Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years

eldavojohn writes "The CBC reports on new research that shows thousand-year-old ice shelves (much different than sea ice) are breaking up and have been reduced by half in a region of Canada over the last six years. 'This summer alone saw the Serson ice shelf almost completely disappear and the Ward Hunt shelf split in half. The ice loss equals about three billion tonnes, or about 500 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.' More detailed pictures can be seen at The Conversation, with a quote from Professor Steven Sherwood, Co-Director of the University of NSW's Climate Change Research Centre: 'The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'"

Comments

"These observations should dispel..."

[AdamJS]

It has never and will never be that easy, Steve. Your optimism is appreciated though.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm not one who tends to dismiss things that experts outside my field say, but this statement is quite a blatant fallacy: just because it's been that way for thousands of years doesn't mean that any change is certainly not natural. It's these types of statements that cause so many to lose credibility. It doesn't give me much faith in someone's ability to interpret complex data when he can't even construct a valid deduction from simple facts...

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Coren22]

Funny, but this gives no evidence of either man made or natural climate change. These ice sheets were created in the last ice age, which is still ending, so they were likely to melt either way.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the good old glass houses argument. Also known as "I can't be wrong because I think you/re wrong". Always a solid argument, unless of course the opponent is particularly cagey and knows the devastating "I'm rubber you're glue" defense which, as we all know, is unstoppable.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Ichijo]

Funny, but this gives no evidence of either man made or natural climate change. These ice sheets were created in the last ice age, which is still ending, so they were likely to melt either way.

No, the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. There was a more recent "little ice age," but that was a local phenomenon, not global.

But you're right that this doesn't prove that the global average temperature is rising. Again, it's only a local phenomenon, and it's possible that the ice shelves are getting colder but seeing less precipitation, resulting in the loss of ice mass.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Synerg1y]

Ice melts naturally as per nature, we are constantly cycling an ice age, I believe we can still trace back to our old one. I'll be honest I think it's both. Part natural, part humans, we can't tell what is natural and what is caused by us because we haven't been watching the ice for very long on the ice's timescale.

Ice shelves melting are nothing to freak out about though, it happens all the time in nature, what is frustrating is the lack of evidence pointing either way and the accusing finger being pointed at humanity without proof. Also, stating that there is a problem isn't helpful, solving it is. If this guy's for real, he's on step 1 of 8 of the scientific method. It's just like the legalize marijuana conventions, a bunch of rabble shows up and expects to be respected simply for being there, marijuana is still illegal 95%, so what does that do for us, besides the scientist being the boy who cried wolf, and when the actual wolf comes, we're too busy w the boy.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[microbox]

The AGW argument doesn't fit into a single factoid. We know the climate change is man-made as follows:

• CO2 has increased since the industrial revolution.
• We know the CO2 is man-made by two independent methods. Firstly, we can account for it by recording the amount of coal/oil that has been burnt. Secondly, coal/oil has a different mixture of carbon isotopes, and these particular isotopes are accumulating in the atmosphere.
• We know CO2 is a green-house gas
• We have detailed models for how much forcing CO2 causes. These models make predictions which have been confirmed. (e.g.: go look at what models in the first IPCC report said about temperatures in 2011.)
• We know that the sun hasn't changed solar output, and that there are no systematic changes in cosmic rays, etc. There is no way to account for modern warming /without/ including CO2

AGW opponents will make any argument of convenience, but the case is straight-forward, and there was a scientific consensus on the basic details in 1979, according to an independent NAS report of that year.

Climate scientists have made *conservative* estimates of CO2 forcing and temperature predictions. The models did not predict the rapid decline of arctic ice, because they were so *conservative*. We could be in for much worse warming than what the IPCC reports say. But real scientists doing the work want to be careful about provided unbiased and factual evidence based science -- and so eschew anything that could be interpreted as hyperbole.

That is the reason why these melting icesheets give no evidence for man-made or natural climate change. The AGW argument isn't written in them. It is, after-all, a global phenomenon.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Synerg1y]

Choke on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Variations_in_Earth.27s_orbit_.28Milankovitch_cycles.29

sourceless bastard!

