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Once-Shrinking Greenland Glacier Is Now Growing, NASA Study Shows (nbcnews.com)

kenh shares a report from NBC News: A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.

A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation -- a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific. The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler than a few years ago, study authors said. While this is "good news" on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.

25 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Unbelievable by Freischutz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I takes more faith to believe in Climate Change theories than to believe in God.

    No it doesn't. I can measure climate change, I can observe it and I can feel it's impact on my surroundings. God is an imaginary being that only your clergy can communicate with and whose existence cannot be documented. This invisible being that only the clergy can communicate with tells them how it wants you to behave and that it will smite you and cast you into a place of eternal torture called hell whose existence cannot be documented either. Give me climate science over your imaginary friend any day.

  2. Re:Still waiting... by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I can see the global warming right out of my window. I live in the mountains, and I can see the skiing resorts. The one that got built in the 1800s, the one from the early 1900s, the one from the 1950ies, 1980ies and of now. I wonder why all new structures have moved higher up.

    I can also see the terminal moraine left by the glaciers in the 1800s, in the early 1900s, the ones from the 1950ies, 1980ies, and where the glacier ends now. I wonder why they likewise move higher up.

    And I can see the postcards with pictures from the same spot in the 1800s, in the early 1900s, the ones from the 1950ies, 1980ies, and where the snow line ends now. I wonder why it moved higher up too.

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    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  3. Re:Unbelievable by Freischutz · · Score: 4, Funny

    No it doesn't. I can measure climate change, I can observe it and I can feel it's impact on my surroundings.

    Funny, it reminds me of Chris Reimer's video channel audience that is shrinking by the minute. For sure he ain't no god although he likes to think he is somehow.

    A bowl of Pasta can be god if you choose to worship it. That's how religion works.

  4. Re:Still waiting... by nonBORG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is local temperature change you are looking at and then claiming it is global warming, and if it were the other way (everything was getting colder locally) you would ignore it and say that it is globally that matters.

    That is not to say there is not global climate change, there is, but there is also a lot of claims of stuff being related which is not (that is not to even say your local situation is not.)

    But more to the point when you see a glacier going the wrong way for your theory or whatever you find a way to write it off and then quote the movement of a few buildings locally as proof positive the other way than the evidence in the article? Few people argue about global warming but they do discuss how big a deal it is and if it is caused by man. Also as with your local example of local climate change people adapt to changes.

    --
    You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
  5. Re:Still waiting... by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Informative

    For some evidence of global warming. It's been decades now, and everything they've shown us as evidence has turned out not to be the case.

    I wonder if in fifty years they'll be going on about global warming, even when it still isn't happening?

    Here you go: http://berkeleyearth.org/globa..., now rejoice in the fact that your life long quest is over. Perhaps you can spend the rest of your life waiting for Trickle-down economics to start working?

  6. Re:Still waiting... by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is local temperature change you are looking at and then claiming it is global warming, and if it were the other way (everything was getting colder locally) you would ignore it and say that it is globally that matters. That is not to say there is not global climate change, there is, but there is also a lot of claims of stuff being related which is not (that is not to even say your local situation is not.) But more to the point when you see a glacier going the wrong way for your theory or whatever you find a way to write it off and then quote the movement of a few buildings locally as proof positive the other way than the evidence in the article? Few people argue about global warming but they do discuss how big a deal it is and if it is caused by man. Also as with your local example of local climate change people adapt to changes.

    The changes I'm seeing all over the N-Atlantic tell me that this is more than a 'local climate change', science confirms this and we have examples of what happened earlier in the earth's history when this much carbon dioxide was de-sequestered into the atmosphere. Long story short, it wasn't pretty. Given the choice between believing thousands of scientists saying the climate is changing and a few useful idiots shilling for the fossil fuel industry who say it isn't, I'm going to pick the scientists.

  7. Re:Unbelievable by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I takes more faith to believe in Climate Change theories than to believe in God.

    So basically your beliefs are:

    Glaciar shrink speeds up? Climate change is a lie.
    Glaciar shrink slows down? Climate change is a lie.
    Blah blah blah? Climate change is a lie.

