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Greenland Is Getting Darker
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Greenland's white snow is getting darker. Scientists have generally attributed that darkening to larger, slightly less white snow grains caused by warmer temperatures. But researchers have found a new source of darkening taking hold: impurities in the snow. The new darkening effect could easily add 2 centimeters to the projections of 20 cm sea level rise by 2100—and perhaps more if impurity levels grow with time."
And Leon's Getting Larrrrrrrrrrrrger
Of course they will grow. As snow melts the impurities at the top get added to the impurities deeper in the snow.
The only thing that can reduce it is if the melt water floats/washes the impurities way.
As long as China insists on NOT using their pollution controls (they built them on new plants per the treaty with japan, but japan forgot to require china to turn them on; besides as we have seen with their money, they really do not care about treaties; only winning a cold war ), this pollution will continue.
And yes, the pollution really carries that far. 10-15% of the western America's pollution is from China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
yeah, I hate science too. They try to force evolution, vaccines and all kinds of crap on us, but it is clear to me that we two understands this much better than they do.
I am 200m above sea level.
Are you?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... when do we rename it Dark Greenland?
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
Of course there are positives to climate change. For one thing, the northern United States would get an extremely prolonged growing season, and all those parts of Canada that are inhabited only by the natives will become liveable, meaning I can finally achieve my dream of growing a year-round peach farm in Connecticut (millions of peaches, peaches for me, etc). Most of the eastern seaboard and California would be underwater. Granted, I live on the eastern seaboard, but my house is just far enough in that it'd probably turn into some nice beachfront property.
The only bad news is that Ohio would still be around. Truly, there is no escaping from Ohio.
Which of the Koch brothers are you?
That's totally racist. Claiming "whiter is more pure".....Obama needs to use an executive order to ban the term white. Only then can things be not racist!
As an Ohioan, allow me to say, fuck you.
1300m here all you below can drown.
I find it hard to get angry or excited or frustrated by environmental programs, in much the same way that I don't lose sleep over the inevitable heat-death of the universe. If there's one thing that Americans, (producers of most of the world's CO2 emissions) hate, it's "going green" (e.g. wearing sweaters in the winter, taking showers less than 10 minutes, turning lights off, and not buying Jeeps). Problem? Yes. Bigger problem? The rest of the world covets our "lifestyle" and has near 20x as many people. Just look at the mess China is making and they aren't even close to the emissions rate per capita of the U.S. (Though they are certainly headed in that direction). As for international agreements, yeah right, many American politicians are basically owned by the oil industry and the rest of the World isn't going to take "only the U.S. gets to pump CO2 in the air." Tragedy of the commons, really. My advice? Move inland, preferably north as well. I head Canada has a great beach climate, or at least will soon. Scotland and Sweden are also nice if you don't mind the respective haggis and socialism.
-1 Comment Contains Portal Reference
Scientists have generally attributed that darkening to larger, slightly less white snow grains caused by warmer temperatures.
Actually I cannot believe that scientists are that stupid. Maybe they should visit here in Winnipeg Canada where we see this every year from the tonnes of sand they put on our streets in the winter. As warmer temps rise the snow banks go from white piles to brown/grey mud piles and as more snow melts the darker it gets and the faster it melts.
No wonder people doubt climate change when scientists say things like this.
The only thing that can reduce it is if the melt water floats/washes the impurities way.
Actual in 90% of the time this is not the case, we get rain in the spring with the piles of mud and all it does is causes the snow pack to compress more (unless the snow pack is already compressed).
Try looking up albedo, then performing some calculations to figure out how changes in the albedo changes changes the local temperature. Finally use that change in temperature to figure out how much ice will melt. While your results won't be as good as those produced by experienced research scientists, the basics are well within the grasp of someone with a high school education. Indeed, it is a common exercise for first year students in the physical sciences.
Once you've done that, you'll be better equipped to assess whether or not this is a climate lie.
The measured rate of rise has been averaged out at 1.1 millimeters per year, so who in their right mind with the credentials to back it up would predict 20cm by 2100? Desperate people trying to keep the funding going and con people in to dumping billions on the study and "solution" to it. With all the money that has been spent on global warming/climate change with little to no results do they think the American public will keep pushing billions their way with no results? The whole thing reminds me of a gambler that has "a sure thing" bet on some team or something.
would get an extremely prolonged growing season
Except for the part in the middle of the summer where the heat kills off all your corn, so you get two short growing seasons, and shorter fall/winter growing seasons. Enjoy your stunted corn and tomato-sized jack-o-lanterns.
The chronically uninformed and uninformable* will find some way to deny this is happening.
