Large Ice Shelf Expected To Break From Antarctica 278
MollyB sends this excerpt from CNN:
"A large ice shelf is 'imminently' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday. Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said. ... The Wilkins Ice Shelf — a large mass of floating ice — would still be connected to Latady Island, which is also part of the peninsula, and Alexander Island, which is not, said professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ... If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say. Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse."
If the ice melts (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm betting it will rise a little bit because the salt concentration is different in the ice than in the ocean.
Re:If the ice melts (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and once it melts its salt concentration will change!... or not.
Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Informative)
Quote from TFL: "The estimated mass loss was enough to raise global sea level about 1.2 millimeters (0.05 inches) during the survey period; about 13 percent of the overall observed sea level rise for the same period. The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of ice annually between April 2002 and August 2005."
Greenland is also losing mass. [nasa.gov]
Re:If the ice melts (Score:5, Interesting)
The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of...
An error margin greater than 50%? Presuming that this is based on a typical 3 standard deviations...
...the chebyshev limit says there is still a whopping 11% chance that the actual value is outside the range...
I don't see any statistics experts mentioned in that link, so I gotta assume that we cannot expect a normally distributed error, that in fact they have no idea what the distribution might be.
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There are some 50 published papers from the journals Nature [google.com.au] and Science [google.com.au] alone, when your finished teaching them stats maybe you can teach them risk management.
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A popular example is Mann's flawed implementation of Principle Component Analysis, peer reviewed and then published by one of the very same journals that you are trying to use for your arguement-from-authority fallacy.
Lets examine what Mann was doing:
AlgorihmDescription.txt [nature.com]
Thats from one of the journals you cited, so you trust that it
Re:If the ice melts (Score:5, Informative)
If by pointing to Mann's reconstruction methods you mean to imply Mann, et al's hockey stick [realclimate.org] was debunked you are simply wrong...
The statisticians at the National Academies do not agree with you, or should I say their written testimony to the senate [nationalacademies.org] doesn't agree with you. Anyway they are probably the best statistical experts you can find in one place and are certainly not alone in their approval of Mann's work. Furthermore the minor problems they did point out were adressed by Mann in a later publication in Science which you can look up yourself, this is how science works, no?
The reason I point to that testimony is because it's the half-truth that many psuedo-skeptical, armchair statistitians base their opinions on, whether you in particular realise that or not is irrelevant.
Quote TFL: "The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years
....[snip]...
We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities."
Why anyone would waste money and scientists time by having a senate enquiry on one particular graph is beyond me but whatever the reason it has served to further strengthen Mann's arguments.
As for the expert you keep demanding, that's not how science does things. Perhaps the NASA links are weak evidence by your standards because most people just rely on their reputation, but if you think they are wrong the onus is on you to provide evidence to the contrary. No matter how many papers I throw at you supporting NASA, you can continue to troll by demanding an individual expert claim an institutional publication which has nothing to do with the credibility of the evidence.
And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?
Re:If the ice melts (Score:5, Interesting)
Adapt argument shows true colours (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, if it is warming, we should adapt to the changes instead of addressing economic activity. That's when they show their true colours.
Basically all this noise is just a big psychotic roadblock to change.
Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Funny)
Speaking of taking things out of context, note that psuedo-skeptics have reduced the entire enquiry down to "our committee does not believe that the climate is warming".
Please do not attempt to speak for us pseudo-skeptics. We are not saying that the climate is not warming. We are not saying that the climate IS warming. What we are saying is that we don't know. So when you say, reduced the entire enquiry down to "our committee does not believe that the climate is warming"., it should read, "our committee thinks the climate is warming. I mean, we're pretty sure. I know we keep saying that we KNOW for sure this time, only to find some boneheaded mistake someone made to either get a grant, political reasons or just stupid. Still, all that aside, we are pretty sure that the climate is warming. And while there is some debate over weather (pun, not grammar) it's warming or not, there is much more debate over why. Oh, and will someone please tell Al Gore to SHUT UP!"
Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Insightful)
However I'm glad you fessed up after our discussion the other day, problem is we regular skeptics don't know what you guys are saying because you keep changing the subject to political conspiracy theories, when that goes nowhere you go back to cherry-picking and red-herrings....I've tried the tinfoil but it simply does not work. Perhaps it's time for you to stop behaving like the shop keeper in Monty Pythons dead parrot sketch.
