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Larson B Ice Shelf In Antarctica To Disintegrate Within 5 Years
BarbaraHudson writes: A new study (abstract) from NASA scientists predicts an Antarctic ice shelf half the size of Rhode Island will disintegrate around 2020. The shelf has existed for roughly 10,000 years. "Ice shelves are the gatekeepers for glaciers flowing from Antarctica toward the ocean. Without them, glacial ice enters the ocean faster and accelerates the pace of global sea level rise." At its thickest point, the ice shelf remnant is a half kilometer tall, and spans approximately 1,600 square kilometers. "The glaciers' thicknesses and flow speeds changed only slightly in the first couple of years following the 2002 collapse, leading researchers to assume they remained stable. The new study revealed, however, that Leppard and Flask glaciers have thinned by 65-72 feet (20-22 meters) and accelerated considerably in the intervening years. The fastest-moving part of Flask Glacier had accelerated 36 percent by 2012 to a flow speed of 2,300 feet (700 meters) a year."
As a professional stats guy, let me just say that "correlation doesn't imply causation" is important to keep in mind for any scientist. However, it's also the laziest, most transparent tool used by idiots on the internet to discard any facts or information that they find inconvenient for their cause. Correlation doesn't NECESSARILY imply causation, but when you have strong reasons to expect a causal relationship based on first principles, and when correlations back that up, that is decent evidence that your hypothesis is correct. Correlations are what underpin about 99% of our scientific understanding of the world, and when you chuck them aside as evidence so glibly, you show only that you are biased and completely ignorant of the scientific process.
Interglacial temperatures don't follow a standard deviation normal curve type graph. They spike up very quickly after the ice age ends, drop back down, and generally fluctuate a significant amount without any human input at all. At the beginning of the current interglacial, the global temperature spiked up by at least 4 degrees in just a few hundred years. That's a massively faster increase than the current warming trend that everybody seems to be so worried about. It's also cooler now than it was during that spike, but the alarmists never seem to publicize that fact.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Hi, geologist here.
Your understanding is wrong. Or at least you misinterpret it.
We are indeed in an interglacial period, but were at the end of one before we fucked it all up. The warming period you expect happened 20-14 thousand years ago, and stabilized to what was the current climate between 10 and 6 thousand years ago. Indeed the stability of the climate over the last 10k years is widely credited with providing the right conditions for the development of agriculture and thus civilization. Those days are now done, what comes next is uncharted territory.
But the relevant laws of chemistry and physics are indisputable, known since Fourier's time in the early 1800s, and immune to PR and politics. The fine details of second order and tertiary feedback effects will only ever tweak the result, those won't and can't overcome the basic fundamental gross effect dictated by physics.
"They spike up very quickly after the ice age ends, drop back down, and generally fluctuate a significant amount without any human input at all.
Not according to any the historical temperature graphs [wikipedia.org] that I've seen. The temperature rises rapidly at the end of the ice age and then levels off an eventually begins to fall again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
The graph in the page you linked to shows temperature doing exactly what I claimed it does."
Acually it does not. The spikes you talk about are changes of about 0.3 degrees Celsius during hundred of years. Check the diagram more closely and you will also see that. The last "downspike" is what's called the little ice age and is still just about a dip which is about half a degree during a couple of hundred of years.
Never before in history has the temperature changed with more then 1 degree over 100 years. Even the during the sharp raise in the beginning in the diagram was that the case.
Natural variation in temperature are very slow and does not change as fast as today. The variations in temperature we see today are unprecedented for the last 10 000 years. Thats why scientist are saying its AGW. We, humankind has caused it.
Just saying it like it are.
Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years? (National Geographic - 2007)
US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 (The Guardian)
OP:
I recall NASA predicting complete loss of arctic sea ice by 2013, and the navy predicting the same in 2016.
You:
after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."
Are you unable to see the difference?
One NASA climate scientist said "the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012", not "NASA predicted complete loss of arctic sea ice by 2013".
No, I'm not, because, according to your point of view, even in this case is not NASA, but five random NASA guys (mainly from the Radar dept.) saying that "[Larsen B] will likely disintegrate completely in the next few years" and that "Larsen B will eventually break it apart completely, probably around the year 2020", so OP is right: NASA guys were wrong before, so NASA guys could be wrong again.
And by the way, that one NASA climate scientist is NASA's Chief Cryosphere Scientist.