Greenland's Fastest Glacier Sets New Speed Record 136
vinces99 writes "The latest observations of Jakobshavn Glacier show that Greenland's largest glacier is moving ice from land into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency measured the speed of the glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results were published Feb. 3 in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union. Jakobshavn Glacier, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep-ocean fjord on the west coast of the island. This speedup of Jakobshavn means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. 'We are now seeing summer speeds more than four times what they were in the 1990s, on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland,' said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW's Polar Science Center. The new observations show that in summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 10 miles (17 km) per year, or more than 150 feet (46 m) per day. These appear to be the fastest flow rates recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, researchers said."
At these rates (Score:5, Funny)
the glacier will break Mach 1 by 2016 when Hillary is president and Al Gore is secretary of state.
More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:1, Interesting)
Greenland has experienced (like Antarctica) some very heavy snowfalls in the past few years, which increases the thickness of the glaciers. Glacial flow is fairly well understood, as the glacier gets thicker it causes faster movement.
The calving of large glaciers is often touted by alarmists as proof of their claims, but this phenomenon does not actually support the alarmist position at all.
Re: More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:2)
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And those who use the word "Denier" are more credible?
Re: More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think neither "alarmist" nor "denier" are very helpful. Let's ask the climate scientists, in stead. Once again [wikipedia.org]:
In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[2][3][4] No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view,[5] though a few organizations hold non-committal positions.[6] Disputes over the key scientific facts of global warming are now more prevalent in the popular media than in the scientific literature, where such issues are treated as resolved, and more in the United States than globally[7][8].
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In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[2][3][4] No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view,[5]
And on the other side we have a massive political campaign to deny climate change:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
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So about $558 million over that period (2003 to 2010)
Its still nothing compared to US Federal spending on climate change for that same period (over 106 billion dollars).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la... [forbes.com]
So whats so bad about spending 0.5% of federal climate change spending to try and get the message out that not everyone is in agreement with it?
Seriously, 558$ million, what a big number. Lets scare the sheeple that read the news.
Honnestly, $106 billion spent over an 8 year period, is insane IMO.
$106,000,000,
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And those who use the word "Denier" are more credible?
Well.... I never saw a "Denier" who could post credible data (usually they don't post any at all).
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Seriously, you think pressure for *annual snowfall* makes a dramatic difference in the speed of the Jakobshavn glacier. this [northlandscapes.com] Jakobshavn glacier. The one that's two kilometers thick [wikipedia.org].
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"Now 6 cm/yr may not sound like a lot of additional thickness, but since 1993 that's at least 1.2 meters additional thickness"
6cm a year sounds like a hell of a lot to me. If your backyard gained 6cm more of new ice every year, you would not think it was trivial. And if you had to haul it all away, a piece at a time, you'd damned well know that much weight isn't trivial.
Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:4, Informative)
What you're talking about is 1.2 meters of new ice on top of *two kilometers* of primordial ice. If we scaled the ice sheet to 2 meters tall, the extra accumulation would be roughly the thickness of a piece of paper.
In any case, you're confusing the vast, 400,000 year-old interior ice sheet with a coastal glacier. It makes no difference that the interior ice sheet has thickened very slightly because measurements of the *glacier in question* show that *it* is thinning.
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And what you do is talk about 1950's to 2012, 1900 to 2012, 1800's, 1600s, 1AD, 2000BC....
All of these dates a mere slivers in climate history. And most anything beyond those dates is circumspect. Based on assumptions with little proof.
Sure you can measure CO2 levels in ice cores from thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. And declare they were significantly lower in the past. But you have zero knowledge of how much CO2 is lost over thousands and millions of years.
Gasses like to escape. Even h
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The center of Greenland's ice sheet may be thickening but over all Greenland is losing ice mass at a rate of over 260 Gt per year since 2002 as measured by the GRACE satellites. See the Total Ice Mass section of this report [noaa.gov] for details.
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So will it one day be a "green land" again?
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NO it hasn't. Geez, 1 article form 2005, and it doesn't measure mass; which has been declining.
I will admit, that was one of the better attempts at cherry picking.
It's been loosing more mass then gaining:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessm... [www.ipcc.ch]
really, what is your problem? The science is sound. I wonder, do you know the science? i mean, you seem to cherry pick the predictions of the science, but do you know even the basics of the science?