Re:If the ice melts (Score:5, Informative)
If by pointing to Mann's reconstruction methods you mean to imply Mann, et al's hockey stick was debunked you are simply wrong...
I said exactly what I meant to say, and you are now trying to argue against something I didnt say, which is fine as long as you don't attribute your straw man arguement it to me.
Now.. don't attribute your strawman arguement to me. OK?
Furthermore the minor problems they did point out were adressed by Mann in a later publication in Science which you can look up yourself, this is how science works, no?
I am arguing that the veracity of the current peer review process in this field is so lacking that you do not get to appeal to its authority, that these climate experts have been known for a fact (which you admit) to use faulty statistical methods which slip right by the peer review process that you appealed to.
You don't get to use the "published in Nature" arguement as valid for their statistical value, since as I pointed out, experts in statistics do not do any reviewing of these papers prior to them being published.
This is quite simple.
Accept it, reject it.. I dont really care.. but do not reply with strawman arguements that you attribute to me as if you have some sort of refutation for my actual argument, when you apparently and obviously do not.
Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Insightful)
But now your talking about gross incompetence on a decades long intensive reasearch effort that requires a massive conspiracy by the worlds scientific institutions to cover up? Or are you saying that these same institutions do not understand undergrad stats?
Either show me your contra-evidence that asserts Mann is incorrect, the ice caps are NOT melting, or the world is NOT getting warmer. If you can't do that then there are other sites such as freerepublic where you can be intellectualy dishonest.
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NOAA studies suggest that there is evidence dust causes a much greater ocean warming effect than anything mankind can cause.
http://www.oceanconserve.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=122714
And, link suggests that the effect isn't a "new" revelation
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html
AND... the effect of dust on atmospheric temperature estimates suggest warming might not be as affected as once believed.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=21574
SO, in conclusion, mo
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"Note that more information isn't needed by those that claim irreversible HIGW afects."
Best effort says we stabalise at a doubling of pre-industrial levels by 2050, this means stabalisi
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To achieve a balance between good stewardship and knee jerk "reactionism", we are required to hold off doing anything until more is known... ...if we don't, that'll be as bad as when rabbits were introduced in australia, termites in hawaii, zebra mussels in the great lakes, etc, etc, etc.
Folks just want to "do something" about the "issue", and that is a rallying cry to politicians... which are, in their own way, another bane to out existence we introduced out of ignorance.
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The ice levels of your childhood were extremely high.
1950-1970 is not an accurate depection of Earth's ideal climate, stop using it as an example.
melting ice and planting trees (Score:3, Interesting)
if we replant the forests, what are the terrible, terrible consequences?
While I support stopping deforestation and support planting more trees, science is all over the park as to whether planting trees will actually absorb more CO2 than what is emitted do to their planting. Some research [heatisonline.org] shows more CO2 is emitted from planting trees than the trees will absorb. I think more research should be done.
Falcon
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do not reply with strawman arguements that you attribute to me as if you have some sort of refutation for my actual argument
You don't have an actual argument, you're just attempting guilt-by-association. Whether or not you like the peer review has nothing to do with the validity of the statistics in the paper being discussed. If you want to impugn their statistics, you need to actually discuss said statistics, not just make veiled libelous insinuations about random scientists on the basis of unrelated publications.
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And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?
While this question was not posed to me, I think I'll take a stab at it anyway.
I would say, "pretty damn good." Take THIS [icecap.us] graph for example. It shows MORE ice in the southern hemisphere.
Which is the exact opposite of what THIS [nwsource.com] article states. So, the data doesn't back up the predictions. Strange. Maybe the predictions were wrong?
Then, there is THIS [icecap.us] graph reporting the average temperatures in Antarctica. Hmmmm. It's going down? So, who is correct here; the predictions or the data? Are you one of th
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They're both NASA links. I think we can trust them to do their stats.
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The same NASA that went 7 years without ever noticing a problem with their methodology [sciam.com] that was detectable with an open source statistics package?
The discovery of the real problem was made almost immediately after NASA GISS finally revealed their methods for public scrutiny.
The same qualities that makes open source good are the same reasons that all of these scientists should open up their work. We re talking about publicly funded science here.. its not supposed to be secret.
They dont get a fre
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I and NASA agree with the call for transparency, lets look at the "Heartland Instituite".
The fact NASA and science in general fucks up every now and then in no way implies you have anything more credible to offer.
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Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Interesting)
An error margin greater than 50%? Presuming that this is based on a typical 3 standard deviations...
