Tibetan Glaciers Melting at Stunning Rate

Tibetan Glaciers Melting at Stunning Rate

dsc.discovery.com

Nov. 24, 2008 -- Glaciers high in the Himalayas are dwindling faster than anyone thought, putting nearly a billion people living in South Asia in peril of losing their water supply.

Throughout India, China, and Nepal, some 15,000 glaciers speckle the Tibetan Plateau, some of the highest land in the world.

(visit the link for the full news article)

A billion people are now in near-future jeopardy of losing their water supply, not to mention how this will impact Asian economies by bringing mass-manufacturing to a dead-halt (no pun intended).

I know 'water wars' is an ever more commonly used term, but I think these findings takes the term out of the realm of rhetorical conjecture and into the sphere of imminent reality.

This is happening in real-time, even though it sounds like an awful kind of make-believe... Anyone have any specific ideas as to how this may, or will, play out?

dsc.discovery.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by TheWayISeeIt

Anyone have any specific ideas as to how this may, or will, play out?

Good thread, scarry-interseting, TheWayYOUSeeIt Star!
This is TheWayISeeIt- nyuk nyuk...

Melting glaciers will be a problem for people who live on coastlines all over the world, due to increasing sea levels, for starts. Also disrupting the ocean currents, and temperatures. With warmer temps, the waters "bulge" and mean more frequent, and more violent storms associated with them, such as hurricanes & typhoons.

Another frightening fact is how they are releasing gasses & pollutants previously thought to be frozen inside forever! Like Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT); a synthetic insecticide banned in the 70's, but still used in other parts of the world, and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB's).
Chemicals melt out of glaciers

Already affecting mammals & aquatic plants & animals & fish, degrading the food chain, and the atmosphere. Soot and unburnt particles from coal & industrial smoke (cough) have been deposited, then released from glacial melt for decades now.

Not to mention whatever could be trapped way down in the ice, that we have NO idea about; like the possibility of some alien, or celestial objects, which could contain elements or properties we don't understand. The movie: 'The THING' comes to mind, about alien life that replicates living things on earth...NNYyyaaahhaaa!

Nothing more than more global warming propeganda. All REAL global temperature data has shown a steady decrease in temeprature since 1999, global warming advocates are always fabricating evidence to keep their cash cow scam going. How long will it be before green taxes are as common place as income taxes? In essence we will be taxed just for happening to be alive and nothing more!

Originally posted by Saf85
Nothing more than more global warming propeganda. All REAL global temperature data has shown a steady decrease in temeprature since 1999, global warming advocates are always fabricating evidence to keep their cash cow scam going. How long will it be before green taxes are as common place as income taxes? In essence we will be taxed just for happening to be alive and nothing more!

Uneducated unintelligent drivel not based on fact.

Its ok to pay banking families billions of dollars for bankrupting the world, making your gandchildren work more hours per week for giving that "Sub" now... and let them charge you for printing your own money too, BUT OH no quick we may have to protect the earth that feeds, clothes and provides all the resources we drink, and make money from, quick bash the evidence ... soo strange, anyhow....

Back to observed and scientific and logical reality.

OP S+F

I meant to do a thread on this a few weeks ago, but time...

There is a proven historical and REAL SCIENCE record of similar events in this very region by these glaciers over the past couple of thousands of years, and maybe before well basically since the Himalaya's were formed and more importantly the Tibetan Plateau, which if most people here would look it up may surprise them as to how recent it was!

Basically the dam's for want of a better word are made up of huge amounts of small to large rocks/boulders etc pushed into place holding back the huge amounts of preserved water from cascading down from the highest place on earth and swamping most of North east India, Bangladesh Parts of Pakistan and other areas in the Asian Continent.

One of the worlds most important if not the most important river and its tributaries in the world, providing the irrigation for millions and millions and millions again and more of people could if a "perfect storm" type event happen to some of these glaciers actually stop flowing completely!!!!

Most of the worlds weather system would also then change.

Ladies and gentlemen without scaremongering, this has the potential in the right circumstances to decimate an entire continent firstly, and then to maybe affect the entire global weather beyond our own current models and understanding of it.