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It proves Greenland is warming. The *global* pattern proves that the globe is warming.
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Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:5, Informative)
You realize 1995 set a record for hottest year ever on record? So you've cherry picked a particularly hot year as your baseline (or somebody dishonest picked it for you). That's Ok, because that record has been exceeded ten times since then, starting with 1998 which was *also* the hottest year on record.
1995 was 0.4C hotter than the 20thC average. 2005 was 0.6C hotter than the baseline, and 2010 was just a smidgen hotter than 2005. So you could answer 0.2C to your question. But it's a lousy question, not just because it starts from a cherry-picked baseline, but because there's so much variation between years.
A better question is "How much hotter were the 00's hotter than the 90's?" The 1990s where 0.313 C hotter than the 1950-1980 baseline. The 00s were 0.513 C hotter than the baseline. So again the answer to the question is 0.2C.
Each of the past three decades set a record for the hottest on record.
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From those nasty scientists with thermometers filled with that dangerous mercury! Not from cherry picked bits of the Bible with all the inconvenient bits about bacon and caring for the poor taken out.
This unchanging Earth shit taken from dumbing down Genesis, conveniently ignoring the bit where we are supposed to look after the place, should not be used to try to show that reality is invalid.
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It doesn't matter what baseline you use for X and Y if you want to answer "how much greater is X than Y?" When I calculate "X - Y", the choice of baseline cancels out. It doesn't matter if I do the calculation in celsius or kelvin; or if I choose 1900-1999 as a baseline or 1950-1980. The answer to the question "how much hotter was 2005 than 1995?" is still going to be 0.2C.
As for the choice of 1995 as a baseline, it was *your* idea to use a year that set a record for high temperature and ask, "has it got w
Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, we don't have to deal in "suggestions". People have actually *gone* to the glacier and taken measurements. It is thinning dramatically since 1997 [1]. Nor do we have to deal in suggestions about the temperature of Greenland, because people have been measuring that too. It is warming, dramatically on the western coast, somewhat less so on the eastern. [2]
The glacier in question, by the way, is considerably less than 100 km long (as you an readily see [goo.gl]), so the interior doesn't enter into the question of what this glacier is doing at all. However if you're interested, ice core data shows that the interior has warmed over the past several decades. [3]
I can certainly buy the argument that this event doesn't prove *global* warming, because it doesn't. But the argument that it proves *local cooling* doesn't hold water, because it we know *from measurements* that there hasn't been local cooling, especially in southwestern Greenland where this glacier is *entirely* located.
--- Citations ---
1: Liu, Lin, John Wahr, Ian Howat, Shfaqat Abbas Khan, Ian Joughin, and Masato Furuya. "Constraining ice mass loss from Jakobshavn Isbræ (Greenland) using InSARmeasured crustal uplift." Geophysical Journal International 188, no. 3 (2012): 994-1006.
2: Hanna, Edward, Sebastian H. Mernild, John Cappelen, and Konrad Steffen. "Recent warming in Greenland in a long-term instrumental (1881–2012) climatic context: I. Evaluation of surface air temperature records." Environmental Research Letters 7, no. 4 (2012): 045404.
3: Muto, Atsuhiro, Ted A. Scambos, Konrad Steffen, Andrew G. Slater, and Gary D. Clow. "Recent surface temperature trends in the interior of East Antarctica from borehole firn temperature measurements and geophysical inverse methods." Geophysical Research Letters 38, no. 15 (2011): L15502.
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"Fortunately, we don't have to deal in "suggestions". People have actually *gone* to the glacier and taken measurements. It is thinning dramatically since 1997"
Its amazing watching people with no scientific ability trying to sound scientific. The glacier is thinning because its surging.
Another way of looking at it is that the glacier is growing in length rapidly, but then that sounds somehow less scary doesn't it?
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The glacier is thinning because its surging. Another way of looking at it is that the glacier is growing in length rapidly, but then that sounds somehow less scary doesn't it?
Yes, intuitively one would think that if a glacier speeds up, it must be growing more quickly. But the world is a complex place, so we should be vary of our intuition. Thankfully people have actually measured the lenght of the glacier, so we con't have to guess:
As the Arctic region warms, Greenland’s glaciers have been thinning and calving icebergs farther and farther inland. This means that even though the glacier is flowing toward the coast and carrying more ice into the ocean, its calving front is actually retreating. In 2012 and 2013, Jakobshavn’s front retreated around 0.6 miles (1 km) each year compared to its position the previous summer.
