial ice melt per year still sounds like a lot to me" Divide the volume of ice by the area of the oceans... 163e9 gigatons ice*1e6 grams/gigaton / (4 * 3.14 * 6.371e8**2 earth area *.70 sea area/earth area) * 100 years/century = 4.5 cm per century. Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative (sea level fall), then one could expect the net contribution to sea level rise to be even smaller. Regardless of any other issue related to global warming, the idea that this is "big" in the actual impact scale is simply being stymied by large absolute numbers which is a red herring. The *variability* in tidal fluctuations dwarfs this "correction" by orders of magnitude.
Except for certain low-lying island nations in the pacific, but fsck'em why should we care?
You ask a salient point why should we care? No really, why should the other 6+ billion people living on the earth all freeze to death in the winter and bake in the summer, so a bunch of islander can continue to live somewhere a strong hurricane(or cyclone) could wipe out their entire community. But hey, you drive a Prius right?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Science corrects itself after finding new facts, no news at 11.
Besides, wether or not global warming is caused by humans isn't the important bit, the important bit is that we learn to understand the dynamics of our only place to live, Earth, and how to prepare for the future.
If global warming is real, it's important that we know what this will bring in the future, what the effects will be on the weather, the oceans, the wild life,...
And even if it's not actually warming, the science that goes into studying this will serve us in the future.
The fact is, we don't have a full understanding of the dynamics involved, all studies i've seen seem to indicate there is in fact global warming, and frankly, i don't care whom or what caused it, i want to know how we're preparing for the next day.
What's the effect of desalination of the oceans? That interests me more then the possibility that the Dutch will need bigger dams in the future.
Scientists, burn the whole bunch.
That'll contribute to greenhouse gasses and help prove them correct. And then you'll feel bad for your vigilantastic actions.
Even if it isn't us affecting the climate, we should still be aiming for efficient use of our finite resources.. I'd be much more pleased to find out that we'd cracked cold fusion and people were switching to electric SUVs.
which is totally what she said
Having scanned through the mentioned research article a couple of days ago and knowing a bit about this subject, I must say that the article is quite wrong in its summary of the results. First, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) is a very well-known but poorly-constrained problem in such estimates. All previous estimates do take into account GIA, but how they take it into account is another matter. Different ways of modelling GIA yields different results.
In fact, if you think about it, not taking into account GIA will imply that we are measuring this uplift as an increase in ice mass, which means that the estimates without correcting for GIA should show less instead of more ice loss. Hence, a contradiction.
What the new article has to offer is a semi-empirical method of modelling GIA. It is certainly insightful and novel, but this does not mean that its estimates are necessarily more accurate than previous numbers. What this research is effectively arguing, though, is that previous analyses have over estimated the effect of GIA.
Nature has a better news article written about it, but it might be behind a paywall: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n9/full/ngeo946.html.
Unless a "rebounding crust" can also cause sea-level rise?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
on sea level rise alone - a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level. To cover it in water would require 250 years of 4mm per year, so it's not going to disappear overnight.
Bear in mind that 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America divided between British, Dutch and French colonies, the Prussians, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and others were fighting the Seven Years war, the British had just gained control of Canada by capturing Montreal from the French and beginning the end of the French and Indian war, the Marathas kingdom in India was fighting (and losing to) the Afghans to their North, and George III was raised to the British throne. :)
A quarter of a millenium is a long time
Rational thought is the only true freedom
People not grasping the complexity of our world make me sad
It is the height of arrogance to think that we can control nature and prevent every death or Bad Thing from ever occurring. Yes, we can affect nature to some minor extent, but we certainly cannot command it!
People, animals, flora, fauna, bacteria, every living species has been dying ever since they've been living on this planet.
Now that humans have 'become self-aware' as it were, we're suddenly capable of never allowing a single person to ever be killed by a force of nature again? We can mould, shape, and terraform the earth's surface as we see fit? Rubbish.
Moreover, why do we suddenly find that desirable? How much of our resources would you spend to save these low-lying island nations? Would you expend 100% of earth's natural resources to save them? How much then, or how few? 90%? 80%? Where's the acceptable level of expenditure for you? When does it become wrong to consider saving them in terms of net cost to the earth and say 'sorry guys, bad luck... see you on the other side'.
