Greenland's Glaciers Develop Stretch Marks As They Accelerate

New submitter dywolf writes: NASA-run Operation IceBridge has been monitoring and mapping ice sheets for the past eight years. They develop these maps in 3D using laser equipped aircraft to measure ice thickness. As glaciers reach the coast, they begin to accelerate, which causes crevasses to appear, which are essentially stretchmarks in the glacial strata. While a natural part of glaciers as they travel to sea, the glaciers of Greenland have increased in speed by 30% in the past decade. Jakobshavn Isbrae is Greenland's fastest glacier, and is now moving four times faster than it did 20 years ago.

Comments

-dafuq, Slashdot?

[Penguinisto]

I'm usually not one to ad hominem by source, but seriously... slate.com? The whole site is a political screed. But, it gets worse...

You go to the article, and of all the links they have, only *two* point to anything that comes even close to scientific -or- academic.

The one academic link points to a summary on UCAR, from 2007(!?), that contains exactly one pretty chart, but *no data* to back it up (or even a link to said data.) If someone finds a link to hard data in any of this mess, please let me know. Meanwhile, it should be noted that one of UCAR's missions is literally "Engaging in effective advocacy."

The one scientific link, to a NASA project site, tells the actual story. the TL;DR is that most of what they saw was routine, but two small areas got their attention... and they didn't measure those areas with anything useful, but instead literally used:

These images were not produced with the lasers, radar, and other instruments flying on the aircraft. (Check out the mission page for content like that.) Rather, IceBridge scientist John Sonntag captured these scenes with a handheld digital camera while looking out the aircraft window.

If you're going to link to something as backup for a story, how about you make it an article that contains some fact, and not an alarmist screed which supports its premise with a series of blind alley links, only one of which eventually leads to something useful... and that useful thing isn't even all that scientific?

Seriously - if you want less skeptics on the subject, it would help if you provided something more than blind assertion by a university-affiliated advocacy group, and what one guy did with his little handycam...

Re:-dafuq, Slashdot?

[Barsteward]

You go to the article, and of all the links they have, only *two* point to anything that comes even close to scientific -or- academic.

thats 2 more than the deniers usually produce, they usually link to denial blog sites.

Seriously - if you want less skeptics on the subject,

There is nothing wrong with sceptics, its the deniers you want to eliminate

Re:-dafuq, Slashdot?

[NoOneInParticular]

I am sorry that you feel left out. Guess what, this is what it means when the science is settled. It means that people stop caring about your untenable position. The world moves on and we are now looking at the effects of global warming, knowing that it occurs and that we do not know where it will stop. Glaciers are retreating, North Pole is shrinking, and Western Antartica is melting.

In contrast with you, Big Oil got the picture, and quite a few investigations are underway to figure out where the oil is when (not if, when) parts of the North Pole become accessible year around. I'm sure if Big Oil would listens to you they would save the 100s of millions they invest in this, but guess what, they follow the science, not the self-proclaimed sceptics that haven't been able to field a single climate model that explains how anthropogenic CO2 increase will NOT lead to climate change.

Re:-dafuq, Slashdot?

[NoOneInParticular]

For me, I draw the line with some basic facts and basic physics. If you disagree with those, I would say that you're in denial, and to have a rational discussion is as likely to have a rational discussion with a Young Earther on geology. This basic fact is that there is anthropogenic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. We had a lot of CO2 captured in the soil of the earth, and we've put it in the atmosphere. If you want to dispute that, there's no helping you, you are in denial. Second is a basic bit of physics: with increased CO2 there is increased retention of heat -- given all else being equal. This is the greenhouse effect. If you dispute that, I would like to urge you to create a greenhouse and observe. We can fairly accurate estimate what increase in warmth we can expect with increase in CO2 concentration. Again, disregarding all other factors such as heat sinks and many of the things that make climate modelling so difficult. This is a highly idealized physical theory that cannot be blindly applied to climate, yet it establishes one important thing: CO2 is a forcing term in the earth's atmosphere by its ability to capture heat. And we can very exactly compute how much heat it captures, and boy, are we in trouble!

If you accept those two things, it might be worth having a discussion about climate change. We, as humans, have introduced a forcing term in the climate that can be expressed as an additional amount of energy that is retained in the atmoshpere, and we are now trying to establish the actual effects. It is fine to be sceptic about some of the results, but honestly, you should also consider the possibility that some of those models are right. Just dismissing them is not an option, as the idealized model already predicts massive trouble. You would have to explain how this is NOT a problem. Claiming ignorance won't help you here, as you are arguing that many knowledgeable people are basically wrong.

The third breed of denier/sceptic is the 'anti-alarmist'. They hate the discussion about what to do about climate change and are denying the science in order to derail the discussion. A fair person would examine the actual ideas, and propose a weighted argument about the costs of the ideas versus the actual uncertainty in the rate of change we're experiencing. A denier just denies the science.

Finally, there is the bona fide sceptic. Somebody that has read up on the subject, has found some major issues, and is busy keeping his peers (because he is climate scientist by now) honest. Some of them exist (people know them by name), and although many don't agree with them, the are fairly well respected.

So, what type are you: the 'young-earth' equivalent of the denier that cannot understand logic and science, the lazy sceptic that does understand a bit of science but cannot be bothered to actually read up on it, or the political activist that denies the science because he hates his policial adversaries, or a scientist that has some informed sceptical point of view? You seem to be a mix of the first three. A bit more honest than most, but still pretty deluded in your reasoning.