Sometimes it pays to read TFA!
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don't hold your breath on deniers/religionists reading and believing facts/evidence
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Its amazing watching people with no scientific ability trying to sound scientific. The glacier is thinning because its surging.
Isn't it, though?
Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:4, Insightful)
Snowfall needs moist air. Warmer air holds more moisture. Increased snowfall is well in the scope of what's been thought to happen. There really doesn't need to be any alarmist campaign; simple scientific observation of the amplified greenhouse effect is enough.
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"simple scientific observation of the amplified greenhouse effect is enough"
Of course, that amplified greenhouse effect appears to be missing everywhere that we can actually measure.
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No it isn't. why the hell would you say that? This article talks about it
the amplified green house effect is EVERYWHERE we look.
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You need to travel more. Glacier National Park has a series of slides showing the retreat of all their glaciers. Coastal glaciers in Alaska are retreating so fast that Princess Cruises has had to change their glacier viewing routes. A photo of Huaraz, Peru from 1947 shows mountain peaks on both sides of the valley covered in glaciers, when I first went in 1986 only the eastern range had glaciers, when I went a few years ago half of the eastern range is now bare. There are valleys in Chile and Argentina
Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:4, Informative)
I did a little searching and found a paper from 2011 [pdf] [science.uu.nl] that addresses Jakobshavn specifically. It has this to say:
3.3. Jakobshavn Isbroe
Jakobshavn Isbroe was losing 8 Gt a1 of mass per year in 2000 (Figure 2). This rate increased over the following years to near 25 Gt a1 by the end of 2002. The loss rate then stabilized and declined back under 20 Gt a1 until 2006, when it increased to 33 Gt a1, reaching 34 Gt a1 by the end of 2007. Subsequently, the annual loss rate has fluctuated between 25 and 33 Gt a1. In total the glacier lost 321 ± 12 Gt by the end of 2010, equivalent to a basin!wide thinning of 3.5 m, with 2/3 of this loss occurring since June of 2005 (Figure 3). The 85 km2 of retreat accounts for nearly 20% of this loss. The rate of discharge is now such that the glacier is losing mass nearly throughout the year. As previously reported [Joughin et al., 2008a, 2008c; Luckman and Murray, 2005], annual oscillations in speed of ±20%, with a peak in June/July, correlated with seasonal retreat and advance of the ice front, become increasingly pronounced at the location of the fluxgate after 2005 (Figure S7). Seasonal oscillations in speed, SMB and front position cause annual fluctuations in mass of up to 50 Gt.
Of the other two glaciers reported on in the paper Helheim gained 17 +/- 13 Gt and Kangerdlugssuaq lost 152 +/- 10 Gt compared to Jakobshavn's 321 +/- 12 Gt in the 11 year period studied. Those are the three largest outlet glaciers in Greenland.
More generally the ice mass loss on Greenland [noaa.gov] has been well documented by the GRACE satellites. See the Total Ice Mass section of the Arctic Report Card: Update for 2013 [noaa.gov] for details.
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Errata: The "a1" in the quote showed as "a-1" in the original and stands for per annum or per year.
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Greenland has experienced (like Antarctica) some very heavy snowfalls in the past few years, which increases the thickness of the glaciers. Glacial flow is fairly well understood, as the glacier gets thicker it causes faster movement.
An observant person might note that the fact that is now snowing in places where it was previously too cold to snow is actually an indication of change, not an argument against it.
The calving of large glaciers is often touted by [scientists] as proof of their claims, but this phenomenon does not actually support the [scientists] position at all.
You are mistaken. Climatologists don't claim that glacial calving is proof of AGW - this proof lies in the observations and theories of Tyndall, Fourier, Arrhenius et al.
I'm not sure what it is about Climatology that makes people think that ignorance can substitute for knowledge. Does this muddled thinking work, say, when you
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"this proof lies in the observations and theories of Tyndall, Fourier, Arrhenius et al. "
The experiments Fourier wrote about (actually performed by de Saussure), were examples of the "real" greenhouse effect; that is, they involved what amounted to a real greenhouse (an enclosed space which did not allow heat to escape via convection). But Fourier's speculations were about a DIFFERENT effect, in which layers of air trapped radiation.