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Synerg1y]

Ya, not sure why I respond, your post clearly wasn't worthy of a response, perhaps... I'm bored!

Here's when to cite...

http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/

and

but the observation is that it is melting faster than records show

is why I called you out.

Don't point fingers at humanity w/o being 100% certain is all im saying.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[riverat1]

No, there really is a consensus among climatologists. 0ver 97% of climatologists who are actively publishing on climate change and over 85% of climatologists in general agree that human influences are responsible for most of the global warming we are seeing (Doran 2009) [PDF].

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Belial6]

Nothing the poster you are replying to is rationalizing anything. It does not comment on whether AGW is true or false. It only comments on the summary, and how the writer of the summary does a disservice to those who would try to make the case for AGW. The writer of the summary is accidentally arguing against AGW while trying to argue for it.

The fact that you started making unsubstantiated accusation in an attempt to defend a belief that was not being questioned makes you a part of the same problem. You give fodder to those that would argue against the existence of AGW in your poor attempt to bully people into taking your side.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[catchblue22]

I'll believe and support AGW when it's advocates support going full nuclear.

So you then implicitly acknowledge that you have no intellectual basis for your beliefs on global warming, and you instead base your views on the perceived trustworthiness of various authorities? This is what the above statement seems to imply.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[Jack9]

> We know that the sun hasn't changed solar output
Er about that....
> and that there are no systematic changes in cosmic rays,
And that...
> etc.
Yeah....might wanna slow down there.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[tompaulco]

Earth to douche bag, scientists have concluded that man is responsible for global warming.
Oh, then it IS natural.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[khallow]

You moved the goalposts. Before you said scientists, now you say climatologists. There are several problems with this assertion. First, people in fields that overlap with climatology projects have noted problems in the parts of climatology research (more accurately, global warming research since that is a particularly problematic aspect) that reflect their area of expertise such as statistics, economics, or computer/math modeling.

To outline an example in each of the three, statisticians have been concerned for a while about how climatologists measure mean surface temperature from weather station data and temperature proxy data (the notorious tree ring data and ice core data) that has a great deal of irregularity and adjustments to it. Economists have been concerned by the primitive economic models of carbon usage. For example, no study of the effects of "peak oil". And there's weak research on the economic effects of global warming. If one is going to decide whether or not to implement mitigating action, they should have some idea of the costs and benefits of global warming as well as the mitigating action. Computer modelers have noted the bizarre spaghetti code that builds crucial datasets (such as the Climate Research Unit's paleoclimate temperature estimate built on a huge number of datasets. Finally, mathematical modelers have noted the absence of large scale weather phenonema such as hurricanes and equatorial waves.

Second, climatology has a problem common to geology, economics, and astronomy, namely, that it is extremely hard to conduct reproducible experiments. This is a crucial flaw of climate modeling and prediction that routinely gets ignored.

Third, the field has unusual difficulty in communicating its research to the outside world due to the complexity of the field and the difficulty of generating data and models.

Fourth, there's an enduring bias due to who funds climatology research in the field of climate change. Most of the organizations want global warming to be demonstrated. It seems to me that there is a serious danger that research which doesn't support a claim of global warming (particularly, urgent global warming which would require substantial change in society in order to mitigate), is at increased risk of becoming defunded. For example, the Goddard Institution of Space Science (a NASA-run organization) and the before-mentioned Climate Research Institute have both been headed by people who have made extreme claims about the effects of global warming for decades. How would research from someone lower down in the hierarchy that doesn't fit the message coming from the top of the organization fare?

As I see it, an argument from authority (such as "over 97% of climatologists who are actively publishing on climate change and over 85% of climatologists in general agree that human influences are responsible for most of the global warming we are seeing") isn't good enough in the present circumstances.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[riverat1]

I certainly didn't say "scientists" before in this tread because that was my only post (until this one) in the thread. But in general if I say scientists it's in the context of the field being discussed, not every scientist in the world. I guess the GP did use the term "*Some* scientists" but I don't consider those not working the field in question to have much authority to comment on it.

