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."
Don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
Which way is west? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Which way is west? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Which way is west? (Score:2)
Re:Don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't believe it (Score:2)
Re:Don't believe it (Score:2)
Re:Don't believe it (Score:2)
0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Funny)
Wow.... better shore up the levees, Waterworld is coming soon!
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)
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: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: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.
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: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".
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Informative)
"The 1841 sea level benchmark (centre) on the `Isle of the Dead', Tasmania. According to Antarctic explorer, Capt. Sir James Clark Ross, it marked mean sea level in 1841. Photo taken at low tide 20 Jan 2004. Mark is 50 cm across; tidal range is less than a metre."
See photos [john-daly.com] to go with caption.
Not Relevant??? (Score:3, Informative)
Nature has the headline "Antarctica is shrinking" with the sub-heading "Gravity survey shows overall loss in ice". Your link does not give reference to the fact that the paper was published in "Science", rather it takes issue with an article about the paper in "ScienceExpress". Off course they have no troubl
Re:0.4mm a year.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Stop Having Babies (Score:2)
All kidding aside, so what. The Earth evolves with us or without us. If we kill ourselves then we probably deserve it. The Earth won't care in the least bit. There will be a balance somewhere as the law of nature dictates it as much as the law of nature dictates that an apple will fall from a tree if it's stem breaks.
I care more about economic stability (not that I don't care about this but any change is beyond m
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 increa
knock yourself out (Score:2, Informative)
here you go, i thought this was a nerds site not one for lazy fskers, you overweight by any chance ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_change [wikipedia.org]
or perhaps a middle school project would explain it better
http://pumas.jpl.nasa.gov/PDF_Examples/02_10_97_1
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:Stop Whining (Score:4, Funny)
Sure it will suck for companies that insure beach-front properties, but for those of us living in the right locations, global warming will only move us closer to the beach and increase our property value.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2)
There's lots of people going around lying about the Greenhouse we're making. Many are just paid to lie by fuel corporations with a vested interest in denying their pollution's real consequences. Many more lie just because they started out being wrong, and have gotten in too deep to stop now.
Most climate experts agree that the climate is becoming mor
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:2)
Anonymous jerkoff Coward. Thes retarded denials from you morons are too tired to bother taking seriously.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2)
I didn't say the world would end tomorrow. And I'm not panicking or shouting in your ear - neither is anyone else, I bet. I'm just destroying unsupportable, irresponsible denial. So, since you're being fairly responsible, I don't know why you're buying into all that hyperbole as a strawman to "balance" the clear reasons that deserve your sensible actions.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2)
Score one for the Greenhouse.
Wrong. Consensus exists. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. There is widespread scientific consensus on the existence of global warming, and that human activity is contributing to it. A 2004 Survey [sciencemag.org] of 928 peer-reviewed research articles related to climate change from 1993-2003 concluded that:
"Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen."
Noteworthy is that none of the articles dissented with the consensus opinion. None of them. Not much of a controversy, at least among people who know what they are talking about.
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.
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:Stop Whining (Score:5, Informative)
We have a number of temperature reconstructions going back about 2000 years. They do vary because they use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temp
Change is the natural way of things. I think it's pretty presumptious of us to think we're causing it.
Well there are the remarkable correlations between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, even over the 650,000 years spanned by Antarctic ice cores. Combine that with the present spike in carbon dioxide, which is verifiably anthropogenic [realclimate.org], and the absorption spectra of carbon dioxide which makes it an effective greenhouse gas, together with the close correlation between the recent spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, and you have some good reasons to start thinking we may be causing it. Is that conclusive? No. But then there's plenty more evidence than what I can pack into a quick paragraph.
Volcanoes put out far more greenhouse gasses than anything humans do.
This one is just a bizarre bit of disinformation that keeps getting circulated. It is quite false. Volcanoes put out around 130 to 230 teragrams [wikipedia.org] of carbon dioxide a year. The US alone puts out around
5844 teragrams [wikipedia.org]. Atmospheric carbon dioxide from volcanoes is less than 1% of the amount from human activities. Please, put this particular myth to bed.
