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Earth Science

Scientists Prepare To Drill For Million-Year-Old Ice In Antarctica (theguardian.com) 64

Posted by BeauHD from the predicting-the-future dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Million-year-old ice buried deep in Antarctica could hold crucial information about the planet's past and help climate predictions. And scientists with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) are a step closer to unearthing it. On Monday, they unveiled a drill designed to reach three kilometers below the surface of the frozen continent. The ice, believed to be up to 1.5m years old, is the target of several international research projects.

"What we're embarking on over the next few years is to solve one of the last great problems in climate science," glaciologist Tas van Ommen said. "We'll see in the ice, tiny bubbles that are trapped between snowflakes in the ice as it gets buried," van Ommen said. "These tiny bubbles are time capsules of past atmosphere. "We want to get that ice, analyze those time capsules and understand what [carbon dioxide] did in that period around one million years ago when the climate was changing." About 1 million years ago the Earth shifted from a 40,000-year ice age cycle to a 100,000-year cycle, van Ommen said. "[Carbon dioxide] is tied up in that change and it changes the rate at which ice ages have worked in the past," he added. "We need to understand if the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will have long-term consequences for the Earth in the future." According to the report, the drilling is expected to begin in 2021 and take four years to complete.
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Scientists Prepare To Drill For Million-Year-Old Ice In Antarctica More

Scientists Prepare To Drill For Million-Year-Old Ice In Antarctica

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  • "last great problems in climate science" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:46PM (#59245646) Journal
    Are there so few difficult problems left in climate science?

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by ScreenPop ( 6010248 )
      By 'last great' I guess they mean the last problem we will know given the climate alarmists tell us we only have 12 years before extinction is irreversible

    • "Are there so few difficult problems left in climate science?"

      Having a million-year-old piece of ice in your whiskey is cool.
      Literally!

    • I think those scientists had better hurry up. My patent on mining antarctic ice for margaritas is making me rich.
  • "We need to understand if the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will have long-term consequences for the Earth in the future." Uh, what? I thought it was a foregone conclusion that human CO2 is causing global warming???
    • Climate science is settled, we're all doomed. What happens to this rock after we are gone is not.
      • Actually, a nice, long nuclear winter would solve the problem. Targeting the biggest CO2 polluters (China + USA) would kill 2 birds with one stone.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tds67 ( 670584 )

      "We need to understand if the CO2 we put in the atmosphere will have long-term consequences for the Earth in the future." Uh, what? I thought it was a foregone conclusion that human CO2 is causing global warming???

      Yeah, like duh. Greta Thunberg already bitched us out about it, right?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Is there something about pumping a lot of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere causing Arctic and Greenland to melt that you don't get?

        You'd rather shoot the messenger who told you to listen to the scientists because they actually study the problem for a living. So if you have a problem with the message, you have a problem with the scientists, their evidence, their models, etc., not her.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tds67 ( 670584 )

          Greta is not a "messenger". She may be your Messiah, in your climate cult, but I live in reality and will not drink this Kool-Aid.

          Nice how you say "...pumping a lot of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere...". Gee, that sounds really scary. Like pumping poison into an enclosed room with a lot of people in it. Give me a break. CO2 is not dangerous, nor is it an effective greenhouse gas. It is not even remotely plentiful.

          Let all the gases in Earth's atmosphere be represented by 100 USD. I will give you an am

          • Re:What's the point of this experiment? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Saturday September 28, 2019 @10:36AM (#59246722)

            Compare the concentration of CO2 at 400 ppm with the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere, which is only 0.3 ppm.

            If 0.3 ppm of ozone can block significant amount UV radiation, why is it hard to believe that 400 ppm of CO2 can block some IR ?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by tds67 ( 670584 )

              If 0.3 ppm of ozone can block significant amount UV radiation, why is it hard to believe that 400 ppm of CO2 can block some IR ?

              If 5'1" tall Mary can bake an apple pie, why is it hard to believe that 6'2" Susan can bake a cherry pie? Oops, sorry... I'm talking about two different things, just like you were.