We now know that the "greenhouse effect" popularized by greenhouse gas warming theories does NOT work by the same principle as a real greenhouse, or the experime
Re:More snow = more pressure = faster calving! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fourier's discovery that the Earth was warmer than it should be given its size and distance from the Sun was a major step forward in geoscience.. That he may not have had the mechanism right in no way detracts from the importance of that insight.
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Ah yes, the right answer using the wrong method. Is there anything more delusional than that?
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In that case take that up with Newton and gravity too.
WTF is it with these luddites?
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P.S. The general term "Luddites" refers to people who are opposed to technological progress. It does not refer to those who think someone else's science is flawed.
So for example: someone who wanted to shut down a power plant might be called a Luddite. Someone who wanted to keep it running would not be.
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Yes.
People who think an entire field of science is invalid and then make a statement that suggests that the entire scientific method is flawed are a different case. S
Kind of like Galileo... (Score:2)
He had the right answer, but most of his proofs had been disproven by contemporary scientistis. He was too egotistical to accept their theories (which history later proved correct), and thus was an unabashed ass in many ways. Who felt that he was beyond the need for the peer review / publication process of his day.
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Do you know who Fourier was? Do you really think he was just "delusional"?
I would have said he's more like "transformational," but yeah that was a different Mr. Fourier.
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"Fourier's calculations about that, were correct."
No, they weren't. See my other post from a few minutes ago. Fourier's calculations about that were very, very WRONG.
He came up with the IDEA. Yes. But his conclusions were based on calculations that were themselves based on invalid assumptions.
So yes, even if you believe that his conclusions were correct (not everybody does), he still arrived at them via incorrect means.
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"Fourier's discovery that the Earth was warmer than it should be given its size and distance from the Sun was a major step forward in geoscience."
It wasn't a "discovery", it was a calculation, AND it was a calculation based on false assumptions, because he simply did not have the information about it that we have now.
To put it bluntly: even if he did arrive at the right solution via his calculations (which is very questionable), he was still wrong. For example: the sunward surface of the moon, even when it is fullest (i.e., the furthest parts of its wobbly orbits about the sun) is FAR hotter than the surface of the earth... and the ONLY significan
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He proposed the theoretical foundation, Tyndall demonstrated the mechanism by his work with radiative absorption - Arrhenius quantified it.
If the aim of the conspiracy theorists is to disprove AGW they need to disprove the work of these giants.
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He (Fourier) proposed the theoretical foundation, Tyndall demonstrated the mechanism by his work with radiative absorption - Arrhenius quantified it.
Nicely and succinctly put. I'm going to steal that.
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"He (Fourier) proposed the theoretical foundation"
Fourier proposed an IDEA, based on flawed assumptions and resulting flawed calculations. I am not "blaming" Fourier... such was the state of science at the time. But modern science would not arrive at his conclusions, given the same raw data. He gets credit (if that is the right word) for conceiving of the idea, but his theoretical work and calculations are useless due to too many flawed assumptions.
Tyndall showed that gases can warm by absorbing radiation, and cool by emitting it. I have no criticism of
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Fourier proposed an IDEA, based on flawed assumptions and resulting flawed calculations. I am not "blaming" Fourier... such was the state of science at the time. But modern science would not arrive at his conclusions, given the same raw data.
Summary Fourier was right.
Tyndall showed that gases can warm by absorbing radiation, and cool by emitting it. I have no criticism of Tyndall's work.
Summary Tyndall was right. There is no known refutation of Tyndall that would cause us to doubt that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a driver for climate change.
Arrhenius attempted to quantify it. He came up with some potentially useful calculations but they were based on indirect observation and yet more assumptions. (I.e., he assumed CO2 and water were what were retaining heat in the atmosphere).
Summary Arrhenius was right.
Kurt Angstrom rebutted Arrhenius' work. Angstrom's rebuttal was basically shouted down; I know of no actual refutation of Angstrom's criticisms.
Summary You heard that someone said something criticising some part of Arrhenius' work. This person was then "shouted down" which I assume means "proven wrong" pending further evidence. Summary of Summary You can't detail any evidence refuting Arrhenius' early work on quantifying the sensitivity of climate to CO2 and othe greenhouse gases, and probably you yourself don't believe there is a problem with it, but can't say so publicly.
