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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."
Gee, it's a good thing Anthropogenic Global Warming is just a Big Leftist Conspiracy, or imagine how bad things would be!
How much evidence is required before denialist clowns will be convinced that Global Warming is a thing, and it is almost certainly Our Fault? It's kind of amusing that the same people that will shovel 100's of $B and sacrifice thousands of lives to counter theoretical threats posed by countries all over the world somehow require absolute irrefutable "I must personally get burnt before I'll ever admit fire exists" proof when it comes to climate change?
One must note that the ice sheet has **ONLY** existed for 10,000 years.
It's very important to stress this point, as those who do not understand geologic time are at risk of thinking that 10,000 years is a long time.
It's a nanosecond on the geologic clock.
This is a very young icesheet. It's loss is noteworthy, but does not have significance when viewed on macro timeframes.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Rhode Island is supposed to be an island. The rising sea levels are only helping it to achieve its natural state!
Probably not enough rise to make that happen.
Although it is believed that the melting of floating ice shelves will not raise sea levels, technically, there is a small effect because sea water is ~2.6% more dense than fresh water combined with the fact that ice shelves are overwhelmingly "fresh" (having virtually no salinity); this causes the volume of the sea water needed to displace a floating ice shelf to be slightly less than the volume of the fresh water contained in the floating ice. Therefore, when a mass of floating ice melts, sea levels will increase; however, this effect is small enough that if all extant sea ice and floating ice shelves were to melt, the corresponding sea level rise is estimated to be ~4 cm.
However, if and when these ice shelves melt sufficiently, they no longer impede glacier flow off the continent, so that glacier flow would accelerate. This new source of ice volume would flow down from above sea level, thus resulting in its total mass contributing to sea rise.
If everything DOESN'T go to hell in 5 years, will the AGW people shut the fuck up? No, I didn't think so.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
It is really more a case of, "Do nothing because our profit margins are set for the current situation and we do not want to incur any additional costs by recognizing risks that upset our current plan".
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Are you really criticizing that scientists failed to accurately predict the demise of a 10,000 year old structure to a better precision than ~10 years? You're really that cynical over a change of like 0.1%? If I predicted that apple stock would double in a 2 year span, and in fact it only went up 99.9%, would you really not listen to my next stock prediction?
The age of the structure is irrelevant to the precision of when it will disappear. If they say it will disappear in 5 years, but it really takes 15, it's not inaccurate by .1% because the structure is 10,000 years old. It's inaccurate by 300%, because their 5 year prediction took 15 years to come true. Considering how many of these "sky is falling" predictions have been made over the past few decades, virtually none of which are even close to accurate when the end date of the prediction comes along, I'd say being cynical is quite appropriate.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
You 'recall' a lot of bullshit. Unsourced bullshit.
But, BTW, the arctic sea ice is decreasing by about 12% per decade.
http://www.wunderground.com/cl...
Nothing to worry about, right? Not even close to worrying?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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."
US Department of Energy-backed research project led by a US Navy scientist predicts that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016 - 84 years ahead of conventional model projections.
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".
As it happened we hit the lowest sea ice extent since 1979 in September 2012.
A US Navy scientist predicted that "the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016", not "the Navy predicted complete loss of arctic sea ice by 2016".
As it happens we're currently only just inside 2 std deviations of the average, looking much like 2014 and 2013.
Anyway, to see what's happening go here http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/.
Watch this Heartland Institute video