* - people who feel that their ignorance outweighs the knowledge of any scientist and so nobody with an IQ over 125 has anything to tell them.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Cannot figure out if you're being serious or not ..
Am fairly sure no-one is spreading sand across Greenland, in the same way they do on the streets of Winnipeg Canada [sic].
Cool.
Problem is, the jury is still out on whether I may shoot the coast dwellers when they come crawling upwards.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Kamchatka peninsula in the far eastern Russia is a very active volcanic place. more interesting the dominant wind direction goes directly towards Greenland.
Nasa article with pictures of 4 Kamchatka volcanos erupting at the same time in 2013.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=80226
This article doesn't actually say when they started erupting. I'm having problems finding historic activity for those volcanos, but I know they were somewhat active during the Icelandic eruption in 2011 meaning they have been on and off for a noteworthy part of the 2009-2013 period where Greenland's reflection was studied, possibly more or less the entire time.
For some reason the article only mentions volcanic activity in Iceland.
Well, if you had RTFA instead of being a dork, you would have noted that they're blaming volcanic activity in Iceland as a contributing factor.
Or are you too dumb to read?
Real classy. Typical of Ohioans though, so I'm not surprised.
Enjoy your life, keep consuming faster and faster. Consume toxic plastic products that go in the landfill 6 months to a year after you buy them. Continue to consume as inefficiently as possible the last of the oil that makes everything in our modern society run including mechanical farm equipment, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizer. Buy a giant unsustainable house and fill it with crap that doesn't make you happy. Maybe someday you will burn that house and the crap in it to stay warm.
Global warming is just one of our problems. If we run out of coal and oil without a suitable replacement for most of us what happens next won't matter...
Let's spray everything with titanium dioxide. Bob Ross will have a fit in his grave, but then the albedo problem goes away!
Mmmmmm stunted corn....
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
America is the best country.
Other countries are not as good.
Particulates from coal-burning, wildfires, dust storms, volcanoes, Etc all contribute to the darkening of the snow. This is true thruout the northern temperate and arctic areas, not just Greenland.
Right? Doesn't the moisture initially form around ash or a dust mote like with sand and a pearl?
It's an all or nothing deal.
If you have bullets for all of them, go ahead. If not, avoid it.
I do NOT want to buy cheap crap. Nor do I want to buy overpriced crap that is made in China or anywhere else - like paying too much or getting a shoddy product just because it says "Made in USA".
I buy cheap stuff because that is all I can get or I cannot afford an American or European made product.
I needed a miter saw because I couldn't get parts for my old one. After calling Stanley-Black&Decker-DeWalt-Delta-Porter&Cable (All the same company), they told me that my 12 year old saw is no longer supported and I should look at DeWalt because they are "very good tools".
DeWalt makes all their stuff in Mexico or China now.
never the less, I cannot afford DeWalt. I ended up fixing the saw myself and it's chugging away - an old USA made Delta.
See? I'm buying Chinese or more comonly SE Asian made shit because my real income has fallen. I cannot afford to buy American even when there is an American product available.
Cars? I have a 20 year old Chevy that I maintain myself because I cannot afford a mechanic. It is barely passing emmissions and I don't know when the particulates per million gets to high what i'm going to do.
Do you understand?
People - us peons - are buying cheap Chinese shit NOT because we want to, but because we HAVE to.
We see our neighbors get canned because WalMart insists that their manufacturers cheapen their products even more.
Its a sprial down to the bottom - all because of Globalisation, automation, and short-term thinking from our leaaders.
Drew Carey?
...IQ over 125 has anything to tell them.
IQ doesnt impress me - accident of birth like big tits. Just because someone scores well on a test that was designed to find deficiencies and was NEVER inteded as a measuring stick doesn't mean they are automatically correct.
What impresses me is years of study and data. And the cliimate scientists impress me.
...under "Even MORE of the sky is falling!"
News at 11.
-Styopa
Well, No Shit. With every tanker jet spraying the chemicals, heavy metals, nanochips and radioactive compounds into the atmosphere and boiling the ionosphere with HAARP technology, its just a matter of time before someone powerful enough gets completely pissed about it. Wars between great nations have been started for a hell of a lot less.
Will they have to rename the country Dark-Greenland?
Melting snow freezes at night making a shiny reflective surface. Have they factored this into their estimates?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Well, since the last ice age it's something like 450 feet higher but since the Great Melt its been rising at a pretty steady rate. Certainly over the last several centuries it's been a fairly constant rise. Nothing to do with "AGW". It's just natural variation.
The primary cause of glaciers shrinking is particulates in the atmosphere. This has been reported many times, but it doesn't fit with the whole Global Warming sound bite so it's generally ignored.
