World's Largest Tropical Glacier Vanishing 462
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.
When will the denials stop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, we're just talking at the level of whether or not warming is happening, and it clearly is. The evidence is there, as is shown by the melting of glaciers in Peru and Greenland, a decade of warm winters in the northern US and Canada, ice-free passage through the Arctic Ocean, and so forth.
I'm just wondering when those people who are standing so steadfast against reality will admit that they've been wrong.
Peru is not the only one in trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
NOT a problem for the water supply (Score:1, Interesting)
The water isn't magically generated by the glacier, it comes from snow and rainfall in that area, which presumably will continue as before.
Re:NOT a problem for the water supply (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When will the denials stop? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:What isn't being said? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:A bit odd (Score:5, Interesting)
You haven't thought that through.
Even tho' tropical areas are likely to see a smaller temperature difference than a sub tropical or artic, they're also much more sensitive to said change. According to Real Climate's Tropical Glacier Retreat Page [realclimate.org]:
Re:When will the denials stop? (Score:2, Interesting)
Kind of like the "Man's driving climate change" argument, eh?
Re:Attitudes Towards Dissent (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:When will the denials stop? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When will the denials stop? (Score:1, Interesting)
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of global warming, or the anthropogenic component thereof, one thing is certain:
It has become a hobby horse ridden by assorted hard-Left statists anxious to make a grab for power and revenue that has been denied to them at the ballot box for many years.
They speak of carbon taxes, but there seems precious little concern about the "carbon" part [capecodtoday.com] and plenty of hand-rubbing over the "tax" part.
Unless and until private jets are confiscated from limousine liberals like Laurie David, and Barbara Streisand is driven out of her 20,000 square foot mansion with 10 separate HVAC systems, and the Kennedys are told to go fuck themselves as a thousand windmills are erected in their private yacht harbor, I'm going to assume they don't really believe what they are preaching. I think they see this as an opportunity to ram collectivist squalor down the throats of us peons, while they continue to enjoy every luxury that free-market capitalism can provide to a tiny elite.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Scientific "consensus" is not proof, especially when most of the "scientists" are not climatologists at all, but left-wing professors of social sciences and epidemiology and the like.
We know that natural processes alone can explain far greater variations in temperature than even the worst predictions of the alarmists. Palm trees once grew at the North Pole, and ice once lay a mile deep over Yosemite Valley and Chicago, before cavemen tamed fire. I'm not ready to dismantle Western civilization and hand it over to the proven failures who have given the world the likes of Zimbabwe and Cuba, without a lot better proof than mere statistical noise. The so-called "precautionary principle" is the the most ridiculous crock of shit that the human mind has ever produced, and that's saying something.
-ccm
Re:When will the denials stop? (Score:3, Interesting)
But since we did a good job, minimizing damage to a negligible amount, lots of people today believe the Y2K bug was a hoax to stretch the Tech Bubble another year.
If farmers stopped feeding their cows "shitty food" (cows), Mad Cow would probably subside. But they aren't stopping.
Epidemics start with a few people. Bird flu is a very serious risk of pandemic. If we don't nip it in the bud, and prepare to cope with any resulting collapse, we will see extreme damage. There's no flu hysteria: the actual risk is certainly proportional to the amount of planning and mitigation underway. SARS was an actual epidemic in China [wikipedia.org], distinguished by extremely rapid spread under cover of official denial. Until the denial was broken and countermeasures reduced both the rate of infection and its mortality rate. SARS might have been beaten, which we'd expect to do to such a dangerous threat, but if we don't reform our denial systems (China's government has officially apologized for its denial and slowness), it will happen again, maybe SARS or maybe some other disease, and maybe with less success. Maybe even to the tipping point of permanent stability incubated in a global population. AIDS is a case in point.
African overpopulation underlies millions dead prematurely there over the past couple of centuries. Overpopulation without social, political or technical mitigation has overbalanced the continent into position for a collapse from Climate change that will make Rwanda look like Little Big Horn.
But of course those are just variously proportionate responses to variously strong risks, that the OP was denying en masse. As if there are no risks, just because they live in a society which usually recognizes expensive risks and minimizes/mitigates them evn if they don't notice. Especially with their head buried in the sand.
You want to talk about hysteria, let's talk about terrorism. Let's talk about the paranoia about meteorite annihilation, which is just propaganda to fund Star Wars.
Climate change is real. Citing all those atmospheric pollution problems we've mitigated is like citing Y2K. Denying it out of ignorance and fear might play with other ignorant, fearful people. But the science and history of similar cases of "Chicken Little" being right about the actual sky actually falling demand we come to grips with it. And with our society's irrational denial reactions. And with our inclination to deny these other extreme risks in our global civilization living increasingly closer to the edge.