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    No sig today...
  8. Re:Unbelievable by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 3, Funny

    So basically your beliefs are:
    Glaciar shrink speeds up? Climate change is a lie.
    Glaciar shrink slows down? Climate change is a lie.

    Agreed, these climate skeptics don't even know how to spell glacier.

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    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  9. Re:Unbelievable by Freischutz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wasn't there a a thing in the book about camels and eyes of needles?

    What about the part that tells you to sell all your Apple products, SUVS and plasma TVs and give the money to the poor? That doing so accumulates riches in the afterlife...?

    I'm an atheist, as far as I know there is no afterlife so I am planning my life based on that fact. What that means is that I'm going to acquire as much wealth as I can and live my life as comfortably as I can. It's the US Christian community that has turned Christianity into a cult of Mammon which, having read the bible, I find immensely amusing given what the scriptures (particularly Jesus) had to say. To my surprise I have found that I tend to know more about Christian holy texts and the history of Christianity than the average Christian seems to do which is saying something because I don't really remember all that much from reading the bible. The main reason for my superior knowledge seems to be that unlike your average Christian I've actually read the bible cover to cover. The only people who seem to have any worthwhile knowledge of the Bible are formally educated priests and Atheists who debate the religious a lot.

  10. Re: Deniable, by lying faggots... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You could've just refuted OPs points on why consensus and science are polar opposites to one another, just like OP could've left out the appeal to authority and just made that point directly.

    So I do it here:

    Consensus is not science. Science is never settled. Experts are good and nice for science, and it is likely they are right on the next issues, but not certain. Politics is not science, either, so large scientific organisations, ever growing aggregates of consensus, old experts and politics, will only produce an ever shrinking amount of actual science.

    For as long as humanity existed, science wasn't settled on anything, experts have been wrong on almost everything and hence all consensii that ever existed have been proven wrong years, decades or millenia later.

    If your only argument is "consensus" and the agreement of measurements, your scientific theory is a sad mess, because your agreement of measurements just got BTFO by another set of glacier expansion data, just as the various mountains all across the world should have been devoid of snow on their summits by now but still aren't. Unless of course growing AND shrinking glaciers are confirmations of your theory. But then the theory is not a theory but a religion. As "man made global warming" has adherents who want to ban dissent, criminalize "climate change denial" with actual prison sentences, demand that everyone makes sacrifices everywhere, and proceed to ramble about things that are unknowable and cannot be understood by laymen anywhere everm, we have a few other components of "New Religious Movements" already.

    I might be wrong, but so do you. Unless you accept that you could be wrong and all the experts could be wrong if a simple observation X and Y happened tomorrow, you are not scientific. And yes, glaciers growing is a pretty strong refute of what we ever heard about what Global Warming would bring. And if climate change is the new thing, we can just give up on the science part and start praying already because climate has and always will warm and cool. Climate will keep changing until the sun burns out. If that is "proof" of your theory, good luck, because now every single observation ever can prove your point. You might as well look at chicken bones and the 50th digit of a household digital thermometer to confirm your points.

  11. Re:End of March by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While growing, how far did it reach? The maximum extent (alternatively, the you could measure the minimum extent, or an average, as long as you're being consistent) has been less than the previous year's by 3km. In last 2 years the maximum extent has grown instead of shrunk, which is a significant change.

  12. Re:Unbelievable by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No it doesn't. I can measure climate change, I can observe it and I can feel it's impact on my surroundings.

    Funny, it reminds me of Chris Reimer's video channel audience that is shrinking by the minute. For sure he ain't no god although he likes to think he is somehow.

    A bowl of Pasta can be god if you choose to worship it. That's how religion works.

    So can climate models. That's how religion works.

    Ever notice how when you see the predictions from multiple hurricane projection models, there often is one or two that are utterly different from the consensus of all the other 10-15 models used to predict hurricanes?

    Why don't any of the climate models predictions we see ever do that? They're all really, really close. That's preposterous. How could they ALL BE ABOUT THE SAME?

    That REALLY should be causing a lot of questions to be raised about what process could be forcing all the models to agree.

