Greenland Ice Melt: See if this don't scare you!, page 1
Pages: <<  1    2    3    4  >>
ATS Members have flagged this thread 1 times
Topic started on 25-6-2006 @ 08:49 AM by loam
This is a long article, and I've lifted some of the most disturbing sentences... I urge you to read the whole thing...






Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away: The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet.


Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted...

...By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February...

...Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate...

...By 2005, Greenland was beginning to lose more ice volume than anyone expected — an annual loss of up to 52 cubic miles a year — according to more recent satellite gravity measurements released by JPL...

...The amount of freshwater ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has almost tripled in a decade...

...There was even a period of melting in December..."We have never seen that," ...

...Most of the computer models on which climate predictions are based did not take the dynamics of the glaciers into account...

...In all, 12 major outlet glaciers drain the ice sheet the way rivers drain a watershed, setting the pace of its release to the ocean. If they all slide too quickly, there is a possibility that, perhaps decades from now, they could collapse suddenly and release the entire ice sheet into the ocean...



By far the most disturbing article I have read in a long time...


[edit on 26-6-2006 by loam]


reply posted on 25-6-2006 @ 12:23 PM by WithoutEqual
I find it laughable, that everyones so sure what the cause is for the climate changing, yet, they can't explain what caused other climate changes in the earths history. We're looking at a brief snapshot of time, literally a sliver compared to the age of the earth.

Noone was measuring water levels on our coasts 400 years ago, noone was counting hurricanes that hit the states 400 years ago. Can anyone even give me an average temp for every year for the past 1000 years so I can take a look myself? Give me proof, not flashy videos, or gores crap, or psudoscience, but actual NUMBERS over the course of many years, that's what it'll take to convince me.

Everytime humans try to "change the world" we just screw it up 10x worse. We use cat converters on our cars to "save the world" years later, we find out that what comes out of a cat converter is worse for the environment than what goes into it. But hey, we still have to use them, law requires it, even though it damages the air more than open headers.

Environmentalism is big business, a huge money maker, remember that.

My city opens fire hydrants for kids in the summer, yet I'm forced to have to buy "low flow" faucets and shower heads cause someone says it's bad for mother earth. And people wonder why I drill em out to make them "high flow".

Oh yeah, and since alot of you believe in global warming, well, do you realize how destructive to the earth manufacturing a computer is? To make the chip board your using RIGHT NOW they dipped it in a OPEN AIR BATH of FREON before and after soldering. So please, quit screwing with my water, and my car, and worry about yourselves. Think about how much freon evaporating into the atmosphere it took make the servers this site uses, or to make your TV, ect. Every environmentalist in the world has a computer, mmm the sweet sweet smell of hiprocracy.


reply posted on 26-6-2006 @ 12:48 AM by zorgon
Well since CO2 {Carbon Dioxide is supposed to be one of the main contributors to Global warming} I wonder if any one has studied the effect of 6 billion people breathing? Just how much CO2 are we putting into the eco system? I bet its a lot!

Recently I was following a post here on the earthquakes in Alaska, particularily Rat Islands. It seemed like it was panic time 40 to 50 quakes a day as high as 6.2.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Well read the thread. It has cool links to the earthquake monitoring centers updated daily. But when things calmed down a little, and you look at the data since 1973, you suddenly see that this is NORMAL for the region

Environmental concern is good, its smart and just plain right thing to do . But lets not panic. Like the big hurricanes, the weather cycles. Like the ozone layer scare, that "hole" over the pole was always there... has to be if you understand the ozone cycle and how its created.

You know when to panic? When the government moves all its naval bases to higher ground!!


On second thought... we have a Coast Guard station here near Laughlin, in the desert. Maybe they know something? {checking my elevation... nope 2434 above sea level... I'm good}

Perhaps if the end is near a good idea would be to get off the computer and go live a little in the outside world, before its all gone

[edit on 26-6-2006 by zorgon]


reply posted on 26-6-2006 @ 12:52 AM by loam
Originally posted by pavil
Not sure how this ties in since I can't find the report. I remember either reading or hearing recently about the Antarctic Melt compared to the amount of new snow laid down and it was pretty much a net even exchange. It implied, if I remember it correctly, that the amount of water trapped in the Antarctic region is staying pretty much the same.


The source article mentions this, but here is what they have to say about it:


The ice sheet seemed such a stolid reservoir of cold that many experts had been confident of it taking centuries for higher temperatures to work their way thousands of feet down to the base of the ice cap and undermine its stability.

By and large, computer models supported that view, predicting that as winter temperatures rose, more snow would fall across the dome of the ice cap. Thus, by the seasonal bookkeeping of the ice sheet, Greenland would neatly balance its losses through new snow.

Indeed, Zwally and his colleagues in March released an analysis of data from two European remote-sensing satellites showing the amount of water locked up in the ice sheet had risen slightly between 1992 and 2002.

Then the ice sheet began to confound computer-generated predictions.

By 2005, Greenland was beginning to lose more ice volume than anyone expected — an annual loss of up to 52 cubic miles a year — according to more recent satellite gravity measurements released by JPL.


Moreover, what was not anticipated by these models was the structure beneath the ice.


In an influential paper published in Science, Zwally surmised that the ice sheets had accelerated in response to warmer temperatures, as summer meltwater lubricated the base of the ice sheet and allowed it to slide faster toward the sea.

In a way no one had detected, the warm water made its way through thousands of feet of ice to the bedrock — in weeks, not decades or centuries.

So much water streamed beneath the ice that in high summer the entire ice sheet near Swiss Camp briefly bulged 2 feet higher, like the crest of a subterranean wave.


The article continues:


At the same time, University of Texas physicist Ginny Catania pulled an ice-penetrating radar in a search pattern around the camp, seeking evidence of any melt holes or drainage crevices that could so quickly channel the hot water of global warming deep into the ice.

To her surprise, she detected a maze of tunnels, natural pipes and cracks beneath the unblemished surface.

"I have never seen anything like it, except in an area where people have been drilling bore holes," Catania said.

No one knows how much of the ice sheet is affected.


In other words, we may have gotten it wrong on several levels.

[edit on 26-6-2006 by loam]
Pages: <<  1    2    3    4  >>    ^^TOP^^



Lake Vostok Antarctica: breakthrough imminent.
  Posted 10 days ago with 175 member flags
Sky Sounds 1/25/2012 Atlanta, GA Personal Video/Audio
  Posted 17 days ago with 146 member flags
Strange sounds warn us of incoming, and very soon...
  Posted 6 days ago with 134 member flags
Volcano in Iceland Erupting Alongside The Aurora Borealis (pics)
  Posted 7 days ago with 121 member flags
6 of the oldest trees from around the world.
  Posted 10 days ago with 108 member flags
West Coast USA: Pay Attention, Cascadia May Be Ready to Rupture
  Posted 8 days ago with 87 member flags
CONFIRMED: Global Warming \'Ended 15 Years Ago\'
  Posted 14 days ago with 75 member flags
Pictures from the Aurora lightshow
  Posted 18 days ago with 73 member flags