Larsen Ice Shelf Collapses 1250
Cally writes in: "The BBC reports that the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, a 200m thick ice floe covering 3,250 sq km, has disintegrated. This is terrible news. The widely respected British Antarctic Survey are quoted as saying "We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering[...] [It is hard] to believe that 500 billion tonnes of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month." As a Greenpeace member who's been following the debate for over a decade, it's hard not to feel aggrieved at those with their own agenda who have pushed the theory that global climate change isn't happening. Risk = probability x consequence..." The big iceberg is a separate event.
Re:Whoops.... (Score:5, Informative)
You figure out why. :
Weather patterns (Score:3, Informative)
Given that we are constantly learning about various cycles in global climate, some of which seem to span over thousands of years ( E.g. NASA: The Sun-Weather connection [nasa.gov]), you can't possibly claim for certain that any temperature fluctuations over the past 10, 20 or 50 years are due exlusively to our behaviour.
I'm not against cleaning up the earth, I just think that global warming isn't a good argument.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:4, Informative)
Here are some resources:
BBC Report [bbc.co.uk]
EPA website on global warming [epa.gov]
Union of concerned scientists. [ucsusa.org]
btw, you forgot to post your evidence.. (typical skeptic evidence: We don't know for 10000000000% sure, so this must be environmentalist propoganda"
-D
p.s. Ok, I'll say It. You, are a mo-ron.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:5, Informative)
John Daly's massive clearinghouse, Still Waiting for Greenhouse [vision.net.au]
An article [cato.org] by MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen.
There's lots more, but others might want to play.
risk != probability * consequence (Score:3, Informative)
Two graphs to consider. (Score:5, Informative)
If you're unsure where you stand on the issue of global warming, you might want to look at the following two graphs. The first shows that carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising. [ornl.gov] There is no real question that this is much human induced. At the same time, global temperatures are also dramatically rising. [noaa.gov] Here the extent of human influence is more debatable. It is possible that an apparent cause (rising CO2) and an apparent effect (rising temperatures) are both happening independently but, coincidentally, at the same time. And, also at the same time, there is some other, unknown force causing the entire planet to heat. It truly is possible. But I wouldn't personally bet the world on that.
Who was Larsen? What lessons to learn from him? (Score:2, Informative)
The St Roch, commanded by Sergeant Larsen, needed 28 months to complete its first traverse of the NW passage, during WW2. (Basically defending the Canadian Arctic from our insensitive American allies.) The recreation of its voyage, in 2000, encountered clear sailing in waters that had been choked with ice sixty years earlier, providing very clear evidence of global warming. [guardian.co.uk]
Meanwhile, In other news ... (Score:4, Informative)
Also on BBC, Ice thickens in West Antarctica [bbc.co.uk]
Sun is hotter [lubbockonline.com], but shrinking [stanford.edu] (mass energy conversion, you know).
Maybe we should realize that perhaps some of the global warming hype is just hype. Everytime there is a heat wave on the news coasts, there a new round of global warming stories. Normal climate variability is large, and modern winters are not the warmest ever (or even in modern history). Check out Minnesota 1877 [umn.edu]. The observed long-term warming trend since 1900 is not unusual in terms of climate history.
BTW, risk of Kyoto protocol is followed in 100% of the expected cost, because it is certain damage to world economy.
Re:Who caused the Ice Age? (Score:3, Informative)
One new theory, the Raymo-Chambelin Hypothesis, suggests that the last ice age was triggered by the collision of the Indian subcontinent and Asia, and the subsequent uplift of the Himalayan plateau. This caused a sharp increase in chemical weathering in Southeast Asia which removed CO2 from the atmosphere (reverse greenhouse effect) and dropped temperatures. Cool!
Not based on the last 100 years at all. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:5, Informative)
Worldwide ecology is a complicated system, and Europe owes much of its warmth to actions of salty atlantic ocean currents. We don't know if the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation locations will move farther from europe... but if it did, let's just note that in Canada, there are polar bears at Edinburgh's latitude. Of course, it might also move closer, and europe could get even warmer.
Some more information: Natural Science Article [naturalscience.com], The Atlantic Online [theatlantic.com]
ps - I'm not sure if I really buy all this, but the lack of certainty does inspire some concern.
Re:Not that much water (Score:3, Informative)
When I square 6,376,000, I get 4.06e+13. Now, times 3.142 = 1.277e+14. And, times 4, I get 5.10e+14.