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"Summary Fourier was right."
No, he wasn't. The "greenhouse gas trapping radiation" explanation he imagined for the effects observed in the de Saussure experiments existed in his mind only and still does not exist. The heating in de Saussure's hotbox experiments was solely due to solar heating, and prevention of convective cooling. See the reconstruction here. [postimg.org]
In other words, exactly like a real greenhouse, which works the way I just described, NOT via trapping of radiation.
Fourier's explanation was that the trapped gas also "trap
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"Summary Tyndall was right. There is no known refutation of Tyndall that would cause us to doubt that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a driver for climate change."
Actually, I just learned that this too is not true. Not only did Tyndall get absoptivity and opacity confused, he also based his work on the assumption of the "luminiferous aether", which we of course know today does not exist. It is simply not valid to take a work that is based on the concept of "aether" and say it is vindication of ANY modern scientific theory.
Nowhere does Tyndall mention measuring the component of radiation reflected by the gases he examines... This is in spite of Tyndall's having handled chlorine gas, which is coloured by its reflection of visible light. It is clear that Tyndall measured opacity and relative opacity, not absorptivity and absorption as he seems to claim. In fact, Tyndall uses the terms "opacity" and "absorbing power" interchangably throughout his work. This is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding, which is nonetheless studiously avoided by nearly all authors who claim that Tyndall's work proved the "Greenhouse Effect". In fact, it was another fundamental misunderstanding that lead to the proposition of the "Greenhouse Effect".
(Quote Tyndall) "I have already adduced considerations which show that the molecules of rock-salt glide with facility through the ether; but the ease of motion which these molecules enjoy must facilitate their mutual collision. Their motion, instead of being expended on the ether which exists between them, and communicated by it to the external ether, is in great part transferred directly from particle to particle, or in other words, is freely conducted. When a molecule of alum, on the contrary, approaches a neighbour molecule, it produces a swell on the intervening ether of space, which swell is in part transmitted, not to the molecules, but to the general ether of space, and thus lost as regards conduction. This lateral waste prevents the motion from penetrating the alum to any great extent, and the substance is what we all a bad conductor."
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"This person was then "shouted down" which I assume means "proven wrong" pending further evidence."
"This person" is no less than Kurt Angstrom, and no, "shouting down" means loudly proclaiming "NO! You're wrong!" without any supporting evidence.
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It sure is a shame the no one has done any science since Fourier. Imagine the things we could have learned if only there were someone who could take his work and continue to study the greenhouse effect.
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"It sure is a shame the no one has done any science since Fourier. Imagine the things we could have learned if only there were someone who could take his work and continue to study the greenhouse effect."
It sure would be interesting. Let me know when that happens. Quote Wikipedia:
"Arrhenius estimated that halving of CO2 would decrease temperatures by 4â"5 ÂC (Celsius) and a doubling of CO2 would cause a temperature rise of 5â"6 ÂC.[10] In his 1906 publication, Arrhenius adjusted the value downwards to 1.6 ÂC (including water vapor feedback: 2.1 ÂC). Recent (2007) estimates from IPCC say this value (the Climate sensitivity) is likely to be between 2 and 4.5 ÂC."
So let's see... Arrhenius estimated climate sensitivity to be 2.1 degrees C. Modern "science" says it's somewhere between 2 and 4.5 degrees C.
Doesn't look like much progress to me over the last 100 years. We've maybe learned to place error bars around out calculations. That's about it.
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> An observant person might note that the fact that is now snowing in places where it was previously too cold to snow is actually an indication of change, not an argument against it.
"Too cold to snow?" Really, now?
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Yeah, the reason that most of Antarctica is considered a desert is because it's too cold to snow most of the time. Cold air can't hold as much moisture as warm air, and when the air gets too cold there isn't enough moisture left to precipitate out in any meaningful way. I used to see it all the time growing up in Michigan, when the temperature dropped below -10F it stopped snowing. The air just couldn't pick up enough water vapor.
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There is no such thing as "too cold to snow"
http://www.theweatherpredictio... [theweatherprediction.com]
http://www.forteantimes.com/st... [forteantimes.com]
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OK, rephrasing. "it's too cold to allow atmospheric lifting that could raise sufficient water vapor to altitudes where snow could be produced."