Actually, reading the paper [sciencemag.org], it looks to me that 80 km^3 is just 1 standard deviation. (They say the GRACE errors were calculated as 1-sigma, and the ice volume error is obtained by sum-of-squared GRACE errors, so it too is presumably 1-sigma.) If so, a 95% interval includes the possibility of zero volume change (but barely).
I don't see any statistics experts mentioned in that link, so I gotta assume that we cannot expect a normally distributed error, that in fact they have no idea what the distribution might be.
Ah, the old "I don't like Mike Mann, therefore nobody in the world except a professional statistician knows what a normal distribution is" argument. Very compelling.
Anyway, if you want to know about the distribution of the errors, read this [agu.org]. They find that the aggregate residuals are normal, but the RMS errors — after standardizing against the spatial and time dependence of the residuals — are non-normal. They discuss the consequences of making a normal approximation. The normal approximation is what they used in the above Science paper.
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sea levels are already rising
No, they're not.
"if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel MÃrner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr MÃrner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story"
[--
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Re:If the ice melts (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA and RTFS (Score:3, Informative)
Never mind the article, it's right there in the summary: "it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say"
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Sorry, I misunderstood you ... still asleep.
Depicted in sci-fi novel Icefire (Score:2)
Slightly OT: an interesting doomsday scenario was predicted in the sci-fi thriller novel Icefire, by Reeves-Stevens [barnesandnoble.com], where a rogue faction in the government of a large country detonates a bunch of bombs around the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf to detach it from land, and then detonate a big blast above it, in effect slapping the ice shelf into the Antarctic Ocean and creating a tsunami that threatens to wipe out the Pacific Rim --Hawaii, California, Japan, etc. It's a fast-paced novel about how the protago
What's in a Name (Score:2, Interesting)
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Re:What's in a Name (Score:5, Informative)
Because, to the general public, global warming is confusing. "They're saying we're making the world warmer, so how come I just saw on TV that we're having the coldest winter on record?"
Climate Change more accurately reflects that it's going out of whack in both directions.
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Or is Global Warming a convenient boogeyman?
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Or is it a question of "Global Warming/Climate Change" being blamed for every "odd" thing that happens in the world's weather?
No, it's not. At least, not in this comment thread it isn't. The question was why the shift from the trend of calling it global warming to calling it climate change.
Please, adjust your knickers and find another place to Diggify.
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Do you mean the increase in hurricane activity? That actually is caused in part by rising water surface temperatures.
There is NO increase in hurricane activity (Score:2, Insightful)
That is probably because the globe's ocean heatcontent is dropping [wattsupwiththat.com]
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Also, it is either harmful to humans or it is not.
If it is harmful to us, then it doesn't matter if we caused it, it merely matters if we can stop/prevent it.
If it is not harmful to us, and it is caused by us, then it's our responsibility, but not as important to us as if it were harmful.
If it is not harmful to us, and not caused by us, then the only reason to stop it is if we care enough about those species it does harm to use the r
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All the coming disasters claimed by the alarmists are projected to happen only in 100 years or so. "Ah-ha!" you may say, "You don't care about the future and probably eat newborns and burn kittens for fuel as well, evil denier!"
I won't admit to eating newborns but the fireplace is nicely stoked, and the mewing is getting annoying. Maybe I'll move to penguins nex
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Because, to the general public, global warming is confusing. "They're saying we're making the world warmer, so how come I just saw on TV that we're having the coldest winter on record?"
Climate Change more accurately reflects that it's going out of whack in both directions.
This is largely false: things are not going out of whack in both directions, but rather just in one direction -- things are getting warmer. The IPCC clearly states that they expect an increase in the number of extreme warm events and a decrease in the number and severity of extreme cold events. The reality is that climate is still variable, with both warm and cold extremes, especially on a regional scale. A decrease in extreme cold events doesn't mean they won't happen, nor that they won't be very cold, jus
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I have a burning question. Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"?
I wonder why it's just not called "the weather" anymore.
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The weather is still the weather. What we're talking about is climate. You should've learned the difference before you left elementary school.
Re:What's in a Name (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"? [emphasis mine]
It hasn't been called "Global Warming" by anyone doing real research in a VERY long time. The mainstream continued to say "Global Warming" for a long time after researchers had stopped using the term, and unfortunately the mainstream didn't catch on until after it became as political as it has, making a lot of the people sceptical of it think that calling it "Climate Change" is a weasel attempt at making it more popular - this couldn't be further from the truth.
