NASA Study Shows Antarctic Ice Sheet Shrinking 407
deman1985 writes "A recently released NASA study has shown that the Antarctic ice shelf is shrinking at an alarming rate of 36 cubic miles per year. The study, run from April 2002 to August 2005, indicates that the melting accounted for 1.2 millimeters of global sea level rise for the period. From the article: 'That is about how much water the United States consumes in three months and represents a change of about 0.4 millimeter (0.01575 inch) per year to global sea level rise, the study concluded. The study claims the majority of the melting to have occurred in the West Antarctic ice sheet."
Deep mathematics (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a deep conclusion.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:4, Insightful)
And assuming a constant, non-accelerating rate unlike what is currently being observed in greenland.
But good job trying to minimaze the problems we face today.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Alarming Rate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:just to remind that (Score:5, Insightful)
It's moments like these I wish Archimedes was alive and reading Slashdot.
Stop Whining (Score:4, Insightful)
You're insisting on denial of the catastrophe because you made up your mind before the situation was so obviously bad. You were wrong then, you're wrong now. The least you could do is drop the denial, because that's the main obstacle to people working together to lower the risk that the end of the world is coming.
Regardless of whether you want to admit that humans caused the warming, the fact is that our actions could slow or halt it before it destroys us.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it was a wakeup call to the people of New Orleans. The US government cut funding to the levies which when breached caused the flooding. Human error was to blame. Get your facts straight.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2, Insightful)
What is dangerous is jumping to the conclusion of why it is changing. If we were to "accept" the opinions of a few climatologists that human nature is what is causing the climate change, then the changes in behaviour we would have to make to try not to warm the atmosphere would be very damaging to the economy.
But why it is dangerous is that we DO NOT KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING. So sticking our head in the sand and saying "It's all human fault!" and ruining our economy while china forges ahead with their industry will mean in 100 years when this natural warming cycle is over and the earth starts cooling again, china will be a world power and the US will be like mexico with nothing to show for the past few hundred years.
Just remember until we know what is causing global warming getting in a panic about who is doing what to stop it is just like being insane.
Re:Beachfront Property!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there is no conclusive evidence that this is only part of a cylce.
As an evironmental scientist, my "gut" feeling is that this IS a part of cycle but being exacerbated by human factors. Look at the ice core and other geologic indicators: none of the planetary heating/cooling cycles ever recorded occcured with anything approaching this intensity. They were gradual, over thousands of years. We've seen millenia worth of warming in the last ~120 yrs.
Regression analyses of almost any factors you care to name show a near-perfect correlation with the humanity's industrial emissions. Cooked up examples in introductory statistics textbooks aren't any better.
Blindly chalking everything up to cycles is dangerous - what if that's incorrect? What do we lose by reducing hazardous emissions and pursuing alternative energies? Nothing, that's what. We potentially save the planet and reduce the corrupting inlfuences of the petrochemical industry. And if it ultimately has no effect on the environment, that's a price I'm willing to pay. What you suggest is a gamble that humanity cannot afford to make.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:3, Insightful)
*Where* does this idea come from? Seriously? The amount of sheer innovation that can be done, and money to be made, in the areas of green power, increasing efficiency of existing devices, etc, etc, is *massive*. This is, if anything, an *opportunity*, one that doomsayers like yourself really seem to be missing.
Re:Alarming Rate (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as we are concerned all of earth's history is unimportant - what matters is how it compares to human history, because while sea levels might have been rising faster some time in the Jurassic it wasn't anything humans ever had to cope with. From the planet's point of view it might indeed be trivial, but from the point of view of humans in the here and now who have to adapt to the changes it may well be significant.
So, how does 0.4mm per year compare to human history? The last 3000 years have (according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]) seen sea levels rise at an average rate of 0.1mm to 0.2mm per year. More recent data shows a rate of around 1mm to 2mm per year since 1850, and 3mm per year using satellite altimetry since 1992. On that sort of scale 0.4mm per year does represent a significant amount. Given the previous lack of certainty as to whether the Antarctic was losing or gaining ice with worst case estimates of about 0.2mm per year worth of ice being lost it is indeed alarming.