That's 510,000,000,000,000 meters square. Times
Colder and Thicker (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Informative)
I think too many environmentalists ignore the fact that human activity is nothing compared to what Nature can do. Do you know that a single hurricane can cause destruction on a scale that makes even our biggest nuclear bombs look puny? Look at what hurricane Camille did in 1969--destruction on an unimaginable scale. Or the fact that a single major volcanic eruption can cause climate changes, as witnessed by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, which actually cooled the atmosphere for over a year? We know that the eruption of Mt. Tambora in what is now Indonesia in 1815 (which sent 15 cubic miles of volcanic ash into the atmosphere) caused much of the Northern Hemisphere to cool quite rapidly--indeed, there are records of blizzards in the upper Hudson River Valley in early July 1816!
For everyone looking at that book (Score:5, Informative)
- UCS examines The Skeptical Environmentalist [ucsusa.org]
- Nine things journalists should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist [wri.org]
As a long time skeptic on many issues myself (just ask my friends who have asked me what sign I am) skepticism is a good thing. Just remember that it goes both ways.-Miko
Graphs and Statistics (Score:2, Informative)
but I'd like to mention a very intersting book
that everyone should at least take a look at
in regards to this topic --
the Skeptical Enviromentalist
by Bjorn Lomborg.
Just pick it up at your local Barnes and Nobles
and leaf through it. You won't be dissapointed you did.
--Dante
More Info (Score:4, Informative)
RFN had links to other research sites, some of which have pics every week or two for the past two months.
Re:Please explain (Score:1, Informative)
The issue is truely the ice caps and glaciers. As those melt, that water will end up in the oceans everywhere. Either via the water cycle, or directly via a stream/river etc.
I'm not sure what you mean by Antartica being the first to flood. When you add water to the ocean, it adds watter to all the oceans. it doesn't stay confined to one area.
Re:Blame the sun (Score:2, Informative)
"But now the solar influence is just turning around to contribute a further warming influence up to the year 2010, boosting the greenhouse effect where for the 30 years up to 1990 it was counterbalancing it. The result is a forecast of much more rapid and pronounced warming of the globe than has previously been thought likely,"
John Gribbin, The case of the missing neutrinos
You were right, good for you - but we have already broken the estimates for the temperatures during the peak of the sun-cycle and there's still 8 more years to go until we are there.
Nobody insists that the Earth's climate is a stable system, they are just more alarmed now that 3,250 sq km of perfectly reflecting surface turned into more heatabsorbing area. If the system isn't stable, what will stop that addition to world heating to boost another one.
Random vulcano eruptions?
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, no we haven't. Accurate weather data has only been gathered for the last 107 years [noaa.gov].
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Informative)
There is no debate here. Global warming is real, the earth has gone through several periods of warming and cooling over it's history and we are now in a period of warming. The only issue up for debate is how much of a contribution we are making to the problem. We know that the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon, a good bit of greenhouse gasses have natural origings, depending on who you believe. Whether we are making the problem significantly worse or not, that is what no one can agree on.
Here are some links that point out we might not be. Take these at face value, they are the unpopular opposing viewpoint in the debate, but they make some good points.
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-pm110697.html [cato.org]1 0.html [clearlight.com] t y.html [clearlight.com] l aciers/glacier1.html [hartwick.edu]
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/LIND07
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/jchris
http://www.junkscience.com/news/jonker.htm [junkscience.com]
http://www.uwm.edu/~vcronin/422-100.glaciers.html [uwm.edu]
http://www.hartwick.edu/geology/work/VFT-so-far/g
Re:Weather patterns (Score:4, Informative)
We don't. We use proxy measurements such as bubbles of air trapped in ice core samples, sediments from lake beds, tree rings, etc etc etc. using many different measurements, which often overlap (and hence correlate each other) we have a fairly good idea of the paleoclimate back to several billion years ago.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:5, Informative)
There's absolutely no way that Earth can turn into Venus. For one thing there isn't enough carbon to make the carbon dioxide to push up the greenhouse effect to that degree. For another Venus is simply closer to the Sun.
And further, the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced by man is dwarfed by the amount produced by volcanoes; by more than ten times. Even if we deliberately tried we can't influence the environment that much. Some, but nothing like you are implying.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pewclimate.org/
http://www.marshall
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/welcome.html
http
http://www.rivm.nl/env/i
http://www.worldwatch.org/
http
http://ww
http://www.unep.org/unep/eia/geo2000/
http://www-climate.mcs.
http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/Model/model.
