World's Largest Tropical Glacier Vanishing

Socguy wrote with a link to a CBC article about the rapidly disappearing Peruvian glacier known as the Quelccaya ice cap. The world's largest tropical glacier was a hot topic this past Thursday at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, and a team of Ohio state scientists, produced the stunning news that Quelccaya and similar formations are melting at a rate of some 60 metres per year. While polar ice caps have commanded attention in the discussion of global warming to date, these tropical caps are crucial to the well-being of ecosystems relying on an influx of mountain stream fresh water.

Re:What isn't being said?

[MarkRose]

Wikipedia actually has an article full of data regarding exactly that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_s ince_1850 [wikipedia.org] . If you don't believe what's written in the article, check out the references. The global conclusions are quite clear.

A bit odd

[93 Escort Wagon]

This is odd on a couple counts. First, Lonnie Thompson has undoubtedly been aware for a couple decades that Quelccaya has been melting away (I used to work in a different university's ice core lab, and we used to collaborate with Lonnie). Second, based on both climate models and historical records I'm pretty sure that what we refer to as "global warming" shouldn't have a huge impact on tropical glaciers. During both glacial and interglacial periods the significant temperature changes were in subtropical and especially arctic areas - tropical areas saw very little change. What this means is: even if we'd never dumped tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, Quelccaya would still likely be melting away right now.

This isn't meant as an argument in the debate over human-caused global warming; it's just an argument that Quelccaya is probably not good supporting evidence for either side.

Re:When will the denials stop?

[GaryPatterson]

It's also a well-known fact that the death rate of polar bears has increased.

Should we posit that more polar bears equals a cooler planet? That polar bears are critical to the regulation of temperature around the globe?

You need to show causation, not just correlation. And you didn't show correlation anyway. How often to the poles move about? Does that match the cycle of previous warming/cooling periods? Is there any link whatsoever?

Re:When will the denials stop?

[sumdumass]

It doesn't matter if it's a long-term cycle or a short-term cycle. What matters is that it's happening, and it's really starting to affect us. For example, most people these days don't have more than a week or so worth of food stored up. So let's suppose the warming is just a short-term trend, lasting only a year. Even just one year of poor crop yields will send food prices through the roof. And as we saw in New Orleans so recently, even American civilization isn't as strong as we may think. The result will be major strife.

Well, There isn't even much there to worry about. First, we product too much food as it is. We are talking about using food as our gas and deisel we have so much of it. Second, we have government subsidies that artificialy inflate the price of food by paying farmers not to produce as much as they would like. so there is room for adjustment there. Third, when good land goes bad, Bad land will become good. err new pices of land will be able to support crops that wouldn't normaly. This wil offset some of it too. While there might be a problem, I doubt it will be that bad. Especialy if it is a cycle that will fix itself.

As for New Orleans and Katrina, There was a serious breakdown from the local government levels there. It isn't that we couldn't handle it, it was we couldn't follow protocal. The first thing that went wrong was when the storm shifted course, the call to evacuate was cancelled. Mos of those people shouldn't have even been there. The second thing that went wrong was the state government didn't folow protocal and request the help that the law says she needed to do untill after being reminded by an aid when a reporter asked why the national guard wasn't there yet. Then after the proper requests were sent to satisfythe law, half another day was waisted in fighting over who would command the reliefe effort. FEMA was supposed to do it but the govenor thought she could better spend the money on resources and stuff. Once that had passed, all the blame had been placed on FEMA and Mike Brown who told it like it was at the senate hearing when everyone tried to place the blame on him. But what really made the whole thing worse was that funds were allocated over the last two decades for maintinance and improvments to the levi system and they were diverted into bridge projects and cannals to industrial parks.

If you doubt this, just look at the surrounding areas that were hit just as hard. They were destroyed just as bad or worse then New Orleans but didn't recieve near as much attention because they had their shit together. Entire towns were gone after katrina hit. But from what I understand, New Orleans has suffered coruption and incompetence for quite a while now. And it is all the way up the state levels and possibly federal levels in the area too. Without any of this, the entire responce would have been different. And it has been different in other disasters when the people invovled knew what was going on.

Re:What isn't being said?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

But there are also glaciers nearby that are advancing instead of receding.

Can you back up that statement with a link, or did you just pull some highly speculative piece of bullshit out of your ass?

So the question to ask is: How many tropical glaciers are advancing or staying the same instead of receding? The report does not say, so it is impossible to draw any global conclusions.

Fucking retarded. TFA talked about other glaciers & a few seconds research would have lead you to Tropical Glacier Retreat [realclimate.org] analysis.

Throughout the Tropics, glaciers are in retreat. Well-documented examples include Quelccaya [Thompson, et al. 1993], Huascaran [Byers, 2000; Kaser and Osmaston,2002], Zongo and Chacaltaya [Francou,et al 2003; Wagnon et al. 1999] in S. America; and the Lewis, Rwenzori and Kilimanjaro (more properly, Kibo) glaciers in East Africa [Hastenrath, 1984; Kaser and Osmaston, 2002]. There have been indications of widespread retreat of Himalayan glaciers, including Dasuopu in the subtropics, but a quantitative understanding of this region must await peer-reviewed analysis of the recently completed 46000-glacier Chinese Glacier Inventory.