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There is no such thing as "too cold to snow"
http://www.theweatherpredictio... [theweatherprediction.com]
http://www.forteantimes.com/st... [forteantimes.com]
Incorrect (Score:2)
In the case of basal sliding, the entire glacier slides over its bed. This type of motion is enhanced if the bed is soft sediment, if the glacier bed is thawed and if meltwater is prevalent.
It's the FASTER melting that causing the increase of speed.
You do understand this is about increased melting, right?
Change of Expression? (Score:1)
Does this mean that in a few years they will have to re-define the term "at glacial pace"? :)
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This glacier is moving at 0.00053m/s
Snails go between 0.013 and 0.000023m/s, so it's somewhere in between but on the slow side.
I doubt any snail could travel 46m in 24 hours though.
Good news! (Score:1, Redundant)
If anyone thinks you're working at a glacial speed, you are now 4x as fast as you were in the 1990's. Now THAT is progress!
Kill all humans (Score:2, Interesting)
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Confused (Score:2)
I'm still a bit confused on those speeds. Can someone convert them to coincide with the viscosity of tar pitch [slashdot.org] or the rate by which bills get passed through congress?
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Bit faster than the first, way faster than the second, for typical values of bit and way.
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Viscosity is an inverse measure of speed
Bills passing congress is measured in Repeals of ObamaCare per session
Confused at any speed! (Score:2)
For over a decade the Slashdot poster has brought ignorance, libel, and the most inestimable repetitive motion, face-palming injuries to have afflicted the general public. With Medea-like intensity, this mass trauma began rising sharply four years ago, reflecting new and unexpected ravages by the keyboards of tens of thousands of monkeys and/or basement dwellers. A 2009 Department of Commerce report projected that 51,000 persons would be rendered eternally speechless by Slashdot posting atrocities in 2025. That figure will probably be reached in 2015, a decade ahead of schedule.
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"For over a decade the Slashdot poster has brought ignorance, libel, and the most inestimable repetitive motion, face-palming injuries to have afflicted the general public."
Must ... resist ... temptation... to... snark...
Ah. There. I did it. Hooray for me.
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150 feet per day is 1.25 inches per minute. That's still fast enough that you could see it in a minute or three with good reference points.
Wait....just....a.....minute... (Score:2)
The glacier is moving a record speeds. This is due to massive accumulation of ice putting pressure on the glacier. Ice....wait.....
I thought ice was only growing in the Antarctic region, NOT the Arctic. But now you tell me it is increasing there too.
(And darn, if it ain't increasing on my home as well.)
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Fail. Coastal glacier, no connection to the inland ice mass. Inland is also losing mass as well. This is pointed out in any number of posts above, which you managed to ignore in your rush to post this bit of foolishness.
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Wrong question. The question is how far sea level is going to rise over your lifetime due to a multitude of causes. Then when you know that, the question is how much you will have to pay (in taxes, prices, and risk) to deal with the consequences.
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The more the sea level rises, the closer my house gets to beachfront property.
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Land rises and falls for the same reasons that continents drift, altitude of any particular spot will change over time. There probably wasn't much more water then, just the magma beneath your continental plate let it sink deeper. Or perhaps your plate has collided with others in the last few hundred million years and buckling has raised the middle.
That's just incredibly cool to contemplate.
Shallow seas (Score:2)
Ironically, only a few hundred million years ago, my house would have been at the bottom of a shallow sea. Apparently there used to be more water than there is now.
You're assuming your elevation and/or geography is the same as it was millions of years ago. I live near the Great Lakes which are inland freshwater seas, roughly 500-600 feet above sea level. Lake Erie is actually quite shallow, particularly on the western third. Just because it was a shallow sea doesn't mean it was part of the world ocean necessarily.
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nah, I'm good. My house is around 100m above sea level
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"Wrong question. The question is how far sea level is going to rise over your lifetime due to a multitude of causes.
According to the IPCC, perhaps as much as a meter over the next hundred years.
Then when you know that, the question is how much you will have to pay (in taxes, prices, and risk) to deal with the consequences."
Well, if that seems fast to you, you can always packing now.
As for taxes, it better not cost me very damned much, because I wasn't one of those people who decided to build (or live in) a big city at sea level. Nobody twisted their arms and made them live there. Let them pay to relocate.
