Slashdot Mirror
NASA Discovers Mantle Plume That's Melting Antarctica From Below (newsweek.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Newsweek: Researchers at NASA have discovered a huge upwelling of hot rock under Marie Byrd Land, which lies between the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, is creating vast lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. The presence of a huge mantle plume could explain why the region is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so quickly at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago. Mantle plumes are thought to be part of the plumbing systems that brings hot material up from Earth's interior. Once it gets through the mantle, it spreads out under the crust, providing magma for volcanic eruptions. The area above a plume is known as a hotspot.
[I]n a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Seroussi and colleagues looked at one of the most well studied magma plumes on Earth -- the Yellowstone hotspot. The team developed a mantle plume model to look at how much geothermal heat would be needed to explain what is seen at Marie Byrd Land. They then used the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), which shows the physics of ice sheets, to look at the natural sources of heating and heat transport. This model enabled researchers to place "powerful constraint" on how much melt rate was allowable, meaning they could test out different scenarios of how much heat was being produced deep beneath the ice. Their findings showed that generally, the energy being generated by the mantle plume is no more than 150 milliwatts per square meter -- any more would result in too much melting. The heat generated under Yellowstone National Park, on average, is 200 milliwatts per square meter.
[I]n a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Seroussi and colleagues looked at one of the most well studied magma plumes on Earth -- the Yellowstone hotspot. The team developed a mantle plume model to look at how much geothermal heat would be needed to explain what is seen at Marie Byrd Land. They then used the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), which shows the physics of ice sheets, to look at the natural sources of heating and heat transport. This model enabled researchers to place "powerful constraint" on how much melt rate was allowable, meaning they could test out different scenarios of how much heat was being produced deep beneath the ice. Their findings showed that generally, the energy being generated by the mantle plume is no more than 150 milliwatts per square meter -- any more would result in too much melting. The heat generated under Yellowstone National Park, on average, is 200 milliwatts per square meter.
Indeed, new data appears every day. The debate would be over tomorrow though if people accepted the economics of anything related to CAGW.
The reason we burn coal, oil, and natural gas is because they are cheap. We can say they are abundant, reliable, and energy dense but that's just another way of calling them cheap. Solar power is expensive because it's unreliable, diffuse, and not necessarily abundant where it's needed. People tend to want energy when it's cold and/or dark where they are, and this tends to happen with then sun isn't shining. Storing, moving, and converting energy adds costs which only adds to the expense of already expensive solar power.
How do we solve this problem? Look to energy sources that have a history of being cheaper than coal, oil, and natural gas. Those are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Wind and hydro suffer from many of the same problems as solar, such as not always being available where and when it's needed, which can add to the cost. Nuclear doesn't have this problem, it can be placed most anywhere we need it. We've even put this energy source to work on ships at sea.
I guess we could say the debate is in fact over, use more nuclear power. We do that then we have cheap and clean power and we'll just have to find something else for congresscritters to prop up as a bogeyman to get us to vote them back into office again and again.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The usual denial hasn't been to deny melting for like thirty years at least.
It's weird then, that we haven't seen any climate contrarians responding to the denialists who say that volcanism is triggering the melting of the polar caps: and the related theory, that volcanism is causing the climate to warm. DOn't you guys care about this misrepresentation of your 'usual' theory?
What IS this theory anyway? Is there evidence to support this theory?
Instead, it's posited that the melting is due to a natural cycle; we're coming out of an interglacial period and back into bed normalcy.
(a) What natural cycle?
(b) Does this cycle appear in the climate record?
(c) What triggered this cycle to start just when the industrial revolution started?
(d) What suppressed the (experimentally proven) warming that otherwise would have occurred due to increased concentrations of CO2? Is the CO2 we released somehow different to the CO2 that was there before? How?
Some of the people who don't buy AGW are actually scientists who modify their theories occasionally, believe it or not. That's where the crazy conspiracy shit comes from. There are some sound ideas in mainstream ecology, but so much stock has been put into shutting out legit dissenters that it makes them indistinguishable from dissenting crackpots.
On numerous occasions I've asked denialists here on Slashdot to provide evidence for their posited theories, and they have not done so. I've been here for more than 10 years, asking for evidence. No evidence has been forthcoming. You want to know why people don't believe you?
That's your answer.