In short, you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.

Re:When will the denials stop?

[TapeCutter]

"That, of course, has yet to be proven."

Depends on what your definition of "proven" is. The certainty in the attribution of the total of all significant +/- forcings is 90% or higher (ref: 2007 IPCC-SPM, figure SPM-2). The forcings attributed to humans outweighs all other forcings combined. ie: It is 90% certain that humas are responsible for greater than 50% of the total warming effect obserevd.

Note that the IPCC is by it's nature a conservative document, as it should be when 2500 "scientists agree". This means that at very best there is a 10% chance humans are not the cause and as each day passes with no viable alternative explaination combined with data sets that continue to improve, the certainty will increase.

Having said that, it is true the cause is not as certain as the observed warming itself but like all scientific concepts the idea will never be "proven", the best we can hope for is "virtually certain", eg: it is "virtually certain" the sun will rise in the morning but not "absolutely certain".

Re:When will the denials stop?

[Capsaicin]

This recent article linking cosmic rays and global warming is the start.

This has already been debunked [realclimate.org] I'm afraid.

Re:When will the denials stop?

[Capsaicin]

Remind me... are these the same scientists, or different ones, that attested with equal certainty as to human activity causing Global Cooling?

Different ones. Also there were a handful of climatologists calling cooling (judging by the infamous Newsweek article, I still have not been shown a peer-reviewd paper arguing cooling), almost the entire profession agree that we are facing a warming trend, plus that it is man-made.

See this is how it works. In the 70s a handful of climatologists (contra the mainstream of the profession) argued for global cooling. In the 90s a handful of climatologists (contra the mainstream) argued that Global Warming was not occuring. In both these instances the mainstream of the profession was proved correct.

Katrina

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>when the storm shifted course, the call to evacuate was cancelled.

>the state government didn't folow protocal and request the help that the law says she needed to do untill after being reminded by an aid when a reporter asked why the national guard wasn't there yet.

Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation call August 27 at 5 PM and made it mandatory the next day. Also on the 28th, Governor Blanco asked the President for a major disaster declaration and invoked the Stafford Act. Counterflow traffic went into effect that day. That afternoon, Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of National Guard troops from the governor of New Mexico. Federal approval for the transfer didn't come until the following Thursday.

On August 28th the President got a briefing that used the word "catastrophe" and didn't ask a single question or give a single order. If he had, perhaps Chertoff would have activated the Critical Incident Annex to the National Response Plan.

Landfall was morning of Monday, the 29th.

On the 29th, Gov. Blanco said "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got". The President went to senior centers to promote the Medicare prescription drug plan and went to a photo-op for McCain's birthday. He talked to Chertoff about -- immigration. He played guitar with Mark Willis, and said that when he returned to DC on Thursday he would "begin work". Thursday was when the DoD finally started giving logistics help to FEMA.

More at the bipartisan Congressional report [house.gov].

Local government down there has never worked right -- pointing to that is a lame excuse for the multiple failures at the federal level.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:When will the denials stop?

[Metasquares]

They drive and you collect while the whole world goes to pot.

Yep, that pretty much summarizes the situation.

Where does this say agriculture?

[mdsolar]

I can see the point that the plants adapted to the Cretaceous might have been slightly more efficient at photosysnthesis though I doubt that one can easily implicate greater availability of CO2 since the increased growing season would have a greater effect. Plants adapted to the Holocene may do much worse in the face of a rapid increase in CO2 for while productivity may go up, the range of pests can also increase with the increase in temperature subjecting large tracks of forests to die off. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046 /j.1461-9563.2002.00124.x/full/?cookieSet=1 [blackwell-synergy.com]

The key here is the rapidity of the change which allows the fast moving species (the pests) to overcome the slow moving species (the trees).

With regard to agriculture, beyond growing season, the timing of the availability of water is crucial, and the loss of glaciers and snowpack reduce the availability of water during the gowing season, counteracting the increase in the season. The cost of attempting to retain water that in the past has been held by snowpack may be unrealistically high, leading to the shutting down of vast amounts of currently productive agricutural land.
--
Switch to Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:Global Warming

[Ubergrendle]

A few comments...

Something like 80% of Canada's population lives within 100km of the border with the US. We're very happy with our neighbours thankyouverymuch. The elect idiot presidents sometimes, but they don't get to see our parliament up close and personal... thank goodness.

Also, given that most of the northern US states are several hundred kilometers north of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe (where 1/3 of Canada's population lives, mainly around Toronto), they have lots of cold places to visit themselves. Oh, and the US has Alaska too.

Overall, Canada has a small population, huge reserves of natural resources, and the largest supply of fresh water in the world. Global Warming probably affects us less than most other countries...except for our arctic tundra eco system and the livelihood of the Innu. I'll callously say that this is a small impact per capita, although the impact felt by the Innu is huge.