In regards to surface temperature there's a project called Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature lead by the physicist Richard Muller who has expressed some skepticism of global warming that is examining that right now. They still have a long way to go for their final report but the initial findings don't do anything to discredit the current science.

A preliminary analysis of 2% of the Berkeley Earth dataset shows a global temperature trend that goes up and down with global cycles, and does so broadly in sync with the temperature records from other groups such as NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU. However, the preliminary analysis includes only a very small subset (2%) of randomly chosen data, and does not include any method for correcting for biases such as the urban heat island effect, the time of observation, or other potentially influential biases.

I left the second sentence in because I acknowledge they have much work to do yet but I will be surprised if their results don't largely validate the current science.

Throw out all of the proxy data and it doesn't matter that much. It's merely corroborating evidence. What matters is the science that's being done today on today's climate.

Economics don't matter until you decide what to do about it which is a political question. It doesn't change the science one bit.

The CRU's paleoclimate temperature estimate code is not a computer model. It is code to process a large dataset. Code for several of the major GCM's such as NASA/GISS Model E are available so feel free to analyze them yourself. Not sure what you're getting at with that last sentence.

The only thing that isn't reproducible in climate science is the data about what happened in the past. It's easy enough to redo the research that determined the effects of different factors on the climate. It's true that it isn't particularly amenable to much lab experimentation but even that occurs (the CERN CLOUD project).

I largely agree with your third point.

I think you see bias because the findings don't say what you want to hear. Someone's going to have to make a much more solid case on that before I'll take the accusation seriously.

An argument from authority isn't necessarily wrong.

The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:

        The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.
        A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.

I would argue that climatologists are indeed legitimate experts on the subject and the study I cited demonstrates there is a consensus in the field. Therefore it is not a fallacious appeal to authority.

Re:"These observations should dispel..."

[V for Vendetta]

Again, it's only a local phenomenon [...]

So, how exactly is glaciers melting around the world a local phenomen?

Uh, Greenland redux?

[arpad1]

How about a bit less in the way of hysteria? All the folks who were having kittens over the phony reduction in the Greenland ice sheet are looking like schmucks now so perhaps a few people, like the editors of Slashdot for instance, could forgo schmuckdom by not engaging in heavy breathing ahead of the facts?

Re:Uh, Greenland redux?

[CrazyDuke]

I have been a regular on this site for over a decade now. And, I have no clue what you are talking about. As for the shyster alt-e stuff, the group consensus is usually along the lines of fails basic thermodynamics, smoke and mirrors, untested/unrevised claims, cost higher/efficiency lower than existing tech, etc...

Perhaps you have this site confused with another you frequent?

Re:Uh, Greenland redux?

[microbox]

Who is having kittens over phony reduction of Greenland ice-sheet? What on earth are you talking about? Surely not an atlas that used the wrong map by mistake?

Re:Uh, Greenland redux?

[riverat1]

Greenland is loosing ice at a rate of over 100 Gigatonnes per year as measured by the GRACE gravimetric satellites. This page contains several references to peer reviewed papers on the subject.

Uh oh.

[MrEricSir]

Now where am I supposed to keep my ice books?

Re:Uh oh.

[Antisyzygy]

That's a total Dad-joke.

There were glaciers all over Montana

[ShavedOrangutan]

... that have been gone since long before the invention of the Sport Utility Vehicle. Or the wheel, for that matter.

I blame the Tea Party.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[asylumx]

Those didn't disappear in six years.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but we have documented proof that both Europe and North America were experiencing a "mini ice age" as late at the mid-1800's, and that before the early 1700's (when the mini ice-age started) it was warmer than it is now.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[Coren22]

These shelves (that are on the water btw) didn't disappear either, take a look at the pictures, they are the ends of the glaciers that hang out in the water, they are going to reduce over time.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[wsxyz]

If we implement some tough emissions-controls, carbon sequestering, and maybe do a little careful climate engineering, I think we can return Ontario to it's natural state under 1 mile of ice in a century or two. Otherwise we're all doomed.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[grub]

Ontario wimp... I'm in Winnipeg. We go under 1mi of ice every Winter.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[tmosley]

No, climate change is real, because it gets warm in summer AND because it gets cold in winter!

