Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Marvel At 'Increasingly Non-Natural' Arctic Warmth (msn.com)
mmell writes: Recognizing that this is a dreadfully old story (at least by Slashdot standards), current developments make this once more a current story. Scientists studying the Arctic environment are used to seeing broad variations in average temperature readings, but recent results have been so far beyond the normal range that they are only able to conclude that they are being caused by human activity. The temperature data (which includes a great many days with readings above 0C) is bolstered by measurements showing that the Arctic ice shelf is both thinner and less extensive than has ever been previously recorded. I wonder if the Arctic ice cap will reform in the winter, or if it's possible that its absence will cause irreversible changes to the Earth's ocean currents (and by extension, Earth's climate)? "[A]fter studying the Arctic and its climate for three and a half decades, I have concluded that what has happened over the last year goes beyond even the extreme," wrote Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, in an essay for Earth magazine. According to The Washington Post, the scientists' simulations predict some places in the high Arctic will rise over 50 degrees above normal. One chart, embedded in the report and shared by several meteorologists online, shows a "jaw-dropping and emblematic display of the intensity and duration of the Arctic warmth. It illustrates the difference from normal in the number of 'freezing degree days,' a measure of the accumulated cold since September."
Queue army of data denying anti-Earthers in 3...2...1
You think slashdot news is somehow cutting edge?
Homo sapiens, R.I.P late 21st century "they denied the truth of their actions to the very end"
Pettit's Ice Volume Death Spiral graphs are somewhat more understandable, but no less depressing.
https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-volume
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
There is a reason I chose to live at elevation in the colder north of England.
At 50 degrees (Fahrenheit right?!) I should be living in a tropical environment very soon. If sea level rises significantly land value will rise as well.
This simulation model really does sound fantastic...but for full disclosure, was my estate agent involved in the creation of this model?
I mean, not that it does not sound awesome but isnt a computer simulation a thing in which scientists make educated guesses as to parameters and then "reliably predict" an outcome?
Wouldn't it be cool to max-out all the factor multipliers and simulate what would happen? will the 'greenhouse effect' continue to spiral temperate out of control to +200c in less than 3 years?! -you know like when you change nuke yields in scortched Earth and it takes the entire map out with that radiation "effect".
Cool jaw dropping simulations bro.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Tweets to come out of that place in DC saying that it is natural and is a good thing for the USA and will 'Make America Great Again'.
Then the people in Colorado will be 're-assigned' to the the middle of the Saudi Desert with the words,
'If they want heat let them have heat'.
Joking aside, I fear for their jobs. They know that the Dear Tweeter does not like anyone speaking out of turn and even less disagreeing with his orangmess.
Long story short. We're all fucked..despite what president Cheeto says.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Here's your broom. Now push back that ocean.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
attic = collateral damage
and past presidents done nothing but ignore it for thier 8-year terms
Look. I wrote my name. Here, I'll hold it up and wave it around so everybody can see I wrote my name. See? I wrote my name. Mike Pence is here, standing right behind me, clapping like a trained seal on cocaine, he's so proud of the way I wrote my name. Also to remind you what will happen next.
I surely hope that the data is representing more than 35 years for temperature variation. We can have a hybris and think everything is man made if we only look things in the scope of single human lifetime. I bet in the 1850's they believed that all the coal burning was the reason for the mini ice age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's been hot this summer, really hot so naturally, I'm catching some waves.
The water is cold, icy cold and I'm only half joking when I say, 'now we know where the icebergs are melting to'. I know it's subjective, I posted this in previous years, however I have decades of experience in the ocean and I remember by month just how cold the water should feel for that time of year. My mental map of the way the ocean should feel is changing enough to notice.
I can sustain a 2+ hour body surf if I have time. I had time the other day and could only stay in for an hour, it was that cold in the middle of summer on a 42C day.
This used to be a pretty rare occurrence, now it is becoming more common at least to my local observations.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Rather than change the weather where you are, why not move where the weather is what you want?
Or will you be opening up britain to people who liked the weather in Spain but now find that it's happening in the UK, so want to move there?
Once the ice is gone it will start to snow and will suck in warm atlantic water to replace the evaporation forming the new ice age glaciation over europe, asia and north america.
Yeah just keep your head buried in the sand.
Of course it's all the fault of evil humans ('evil humans' = Western civilization) and could not possibly be due to undiscovered natural climate mechanisms. We thoroughly understand how planetary climates work, that's why scientists never announce new climate mechanism discoveries, because all is known that is knowable regarding the Earth's climate system.
Anyone who voices a different view or attempts to present conflicting data should be persecuted, ridiculed, prosecuted, and thrown in prison because they are evil. It is imperative that we cripple Western civilization as it alone is solely responsible for CAGW because Western CO2 is evil, but Chinese/Indian CO2 is climate-neutral due to not being generated by evil Western civilization.
Actually, I withdraw my previous comment. Venice DOES seem to have major problems with flooding, something that will be very expensive to fix and will likely cause massive loss of life especially when combined with natural disasters, like tsunamis.
By slashdot. Winter is usually the off season for these nuts. Not hard to drum up a leftist hysteric whenever they need one.
It's still a friggin' simulation. Occam's Razor says it's a bug in your code.
Ahh, news about 21st century alchemy. A philosopher has lost his stones.
And the deniers have lost their marbles.
if the model simulation is saying 50C higher, I'd get a better model, some fruit loop must have messed with the parameters.
Then again all the present simulation models are fucking shit, biased to run way too hot. and don't model reality correctly. stop adding dumb fucking parameter kludges.
I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013, and look at this graph. The arctic ice cap is currently a little over 13 million square km.
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappear anyway in the next 5 billion years... Unless we disseminate elsewhere in our universe, we're doomed.