Is that an offensive question to you? If it is, you're doing it wrong. Everything has a cost and a benefit. Them's the breaks.
It'll be sad if they lose their homes but that's nature. Are we affecting it? Maybe. Probably. Can we stop it and command nature? No. Can we slow it? Maybe, but their homes will go one day regardless. So will ours. In many billions of years the sun will expand to a massive giant which will swallow the earth whole before collapsing into a massive black hole. What about those poor low-lying nations then?
Nothing is permanent in this universe. Everything is temporary. Including us, including life. There's life and then there's death. That's the cycle of things. It might be better to get used to it now or you're going to be in for a real unhappy surprise in about 40 years.
The irony is that from the very article posted:
"Beachhead erosion, coastal engineering, environmental mismanagement, overpopulation, deforestation, and deteriorating coral reefs are acting together and in conjunction with global warming to affect sea levels and cause damage to Tuvalu's underground water table. A 1989 United Nations report on the greenhouse effect stated that Tuvalu would completely disappear into the ocean in the twenty-first century, unless global warming was drastically diminished."
Out of 7 problems causing the island to sink and deteriorate, 1 is caused by someone off the island of Tuvalu. But of course, that one is the only one the OP is leading us to believe is relevant.
This is the sort of BS that makes global warming so unbelievable to the public to begin with.
but isn't half of "a lot" still "a lot"? :S
Science is about postulating a hypothesis, then testing to see if you can disprove or refine it... If science were about coming up with an idea, and deciding, "yeah, that's the likely answer" and never testing / refining /disproving anything, then we'd still be believing that the sun goes 'round the Earth, and we'd still have no clue about the cause of disease or how basic physics worked. We'd never advance knowledge.
Seems to me that an adjustment of the measurement doesn't mean "OOPS, sorry folks there is no Global Warming", it means "Hey, we've realized we made an error in our estimates, here is the new data". In my mind, things like this could also mean, "hey, maybe we DO have a little longer before we cross the point of no return... maybe even long enough to do something about it" /P
The Digital Sorceress
Greenland was once green. It was discovered by Eric the Red who founded a viking colony there. Later on it got cold and covered with ice.
BTW Eric the Red's son, Leif Ericson, went west and discovered America. . He also founded a cattle ranch near Tucson called the High Chaparal. His brother was Cameron Mitchell who went on to command SG1 on its last few missions before the government closed down the stargate program.
Exactly, some people seem to not understand how science works, and this is very simular to evolution denial.
Possibly. If a change in the shape of the earth's crust leads to a smaller ocean area, then deeper oceans are probably a consequence of that. It's also possible that a rebound-driven rise in the crust in one place leads to a lowering of the crust in another place. For instance, the UK is tilting - Scotland is rising but the south of England is sinking.
Despite the pretty undisputable fact, that the western countries, first and foremost the U.S., are the main drivers of climate change (wether it being slow or fast doesn't really matter) and the "island nations" that will suffer most from it, without contributing any measurable amount to the causes - have you forgotten about the recent happenings on your own coast already? Do you really think that Katrina was a one time incident and will not happen again, ever?
Keep on dreaming but don't expect any serious understanding or even help once it hits you one day. There are quite a few sane people left in all regions all over the world, including the U.S., otherwise I'd be very interested to see what you would do if (for whichever reason) your own country would suffer from an impact that threatens your whole country and/or many of its inhabitants. ... but I guess even then you would say something along the lines "Screw the people in Louisiana, I live in Texas!"
Selfish asshole!
Maybe, but their homes will go one day regardless. So will ours. In many billions of years the sun will expand to a massive giant which will swallow the earth whole before collapsing into a massive black hole.
Sir, I would like the name of the contractor who constructed your home. Longevity like that is something I would love to invest in. Also, do they offer an option which will protect my home from said black hole?
Tell that to the politicians who scare hippies into thinking the sky is burning.