    But yet you worship the output from those models, and expect the rest of the human race to agree with you and expend trillions of dollars over decades to address YOUR beliefs, to the point of using non-scientific words dripping with emotional content to denounce the disbelievers: DENIALISTS!! You might as well drop the hypocrisy and just call them heretics.

    You got the balls to actually look at your own beliefs critically?

    No I don't, worship has nothing to do with it. You will not find the word worship used anywhere in science except in the study religion and even then only because worship is a central concept in religion. I don't think climate models are an omnipresent entity that only scientists can hear. So far no scientist has delivered to me a message from climate models that only they can hear that instructs me on how to live my life or else the almighty climate models will cast me into hell for an eternity of sadistic torture for refusing to 'believe'. That's how religion works. Climate science, like all science, is a method of procedure that consists of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Nothing in science is taken 'on faith' without any proof like in religion.

  13. Re:Unbelievable by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see floods. I can see ice bergs melt. I can't see gods.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  14. Re:Unbelievable by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ramen, brother!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  15. Re:Unbelievable by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, but Christianity has the dangerous narrative built in that you can basically crap on the world because it's YOURS and when you're done with it, the end of the world is coming anyway and you go to a blissful place.

    Basically it's suicide terrorism on a global scale.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  16. Re:Unbelievable by zifn4b · · Score: 4, Funny

    It always amazes me how the creator of the universe needs such a large sales force with such high pressure sales tactics. You would think an omnipotent, omniscient product would sell itself. But wait it gets better! All said sales people are cursed because one of their ancestors was social engineered by a talking snake into a eating a cursed fruit in a magical garden. They are all doomed to suffer eternally from the Dunning Kruger effect.

    --
    We'll make great pets
  17. Re:Still waiting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    but what are the scientists saying, because there is a lot of sensationalism in the media of what they are saying and there is what they are really saying. What they are really saying is all sorts of things but not a unified consensus about what will happen and what the cause of what has happened is. There is a problem with media and true believers (not yourself probably) who have spouted stuff and then they followed up by staying with the program. There is a thing called climate gate. When chicken little runs around saying the sky is falling he gets enough media attention and says everything that happens is a sign of the end of the world and what not it becomes difficult to sift out the crap and get to the truth. Have a look at climate gate and you may get a insight into the mindset here. None of that proves anything just that there is a lot of fud. For example these glaciers were supposed to disappear now they are not disappearing but it is bad news and some people expect us all to stay convinced and fearful about the end of world in 7 years. Some of us are a little jaded by the climate stuff being the end of the world and every news story having to follow the same path.

    Try reading up on the Permian–Triassic extinction event it was caused by an 8 degree increase in global temperatures due to CO2 emissions (or a breakdown of the carbon cycle as scientists called it) it killed every terrestrial animal over 5 kg in weight and 96% of all marine species. I don't know if you'd call that the end of the world but in my book it is pretty close and even if the damage is limited to a subset of what happened during the PT event is bad all on it's own. We have currently raised the temperature of the planet by 1 degree over pre-industrial levels so that's 1/8th of the P/T event increase and we are on track for 2-4 which is 1/4 to 1/2 of the PT event if nothing is done and so far the increase in temperature has always beaten projections because of unforeseen feedback loops. The thing is that if the temperature increase reaches a certain point the warming became a runaway process in the past and there is no reason to believe the same won't happen this time.

  18. Re:Unbelievable by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, but Christianity has the dangerous narrative built in that you can basically crap on the world because it's YOURS and when you're done with it, the end of the world is coming anyway and you go to a blissful place.

    Basically it's suicide terrorism on a global scale.

    See, that doesn't make sense to me. If, as the Bible says, God both created the Earth and made man in his own image to be the stewards of his creation, then by letting the world basically go to hell we aren't being very good stewards are we? We've basically failed in our reason for existence. If God tossed Adam and Eve of Eden for simply eating an apple, imagine what he would have done if they had burned the whole place down. And, since the only heaven or hell we can absolutely 100% prove exists is right here on Earth, only seems to make sense to try and make it heaven, not hell.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  19. Well there is all the proof you need by 3seas · · Score: 3, Funny

    Chemtrails work.