Please do do the research on this yourselves and educate yourselves to the following factors,

The Himalaya's and its effect on the world weather system, its as important as the North Atlantic conveyer etc, its relationship to the desert areas of the Gobi, the Jet Stream, the vital continent wide Monsoon rains....

The Brahmaputra and the Ganges rivers and their importance to an entire continent, in much more than just one way being clean water....

The reflective index of the current ice on the Tibetan Plateau in regards to sending thermal energy back to space, its size of such reflective material in an area larger than europe! and the consequences of all the very very DARK rock underneath and permafrost if its gone quickly on global mean average temp.....

The effect on the Yellow River in China and the billion or so people that rely on it if the moisture laden air did not rise above the himalaya's as it does at present but instead hit dark hot rock and nor ice and glaciers....

oh look that would be ANOTHER continent with hardly any current water levels,

The environment that Rice needs to grow in and where the weather of most of CHINA comes from....

I could go on....ladies and gentleman but I am sure you can understand the need to look at this yourself quite closely indeed yes????


more than worried

Elf.

reply to post by Saf85

Nothing more than more global warming propeganda.

It never ceases to amaze my how GW deniers can stare facts in the face and deny they exist.

The Antarctic will be a desert before they admit they were wrong.

Originally posted by pause4thought
reply to post by Saf85

 

Nothing more than more global warming propeganda.

It never ceases to amaze my how GW deniers can stare facts in the face and deny they exist.

The Antarctic will be a desert before they admit they were wrong.

It never ceases to amaze me how GW proponents overlook reports like these:

www.telegraph.co.uk.../opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

www.theregister.co.uk...

network.nationalpost.com...

Originally posted by sos37
It never ceases to amaze me how GW proponents overlook reports like these:

Personally I prefer Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

The Met office

The Russian institute of Science etc etc

BACK on TOPIC

The glaciers are undeniably melting, getting smaller, no small prints of words on computers needed the pictures alone show this.

When this has happened in the past to these glaciers these rock/scree dams have sometimes slipped for want of a better terminology, if you are meting them from 10,000 hair dryers, a big fire, the sun or even UFO laser beams... whatever the cause they are melting at an alarming rate.

If as the CURRENT science shows by the researchers there now, looking at them and measuring them, is to be extrapolated into the VERY NEAR FUTURE maybe a year or just a bit more an ENTIRE continent could be devastated, and our models and reports would go out of the window.

Pro or anti GW...look at my post above why don't you google the importance of these glaciers on global temperatures, weather patterns, winds?

The weather, fresh water and the survival of the most populated and second most populated countries in the world???

And its defining driving factor, and if these weather patterns and drinking/farming water could exist if the main glaciers do as currently being measured melt and flood totally, with no basis for any in any way argument to the contrary?

And then what would happen to YOUR weather and YOUR rainfall and then YOUR food's Source (arable land)

My god wake up, GW human, sun,, little elves with matches, too many Chinese fireworks landing there after the Olympics... who cares if these go we are all F~~~~

Elf

[edit on 25-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

reply to post by sos37

It never ceases to amaze me how GW proponents overlook reports like these...

Problem is your evidence consists of arguments over conflicting data and conflicting interpretations, leading to conflicting presentations of evidence via graphs, etc.

When people take their eyes off all that obfuscation and look at the photographic evidence of how most of the world's glaciers have been retreating over recent decades they begin to see through the propaganda funded by the oil industry and other money-comes-first earth-destroying global businesses.

The photographs speak for themselves:

Evidence from glaciers around the world

We're not going to settle this issue in this thread, that's for sure. However, as I said:

It never ceases to amaze my how GW deniers can stare facts in the face and deny they exist.

I'm waiting for the "photoshopped photos" response even now...

Sriously, there is no point in arguing with people, who when given evidence just refute it with no counter evidence. If GW was a real as you all claim, then start putting up hard eveidence instead of sketchy at best info.

www.globalwarminghoax.com...

Read it, find some solid evidence they tell lies or are wrong, then show some hard proof your right. Untill then I will take my leave of your own ignorance and claims of others ignorance.