In this Science Friday interview, DJ Patil says that the climate data is available for anyone to download and that the results are so overwhelmingly clear that anyone can analyse the data and see the human impact. I never thought this type of analysis was so accessible. I am wondering if anyone here on slashdot has tried to look at the data themselves.
We only have about a billion years before the Earth is uninhabitable though...so we'd better get cracking!
... specially those scientist living there warming the place, if they moved out it would obviously cool down again.
On the other hand, were Greenland's ice sheet to totally melt, we get roughly 24 ft of sea level rise. So if only 10 % of it melts, we get 2.4 ft rise. There goes Miami and most of southern Florida, Louisiana is...reduced. Virginia can kiss Norfolk goodbye. And if that rise also causes a shift in ocean currents, we can expect more effects.
So please, let's gamble with the future. What do we have to lose, eh?
Once the humans are gone.
The article is talking about summer ice cap, and you're showing a graph of the winter. Current low record for extend of arctic summer ice is about 3.5 million km, from september 2013. Granted, 2013 wasn't ice-free, but that was an early estimate from one overexcited scientist. We're getting close, though, but the exact year depends on a lot on the particular weather.
as it's pretty obvious the climate IS changing.
I'm just not so sure about the sole root cause being what the politically correct opinion is on the matter. ( Eg: Humanity is the reason )
In the grand scheme of things, our species is a relative newcomer to all things Earth. Since long before we showed up, the planet has cycled between two states. One of them being the Greenhouse version, the other the rather Chilly Ice Age variety. It's been going on for millions of years and will continue to do so long after we're dust. I'm pretty sure we have had nothing to do with the previous cycles, thus my reluctance to blame humanity as the sole contributor to the issue.
At some point it's going to get really hot around here. The Polar Caps and glaciers will all melt and the sea levels will rise once again. Somewhere along the way a Super Volcano will do its thing or we'll get a big enough NEO impact and the resulting dust / ash clouds will block enough sunlight, cool things off and we'll swing the cycle back the other way. Wash, rinse and repeat for billions of years.
It's Natures way of reformatting the planet so to speak.
Not to say we shouldn't try and minimize the pollution we spew out. It's nice to live in a non-toxic environment where I can breathe without a coughing fit.
If we want to blame human industry, so be it. Something needs to be the bad guy before folks can even be bothered to notice that something needs to be fixed.
The human variable may ultimately help speed things up, but in the end the cycle will continue to repeat itself and there isn't much we can do to stop it.
You are not taking into account any changes between then and now, but even worse, you have no data on the depth of the ice, only on the area. The square kilometers says nothing about the volume, this however, does: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/q...
Just because one model (and your BBC article was about ONE model which contradicted other model) didn't accurately predict when all the ice will be gone, doesn't mean that you should throw all models in the bin. Right now, most models say that the ice will be mostly gone somewhere between 2040 - 2100.
Hmm, a non expert chiming in with a contrarian view so he can keep his head in the sand.
Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free. If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland. And colonies having been very far north. That was during a little ice age, another factor up there, we don't see the influence of volcanism. No one reports what is happening there. But, during the last ice melt off, scientists found several widespread lava fields, they never seen before. Same in the Antarctic, several active fields were found.
And if that rise also causes a shift in ocean currents, we can expect more effects.
I'd hate to see the ceasing of the Monsoon simultaneously combined with the stopping of the Golf-stream. Drought and no harvest in the south and ice with no harvest in the north.
. Virginia can kiss Norfolk goodbye.
If it weren't for the fact that there is much more to Norfolk than the HQ to PeTA, I would be rather apathetic. Fuck PeTA.
Whatever happened to "unnatural" or simply "abnormal"? Why do people keep insisting on using "non" as a prefix?
Call me when the sea level actually rises more than a few cm.
Wouldn't you prefer it not to?
Venice seems to cope with much more than that.
No they don't. They're in constant panic and expensive shoring-up operations.
Plus: The Mediterranean will be among the last to rise - not many places for ice to melt into it..
No sig today...
fwiw, the Sierra's snow pack is the deepest in 22 years.
Hmm, a non expert chiming in with a contrarian view so he can keep his head in the sand.
You mean like the guy "Nico Sun, citizen scientist" the report is quoting?
Which part of that means it's perfectly OK to dump billions of tons of CO2 into the air now?
No sig today...
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans
This is very true. However, in this case we are certain that it is, in fact, being caused by human activity. The Keeling curve leaves very little room for interpretation.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
" Venice DOES seem to have major problems with flooding, something that will be very expensive to fix"
Mainly because Venice is sinking:
http://www.livescience.com/191...
how heavily they are pushing this man made climate change conspiracy theory lol
Melting of Arctic sea ice is already causing an increase in precipitation in the region:
https://www.dartmouth.edu/pres...
It's called "El Niño", we're experiencing a stronger one this year.
http://www.upworthy.com/the-re...
Most of these "scientists" are delusional crackpots. Using an idea that drives there socialist utopian ideas. So we are all subserviant to their idealogies. Telling us how to live and what to eat and what to produce. All controlled by an elite class that wants to drive us to slavery.
All this variability, it's so unnatural!
Scientists haven't seen this variation in their lifetimes!
Because geological history is confined to the lifetime of a scientist.
I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013, and look at this graph. The arctic ice cap is currently a little over 13 million square km.
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappear anyway in the next 5 billion years... Unless we disseminate elsewhere in our universe, we're doomed.
How can you link to a text that says "could be ice-free in summers" and claim it says "there would be no ice (full stop). The ice cap is not "shrinking a little", it's shrinking massively. "Currently" it's the middle of winter, when the sea ice is always expanding to nearly the same level (basically, it covers the arctic until it runs out of ocean). In the arctic ocean, the summer minimum is the most important measurement. That said, the arctic ice has been at or near record low for the entire winter, and for good measure in this year antarctic sea ice also is unusually low. The newly formed first-year ice is so thin that it melts very quickly in the summer, probably giving us another record low, and leading to more heating, as the sunlight is absorbed by the water, not reflected by the ice.
