Resisting Climate Hysteria

trainspotter · 22 May 2014

Just LOL Basilio ... you are once again going off half cocked old **** :

You have missed the point completely. Can you answer me this one simple question:-

Are glaciers/Antarctic land ice COLLAPSING or are they merely melting?

If they are merely "melting" at a rate that will increase the ocean level by .45mm per annum then this is hardly earth shattering news. Big woop. Like I said previously it would only take a very small shift in down degrees for things to start freezing again.

As for the sea ice / land ice the article is not very clear as to whether they are including the WHOLE of Antarctica ice melt or just being specific to the land ice / glacier movements. SO I did some further research and lo and behold the diagrams posted up INCLUDED the sea ice hence my reference in the first place.

Once again I reiterate to you 8 years or 40 years is not long enough to come even close to developing a thesis. Yep .. it's melting right now ... come and tell me when it starts freezing again next winter.

Lloyds is jumping on the bandwagon cause now they can INCREASE your premiums and blame it on global warming. Surely you are not that naive to not understand that this STARTLING bit of money grabbing sh1te is simply that ... bottom line improvement with bigger bonuses to the executives that thought this up?

The article you posted even stated "But both studies came to broadly similar conclusions – that the thinning and melting of the Antarctic ice sheet has begun and cannot be halted, even with drastic action to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change."

So it cannot be halted huh? May as well go live on top of ULURU right now and avoid the rush.

burglar · 22 May 2014

trainspotter said:
... The article you posted even stated "But both studies came to broadly similar conclusions – that the thinning and melting of the Antarctic ice sheet has begun and cannot be halted, even with drastic action to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change."

So it cannot be halted huh? May as well go live on top of ULURU right now and avoid the rush.

+100

trainspotter · 22 May 2014

This should make you happy basilio:-

For China, the world's second-largest economy, the deal will help ease gas shortages and curb its reliance on coal.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted that Russia and China have been trying to work out an energy agreement for 10 years and said the deal “isn't a sudden response to what's been going on” in Ukraine.
“And if the world benefits as a result of that, that's fine,” he said

http://www.news.com.au/finance/busi...billion-gas-deal/story-fnda1bsz-1226926867904

ERGO less coal being burned and producing nasty Co2 gas is a good thing right?

Smurf1976 · 22 May 2014

trainspotter said:
ERGO less coal being burned and producing nasty Co2 gas is a good thing right?

Theoretically yes, although my expectation is that increasing China's use of gas will merely slow the rate of increase in coal rather than see a consumption drop as such.

There are exceptions, but in countries with growing economies any new energy source is usually in addition to, rather than as a replacement for, what they already have.

basilio · 22 May 2014

Ok let's find some common understandings.

Are glaciers/Antarctic land ice COLLAPSING or are they merely melting?

If they are merely "melting" at a rate that will increase the ocean level by .45mm per annum then this is hardly earth shattering news. Big woop. Like I said previously it would only take a very small shift in down degrees for things to start freezing again.

I suggest that "COLLAPSING" is a word that can have legitimately different meanings depending on the context.
In geological terms the total melting of glaciers studied in a time span of 200-1000 years would certainly rate as a collapse. 200-1000 years is a very short geological time span for such volumes of ice to melt and sea levels to rise by 3-4 metres.

From a human perspective 200-1000 years looks like many generations away. So I can understand (a little) why "collapse" seems too dramatic a term to use for this change in sea levels.

But on a more realistic bigger picture I suggest the scenario posed by what seems to be irreversible melting of the East Antarctic ice shelf is very sobering. I opened this discussion a few days ago with those points

1) The extra melt is in addition to what scientists are are calculating as rises caused by sea water expansion, continuing loss of land glaciers and current melt rates in Greenland. So what looks like merely .45mm a year adds up to 45 mm, at least, in addition to what is happening elsewhere. We are seeing the effects of sea levels rises now and these will be even more obvious in the next 20-40 years let along 200.

2) The prospect of an ultimate rise of 3-4 metres in sea levels (and possibly more) makes decisions about how up hill we rebuild cities very difficult.

3) If/when we come to the conclusion that this melt is on how do we make decisions on pouring more resources into effectively stranded assets versus rebuilding for the longer term? And do we have the courage to ask the question, provide the research capacity to examine the problem and then accept the results ?

Also TS your throwaway line that there could be a temperature reversal in the next few years that refreezes the ice is just magical thinking. Global warming has been particularly noticeable in the polar regions. That is where the biggest increases in temperature have occurred. That is why there has been this geologically rapid deterioration in ice shelfs which scientists formerly thought were very secure.

The only way (I can see) reversing temperatures rises is a collapse of the gulf stream which would immediately ( a few years at the most) plunge the Northern hemisphere into an ice age. Interested in that scenario ?