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/acpi/
And some (mostly BBC) stories related to climate change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
ht
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://science.nasa.gov/head
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/e
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://www.spacedaily.com/ne
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/americ
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/en
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/
http://science.nasa.gov/head
Re:I wouldn't tak eGreenpeace's word for it. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Greenhouse Gasses (Score:5, Informative)
Dumping the heat into the air gets rid of the heat pretty well. That's what the hyperbolic towers are for. Most of the heat radiates into space.
A Nuke plant's pollution is thus mainly a little waste heat. Of course, the gigawatt of electrical power eventually is turned into heat, too.
Nuke plants are pretty expensive to operate. You have to be extremely careful, which costs money. The cost of fuel is quite low - nearly insignificant, like $10/megawatt hour.
There is a hidden cost, and I'm not sure that it has been paid yet. Once the fuel is consumed, it must be disposed of. At the moment, we're storing the spent fuel at the Nuke plant. This is a short term stopgap proceedure. We need a longer term solution. The current proposed solution in the US is very late, and way over budget. Since you must store the spent fuel for a million years, you must store it in a geologically benign place. Since a million years is a long time, I'd argue that no such place exists. So, you have to design it so that it is possible to move the fuel from time to time. This will provide us with an additional cost stream forever.
The other cost is that, statistically, there will be other 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, etc., incidents. The more plants you run, the higher the chances.
The UK is talking about ramping up to 10% of their power derived from wind energy. It is expected to be competitive with other power types.
Solar power isn't currently considered viable, but should become so pretty soon.
At the moment, we heat our houses by burning more fossile fuels. We could heat them by using waste heat from electrical power plants. Purdue University runs it's own electrical power plant, and heats the campus as a side effect. It's not a new idea.
Conservation provided the US most of the way out of the 70's energy crisis. Reducing the highway speed limit saved about 15% in fuel. And, it happens instantly - despite what President Bush said.
We don't really have to drive gas guzzling SUVs. My primary car averages about 33 MPG. It's a 4 door sedan, about 14 years old. I'd like to replace it with something more efficient. Several products are available and affordable.
I've started replacing incandescant lights in the house with screw-in flouresant bulbs. These last longer, produce the same light but use much less power and produce less heat. I'm finding that I can't use them everywhere, but they work in most places. My electric bill is lower.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:2, Informative)
There is no doubt the climate is getting warmer, but if CO2 is the reason, why was the earth far warmer than today when we had no CO2 emissions at all?
Personally I doubt the CO2 theory. It doesnt explain earlier climate changes. And if the CO2 theory is invalid, it takes resources away from dealing with the actual problems a climate change we can do nothing about will cause.
(Of course, there are many reasons why we should decrease CO2 emissions anyway, but I dont think global warming is one of them.)
Re:Greenhouse Gasses (Score:5, Informative)
The only way to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses is to stop burning coal and gas. Thats it.
That's not it. Emission controls reduce greenhouse gasses. In 1997 [enn.com], for example, coal-fired utility boilers spewed out more than 12 million tons of sulfur dioxide. Without any environmental controls, the number would have been 20 million tons. With high-tech controls, the pollution would be cut to 2 million tons.
The reason that more pollution controls aren't used is because the cost is borne by the polluter while the consequence is borne by the society at large.
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:2, Informative)
Well, certain well respected scientists (Dr. S. Fred Singer) have a healthy scepticism towards many claims of global warming.
Second, scientists tend not to be impartial either. I work with them all the time (I'm a graduate geology student at the Ohio State University). Their success is dependent upon funding and publishing, validity and accuracy much less so. What do you think is more likely to get funding-screaming human induced global warming is going to destroy us all or saying that we don't really know how humans are/or if they are influencing global warming?
Finally, I am perfectly qualified to judge whether a model is bad. If you have a basic understanding of models, their limits, and science, you can do it too. It is fairly easy to point out errors in a model (it is much more difficult to determine if it is good). Does it account for all of the variables (never seen one that could or did)? If it doesn't, can they prove it isn't important? Can it predict the past? If it can't, then how can it predict the future? Etc.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Informative)
The satellite record is much more accurate because it covers 90%+ of the earth whereas the surface record only covers a small fraction of the earth. I.e., where there are cities, mostly in the northern hemisphere, and almost no constant readings from the high seas.
Further, the surface record is heavily biased due to the fact that urban sprawl has created "heat islands" around cities. Recording stations that used to be out in the fields are now in the middle of parking lots.
While the greenies have tried to discredit the satellite record, they haven't succeeded, and the satellite record is the most reliable and accurate information we have about global temperatures. And they haven't increased in 23 years.
Those of us that don't believe in human-caused global warming are NOT living in denial nor is it that we could care less about the planet. Those of us who don't believe in global warming have taken the time to study the facts and come to a conclusion which is very unpopular in today's culture.
But, say this to yourself until you understand what you means: THERE HAS BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING IN THE 23 YEARS WE'VE HAD SATELLITES MONITORING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Informative)
Your turn.
PS why should I blind believe you over 'the greenies'? No doubt you have an agenda to, yet you seem to think you are the only one who knows theirs
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Informative)
Warm/Cold (Score:2, Informative)
I have a hard time giving any credit to the "scientists" who reverse themselves every 30 or so years. The planet goes through cycles. Sure we need to stay as clean as possible and I'm all for protecting our home. But this Chicken Little routine is getting old.
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:3, Informative)
Not only that, but per studies that didn't have an axe to grind, it turns out natural sources of "greenhouse gasses" -- swamps and such -- outstrip humanity's production by several orders of magnitude.
Furthermore, that the biggest human-caused waste-gasses and general-atmospheric-pollutants production spike took place about 1890 (during the major spasms of the Industrial Revolution) and has dropped ever since.
Methinks coincidence is being taken for causation again.
Re:Greenhouse Gasses (Score:2, Informative)
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuc
I thought it was interesting that the naturally occuring uranium impurities in coal could produce more power via fission than burning the coal itself.
This page also has some interesting points:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~res95/energy/nuclear.htm
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:2, Informative)
If we really want to get hard-core scientific here, we've got to say that climate prediction is not a 'science' until we can accurately predict weather in any part of the globe, at least three days in advance. We can't do that yet, let alone in a hundred or a hundred thousand years.
"Who are you going to believe - fat cats with strong financial interest in doing nothing to halt CO2 production, or imkpartial scientists whose career and reputation rests on the validity of their findings, models, and predictions?"
It isn't just impartial scientists who are lobbying for climate control. The Greenies definately have an agenda, and I do not trust their 'science' any more than I do the nitwits who implanted lynx fur.
If you don't want a civilization to continue to rely on carbon-based fuels, then stop using related products, or better yet, invent a cheap, renewable energy source yourself and release it into the public domain. I'll buy you as many beers as you want if you do that.
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:3, Informative)
This "volcanos are worse greenhouse emitters than humanity" bit keeps popping back up ever since Rush was spouting about it for a while in the early/mid 90's. In fact, total global volcanic C02 output is estimated to be about 1/150th that of athropogenic C02 output [Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS), v. 72, p. 249, and 254-255.]
Sulfer is a slightly different story -- volcanos actually make up around 50% of natural sulfer emmisions! This is still only about 1/10 as much as human activity produces, however.
About the only area of concern in which volcanos outstrip human emissions are stratospheric injection of various aerosols and dusts during explosive erruptions (rare!) and emmissions of certain heavy metals like selenium. Not lead though -- we still win there
Going beyond that to your several orders of magnitude swamps... anthropogenic C02 emmissions total somewhere around 5 to 10Gigatons of carbon per year... gross terrestrial biosphere carbon release is somwhere around 60GT/year, which is in fact less than one order of magnitude. Couple that with the fact that gross terrestrial biosphere _uptake_ of carbon is quite close the emissions, and the net effect on the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources is greater.
-Ethan O'Connor
So lets feed the troll (Score:4, Informative)
The NAS(USA) eventually sent out a public rebuke disavowing involvement and pointing out that it's own committee had reached the opposite conclusion.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Informative)
Climate Study [unisci.com]
Kintanon
Re:Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
when The earth changes (then species go extinct ) (Score:5, Informative)
Your assertion that the earth's climate and ecosystems normally change very gradually is sort of wrong. It's sort of right and sort of wrong. It's very true that over the entire period that there have been human civilizations, global climate has been extremely stable, and it's also true that ranges of hot to cold temperature have been very narrow and mild; but over the long term, (long term ideas being based on analysis of the Vostok ice cores and other long scale records) catastrophic changes in global climate appears to have been really common. Viciously wide ranges of temperature appear to have been really common.
The danger is that we're doing the exact things that may push our wonderfully stable, basically benign, late Holocene climate out of its comfortable groove and back into wild swings like the earth has seen before in the past 300,000 years that we know something about. Not just that the atmosphere will heat up a bit but that the MIRACULOUS balance we enjoyed for the last 10,000 years will give way to instability.