The wold population should start declining soon. Most developed countries have declining birth rates. Japan & Russia lead the way. China has it's one child per couple policy. Population growth in North America is due to immigration. I believe this is the same case in Europe. At some point we will hit a population maximum, then start to decline. I think the best marker for the environment is new species vs extinction of old species. If we start seeing a decline in species in non-human area, then I would be worried. Until then, I'd guess that planet would be able to adjust and maintain the dynamic equilibrium. Don't forget that all it would take is one pandemic to wipe out a significant portion of the human population (thanks in part to cheap air travel). Bacteria & viruses adapt, just like we (and our immune) do.
"....and what also melts?"
"Cheese?"
"small stones!"
"toasters!"
"witches"
"That's right! Witches. Now who doesn't like Witches?"
"Water?"
"DUCKS!"
"Jesus?"
"Correct! Jesus hates witches... and what happens when messiah returns?"
"Frogs?"
"Mice?"
"The Destruction of Earth!"
"Very good, the destruction of earth! Now what does the earth do now?"
"Rotates around the sun?"
"Hosts Life?"
"Spins?"
"Yes it spins! Therefore when it is destroyed, it will stop spinning. What is created by spinning?"
"Centrifugal force?"
"large rats?"
"Magnetism!"
"Correct, it creates magnetism, which must cause the destruction of earth due to its stopping by Jesus because he hates witches. Quid Pro Quo."
"Applause!"
In science, when your hypothesis is falsified by the data being different from its predictions, you abandon it and look for a different model.
In religion, when the predictions of your dogma turn out to be wrong, you tell your critics that they just don't understand how your religion works, and really with a deeper understanding you were right all along.
Supporters of the notion that "AGW is a serious threat" keep sounding like the latter case to me. When the data is unexpected, the models are adjusted to explain that too, and the modelers keep believing. Creationists have really entertaining explanations for the fossil record - but it doesn't help your case if the explanations come after the data, as that's sort of the opposite of a prediction.
If your belief in AGW (or anything else!) is scientific and not religious, then you can both explain the belief at a qualitative level (quick: how does a greenhouse work?) and you can explain what new data would cause you to abandon your belief. In my experience, most people who consider themselves intellectuals have a religious faith in scientists (the intellectually lazy approach) instead of having scientific beliefs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It has been documented that the massive rise in the economic impact of hurricanes, particularly in the US, is not really any indicator that hurricane intensity is increasing. Instead, it is an indicator that there is more economic activity happening in areas that are in the path of hurricanes. For instance, the population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years. More people == more stuff to break, which means a higher cost to repair/replace.
Also, the devestation caused by Katrina in New Orleans was more due to the dam bursting, flooding the city than to the high winds and heavy rainfall.
These are both due to human intervention, all right, yet not a result of climate change. I don't have the reference handy, but I have read that the severity of hurricanes in terms of frequency, wind speed or size (as in area affected) has not increased significantly on average.
That's not to say that climate change won't affect everyone - the increased rainfall in Europe and the drought in Russia are two examples of small weather system changes causing big ass problems. But hysteria doesn't help support your view. Let's keep it calm, rational, and focused
Rational thought is the only true freedom
The theory IS wrong. I know you want it to be correct. It isn't. We have supposedly been having some kind of catastrophic climate change for quite a while now, yet somehow nothing much has changed at all. Icebergs and frozen things melt in one area, and things freeze in others. In over 30 years of paying attention, I cannot find a shift in temperatures anywhere that is consistent globally, or falling outside of variances.
The problem I have with the people who believe in AGW is that mostly they fall more in the religious category, anyone who tries to present results different then there's or question the methods used is subjected to public ridicule, not listened to. This is religious reasoning, not scientific, listen to the people who disagree and adjust your methods, stop believing that everything you have done is exactly correct and I will listen to you too. There are many flaws in the methodology, from sensors placed within 10 feet of AC exhaust to sensors placed in the middle of a asphalt parking lot, these things skew the results and aren't taken into account.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
What he meant by 'not going to chase anyone out of their homes' is that we're not going to see sudden, dramatic raises in sea levels. If you think that people aren't capable of adapting to changes in their environment over a period of a hundred years, then, well... I guess I should break out my buggy whip.
In my mind, things like this could also mean, "hey, maybe we DO have a little longer before we cross the point of no return... maybe even long enough to do something about it"
Worrying about a "point of no return" is an irrational, alarmist belief. People who want power and enjoy controlling the lives of other love irrational, alarmist beliefs. Scientists, not so much.