Haha funny how in the face of real evidence, all the pro global warming sheep left the thread faster than rats on a sinking ship.

Global warming is fact...whether humans contribute to it significantly is STILL out in the open.Until someone shows me concrete proof im in the middle and there has been no concrete proof.

I have yet to see anything that shows global warming. The only thing I am aware of is that the last year's average mean temp sense it has been calculated actually fell in the bottom 78 record lows globally. When this happened a couple scientists if you want to call them that started touting the earth is now cooling and we could have a mini ice age.

So what is it ice age or global warming? They can't make up their minds. Even Gore is starting to back off the global warming stage.

Originally posted by Darthorious
I have yet to see anything that shows global warming. The only thing I am aware of is that the last year's average mean temp sense it has been calculated actually fell in the bottom 78 record lows globally. When this happened a couple scientists if you want to call them that started touting the earth is now cooling and we could have a mini ice age.

So what is it ice age or global warming? They can't make up their minds. Even Gore is starting to back off the global warming stage.

Global warming has effects on many things which yes could also lead to an ice age in certain parts of the world...everything is linked together its just silly complicated...no scientist has a clue really how everything effects everything when it comes to temp etc...soooo many variables,thats why all these models should be taken with a gram of salt.

BACK ON TOPIC!!!

This is not an Global Warming Thread this is about the Proven Science that these Glaciers are Melting at an alarming rate not articles from the MSM which is controlled by about 10 individuals and corporations in the world, but if you must all I will!

reply to post by Saf85

Sriously, there is no point in arguing with people, who when given evidence just refute it with no counter evidence.

Please look below and debunk some of my links and excerpts not Media Spin.
Which If you looked by researching and not reading the press,
Who provided the evidence mainly comes from the same LOBBY groups who are paid companies, paying scientists, paid by Bush and Co and the likes who also said TABACCO was fine until they were forced by law after Millions of deaths 20-30 yrs ago!
With an abundance of proof smoking does cause cancer, these same LOBBY groups and PAID media scientists were ignoring the science for 30 yrs.... tsskk anyhow here we go on this TOPIC of the THREAD

reply to post by SOS37
As Above


reply to post by Solomons
An intelligent point of view, and you do accept the proof showing this though are not sure of the human contribution, please look at some of the real research below to think over my friend, and you are right the climate is massively complicated, one burp on the sun now could change it for many thousands of years, one large volcanic eruption could affect it for a generation.

reply to post by Darthorious
It’s not hard to "see" just open your eyes, even ignore the data if you like and look at the Pictures!

OK so on topic first THIS TIBETAN Glacier issue,

NO ONE can refute the Science obviously no one who says otherwise did read the paper and research done here, so take a gander at this:

Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University and a team of researchers travelled to central Himalayas in 2006 to study the Naimona'nyi glacier, expecting to find some melting.

Mountain glaciers have been receding all over the world since the 1990's and there was no reason this one, which provides water to the mighty Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra Rivers, should be any different.

But when the team analyzed samples of glacier, what they found stunned them. Glaciers around the planet are usually dated by looking for two pulses pulse of radioactivity buried in the ice.

These are the leftovers from American and Russian atomic bomb testing in the 1950's and 1960's.

In the Naimona'nyi samples, there was no sign of the tests. In fact, the glacier had melted so much that the exposed surface of the glacier dated to 1944.

"We were very surprised not to find the 1962-1963 horizon, and even more surprised not to find the 1951-1952 signal," Thompson said. In more than twenty years of sampling glaciers all over the world, this was the first time both markers were missing

OP SOURCE!! did you read it?

OK from scientists who get funding to study the environment and its behaviour, WITH NO RESEARCH GRANTS FOCUSED ON GLOBAL WARMING a very very good source is WOODS Hole Oceanographic institute.

The IMHO best such research centre in the world, they just collect data, measure and observe, and don't model as much as others. The same as they have since they formed... the US navy is heavily dependant on their research and findings to operate its advanced deep sea research etc.

