Originally posted by atlasastro
Why are the Artic, and antartic melting[?] Why is global glacial ice still melting[?]
Glaciers worldwide have
always been in recession, as far as Mankind is concerned. Since the end of the last major Ice Age, glaciers around the
globe have retreated by thousands of miles, shrinking to mere trickles of their former presence on Earth...
and thankfully so. If not
for glacial retreat, only isolated pockets of humankind would still be struggling for survival, probably no more technically advanced than our Stone
Age ancestors.
It always amuses me when shallow and ignorant
global warming alarmists (who are often world leaders) venture out on their much-publicized
fact-finding tours and end up in
Iceland, gawking at retreating glaciers while surrounded by volcanos and geothermal activity. Do these people
really have
so little grasp of cause & effect?
The Arctic and Antarctic also go through cycles of expansion and recession, just as they have done all throughout the history of Earth. In point of
fact, current evidence shows that the Arctic is
retaining more ice than normal during its seasonal melt — meaning that the Arctic is
accumulating more ice from year to year.
Current Arctic Sea Ice Analysis
I quote the above-linked site:
"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the 2008 melt season was the higher-than-average retention of first-year sea ice (see earlier entries,
including April 7). Relatively thin first-year ice is more prone to melting out completely than older, thicker ice. However, more of this year’s
first-year ice survived the melt season than is typical. Sea ice age maps from Sheldon Drobot, our colleague at the University of Colorado at Boulder,
show that much more first-year ice survived in 2008 than in 2007. This is one of the reasons that 2008 did not break last year's record-low
minimum."
So much for the Arctic.
As for the Antarctic, the main area of concern for "manmade global warming" fanatics is the vast
Western Ice Sheet, where we have seen steady
ice recession and some recent break-aways. However, this period of Antarctic ice recession
has been ongoing for some 10,000 years, predating
manmade greenhouse gases all the way back into the Stone Age. Not too many SUVs around back then.
And, as a matter of fact, the most
damnable revelation is that Antarctica's Western Ice Sheet is now getting
thicker, which seems to
mark a
reversal of this 10,000 year melt cycle.
Antarctic Western Ice Sheet Thickening
I quote from the above-linked BBC story:
"Dr Ian Joughin, of the American space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Slawed Tulaczyk, of the University of California at Santa
Cruz, say they have found strong evidence that the ice sheet in the Ross Sea area is growing, by 26.8 gigatons per year. Most of the growth is on an
ice sheet called Ice Stream C. 'The ice sheet has been retreating for the last few thousand years, but we think the end of this retreat has come,'
says Dr Joughin."
And, here's a little tidbit that was quickly swept under the carpet by
manmade global warming fanatics earlier this year — a massive
volcano exists beneath the Western Ice Sheet, probably contributing to Antarctic ice recession over the last 2000 years.
Volcano Under Antarctica's Western Ice Sheet
I quote from the above-linked story:
"A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding which raises
questions about ice loss from the white continent. The explosive event – rated 'severe' to 'cataclysmic' on an international scale of volcanic
force – punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12 kilometres into the sky, said British scientists behind the find.
Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth's crust that gives rise to occasional volcanism and geothermal
heat, occurring on the Antarctic coastal margins. This is the first evidence for an eruption under the ice sheet itself – a slab of frozen water,
hundreds of metres thick in places, that holds most of the world's stock of fresh water. Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience this week, the
investigators from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), In Cambridge, England, describe the finding as 'unique.' It extends the range of known
volcanism in Antarctica by some 500 km and raises the question whether this or other sub-glacial volcanoes may have melted so much ice that global sea
levels were affected, they said."
So much for
manmade global warming and its impact on the Antarctic. A decade or so from now, we'll look back on this media-driven hysteria as
one of the darkest periods in scientific credibility. And I think some heads should roll for causing it.
— Doc Velocity
