Exclusive: No Ice At The North Pole

reply to post by Long Lance


First of all, science is never accurate. And even if some scientific data is believed accurate within a specific percentage, the entire foundation of science can change overnight with a new scientific discovery. Everything is always changing and our understanding of the universe and science in general is never exact. It is mostly a best guess given what we know at any given point in time. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all these scientists are wrong about climate change. Any percentage of certainty that the scientific community spits-out needs to be taken with a grain of salt because people must understand that our understanding of the world around us is extremely small and much that we think we know is probably wrong.. That is just the way it is..

There is no doubt that global warming has been a huge topic in the media over the last half decade. That much is certain. And there have, inevitably, been people writing books, making movies, and generally profiting off of scaring the American people with this stuff. But that doesn't in any way, shape, or form take away from the facts..

The simple issue here is whether or not science should be trusted.. Obviously, they are best suited for the task of finding out what is going on. Who else is going to do this kind of research? Blaming science for being uncertain about climate change doesn't make any sense.

We have all emitted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by simply being alive and breathing, therefore we all are contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gases to some degree.. There's simply no way around the breathing part.

This isn't all about humans destroying the environment. Certainly we are playing a roll in what is going on but climate change is completely normal for the planet earth anyway. There are MANY factors and MANY causes (many of them completely natural) and we just don't know for sure how it all fits into the big picture yet, even now. We have a general idea but that's about it. Most statistical information about climate change is estimated.. And even if we had some level of certainty to this data there are always unknowns and we can never know for certain what is always going on at all points on the planet at any given point in time. Therefore everything involves science doing it's best to gauge the facts. I don't see any other way to go about it.. Regardless of who feels what about science in general and what the scientific community thinks about climate change/global warming. WE need to understand the truth about what is going on period..

But that is not exactly easy..

I agree that many have blown our part in climate change way out of proportion for their own reasons. But these huge sections of Antarctica disentigrating should tell everyone that this is not some freak event. Let alone what is currently happening, globally, to glaciers, arctic ice on the North Pole, and Antarctica. It's all happening right before our eyes. I live in Alaska and I can vouch for the fact that these glacies are all melting at a remarkably fast rate.. Many of the glaciers which you used to go right up to on tour-boats are now so thick with icebergs and ice chunks that you can't get within a couple miles of any of the glaciers. At least not from prince williams sound in Valdez. The University of Alaska has conducted research on the melting glaciers now for years and their data consistently shows that this is not some freak event to one or two glaciers but that this is an ongoing trend that is affecting ALL glaciers here in Alaska..

-ChriS

Double post. Carry on.

-ChriS

[edit on 29-6-2008 by BlasteR]

During World War Two he Northwest Passage opened up.

We were too busy fighting to notice it, and we didn't have satellites or plane overflights to let us know that it happened.

But I guess the world's population has decreased since WW2 and we since use only a fraction of the resources as they did that would explain why the ice reformed and now that we are getting back up to WW2 population levels, the ice is melting again.

Looks like we need to start using massive amounts of petroleum again. We need to get the ice back to the way it was in the 70s when the environment was truly loved and cared for and there was lopts of ice and lead in the gas - coincidence I think not.

Originally posted by doctormcauley
There is Consensus on global warming, there is consensus that humans are the cause of recent volcanic activity. It is anthropomorphologicalistically caused, regardless of your propaganda.

anthropomorphologicalistically

Please - get a dictionary before attempting to tackle this argument! You're undermining your own position by not even being able to correctly spell.

Do we really need to regress back to 5th grade and how Volcanoes work? Do us all a favor and stop spreading these blatant lies.

I'd like to see some proof of just how man is responsible for them.

reply to post by BlasteR


Good post, but something needs highlighting: just because ice is melting, doesn't mean the world is doomed.

Ice melts when the surrounding environment is above the freezing point of water. The mass doing the actual melting remains at 0°C until it has melted.