Can humans affect the climate? Certainly - the only question is how many significant digits do you need before you see the effect. Can humans affect the climate long term? No - compared to normal long-term climate variation, anything we do will be lost in the noise (from memory, the amout of carbon involved in the long-term (rock) carbon cycle is 10^6 times the totall amount of carbon in all known fossil fuels).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Unless a "rebounding crust" can also cause sea-level rise?
You were not supposed to notice that.
More seriously, though, if post ice age rebound is significant enough that it needs to be included in these models, then these questions follow:
At most, the research suggests that the changes we face are less anthropogenic and thus more difficult to forestall than we might have hoped for. If the rise in sea levels is unavoidable, then we need to more stringently control the variables that we CAN influence, and plan on a warmer, possibly wetter, world anyway.
Question: I have yet to see any empirical science behind the idea that thermal expansion is a major contributor to the increase in sea level. Is this hypothetical guessing? Or have we really enough historical data on average deep ocean temperatures to support the conjecture?
Will
Nevermind, the original estimates were correct. Somebody bumped the globe and were looking at Iceland this morning.
Actually try ZERO, as the islanders were actually blowing up the reefs with dynamite to keep them from fucking up the bottoms of their fishing boats. Using that brain trust as an example of AGW? And people wonder why some of us smell bullshit?
Tuvalu is fucked for the same reason Easter Island was fucked, the islanders themselves destroyed it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The problem is the intersection of science and policy. Scientists have every reason to refine, adjust, and even abandon their ideas, when the evidence warrants it. Politicians don't have that same incentive. And as we've seen in the past, when you're beholden to the politicians for your funding,
China has a larger carbon footprint than the U.S.. We are no longer the dominant industrial force, or the biggest polluter. Go look up the citations yourself. I am not taking the time to bother with dipshits that believe electric cars pollute less, or that global warming is in effect due to emissions. Electricity is currently produced largely from coal, and has losses in transmission, losses in storage, and losses due to inefficiencies.
If you believe this crap is truly relevant and dire, go bitch at China. They are the 800 pound gorilla,
This estimate change means climate change has once again been proven wrong! Right? Right?
Of course not. But such a major correction shows that we have a long way to go before we REALLY understand climate science well enough to predict anything long term, or say exactly what is causing changes we observe.
It does indicate you should take anything any climate scientist tells you is "absolute truth" with a huge grain of salt.
I mean, you aren't claiming that no other studies on which the theory of global warming is based are without uncovered error at all of at least this magnitude... Right? Right?
Climate science will be a science when they can actually predict something that will happen instead of predicting what has already happened (oh, but with just a few holes in the results that you should ignore). So far they are nowhere close to that state.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What AC said, what you said.
and then we have localized weather. That means some areas get craploads of rain, and some areas get almost none.
Erm, isn't that how it is now? I mean here in the UK we rota of weather like this: rain, rain, cloudy sky, rain, cloudy sky, rain, cloudy sky and rain, rain and very occasionally when the gods look upon us.... sunshine! As opposed to our EU friends in places like Spain who have Scorchio weather ... Bueno estente !!!
Is it just me, or was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.
This was between 1942 and 1992. Over that 50 years the ice level went up over 5 feet per year. That's not melting. If you're trying to tell me (like the article is) that it's really the crust is going up instead of the ice level, you're full of crap.
And, creationists actually have some very good explanations for the fossil record. In some cases they are far better than their evolutionary counterparts.
Creationists have no trouble explaining why there are ocean fossils mixed with land fossils in the same areas in Kansas.
Creationists can explain why the amount of helium found in deep rock is not all gone already (notice that it's becoming rare quickly and will soon all be gone).
Creationists can explain why the fossils appear suddenly, in their modern-day forms with very few extinct species. Evolutionists actually have a hard time with that.
Never forget that evolutionists are also religious. Richard Dawkins is anti-God more than he is a scientist. And Richard Lewontin even admitted that evolutionists will believe any absurdity necessary "for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of refinement of the theory.
Scientists don't "believe" in the big bang or evolution, but they don't automatically revert back to Intelligent Design just because someone found out that, oh, I don't know, there's two extra types of quark or something.
