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ESA Satellite Shows Sudden Ice Loss In Southern Antarctic Peninsula
ddelmonte tips news that the ESA's CryoSat spacecraft has detected a sharp increase in the rate at which ice is being lost in a previously stable section of Antarctica. In 2009, glaciers at the Southern Antarctic Peninsula began rapidly shedding ice into the ocean, at a rate of roughly 60 cubic kilometers per year (abstract). From the ESA's press release:
This makes the region one of the largest contributors to sea-level rise in Antarctica, having added about 300 cubic km of water into the ocean in the past six years. Some glaciers along the coastal expanse are currently lowering by as much as four m each year. Prior to 2009, the 750 km-long Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change. ... The ice loss in the region is so large that it has even caused small changes in Earth’s gravity field, detected by NASA’s GRACE mission. Climate models show that the sudden change cannot be explained by changes in snowfall or air temperature. Instead, the team attributes the rapid ice loss to warming oceans.
The post accepted by Slashdot cites European Space Agency's satellite as evidence of ice-loss.
And earlier submission citing NASA's satellites leading to the opposite conclusion was not accepted. Kind a strange for a normally unabashedly US-centric Slashdot to so openly favour European satellite-data over American — makes one suspect a certain pre-existing bias...
I don't see any substantial changes here, do you?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Apparently, the Antarctic Peninsula is a specific feature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Peninsula
Since peninsulas stick out into the ocean and the ocean is (of course) north of antarctica, I assume "Southern Antarctic Peninsula" describes the base of the peninsula, rather than referring to some nebulous "Southern Antarctica", which would be nothing more than an amusing way to refer to the pole. Giving directions there has got to be very confusing. Clocks basically turn east down there.
Politics are not Pro- or Anti-Science. It is weather the science is political useful for them or not. Otherwise they will be happy putting their head in the sand.
This. If you know anything about lawyers and law, the first tenet is NEVER ADMIT FAULT. No good can come of it. People might then expect you to pay for damages or whatever.
Environmentalists make the mistake thinking that conservatives are stupid. That is not the case. The only thing they care about is that they will not have to pay for or be part of the solution. Any time you spend trying to convince them otherwise is wasted.
The other bit is that politics is never proactive, always reactionary. No environmental protection or anti-pollution law was ever passed until something was already FUBAR, be it due to the London yellow fog, or smog over LA, holes in the ozone layer, or Chinese urban centers shutting down due to respiratory issues. The politicians will maybe finally get around to doing something substantial about AGW after there's a refugee crises from low-lying areas, like the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Louisiana, Florida, etc. Chances are, they still won't blame AGW, since it'll be sea swell from a hurricane/typhoon that does those population centers in, but at some point they'll get tired of throwing money at those places to rebuild. Fortunately there are already a lot of migrant refugee boats in the Mediterranean and Andaman Sea for other reasons, so we're already slowly building a framework for dealing with these kinds of things.
I've had the same problem with mi. Apparently his mind is too simple to parse out the comparison in a single link and he rigidly requires responses be presented only in the format he wants.
In response to your post temperatures are still within the uncertainty range on the model projections so it's impossible to say they are wrong.
I'm not going to try again because I've already presented you with this peer reviewed paper that compares IPCC projections to observations for temperature and sea level rise. The fact that you won't accept the format I present it in just shows how you lack intellectual flexibility.