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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (6946)	4/6/2009 9:58:26 AM
From: Eric	2 Recommendations Respond to of 86356

Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic David Vaughan says the breakage is a 'really strong indication' of warming An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean. The ice bridge has splintered at its thinnest point European Space Agency satellite pictures had indicated last week that cracks were starting to appear in the bridge. Newly created icebergs were seen to be floating in the sea on the western side of the peninsula, which juts up from the continent towards South America's southern tip. Professor David Vaughan is a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey who planted a GPS tracker on the ice bridge in January to monitor its movement. He said the breaking of the bridge had been expected for some weeks and much of the ice shelf behind was likely to follow. "We know that [the Wilkins Ice Shelf] has been completely or very stable since the 1930s and then it started to retreat in the late 1990s. But we suspect that it's been stable for a very much longer period than that," he told BBC News. "The fact that it's retreating and now has lost connection with one of its islands is really a strong indication that the warming on the Antarctic is having an effect on yet another ice shelf." While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating, it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica. Over the past 50 years, the peninsula has been one of the fastest warming places on the planet. Many of its ice shelves have retreated in that time and six of them have collapsed completely (Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf). Separate research shows that when ice shelves are removed, the glaciers and landed ice behind them start to move towards the ocean more rapidly. It is this ice which can raise sea levels, but by how much is a matter of ongoing scientific debate. Such acceleration effects were not included by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when it made its latest projections on likely future sea level rise. Its 2007 assessment said ice dynamics were poorly understood. news.bbc.co.uk

To: RetiredNow who wrote (6946)	4/6/2009 10:49:21 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

I think the small oscillations are the sunspots, which run in 11 year cycles. And it doesn't matter that Sunspot activity is the lowest recorded in over 100 years and expected to get even lower in Cycle 25 due to the decrease in the solar conveyor? It doesn't matter that the Maunder Minimum ocurred during a period of extremely low sunspot activity, resulting in a "little ice age" that lasted for nearly 100 years!! The Maunder Minimum is the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.... .....During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 spots in modern times. The highlighted/underlined fact above should be MORE THAN CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE that sunspot activity plays a MAJOR role in global climate. 50 sunspots during a mini-ice age versus thousands of them over a 30 year period in a global warming scenario. That really strikes me as indicating that your "CO2 fluctuations" are pretty irrelevant, if not actually a consequence of, solar (in)activity in the grand scheme of global climate change. I also believe that humans have become a force that can alter climate through its own actions, Depends on how you define "force" and the degree of alteration both in quantity and area. It's easy to state that every breath a human takes can "alter" the environment. Of course, it only to a miniscule level, but still it's alteration. But compare the emissions of the entire history of humanity to the effect of all the natural GG emissions by the oceans, peat bogs, swamps, volcanoes, or various fauna. This planet has seen FAR WORSE climatic change during periods LONG BEFORE the advent of mankind and our industrialism. So to think that man has finally reached the level where it's more powerful than mother nature displays a huge amount of hubris on your part. Sure... we may have unlocked a huge amount of sequestered CO2 via our burning of fossil fuels. But you have to ask how all of those hydrocarbons got sequestered in the first place in such HUGE QUANTITIES? Does that mean we shouldn't seek out non-fossil fuel energy, or renewable hydrocarbons that create a closed CO2 cycle? No... We definitely should, if only to be good stewards of the environment and to maintain a hospitable habitat for all lifeforms. And we're within 30-40 years of achieving that, IMO. But if we're smart, we'll utilize the planets natural CO2 sequestration processes to counter our emissions until such a point where we have substantially reduced our contributions. Hawk