You have a point about the 5 billion years, but most of us have a somewhat shorter perspective - and even those with the long perspective may want to give us enough time to escape this doomed planet before things get really ugly.
Stephan
You see, I've been watering my lawn more than usual.
THAT is the cause because it puts more moisture into the atmosphere.
It's open at one end.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013,
Sure, some scientists said that, the TV/media decided it was a good story, and that's the part that you heard.
All climate scientists are therefore dumbasses, right?
PS: The press was probably paid to make a big deal over that story. The climate change denial you're hearing is a well funded organization. Not a conspiracy either, one with actual names, published details of bank transfers, etc.
https://encrypted.google.com/s...
No sig today...
Pretty low on commas too - they're all in your post.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013
Of course, the article says nothing of the kind:
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers
"Wouldn't you prefer it not to?"
I'm not sure. Seasteading seems like a massive opportunity just waiting to happen for the person who owns a styrofoam billet store.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
fight CO2! Go NUCLEAR!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So we move the capitol of our country to Topeka, and continue on as normal.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And where do you think this snow is coming from?
If there is more snow dropped than normal here, there must have been more water evaporated than normally somewhere else.
What could have caused that? Could it be that other places are warming up more than usual?
Naahhh.. Cannot be....
There was a time the Arctic Sea was brackish. And plants grew all over its surface. So it was green.
Narrow enough, You could probably place a lock at the straights of Gibraltar if there was a desire. Even as far back as world war 2, Germany had envisioned doing such a thing if they won the war- they also planed on lowering the water level of the Mediterranean substantially.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Hopefully a few billion people will die off. The Earth is grossly overpopulated. In turn, less people will mean less pollution.
Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free. If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland.
Greenland wasn't named Greenland because it was green, it was named Greenland much for the same reason the US is full of small towns named "Greenville", "Mt Pleasant", "Pleasantville", "Spring Valley". It would have been hard getting a colony going if they called it "Frozen Piece of Shitland". By giving it a pleasant sounding name they hoped to attract people to come move there, as, for rather obvious reasons, most Danes were reluctant to move there.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Climate Change" or "Global Warming"?
The Global Warming hoax was brought into the public arena by a sleazy politician named Al Gore. It was based on "science" at the University of Angola, which was later proven to be based upon falsified data.
Now they call it "Climate Change".
Regardless of what you call it, we (you and I) are not responsible for it.
Climate change is a natural phenomenon, although it is likely be being accelerated by large corporations (the oil industry) in an effort to melt ice and thaw the ground in northern regions in an attempt to extract more oil - to fuel the so-called "war on terror" (aka Zionist terrorism and against Arabic peoples).
Bullshit.
Frank Luntz invented the bullshit euphemism to hide Global Warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz , https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange
Yeah, Ironically, the worry is global warming will make Europe colder (it is at the same latitude as Canada but is saved the brutal cold because of warming ocean currents).
If the ice melts, especially if it melts quickly, the relative lower salinity that results in the Northern Atlantic could screw up the ocean currents. That warm water that makes Europe warmer than say, Mongolia and Siberia no longer warms Europe. Europe freezes over like much of Canada.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Thats because they are messing around with the ruins of Atlantis in Antarctica and its starting to wake up.
Atlantis didnt sink or get destroyed, it was deliberately put into sleep mode and made to generate extreme cold so as to be impassable by humans until our current level of technology.
Coverage is only part of the equation. There's also thickness. And reflectivity.
I believe the traditional response is, "You first!"
Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free.
Nice try, Mr. Shatner.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland
The Greenland ice sheet is 100,000 years old, so it was there when the Vikings visited it. The Vikings did find some green parts along the edges, but these are green today as well. See this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's aliens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Out of curiosity, how easy would it be for a relatively developed nation like the US to build damns to protect coastal cities? How much would they cost if there is a 2.4 ft. rise? Does somebody know how to calculate this?
We can track the variations beyond our lifetime by looking at the atomic composition of ice cores. And that is something scientists do.
They can't be very good scientists if they "marvel" at long predicted and long observed gradual changes in climate. Yes, the Arctic is getting warmer. That's pretty much what we expect to happen. And it will likely continue to get warmer. Every couple of years from now on, we will have a new high-temperature record in the Arctic and the whole planet (it's pretty much the same thing). No need to hyperventilate or write new sensationalist headlines every year.
It's getting warmer.
There is nothing we can do about it.
Learn to live with it and adapt.
So how much has actually melted?
Virginia will not miss Norfolk, or VA Beach.
Yes, and what do they find?
Why isn't it? CO2 isn't pollution. It's the central ingredient in biosphere productivity.
Ok, so some scientists and the TV media said that. Well, some scientists and the TV/media are saying it again. Why should we totally trust them this time?
That the current warming is unprecedented in the ice core record.
The contribution of the volcanism was measured. It's small.
In terms of the Vikings, the Arctic was not free of ice then, just a bit warmer than periods immediately preceding and after the period of the Greenland settlements, but cooler than today. That was part of a regional climate change over a long period, although it does not appear to have been a global shift.
> This can or cannot be caused by humans.
And cancer can and can not be caused by smoking. So go ahead and smoke. Please. Lots, and rapidly. Thanks.
Another thing to consider is extent versus volume. If ice is spread out by wind it may form a relatively large extent but be relatively thin. Increased energy in the system can modify wind patterns to make this more likely.
Ice volume is probably dropping faster than extent as far as can be determined, but volume is much harder to determine, though, so the error bars are much larger, so it's harder to be sure in statistical terms, hence extent being the main metric actually used.