I have existed from the dawn of time, and I shall I live beyond its end! In the meantime, I shall feed, and this time I do not need a knife. You will all die horribly in searing pain!
And Florida would totally disappear! Anyone else feel like going out right now and lighting off a coal seam?
That's because you're a creationist
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I am 200m above sea level.
Are you?
The Dead Sea, yes.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Groucho
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
He is being serious. In Colorado we get dust storms that leave layers of dark dust in the mountain snowpack. Once those layers become exposed the snow melts faster, sometimes causing minor flooding issues.
It would be easy for dust, pollution, or volcanic ash to get caught up in the jet stream and deposited amongst the Greenland snow/ice. Only political clowns would try to make a case that this is related to global warming.
Actually about 20m in the last 12K years, a combo of ice melt, but more importantly isostacy.
Gives new meaning to the term "Stand Your Ground Law"
Don't eat the yellow snow.
No. You can only shoot the ones that voted for AGW deniers, or didn't vote at all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
qatar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
china(nearly twice as much as the US)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's as if the earth never has experienced higher temperatures before and survived.
I don't think any scientist, or thoughtful person for that matter, questions whether the Earth will survive. Of course it will. Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
But less than 0.3m in the last 3K years.
Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
Considering the biggest killer of humans in the last 200 years has been governments, for some reason I don't think they can be trusted to "save" any of them. Give them enough power to control CO2 emissions, then their most likely course of action will be to quickly reduce the global population - because attrition would take too long.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
> Try looking up albedo
Sorry that's too sciency. Don't you have anything at the hurr-durr level?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Dont forget all the intentional particulates put there by chem planes.
Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
Considering the biggest killer of humans in the last 200 years has been governments, for some reason I don't think they can be trusted to "save" any of them. Give them enough power to control CO2 emissions, then their most likely course of action will be to quickly reduce the global population - because attrition would take too long.
Do you have a any citations that collaborate this claim, ranking it vs other causes? Looking at various statistics about leading causes of death, intentional deaths including war seem to be pretty far down the list.
No wonder people doubt climate change when scientists say things like this..
I'm just guessing here based on nothing but a few decades of involvement in the scientific community, but I'd say it's pretty likely that a) the scientists in question have thought of your objection already and b) they have quantified the relative contributions from increased grain size vs increased dark pollutants.
What would be incredibly stupid is assuming that people who study this stuff professionally can be out-thought by a random Internet commenter who has just encountered the question for the first time.
But just in case, let me ask you: what is the quantitative relationship between grain size and reflectivity of snow? Please respond with a graph or formula. You must have access to this information to judge the relative importance of grain size vs pollutant cover, and it would be a positive contribution to this discussion to share it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
Considering the biggest killer of humans in the last 200 years has been governments, for some reason I don't think they can be trusted to "save" any of them. Give them enough power to control CO2 emissions, then their most likely course of action will be to quickly reduce the global population - because attrition would take too long.
Do you have a any citations that collaborate this claim, ranking it vs other causes? Looking at various statistics about leading causes of death, intentional deaths including war seem to be pretty far down the list.
I can't find any specific figures for ALL cases of killing by government, but there are some supporting figures on this web site on the statistics for Democide. It's by far #1 cause of unnatural death in the 20th century. Include wars (which is actually LESS a killer than governments killing their own people), and it easily surpasses everything else.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
Considering the biggest killer of humans in the last 200 years has been governments, for some reason I don't think they can be trusted to "save" any of them. Give them enough power to control CO2 emissions, then their most likely course of action will be to quickly reduce the global population - because attrition would take too long.
Do you have a any citations that collaborate this claim, ranking it vs other causes? Looking at various statistics about leading causes of death, intentional deaths including war seem to be pretty far down the list.
I can't find any specific figures for ALL cases of killing by government, but there are some supporting figures on this web site on the statistics for Democide. It's by far #1 cause of unnatural death in the 20th century. Include wars (which is actually LESS a killer than governments killing their own people), and it easily surpasses everything else.
WHO's statistics on top 10 causes of death in the world in 2012 vs. 2000 sums up to about 30 million kills in 2012 (that is, per year). http://www.who.int/mediacentre.... And the list is going to get interesting if the anti-vaccine people continue on their path, diseases that wiped out huge numbers of people historically are now growing again.
The trend that is presented seems to acknowledge the two volcanic eruptions and their contributions as being 'important sources of material' but does not explain how they account for two uncontrollable events in their trend. If the trend moves forward with an assumed rate of dust/soot/microbiology deposits that is skewed higher than it should be because of the inclusion of the volcanic events, then the trend will be higher. This is not stated in the article, and the abstract of the study.