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[mpe]

No, but we have documented proof that both Europe and North America were experiencing a "mini ice age" as late at the mid-1800's, and that before the early 1700's (when the mini ice-age started) it was warmer than it is now.

However as none of these records were written by "climate scientists" the AGW lot tend to deny them.

Re:There were glaciers all over Montana

[riverat1]

No, but we have documented proof that both Europe and North America were experiencing a "mini ice age" as late at the mid-1800's, and that before the early 1700's (when the mini ice-age started) it was warmer than it is now.

Insightful my ass. It's at least as warm if not warmer now than it was during the Medieval Warm Period.

Amazing

[avandesande]

These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.

So you are saying that if there was natural global warming these ice shelves wouldn't melt? That's pretty amazing!

Re:Amazing

[Antisyzygy]

I think he's arguing that the ice shelves were there through previously known natural warmings. Its still unjustified to claim its absolutely caused by human related global warming, but whatever.

Re:Amazing

[avandesande]

Point taken. So to be correct we would should say that whatever the cause of the current warming it is unprecedented in the last several thousand years.

Funny how if you see a logical fallacy when you skim something you tend to ignore the rest....

Re:Amazing

[quantaman]

"The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years."

So we see the strongest warming cycle in thousands of years.

What's more likely?

That this unprecedented warming is natural and just happened to correspond with AGW.

Or that the AGW thing that scientists have been talking about for decades is doing exactly the thing they've been predicting.

True there's more nuance than that (not everywhere warms the same, etc) but the evidence has piled up pretty damn high.

Re:Amazing

[quantaman]

Sorry, global cooling was never the rage among scientists.

Re:Amazing

[riverat1]

No one who is alive today has to worry about the next ice age hitting (unless we invent immortality) as it's not scheduled to start for about 20,000 years and it takes 10,000 years or so for the change to happen.

Re:Amazing

[riverat1]

It's not as simple as you'd like it to be. CO2 is only one factor in plant growth. Higher CO2 helps some plants (poison ivy comes to mind) grow but not others. But you still have to have water, ask the farmers in Texas about that, and appropriate soil.

Re:Amazing

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No, sorry, I remember the 70's and global cooling was all the rage then. Search 'global cooling 1970s'. Global Warming has been since the 90's.

You remember what Fox News tells you to remember. Before you tell people to try a search like that, you probably ought to try the search yourself.

Re:Amazing

[rs79]

Your "search" is about articles that talk about how global cooling didn't exist in the 70s.

Why doin't you try an actual search of newspapers and magazines in the 70s and 80s. The yields a different result.

"the next ice age" have way to "the ozone hole" which gave way to global warming.

it's always some damn thing or another. many people were convinced in 1900 that halley's comet would cause the death of all mankind.

it's always some damn thing or another.

Why would that dispel anything?

[SuperKendall]

Since you have no record of how fast ice shelves may have vanished in the past due to natural warming, it seems suspect to claim that this certainly proves the current rate of dissipation is due to unnatural warming...

Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.

But then what would he know? He's only the chair of a climatology department...

But my main point remains, that you are taking a rather unscientific leap with your fear-mongering statement.

Re:Why would that dispel anything?

[cosmicaug]

Since you have no record of how fast ice shelves may have vanished in the past due to natural warming, it seems suspect to claim that this certainly proves the current rate of dissipation is due to unnatural warming...

Says who? At the very least, someone seems to have the idea that these particular ice masses have been around for thousands of years.

Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.

But then what would he know? He's only the chair of a climatology department...

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/murray_salby_and_conservation.php

Re:Why would that dispel anything?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

In 2008 fossil fuel burning adding 8.7 gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere, land use changes another 1.2 gigatons. Where did it go? Unless all anthropogenic CO2 is disappearing in a way that natural CO2 isn't, then we're contributing to the increase.

