Greenland Ice Melt: See if this don't scare you!

Outside Source "Glaciers have been retreating for more than 10,000 years, a phenomenon generally regarded as a good thing. When glaciers showed a strong resurgence between 1450 and 1850--as Smithsonian visiting scientist Alan Cutler reported recently in the Washington Post ("The Little Ice Age: When Global Cooling Gripped the World," 8/13)--the slowly flowing ice engulfed farms and crushed whole villages. Crops failed, leading to widespread famine in Norway, Scotland, and other northern areas.

"The possibility that global temperatures could rise because of an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a concern that needs to be monitored," says Singer. "But there has been no indication in the last century that we've seen anything other than natural climate fluctuations. Both greenhouse theory and computer models predict that global warming should be more rapid in the polar regions than anywhere else," he says, "but in July the Antarctic experienced the coldest weather on record."

"To make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do," says glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer of the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute. "The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response."

[link] www.sepp.org... [/link]

The "Hockey Stick" model has been debunked, and none of the computer models work. If you generate a model, say, 200 years into the future, if you run it backwards it should give you a result the same as when you started; which no model has ever done.

[edit on 27-6-2006 by zappafan1]

WASHINGTON - Weighing in on the highest profile debate about global warming, the nation's premier science policy body on Thursday voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years.

REPLY: As is quite obvious (and no pun intended) this is old news, and many sources of evidence shows it to be true.

However, 400 years is a bit before we were in America, and also well the before the Industrial Revolution.

Nothing much was happening 2,000 years ago that would attribute global warming to the actions of humans, either. So........... what was the cause? Solar activity and water vapor..... the same reason it's happening now.

The quote, above, is basically nothing but scare tactics to make people believe humans are somehow causing, or greatly aiding, global warming; which I do believe is happening, by the way.

However, if the oceans DO rise twenty feet (won't happen), and we lose Floriduh and the left Coast........... I'm still trying to figure out the downside to that.

posted by ixiy

After all global warming is a natural event on earth. At what stage do we realize that we are destroying our environment?

REPLY: Let's see..... global warming is a natural event (true), so how are we destroying the environment?

America's air right now is cleaner than it was before the industrial revolution, and it's thanks to Capitolism, which allows companies to make enough profit to clean up after themselves.

If we do not learn our lesson now, we will continue to pollute other planets that we colonize in the future.

REPLY: As if technology won't improve by then?

When will we learn that polluting has a price?

REPLY: You need to get that information to China and India, and also Russia. Maybe also to those countries who are now backing off from the Kyoto Treaty (smart people).

Originally posted by arius
we have the following equations detailing how long it has taken this amount of ice to accumulate

But we want to know the derivatives which give us the rates of change. So are you still bored?

Another point to be taken seriously with the Greenland Ice Sheet melting is the impact it will have on Europe's weather, particularly the UK. As we all know the Gulf Stream is the driving force behind the temperate conditons on the Old Sod. A massive influx of fresh water, such as the one being predicted via the melting ice sheet, would have a devastating impact. Some computer models predict another ice age. Ironic isn't it? That melting ice, a by-product of global warming, could trigger an opposite effect and plunge Europe into an ice age.

This sounds like the beginning of what could happen in that movie, "The day after tomorrow." Frightening, yes. Scary, absolutely. So why aren't the governments of the world more vocal on the subject? They spend more time on a North Korean Missile that may or may not be launched. Shouldn't they be spreading the word about how everything is about to fall apart?

Originally posted by Truthwillsetyoufree
This sounds like the beginning of what could happen in that movie, "The day after tomorrow." Frightening, yes. Scary, absolutely. So why aren't the governments of the world more vocal on the subject? They spend more time on a North Korean Missile that may or may not be launched. Shouldn't they be spreading the word about how everything is about to fall apart?

Yes, they should, but...

Try to think on the consequences of such a warning...


Do you think they want to have all these consequences or do you think they rather prefer to hide it, try to cope with it and wait and see...?

This has been worrying me for quite some time. Im here on the east coast and it was raining for about 4-5 days straight here which kinda worried me. Maybe its no biggie, and its normal for it to rain that much?

Greenland ice cap may be melting at triple speed

The world's second largest ice cap may be melting three times faster than indicated by previous measurements, according to newly released gravity data collected by satellites.