Now before you bang on about Global Temperatures have fallen by x amount over the last 3-4 years or whatever, KNOW your subject you debunk, of which I DO.

You can in no way at all understand and postulate anything about global warming anthropogenic or not without understanding the engine of our climate the OCEANS.

Most of the effects of C02 release has been to raise the massive bodies of water in the oceans, temperatures and acidity, which then will drive the weather and create bigger extreme and unusual storms, hurricanes and such like, to include the cold weather predicted over parts of Europe and esp Britain.

Global warming does not mean everywhere gets hotter, what it means is that you are adding energy to a CLOSED SYSTEM which as we know from the laws of thermodynamics , energy in means its has to be removed or change form. If that energy is not to be liberated in its current form when it gets to a part of the CLOSED system that allows, for example a cooler area to take on board the heat.

Its really simple science and I think people are sooo dumbed down over the last 20 yrs they can’t understand this basic high school engineering, physics and chemistry.

IF YOU ADD SOMETHING TO A CLOSED SYSTEM IT CANT DISAPEAR! period full stop, it has to be converted to another type or form of energy or spread across the entire system like osmosis...

Now this C02 etc we have without a doubt added since the industrial revolution in massive quantities, with other nasty gases and pollutants is in the system , period, no arguing.

This C02 we have added was originally energy from the sun, which has been buried for millions and millions of years out of the system. We have taken all of that energy which has been stored as hydrocarbons, and added it back into the system. So when people say its the sun causing it, YEP your right in more than one way, the effects of the suns behaviour, sun spots and radiance etc its immediate effects but also the energy from millions of years ago.

So hopefully will help some people think about this a bit more deeply, that Co2 is changing the world by acidifying the oceans, which BYW increases the coastal erosion, Which BTW reduces land to absorb ultraviolet light, Which BTW increases the ocean temp as its heated by the sun, which BTW is happening anyhow due to the blanket created by the Co2.

It’s all feedback and as mentioned massively complicated and massively co-dependant and driven.

So lets look at other glaciers around the world proving that something is definitely melting them, which I don't care what you say means a raise in Temperature, or are there millions of Eskimos lighting fires on them every night?

I read and get the related science journal's I took a B.Sc environmental engineering and management in Uni, so I will link where I can where not will provide source:

Sarah Das of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, US, and colleagues camped out next to a 3-kilometre-wide lake in western Greenland. In July 2006, their seismometers picked up rumbles from the ice, then 30 minutes later the water started draining.

The entire lake was swallowed up in about an hour and a half.

Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado points to Greenland's so-called Dead Glacier, stagnant for decades until it recently became active, which speeds up by 80%t during the summer.

from journal Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1153360

And further:

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Durham University and Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) collected boulders deposited by three glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment -- a region currently the focus of intense international scientific attention because it is changing faster than anywhere else on the WAIS and it has the potential to raise sea-level by around 1.5 metres.

Lead author Dr Joanne Johnson of BAS says, "Until now we didn't know much about the long-term history of this part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet because the region is incredibly remote and inaccessible. Our geological findings add a new piece to the jigsaw SNIP

results show that Pine Island Glacier has 'thinned' by around 4 centimetres per year over the past 5,000 years, while Smith and Pope Glaciers thinned by just over 2 cm per year during the past 14,500 years. These rates are more than 20 times slower than recent changes

Science Daily

So there the Largest Mass of Glacial water in the world IS PROVEN in just MARCH 08 to be melting 20 times Faster than before!!

So we have to all agree that Glaciers are scientifically proven to be melting very quickly, at a faster rate than in recent history and worldwide, from sea level to the Himalayas.

FULL STOP no spin no argument no models no extrapolations REAL results and actually observed NOW.

This freshwater going into the SEA which reduces its salinity and therefore its density and FREEZING LEVEL , think antifreeze??? has massive implication as PROVEN in the past...:

in Earth history, larger climatic events occurred following the rapid freshening of the North Atlantic. The rapid release of freshwater from a large lake near Hudson Bay into the subpolar North Atlantic 8,200 years ago caused a century-long interval of colder and drier conditions over much of the northern hemisphere .