Sure, it isn't the end of the world, but then nobody with any sense was worried about that. The concern is the vast economic impact that could result from the forced relocation or rebuilding efforts caused by greater risks of flooding for the many many urban areas close to sea level. It may not be an epic disaster, but it could well be very expensive, so it's worth knowing about it so we can be forewarned and take preventative action now.
Jedidiah.
Which way is west? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Beachfront Property!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
"It is worth keeping in mind that an "abrupt" climate change, which may take place over a decade, is abrupt from a geologic perspective, in which many phenomena take place on the time scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years."
To put it mildly, if you looked up and saw a car might hit you at 1MPH then you might be a little worried but not really all that concerned. If instead you looked up and found a car might hit you at 100MPH then you would shit yourself. Yes, we don't have the data, capability or knowledge to model climate actions and consequences accurately. This is because in most cases we don't know what the hell we are doing. We do have survival instincts however, and one of these should currently be telling you that its all well and fine to stand on the road, but it might be safer to walk on the grass. Cycles are a reality and love them all you want but being carefull the other side of the cycle doesn't have a big "End of life as you want it" sign is a damn good idea.
On the other side of things, a good two or three meter rise would put one of my homes in a really nice position (taking erosion into account). The downside is that it would be the only home I had left.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because you've always been moved gently by your mommy and daddy, Anonymous baby Coward, doesn't mean your world won't end. In fact, with your totally inane sense of reality, you're certainly one of those who won't survive. Not much of a silver lining for me, but compensation enough for seeing your gibberish once.
Re:Wow! That's a lot of water! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's probably a lowball estimate. Don't forget that basically every product we consume takes water to make, sometimes a whole lot of it.
Vunerable Infrastructures and Systemic Change (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be that we will come out in a world better suited to our soon to be 9 billion human population. It may be that much of the planet will become uninhabitable or no longer arable. What is evident is that the majority of people who bother to consider the possible outcomes seem to think there will be one diasterous consequence and that somehow we'll all pull together to get things under control. It's as if something like Katrina is envisioned, but it's likely to be very complex and detrimental on a number of fronts. The truth is our ability to maintain our existing infrastructure is very limited.
A washed out bridge can bring traffic to a halt on a major highway. Imagine a warming world with increased sever storms, washing out roadways and rail lines, while bringing down power lines. Ice storms could bring the whole eastern seaboard to it's knees because the existing powerlines aren't able to carry the weight of the ice.
The emergency contingency plans and resources in place were slow and sloppy in reacting to Katrina. Play whatif with three or four hurricanes or sever storms pounding on the Gulf of Mexico and turning to ice storms in the north.
In the late 90's the American scientist Edmund Wilson postulated that for the existing world population to enjoy the life style of America today on a percapita basis would require the resources of another 5 worlds. Recently a conservative thinktank worked out that for China and India to live at the level of America today we would require the resources of another two worlds. So we have a world awash in weapons with a population ontrack to hit 9 billion in a biosphere showing signs of undergoing radical systemic change.
You should ridicule the alarmists. You should make jokes because it looks like it's going to get ugly fast.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Put bluntly, we've been lucky....we hit a relatively calm spell at just the right time in our history and thus moved from a Stone Age society to a Technological Age society. A lot of other planets probably aren't so fortunate.
Ferretman
From the High, Snowy Mountains of Colorado
Re:Stop Whining (Score:5, Insightful)
But YOU are believing what you have read about anthropogenic global warming; please be consistent.
There's lots of people going around lying about the Greenhouse we're making.
There sure are. And they are mostly people that don't understand jack squat about chemistry, thermodynamics, and fluid behavior. The ones that DO understand these things, know the system is very, very complicated and is not so easily explained.
Most climate experts agree that the climate is becoming more chaotic, with pollution making it worse.
Bah. I don't believe this statement; if you'd like to convince me otherwise, show me some data wherein you've polled a MAJORITY of climate scientists as to their present understanding, beliefs and conclusions about the current data.