I know that many "skeptics" desperately want to portray this as a black or white "religious" issue because it allows a convenient out. Of course they're adjusting the theory to fit the data because that's how science actually works.
--srj/mmv
No, most of the people who believe in AGW are climate scientists. AGW is not measured by "sensors" in parking lots. I have no idea where you got that from.
So they don't actually use sensors to gather their data? Sounds more and more like religion then.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
To show what I am talking about:
http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/07/04/ground-based-temperature-recording-stations-stupid-locations-for-measuring-global-warming/
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Can you please provide citations for all of the above statements?
(This should be amusing...)
Scientists certainly do "believe" in evolution (well, a few of them don't, I suppose) and that belief is justified by a great many successful predictions made by that theory (and not by others).
It's simply not the case that science is about adjusting the theory to fit the data (well, it happens, but it's not seen as good science). Newtons theories weren't "adjusted" by relativity, they were proven wrong. They were still useful, in fact very predictive in most cases, but nevertheless wrong.
Anyway, that whole discussion misses the point: as you say, it's not about black-or-white "right" or "wrong", its about how predictive is a hypothesis over the domain of interest. Thus far, to the extent that the climate modelers have deigned to make any predictions, the predictive value of those models has been crap. Call it "right" or "wrong", I don't care, but I call it "not sufficiently predictive to justify telling me what to do in my daily life"!
And what about you - sarhjinian - are your beliefs about AGW scientific or religious? Do you actually understand what you're arguing for, or are you just saying "I'm part of the 'in' crowd that believes in X, not one of those lossers with unfashionable beliefs".
Quick: how does a greenhouse work? Are we in an ice age right now? What's the only 10ky period of relatively stable climate in the past 400K years, per the accurate ice core data - is a stable climate norma? What's the obvious ~100ky cycle in that data? What's the highest historical level of CO2 (as a multiple of today's) since the oxygen catastrophe? How well did life on land do during that time?
Well, have you actually taght yourself about this stuff, or are you just fashionable?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Those sensors made old temperatures look warmer then they really were. Old temperature data had to be adjusted downwards to compensate, making modern readings higher by comparison.
(Yes, they've moved them...and these days they measure temperatures via satellite, not manually-read thermometers)
No sig today...
Tuvalu is fucked for the same reason Easter Island was fucked, the islanders themselves destroyed it.
Not true. Tuvalu's greatest resource is the .tv TLD. It is unsinkable.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Future generations won't have SUVs no matter what happens with AGW.
Why not start making the move away from them before we guzzle the last drops of one of our most precious resources in the most stupid way possible (ie. burn it and turn it into greenhouse gas just so you can commute to work in a truck).
No sig today...
Question: I have yet to see any empirical science behind the idea that thermal expansion is a major contributor to the increase in sea level. Is this hypothetical guessing? Or have we really enough historical data on average deep ocean temperatures to support the conjecture?
That's the first I've heard of that suggestion. I thought the rise was supposedly due to glacial and Antarctic melting.
Never forget that evolutionists are also religious
It always frustrates me when people use linguistic fuzziness about the word "religious" to try to put two very different things on the same plane. Using the word religious to mean "takes a strong stand" and religious to mean "is operating on faith that is by definition disconnected from evidence" and then saying they're the same thing does not actually make them the same thing.
Evolutionists are working with a massive pile of documented stuff and trying to piece together their best interpretation of those facts. Yes, many of them believe very strongly that this process has led them to a reasonably accurate understanding of the issue. But you can't just say "that strong belief can be called religious and religious can be called believing in stuff from the bible, so it's all the same."
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
They have barely passed you -after you led the charts for decades. It will take them quite a while before they really catch up to you.
Apart from this: What's your point? "They suck so we can behave like idiots as well!" ?
I've got news for you bro, a thermometer is a sensor.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Speaking of predictions: I seem to recall that, over the years, Global Climate Change skeptics have predicted that an investigation into the practices of Climatologists would prove that Global Warming is a "hoax".
This year we have had 3 investigations: All of which failed to turn up any evidence of scientific malpractice.
It's interesting that the "skeptics" can't seem to explain the contradictions between their predictions and reality!
