Past evidence boosts concern for Greenland icesheet: scientists

[lligrd]

Source: AFP

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists Sunday said they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet -- a prospect, once the preserve of doomsayers, that would see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas.

The researchers found that the great Laurentide icesheet which smothered much of North America during the last Ice Age melted far swifter than realised, dumping billions of tonnes of water into the ocean.

The discovery raises worrying questions about the future stability of Greenland's icesheet, for the Laurentide melt occurred thanks to a spurt of warming that could be mirrored once more by the end of this century, they said

<snip>

"This new evidence from the past, paired with our model for predicting future climate, indicates that 'glacial' is anything but slow. Past icesheets responded quickly to a changing climate, hinting at the potential for a similar response in the future."



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080831/ts_afp/climatewarmingice_080831173826

[ben_meyers]

1. Don't say that because

someone will post that Global Climate change seems to have happened throughout the history of the earth with or without the existence of human interaction.

And then some will come back with some obscure "scientific theory" to prove that it never ever happened this fast before and post twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence of their position.

You are opening a can of worms here.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spin]

3. Well while it is true that Global Climate change has happened...

many times in the past history of the earth, it is also true that pumping tons and tons of pollution into the atmosphere isn't helping the environment.

[lligrd]

5. Self Delete

[greenman3610]

6. climate has changed in the past

We know why it has changed
(orbital variations, catastrophic volcanic eruptions, tectonic
shifts, Mountain building)

Because we know why it has changed,
we know that adding Greenhouse gases
duplicates natural processes that have
happened in the past ( and are not happening now)

Therefore we understand that we must stop what
we are doing.

Chapter 6 of the IPCC, "PaleoClimate", is a free
download that answers many of these questions.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Also, "Origin and Evolution of Earth", by the
National Academy of Science - Download
Chapter 4 for only 5.50
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12161

[wildflower]

7. Simple and concise; thank you

I often wrestle with how to explain this to global warming deniers; I think your explanation is an excellent one.

[kristopher]

9. The 'deniers' don't give a fig about explanations or facts...

The 'deniers' don't give a fig about explanations or facts, they are acting as part of an ideological club that is centered on a set of beliefs about the environment and the human relationship to it. They are deserving of nothing but ridicule. This environmental skepticism movement is described well by Peter Jacques here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/global_environmental_politics/v006/6.1jacques.html

"Environmental skepticism doubts the importance and reality of environmental problems, but it is not about science. It is about politics—global politics to be specific. In 2001, Cambridge University Press published Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist,1 which argued that the world's environmental conditions and human well-being were nearly universally improving, using Julian Simon's work as an inspiration.2

This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.3

In its elemental form,4 the skeptical program asserts that there are no environmental problems that threaten environmental sustainability, except perhaps the environmental movement which they believe is obstructing human progress.5 Importantly, environmental skepticism is distinct from, if sympathetic to, what is often referred to as "free market environmentalism,"6 which questions the legitimate role of government in environmental problems but does not argue that environmental problems are imagined or politically fabricated. Skepticism is also distinct, if sympathetic with, the US counter-environmental Wise Use movement for local industrial access to public lands, though Wise Use leaders such as Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb are also environmental skeptics.7 Thus, even though skepticism "from the start" has been and is part of the "broader stream of right-wing political"8 movement, skepticism is a new kind of anti-environmental sub-movement.

Since most of the controversy surrounding environmental skepticism has been on the order of "why it is wrong,"9 academic discussions have been focused on the fact that its assertions are scientific outliers.10 However, the importance of skepticism lies outside of its epistemic challenges.

There are two reasons why its political claims are more important than if and how skepticism is generally incorrect. First, science alone, if at all, does not drive international environmental (or other) policy, and the fact that skepticism has found an audience among important elites is more consequential than its (mis)representation of environmental conditions.11 Second, if the Kyoto Protocol controversy in the US is any indicator, simply creating significant levels of conflict within epistemic communities may be just as effective in stalling protective environmental policy as settling a debate between claims. Therefore, the contrarian knowledge claims made by skeptics are of secondary importance tothe political conflict they generate and the meaning this has for global societies.12

Skepticism's doubt of environmental knowledge is thus superficial, tangential even, to its more important arguments for limiting who and what citizens are responsible to and for. More importantly, the struggle over the state of the planet is a struggle over society's dominant core social values that institutionalize obligation and power. This contest has been overshadowed if not wholly unrealized because academics have been overly concerned with the contrarian claims themselves, leaving the meaning of skepticism relatively underdetermined and under-analyzed. This paper begins addressing these more profound political issues.

From here, the paper is organized to describe the "what," "how," and "why" of skepticism in that order by deconstructing the relevant literature. The paper introduces the concept of "deep anthropocentrism" as an ethical assumption that separates non-human nature from society. Doing so effectively dissolves impending civic duty and obligation to ecological changes because they are no longer important. Most importantly, the environmental skeptical movement guards against paradigmatic changes to world dominant social values and institutions that guide the global accumulation and concentration of power."

[spin]

10. I grew up in the 60's in a small industrial town ....

Ashtabula, Ohio.

The pollution from the factories was so bad that you had to roll your windows up when you drove near them. One of the workers told me that it would eat the paint off the employees cars. When I went back to Ashtabula after I left the service, I had to renew my driver's license. I was given a map of the state that had a picture of a factory belching smoke and a caption that said, "Progress is not a Dirty Word in Ohio". At that moment I made a decision to get the hell out of Ohio. I moved to Florida.

