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Polar ice-caps melting

N

Nemesis77

Diamond Member


<<
An Antarctic ice shelf that was 200 metres thick and with a surface area of 3,250 square kilometers has broken apart in less than a month.

UK scientists say the Larsen B shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula has fragmented into small icebergs.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (Bas) predicted in 1998 that several ice shelves around the peninsula were doomed because of rising temperatures in the region - but the speed with which the Larsen B has gone has shocked them.

"We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering," said Dr David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the Bas in Cambridge, UK.

"[It is hard] to believe that 500 million billion tonnes of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month."

Faster flow

The climate on the peninsula has changed rapidly in the last 50 years. The region has experienced a 2.5 degree Celsius rise in average temperatures - an increase greater than for any location in the Southern Hemisphere.

However, the picture generally in Antarctica is a complicated one with temperatures in the interior actually falling over the same period. There is also some evidence that the retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, on the other side of the peninsula to the Larsen B shelf, has halted.

The Larsen B was one of five ice shelves - huge masses of ice that are floating extensions of the ice sheets covering the land - that had been steadily shrinking because of climate change, Dr Vaughan said.

But the break up of the ice mass would not raise sea levels because the ice was already floating, he added. Sea levels would only be affected if the land ice behind it now began to flow more rapidly into the sea.
 >>



Source

EDIT: Forgot the source 😱
 
The Ross ice shelf is heading for the same demise,and if it fails,say good-by to Miami, the Florida keys,New York City. If it goes, the ocean is predicted to rise 15 feet. But of course, we need more studies, don't we? An Ice shelf the size of Rhode Island slides out to sea,but those who think we are not having a global warming problem will stall any attempt to curb greenhouse emmisions for all the stupidest reasons you can imagine. If this thread gets legs, the hosers will be here telling you there is no problem.

go figure
rolleye.gif
 


<< If this thread gets legs, the hosers will be here telling you there is no problem. >>


There's no problem. I'm banking on retiring to beachfront property when I'm 60. By that time my parents' townhouse in Western NJ will be beachfront.

🙂
 


<< Global warming is a VERY serious threat. why don't people care more? >>



Because it's very hard to have good data that supports it.




Not that I don't believe it does. Just answering your question.
 
Navy report shows polar cap is shrinking fast



<< The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report.

Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 -- or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

For the U.S. Navy, this presents an unprecedented challenge: a new ocean.

The nation's maritime military does not yet have the ships, training, technology and logistics in place to patrol or police a wide-open polar sea, according to the final report from a symposium on Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic.

As a result, the Navy needs to start planning now on how to deal with it, said Dennis Conlon, program manager of high latitude dynamics at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.

For example, the ice "canopy" that now hides U.S. submarines will disappear, while opening the surface to marine operations by rival navies, criminals or even terrorists.

The report offers an early warning for naval operations, Conlon said in a telephone interview this week.

"It's being briefed at high levels throughout the Navy and the Department of Defense. The specific needs haven't been developed yet, but the attitude is in place. . . . I think with any positive reaction to this report, you're going to see an increased role for Alaska."

Released to the public last week, the report was based on a meeting last spring at the Washington Naval Yard with 50 officers and scientists from the Navy, Coast Guard, Canadian military, Royal Navy and academic institutions.

The most critical needs for the Navy include increasing the bandwidth of radio communications and navigational aids over the Arctic, a process that will likely require additional polar satellites, Conlon said.

"In the Bering Sea, you can still depend on the normal satellite communications and the (Global Positioning System), but the further north you get to the North Pole, those things tend to drop off and become less available," Conlon said.

The Navy will also need to bolster search-and-rescue abilities and redesign equipment for operations in a deep ocean that features icing, fog, poor visibility, bad weather and intermittent ice.

The new sea routes will reduce shipping times between Europe and Asia, but are now claimed as national waters by Russia and Canada. Hinting at controversy to come, Alaska officials and environmental groups issued alarms last year over a proposal to use Russian ice breakers to help transport spent nuclear fuel back and forth between Europe and Japan.