The worst that happens should all the ice melt? Sea levels rise. Which results in what? Some low lying land ending up under water, possibly permanently.

Wow... so some land gets flooded.

Sorry to say, but there isn't some cataclysmic event that will occur. The world won't start blowing up or anything like that. It's quite mundane really.

The way people go on about "the effects of climate change" you'd think we'd all die tomorrow or something, but that simply wouldn't happen.

The fact the planet is warming is a good thing - food we can't grow in the higher latitudes because it's too cold will be able to be grown. Food will actually be easier to produce, etc.. Is that a bad thing? No, it isn't.

[edit on 29-6-2008 by mirageofdeceit]

reply to post by mirageofdeceit


Your name suits you perfectly - you deceive even yourself.

Why must you deny Global Warming? Sure there may be more ice on Antarctica, but it is warm ice, not nearly as cold as it should be. In fact, it ice in Antarctic is warmer than ever before. Ask anyone.

The worst part is that the Antarctic Ice sheet keeps growing, gaining more mass very year, so just imagine the consequences of Global Warming once all that Land-based ice melts. Imagine how many cities will flood when Global Warming melts the ice in Antarctica.

The worst part is, as ice sheet increases in size it also gets warmer... making melting far more likely which will cause Global Disasters unparalleled in Human history, except maybe for the casualties caused by eating meat.

Is it due to underwater Volcanoes? Is land preparing for the shift? And afterwards will the frozen ice caps be down in South America or where do they go?

reply to post by doctormcauley

Why must you deny Global Warming?

I don't deny global warming. I deny the *causes* of global warming.

I don't believe GW is man-made. Why? Well... let's roll back 100,000 years to the last ice-age shall we? Ever since the ice-age started thawing out, just where was the man-made CO2 then?

They talk of our industrialized ways causing the problem, but that only really started about 150 years ago.

Given all the warming between then (100,000 years ago and more) and now, the world hasn't done bad at all, has it?

At one time, this planet was just a molten ball of rock. Not bad, huh?

They say the only way to "reverse" (note the term *reverse*) GW is to pay more taxes, stop using oil and find alternative sources of energy.... hmmm.... so that fact I have electrical equipment sat here comfortably (and artificially) warming my office up a good 10 degrees has NO effect whatsoever? What about my air conditioner on the roof? Hmm... more direct heat.

Even if all my electricity was to be generated via nuclear power (allegedly a "green" solution, excepting the radioactive, DNA-damaging, cancer-causing waste ), I'm directly warming the atmosphere, yet none of this gets talked about. Why?

That aside, why target just CO2, and say "stop using fossil fuels"?

Facts you just can't ignore.

The reason is quite simple: the western governments at least, no longer wish to rely on oil from the Middle East, and want to become self-sufficient. Talk of "carbon offsetting" and the rest of it is just one huge money-making scam.

[edit on 29-6-2008 by mirageofdeceit]

reply to post by mirageofdeceit


Sounds like you have been buying into the oil companies propaganda... How can you say fossil fuels are not the cause? How can you say that carbon credits won't stop people from using carbon, when you know it will.

This is how it works: Say it is August and you have used up your carbon credits, you buy more credits. In the winter if you are out of carbon credits, you just buy more, and if you can't afford them you just get another job - simple.

If it is winter and you are out of credits and unemployed, well what the hell are you doing with your own house anyways? Shouldn't you be more worried about finding work so you can buy more carbon credits to heat your house and pay the bills etc? What it so hard to understand about that.

Not to mention all the jobs that will be created; There will be thousands of administrative, regulatory and even enforcement-type jobs coming out of this Carbon Ration/Credit plan. Don't you want more jobs?