              Other gases, such as O2 and N2 also absorb ultraviolet light (at different wavelengths... in other words, these UV blocking gases work together). But since you are fixating on a single IR blocking molecul

          • Just said this to someone else and I'll say it to you, too: If we go with your whole list of 'assumptions' about things and you're wrong, then we're all completely fucked. If we stop burning fossil fuels and otherwise clean up our shit, the worst that can happen is we're all 'slightly inconvenienced', comparatively speaking. I'll stick to 'human-caused global warming', thank you very much, and I recommend you do the same, old son.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by tds67 ( 670584 )

              If we stop burning fossil fuels and otherwise clean up our shit, the worst that can happen is we're all 'slightly inconvenienced', comparatively speaking.

              The reason you are able to post this is because of the very fuels you deride. No affordable and dense fuel sources, no electricity. No electricity, no Internet. No Slashdot.

              If we go with your whole list of 'assumptions' about things and you're wrong, then we're all completely fucked.

              And if we go with your proposed solutions, we are all completely fucked. I

              • Nothing you just posted is logical, rational, or even an argument. It's all emotional arm-waving.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by tds67 ( 670584 )

                  Nothing you just posted is logical, rational, or even an argument. It's all emotional arm-waving.

                  I'm sorry, are you directing your comment at me or Greta Thunberg? I can't tell.

                  • Okay idiot, I'll take your low-tier bait: LOGICALLY, RATIONALLY refute what I said. None of your bullshit emotional statements that amount to "WAAH, I Don't WANT TO!", either. I doubt you can but I'll give you one more chance.
                  • See how you are? You're not even going to try taking on my challenge are you? You can't refute anything I said, not logically, not rationally, so you're just going to go back to your echo chamber, aren't you? Enjoy your fantasy land I guess. Please stop voting for Trump by the way we'd prefer to still have a United States in 2021.

  • What this means (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Friday September 27, 2019 @11:03PM (#59245670)

    About 1 million years ago the Earth shifted from a 40,000-year ice age cycle to a 100,000-year cycle

    So ice ages became less frequent. Because the Earth is...... warming. Damn that Australopithecus and his SUV's.

    • About 1 million years ago the Earth shifted from a 40,000-year ice age cycle to a 100,000-year cycle

      So ice ages became less frequent. Because the Earth is...... warming. Damn that Australopithecus and his SUV's.

      Is this the point that Al Gore calls off of the forklift?

    • Wouldn't that be Anthropopithecus?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        No idea I'm not an archaeologist. This is just a hazy memory from some biology classes 30 years ago. Actually I think 1 million years ago was Cro Magnon and Neanderthals but I'm probably wrong there too :)
    • No scientist has ever claimed that CO2 and greenhouse gas production is the only way Earth's climate changes. That would be really stupid, given that we know that Earth has gone through some periods where it has been much hotter and some periods where it has been colder. This is essentially akin to if a doctor told a patient they need to quit smoking because otherwise they might have a heart attack, and the patient points out that they have a friend who didn't smoke but was very fat and that friend had a he

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        Then someone else comes and points out that heart attacks are the leading cause of death anyway so it's pretty likely the heart attack is coming whether you smoke or are overweight or not...

        I'm being cynical - there's a difference between a heart attack at 30 and a heart attack at 75. I had my first at age 26. Thanks mom and dad :)

  • Martini Shaker ;)

  • Tiny bubbles are trapped between snowflakes in the ice as it gets buried. These tiny bubbles are time capsules of past atmosphere. We want to understand what [carbon dioxide] did in that period around one million years ago when the climate was changing.

    Would be interesting to know how they are going to do it. Checking past CO2 level can correlate climate to temperature. But correlation is not causation. It is either C02 that changes the temperature (but I don't see how, it's a tiny part of the atmosphere)

    • It is either C02 that changes the temperature (but I don't see how, it's a tiny part of the atmosphere)

      Did you calculate the effects, or are you just speaking from ignorance ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Hmm....hydrofluorocarbons are a small part of the atmosphere yet they cause the earth's ozone blanket to thin and actually form a hole over the Antarctic. Given your reasoning ability, you won't understand how that could happen either.

      • Your reasoning is substance x is bad, so CO2 must also be bad - what does it tell about your reasoning ability? CO2 is the same gas that trees consume - or release (in winter when the fallen leaves decay). Why should this affect the climate so much? Why would CO2 be more potent than - say - water vapour (what clouds are made of)?
        People get very emotional about this stuff so it's no longer possible to have a sensible discussion. If you ask for arguments they put hands over their ears and yell - he does not

        • Your reasoning is substance x is bad, so CO2 must also be bad - what does it tell about your reasoning ability?