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
I think the "theory" in question here is the sensationalism and alarmism attributed to this mess. I'd have FAR less problems believing the climatologists predictions if they would avoid the sensationalism that they've presented in the past few years. Let me list a few so you'll be aware what I'm talking about...
* Hurricanes will increase in frequency or strength, predicted specifically for 2009/2010.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2007-07-29-more-hurricanes_N.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/HurricaneRita/story?id=1154125&page=1
Except they didn't. I can't find the link that compared the predicted versus actual numbers but there are far fewer hurricanes than previous years for 2009 and 2010 seems to be pretty low as well so far. *I* am predicting that the next prediction will be "global warming will cause a decreased frequency of hurricanes". And they never got stronger. That was, as usual, someone not understanding statistics.
* Himalayas will be devoid of ice by 2035. Yes, it was a "typo" but everyone wanted to believe it..
* Due to the Greenland glaciers, the ocean will rise 21 feet. Too bad it was recalculated closer to 7 inches.
* And now the Antarctic and Greenland melting is happening at about 1/2 the rate they thought.. ZOMG the world is gonna end. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!! Or not.
I'm sure there are other examples but that's all I can think of right now without my caffeine..
If the climatologists would stop predicting anything other than facts and trends, they might get less egg on their faces and be considered to be at least somewhat respectable. As it stands they prefer to play the role of seer/doomsayer and as such I'm committed to shoot them down when they get out of hand.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I bet hairyfeet is such a ding-dong that he doesn't even see the irony in his choice of anecdote.
ah, well, gotta learn terraforming somehwere...
How much of the island would be a viable place to live for all those 250 years? How much rise would it take to make it unlivable?
The problem I have with the people who believe in AGW is that mostly they fall more in the religious category, anyone who tries to present results different then there's or question the methods used is subjected to public ridicule, not listened to... There are many flaws in the methodology, from sensors placed within 10 feet of AC exhaust to sensors placed in the middle of a asphalt parking lot, these things skew the results and aren't taken into account.
What makes you think they don't listen? With respect to station placement, much criticism has been leveled by Anthony Watts on surfacestation.org. With the help of volunteers Watts rated over 70% of the stations in the USA and found many to be poorly placed.
Scientists did listen. They investigated to see whether the poorly placed stations (As rated by Watts) reported more warming. They did not. The well placed stations reported more warming. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html
Further, surface stations are not our only measure of the temperature. Satellite data shows a similar warming. Here is a fun site to play with: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2010/offset:0.04/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2010/offset:0.025/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:2010/offset:-0.1
This allows you to plot various climate related data. The link above is a comparison between the UAH station data and two satellite data sets. They have an almost identical slope (you can select linear trend on each to see) You can also try comparing temps to CO2 or sun spot activity. Great fun.
You can take that theory of electricity with a grain of salt when you stick a metal fork in an outlet,
Yeah, right.
It will get warmer.
Then, it will get colder.
Repeat.
My Theory is infallible.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
In [religion], when your [interpretation] is falsified by the data being different from its predictions, you abandon it and look for a different [interpretation].
In [science], when the predictions of your dogma turn out to be wrong, you tell your critics that they just don't understand how [science] works, and really with a deeper understanding you were right all along.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
You people out there who don't believe in AGM are idiots. We keep telling you that the earth is warming, and it's all your fault. But you just keep on living and driving cars, both of which must end immediately. We, of coarse, will keep living and driving our cars, but that's because we have to be around to tell you how bad you are. Ignore the fact that our predictions are wrong, just take our word for it that the earth is warming, it's all your fault, and kill yourself and everyone else, except us. kthxbye
If your belief in AGW (or anything else!) is scientific and not religious, then you can both explain the belief at a qualitative level (quick: how does a greenhouse work?)
The greenhouse effect does not work like a greenhouse. A greenhouse works by trapping warm air. The greenhouse effect works because greenhouse gasses are transparent to visible light but opaque to infrared radiation.
If you are skeptical that CO2 acts like a greenhouse - you should be. It doesn't. If you are skeptical that CO2 is a greenhouse gas - you shouldn't be. It is. We have taken measurements that show that greenhouse gasses are absorbing radiation from the surface.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory.htm
I've dreamed of mini-fusion engines ever since I read the first Foundation novel.