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

So we are in this CLOSED SYSTEM making one change which runs away. making another change, we melt the glaciers, they then add fresh water to the sea and without models, but actual data as above WE KNOW what will happen...

WAKE UP!!

So onto the oceans as I mention above and the fact that they are proven to be getting hotter world wide, and taking most of the Heat caused by the blanket of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, but trust me, it will come back to us again, think El Nino and his Sister!!:

During the last four decades, the oceans have warmed over a very large depth range. That indicates that the ocean has mitigated some of the warming expected from greenhouse gas increases because even a small temperature change in the ocean requires an enormous amount of heat energy to be absorbed by the ocean.

Woods Hole

Proof here:

Contd....

[edit on 27-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

Seriously I have already given enough info to discredit global warming, yet we still have sheep clinging to their silly new age religion? Sheep who seem to claim there is so much solid evidence, yet still do not post any link to anything other than media stories...

If I did not know any better, you guys just swallow anything as long as the media said so. Try showing us some science behind you claims.

How can anyone with an ounce of sense claim ice age can be a result of heating up and melting of glaciers and the polar caps? Do you not contradict yourself makeing such a pathetic claim? Oh wait maybe these holes in the ozone are helping the earth cool down at night? LOL.

Dr Tim Barnett
Research Marine Physicist Scripps Institute of Oceanography Says:

My subject has to do with the warming of world's oceans. I think it's no secret that over the last 40 years there's been considerable warming in the planetary system and approximately 90% of that warming has gone directly into the oceans. So if you want to go find out what's causing it, that's the place to look. We did look: we defined a fingerprint, if you wish, of ocean warming. Each of the oceans warm differently, different rate to different depths, that constitutes a fingerprint that you can look for. We had several computer simulations, for instance, one for the natural variability, could the climate system just do this on its own? The answer was clearly, no. We looked at the possibility that solar changes and volcanic effects could cause the warming - not a chance.

And further:

What just absolutely nailed it was greenhouse warming. Two models, one from here one from England, got the observed warming almost exactly, in fact we were stunned by the degree of similarity between the observations and the models. Well, what does this mean? If you take these results - we got the bulk of the signal, 90% of it – you take these results and combine them with a decade of earlier results, the debate about whether or not there is a global warming signal here now is over - at least for rational people.

Ruth Curry Research Specialist Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The climate system's response to rising greenhouse gasses involves more than just temperature. Earth's water cycle - that's kind of the hydrologic engine that moves fresh water around the planet's surfaces, various phases, ice, liquid water, and water vapour - that water cycle is changing; precipitation patterns are shifting as well. There's large scale drying that's taking place in the temperate zones, especially in the northern hemisphere and it's causing, as Tim just said, severe drought conditions in places like the western United States.

That extra precipitation is instead going to the higher latitudes of both hemispheres. Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet and it's especially apparent in the Arctic.
This melting of the land glaciers combined with ocean warming is causing sea levels to rise and there's a whole lot of extra fresh water that's being dumped into the high latitude, the northern North Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic and this has the potential to interrupt the ocean circulation and to change the way that the ocean transports heat from the low latitudes to the high latitudes. This has the potential to trigger other impacts in the climate system.

And she further adds:

The present situation (in the Arctic) is different than it was in the past. It stores enough fresh water to raise sea level by about 7 metres. It's now beginning to lose mass balance: that's new, that wasn't taking place a decade or two decades ago. Its summer melt area is increasing: fresh water's percolating down to the base of the glaciers and lubricating the base and its ice shelves are becoming unstable. All of these things are potential mechanisms to create a sudden release of fresh water into the critical areas, the areas that are critical to the conveyor. So that's probably the wild card in the system, what could actually cause the conveyor to shut down.

Dr Sharon Smith Oceans and Human Health Center University of Miami

The ice in the Arctic is diminishing fast; the trends in eco system productivity recorded in things like the baleen of the Bowhead whale show a similar downward trend over the last 50 years indicating that the loss of ice has been reflected in a similar reduction in productivity of the food web. Now in the Arctic ice is important in a lot of ways, in terms of animals the ice contains algae that photosynthesise about half of the primary productivity of ice covered seas comes from the ice algae - those are gone, the ice is gone.