The Greenland Ice Sheet shrank at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres per year from April 2002 to November 2005, a team from the University of Texas at Austin, US, found. In the last 18 months of the measurements, ice melting has appeared to accelerate, particularly in southeastern Greenland.

"This is a good study which confirms that indeed the Greenland ice sheet is losing a large amount of mass and that the mass loss is increasing with time," says Eric Rignot, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, who led a separate study that reached a similar conclusion earlier in 2006 (See Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean). His team used satellites to measure the velocity of glacier movement and calculate net ice loss.

Yet another technique, which uses a laser to measure the altitude of the surface, determined that the ice sheet was losing about 80 cubic kilometres of ice annually between 1997 and 2003. The newer measurements suggest the ice loss is three times that.

More...

The evidence continues to mount.

[edit on 11-8-2006 by loam]

www.upi.com...

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say the most precise record of Antarctic snowfall ever generated shows no real increase in precipitation during the past 50 years.

The study's results from the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University show the snowfall was nearly static, although most computer models assessing global climate change call for an increase in Antarctic precipitation as atmospheric temperatures rise.

If there is 'Gobal Warming' which has been 'created' by man it's not effecting the Antarctic.

Continue reading:

"The year-to-year and decadal variability of the snowfall is so large that it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish trends that might be related to climate change from even a 50-year record," said Andrew Monaghan, a center research associate and lead author of the study.

And from here on the same study:

Antarctic snow may hide climate shock

A new study that shows Antarctic snowfalls have changed little in 50 years, despite global warming, could be evidence that the worst is yet to come, says one of the authors...

This contradicts the predictions of most climate models that are based on the assumption that warming air can carry more moisture and produce greater snowfalls at the poles.

"The models predict that Antarctic snowfall should be increasing with a warming atmosphere," says Australian team member and palaeoclimatologist Dr Ian Goodwin, of the University of Newcastle.

Goodwin doesn't challenge this basic climate physics. But says the recent evidence supports the idea, not recognised in climate models, that there is a lag between global warming and Antarctica's response to it.

The reason is that Antarctica and the southern hemisphere are surrounded by large oceans that take a long time to heat and therefore act as a buffer to climate change.

More...

...when the Earth dies, we ALL die! PERIOD! End of story with nothing and nobody left for debate. To that end a little environmentalism, conservationalism and care will go a long, long way.

I mean, is there really anyone here who believes that we have the ability to beat the forces of nature?

Thanks for the update and good articles. Its gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.

Greenland's massive ice sheet is melting rapidly, losing the equivalent of Lake Houston every six hours.

That's the conclusion of a study by University of Texas at Austin scientists that appears to confirm earlier, controversial research that suggests the melting of Greenland's ice has nearly tripled since the late 1990s. Greenland's ice sheet contains about 10 percent of the world's fresh water.

The findings concern climate scientists, who say that since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the mid-1900s, carbon dioxide levels have risen by more than 40 percent. They attribute much of the increase to fossil fuel burning and say that, in the absence of increased carbon emissions, no natural factor can explain warming global temperatures.

More...

Loam

WATS once again you have posted the important information and in a way accessable to most peoples understanding. You put into words what I am thinking!


Thanks loam

Regards

Elf

Here is the most recent update I found on the Greenland glacier melt problem:


earthobservatory.nasa.gov...


Scientists also recently discovered that a major contributing factor in the Antarctica breakup of one of its eastern (Ross?) glaciers a few years ago was a hitherto-unnoticed warmer-than-normal wind blowing over the mountains near that glacier. So Antarctica does respond to global warming, but with a time-lag, as Loam suggests.

Another scientific website that has a lot of good reports on what is going on with ice melting is the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute:


www.whoi.edu...

239 cubic kilometres. How much ice is there already, and how thick is it? Because it is a large amount, but how much is there still ice there?

That is a large amount by anyones description though. Does anyone know the surface area of the oceans? Because if we did we could work out the current rate of rise from Greeenland.

One thing I have noticed is that global warming is primarily a Northern Hemisphere warming. By that I mean that it seems much more pronouced in the Northern Hemisphere rather than the same everywhere round the globe. Does anyone have a sound reason for this?