Of course, that was shot to shit two decades ago by nuclear power alarmists. It's funny that these alarmists seem to be the exact same people, no matter what the issue is.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20015596-10391695.html
Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative
It's the net rate, accounting for both accumulation and melting. So, no.
The enemies of Democracy are
...This year we have had 3 investigations: All of which failed to turn up any evidence of scientific malpractice.
It's interesting that the "skeptics" can't seem to explain the contradictions between their predictions and reality!
fox guards hen house.
"Oh, what sad times these are when passing ruffians can say 'ni' to helpless old ladies."
Yes, you understand - most people don't even at this most basic level.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
. . . its about how predictive is a hypothesis over the domain of interest. Thus far, to the extent that the climate modelers have deigned to make any predictions, the predictive value of those models has been crap
In this case, however, the proposed new estimate of current glacial loss is closer to that predicted by the climate models and the need to explain why the glaciers in Greenland are retreating faster than predicted might be averted.
No, mini-fusion or any fusion outside of a fission-fusion atomic weapon was "shot to shit" by the inability of anyone to get fusion to work in a laboratory. The best nuclear scientists in the US, Europe, Japan and Soviet Union/Russia have been trying for decades.
You can blame the anti-nuke crowd for a lack of fission reactors and stagnation in that tech, but not for fusion.
which they clearly have in spades . they need to go back to school .
Deleted
Huh? I always thought religion worked like this: Man is fallible, God is infallible (and therefore always "correct") so believe what is written here because it is the Word of God.
Whereas science says nothing can be proven "correct", we can only get better at modeling the world, but here are our current models and the data that supports them.
Really, I'm feeling better.
No brain, no pain.
This is something anyone on Slashdot should be able to do. First, go get the GISP2 ice core data at
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Pull the data into Excel or R or your favourite tool and plot the most recent 10,000 years (period since the end of the last ice age). You'll find it easier to interpret if you convert the age to years AD and BC and normalize the temperatures to make them relative to current.
You'll see that the Mann Hockey Stick is right where it's supposed to be. What's surprising is how tiny it is (said the actress to the bishop).
What I find most interesting is that, since 8000BC, it's only been as cold as it is now three times, and for each time only 200 or so years. So is it going to get warmer? Yeah, that's a safe bet if we don't get an ice age first. It's going to get a lot warmer before it gets to what's been normal and comfortable for most of modern human history.
Does Mann demand an explanation? No--there's nothing exceptional about the current trend--it doesn't require an exceptional explanation. It's just the climate being the climate.
The next thing I did was superimpose the rise and fall of the great human cultures in both the Old World and the Americas, with a focus on equatorial civilizations. With a couple of exceptions, they all get their start during warming periods. A few, the Hittites, both Romes, Islam, see their fortunes literally rise and fall with temperature.
But don't take my word for it. It's an hour's work to see for yourself.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level... 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America
I'm confused. Is that "1 million above sea level" or "1.5 meter colonists?" :P
I went through many of the posts here, it was very interesting to see how in the denialist camp you see so many trying to frame understanding of global climate change as a matter of belief.
This is understandable, since they are so short of arguments they want to move the debate to their home turf, where they feel comfortable.
It is frankly mind boggling how any single adjustment of the main thesis is immediately proclaimed as proof that everything is a sham with a straight face.
So Greenland is melting very fast, but twice as slow as previously thought, this is seen by the denialists as a get out of jail proof.
That people don't understand time scales is frankly astonishing: there are several people talking about 250 or 500 years being a long time, failing miserably to realize that this kind of natural events normally develop in a matter of thousands, tens or thousands normally, years. So if a glacier that has been in place for time immemorial melts in 5000 instead of 250 years it is still bad news.
The short term vision of some people is terrifying....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A greenhouse works primarily by restricting air movement allowing the space it encloses to capture the heat from solar radiation instead of it just blowing away.
The greenhouse effect works by greenhouse gases and clouds capturing the infrared energy radiated from the surface of the Earth.
Two quite different things.
Of course you ignore the study that was done comparing well sited to poorly sited stations (as defined on surfacestations.org) that showed if anything the poorly sited stations introduce a slight cooling bias.
You can read it here [PDF].