Though the 72-page report primarily addressed naval issues, it offered a vivid update on how recent warming has been consuming the polar cap.

Submarine data has found a 40 percent decrease in the volume of the Arctic ice. Since the 1970s, the ice cover extent has been shrinking about 3 percent per decade, bringing more precipitation and worsening weather north of Alaska.

The changes may be speeding up, Conlon said. Last year, the Bering Sea remained ice-free for the first time on record. Satellite imagery found that a regular commercial ship could have traveled last summer from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans over Canada.

"It looks like the Northwest Passage was open for about 10 days to two weeks," Conlon said. "That surprised me and a few of my Arctic colleagues."

Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com and 907 257-4334. >>





ps.. check out the map on the page
 
The problem with the problem of global warming is this. No one is certain that it exists. Now if it does exist, is certain it is man-made? Notice the emphasis on certainty. What is certain is that any action taken to avert or mitigate warming would have ENORMOUS economic consequences. The drain on the worldwide economy would most likely cause economic downturns that would make the Depression look insignificant by comparison. Many people are unwilling to put up with that even if satisfied that global warming was a fact. Generally you would find comments like "maybe warming is a good thing" Obviously these individuals know little of what they speak, so I will dismiss them out of hand. Now back to the real problem- money- and lack of concrete evidence. Trillions of dollars. MANY trillions of dollars. And you are going to spend them because there MIGHT be a problem? Not gonna happen. Everything in climatology is based on models of complex chaotic systems that do not lend themselves well to modeling. That is the scientific conundrum. Until EVIDENCE showing warming is fact AND that it is man-made and not a natural event comes to light, expect to see little done.
 
Czar:

Given that that article is correct, show proof that it related to man-made global warming.

This is an example of what I just posted. A lot of data without correlation.

I am not saying global warming exists or not. This is deliberate, as my opinion is not important, but determining the facts are.
 
It isnt certain it exists, but it is possible that it exists, and it being caused by us. Why would we want to take such a big risk, when doing thing such as reducing emissions, using less fuel/ alternate energy sources... this would benefit everyone with a cleaner, better planet? If all the politicians would realize what is happening instead of putting it off like the procrastinators they are, we wouldn't have a problem.

Edit: Plus, some things we could do would not have an ENOURMOUS economic effect. Reducing emmisions? Why don't we? Because of greed. Simple, human, greed. That is the bottom line to most every problem that exists in the world.
 


<< It isnt certain it exists, but it is possible that it exists, and it being caused by us. Why would we want to take such a big risk, when doing thing such as reducing emissions, using less fuel/ alternate energy sources... this would benefit everyone with a cleaner, better planet? If all the politicians would realize what is happening instead of putting it off like the procrastinators they are, we wouldn't have a problem. >>



Money. Money. Money.

This is an ugly lesson in reality. What you are suggesting to do is good, but will the WORLD, (that means developing countries as well as the US) give up what it wants on the POSSIBILITY that it may be correct without good, solid, evidence? Are many families going to support such heavy taxation to get this under control, that they cant send their children to college? Yes it will cost that much to do it in a time scale where it makes a difference.
 


<< Plus, some things we could do would not have an ENOURMOUS economic effect. Reducing emmisions? Why don't we? Because of greed. Simple, human, greed. That is the bottom line to most every problem that exists in the world. >>


It's survival of the fittest, Mac(x). And we've got the F'ing guns.

Couldn't resist after seeing your Pi Sig 🙂
 


<< Global warming is a VERY serious threat. why don't people care more? >>




Maybe because the same people screaming about the current global warming "problem" are the same ones screaming about a new ice age back in the '60s and '70s.
 
We are a reactive society instead of a preventative society. They will start moving once the waters start rising around the coastal cities but by then it will be too late. Same thing for our medical, our health care system will not cover preventative tests and medicine but once you have something then by all means let the testing begin.

Best example recently is the reports of the Philippine government uncovering the exact plot scenario that happened on 9/11 back in 1995. The plot showed them going to aviation schools in America and hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. They turned the info over to the FBI and yet no rules to hijacking or extra security for the planes were ever done. It had to happen first before they get their heads out of the sand. Seeing reports like the ice caps melting and the terror plots discovered years ago and nothing is being done really make me angry. As great as this country is, it sure can be na&iuml;ve.
 