Greenland has been losing about 270 gigatons of ice per year lately, but the pace is likely to accelerate as the warming continues.
This time they're making a prediction for next week, not 5 years in the future.
Can you state that as a percentage please?
Narrow enough, You could probably place a lock at the straights of Gibraltar if there was a desire. Even as far back as world war 2, Germany had envisioned doing such a thing if they won the war- they also planed on lowering the water level of the Mediterranean substantially.
Look, some 10,000 thousand years ago there was something called Lake Agassiz, in today's Alberta. It was held in place by an ice dam. The dam collapsed in a matter of days. There was a *huge* amount of water. Where did the water go? It was enough to separate Britain from the continent and, going through Gibraltar, to create the Black Sea. Look it up!
Never mind the cause (which seems obvious to me) - what can we do to stabilize our planet's ecology? It may cost a fortune, but it strikes me as money well spent, and think of all the jobs it could create!
And I, would've, gotten away, with it if, it wasn't for you, little punks.
Do it yourself.
do you even map?
I don't know where you live but it's not winter in Antarctica:
"On Antarctica's coast, where our stations are located, there are usually a couple of weeks in mid-winter (around 21 June) when the sun does not rise, and a couple of weeks in summer around Christmas when there is 24-hour sunlight"
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/a...
But I might have not kept my calendar up to date.
So please, let's gamble with the future. What do we have to lose, eh?
Well of course anyone with money and power to protect are going to do that, they only care about what happens while they're alive, not what happens hundreds of years from now, they figure that's someone else's problem, why should they care? Then there's the religious types who are absolutely certain that the World Is Coming To An End Real Soon Now anyway, so again, why should they care? It's all part of 'gods plan' or somesuch nonsense, this Earth and this Existence is all supposed to be temporary so far as they're concerned. What's left are the rank-and-file citizens of countries all over the world, who have neither the time nor the education to understand what's going on; they're all too busy just trying to live their lives and have no time to worry about things that will happen hundreds of years from now, not with bills to pay, kids to raise, etc. So it's a hard sell to them.
Sure, because scientists can only answer a question once, are not allowed to revise it, otherwise they have no credibility, right? They have to be omniscient, like a god, and always know the Truth the first time, otherwise they know nothing, right?
Wrong. You talk like you don't undestand how the scientific method works. If their theories never changed over time, that's when I'd start worrying that they were wrong. So far the trend has been the same, even if the magnitude of the projected effects has changed, and it's not like there's just one or two climatologists saying what they've been saying, there are many, and while they don't agree on all the details, the trend in what they're saying is in the same direction.
I don't know where you live but it's not winter in Antarctica:
Well, good that you mention that. We were, however, talking about the arctic, where it is the middle of winter right now. In the antarctic, the situation is differently - every southern summer essentially all of the sea ice melts, and the winter maximum is the important indicator to track. This is because we have the arctic ocean, mostly surrounded by land (which limits sea ice growth in winter, as the ice mostly runs out of sea to grow on), and the antarctic continent (which stops sea ice melting in summer, as the sea runs out of ice to melt).
Stephan
No.
Case in point: Viking farms built ~1000 years ago are now being uncovered by the melting ice. Thus, the ice wasn't there when they were built.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05...
it's in my head
Be that as it may, ice sheets move, it's well known from contemporary histories that Greenland had large ice coverings when Erik the Red was exiled there and named it Greenland to try and get people to join him there from the warmer island of Iceland.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
So... people move. We don't exactly have a shortage of land mass here in the US.
Doing some googling, the numbers are all over the place. The only percentage of total I could find stated that up to 10% of Greenland's ice was lost in the last century. Another source stated that Greenland's ice contributes 10% to the total sea level rise. I doubt the sea level has increased by 24 feet in 100 years, then again "0" is included in "up to10%."
Since nearly everyone voted up on this thread as informative did not post citations, I will take it as being acceptable to do the same. [lazily raises coffee mug with an early morning smugface]
Cool
I love how Slashdot champions every feat of engineering and scientific discovery, until it relates to climate.
The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Can they send a few thousand starving polar bears there?
"ice sheets move"
Are you disputing the well known warmer arctic temperatures during the Viking era? And if so, why do you deny known historic climate?
Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today.
(Erik did name it Greenland since it sounded attractive, but it still was green. Greener than today)
http://news.nationalgeographic...
it's in my head
I'd hate to see the ceasing of the Monsoon simultaneously combined with the stopping of the Golf-stream.
I don't play golf, so I don't particularly care about that. My in-laws would be crushed, though.
I believe the traditional response is, "You first!"
Sorry, the enlightened are too important to kill off, they are the caretakers. It's the polluters and non-believers that they want dead.
If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland
The Greenland ice sheet is 100,000 years old, so it was there when the Vikings visited it. The Vikings did find some green parts along the edges, but these are green today as well. See this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Funny since we also have evidence (f.e https://news.slashdot.org/comm...) that directly contradicts that. Guess it's really only 100,000 years old if you accept evolutionary theory over reality, and the purposeful redesign of geological information the late 1800's and early 1900's to better position evolution as reality, versus the known historic records that directly contradict purported science.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
A lot more than going carbon-free(which is estimated to be cheaper on the long run BTW).
Interesting you should talk about people moving. Migration from farming areas to cities seems to be the largest factor in the Syrian Civil War. The farm communities moved to the cities because of drought. There are many that link the severity of the droughts to climate change. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ominous-story-of-syria-climate-refugees/
I assume that when you say "we don't exactly have a shortage of land..." you assume that people who have to move will move to empty areas.
Once you kids live through a few of these baseless doom and gloom predictions that never come close to happening, you'll get out of the Earth Death Cult and get a clue. Also, drive across the USA someday, and you'll see how under populated the earth really is.
Canada's PM is hella hot !