Jedidiah.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:3, Informative)
These are proxies, not direct measurements. Saying they're accurate to a fraction of a degree - while politically correct - is buying into unproven theory. It may be correct, it may be incorrect. But the only "truth" is in direct measurement. Even then, you can argue about what it means - taking into account heat island effects, for example.
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:2)
Even the proponents of Kyoto recognize that its provisions wouldn't budge the trend in the slightest. From what I have read, any sort of provisions to "slow or stop the trend" would require essentially the reversal of the Industrial Revolution. No one is volunteering to be first, of course.
Because they're coming to get you - much faster than the seas will drown you
I'm positively shaking with fear.
Re:Stop Whining (Score:2)
Re:Ok. Shut off your computer. (Score:2)
You smelly hippie, your increased, though brief, pollution contribution from setting yourself on fire would be well worth the end of your idiotic prattle.
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:0.4mm a year.... (Score:4, Informative)
0.4mm per year just from the Antarctic ice sheet, and 2500 years for a meter presuming a constant rate. On the other hand there are other factors at play such as the Greenland glaciers, which are accelerating their slide into the sea [realclimate.org], which means it might be worth considering the possibility of acceleration of the loss of Antarctic ice. There's also thermal expansion as another factor causing sea levels to rise.
It's also worth noting that, in the grand scheme of things, 0.4mm per year is quite a lot: sea level change over the last 3000 years averages to about 0.1mm to 0.2mm per year.
Is this a clear indication of catastrophic distaster? Far from it. Nor is it the least bit implicit of any sort of bizarre Waterworld scenario. However, even a 1 meter change in sea will have signficant impact given the large numbers of cities very close to sea level - even a small rise makes them far more susceptible to flooding from, say, storm swell or similar. In practice even a small change is going to displace an awful lot of people, costing an awful lot of money, and having a significant economic impact. It may not be a disaster of biblical proportions, but it is most definitely something to be concerned about and to keep an eye on.
Jedidiah.
That's okay (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's okay (Score:5, Funny)
Beachfront Property!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Any day now....
2500 years? a Meter?
Hmmm... Anyone want to by a condo with ocean view in Arizona... Not quite finished...
Anyone?
PFFFT!
PS.. Remember MARS icecaps are melting also... Thats probibly my fault too...
Why can't people understand CYCLES? and "GET OVER IT"...
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: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.
Disaster! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Disaster! (Score:2)
Alarming Rate (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Alarming Rate (Score:2)
Easy (Score:2)
It's alarming because "oh shit, that's a lot of ice making the sea levels rise."
Because it is unprecendented (Score:2)
OMG! Bunkers - now 30% off (Score:5, Funny)
Amenties include:
*Refurbished Y2K model# 1D10T"
.4 mm a year???? (Score:2)
I say nuke the poles, lets get this done now, not 2500 years in the future!
1.2 millimeters (Score:2)
Flood of earth science (Score:2)
It's interesting stuff, hopefully more data will continue to help refine and quanitify our understanding of how the earth works.
And guide developers to their next beachfront property
Drink more water (Score:2, Funny)
Bush's thoughts... (Score:5, Funny)
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:Vunerable Infrastructures and Systemic Change (Score:2)
Stubbed toes and butterflies. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and if you cycle the car's exhaust through your air conditioner while driving, you won't be getting your groceries back home.
My body is a system too, but when I stub my toe, I don't get a cold.
No, but you will hobble around cursing. And if you continually stub it, say, once every fifteen minutes, you'll probably do some ugly and lasting damage over the course of an afternoon and lose the ability to walk
A bit O.T. - Misleading tagline (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Polar bears are Arctic critters -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bears [wikipedia.org]
I guess we should........ (Score:2)
There IS a Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Re:just to remind that (Score:2, Interesting)
-- Andyvan
Re:just to remind that (Score:5, Insightful)
It's moments like these I wish Archimedes was alive and reading Slashdot.