Bad phrasing

[OverlordQ]

'The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'"

How's that saying go, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The Andes used to be under water for thousands of years; the continents used to all be one big land mass. If we lived back then I'm sure we'd be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.

Dont jump from "There used to be ice, now there isn't." to "We did it"

These unique and massive geographical features that we consider to be a part of the map of Canada are disappearing and they won’t come back

Alarmist.

The researchers say their disappearance suggests a possible return to conditions unseen in the Arctic for thousands of years.

So there used to be conditions where they would have melted anyways, climate changed and they appeared, now they're disappearing again and you say we'll never see them again?

Re:Bad phrasing

[cosmicaug]

'The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'"

How's that saying go, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The Andes used to be under water for thousands of years; the continents used to all be one big land mass. If we lived back then I'm sure we'd be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.

Assuming this is not some pathetic attempt at humor which I am pathetically entirely missing, do you even have any idea of the timescales involved here or are you one of those 'the earth is 10000 years old' folk?

Re:Bad phrasing

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>If we lived back then I'm sure we'd be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.

The difference is that there's a physical mechanism for human effect on climate and that observations are matching calculations based on that physics.

A quick touchstone for any alternative hypothesis for explaining global temperature rises is to ask, "Does it predict stratospheric cooling?" If CO2 is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, then we'd predict that it won't reach the stratosphere, which will then cool down. Warming due to orbital changes, solar activity, or whatnot, would warm up the stratosphere.

It's easy to find out which is happening.

Re:Bad phrasing

[tompaulco]

Dont jump from "There used to be ice, now there isn't." to "We did it"
He didn't. He said it wasn't natural. If it wasn't natural, it must be supernatural. If we did it, it would be natural.

Re:Bad phrasing

[Fned]

You do realize he offered a fairly specific prediction in the sentence immediately following the one you quoted, right?

erroneous conclusions

[corbettw]

"These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural."

Really? Because climate has never, ever, not even once, shifted quickly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Note the huge uptick in average temperature starting roughly 11.5k years BP. I'm pretty sure the foot-powered cars the Flintstones drove didn't warm the earth, so this must've been a natural event. Saying that it's impossible for current temperature trends to be unnatural flies in the face of something that has already happened once, almost within recorded history; not to mention all the times when it happened outside of recorded history.

This is why some people, like myself, do not take climate alarmists seriously. They make these grandiose pronouncements that have little, if anything, to do with the facts.

Re:erroneous conclusions

[Ichijo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Note the huge uptick in average temperature starting roughly 11.5k years BP. I'm pretty sure the foot-powered cars the Flintstones drove didn't warm the earth, so this must've been a natural event.

What's that massive spike at the end of the graph, in the "Recent Proxies" section? Do you see it?

Re:erroneous conclusions

[cosmicaug]

"These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural."

Really? Because climate has never, ever, not even once, shifted quickly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Note the huge uptick in average temperature starting roughly 11.5k years BP. I'm pretty sure the foot-powered cars the Flintstones drove didn't warm the earth, so this must've been a natural event. Saying that it's impossible for current temperature trends to be unnatural flies in the face of something that has already happened once, almost within recorded history; not to mention all the times when it happened outside of recorded history.

This is why some people, like myself, do not take climate alarmists seriously. They make these grandiose pronouncements that have little, if anything, to do with the facts.

That's not a very reassuring comparison if you want to calm down the alarmists. You know what else happened at a time when, despite what you are suggesting, temperature change was slower than what we seem to be getting now, at ~11.5k years BP? Yup, that's right, a mass extinction.

Re:erroneous conclusions

[Alsee]

Because climate has never, ever, not even once, shifted quickly?

Right. It hasn't. And your link only demonstrates how radically unnatural the current warming is.

Check the slope of the graph you linked to. The "rapid" warming coming out of the last ice age has a rate of approximately 1 degree C per 2200 years.