Don't worry about the polar icecaps. When the oceans rise, the total reflective surface increases as well as the thermal absorbency of the total volume of water, causing an anti-reaction of cooling on the planet. So basically we're headed for the next ice age. Keep in mind that an ice age does not mean the whole planet get's frozen, but be prepared for severe temperature drops in the next 10 years.
 
Don't worry about the polar icecaps. When the oceans rise, the total reflective surface increases as well as the thermal absorbency of the total volume of water, causing an anti-reaction of cooling on the planet. So basically we're headed for the next ice age. Keep in mind that an ice age does not mean the whole planet get's frozen, but be prepared for severe temperature drops in the next 10 years.

Is that before or after I can step out the 15th floor balcony at the Miami Fontainblue Hotel and launch my surfboard?

It is happening right before your eyes. You watch an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island melt and break apart and yoy still want imperical evidence that global warming is the cause before you spend the energy to change your way of thinking about your responsibility as steward's of mother earth.

A murderer can be convicted and put to death for anactdotal and circumstantial evidence,and you nay sayers don't blink an eye,yet when something as serious as this happens, with the entire Ross ice shelf on the brink of following B-15, you demand emerical evidence as proof before you do anything to change your ways.

hmmmmm. Is ignorance bliss?🙁
 
Tripleshot - I'm glad to see that your ignorance extends far past political issues.

News article on the melting



<< The British Antarctic Survey limited its observation to earlier studies that found the peninsula has warmed by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 50 years ? much faster than global warming worldwide or even in other parts of Antarctica. The peninsula is the Antarctic area closest to southern Argentina and Chile. >>





<< In comments to MSNBC.com, Scambos was careful not to tie the collapse to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, and noted that computer models actually predicted different regional effects from those gases. >>





<< Other studies have actually suggested some Antarctic areas might be cooling. The researchers said the thickening, if not merely part of some short-term fluctuation, represented a reversal of the long retreat of the ice. >>



It is junk science to immediately say that there is "global warming that caused the ice shelf to collapse". That's typical Tripleshot, lots of screaming and yelling but little thought.

Every reasonable study I've read, including from those who do not think there is all that much man-made global warming all agree that it is probable that our activity is affecting the overall environment. In the past few decades, the United States and Europe have both taken more and more actions to reduce the rate of increase of emissions. It's not like nothing has been done.

The key issue is the total economic cost. The developed world could probably bear it, but the developing world can not.

There is a great deal of evidence that the extreme views about global warming are wrong. The models being used to support global warming have done a very poor job of predicting what is actually occurring and many feel that they are too inaccurate to rely on.

I'm for continuing to keep the pressure up to reduce emissions but I'm against Chicken Little's running around with their heads cut off as is far too common.

Michael
 
Global warming does exsist, but man isnt the cause of it. The earth heats up and cools down in cycles, has for the past billion years. There isnt a shred of proof that says man is the cause of the current warming trend. Sure we create greenhouse gases, but mother earth creates far far more by herself. Its funny though in the 60-70s people said greenhouse gases would lead to the next ice age. Also when the mainland ice of Antartica starts melting, then we have a problem, but as it is now, interior antartica is only getting colder not warmer.
 
Poor penquins. They probably have no idea about climate cycles on earth, muchless global warming theories, and they're out there probably blaming some of their own for jumping up and down to hard on the ice shelf or something. Somebody outta get the word out to them that its not their fault. 🙁
 
Go visit NASA's website and read up on global warming. It is unlikely to be manmade considering the amount of energy man would have to release is equal to several inventories of the U.S.'s nuclear stockpile, and all of it concentrated on the south pole.

The same scientists measuring the ice flows are reading instruments on the interior of the landmass and concude that the inland temperatures have fallen. This is not global warming, but rather a shift of energy.

There is alot more energy in the weather and environment than man could ever hope to harvest for his own use.
 
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