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Science

Antarctic Ice Cap Breaking Up? 16

Posted by michael from the breaking-up-is-hard-to-undo dept.
vrmlguy writes "Here's another reason why I'm glad to live well away from any of the coasts, East, Left, or Gulf: The Antarctic icecap (and a large number of Northern Hemisphere glaciers) may be melting faster than previously suspected. New Orleans, which is already 8 feet below sea level, may be just a memory in less than a century." Interesting stuff.
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Antarctic Ice Cap Breaking Up? More

Antarctic Ice Cap Breaking Up?

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  • Louisiana has an perplexing predicament. It looses millions of acres of coastline every year to the Gulf of Mexico. The Port of Baton Rouge is the second largest deep-water port in the United States, as far as dollar amounts. The Mississippi river is being diverted from its natural course (actually, the course nature wants it to take). It will take billions of dollars to keep the Mississippi on it's course and not flooding. But, it is the flooding of the Mississippi that would keep the state from loosing as much coastline. New Orleans has another problem--it is sinking under its own weight. All of the Slit from the Mississippi is being thrown off of the continental shelf and into the depths of the gulf. Eventually, and this will wreak havoc on Louisiana, as well as the entire Mississippi delta, the Army Corps of Engineers will have to let the Mississippi follow the straight path to the Gulf now known as the Atchafalaya River. This will flood many towns and small cities and will leave New Orleans and Baton Rouge without a city--and without a port. The Atchafalaya is a treacherous river, and will be even more treacherous if it has that much more water going down it. It will probably destroy highways that cross it (Interstate 10) and levees around it. It will probably be impassable to boat travel for months if not years. Whoever is the politician that deems it's time to do this will probably be very unpopular. It would be interesting to know how this will play out. (BTW, Baton Rouge is 20 feet above sea level, and it's over 100 miles from the coase. Imagine what rising sea levels will do to this state.)
  • Much of the initial salt water encroachment was caused when oil companies dug canals from the gulf and through the swamps (it's not just oil companies, but that was one major problem). The amount of change of salt in the water caused the vegetation to die, and the coastline to erode (with the help of Nutria rats, which were introduced to eat another type of vegetation...I digress).

    The problem with New Orleans is that once the coast is gone, waves will be beating on its levees. At that point, you better have some kick-ass levees or just leave.

    I guess what I mean to say, is that the salt water encroachment is a problem with above surface water, not ground water, in Louisiana. It gets to the plants through natural erosion of the coast line.

    This past summer, which was the second year of a bad drought here, rice farmers were pulling salt water from their wells. I assume that is what you are referring to.
  • Excuse me, I am talking about another thread. I'm just lost today. Ignore that last comment.
  • I think I'll just start buying lots of not-quite-beachfront property. Then just sit back and watch the beach come to you!

    Better patent it before anybody else starts using my business model.

  • Who the hell thought they were all smart when they wrote that article? They are right that the oceans are warming, but claiming the changes in the ross ice shelf is evidence for thier case is crazy. Their dates are between december and march, crossing over 10 years. We know that the ice formation in antartica changes from one year to the next, there might be a visible change between two seperate years, but the third year it could match or exceed both prior. According to a poster I have the antartic ice was its largest in recorded history in 1988. Or at least as long as it has been monitored. So, what's the big deal.
  • Netherlands 300 years ago used and developed this technology. They called it a dyke. No, you perverts, not a lesbian.
  • Overclocking their CPUs!

    Maybe they should get some MicroFans [slashdot.org]

  • The tone of comments here seems to me to reflect a real head-in-the-sand attitude... if the release of chunks of ice the size of a small state is no big deal, what WILL get your attention? So what if this has been going on for 14,000 years - it's clearly speeded up tremendously in the last ten or so. And sure, we can put up a big dike to save Manhattan, but what about the 10 million people who live in other parts of the NYC metro area? Not to mention the other 50-100 million Americans living in coastal areas.

    To give a specific example, I live in eastern Long Island, where a huge fuss is made about protecting our "sole source aquifer" from pollutants. What's the biggest threat to the aquifer? Salt water encroachment - and the extent of that is determined by the effective "height above sea level" of the water pressure. Currently the highest pressure points are 50 feet above sea level - but huge areas of the aquifer are only at pressures a few feet above sea level, so a sea level rise of even 3 feet would tremendously reduce the quantity of fresh water available here.

    Multiply that problem by thousands of local regions with similar issues, and you're talking some serious costs that go with even a small sea level rise. This is a big deal folks!
  • New Orleans has more problems than sea level rise.

    The article mentions that the barrier islands and wetlands around the mouth of the Mississippi are shrinking. This is largely due to the flood control and silt control on the Mississippi River. The dams and levees that keep the river navigable and that protect all those farms along the river also prevent the natural transport of sediment to the sea. This means that while the weight of the delta continues to cause it to sink, there is not as much sand to keep building new land.

    The Army Corps of Engineers, which has been trying to tame the Mississippi for decades, may in the end be responsible for the first abandonment of a major city in the modern era.
  • Don't be so hasty and naive. Think for a moment. If the Earth is warming what then should happen ? Increased heating should produce more active air mass transport to the poles. At the poles this will increase snowfall since it will be bringing in humid air. It should also produce stronger colder winds from the poles as the global heat engine starts to more effectively move heat from source to sinks.