Sure it will be tough at the beginning, but as families learn to fit more people into one house, they can pool their credits and maybe even have the heating on all winter and the a/c on all summer. It will bring people closer together as a community, as they will all Know that they are contributing to a cause that everyone thinks is worth it - except for shills and disinformation repeaters who are either paid or in total denial.

reply to post by doctormcauley


How does me buying carbon credits help reduce CO2 *IF* that's the problem? I thought the idea was to reduce the amount of CO2 output?

Example:

If we stop burning fossil fuels, obviously we reduce CO2 output from these sources.

If however, I can go on burning fossil fuels, but buy carbon credits, just how in the hell has that reduced overall output?

Another fact for you: all these "green" energy sources aren't so green. They have to be manufactured, then in order to pay for themselves, they have to generate at least as much energy as was expended into building them.

...but what does that matter if I'm still burning the same amount of fossil fuels as I always did, but buy credits to do so?

Can't you see just how flawed this idea is? You're throwing money away for nothing.

Who said CO2 was *the* cause anyway? Any proof to back the findings? After I trawled the Met Office own records since the 1940s for CO2 vs. temperature for my part of the world, whilst CO2 has been rising, average temperatures year on year for where I live have fallen. Go figure...

[edit on 29-6-2008 by mirageofdeceit]

reply to post by mirageofdeceit


I see you are still building straw-men to knock down...

The debate is over, you lost. Apart from that you are denying the Reality Global Warming and the solutions to the crisis - continuing to do so regardless of the facts presented will not make it go away.

Think about the children alive today, do you want them to live in a world devastated by global warming, even when you have the chance to stop it?

What Happens To Santa?

Originally posted by BlasteR

First of all, science is never accurate. ..

oh, so let's just launch a mars probe and, since it's never accurate (hey, you said that), we'll be pleased if it hits 'within 50% of mars' whatever that means, probably a 50% hit ratio

sounds accurate for your average mars mission, but it should at this point be noted that these losses occured due to faulty rangefinders or data link goofs, not due to miscalcalculated orbital mechanics. so there are indeed branches of science which are taken seriously, mainly because they yield accurate predictions and results.

as i said before, NO OTHER DISCIPLINE OF SCIENCE COULD GET AWAY WITH THIS NONSENSE.

fry me for caps all you want.

blanket statements, 'job creation' exucses, derailment, you name it. will you attempt to chalk it off to mistakes, 'inaccuracies', an agenda maybe or just plain dishonesty? just an idea that hit me while posting.

Let alone what is currently happening, globally, to glaciers, arctic ice on the North Pole, and Antarctica. It's all happening right before our eyes. I live in Alaska and I can vouch for the fact that these glacies are all melting at a remarkably fast rate..

i mean the entire situation is patently ridiculous, the GW snake oilers use glaciers as an indicator of temperature rises, which satellite data does not really mirror to that extent*. therefore, i posted a couple of links which linked glacier loss and growth to more than just temps and included precipitation (ohh, so complicated..). suddenly, we're now guilty of altering these as well, via warming, because people with short attention spans have 'already proven' - through these same glacier measurements - that warming is real.



circular logic at its finest and that'S before going into growing antarctic ice fields, which i'll now post for the 4th time:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

ice breaking off does not need to imply warming either, but you know that. add to that that polar areas have only become observable a few deacdes ago and all your data lacks significance, because you have no past records to compare to.

* data collection is the real culprit, it's usually dubbed the 'urban heat island effect', the reality is that cold area stations were simply shut down and the data sets never seperated, which is about as unscientific as it comes.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

oh and please, for a change, read this short thread of 4 posts before going on with blanket statements and follow at least 2 links while you're at it.


reply to post by doctormcauley


lol, i'm afraid posting annoying nonsense mirroring their debating style will only be lost in the noise, because people seem to love taking sarcastic posts seriously and the rest won't answer unless you start accusing them.

nowadays, that's the only universally understood language, d'oh.

Originally posted by doctormcauley
reply to post by mirageofdeceit

 

Think about the children alive today, do you want them to live in a world devastated by global warming, even when you have the chance to stop it?