Dear loam and others,

You are not the only one deeply concerned about the changes to our planet's eco-systems. Without going deeply into it (it is too long of a process to explain here), our planet has a spiritual government that oversees the developments that affect mankind.

A few weeks back, one of the chief's of administration spoke to the sudden changes to the polar ice caps, and issued the following bulletin:

For a full read of this information please go to:
LINK

Here are the comments regarding Greenland and the melting ice:

QUOTE:
The melting of the Greenland icecap will be studied and provide many surprising insights into your world. Those insights will not come free, but they will be each associated with a major disaster in your world. There will come a time in the melting of the icecap when scientists and media will record a continuous flood. Think of the floods that are going on in areas of your world now due to extreme high rainfall. There will be literally rivers flooding, descending from the icecap, into the sea. This will go on for three to five years as it melts very rapidly.

As the ice reaches the point of zero degrees centigrade and above, it takes a great deal of energy for it to change to a liquid form. Once this process begins, it will be horrendous. The water will flood from the icecap in tremendous gushes over this period, and will continue to do so to a lesser degree for another ten to fifteen years. Results to the North Atlantic currents will be . . . “awesome” is too small of a word to explain to you the affect on the gulf stream and what will occur afterwards. The rising of the ocean will be at a far more rapid rate than scientists have forecast.

Further, it will have a significant affect on Antarctica. The ice flows there that extend many miles into the sea will be raised from the ocean floor. There will be an immense break-off of these ice flows, into ice bergs of hundreds of square and cubic miles, and this will also aggravate the level of the ocean, worldwide. Yes, it will be an aggravating factor; it will be an anomaly that will occur rapidly in your world. It has occurred before; Greenland was known as Greenland because it truly was green—and Iceland had little ice. These areas allowed the survival and the growth and development of people and cultures there, in centuries past. This will occur once again. Many of you will see this development in your lifetime.

This will become the new, wonderful agricultural area of the world, where gardens will grow vegetables and flowers will grow from places from all over the world, when they are imported. Yes, to answer both of your questions, the mineral resources of your world will be diminished, but on the other hand, vast new areas of mineral development will be available, for fewer people. Truly, it will be a time of great abundance for a few, a few that carry great sorrow. Yes, there will be many other aggravating or augmenting factors to this decimation, but as we have said, the initiating causes may be totally and completely unrelated to this issue, such as the melting of Greenland’s icecap, but that factor alone will diminish all technologically developed nations’ capacity to protect themselves and to aid their neighbors.

END-QUOTE

Originally posted by pavil
One thing I have noticed is that global warming is primarily a Northern Hemisphere warming. By that I mean that it seems much more pronouced in the Northern Hemisphere rather than the same everywhere round the globe.


Does anyone have a sound reason for this?

to my untrained eye, there is more land mass in the northern half,
therefore more people with an infrastructure that contributes greenhouse gasses...there's also these 3 items of a considerably longer list;

- more food-chain farms generating methane & CO2
- more use of portland cement, not insignificant CO2 production
- more OPEC & Russian petroleum fields
(which 24/7 burn off the excess gases from the wells, figure +10,000 well heads with a rocket engine shooting up into the atmosphere a 30' flame approaching 1,000 degrees 24 hours a day, 365 days a year) how big or insignificant is this item?

these are all in addition to the naturally produced Earth's outgassing, volcanos, thermal vents, decay & flatulance that are part of nature and was integrated into the biospheres 'balancing' processes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

there's another recent article dealing with the radar scanned topography of Greenland, 1.5 miles below the ice surface,

they will continue with a 1.5 mile wide radar scan this April 2007
after they get the side-scan algorithms software more precise,

the scans aready produced show deep lakes and mountain ranges under the icesheet...how does one suppose that the surface melt will trickle down the 1.5 miles through the cracks & fissures to 'lubricate' the icesheet
to slide into the ocean......when the icesheet appears to be sitting atop a 'bowl' created by mountain ranges of the (below the ice) Greenland topography, the physics of ice sliding uphill to then slide down a mountainous terrain then into the ocean...seems more of a scare tactic & hyperbole , to excite the crowd

(i can't find the radar mapping of Greenland link now, but it also addressed the accelerated & hyper melt supposition...)