Why did this AC get modded down? This is a legitimate question. They make a leap from "well we don't know why" straight to "must be human activity". Do you really have to wonder why there are "deniers" to something you claim is so irrefutable? Because you are disingenuous with how you present it. You say "climate change" is a thing, which it is. Climates change. Not as often as the weather, but they change. And that's how you ACT like you're stating it when you stare slack jawed at the "idiocy" of the deniers. Yet in reality you're not saying anything about climate change by itself. You are ALWAYS inferring that the major driver is human activity and therefore to accept that you must accept changes to human activity. Not small changes, HUGE changes. Because if human activity is the primary or even a notable driver of climate change, then the change to make it better has to be global in scale. That means putting your Styrofoam or plastic cups in the recycle bin isn't even close to enough. It means fundamentally altering society. Which means chaos. Which will have a much more dramatic and dire effect on our individual ability to survive. And that's ASSUMING there is a way for humans to avert the type of climate change that makes our lives problematic at some unknown time in the future. But can you assume that without having actual hard data showing the causation (not correlation, not gut feel of your gaia meter) and therefore force change on the global population? You can try, but you'll get no where. Maybe that's what the rabid climate change enthusiast want. An unwinnable whinefest. Well Congratulations, you have it.
I mean the main inland ice sheet is 100,000 years old. Obviously, the edges of Greenland are much more sensitive to small temperature fluctuations and local climate changes.
How much ice melt is require to get rid of Hollywood? That's my target.
"I assume that when you say "we don't exactly have a shortage of land..." you assume that people who have to move will move to empty areas."
;) Whatever gains you get from infrastructure you lose in privacy, limitations of activity you can engage in, ridiculously higher costs for inferior living conditions, pollution, etc. If the rural populations here all moved to the cities the urban majority would be at a loss for how to marginalize the other 49% of the country in arguments about redistricting but I doubt it will trigger a civil war.
Who knows what Syrian infrastructure is like in rural areas. In the US those places are just less expensive to live in
You should read articles before linking them.
"At Nipaatsoq, blowing glacial sands covered the farm in the early 1400's, sealing it until 1990, when two hunters reported seeing ancient wood protruding from an eroded stream bank.".
It wasn't uncovered by melting ice. It was buried under sand that the wind blew on top of it. Also
"Today the edge of Greenland's ice cap is only six miles from the old farm site. But in the mid-14th century, it probably was far closer."
There was more ice back then than today, not less.
Since all the "scientists" refuse to offer some basic math, here it is.
Since the density of solid ice is irrelevant in seawater level calulations based on the assumption that it has melted, I interpret the "270 gigatons" as 270,000,000,000 cubic meters of water.
The wet surface area of the earth is roughly 3.61 x 10^14 square meters.
The claim of 24 feet of sea level rise is roughly 8 meters of depth.
If the water level were to rise vertically and gain no more potential volume (meaning, this is a wild underestimate), 8 meters of ocean depth would require roughly 2.89 x 10^15 cubic meters more water than the oceans currently hold.
2.7 x 10^11 is roughly 0.009% of 2.89 x 10^15.
Since my estimate for water volume due to increased depth is wildly low, the actual relative volume of "270 gigatons" is significantly lower than 0.009% of the stated Greenland ice sheet's mass.
Since nearly everyone voted up on this thread as informative did not post citations, I will take it as being acceptable to do the same. [lazily raises coffee mug with an early morning smugface]
On that note, the sun is a actually a flat disc of ice that sucks in cold rays. And Phlogistam.
Doesn't mean we don't need to do something about reversing the destruction of the environment. Arguing whether climate change is almost a moot point from that perspective (although definitely not so for the coastal/island countries). I guess the general human as a species are too selfish and stupid to do anything until there is catastrophic failure all over the globe.
The climate change doomsday clock has been moved ahead by 2 cow farts.
There's contention on the actual effect of the currents themselves though:
http://www.americanscientist.o...
Why are you under the impression that mid-14th century had anything to do when Greenland was warm, and the farm was built?
Why is it important for you to deny known climatic history?
Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today. This means that when the Vikings first arrived, the Greenland name would make sense. But by the 14th century, maximum summer temperatures in Greenland had dropped.
http://news.nationalgeographic...
it's in my head
My bad. I should have paid more attention.
Yeah, it's nice that you post a link and whatnot, but perhaps you should actually read it:
"Venice subsided about 120 mm in the 20th century due to natural processes and groundwater extraction, in addition to a sea level rise of about 110 mm at the same time"
So Venice's issues with flooding are almost equally caused by sinking and sea level rise. Not "Mainly .. sinking".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
A perv, a con man and a fascist walk into a bar. The barman says: "What'll that be Mr President?"
Sorry, but that'd be Mrs instead. And Hillary didn't win so it's not that funny.
Not 100% sure about the fascist though, but I'd be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I wasn't necessarily saying that there will be a civil war. I was indicating that mass migration (for whatever reasons) could have unforeseen circumstances and then using the example of the (probable) climate related droughts causing migration of rural syrians into the cities.
Also, if I'm following the thread correctly, the argument is being made that coastal, urban areas that may be threaten by sea-level would be moving to more rural, in land areas. I don't have no idea what that would cause.
So, it's a good thing then?
I remember being told as a kid that it was named "Greenland" to fool others, as well as "Iceland". Any truth to any of that? I could google it but I am lazy.
like people have never fought wars before. your argument is laughable.
That's what I was getting at.
For Trump, it would be easy... he would just tell the ocean to pay for it.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Sea levels have only risen about 20cm in the last 100 years. If Greenland had lost 10% of its ice, sea levels should have risen much more than that. The (unsourced) numbers don't add up.
Why are you under the impression that mid-14th century had anything to do when Greenland was warm, and the farm was built?
The 14th century is only relevant insofar as it is contained in the sentence quoted that directly contradicts your claim that the place was much warmer in recent history.