          No, it's just a counterexample to the common reasoning that "if a substance x only appears in low concentration (400 ppm), it can't have a big effect"

          water vapour (what clouds are made of)?

          Clouds are commonly made from ice crystals, a solid, water droplets, which is a liquid. Water vapour is a gas.

          • No, it's just a counterexample to the common reasoning

            OK then - you are debating an argument I did not make; you have picked some "common reasoning" instead. What does it tell about your reasoning ability?

            Clouds are commonly made from ice crystals, a solid, water droplets

            And before those ice crystals solidify they would be water droplets, and before that - you have guessed it - water vapour.

            Coming back to square one - why would CO2 cause the temperature rise and not vice versa?

            • OK then - you are debating an argument I did not make.

              You literally said: "but I don't see how, it's a tiny part of the atmosphere"

              Coming back to square one - why would CO2 cause the temperature rise

              Because of the IR absorption bands. You can see a simple demonstration here https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
              Note that all the CO2 gas in the atmosphere would make a layer of about 10 feet thick, if you were to make a single pure layer at standard pressure. If you did the same thing 150 years ago, we would have a layer of just 8 feet thick.

              If the amount in a glass can have a clear effect, then 2 extra feet surely has an effect.

            • If you don't know why CO2 is bad, it is pretty pointless to argue with you.
              Sorry, if you are a 4 year old child that managed to read and write and has its own /. account.
              Google: climate gas, greenhouse gas, CO2 climate change, or similar terms and read wikipedia.

              We are not here to teach you basic physics.

        • Because you could double, triple or increase the CO2 by massive amounts if you so cared.
          Try that with water vapour and it just falls out as rain.

  • Didn't Russians already drill the Antarctic ice down more than 3000 metres?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • "In 2016, cores were retrieved from the Allan Hills in Antarctica in an area where old ice lay near the surface. The cores were dated by potassium-argon dating; traditional ice core dating is not possible as not all layers were present. The oldest core was found to include ice from 2.7 million years agoâ"by far the oldest ice yet dated from a core."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Well, yes, in Vostok, but it was in an area with side motion, so the datation of layers was not very precise, and not too old (since it moved sideways). Then from 1996 to 2005 Europe drilled 3270.70m at Dome C on the Epica project [gdargaud.net], on which I was part, and found the oldest ice in the world, covering 4 full glacial cycles and laying the experimental groundwork for experimental climate change.

      Now the race is on to find older and fully layered ice to bring us to the period before the last set of glaciations

  • Deniers of human-caused global warming make a whole bunch of assumptions as to how and why it's not the fault of human civilization.
    Furthermore the accuse climate scientists and those who support their theories of making a bunch of assumptions themselves, and furthermore some deniers accuse the scientific community and those who support their claims of perpetrating some sort of 'conspiracy' against humanity with their claims that humans are causing global warming. Stet?

    Now, here comes the logic:
    If Climate Change Deniers are wrong, we're all fucked.
    If we all stop using fossil fuels and Human-Caused Global Warming is not real, the worst that can happen is we're 'inconvenienced', compared to what the consequences of ignoring the problem would have been.
    You can't deny the logic of that.
    Furthermore: Fossil fuels aren't going to last forever, regardless. Sooner or later, we'll have to stop using them, regardless. Why not move away from them starting now? You can't deny the logic of that, either.

    Come on humans: stop being emotional about this.
    Also, to some humans: Stop being greedy pigs at the cost of everyone else. Shift your interests over to renewables and nuclear R&D instead.

    Am I getting through to some of you? Yes? Maybe? Good.
    Of course some hard-core deniers will try to dismantle my statements, now. Some others will have mod points and mod me down to the sub-basement just because they don't like being told what to do, regardless of the consequences. Good. Go right ahead and do it, you're just proving that I got into your heads if you do. ;-)

    • Fossil fuels aren't going to last forever, regardless. Sooner or later, we'll have to stop using them, regardless. Why not move away from them starting now? You can't deny the logic of that, either.

      We are.

      What was your problem again?

      • The 'problem' are some rich and/or influential people with obstructionist attitudes towards the whole issue, and the 'useful idiots' who get in line behind them.
        I'm not even going to get into the religious zealot types who have their own insane reasons to ignore the possibility of the Earth becoming uninhabitable, but they're in the mix, too.

        • Rest assured the "OMG it's the end of the world and we are all going to die" folks have their very own set of issues to work out.

  • wait here for a little while... see what happens?

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