This is taken from the journal of the Advancement of American science Meeting in February 2005, where they did a lecture collating their respective research as follows into a talk/lecture:
Dr Tim Barnett 'Changes in the Ocean Heat Budget Due to Anthropogenic Warming and the Role of Models in Detection'
Dr Sharon Smith 'Dramatic Changes Due to Anthropogenic Warming in the Arctic Ocean, Circulation & Marine Ecosystem'
Ruth Curry 'Changes in the Freshwater Budget and Meridional Overturning Circulation Due to Anthropogenic Warming'

I am sure if you contact the respective Universities/Institutes/Dept’s you will be able to get a hold of their Papers and research projects. They went to Peer review, I know of no one who has been able to in ATS terms Debunk any of their data and findings, please let me know if you are aware of any.

Now further from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and collaboration with other scientists and researcher’s:

Scripps Researchers Find Clear Evidence of Human-Produced Warming in World's Oceans:
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their colleagues have produced the first clear evidence of human-produced warming in the world's oceans, a finding they say removes much of the uncertainty associated with debates about global warming.

Scripps institution Of Oceanography

I could go on and on and on.

Read the subject, who in the MSM mentions the oceans?

No one can say that if as the oceans have been proven to be doing, rise in temperatures that it will not affect the weather drastically around the word, it has been shown to as displayed above many many times.
It obviously as well will melt the Glaciers and raise the temperature of the air just above the warming oceans, even if this heat is quickly dissipated into the atmosphere quickly, that air will also flows over the Artic and Antarctic.

The Glaciers ARE melting, Global Warming has been observed, measured, and its fingerprints are everywhere.

To say that over the last 2-5 yrs overall temperatures have dropped is very ignorant of climate, oceans and their interaction. The fact that the trend is the most important factor, especially in our closed system that we are adding things to, and has been proven in the past to produce Feedback within this closed system and runaway interrelated dynamical events will happen my friends unfortunately.

Yep the sun is part of it of course, remember though from millions of years ago we are releasing that stored energy back into the system with a strangely acting sun at present too as well.

Also be aware much of the pollution of the industrial revolution has been reduced in its effects on warming this planet by the pollution of Particulates , like soot, causing global dimming. As we want clean air and not so much of these are added now, those particulates are being washed and settling out of the atmosphere allowing the full strength of the suns ray through….

Oh lastly look at this graph below which the source is irrefutable the NOAA, this is the true trend of all temperatures on earth Sea, Air Land to say its not going the way I say is very ignorant and stupid IMHO!



So does anyone have any evidence to the contrary to what I have posted? And especially in regard to the OP topic that the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting soo quickly?

WAKE UP and don’t listen to Tobacco scientists and their friends people, remember 75% of all the scientists in the western world work fro and are paid fro by the MILITARY INDUTRIAL COMPLEX, really think on that.

Kind regards,

Elf.
Edit to resize graph data set.

[edit on 27-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

Originally posted by Saf85
SNIP as no evidence

did you read my post, or as I proved you never read the OP source

Where is the Radiation in the himalaya glaciers gone?

Im not a sheep I actually studied the data sets for and against this in University 10 years ago before it even hit the media...

please show the peer reveiewed research and data I provide to be wrong from similar sources before you rant your point of view,

Thank you.

elf

[edit on 27-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

I thought scientists said the pole would melt this summer? oh they were wrong? well shock horror...who wudda thunk it...

Originally posted by Solomons
I thought scientists said the pole would melt this summer? oh they were wrong? well shock horror...who wudda thunk it...

Which Scientists?

The ones I post?

Please show me where the Glacier in the Himalayas is not melting from the research of the OP source you obviously never read.

Please provide Independent peer reviewed data sets and observations that conteracts the studies that I put above, not general ones, but in regard to the proven warming of the oceans, then also that this will not affect climate, and also one to prove the NOAA mix graph fro Land sea and air is incorrect.

I look forward to your contributions.

Elf