Over the last hundred-odd years the earth has earth has recently warmed at a rate fourteen times faster than that. And the conservative end of the scale the current rate of warming is 2 degrees C over the next hundred years. That's 44 times faster than the unusually rapid rate of the planet thawing out of an ice age.

-

Logical fallacy

[argStyopa]

"These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural"

Why?

Ice melting fast != humans at fault. Honestly, I've seen a lake go from "safe to walk on" to "no trace of ice" in a few days. I never once thought "Holy crap, some dude must have caused this!"

Certainly, that's the ASSUMPTION, and there are a lot of credible reasons for believing that to be true. But I don't see how A logically follows B unless you're already certain that B is true and just looking for more reasons to say it.

We need more pirates!

[Oswald McWeany]

We all know by now that global warming is caused by the lack of pirates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming

The Happening vs Natural Argument

[ChrisKnight]

Summaries like this irk me. It ends with "These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural." This is a complete invalid conclusion.

"These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming is not happening." is a more reasonable statement based on the facts presented.

As to proving that it is not natural, that is a different argument that needs to be made by demonstrating the causes not reciting the symptoms.

The Alarmism misses a key detail

[Karmashock]

I'll just point out the corresponding lack of sea level rise. I'm going to have to put this in the same category as the atlas maker that said 15 percent of Greenland's ice melted. If that had actually happened the oceans would have gone up by feat. That hasn't happened so 15 percent of greenland's ice didn't melt. Likewise if this ice pack is so significant in canada there must be a corresponding rise in sea level.

Over the last century we've had a rise of about 8 cm in sea level. That means ice has absolutely melted. Just not as much as the alarmists would have us believe.

We can take GW seriously without getting hysterical about it. What we're seeing is SLOW melting and SLOW sea level rise.

Re:The Alarmism misses a key detail

[Karmashock]

I'm assuming you know how water works... so to answer your question... yes... and a duh. :-)

There are some minor differences due to tide which is mostly the moon but that's happening to the whole world all the time and couldn't mask a global increase of a few feet in sea level rise.

what do Canada's growing glaciers prove?

[iggymanz]

Other glaciers in Canada are *growing* (an inconvenient truth), like Helm, Pace and on Mount Logan. In one swoop, this proves......

Re:what do Canada's growing glaciers prove?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Other glaciers in Canada are *growing* (an inconvenient truth), like Helm, Pace and on Mount Logan. In one swoop, this proves......

I like it when people post references for their claims.
I tried to verify yours on my own and was not successful.

The claim that Helm Glacier is growing seems to be out right false.

The claim about Mount Logan seem to be based on an increase in height - the assumption being that it's due to ice accumulation, but that does not translate one way or the other to the total mass of the glacier, just the thickness at one point.

I couldn't easily find what "Pace" refers to since the word "pace," as in speed, is commonly used with the word "glacier" so I couldn't verify your claim either way.

Re:what do Canada's growing glaciers prove?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some glaciers should grow due to AGW while others should shrink. We can, to a degree, model which ones should grow and which ones should shrink (but that's a bit harder than recognizing the generality).

AGW raises that atmosphere's temperature, and its temperature affects glaciers by at least two general proximal mechanisms: more or less directly, by melting them, melting the snow that would accumulate to form them, lubricating their flow, etc.; and by changing the amount and type of precipitation that might fall on them. The mass of a glacier is dictated by the balance between melting and accumulation. If the extra moisture in the atmosphere falls as significantly more snow than would have fallen without AGW, as might occur at certain latitudes and elevations, or due to peculiarities of geography, it can swamp the loss of mass caused by warming. Those glaciers will accumulate mass even in spite of somewhat higher temperatures.

The most endangered glaciers are those at modest latitudes and elevations, especially in places that don't get dramatic amounts of snowfall, or areas that will see adverse changes in precipitation levels and patterns as a result of climate change.

That said, I have no idea how Mt. Logan might be affected by this dynamic, but no single mountain or glacier's behavior will prove or disprove anything about climate change. Overall, however, the world's long-lived temperate glaciers are losing mass and receding, the cause of which can only be climate related. The most reasonable explanation for the abrupt change is AGW.