    Eventually, however the transported heat will lower the overall temperature far enough that the ice will start to melt. By then of course it is too late. I think its too late now. There is nothing we can do, there is probably nothing we could have done. It was inevitable.

    There is abundant evidence for global warming. If you go looking for it you'll be amazed.

    As for the opposite view, what are the options:

    * GCMs arent accurate ... yeah so, thats no news, but the actual measurements are accurate.

    * the old satellite argument. Now didn't I read that the recalculation of the satellite orbits showed that the orbital decay masked the increasing temperature ?

    Can't think of any more. Apart from the personal slander I've heard.

    On the opposing side what evidence is there for warming:

    * the thermal pulse propagating down through the perma frost.

    * increased wind and wave action over the last 40 years.

    * ice thickness reduction in the Arctic and Antarctic.

    * coral bleaching

    * oxygen isotope measurements of the last 10,000 years.

    etc...

    But since this seems to be a religious / ideological view with many of the proponents I have absolutely no expectation that they will change their minds. If they are genuinely interested in the truth I would only suggest they look at the evidence and distrust anything that feels 'comfortable'.

    Peter
  • The real problem with melting ice caps is not the immediate sea level rise, but rather a break in the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). [tamu.edu] NADW is the driving force behind the worlds largest ocean currents. In the north atlantic, extremely salty, cold water descends to the bottom of the; this downward flow, draws water behind it, initiating global thermohaline circulation. This circulation acts as a belt that rotates around the world, Americans would most likely identify the Gulf Stream lying off the coast of the Eastern United States; this stream is caused by the sinking of the NADW; however this flow of water from the equatorial regions of the atlantic most notably affects England and North-Western Europe. If the Polar ice caps continue to melt, or a fresh water lake in the cap were to rupture and spill out over the North Atlantic, the salty/cold water would be dilluted and would no longer sink to the bottom. This would cause all of the major ocean currents to slow and ultimately cease. Most likely the first place that this effect would be seen is in dramatic weather change in the Northeast Atlantic, if the Gulf stream stops then warm water will no longer carry warm water to these upper latitudes, resulting in much colder temperatures, and possibly a regrowth of some ice sheets over regions of England and Northern Europe.
    -OctaneZ

  • I also think the media's attempts to hype up global warming are regrettable. Flimsy alarmism gives the impression that global warming is not a real problem, which I think it is. Air-conditioned corporate cubicle life can probably be totally insulated from the effects of global warming for the forseeable future. The difficulties are elsewhere:

    • Low-lying islands and poor, low-lying countries are doomed. It seems pretty low of us rich folk to destroy everything they have because we're wusses about nuclear power and like to drive big cars.
    • Non-human ecosystems will be trashed. Yes, life will go on in a new form, but it is sad that there will be no pristine place left anywhere on earth that has not been reshaped by human excess.
    • The real problem, I think, is that heating the entire planet will change a million things that no one has even considered yet. Maybe all changes will be relatively harmless. Maybe there will be a positive feedback that wipes out the human race. Most likely there will be some big hassles that we can survive. But there's really no way to know; the state of planetary science stinks. We're gambling the planet to win convenience. Even if the odds are 10-1 in our favor, that seems like a dumb bet to me.
  • that most of the Netherlands and other countries have significant ocean-side property that should be flooded, because it's below sea-level. Isn't it amazing what a little bit of old technology, called a WALL can do to a potentially flooded city in this situation?

    Darn media blitz of bad news with no thought behind it...
  • Rise in sea level has little to do with salt encroachment. I lived on an island for a while and I learned about a freshwater lens. This is where fresh rainwater falling on the land flushes out saltwater so shallow groundwater is fresh and deep water is salt. A rise in the sea level just raises the height of the fresh water. Serious encroachment occurs when rainwater is kept out of the ground (storm sewers) and the fresh water is removed from the lens by pumping from wells. The missing normal flow of freshwater is replaced by outside water from the ocean which happens to be salty. At the end of a long dry season (in the tropics) my well did start to smell.
  • Walling off the ocean... that's gotta be a nice stable, long term solution...

    I know that walls are commonly used to hold back water, that's got to be a nice target for oh, TERRORISTS

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
  • It reminds me of a CNN story on global warming I watched about two years ago.

    They interviewed Greenpeace and a dozen other American sources. All were predicting disaster in outrageous terms, and some professor even suggested the survival of the human race was in question, citing the demise of the dinosaurs.

    There was this 20 second clip slipped into the middle of the thing, you could easily miss it, in which they interviewed a Dutch minister who was in charge of Dikes and port infrastructure, or something. He gently chuckled at the reporter and told her (in perfect English, of course) "I could raise our walls one meter in three years for a third of our annual budget. If the sea starts rising it won't be an issue for us at all; we'll appropriate a small increase, and spread out the funding so it will be unnoticeable." And then he went on to suggest that the interviewer talk to people from poor nations in the South Pacific, saying that the Western world had enough money to take care of itself.

    No American agency head would ever say something like that. If you asked them about pink aliens, they would claim immediate danger and the need for double their budget and an "awareness campaign".

    I think our government system is better than that parlimentary system, but the individuals staffing it are a collection of third prizes. It's our own fault of course; we reward hypesters and alarmists, and punish the calm and accurate.

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