What I DO believe is that most climate experts that you choose to listen to say this. Further, I also believe that those that believe the climate is becoming "more chaotic" (compared to when, the entire earth's history?...if that's their assertion, they are plain wrong and there is a WEALTH of data to show very dramatic, short time scale HUGE shifts in climate) would vastly disagree on a mechanism for that change.
I've read your posts to others, and from the tone of your message compared to theirs, I conclude that you don't want to actually UNDERSTAND this issue; that would require listening to contra-evidence, and giving it very careful consideration. Calling people names, jumping on politically radical bandwagons and hurling accusations are not forms of debate; they are techniques of oppression.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I want to see some evidence to support this figure. It sounds way to large to me. As Isaac Asimov once pointed out, sloppy calculations are too often used regarding sea level increases. You can't just assume all the non-floating ice in the world melts to form X cubic meters of water, which ends up on top of the Y area of the oceans, and thus increasing sea level by Z and flooding everything below that level. The sides of the oceans aren't vertical, so as the sea level increases, it also increases its area. So sure, there will be some flooding, but it's important to know exactly how much. Are we talking about losing the Maldives, Manhattan, all of Florida, what? Hopefully someone in this thread has the math chops to give a carefully estimated figure for maximum possible sea level rise, but I'll bet it's a ot less than 35 feet.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Problems facing today being the operative phrase. All the study shows is a 3 year trend. Which they extrapolated. 3 years is not a data set to base public policy OR firm geo science upon.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2, Insightful)
Which was his point. Hundreds of thousands is a blip in geologic timescales. Modern humans have only been in existence for 200,000 years, and yet climate varied without us.
But if I can get you to stop braying like a FoxNews mule
I usually try not to throw accusations, but you are by far one of the biggest "brayers" on Slashdot. Now get all your little friends to mod me down for you.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:5, Insightful)
The angle of the shallows of the seas are close enough to vertical, compared to their huge area, that practically none of the rise is absorbed by them. In fact, the higher tides and more frequent inundating storms from the warmer, wetter, more chaotic atmosphere will see the sea's area increase even more, as the water gets spread around kineticly.
The sad truth is that there is very little mitigation of the damage from all that land ice melting into the seas. Another factor is the collapse of the ThermoHaline Current that keeps Europe inhabitable, due to dilution by fresh water. We're looking at Florida below its narrowest width sinking, along with all but mountaintops in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Manhattan Island would be partly below the combined Hudson, Harlem and East rivers, if we weren't planning to dam it at the harbor (inside secret).
I know it's so scary a prospect, especially with worse news every few months, that the mind reels. But that doesn't justify the rush to deny it any way that seems convenient. We're staring into the abyss, and it looks like us. We can probably survive, even thrive, if we come to grips now, before it's too late. Help turn the ship around.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:2, Insightful)
You base public policy on whatever data you have available. When you have large unknowns, you do a risk assessment and then decide if that possibility of destroying the planet is important to you or not.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:1, Insightful)
OTOH, good on you for contributing less to the problem than most of us.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you sure what you're carrying on about has anything at all to do with science?
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of that analysis is the probability that destroying the planet is even a likelihood. That burden is on those who assert it is. Anyone that would base exceedingly costly and disruptive policy on 3 years of data on a subject (literally) with geologic timescales is foolish in the extreme. And, I would argue, not a very serious person.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Fail-safe default, no?
Except (Score:2, Insightful)
For pity sake here is his OWN bio showing he has no idea about climatology :
CRICHTON, (John) Michael. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942. Educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65. Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970. Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988. .
Emphasis mine. I somewhat agree that consensus is bad, but sometiems there can ONLY be consensus when everything point to it !!! Evere heard on the consesnsus that if you release a weight within a gravitational field without initial speed it will craqsh to the ground ? Well there is a consensus ont he cliamt, get over with it, and stop reading your favorite POLITICAL propagenda.
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because humans burning fossile fuels in great numbers is the natural state of affairs on earth, and the risk from any deviation from it should be thouroughly assessed before starting?