So yeah maybe Uluru is a good option.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation
http://americablog.com/2014/03/climate-change-gulf-stream-could-cause-ice-age-europe.html

trainspotter · 23 May 2014

Finally a more sensible approach to this discussion.

col·lapse [kuh-laps]
verb (used without object), col·lapsed, col·laps·ing.
1. to fall or cave in; crumble suddenly:

melt1 [melt] Show IPA
verb (used without object), melt·ed, melt·ed or mol·ten, melt·ing.
1. to become liquefied by warmth or heat, as ice, snow, butter, or metal.
2. to become liquid; dissolve: Let the cough drop melt in your mouth.
3. to pass, dwindle, or fade gradually

Ok I will go with the timeframe of 200 - 1000 years in a geological sense is a very short time - point conceded. But as this phenomenon has only been observed for 40 years who is to say in let's say ... 40 years time there is a Pinatubo effect (now don't get confused that I am relating this to a volcano erupting, a Pinatubo effect is a global cooling analogy) and like you say the gulf stream collapses (there is that word again) ahem ... fades gradually thusly cooling the atmosphere of Antarctica and things start freezing again.

As for the ocean rising 4 - 5 metres blah blah blah I would appreciate a link to the 45mm reference as most of the material I have read has said the COMBINED of all ice floes/glaciers/land ice/cyclical sea ice ad infinitum melting is less than 1mm per annum ?

If it is like Rignot claims that this trend is now "irreversible" then we should seriously look at his data to see if there is any level of "uncertainty" in his studies before we all become Chicken Little's screaming "the ocean is rising, the ocean is rising". But the unfortunate fact about "uncertainty" is that the error bars always go in both directions.

John Connor: The whole thing goes: The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.

trainspotter · 24 May 2014

I am off to Indonesia for 2 weeks to check out the rising sea levels . The only melting ice I will be seeing is in my cocktails. Full report on Rignt's discussion paper to be forthcoming on how the lower islands will fare if the ocean rises by 4-5 metres when the ice melts. Hopefully my villa will become an oceanside property and the value increases !!

Will be keeping an eye on the markets to close at 5461 so I can claim my Nexus tablet ... *wink* (Tony Abbott style)

TS

basilio · 24 May 2014

If it is like Rignot claims that this trend is now "irreversible" then we should seriously look at his data to see if there is any level of "uncertainty" in his studies before we all become Chicken Little's screaming "the ocean is rising, the ocean is rising

1000% agree. In fact I think all governments should look extremely closely at the two reports as well as all other glaciological studies in Arctic and Antarctic. And I think commission more work to see what is happening.

Your quite right to say that if this is as serious as it looks we would want to have all the information available.

The understandings behind the behavior of the ice caps as the world has warmed has been growing exponentially in the past 10-20-40 years. I can remember the initial views were that melting would be very slow if it happened from the top down given that summers were short ect.

Then the glaciologist discovered that the warm water was in fact coming underneath the ice shelf and eroding it away from the base at a far more rapid rate than they ever imagined.They also discovered that huge cracks were opening up in the Greenland ice cap and billions of tons of melt water was penetrating the cap, reaching the base of the glaciers and speeding up the movement.

With regard to Rignot's work I think it has gone from theory and research to factual observation of the "collapse" of the ice shelf. He has noted possible time frames for this collapse and they are predicated on the amount of future warming. More warming - quicker collapse.

Wikipedia has a comprehensive look at current sea level rise. It's a bit out of date with the latest IPCC data but it is certainly thorough.

The reference to the .45mm a year increase in sea levels from the current rate of melting in the Antarctic comes from the Rignots recent work. Mind you the fact that the rate of melt has increase so markedly in the last 10 years suggests this could increase quit quickly.

A 45mm increase in sea level would be the expected rise over a century at the current rate.

Have fun in Bali TS.

Cheers

http://mashable.com/2014/05/12/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse/
A more detailed description of the report than I have seen previously
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20543483
Pulls together the contribution of Greenland and Antarctic ice melt from 1995 to 2011

basilio · 26 May 2014

Learning more about the threat of West Antartica ice melt.

An excellent article in Mother Jones. Just learnt a fascinating fact about ice, gravity and sea levels.

If you want to truly grasp the scale of Earth's polar ice sheets, you need some help from Isaac Newton. Newton taught us the universal law of gravitation, which states that all objects are attracted to one another in relation to their masses (and the distance between them). The ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland are incredibly massive””Antarctica's ice is more than two miles thick in places and 5.4 million square miles in extent. These ice sheets are so large, in fact, that gravitational attraction pulls the surrounding ocean toward them. The sea level therefore rises upward at an angle as you approach an ice sheet, and slopes downward and away as you leave its presence.

This is not good news for humanity. As the ice sheets melt due to global warming, not only do they raise the sea level directly; they also exert a weaker gravitational pull on the surrounding ocean. So water sloshes back toward the continents, where we all live. "If Antarctica shrinks and puts that water in the ocean, the ocean raises around the world, but then Antarctica is pulling the ocean towards it less strongly," explains the celebrated Penn State University glaciologist Richard Alley on the latest installment of the Inquiring Minds podcast. "And as that extra water around Antarctica spreads around the world, we will get a little more sea level rise in the US than the global average."

http://www.motherjones.com/environm...inds-richard-alley-antarctica-greenland-sandy

basilio · 26 May 2014

And for those who like a bit of fun mixed up with the environment check out this comedy clip from John Oliver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

basilio · 26 May 2014

And finally...

How fast are glaciers melting. Check out this time lapse video to get an idea of what is happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjeIpjhAqsM

cynic · 26 May 2014

It appears there may indeed be an anthropogenic cause behind the deterioration of glaciers:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/02/man-steals-glacier-for-designer-ice-cubes/

trainspotter · 27 May 2014

The ice melts very quickly in my 18 year old Chivas in the warmer climate of Bali. So quickly in fact that I don't have to add any water to it. You might be onto something here badilio, I am going to ask the government for a research grant to investigate this phenomenon on a much larger scale and increase my Chivas intake ..... full report to be forthcoming.

sydboy007 · 30 May 2014

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...23/one-hurricane-is-enough-to-ruin-your-year/

We are currently in the midst of an active few decades in Atlantic hurricane activity. Sea surface temperatures””the basic fuel of a tropical cyclone””have been above average since the 1990s. In fact, 2014 is the first year the Atlantic Ocean has boasted average sea surface temperatures in nearly two decades.

Knobby22 · 30 May 2014

Thanks Sid, much appreciated.

So that explains the reduction of hurricanes in the late 90s and the subsequent increase since.

With less fuel and, most likely, more resistance from the atmospheric circumstances created by an El Nino in the Pacific””stronger trade winds and also more winds high in the atmosphere to rip apart any tropical cyclone as it tries to form””the outlook is good for avoiding hurricanes this year, much as 2013 saw only two storms reach hurricane intensity despite a forecast for an active year from NOAA. Yes, if this year’s El Nino proves strong, then it may dampen hurricane activity to the lowest end of NOAA’s range but, if that climate pattern fizzles, then more hurricanes can be expected.

basilio · 31 May 2014

Re Melting of Greenland/Antartica

A couple of weeks ago the big news was the report on what seems to be the inevitable collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet. The new methodologies are also allowing more detailed research with regard to the Greenland ice cap which is also melting rapidly.

The results are disturbing.

Global warming and the vulnerability of Greenland's ice sheet

A new study sheds light on the stability and vulnerability of the world's large ice sheets.

....When they compared their results with other studies, the authors found, “widespread presence of well-eroded, deep-bed troughs along the ice-sheet periphery, generally grounded below sea level, coincident in location and spatial extent with fast-flow features and extending over considerable distance inland.” These features were not previously known.

These findings allow a few conclusions. Aside from the importance of deep troughs to ice motion, the extension inland means that glaciers will have to retreat further than anticipated inland in order to reach a position above sea level. “Some of them will stay in contact with the ocean for centuries, when we thought that in a couple of decades they would stabilize.” said Mathieu Morlighem.

The ice sheet is therefore more vulnerable than predicted, and existing projections of sea level rise contribution from Greenland are too conservative and need to be revised. The research also shows that also means that these troughs are old – it takes 10,000 to 100,000 years for these troughs to be created through erosive action. Also startling is that while only 8% of these regions correspond to ice-grounding below sea level, they are responsible for 88% of the total ice discharge. These are the parts of Greenland that really matter.

As the authors state in the paper, “Our findings imply that the outlet glaciers of Greenland, and the ice sheet as a whole, are probably more vulnerable to ocean thermal forcing and peripheral thinning than inferred previously from existing numerical ice-sheet models.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...al-warming-vulnerability-greenlands-ice-sheet

Clearly the most concerning part is the discovery that there are very deep troughs under the glaciers which extend much further into Greenland than previously realized.

This means that warm ocean water will be able to reach much further inland and accelerate glacier movement and break up of the ice caps

The previous models for melting of the ice caps are being re-worked. The melt will be much quicker than we thought.

medicowallet · 31 May 2014

basilio said:
Re Melting of Greenland/Antartica

Clearly the most concerning part is the discovery that there are very deep troughs under the glaciers which extend much further into Greenland than previously realized.

This means that warm ocean water will be able to reach much further inland and accelerate glacier movement and break up of the ice caps

The previous models for melting of the ice caps are being re-worked. The melt will be much quicker than we thought.

But I thought the science was settled years ago.

Are you telling us that the scientists were clearly extremely inaccurate and clearly wrong?

MW

explod · 31 May 2014

medicowallet said:
But I thought the science was settled years ago.

Are you telling us that the scientists were clearly extremely inaccurate and clearly wrong?

MW

On what points are you referring to medicowallet, ie. on what was settled?

medicowallet · 31 May 2014

explod said:
On what points are you referring to medicowallet, ie. on what was settled?

Well the science of course!!

It's like the vibe of the science

And the vibe is awesome because the science was settled years ago. All this" new" science stuff is wrong cause like the science is settled and 97% of mothers prefer napisan. ....we..I mean..97% of scientists feel the vibe

Mw

bellenuit · 31 May 2014

Resisting Climate Hysteria

trainspotter

burglar

trainspotter

Smurf1976

basilio

trainspotter

trainspotter

basilio

basilio

basilio

basilio

cynic

trainspotter

sydboy007

Knobby22

Mmmmmm 2nd breakfast

basilio

medicowallet

explod

explod

medicowallet

bellenuit

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