It doesn't matter...

[dpilot]

There are 2 basic threads to anti-anthropogenic global warming arguments...

The first is, "It's not really happening, you've cherry-picked your data and/or misinterpreted it." and the refutation usually seems to consist of cherry-picked data with very specific interpretations.

The second is, "It's not anthropogenic, it's natural, because of..." with some reason or other.

For the moment I won't take sides on either thread, but I'm going to take very serious issue with the second. However I get the very distinct feeling with both threads that the real message is, "Since global warming is not real / not anthropogenic, we don't need to modify our actions. We can keep our fossil-fuel-based energy and transportation, unmodified." (and business models, might I add...)

But assuming you're on the second thread, and assuming you're saying that global warming is real, just not man-caused, it must be apparent that we simply cannot keep going the way we are. We must come to grips with a changing environment. Global warming means more energy into the atmosphere, and that means more water evaporates and moves from place to place. Some places get even more water, some places get even less, storms get stronger, and it's not even a smoking-gun kind of thing, it's statistical. No new killer drought or killer flood or killer tornado, just a slow ramp on the severity and frequency of the ones we have.

All the while people living in marginal areas get stressed, our agricultural systems get stressed, our emergency response systems get stressed. It's not "a disaster", it's more of the disasters we've had all along.

Not planning for it, not studying it very carefully to understand the extent, not taking some action to mitigate it, is hiding our head in the sand, and waiting to get smacked in the butt.

When you get flattened by a giant rock, you're just as dead if the rock rolled off a cliff as if it was dropped by a crane. One is "natural", the other "anthropogenic", but you're still dead.

Re:It doesn't matter...

[Antisyzygy]

Both sides have their fair share of bullshit. Furthermore, getting oil and coal out of the ground and refining it (or in the case of Coal the byproducts of burning it) aren't good for the environment anyway, so their reduction should help certain things regardless of human CO2 output affecting global warming.

Re:It doesn't matter...

[microbox]

Intractable arguments are generally based on people being dishonest about what is really important to them. Climate science dissenters believe that the environment is robust, and that humans really cannot change it. Environmentalists, therefore, are naive control freaks that are going to interfere with the correct way that things should be run, and for no good reason. That is why there is no real discussion of the science -- the deniers really only care enough to say something that sounds good, so that they can hold onto the underlying meme that is so important to them. My understanding of behavioural genetics suggests that there may be biological factors at play. I suspect that you could predict a climate denier from biological parents, but do no better than chance with adoptive parents.

Gary Cooper. High Noon.

[MarkvW]

Global warming is happening.

Why do we care whether global warming is human-caused, or not? Are we all Catholics trying to assess guilt? What does it matter whether or not global warming is human caused or not? Global warming is here and it is happening. The cow is already out of the barn.

What's relevant is whether or not humans can alter the course of global warming.

Answer is obvious!

[hilldog]

We have had enough of voodoo science and liberal agenda dweebs! The answer is obvious why the ice is melting. Bird poop and pee! That's right migrating sea birds land on the ice and after a meal of fish poop and pee to their hearts content and that my friends warms the ice and that is why its melting. My name is Rick Perry and I endorse this message.

Re:Go away, oil industry shill!

[amiga3D]

It has happened before. 8 thousand years ago the land bridge between across the Bering Strait was drowned by receding glaciers. Those damn neo-con rebuplicans! I bet Sarah Palin did it! It was a plot by those racist rich bastards to keep out people from siberia.

Lets go on averages and go nuclear

[Stonefish]

The pro greenhouse factions have been pointing to isolated areas where there has been ice reduction.
The pro fossil fuel group point to areas where ice is increasing.

There areas of reduction are larger and more prominent than the areas of ice increase. If I were a betting person I would want long odds before supporting the ice increase camp and what would I spend the money on if I lost.