That part is always thrown around by global warming alarmists like yourself. If the threat was real, and the cause was real ("us"), we wouldn't be arguing about it. But since the evidence is lacking, faulty, or purposely wrong or skewed, we can't believe AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is real. If humans were producing large amounts of water vapour (the most abundant and most potent greenhouse gas), I would blame global warming on humans.

I bet you watched Al Gore's mockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth", and believed every word of it. There are at least 30 major facts in that film that are blatantly wrong. Where do you get your info, doctormcauley?

P.S. Sorry if me saying "we" offended any global warming skeptics. This is my opinion. It may not be the same as other skeptics or "deniers", as doctormcauley would put it.

The evidence that Global Warming is real greatly outweighs the evidence that it is not real. The posts which try to claim that global warming is not real rely on very specious arguments. Whether or not man is causing this is another story, but considering the ramifications, it is well worth the investment for mankind to change its ways to reduce the impact on the worlds climate as much as possible.

While sea ice around the Antarctic is slightly increasing, the continent is getting warmer, and the ocean temperatures around the continent are getting warmer, and the glaciers on the continent themselves are shrinking. In other words, the south pole is melting as well.

The glaciers covering the worlds mountains are also melting at alarming rates. Yes, there is some evidence that Kilimanjaro's glaciers are shrinking as much due to lack of rain fall, as global warming, but this theory does not apply to the poles, or the mountain chains elsewhere around the globe which are seeing their glaciers melt.

All the information to back up these claims has already been provided in this thread, along with the links to sites that back up the information.

If all the worlds glaciers melt, it is predicted that ocean levels would rise around 66 meters, A large chunk of the worlds most productive farmland would be underwater, bye bye Florida, Holland, Denmark, large areas of Germany and France, a large chunk of the U.S. Mississippi plains, San Joaquin Valley in California. It seems we could build dams to save the San Joaquin valley, which produces a large chunk of the worlds food supply. Bye bye Shanghai and a large chunk of China, Calcutta, Uruguay, a large chunk of the Amazon Rain Forest, much of Indonesia, Sydney, and a large number of coastal cities, Boston, NYC, LA, ect..

Here is a nice website of maps that I found, including a world map of world ocean changes if the ocean levels rose by 66 meters.

www.johnstonsarchive.net...
www.johnstonsarchive.net...

If you save the map and brighten it with photo editor you will see how much the global map will change.

Here is site where you can look up the elevations of cities and a great deal of map information.

www.worldatlas.com...

If the melting of the worlds ice glaciers continues to accelerate, many of these areas could be underwater by the end of the century. If the North Pole is ice free this summer, it ought to be a wake up call for the world. The effects on the world will be phenomenal. There will need to be over a billion people relocated, and there will most likely be world wide starvation. To ignore these very real possibilities would be foolish.

Originally posted by poet1b
The evidence that Global Warming is real greatly outweighs the evidence that it is not real. The posts which try to claim that global warming is not real rely on very specious arguments.

While sea ice around the Antarctic is slightly increasing, the continent is getting warmer, and the ocean temperatures around the continent are getting warmer, and the glaciers on the continent themselves are shrinking. In other words, the south pole is melting as well.

because you want it to be true?

www.newscientist.com...

But now Ian Joughin of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California at Santa Cruz report a net gain of 26.8 billion tons per year. This represents about a quarter of the annual snow accumulation.