Ice core and mollusk shell data suggests that from A.D. 800 to 1300, southern Greenland was much warmer than it is today. This means that when the Vikings first arrived, the Greenland name would make sense. But by the 14th century, maximum summer temperatures in Greenland had dropped.
Again, read the first article you linked. The settlement was not in southern Greenland. It doesn't say anything about the temperature at the time compared to today, only that it was getting colder.
"Faced with the climactic cooling, the Norse here had the survival choice of ''going native'' and living like Eskimos, or moving -- to Greenland's southern tip, to Iceland or to Scandinavia"
if you accept evolutionary theory over reality
The irony is strong in this one.
24 foot of rise! EXCELLENT!!! My house will be beachfront property and all those rich bastards hogging all the current beach front property can suck it.
I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013
Yes, they said "there would be no ice", in strong terms like
could be
It might not be as early as 2013
My thinking on this is that 2030 is not an unreasonable date to be thinking of.
I think Wieslaw is probably a little aggressive in his projections
Yup, they said it, definitely 2013.
And that means 50 degrees of what? Gray?
BTW, which degrees? Latitude?
And normal is???
And we get all high and mighty on our coal / co2 driven devices / internet. But at least were not denying it !
Us - 1. Them - 0. Planet - 0.
No, we think it's a man-made issue because we're dumping gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. In the 1850s (and for that matter the 1950s as well) it was generally assumed that the climate was, if not static, then cyclical, to where cold years were balanced out by warmer ones. Evidence that the climate had been vastly different was beginning to arise, and it's about that time that Ice Ages were considered to be pretty well proven. Also, in 1859 Tyndall measured the absorption of heat by various atmospheric gases, which was the foundation for Arrhenius' 1896 paper describing the carbon dioxide theory of climate change. There were other theories of climate change, and at that time no one considered that warming could result from human activity, Arrhenius included calculations of the effects of both a halving and doubling of CO2 just for good measure. His theory was considered to have been refuted for the next 50 years. At that point, various better measures of the atmosphere were made that overturned our previous assumptions about what was going on up there. Now we have planes, rockets, satellites, computer modeling, and various devices and stations gathering information all over the globe, which have done nothing but confirm these findings for the last 60 years or so. There are specific observations which would falsify the theory. We have yet to observe them. At this point, it's about as likely that we're wrong about CO2 as it is that we're wrong about gravity.
You are clearly completely ignorant of anything related to this topic. You also didn't bother to read the papers presented. Your post is about as useful to a real discussion of this subject as a dog's barking. It takes years of study to be able to usefully critique a research paper, and I am not going to pretend to be able to do so myself. You should probably think carefully on what is meant by hybris before denigrating climate science.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You can blame this on liberals or other politicians all you want, but it's not true, and you're not going to fight science with bullets.
If you insist on political stances at odds with empirical reality, you're going to be disappointed at the results.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Models have nothing to do with the evidence for global warming. The theory was developed in the 19th Century prior to the invention of the computer. Models are useful to try to predict specific outcomes, but AGW is a pretty straightforward result of the properties of atmospheric gases.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
CO2 within the natural carbon cycle is not pollution. CO2 created by human fossil fuel use is pollution because it causes the ice caps to melt and the oceans to acidify. Plants may like it, but humans aren't plants and have slightly different requirements for life.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
So in the early 19th Century the prevailing wisdom was that the climate did not change. The idea of climate as being the long-term average of weather didn't die until the mid-1950s at the earliest. Theories of climate change were necessary to explain Ice Ages.
These days the terms "climate change" and "global warming" are both used interchangably, and both can be used to refer to the dominant theory of anthropogenic-CO2-mediated warming. There was once a distinction, and if there was any reason to believe that the climate might cool soon, we might start making a distinction between the two terms again. So not only are you completely wrong about why we have these two terms, apparently you're unaware the 'global warming' is the newer term/theory by at least 100 years.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You dorks are so fucking stupid
Consensus is how all competing models of reality are evaluated. However, global warming is not a model (per se). It is a very straightforward result of the properties of CO2. We'll skip semantic and philosophical arguments about what facts are, since it doesn't seem that you have much knowledge of the philosophy of science or epistemology generally, but suffice to say that you can test the principles of AGW the same way that Tyndall did, if you happen to think he needs revision. You should be able to make far more precise measurements.
Go ahead and pick apart the consensus, if you can. Do it with science -- it's the only way. It has changed before, so you have that going for you. Yes, you read that right. We thought we had disproved AGW conclusively until the mid-1950s. Then we got better data and the consensus changed. It wasn't some big deal, either, because people weren't trying to politicize the issue. No one was fired, and scientists just accepted that they were wrong before and kept on sciencing. Our ability to measure the world has expanded unimaginably since the foundations of AGW were laid over 100 years ago, so we're about as sure that increased CO2 will result in warming as we are of the germ theory of disease, but you're welcome to have a go at disproving it. It can only help all of us if you try, so please do. You should probably start by learning what the science currently says though.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
We have a *vast* amount of evidence from a huge number of observations over many decades, from a lot of different proxies. That is what has convinced so many climatologists of AGW, and that is what makes them so confident of its reality, though of course precise details are still in question.
Skeptics merely have to look at the accumulated evidence for themselves. That's what the Berkeley re-analysis did - and they came away convinced too. But by contrast, self-proclaimed "skeptics" who merely try to cast doubt on selected bits of existing evidence while ignoring all the rest, or who just attempt to undermine the credibility of the field instead, get labelled "deniers".
If you want us to doubt the conclusions of an entire scientific field - give us *strong evidence*, or go away. Just because a couple of fields have in the past made incorrect assumptions based on limited evidence does not mean you get to wave away any science you don't like, particularly when it's as well-studied as climatology.
