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Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts
mdsolar (1045926) writes "The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday. The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis."
Just kidding... the Antarctic ice has been melting for decades. More precisely, the mass of the old, thick land ice is decreasing due to rising temperatures, but the surface area of the short-lived, thin sea ice has been increasing, partly due to decreased salinity in the Southern Ocean because the land ice is melting. Overall, the Antarctic has been losing ice at an accelerating rate as temperatures have continued to increase.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
All the cool kids these days are buying amphibious demilitarized "ducks".
Nobody should build anything along the coast. At least any coast that is not at least 100m above sea level.
Push the button for the interactive map -
http://ngm.nationalgeographic....
Well, there's also the issue of the numerous global financial centers along various coasts.
Yea, not seeing the problem...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You're probably trolling, but here goes:
Any continent will rise if the mass on top is reduced, because the mantle acts as a liquid on geological time scales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound)
However, it's not the loss of mass or height of the antartcic that is causing sea levels to rise, but the movement of water from "long term storage" on top of the antarctic continent into the ocean. What the container does after the contents have been released is immaterial.
(for the arctic ice it is different because it is all floating, so melting it won't do anything to sea levels (it will to salinity and hence ocean currents) - and greenland has a lot of land ice, of course)
It's not "waterfront property" that anybody is worried about. It's the fact that a very large number of the world's current cities happen to be located near the water for historical reasons (major trading hubs built around ports for oceangoing ships.) The utter annihilation of those cities is a huge economic problem.
And flooding Death Valley with seawater doesn't create a single acre of arable land. You can't farm jack $hit out of soil contaminated with salt. The shores of the Persian gulf (nor, for that matter the shores of southern CA) don't support much in the way of farms, despite the large body of water next door.
That's the surface area of ice, not the amount of ice, which is measured by volume or mass. If you look at the mass of ice in the Antarctic, you can see it's been melting for decades at an accelerating rate. Funny how the real facts get in the way of a good misinformation campaign.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
*cough* *cough*
I didn't know global warming only affected air temps...?
Right. Because the national debt is equivalent to climate change.
Also, as has been pointed out, your contention is completely unsupported by reality. But nice try. Maybe you should take your own advice about not being a "partisan pawn"?
Why? 10'?
Only the male scientists say it's 10 feet, the women say it's really about 5-6 feet.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You know this whole 'back in the seventies the scientists we're all about global cooling' has been debunked so many times that it makes you really look moronic to post it yet again.
Do you have any problem with the fact that some time in the distant future, the sun will stop shining? Maybe 5 billion years from now? No problem?
Okay, how about the fact that rivers change course? The Mississippi might have already switched to the Atchafalaya, if not for our meddling. We don't want New Orleans made useless. No problem with that either?
Then, what of the fact that large and powerful corporations lie, and engage in propaganda campaigns? You know, like Big Tobacco did? And like Wall Street did not too long ago with home mortgages? And like Big Oil does now? Big Oil lies about a lot of things, like the safety of offshore oil drilling. An accident like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill wasn't supposed to happen. When it did, they kept right on lying, about the rate of the leak and the amount of damage it was doing. Are we still okay here? Corporations routinely tell self serving lies, agreed? And surely you see that, whether or not Climate Disruption is real, Big Oil is highly motivated to be dismissive of warnings about it. If Climate Disruption is real and a huge problem, and Big Oil knows it, would they attempt to distract and deceive the public with propaganda campaigns? Yes, yes, they would. Still with me, I hope?
Now let's look at the other side. Either a) scientists are right and Climate Disruption is real, happening right now, and will cause huge problems. Or b) scientists are united in a big conspiracy to lie about Climate Disruption because it gets them more grant money, or c) scientists are morons and are getting it all wrong. The trouble with b) and c) is that they are not at all credible. I hope no one seriously credits c), it's just too implausible. As for b), you do realize that the flow of grant money does not much depend on the subject matter. If anything, being forced to study and restudy the climate takes away money that could have been used for other science. The public has turned negative and cut back funding for all science, so I'd have to say the Great Conspiracy, if it exists, is not working and if anything is backfiring. And do you suppose smarties like scientists wouldn't see that? And if their main interest was grant money, wouldn't they change their tune to the nicey nicey good news the public seems to want? Why haven't they done so then? Why haven't they dropped this story of Climate Disruption like a radioactive spud, given the damage it's doing to scientific funding? Could it be because it's real, and scientists are honestly worried about it?
Also, don't you understand how competitive science can be? For the time being we're stuck with anti-competitive oligopolies in oil and banking and several other industries. But not in science. If a few scientists had good evidence that Climate Disruption was wrong, do you suppose they would keep quiet and maintain the front? No way! They'd all be scrambling to publish first. It'd be a bombshell, like figuring out how to build a usable quantum computer and breaking many and perhaps all of our public key encryption schemes.
As for the evidence you demand, the "large scale changes", you have only to open your eyes and admit that what's right in front of your nose is indeed exactly that. Just 180 years ago, atmospheric CO2 was about 280 ppm. Now it's 400ppm, certainly higher than it has been in nearly 1 million years, and probably higher than any level in the last 20 million years. That is a very fast change. We're seeing ocean acidification. And we are indeed seeing higher average temperatures. In recent years, we've had far more record highs than record lows. The Arctic Ice Cap is smaller than it has ever been in recorded history. Antarctic ice shelves such as Larson A and B have collapsed. How can you hear of such events and not think they are significant?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"