Joughin measured flow rates along the ice streams emptying into the Ross Embayment with the Canadian Radarsat satellite. Then he compared the outflow volume with other measurements on surface accumulation to obtain the mass balance.

did you really believe i would not retain some ace up my sleeve?

did you really believe you could get away with just deriding or ignoring the data i've given so far? how much have you done expect trumpeting your stampede-consensus? what about the data collection issue, that's goes right at the very core of GW. i'm not really sure if GW exists, i cannot know it from the data i have. it's ambiguous and contradictory, so i'll have to reserve judgement for now. anything else would show bias. i can still point out alternative viewpoints, however.

you apparently don't think that data should be reliable beyond reasonable doubt, before acting on it, especially if it concerns the future of mankind, how we are 'allowed' to develop by some monopolistic, misanthropic organsiation like the UN. which, coincidentially is a bureaucracy without accountability, which was never voted into their position and which is trying to attain control over our lives, no matter the cost, apparently.


and you cheer them. if you're insulted, you should be, but do not forget that i'm just the messenger.



reply to post by flyindevil


i think he's just pulling your posterior extremities. i really think he's trying to mock AGW'ers.

edit: will you be so kind as to confirm it for everyone, Doctormcauley?

[edit on 2008.6.29 by Long Lance]

Well it was bound to happen with human intervention or not. Think of the bright side, a new shipping lane has opened

Originally posted by doctormcauley
reply to post by mirageofdeceit

 

I see you are still building straw-men to knock down...

The debate is over, you lost. Apart from that you are denying the Reality Global Warming and the solutions to the crisis - continuing to do so regardless of the facts presented will not make it go away.

Think about the children alive today, do you want them to live in a world devastated by global warming, even when you have the chance to stop it?

Did you not read one word of my post?? You even got 2 stars for this pathetic ad homien attack (which I think you'll find is in contravention of the rules at ATS). I posted some real verifiable science.

I also note your rather large negative post-count.

Apart from that you are denying the Reality Global Warming...continuing to do so regardless of the facts presented will not make it go away.

Please re-read my last post. That is the reality of carbon trading. I'm paying (effectively) for the right ot keep on burning, in the face of these schemes being totally corrupt.

Please tell me just how that helps the fight?

[edit on 29-6-2008 by mirageofdeceit]

reply to post by doctormcauley


I am curious what "facts" you have to show your side of the case? I haven't seen any yet. I HAVE seen the 30k plus scientists sign a petition saying that the "facts" are definitely NOT decided.

If you could just point me to these facts, please.

reply to post by Long Lance


You are whining about blanket statements yet you completely missed the boat with what I was conveying in my post... Science does have some element of accuracy because it has an element of truth!! DUH!!! And there are many things in science that we understand to a degree of certainty that scientists can now accurately launch probes to mars etc... Everybody KNOWS THAT!! My statement is with regards to science in general (i.e. if you don't know what science means.. Understanding the world and universe around us... i.e. The friggin truth OK).

Our scientific understanding of the world around us is extremely limited.. Therefore science is never exact because WE CAN NEVER KNOW HOW ACCURATE OUR UNDERSTANDING IS. I appreciate your cynicism I really do but I stand by my statement because it is the truth..

It doesn't take uncommon logic to understand this..

-ChriS

[edit on 29-6-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by Long Lance


You ignore that the data I have provided that trumps the data that you have provided, while you pretend that the specious data you provide proves your point, when it is consistently too narrow to back your claims that the melting of the worlds glaciers is not occurring.

This last article you point to speaks of only one glacier on Antarctic, and talks about long term trends when the current changes in global temperature have been rapid, and do not fit into the long term model. We are currently experiencing a rise in temperature that is far greater than any that science is aware of in global history. Long term does not apply to our current situation. Maybe in five hundred years long term trends might come back into effect, but that isn't going to do us any good in the next hundred years. In addition, snow accumulation is not ice formation. The article switches from talking about loss of ice, to state that their is a net gain in the next paragraph, but doesn't identify what the net gain is in, then speaks of snow accumulation. What exactly is this net gain the article is talking about. I suspect the gain is in in snow, not ice, big difference. The article even admits that the other glaciers continue to lose ice. The article seems more interested in proving its own point of view than giving an accurate analysis. All you have done is provide a link, once again, to an article that tries to ignore the big picture.

The evidence that the world's glaciers are melting is very solid, and very credible. You just want to pretend that this isn't so.