In the case of New Orleans, the corrupt politicians and Army officials (Corp of Engineers) who took everybody's money instead of keeping the
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Actually I feel the same way about San Francisco. Once every century or so they enjoy a magnitude 9 earthquake. Obviously not the best place to build a densely populated city. Yet after the last magnitude 9 quake, the city leaders and rich elites deliberately downplayed the damage and death toll because they wanted people to come back to the city. They were protecting their wealth, which were tied to the S.F. real estate values.
Re:What will it cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not so simple as "10 cm/decade doesn't seem like much".
Imagine storm surges laid out on a bell curve, with height above mean high tide as the X axis. When you chose how close to build to the waterline, and the protections you put in, you probably wouldn't draw the line where you'd get one flood every thousand years. You might decide you can live with one flood every ten years. But shift the mean high tide by 20 cm over two decades, and that once a decade flood might happen eight or ten times a decade.
There's often a sharp line between a near miss and a disaster. A one foot rise over thirty years (roughly correponds to 1m/century) means that a seawall or levee that would have held back the flood get overtopped. A one foot rise means a place that never got flooded before could be in harms way. Some of the levees that failed in Katrina were overtopped by only a matter of inches. Others were overtopped by ten feet, but that's a different issue.
And in a lot of the world, the floodplain isn't chosen because it's a nice place to live. Bengladeshi subsistence farmers don't locate in low areas because of the beaches, but because that's the only land they can afford. These are people with very low levels of material consumption. They don't get much of the share of benefit from the carbon added to the atmosphere, but they bear a disproportionate share of the costs.
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"A one foot rise over thirty years (roughly correponds to 1m/century) means that a seawall or levee that would have held back the flood get overtopped."
Sure. But it also means that you have 100 years to make your levee higher, or to move farther up the hill. We aren't talking about sudden changes here.
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Where I live, any construction in a 100-year flood zone has to meet special criteria, and even then might not be approved by the city or county.
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Speaking as someone who once lost his house due to frequent, relatively new, unexpected, and profound flooding*:
If a community is depending on a seawall or levee for survival against the ingress of water: It was known to be doomed for some time already -- otherwise, the seawall or levee would not have been constructed to begin with. (These things are expensive to build, even in WPA times.)
Time and time again, from Katrina to the Mississippi floods to Sandy to Fukashima, we see the dire effects of building
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Just as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every anecdote there is an equal and opposite anecdote. See also: Quantum entanglement.
That said, it's a lovely story that you have. But what are you adding?
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And in a lot of the world, the floodplain isn't chosen because it's a nice place to live. Bengladeshi subsistence farmers don't locate in low areas because of the beaches, but because that's the only land they can afford.
Also, because flood plain land is the most fertile.
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wrong. Maybe you should read the report?
Best case 220 mm, worse case 500mm
Where the hell are you getting 1 meter from?
Just so you know, event happening have been closer to worse case then best case, in general.
And do you really think it won't effect you much just becasue you don't live in a city below sea level(of which there will be any more in the next 85 years.
All those people will move, to where you are at. Infrastructure rices will increase faster then tax base growth.
That is why we, society, should be
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"wrong. Maybe you should read the report? Best case 220 mm, worse case 500mm"
Depends on which report you mean. In the IPCC Assessment Reports (plural) the realistic-worst-case I have seen was about a meter. As I recall, in the latest report they toned that down some, but as I said, I was talking about the worst case that I remember they reported.
"Just so you know, event happening have been closer to worse case then best case, in general."
Depends on who you talk to. Of 117 AGW models studies, many of which were referenced when compiling the latest AR report, the MEAN difference between the models' projections and actual observations was over 100%. I would say that only 50%, o
Yes...but according to the IPCC (Score:2)
Who's computer models have yet to predict anywhere close to accurately.
Creating a model that predicts the past is easy. Creating one that predicts the future....that's scientific.
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what about the other 70m that the sea is going to rise because of the melting of the ice ?
The scientific consensus seems to be that it will take us 5,000 years to melt it all, so I am guessing that people will move out little by little.
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The answer: sea levels have risen (on average) by a millimeter per year since the end of the Little Ice Age. Of course, during the Little Ice Age, sea levels FELL. Sometimes sea level rise appears to accelerate and sometimes decelerate to almost nothing.
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