Reality check: serious CO2 emissions by humans have started 150 years ago. Your sentence should be turned around: "If you are going to propose a hypothesis that CO2 emissions are harmless, you have the burden of proof, not the other way round".
Is there a reasonable alternative? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consensus is widespread agreement among a group. Scientific consensus is more formalized than that you find among other groups, because it is a natural result of peer review and practice of the scientific method. A fundamental component of the Scientific method is the testing of hypotheses with experiments. Reproduction of these experiments and Peer Review are the methods by which faulty experiments and logic are exposed and corrected. This is the self-correcting methodology that has allowed the feats of science to overshadow inferior methods of prediction, that once dominated our decision-making.
I find the objection to scientific consensus a tad moronic. What, exactly, would you prefer to rely on? A few lonely dissenters who are unable to produce results that hold up under peer review? Or groups who are guided by alternative decision-making such as astrology, religion, or short-term economic or political aims? Go ahead, but don't kid yourself that there is anything scientific or logical about your viewpoint.
Today may be the best time to act ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that Earth's climate is something with a huge momentum, changing its course later on may or may not be an option. That's why ignoring even the _possibility_ of irreversable and catastrophic climate change risks missing a crucial window of opportunity, or even a less-crucial window of low-cost opportunity. Now is the time when we have a good chance of getting by with relatively painless, limited, and non-intrusive measures, provided we are prepared to make them _structural_.
And low-cost, low-tech opportunities for savings abound. Just think of home insulation, use of solar energy to reduce the energy needed for airconditioning and general climate control in buildings, use of heat pumps to lower energy requirements of climate control, and (heaven forbid) energy efficient cars etc..
But even those are often not economically viable because the price of energy is so low in the US. To be fair, why bother with complicated gizmos when you can just have this big cheap wasteful-but-effective-and-reliable thingy installed that will set you back only about 100$ a year in energy bills? Unfortunately our situation is known as a prisoners dilemma. If any business takes the time and effort to conserve energy, it can't spend that time and effort on its core business, and any resulting cost increase (or failure to drive costs down) in its products will be punished by the market.
This is why governments were invented. Tho break this deadlock of short-term interests and impose measures on _everyone at the same time_ that make the long-term needs felt. And yes, the primary instruments are often know as laws and regulations, and and the only ways of internalising external cost (as it is called) are known as taxes or levies. Nobody likes them (they hurt), but sometimes you have to have them. I personally think this is one of those occasions.
Taking the risk of missing either a "hard" window of opportunity or a "soft" one, purely for contraryness, short-term financial reasons, inertia, convenience and short-term political gain is both irresponsible and irrational.
It's telling of the American mindset that decades of energy-related research have been marginalised, downsized, cost-cut and generally ridiculed as idealistic but impractical, and certainly unneeded.
It's equally telling that the prospect of irreversible catastrophic global climate change is dismissed while the certain prospect of price hikes for gasoline (to say the levels of Europe) and *gasp* dependence on foreign powers is enough to galvanise an administration into a (fairly marginal) energy research programme.
Well ... at least it got their attention now ... in a way.
Re:Beachfront Property!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Refusal to believe something because it is too horrible despite overwhelming evidence is does not make it any less real.
Saying that we must wait to do anything until we are absolutely certain man is the cause is 1) incredibly shortsighted and dangerous. We simply cannot afford to be wrong. 2) Continues to ignore 99.999% of the most brillant minds in the world with expertise in this subject area. You simply cannot find stronger correlates than rising worldwide temperature averages and the growth of industrial-related emission. Any scientist with even basic statisical training will tell you the two are remarkable related. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but you will probably never have a safer bet.
And finally, what's the potential downside if these "alarmist" scientists and their fancy "facts" are indeed wrong? Alternative fuels, cleaner air and water, a more responsible populace? I'll risk a recession any day for any one of those goals.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2, Insightful)
What may be even more remarkable is the correlation [lexi.net] between solar activity and atmospheric temperature.
There is increasing opinion [bbc.co.uk] that solar activity is a primary cause of warming. In fact, solar output has been increasing [nasa.gov] about