Slashdot Mirror
The Himalayas and Nearby Peaks Have Lost No Ice In Past 10 Years, Study Shows
DesScorp writes "A story from UK's Guardian reports on a study of ice levels from the Himalayas area, and finds that no significant melting has occurred, despite earlier predictions of losses of up to 50 billion tons of ice. 'The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero,' said Professor Jonathan Bamber, who also warns that 8 years simply isn't enough time to draw conclusions. 'It is awfully dangerous to take an eight-year record and predict even the next eight years, let alone the next century,' he said." Readers have sent in a few other stories today relating to melting (or persisting) ice around the globe; read on for more.
bonch writes "New research from the University of Colorado concludes that the polar ice caps are melting less than previously thought. Almost 230 billion tons of ice annually melt into the ocean, 30% less than past predictions. The new data comes from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite, which provides more accurate estimates than previous methods."
The earth being a complex thing, though, note that these observations don't mean an end to predictions of elevated sea level.
Finally, an anonymous reader writes with another ice story: "NASA's Terra satellite saw a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica and it is all set to give rise to an iceberg the size of Manhattan! The huge gash in the snow is 30 kilometers (or 19 miles) long and nearly 100 meters wide, and is widening every passing minute. This is expected to create an iceberg more than 900 square kilometer in area, as compared to the 785 square kilometer area of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Bronx combined, said NASA."
The earth being a complex thing, though, note that these observations don't mean an end to predictions of elevated sea level.
Finally, an anonymous reader writes with another ice story: "NASA's Terra satellite saw a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica and it is all set to give rise to an iceberg the size of Manhattan! The huge gash in the snow is 30 kilometers (or 19 miles) long and nearly 100 meters wide, and is widening every passing minute. This is expected to create an iceberg more than 900 square kilometer in area, as compared to the 785 square kilometer area of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Bronx combined, said NASA."
There's also extremely solid evidence that the climate has been much warmer today with ten times the amount of CO2 in the air, and not only was life just grand then, life flourished, and was even more diverse then, then it is today.
Yes, AFTER life adapted to the environment. When the climate shifted rapidly it caused an extinction event. In fact, every time there has been a rapid climate change there has been an extinction event. Only when life has adapted to the new conditions does it "flourish".
You're also equating the world millions of years ago to the world of today, which is naive.
So, we're going to base all of our information on 150-200 years roughly.
Hardly. Paleoclimate reconstructions go back reliably for thousands of years.
With 20-30 years of 'goodish' data, with 5-15 years of not bad data, with 5 years of okay data.
You're confusing weather and climate. Don't do that.
That the earth is warming. Not forgetting that, it's been so much warmer when humans weren't even involved.
Beh.
No one is arguing that. However, the Earth does not warm up just because it wants to. Climate change happens when something about the planet changes. These can be volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, extended solar minimums, orbital variations, etc. .
Here's what we are observing. The planet is warming rapidly. The trend started about 100 years or so ago. We have not undergone any noticeable orbital or axial variations. Solar output has not significantly increased or decreased. The Earth does not produce a significant amount of surface heat.
Given all that, come up with a way for the planetary temperature to rise WITHOUT using the significant increases in GHGs and DOESN'T violate the laws of thermodynamics.
~X~
I'm not sure how good this news is. From the Guardian article:
The scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the "third pole" – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.
So while the total amount of ice has remained relatively stable it appears the snowfall is moving up in elevation. As the atmosphere warms it can hold more water vapor so a possible cause of the increase in ice at higher elevations is warmer temperatures carrying water vapor higher before it precipitates out. The news may ameliorate some of the concerns over the water delivered by glaciers to the lowlands but it doesn't appear to me to be evidence against global warming.
Nuclear power is only expensive because of the coal and enviromental lobbists
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=886&dat=19890326&id=dOdSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KYEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6879,6110878
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station
Inital proposed costs 2.8 Billion
Final Cost 5.8 Billion, 9.3 Billion with Financing added in
1.8 million Manhours wasted
I talked with a Senior Security employee at APS once who started out back in the day working security at the construction of that plant and he told me this story.
Due to regulations each contractor had to have the contents of their tool bag inventoried before they were allowed to begin work or leave work.
Each item brought into the plant had to be listed on a sheet with each Item getting a line.
Example 1 box of screws
1. cardboard box screws with plastic window 50 count
2. plastic window from box of screws 50 count
3. 1 screw - from box of screws 50 count
4. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count
5. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count
I could go on but you get the point
This was in the days before computers were everywhere so it had to be hand written At the end of the shift the same procedure was followed and the lists were compared and if there was any discrepency between the two and the contractors work log which recorded each item used and where it was used, a security guard had to accompany the contractor to locate the missing item and recover it.
Initally contractors were put on the clock before they entered security and taken off the clock after they exited security, so there was incentive for workers to pad their hours by bring in unnecessary boxes of screws, and ocassionally leaving an item in the facility so that they could milk overtime. eventually it was sorted out but the contractors constantly found ways to abuse the regulations to justify extra pay.
The plant at the time of the above story had no nuclear material present and the above work area that the contractors were being let into would never be exposed to nuclear material during operation (office building), but the regulation was in place purportedly to reduce the amount of potential nuclear waste by limiting and controlling the amount of material that went into the plant.
Until the regulations governing nuclear power plant construction are rationalized there will be almost no nuclear plant construction in the US and it will always be expensive and over budget. Nuclear is cheaper than current solar technologies and coal but its the regulations that drive up the cost.