Absolutist statements are dangerous.
Calibrate your irony meter.
There is no line of physical observation that will not lead you to conclude that perpetual motion or "free" energy is impossible. Thermodynamics, Relativity, Quantum physics, whatever. And anyone wanting to argue about conservation laws is going to need to take that up with Noether's theorem. Conservation laws are more like a result of the laws of physics not being dependent on the conserved element. If energy is conserved, that means that (e.g.) light does not travel faster or slower through a vaccum depending on some sort of energy condition. All of this says that [1] we've tested CoE explicitly or implicitly with nearly every observation of anything, ever, and [2] if you violate that assumption everything in physics breaks in wildly weird and inconsistent ways even within the same theory, and might actually end our being able to understand physics at all.
Nothing is certain. Science is empirical, and measurement error will always be with us. That doesn't mean that nothing is knowable or predictable. The Sun will rise upon a weary Earth tomorrow, and there will never be any such thing as an ansible, a faster-than-light drive, or a perpetual motion machine. Yes, it's a bit depressing, but that's reality for you.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I appreciate the characterization of my faults and your detailed refutation of my position. As it happens, I don't have any opinions on this matter, but I would be happy to provide citations for any part which you thought insufficient. The nice thing about being on the side with facts is that they all match up with each other neatly, and you can always find a source for something. And, if that is still not sufficient, there are actually a variety of simple experiments you could perform to verify them.
I admit I'm pretty stupid. The IPCC report is a bit thick, you know? So I went back and read Tyndall. Then I read Arrhenius, and Callendar. I read Keeling and at least looked through Hansen. Most of the old stuff is available online, but there's also university libraries all over the place. I read a couple of atmospheric physics textbooks too. The one from 1950 was the funniest, explicitly disclaiming the role of CO2 in climate. It was correct with what was known at the time though. But I didn't find any opinions in all of that, so I guess I didn't do it right. Perhaps you can do better?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You don't get to argue against this. Trump won, get over it. You supported him during elections and you continue to this day. This is the bed you wanted now lay the fuck in it!
Why isn't it? CO2 isn't pollution. It's the central ingredient in biosphere productivity.
And you can't drown in water - it's a central ingredient for life. Salt can't be bad for you, since without it you die. And so on. As Paracelsus said, sola dosis facit venenum.
Stephan
People who challenge the consensus are called contrarians, unless they don't have a factual argument. Then we call them deniers. For example, Dr. Roy Spencer is a prominent contrarian climatologist, who has been lead author on sections of the IPCC reports. You also seem to be unaware that there was a consensus *against* AGW up until the mid-1950s. It was overturned by better observations of the atmosphere and oceans. In short, the idea that there is some political cabal in charge of the consensus view is false, bordering on the ridiculous. We KNOW, empirically, from experience, that not only has the consensus changed, the authors of the authoritative summary of climate change research selected perhaps the most notable contrarian as lead author (for the bits relevant to his research). Because it doesn't make a difference whether he or anyone else thinks about whether the Earth is warming, the only thing that matters is what the observations say. And unfortunately we've ruled out the alternatives to warming, at least without some bizarre new physics.
This isn't nutrition, this is basic atmospheric physics. If we're wrong about this atmosphere then we're wrong about all the extraterrestrial atmospheres too. Also, you're going to be able to demonstrate this fact unambiguously either way -- we're measuring heat, not health. The way to unmask this supposed conspiracy is to do the experiments yourself -- no trust in any community is required. Failing that you are able to read the papers and use a better analysis to figure out where everyone else went wrong. We figured this stuff out in the 19th Century so it's not like it requires a big lab setup. The IPCC report is big and complicated, but the actual science at hand is surprisingly simple. If you don't want to trust the scientists, but refuse to provide an alternate explanation, to experiment, or even read the theory, well, I'm not sure there's anything more descriptive than "denialist".
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Dude, even if we had perfect numbers that a deity handed to you on a couple finely sculpted stone tablets, you would still tell us that the numbers don't add up. That's why we're tired of this debate and just finally call you a dumbass cause we simply don't have time. We're too busy doing our jobs of taking measurements and crunching numbers to deal with a bunch of backasswards rednecks like you.
Classic ignorant denialism. The evidence for AGW has nothing to do with models or the temperature record. It is a straightforward result of the properties of CO2. Straightforward as in, "Some guy in 1896 figured it out using research from 1859". You know this theory is more than 100 years old, right?
It's really irritating to read this. It's one thing to be completely ignorant of a subject -- we all start out that way. It's quite another thing for you to declare your ignorance of the causal chain but insist that other people got it wrong. Yes, you're right, it's hard to draw causal links from statistics, but that's not remotely what has happened, and the idea that you know this and some scientific community might not is breathtakingly stupid. But okay, I'll try to believe that you at least mean well and maybe don't have a lot of time to read about this. I would recommend starting here, and maybe continuing on the section about basic radiation maths. Keep in mind that what we know about Earth's atmosphere we have also been able to apply to extraterrestrial atmospheres, including the Sun. Generally what you're going to find is that warming is a direct result of CO2 trapping heat, and that we've been trying pretty hard to find reasons why raising the partial pressure won't also raise the temperature. There's only so many things that can happen in terms of radiation between the surface of the Earth and outer space, and we've pretty much ruled out anything that could prevent drastic warming. Which, yes, sucks balls. The other interesting thing that you'll find is that there was a scientific consensus *against* the CO2 theory, and you'll have to see why it was overturned.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Oh god, no. Really? All this sola dosis facit venenum that increasing CO2 is causing. It's absolutely terrible. What is wrong with me. I'm not hysterical.
Do your in-laws fly with a Gulfstream to continue their golf-stream? A cheaper alternative is to dip in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe for a little water golf and watch the Golf-stream's heat pump loading while the last surviving Gulf Oil's tanker is sailing by on its way to be decommissioned.
