Greenland Is Getting Darker 174
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Greenland's white snow is getting darker. Scientists have generally attributed that darkening to larger, slightly less white snow grains caused by warmer temperatures. But researchers have found a new source of darkening taking hold: impurities in the snow. The new darkening effect could easily add 2 centimeters to the projections of 20 cm sea level rise by 2100—and perhaps more if impurity levels grow with time."
Re:China anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Getting extremely sick of this. (Score:3, Insightful)
would get an extremely prolonged growing season
Except for the part in the middle of the summer where the heat kills off all your corn, so you get two short growing seasons, and shorter fall/winter growing seasons. Enjoy your stunted corn and tomato-sized jack-o-lanterns.
I suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
The chronically uninformed and uninformable* will find some way to deny this is happening.
* - people who feel that their ignorance outweighs the knowledge of any scientist and so nobody with an IQ over 125 has anything to tell them.
Re: ...if impurity levels grow with time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cannot figure out if you're being serious or not ..
Am fairly sure no-one is spreading sand across Greenland, in the same way they do on the streets of Winnipeg Canada [sic].
Re:China anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and as long as WE keep buying their cheap crap, WE actually reward this behaviour.
Remember, that thing called free market? Where the buyer decides what products flourish and what products perish based on his decision what he buys and what he doesn't? It's the only little bit of free market left that we have, and, well, it seems that we want China to pump out black smoke as long as it means we get to buy cheap crap.
Re:More climate lies (Score:4, Insightful)
No. You can only shoot the ones that voted for AGW deniers, or didn't vote at all.
Re:Getting extremely sick of this. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's as if the earth never has experienced higher temperatures before and survived.
I don't think any scientist, or thoughtful person for that matter, questions whether the Earth will survive. Of course it will. Their real question is whether the changes will cause a great die off in humans and animals. Some animals will undoubtedly thrive in the new environment but humans, probably not so much.
Re: ...if impurity levels grow with time. (Score:5, Insightful)
No wonder people doubt climate change when scientists say things like this..
I'm just guessing here based on nothing but a few decades of involvement in the scientific community, but I'd say it's pretty likely that a) the scientists in question have thought of your objection already and b) they have quantified the relative contributions from increased grain size vs increased dark pollutants.
What would be incredibly stupid is assuming that people who study this stuff professionally can be out-thought by a random Internet commenter who has just encountered the question for the first time.
But just in case, let me ask you: what is the quantitative relationship between grain size and reflectivity of snow? Please respond with a graph or formula. You must have access to this information to judge the relative importance of grain size vs pollutant cover, and it would be a positive contribution to this discussion to share it.
Re:Getting extremely sick of this. (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet if we don't control our CO2 emissions the end result will be an increased strain on our civilization which is likely to cause more wars anyway. For instance one factor in the Syrian conflict is the drought that Syria has been going through for the last 3 years. The chances are good that global warming is part of the Syrian drought. The effects of global warming won't always be directly visible as a cause of things like this but it's likely to be a factor and it's likely to get worse as global warming marches on.