Re:just to remind that (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:just to remind that (Score:2)
"The melting of floating ice has no net effect on water level."
That's right, so we don't have to worry about ice in the Arctic Ocean. Which just leaves the ice covering most of Greenland, Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, the coastal glaciers in North America and elsewhere. And Antarctica. But aside from that, we're fine.
[Sarcasm aimed at GP, not parent. I think.]
Re:just to remind that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:just to remind that (Score:2)
Though I guess it would cause a slight short-term decline in the sea levels due to its cooling effect.
Re:just to remind that (Score:5, Informative)
Errr... WHAT?
Time to do the math again, I guess. Every now and then this bit of ugly science rears its ugly head.
Useful numbers:
Density of Seawater: 1025kg/m^3 [hypertextbook.com].
Density of Freshwater: 1000kg/m^3 [hypertextbook.com] (rounded up from 999.98 at freezing point)
Density of Ice: 916kg/m^3 [same source].
Things to know:
The vast majority of icebergs are not frozen seawater, they break off from land glaciers and float out to sea.
Buoyancy tells us that X will float in Y if X displaces a volume of Y where the mass of the displaced volume equals the mass of X.
Hollowed out shapes can contain more volume than a solid block of mass (this is why metal boats float).
So, lets say we have a solid, convex iceberg floating in an ocean ever so slightly above freezing, consisting of exactly 1025kg of ice right about to melt. To float, this iceberg must displace 1025kg of saltwater, which by sheer coincidence is exactly one cubic meter. Thus, when this iceberg broke off the glacier and fell into the water, the sea level increased by the height of one cubic meter spread out really thin across the entire surface. If you lifted the iceberg out without letting it melt, that one cubic meter would come back and fill the hole where it was.
Naturally, the sea being ever so slightly above freezing and the ice being ever so slightly below, the ice absorbs heat from the ocean and melts. Thanks to wonderful conservation of mass, we know we now have 1025kg of fresh water at ever so slightly above freezing, with a density of 1000kg/m^3. Thus, we have 1.025 cubic meters of fresh water to fill that 1 cubic meter hole where the iceberg used to be.
So because the iceberg fell into the ocean and melted, the sea level is now 1.025 cubic meters (spread out real thin over the entire ocean) higher than it used to be. Even if the ice started in the ocean (as in the Arctic), it's still 0.025 cubic meters high! It gets worse if the ice is sitting on the bottom of the ocean (then there is more ice than displaced water)! Even if you assume that the seawater is less dense in the Arctic (a fallacy, as the freezing action actually increases the saline content of the water around the ice), as long as the density of the seawater is greater than the density of the water you get from melting the ice (almost always freshwater), you will get an increase in sea level from melting the ice.
Incidentially, arctic ice is not all frozen seawater, much of it is from precipitation falling on top of the frozen seawater, so you can't even claim that the water in the ice came directly from the ocean in the first place (not that that claim would really help any, because that water has been locked up for thousands and thousands of years, returning it to water would definitely raise the ocean level beyond anything in written history). Plus, once the water is liquid and continues to heat, it will continue to expand: at 30C freshwater is only 995.65kg/m^3.
Since I whipped out the math anyway, 1025kg of ice is 1025kg*(1m^3/916kg)=1.119 m^3. Since it's solid and convex we know that there must be 0.119 m^3 of ice above sea level. This shows that roughly 10% of the 1.119 m^3 of ice is above sea level, thereby supporting the old adage that 9/10 of the iceberg is below the waterline.
Re:just to remind that (Score:2)
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:2)
Also, when you say water vapour, I assume you don't mean clouds, which are not vapour.