If the ice sheet on Greenland were to completely melt sea level would rise over 23 feet. But that would take at least several centuries to happen. Current estimates for 2100 are around 3 feet of SLR. Of course that's subject to revision as we learn more.
Maybe the polar ice sheets are melting at half the rate originally thought but they're still melting and the melting has been accelerating. That is documented.
Actually, I drive a Prius. I don't own a TV. I set my thermostat for an economical setting. I dare say, the majority of environmentalist(s) elitists do the same. Just the opposite, I'd say. In any case:
It simply DOES NOT MATTER. The industrial revolution is on it's way down. There WILL BE choices in home heating & transportation that will be adopted by the masses for economical reasons. The TROUBLE is, this new stuff is TOO expensive at the moment and there is NO infrastructure to implement. It will take a decade or two but 'environmental friendly' choices will be available as the choice will be economical, again. People vote and live by their POCKETBOOK and will not make choices because the ELITE say it is the right thing to do.
To mandate such choices by radical government spending and mandates (Obama) has turned the majority of the US off... and rightly so. You cannot TAX a country into prosperity and you cannot SPEND your way out of a depression. It's why the 1929 crash is 'Great' and lasted as long as it did.
The private sector shall (and should) reign. The fuel cell and electric transportation (or other) will be affordable IF and ONLY IF the populous have the funding. Raising taxes to combat a theory such as global climate change is simply ridiculous at this point. The private sector shall take care more efficiently and quicker than creating bureaucrats and entitlement programs.
Cheers
...was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.
This was between 1942 and 1992. .....
Umm, don't objects placed on the surface tend to 'sink' into ice caps ? Gear and huts built on the surface slowly descend into the ice as the years pass. So the P-38s sank down, as well as each years snow/ice deposit being layered on top of them. IIRC isn't the sink faster than the accertion of ice ?
The plural of anecdote is not evidence.
GW as well as CC is just like Richard Gere and Gerbils ...
http://www.dailyhaha.com/_pics/large_mouse_eater.htm
But how many people who are sure AGW is correct know even this much? It's mostly fashion, IMO.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Quick! Change the name!
CLIMATE CHANGE!
Yeaaah! Then we'll be able to claim we're right, even when we're wrong! woo!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it actually the right wing and their petrochemical backers who popularized the phrase "climate change" to squeeze the words "global warming" out of the debate?
EXACTLY !!!
It is ALL a political scam.
You can be sure that the scientists who actually study climate know it. I'm not sure how much it matters for the general public.
Your calculation presumes the rate of glacial ice melt is not increasing but it is. Also, thermal expansion is as big a factor in SLR as added water from glacial melt. As the oceans warm up the volume increases.
The thermal expansion of water is simple physics, measurable in a laboratory. The increase in temperatures of the oceans has been measured. It doesn't matter if it's deep or shallow water, it still expands when it's warmed.
When talking about Arctic sea ice it's important to distinguish whether you are talking about ice extent (the area it covers) or ice volume. As far as 2010, it's not clear if ice extent will be lower than 2007 but ice volume is already below 2007 because multi-year ice has been disappearing year after year. We already have a record low for ice volume.
I'm not talking about the scientists at all. I'm talking about the typical Slashdotter who rails against irrational religious belief, yet his own belief in AGW is itself based on nothing but religious faith in scientists. If you don't personally understand why something is thought to be true, at least qualitatively, you do not have a scientific belief, and you ought not be chastising others for believing differently.
The same thing goes for evolution debates: if the only reason you believe in evolution is that "all the smart people do", you're every bit as bad, every bit as much a part of the problem, as people who believe in creationism because "all the wise men do".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Where else are they going to live?
Seriously, if 6 billion people want to pursue a course that deprives, I don't know how many, let's say 50 million people of their homes - surely the least those 6 billion, between them, can do is to come up with enough land and money to compensate the 50 million?
Which doesn't sound too bad, until you think - it's not just a few low-lying islands in the Pacific. It's also low-lying parts of major continents. New Orleans springs to mind for some reason; also the Netherlands, Bangladesh, large parts of Indonesia and the Philippines... within a century, you're looking at something like half a billion refugees.
Where exactly do you suggest we put them? And who's going to pay for that land?