As the other replier pointed out, "Climate Change" is simply a more accurate and less confusing name. It DOES amount to the same thing in the long term and when you look at global scales, but to avoid people saying "it's colder where I am right now, so Global Warming is a myth", "Climate Change" is more sensible.
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Because the mean temperature of the entire globe is rising, it used to be called Global Warming. As more study was thrown at it, side effects that a mean rise in global temperature was found to create were a bigger spread between maxima and minima, effects on ocean currents, and possibly effects on hurricane formation and migration patterns. So Global Warming as a description just didn't cover the entire range of phenomena anymore.
And as pointed out by others, this change in actual scientific terminology is
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Scientists have called used the term climate change for decades (I found papers going back to at least the 1960s last time I checked, and that's just from what's available online).
The term "global warming" is a relatively recent, which was popularized in the media. It came to real public prominence after Jim Hansen's 1988 testimony to Congress, in which he used the phrase. The media as well as environmental groups embraced the term "global warming". The phrase had been used occasionally by scientists as
Glaciologist (Score:5, Funny)
That's a pretty cool job.
ah, that's better.
Global Warming Is A Hoax (Score:5, Funny)
Global Warming due to industry and emissions is a hoax...
The truth is the planet keeps getting warmer the closer we get to Hell.
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Re:Global Warming Is A Hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the "religion" aspect extends to BOTH sides of the debate. Those who argue that climate change could cause a "Day After Tomorrow" sort of situation are at best, completely devoid of both knowledge and reasoning skills (and at worst, complete loonies). On the other side though, those who argue that "There is 'no way' humankind could ever have an effect on our environment" are equally lacking.
I am quite convinced that we are having a measurable effect on our environment, and that without fully understanding the processes involved, it is extremely critical that we examine what we're doing, what effect it is having and, at the same time, take measures to reduce our impact until it is better understood. For this reason, many people who argue that it's all some great conspiracy would be quite quick to label me in with the nutjobs, and this is an intellectually dishonest approach. The vast majority of people that I've talked to (and seen comments from here on slashdot) appear to have the same opinion as myself, however those who argue against us tend to trot out things such as your comment about earthquakes and lump the rest of us in with that crowd. I would kindly request that you stop doing so, as it doesn't serve anyone's interests and only aims to weaken the concept of scientific understanding further.
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I didn't say we weren't having an effect on the environment, my point was that any and every natural event is given a globalwarming tag when it doesn't deserve one. Your point about nutjobs is moot, because the very people who are driving AGW policy are nutjobs themselves. If you agree with me that Gore, Mann and Hansen are nutjobs, then the case for AGW falls, beca
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I didn't say we weren't having an effect on the environment, my point was that any and every natural event is given a globalwarming tag when it doesn't deserve one.
In many cases, that may be true, but the problem comes when you then begin to dismiss everything as being erroneously tagged when the tag might just be valid in some cases.
Your point about nutjobs is moot, because the very people who are driving AGW policy are nutjobs themselves. If you agree with me that Gore, Mann and Hansen are nutjobs, then the case for AGW falls, because they are its primary proponents.
I'm not familiar with Mann and Hansen at all other than seeing some data analysis attributed to them, and only know of Al Gore in passing (he seems a bit towards the nutjob side of things from what I've seen though). Bear in mind that I don't live in the US and so much of the "politics" of it is completely off my radar - the only time I
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People who believe in the AGW religion have a tendency, much like Bronze age fantasists, to assign causes to any and every natural event
so you're saying it's a phenomenon without a cause? cause-and-effect has been suspended?
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Where in my paragraph did I even hint that this does not have a "cause"? My point was the assignment of AGW cause and effect. It's "global warming" (sorry, I mean Climate Change - as if that were somehow unusual - the fantasists in the AGW religion changed the meme when it stopped warming), stupid!
So the Earth is shrinking? (Score:2)
It's remembering this kind of stuff that reminds me why, at bottom, I don't believe the anti-anthropogenic-climate-change brigade; throughout history, the people who opposed the scientists (not the next generation of scientists, the contrarians) have always turned out to be wrong.
Ice Shelf Questions?? (Score:2)
I have 2 questions.
According to TFA, the Wilkins Ice Shelf has lost 1,800 km^2 of ice in the past year. This [nasa.gov] article states that the ice shelf is 200-250m thick. This gives volume lost of 360,000 km^3 to 450,000 km^3; 2000m*900m*200m, 2000m*900m*250m (easy numbers). Remaining area = (1800/.14)-1800 = 11057 km^2.