Now climate change doesn't need to be a bad thing, it depends upon your perspective and context however I'm more worried about the impact of lots of CO2 on the oceans pH. This will change life as we know it and I suspect that the oceans will become a not very nice place to be close to.

If I had the power I'd be making society go nuclear big time and taxing the begessus out of any C02 emmiter to fund the change. It not that I like nuclear its the only real option that is palatable to me. I like using lots of energy, I don't want to be frugal with my energy budget which the green loonies think is the best option. The situation in Japan is simply poor planning, Anyone who thought that putting fundamentally unstable nuclear plant designs on the coast which are plagued by extreme earthquakes and tsunamis needs their head read. By the way the Japanese aren't the only numbnuts.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/google-earth-maps-out-at-risk-populations-around-nuclear-power-plants.php
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/nuclear-reactors-in-earthquake-zones-in-the-us-map.php

The answer is better reactor design and better plant placement.

 

There's also career selection bias

[unassimilatible]

Do you go into climate science as a field if you think everything with the climate is hunky dory?
It's like saying most sociologists agree that the government should spend more on social programs.

Re:There's also career selection bias

[khallow]

Do you go into climate science as a field if you think everything with the climate is hunky dory?

Why not? I went into mathematics because I was interested in the field not because I thought there was something wrong with it. I don't think, for example, that there's a need for government to spend more on mathematical research.

In One Fell Swoop?

[davesque]

This is part of the problem with this issue. People want to be convinced about global warming in one fell swoop. The truth is, it takes patience and intelligence to understand the issue. The reality lies in the data. The data takes time to understand. It takes willingness to understand. It is what shows that recent warming trends are not natural. Just because glaciers which have been there "for thousands of years" have now almost disappeared, that alone doesn't prove that warming is not natural. Those glaciers were naturally not there thousands of years ago, otherwise they wouldn't have been there "for thousands of years".

Skeptics are not going to be convinced until they can learn to have the patience that it takes to cultivate a scientific mind.

Re:Go away, oil industry shill!

[Ol Olsoc]

You take nothing at face value? I call bull.

Do you need to stick your hand in a flame to determine that it is hot? Is every flame hot? Can you say with certainty that the laws of the universe don't change with every breath?

Yeah, I'm a skeptic too, but that means that I do take some things as fact, then try to make sense of them, lest I sound like one of those people who believe that nothing else exists, but what they experience.

The possibility of the earth having an average temperature that changes over time. It would appear that it does. I don't know for sure, because I wasn't alive forever, so I have to take it on likelihood that it did, based on evidence presented that does not contradict what I know.

That certain gases will affect the heat retention in a gaseous mixture is a fact that you can confirm to your own personal belief. It's done all the time in school science fairs.. The amounts that are put into the air by humans, very well might have an effect in our atmosphere. That can be calculated. So does it or does it not have an effect? It probably should, especially since the present focus is on Carbon Dioxide, and not methane, or other gases that are more powerful agents of heat retention.It is very likely that there will be more effect than calculated for CO2 alone.

Theory: Human activities have an effect upon the average temperature of the earth via greenhouse gas emissions.

So now we have something that is falsifiable, and possible avenues of refutation of the concept.

If global warming via human activity not causing the atmosphere to retain heat from insolation, what would be the mechanism that prevents the expected warming effect?

Now we have something we can sink our teeth into. I can think of a few possibilities, such as increased cloud cover compensating for the increased greenhouse gases, perhaps. Perhaps changes in the composition of the atmosphere might make for reflectivity changes in the highest level of the atmosphere. I don't know, these are just initial thoughts, of the sort that need a lot more research to have some clue.

Duly noted that you didn't mention the anti - AGW crowd. Do you approve of their Intelligent design and Creationist type arguments for their position? That sort of thing where any and every misstep is fuel to discredit an entire concept? That crowd will not accept AGW no matter what. That American professor that they have been after, and has been cleared by multiple inquiries, but they just say the inquiries are flawed. The false dichotomy of if it isn't one, it has to be the other? Why don't we see any of your skepticism about that?

Perhaps you aren't as much of a skeptic as you think you are...