  20. Re: Deniable, by lying faggots... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I call bullshit on your argument. That's the same logical fault that is used by the anti-vax movement: because there is one "scientist" that published a link between autism and vaccination, the science is not settled. Let's just ignore that this "scientist" had his paper and approbation revoked for gross misconduct.

    The question of "Is the human burning of fossil fuels affecting the world climate?" is settled. There is a small number of nay-Sayers, many with political and financial reasons, but that's completely normal. The on-going debate is only about the precise impact. Much of the projections in research papers is by nature conservative. Not in the political sense, but in the sense of "let's assume the unknown factors compensate as much as reasonable possible for humanities impact". Of course, media likes to quote the most dramatic projection instead, so for the layman it might look like drawing doomsday scenarios. A 50 feet raise of the ocean level doesn't sound that extreme, e.g. if you compare with https://xkcd.com/1225/ Not a scientific source and there is a ~10% difference in density between ice and water, but good enough.

    Some of the big open questions are "Where is all the extra energy going that we do not see?" and "How does the raising ocean temperature affect the ocean and air circulation streams?". The former is difficult to answer because temperature monitoring for the world oceans is spotty at best. It's also an insanely large reservoir of storage capacity for heat, so small temperature changes reflect vast amounts of energy. The latter question is difficult to answer because there are a lot of small scale and large scale interactions all getting mixed up.

    But with all those open questions, the data base is getting better every day and the quality of the models used is improving constantly as well. So far, the actual data has pretty consistently out-paced the conservative predictions for the temperature raise. That should be deeply troubling to everyone...

  21. Re:Unbelievable by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So basically your beliefs are:

    Glaciar shrink speeds up? Climate change is a lie.
    Glaciar shrink slows down? Climate change is a lie.
    Blah blah blah? Climate change is a lie.

    It's not "shrinking slower", it's "growing".

    I find it ironic, though, that you're accusing him of this. Read the summary. There, you'll find that:

    Glacier shrinking - Bad news! It's climate change!
    Glacier growing - Bad news! It's climate change!

    The alarmists are the ones who do the "it doesn't matter if two opposite things happen, both are evidence that catastrophic climate change is going to destroy the world!" thing.

  22. Re:Unbelievable by jbengt · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was well known and *PROVEN* at one time, though these scientific methods and the observable information at hand that:

    The Earth was flat

    That was never proven and never a scientific theory.

    The Earth was the center of the universe

    That was a view of the world that was assumed, not scientifically proven. Even though some scientists worked to make their models fit that assumption, it was "disproven" by theories using better measurements..

    The Earth is not only 4,000 years old ... ...

    That idea came from was a religious scholar who added up all the begats in the bible to come up with an estimated age. It had nothing to do with science.

    The earth was cooling and we were on the cusp of another ice age (late 70s) (when I was growing up)

    That was speculation made when the Milankovitch cycles were first becoming known. It seemed that if those cycles held true, we would be returning to a glaciation maximum in the next few thousand years, give or take a few thousand, and it was unkown how quickly that might occur. Combined with the cold winters in the 70s that gave the press something sensational to write, but it had nothing to do with scientific proof.

  23. Consistent pattern by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1988 James Hansen New York will be Under Water in 20-30 years

    https://www.salon.com/2001/10/...

    1989 UN we have 12 years to save the planet

    https://www.apnews.com/bd45c37...

    1989 New York Times NOAA (No warming trend over the past 100 years )

    https://www.nytimes.com/1989/0...

    2000 Snowfalls are a thing of the past

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp...

    2005 UN we will have 50 million climate refugees by 2010

    http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

    2009 James Hansen, Obama Has 4 years to save the planet

    https://www.theguardian.com/en...

    2018 UN Only 12 years left to save the planet

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/07...

    2019 Greenland Glacier Reverses Decline.

  24. Re:Unbelievable by Daralantan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Chianti.

    Were you having an old friend for dinner?

  25. Re:Unbelievable by sexconker · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's complicated by the fact that a central tenet of the religion is the idea that priests must interpret the words for you.

    That is not a central tenet of the religion.