So I know pollution and I have seen it's effects. When I was watching the Olympics I realized that we had merely outsourced pollution. I guess the politicians feel that if you can't see it, it's no problem. If it happens in China or India, who cares.

As I mentioned, we really don't understand all the factors that influence climate change. It's simplistic to assume that mankind is causing hurricanes. There is a possibility that we are, but a lot of reputable scientists feel that pollution is one of many factors. The problem is that if we really are causing the climate to change, by the time we prove it, it will too late.

Nevertheless, pollution is hurting the environment and we need to do everything we can to stop it. If the "sky is falling" approach in necessary to wake people up, well so be it.

[trthnd4jstc]

4. Imagine 100 years from now and the Atlantic Ocean, a foot or more higher.

.12 inches of rise a year X 100 = 12", but if Greenlandish, and Antartic Ice Melts even faster, which I think it will, like a cascade effect on the glaciers, and the dark water effect in the oceans, the Oceans will rise more than that. To the 'Pukes, you F#ckers will be affected when your g=dd@m beach houses slide into, or get swamped by the oceans.

[aquart]

8. Have you seen those artificial islands for the rich?

In one of those tiny oil emirates?

[bhikkhu]

11. weep, weep, for the Dubai Mega Projects....

[trthnd4jstc]

12. Oh Yeah, and those islands are not much above sea level.

We have so much work to be done, and yet Most of the Rich continue with their country club lives, drinking and partying, and doing nothing to move the world forward, decrease the population, humanely, create sustainable economies, and create a world of justice, and honor. What a shame, that all this time is wasted, and us few who are concerned have so much crap that we have to deal with.

[aquart]

13. Not much above sea level at all.

I can't deal with what will happen to Manhattan and Long Island...so I let my mind drift out to sea to those artificial edens, those heavy concentrations of uber wealth...

[Newsjock]

14. Huge ice sheet could melt faster than thought: report

Source: Canadian Press

HALIFAX — One of the world's largest masses of ice could melt much faster than predicted, says a new study that warns the steady loss of the Greenland ice sheet could raise sea levels three times higher than estimated.

The report, released Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, challenges current predictions about the rate at which the massive ice sheet is predicted to melt over the next century as greenhouse gases rise and temperatures warm.

The report's authors say the loss of the ice mass could raise global sea levels by up to five millimetres a year— almost three times the current estimates set by an international authority on the issue.

... Mr. Carlson says that if the Greenland sheet completely disappeared, it would raise sea levels by seven metres, adding that even the slightest increases could threaten hundreds of millions of people in coastal communities.

“The word 'glacial' used to imply that something was very slow,” co-author Allegra LeGrande of the New York-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote in the report. “This new evidence ... indicates that 'glacial' is anything but slow.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080831.wicesheetmelt0831/BNStory/Science/home

[XemaSab]

15. .

[opihimoimoi]

16. Palin should be informed cause she thinks climate change is BS

[kestrel91316]

18. I guarantee you Miss Wasilla 1984's mind is hermetically sealed shut

on the subject of global warming.

[opihimoimoi]

20. OMG...a Fundie of the worst kind.....DENIAL is a sign of Fantasy which often leads to TRAGEDY

Pathetic

[FirstLight]

17. Will this hurricane season be the one that shows us what a rise in sea level looks like?

Between gustav & hanna...I think about the storm surges and the rising waters from icemelt and the low lying lands..it would seem that these will be some of the first land masses to be actually 'consumed' by the rising ocean.

would that be enough to make people wake up and realize golbal warming is a threat?


I am not wishing Ill on anyone, just thinking of it in a geological/meterological way...

[FuckYouAROCK]

19. It'll be alright

I mean it's not like global warming is real or anything :eyes:

[Cronus Protagonist]

21. Damn, I can think very fast!!

Faster than thought??? Are you SERIES!!1????

[bean fidhleir]

22. So far, Lovelock seems to be right on the money. Everyone says "oh no, it won't be as bad as he

says" and then later "damn, this is happening faster than we thought".

What's awful is that he might actually be proven to have been *optimistic* - he said "north pole iceless by 2020-2025", the conventional wisdom was "not before 2070". Now the conventional guys are saying "damn, this is happening faster than we thought. It could be 2030", and there's evidence that it might happen by 2010.

[Bigmack]

24. Huge volumes of fresh water "dumped" into the north Atlantic could disrupt

the thermohaline current......maybe I'm not reading these posts closely enuf, but I haven't seen comment on this dire possibility..... I realize that mentioning the possibility of rapid cooling in north Europe in the context of global warming is impossibly confusing to the Great Unwashed, but it has always seemed to me that this possibility is AT LEAST as dire as the likely rise of sea levels. Ms Bigmack

[bean fidhleir]

25. Lovelock now believes that won't be a problem, if it happens, because

the global temperature rise would offset the loss of the warming current.

[Zero Division]

23. The MSM defines legitimate debate as the mainstream scientific....

consensus versus the deniers when, perhaps, the debate should be presented more in the direction of whether the mainstream AGW consensus is too conservative. Funny how the so-called skeptics call the mainstream consensus "alarmist", when the truth seems to come out repeatedly as being worse than the consensus had thought.

[Uncle Joe]

26. Good observation, darkblue.

:thumbsup: