*** Melting Glaciers *** All they proved is that we have, if we are lucky, stopped the progression to the next ice-age.
But we knew glaciers were melting 100 years ago, because around the Southern Alps, the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have retreated uphill [long before the greenhouse effect could be claimed to be doing anything - I'm not sure if they are still retreating]. Photos here: members.tripod.com So it's not certain that we've actually achieved anything; maybe the melting was going to happen no matter what we did.
< two scientists said they had found that about 36 cubic miles of ice had melted from glaciers in West Antarctica over the past decade. That is enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by about one-sixtieth of an inch, they said.>
So, after 60 years, these glaciers will have raised sea levels one inch. Not such a big worry.
<"These glaciers are thinning rapidly," said one of the scientists, Dr. Eric Rignot from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The conclusions were presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The findings counter results of an earlier study, drawing on ground-based observations, that concluded that Antarctica was gaining in mass, with the snow falling at the interior. <
So, which study is correct? Presumably this one, but maybe not.
<Dr. Rignot said a satellite instrument designed to detect deformations in the ground shape found no areas gaining in mass. But, he said, the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in West Antarctica, the two largest on the continent, are noticeably thinning. The rest of Antarctica appears to be stable, he said.<
So, unsurprisingly, what we have is snow falling in the centre, sliding off down the glaciers, then melting. The edges of the glaciers are unstable and shrink or grow depending on small variations in climatic conditions. The situation in the centre is stable, so the snowfall in the centre is stable, which is what we'd expect if no ice-age is coming or big-melt is coming.
>Ocean levels have been rising at a rate of about eight inches a century. Half of that is attributable to the fact that water expands as temperatures rise; 20 percent appears to be water running down mountain glaciers. The remaining 30 percent is a mystery, but the new data suggests it is coming from Antarctica.>
So, in 100 years, we got 8 inches. In the next 100 years we might get a foot or so. Yawn! The splash from a small Tunguska-style comet will raise sea levels more than a foot and do it over a much shorter time than a century, which will mean people don't have much time to react. They will get wet and maybe have trouble breathing.
Sea levels have always risen and fallen. We can be grateful that they are rising because that means we are NOT heading into another ice-age. An ice-age is very bad for people because the huge northern land masses get buried in kilometres of ice, which makes growing corn difficult and even driving on roads problematic [though tunnels at ground level could be kept clear by constant excavation - that would protect us against storms, comets, nuclear attack by MIRV. I doubt that many people would want to live in such a huge igloo. They could always catch a train south for a few days in the sun [or take an elevator to the surface if they want to see the sky].
Overall, we should be very pleased that sea levels are gently rising - warmer is better. The huge land masses of Canada and Russia would become arable. We do NOT want another ice-age. By producing enough CO2, we should be able to keep the forests lush [they love eating CO2] and the earth warm [which is what living things like]. Burning fossil carbon should be a tax-free activity.
<Using a second instrument on the satellite, one that measures altitude, Dr. Andrew Shepherd, a research fellow at the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling at University College London, came to similar conclusions. A smaller, neighboring glacier, the Smith glacier, is losing mass even more quickly, he said.
No obvious explanation exists for the melting. The rise in global temperatures — about one degree Fahrenheit over the last century — would have negligible effect in the frigid climes of Antarctica, scientists say.>
Duh, what do they mean there is no obvious explanation for the melting. Yes there is. It doesn't take one degree Fahrenheit to melt ice. 0.002 degrees Fahrenheit will do it. If the melting point is 0.0000 degrees Celsius, then if it is raised to 0.0001 degrees Celsius, it will turn to water. Glaciers ALWAYS melt at their terminus. If the snowfall upstream is less than the melt-rate, the glacier retreats. If the snowfall upstream is more than the melt-rate, the glacier advances [because it has to increase the melt-rate to regain stability, so it pushes down into warmer circumstances which raises the melt-rate].
There is ALWAYS some variation. Sometimes snowfall is heavy, sometimes it isn't. There can be multi-year droughts. There can be shifts in climate, such as the melting of the last ice-age, which left vast tracts of land which became covered in plant life, which acts on the climate by stripping CO2 and absorbing solar radiation instead of reflecting it as snow does, which warms the atmosphere, which melts more ice.
Ice-ages are a battle between plants and ice. When ice-ages advance, they do it rapidly [my theory anyway] because they bury plant life in snow, increasing reflection and cooling. The plant life can't propagate south fast enough so the desert areas, which reflect a lot of light, and encroaching snow cause rapid cooling of earth which increases the rate of snow cover moving south. We don't like it when that happens.
The greenhouse effect is good. Oil and coal belong in the biosphere, where they came from. The carbon should be brought back to life. The earth has been gradually dying as the carbon has been stripped from the biosphere and buried for millions of years. Volcanoes return a little to the atmosphere, but not much.
A pipeline from Russia through Afghanistan would help get more carbon into the atmosphere by lowering crude oil prices so that people could drive bigger vehicles economically. It would reduce the need for high-cost exploration in deep water locations, which would save money and help keep oil prices down.
Everyone should burn more hydrocarbons to save the world.
Mqurice |