First question. Is it possible that over time (think glacial timeframe, not human timeframe) that the remaining 11,057 km^2 will rebuild the lost volume? How long is this process? If I remembe
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Yes, the ice shelf can be rebuilt on glacial time scales (e.g., in the next ice age).
As for the climate impact of ozone loss, your own Wikipedia link has a decent summary: the net affect appears to be slight surface cooling.
The ice bridge is only 2 km! (Score:4, Interesting)
It is hard to get a sense for the scale and the magnitude from the article's pictures. So, I looked it up on Google Earth.
That "ice bridge" protecting the Wilkins Ice shelf is narrow, only about 2 km wide, or slightly more than mile. And it is that which is breaking up. The floating ice area behind it (i.e. to the east) is huge, about 100x100 km!
Once that bridge is broken, sea currents may more easily flush that ice into the high seas. And, what the effects will be then, we don't know I guess.
.
60 km long and 3 km wide (Score:3, Informative)
I remeasured it, the ice bridge is about 60 km long and 3 km wide at its waist.
Misleading headline much? (Score:2)
The only reason this makes news? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, the only reason we hear about these icebergs is due to people using fear to scare mankind into making costly measures to prevent some mythical disaster. Mankind has a remarkable ability to adapt to change. The creatures of this earth also adapt to change. If the conditions are not favorable, they die. Why after all these years of living on this planet do we think we have the ability to stop it? I have seen figures saying more will be spent to ATTEMPT to stop warming than will be spent adapti
oblig (Score:2)
"The planet has a fever" -Al Gore
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Re:Yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fresh water from ice and salt water in the oceans have different densities. The volume of salt water displaced by 1000 kg of frozen fresh water will be less than the volume that those same 1000 kg of ice occupy when melted, since the salt water is denser.
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A thick sheet of ice will resist waves and bend with the tide rather than cracking. However if the temprature is warm enough to reduce the thickness, cracks are likely to appear at tension points near where the ic
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Well, this ice is already floating, according to the article. Just because it's floating by itself doesn't mean the sea level's going to rise around it.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Informative)
ice that is floating is already displacing an amount of water equivalent to it's mass which has... the same volume as the volume of the ice once it's melted (remember that frozen water has a larger volume, lower density, than liquid water). Thus, melting ice that is already floating has zero effect on sea levels.
Re:Yeah, yeah but but... (Score:5, Informative)
The catch is that the ice shelves slow down the ice behind them which is pushing into the sea.
That ice is on land and WILL affect sea levels when it starts moving forward into the sea a LOT faster.
Even worse, glacier motion is lubricated by water - so if there's already a lot more meltwater under the glaciers --- whoooooshhhhh (in slow motion anyway)
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So you mean like: wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooo OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ooooooooooooooooooooo ssssssssssssssssssssssss hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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More like: wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww *to be continued in 2010*
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Parent post is the first complete and succinct answer to "why sea level is not going to change" that I've seen. It looks like a good place to hang my question.
Background: As these 1,000+ year old ice shelves break away, the amount of icebergs calving from them is increasing as well. With the increase in icebergs comes an increase in high albedo reflective surface on the ocean. On first look, it would seem that this increase in surface area is quite a bit: break off a 10 meter wide by 100 meter long berg f
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IANAOceanographer. But according to wikipedia, the ocean has a volume of approximately 1.3x10^9 cubic kilometers. According to NASA [nasa.gov] the Wilkins ice sheet has an area of 13680 square kilometers and a maximum thickness of 200 to 250 meters. Taking 225 meters as the average thickness (gotta pick something), the Wilkins ice sheet has a volume of 3078 cubic kilometers. That is about 2.368x10^(-4) percent of the ocean's volume. I've tried the calculations of the effect on salinity, and either I keep making mistak
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the ice is floating in the ocean as it is. it is therefore displacing as much water as it possibly can. had it been siting on a continent somewhere and slid off into the ocean then you'd be correct.
Are you sure? (Score:2)
Now -- I know I could be wrong -- but I always thought in order to be a continent, a land mass has to be... land? Am I wrong?
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Unlike the Arctic (which is just frozen water), Antarctica is actually a continent.
Now -- I know I could be wrong -- but I always thought in order to be a continent, a land mass has to be... land? Am I wrong?
You're not wrong, but the GP's point was that this particular ice is already floating - it's "jutting out over the side" over the continent and is floating on water.