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:2)
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:3, Informative)
H2O is a greenhouse gas. It does reduce heating from the sun if it forms into daytime clouds. The same clouds also hold heat in at night. Then just to complicate things further, the more ice melts, the less reflection there is from the polar regions, and solar heating goes up.
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:2)
Global dimming [wikipedia.org] used to dampen the warming. Silver lining: less asthma and acid rain while on summer vacation in Siberia. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:2)
Wow, this is so misguided it's sad.
More water means more water vapor [...] Ummm
Re:Effect of Antarctic melting exaggerated (Score:2)
Do you think those might have adverse effects?
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)
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:4, Informative)
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
"In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large."
"..overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects."
So WTF have they been doing with the money?
"By 1998, Louisiana's state government had a $2 billion construction budget, but less than one tenth of one percent of that -- $1.98 million -- was dedicated to levee improvements in the New Orleans area. State appropriators were able to find $22 million that year to renovate a new home for the Louisiana Supreme Court and $35 million for one phase of an expansion to the New Orleans convention center."
I've wasted enough time on this, you can google the rest yourself.
The liberal leadership in New Orleans reaped exactly what it sowed for so many years.
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
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:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
So, tell me, which company is likely to be more profitable and competative: the one that uses a lot of energy, and thus must pay for it, or the o
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:5, Interesting)
I beg to differ. In a recent study [sciencemag.org] by Science Magazine, a search of the ISI database [thomson.com] on the keyword "climate change" yielded 928 peer-reviewed papers, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF WHICH disputed the conclusion that global warming is caused by man-made changes to the atmosphere.
The so-called "debate" only exists in the popular press, where (in a misguided attempt to provide "balance",) 53% of articles express doubt on global warming. Red-staters may not like this article [worldchanging.com] very much either, but I challenge any of them to find a respectable counterargument.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
In all fairness, in the absence of additional data, this statement on it's face only suggests a bias in editorial policy. I find it hard to believe that with something this complicated that there are not SOME 'dissenting' papers.
Maybe I'll start my own journal - the Journal of Anti-Anthropogenic Global Warming just to se
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
I think fairly good guesses can be made. We do know that atmospheric carbon dioxide, by dint of its absorption spectra, will tend to trap heat in the atmosphere. We also know that historically temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide correlate very closely [wikipedia.org]. We also know that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have spiked to a level completely unprecedented in the last 650,000 years, with the majority spike occuring as an exponentially s [wikipedia.org]
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
Well, I have no power at all, and I don't give a shit either.
I hope this helps. :)
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
No, it was a wake-up call that the North Atlantic Mode has made its 40 year cycle and we can expect two decades of intense storms. Like the Great Hurricane that flattened Galveston in 1900 and killed 6000 people, or Hurricane Betsy in 1964 that flooded half of New Orleans with 20 foot deep water.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
Nothing worse than a rebel without a clue.
Re:A Whitehouse spokesperson was quoted as saying. (Score:2)
You're missing the BIGGER PICTURE here. Weather is becoming more extreme as a direct result of global warming, which in turn is happening becuse of man-made pollution.
Why is this so hard for Americans to grasp or accept? Its not doubted by any other nations in the world.
Re:OH NOS (Score:2)
I know I, for one, don't want to see humanity end, though the world would probably be better off if we just obliterated ourselves and are fucked-in-the-head egocentrical ways. How much effort doe
Re:But... (Score:2)
and
Hasn't the polar ice caps been receeding since the last ice age?
No.
and
No.
There's been cycles, there were freak occurences, such as the Year Without Summer in the 19th century (volcanic ash), but there has not been a steady warm up. That's a lie told to help ignore evidence such as this, in order to maintain the status quo, so that the currently rich will keep getting steadily richer. Don't believe it; don't spread it.
Re:But... (Score:2)
I will from now on completely ignore any and all climatologist, geologist, meteorologist or pysysicsts. You have proven to me that they are all stupid incompetent fools who haven't even managed to notice that the earth has been warming up since the last ice age.
Can I have your autograph?
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.