Also, though this Georgia Institute of Technologies PDF (http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS_Spring2006/Choi.pdf) is from 2006, it points out that Albedo measurement via satellite is not necessarily a clear cut measurement, and points out that direct correlations are not always possible.
That's because you're a creationist
Nuh-uh! The Earth was hotter and had more CO2 when the dinosaurs were around, literally thousands of years ago. The climate change didn't kill off the dinosaurs (hello, Sparrow!), so why should it kill off us?
I'm tired of seeing all these BS claims of satellite data from 1960 or so on. Show us the data from the 1920s! Why do they always cut off satellite data before 1957? It's a conspiracy funded by big science and their unlimited funds, grad students living the high life on "Top" Ramen and other exotic imported foods. Buy American at Walmart, ya commies! :p
well then we should just plow it under to make it whiter?
Is that racist?
bark-bark-bark-howl
If you believe in global warming, you should start moving upwards already anyway... Who's left at sea level when the water comes clearly doesn't believe in GW.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's obviously the particulates from Al Gore's jet as he jets around the world trying to jack up taxes and build a cap and tax economy.
And yet if we don't control our CO2 emissions the end result will be an increased strain on our civilization which is likely to cause more wars anyway. For instance one factor in the Syrian conflict is the drought that Syria has been going through for the last 3 years. The chances are good that global warming is part of the Syrian drought. The effects of global warming won't always be directly visible as a cause of things like this but it's likely to be a factor and it's likely to get worse as global warming marches on.
Cannot figure out if you're being serious or not ..
Am fairly sure no-one is spreading sand across Greenland, in the same way they do on the streets of Winnipeg Canada [sic].
Why exactly are you fairly sure no-one is spreading sand across Greenland, in the same way they do on the streets of Winnipeg Canada? Is it because you think the island is unpopulated? Its not. Have you considered that maybe the inhabitants might be trying to increase their land space? Or maybe the sand from Europe and Canada is being deposited there. Don't be ignorant like those scientists.
Well, if you had RTFA instead of being a dork, you would have noted that they're blaming volcanic activity in Iceland as a contributing factor. Or are you too dumb to read?
According to the AC above, apparently he is. I will miss Slashdot when it goes to the dark side (ie beta).
I have a troll mod for ya!
Now tell me, what does climate change have to do with male sex drive?!
[somewhere in greenland]
Scientist: OMG... My whole life has been a waste
And yet if we don't control our CO2 emissions the end result will be an increased strain on our civilization which is likely to cause more wars anyway.
Pure rampant speculation without even any historical evidence to back it up.
For instance one factor in the Syrian conflict is the drought that Syria has been going through for the last 3 years. The chances are good that global warming is part of the Syrian drought.
Droughts have occurred since before mankind existed. More rampant speculation with NO evidence.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
As someone who lives in an OH border state, let me say fuck everybody in OH. If you would just stay in your state everyone would be much happier.
Most wars are ultimately about resources. The changes caused by global warming are subtle enough that someone like you can easily argue they are natural occurrences in the short run but as time marches on they will become more and more obvious. Expansion of the Hadley Cells and more desertification in the descending legs (where Syria is located) is an expected result of global warming.
Most wars are ultimately about resources. The changes caused by global warming are subtle enough that someone like you can easily argue they are natural occurrences in the short run but as time marches on they will become more and more obvious. Expansion of the Hadley Cells and more desertification in the descending legs (where Syria is located) is an expected result of global warming.
And most people killed by governments are killed BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT, not by war. There are plenty of reasons for war, and, frankly, many of the large ones were NOT about resources, but caused by nationalism or religious intolerance.
But, hey, keep on preaching the global warming alarmism. It's most likely to lead to either war, or some country deciding the need to eliminate a chunk of their own population. That's the path "you're not allowed to use fossil fuels or nuclear" will lead to, as it reduces resources for EVERYONE.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I use troll fat to pop MY stunted corn.
Nationalism or religious intolerance is the excuse you hear but more often that's a cover for resource competition. It's a lot easier for demagogues to whip up the population when resources are short.
Energy is a fungible resource. It's not necessary to produce it with fossil fuels or nuclear power (and I'm not anti-nuke but it is one of the more expensive ways to produce power). Getting off fossil fuels may necessitate some changes to our lifestyle but I don't believe it has to be any worse than we have now, just different.
Most economic analyses I've see show it will be much more expensive in the long run to not do something about global warming than it will be to do something about it.
Call me when it starts to increase the amount of Magenta
-- 29A the number of the Beast