That said though, it's possible that the GP is missing the fact that although this ice is "mostly floating", it's entirely possible that it is at least in part being supported by the ice that it's connected to (which is sitting on land), which would mean two things:
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Re:What, No Climate Change Reference? (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed. That aside, climate change can be thought of as a diffuse property rights issue. Power plant produces CO2, CO2 warms planet and melts ice, sea levels rise, higher sea levels erode my property, who is responsible for the property damage?
that is indeed true if the rate of diversification and adaptation are high enough or the rate of change is slow enough. However, there are several instances in biological history where this planet was made uninhabitable for 3/4 of all life or more including human beings had we existed then. There is a limit to how quickly an ecosystem can adapt to a change before permanent damage occurs. This certainly may not be a "fatal" event for humanity but in so far as destroying someone else's resource I don't see how any of that can possibly be justified ethically. You talk about the cost of doing something and you have a point- the current plans for dealing with climate change often involve costly measures but it certainly doesn't need to be the case. knocking out subsidies to inefficient, polluting industries would help the environment and save the government money. relying on a market based approach to solving the problem would be more efficient than a more planned economy could ever achieve. Don't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon that claims environmental protection can't coexist with sound economic policy- it's often the case that the waste caused in planned economies is even worse for the environment.
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Good point, nobody ever seems to mention the environmental horrors that existed/still exist in those failed planned economies you refer to.
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Re:What, No Climate Change Reference? (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that if done correctly, cap and trade is a valid temporary solution however I think that the ultimate solution to the problem is to knock out any regulatory restrictions preventing a viable market based on the trade of carbon dioxide as a resource. It may be possible to start with a cap and trade system and ween the economy off of it and on to a market that stands completely on its own. The big problem as is being seen to an extent in Europe is that it is somewhat difficult to quantify CO2 offsets in many cases. Too many permits in the wild can also cause the system not to work as efficiently as it should however auctioning the credits may solve that problem. A green shift in taxation may also improve conditions. Shifting away from our current very complicated tax system toward one that both functions to discourage wasteful consumption and simplifies the tax code [eliminating many tax loopoles in the process] may actually offer an overall economic benefit outside of the environment its self.
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Ideas for air pollution would be pl
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Is CO2 actually a "pollutant", and how do we define pollution?
Has relatively recent human activity actually been proven to be the cause of something we can't even measure properly?
What percentage of the atmosphere does CO2 actually occupy and what is it's molecular weight?
Re:What, No Climate Change Reference? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, Yes, A resourse out of place, Two incorrect assumptions in the question render it meaningless, Very small, Irrelevant.
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Yes. China, India, and Indonesia, to name three moderately large emitters of CO2, are not bound to limit their CO2 emissions in any way.
And China and India have already said that they won't sign onto a Kyoto follow-on that requires them to limit their CO2 emissions.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of the signers of Kyoto are not required to limit their CO2 emissions in any way. Which is one of the things that makes Kyoto a farce.
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Power plant produces CO2
You are responsible. Go switch your computer off now!
Re:What, No Climate Change Reference? - Solved (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately, Antarctica is too big to fail - rest assured our representatives are hard at work on crafting a bailout.
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>>Fortunately, Antarctica is too big to fail - rest assured our representatives are hard at work on crafting a bailout.
I'll just return my Margaritaville.
That'll give us the trillions of dollars we need to bail out the oceans.
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Let's discuss this "hundred trillion dollars" figure.
First, citation frakking needed.
On the other hand, is that really such a huge number? That total amounts to approximately two years of the world's GDP. If the alternative is, say, a 20% risk of societal collapse (which, for the sake of the math, I will define as a 50% reduction in world GDP and a 30,000% increase in cannibalism), then dumping a hundred trillion dollars into fixing it would pay for itself in two years.
Still, I strongly dispute the number
Re:What, No Climate Change Reference? (Score:4, Informative)
"Some plants and animals may have to adapt". Yeah? Many plants in Antarctica?
Apparently not a lot [wikipedia.org], but still [wikipedia.org] some [wikipedia.org]...
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural processes are not really news.
Regardless of your opinions about the cause of it, I beg to differ that natural processes are not news. Hurricanes in south-eastern US, flooding in India, bushfires in Australia, large rocks hurtling through space that might hit us and wipe out all life on earth - all of these are things are "natural processes", but always make the news every time, and quite rightly so.
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