Sorry bro, I farted.
No, just a simple troll wasting space and air.
Wikipedia states that Greenland's ice sheet contains 2,850,000 km3 of ice. If a gigaton of ice is 1 km3, then that agrees with your math, and if it were only a constant rate of melting, it would take millennia to melt completely.
However, the rate is not constant - it's been steadily increasing due to positive feedbacks like reduced albedo and water lubrication of glaciers. In fact there's evidence that the ice loss is accelerating exponentially, so it could happen much quicker (still likely centuries).
Models also suggest that a 2-3 C rise would be all that's needed for complete melting, and at least 7m of sea rise (plus Antarctica's contribution, which will be a lot more). Since it appears highly unlikely that we'll prevent that now, our descendants are going to have to relocate almost every coastal city on the planet (multiple times, since current experience suggests they won't think ahead much either).
Yeah it's not even close to 10%. There was a claim by Times Atlas cartographers back in 2010 that Greenland had lost 15% of its ice by area, not volume, but ice specialists jumped on that, and it was eventually retracted.
I'm not aware of reliable figures for total ice loss in the last century, but even current ice loss rates would mean an upper bound of about 1%.
If you don't have enough water you'll die of thirst, do you can't drown, right?
No, it did not contradict anything I wrote. You seem to be quite confused as to the temperatures during its colonization and when the Norse left due to the switch into a much colder climate. Please read the links I posted.
it's in my head
In pictures you might understand:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Longer timescales:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Oh, a cartoon. Strange how this looks nothing like the Vostok or Greenland core data. One could almost imagine it's cherry picked data that's first been massaged by the hairy hands of a fraudster. I'd be careful with that if I were you.
Oh sorry - you're right. Because these graphs have totally different scales and orientations they look nothing like each other.
But wait a minute... if we look at just the data that both graphs cover (temperature, the last 20000 years, highlighted with a black box):
https://ibb.co/co1ABF
And then line up the scales so they are the same on both graphs (X=-5C to +5C, Y=0 to -20000 years) we can see that the data does actually match up pretty well, considering I did this with paint:
https://ibb.co/hX9K5a
Consistent science FTW! Thanks for playing.
Of course, it's the last 100 years that are the most interesting - the heating is happening at an _unprecedented_ rate. The ~2 degree increase of the last century would have taken millennia to occur naturally - as shown by the very graphs you supplied as evidence!
Don't misuse actual data. It doesn't work, because the data shows AWG is happening.
That's literally what you've just done. You've presented a ridiculous, condescending cartoon that shows Michael Mann's largely (completely actually) discredited "hockey stick". Shameless.
The hockey stick has not been discredited. It has been replicated numerous times, by numerous people and organisations.
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
> Climate deniers threw all their might at disproving the famous climate change graph. Here's why they failed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Arguments over the reconstructions have been taken up by fossil fuel industry funded lobbying groups attempting to cast doubt on climate science.
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
> In fact, later studies support the key conclusion: the world is warmer now than it has been for at least 1000 years
The graphs we /were/ talking about go back much further - XKCD's 20,000 years, and your favourite the Vostok core, 400,000. And they all show the same data.
Good luck with your research.
*PLONK*
Are you having a laugh? Proxy reconstruction (ref: Michael Mann) that depended on, it turned out, one single tree?
The hurricanes and tornadoes in the USA midcountry and flooding will just be acts of the unpredictability of nature. There is nothing that man does that resulted in the increase in frequency and severity. Or are we all wrong?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
One problem is that larger coastal cities tend to be ports, and smaller ones may have some seaside access. So, figure out how much to build the dams, build the locks, and operate the locks. Also, your proposal needs refinement. Are you talking about dams all across the coast, like Dutch dykes, or do you want to turn the cities into artificial islands?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yup. That doesn't mean Greenland wasn't mostly ice. There were (IIRC) a couple of small Viking settlements that were eventually wiped out by the natives.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No one has ever claimed Greenland wasn't "mostly ice". There was a thriving Viking community during the Medieval Warm Period which was abandoned (peacefully, no wiping out by any "natives") when the climate became (much) colder at the start of the Little Ice Age.
it's in my head
So Greenland's ice sheet can displace 24 feet of the sea-level? Horse shit. I imagine parking the moon in the middle of the Atlantic could accomplish that though. Please show us a citation from hystericalbullshithipsterscience.com that sheds some light on the math. If it passes a laugh test I'll go howl at the moon naked.
So, 120 mm is not "mainly' more than 110 mm?
I think I am being out-punned here, so I will bow to your expertise.
What is the current status of the Gakkel Ridge? Lava + Big Ice Caps= small ice caps...
I try to keep up with it, as there was a M4.7 earthquake on October of 2016. It is a slow moving crack that may be speeding up. If the Magnetic Poles flip, who knows what the effect will be.
"Endeavour to persevere"
Watch: Snowfall in UAE, temperature hits -2.2 degree
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/temperature-hits--1-degree-celsius-in-uae
IIRC, the naming of Greenland and Iceland were attempts by the Viking leaders to encourage colonization of those two lands. But that's history, not tech.ðY
> No one has ever claimed Greenland wasn't "mostly ice".
Except for AC above, who claimed "Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free" because the Vikings named it Greenland.
I mean the main inland ice sheet is 100,000 years old. Obviously, the edges of Greenland are much more sensitive to small temperature fluctuations and local climate changes.
Would love to see the proof - and not just suppositions, theories, etc - that it's 100,000 years old.
Problem is, you can't prove it. You can only extrapolate based on theories, hypotheses, and suppositions with math based on assumptions designed to support that conclusion.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
You could start here but I have a feeling you wouldn't know what to do with the data if you got it.
I'm taking a wild guess that you have never formally studied earth science. Amirite?