The irony of the screamers' chant that "climate change is normal" is that they assume that the word "normal" means good. Normal is NOT GOOD -not from a human point of view! For millions of years it was quite normal for latitudes we call temperate now to have a climate that would tax the limits of human survival to say nothing of civilization with intense heat and humidity. It was both normal and good only for giant reptiles. Large mammals like homo sapiens wouldn't have been able to avert overheating long enough to avoid being eaten by the lizards, hence they never evolved in that period. If the screamers and the flatearthers had a sincere curiosity in the subject and had been keeping up with the lay science, it would have occurred to them all sooner or later that what has been normal for earth in the long ago past, and for most of its history, would be absoultely fatal to any and all human civilizations we have ever lived in or can live in. To discover the relevance of radical climate change to civilization and the incredibly large populations of humans our modern civilization sustains and all one has to do is ponder the term "growing season".
Scientists tell us that in ages preceding the modern humans' tenure on earth, climate change could occur so fast that woodlands could become savannahs in the space of just a couple of human generations, grasslands could become deserts. That's 60 growing seasons the human residents of earth would have no idea how to plan for -across much of the planet's surface all at the same time. Climatologists studying the Vosotok ice cores tell us not only that it was common for earth's climate to change more rapidly than anything we have ever seen, but that local conditions could stay in a state of radical flux for a long time. Now as long as a region still got some rainfall plants would still grow, (all which is "normal" and "in balance" and "natural"). On a map that area might be represented as green and stay that way when observed from a distance, but you'd have a damn hard time predicting exactly what plants would grow where one five year peiod or decade to the next, and predictability is everything as far as humans are concerned. The chances that Farmer Lee could know when to move the rice seedlings to the paddy or that Farmer Brown could know when to sow corn to get a good yield would dwindle to nothing. Moreover, the chances that an entire crop begun well enough could be lost to drowning rains or burning drought multiply beyond what we're used t dealing with.
Modern homo sapiens came into being about 100,00 years ago we're told, and for three quarters of our existence on earth we were not farmers. For the greater portion of our existence it was normal for human beings not to have agriculture and it was normal for us to have no surplus of food that could be stored and traded for nonfood items. It was normal and not good.
Why did it take us so long to invent agriculture? As far as we can tell the human brain came to its present form way back then. Genetically we have nothing on our ancestors. People 95,000 years ago 85,000 years, 65,000 years ago 55,000 years ago, 45,000 years ago were no less intelligent than we are today. They never ate a single slice of bread. They never put away baskets of rice in clay urns to store for use in bad times. They never had a single drop of barley beer! What made them persist in such a nasty brutish and short way of life? How could they go for tens of thousands of years without figuring out that putting the seeds of edible plants in the ground provided you with a concentrated supply of that food several weeks later if you stuck around or came back to the area. I can only guess that humans were constantly dabbling and experimenting as they always do, but that on balance chasing down food on the hoof, migrating with the animals, gathering yams and nuts and berries on the side, was a more predictable way to make a living until we get to 10,000 years ago when the last Ice Age ended. As soon as the Ice Age is over, we know for a fact that humans begin to go agricultural with a vengeance. Civilization is declared open for business the next day. Climate change triggered the development of agriculture and civilization, I'd bet climate flux was responsible for suppressing the development of agriculture before the Ice Age too. People did not live for 80,000 plus years before suddenly discovering out of the blue that having more food in a more reliable way would be more desireable than chasing down meat, one steak at a time. Until about 10,000 years ago, they could not make the transition from experimenting with seeds to settled agriculture because they would have died trying. Just as climate forbade the evolution of large mammals during the dinosaur era, it forbade agriculture also until damn recently.
When the climate stabs one country or county in the back you have what are called shortages or local famine. To a limited extent, staple crops can be redistributed politically nowadays from a country with a surplus to a country with failed crops, so as to avert famine. When it happens on a global scale - well it has never happened to us on a global scale so we don't have a word for it. But if it did there would be little possibility of spreading the surplus around to help out those with failed crops. A global return to true climatic normalcy will destroy the agricultural surplus in many places at once. This surplus of food we get from the humble dirt is the basis of ALL civilization no matter how technological and advanced. If we were to leave the Holocene Era with its mild ranges of temperatures, predictable rainfalls and stable growing seasons with the same abruptness with which Earth initially entered it, I would bet the word for the effect on agriculture and civilization would be "mass extinction event".