Tibetan Glaciers Melting at Stunning Rate

Originally posted by Saf85
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.

I have

Originally posted by Saf85
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?

Your ignorance of Climate is soo well displayed in your comment above,

I must assume from that statement your knowledge comes from reading about 2 hours on the subject from very dubious sources indeed.

I really do suggest you read some of my links, some journals, text books and the like, please if you like I can u2u you hundreds of links for articles, journals, school text books and science books, to educate yourself on the way the environment and science of climatology has been understood for many years with no GW aspect at all.

Really I would be blushing.

Elf

Listen people. I am going to make this extremely simple for everyone to understand.


1) Look at the Facts. The Earth goes in and out of ice-ages constantly. We happen to be lucky enough to live in an "interglacial" period at this time.

2) There are several things that can cause an ice age. Volcanoes, Asteroid and Comet impacts, and fluctuations of the sun are all things responsible for some of the previous ice ages.

3) Mankind cannot overcome nature in changing the climate. The climate does as it dang well pleases.

4) Melting glaciers can do strange things to ocean currents. One thing that it can cause is the cooling of the gulf stream, causing a drastic cooling of England, and Europe. And my god it can even throw the planet into an "instant ice-age".

You can blame it on whoever you want I don't care. SUV drivers, Coal fired power plants whatever.

This planet controls us, we do not control it. We are along for the ride, and history shows that it can be a real bumpy ride.

Adaptation to extreme environments is the only reason we are alive today. It's the reason we have a future on this planet.

Yeah I agree the glaciers always melted and came back over billions of years.
Before we even existed.
To try and blame it on us in order to institute more taxes is ridiculous.
The fact they are at risk of losing there water supply is the problem here I see, not that the glaciers are melting because they always have.
We need to find them a better water source.
We put a carbon tax on people, they still lose there water source, and they have less money.
People need to think whats going on here.

www.globalwarminghoax.com...

Unlike your claims, artic ice continues to grow, not melt.


www.globalwarminghoax.com...


Much more money goes to scientists researching the existence and man-made causes of climate change, as compared to the skeptics.



Qutoes

“In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one,"

and

“[Newsweek] alleges that a few scientists were offered $10,000 (!) by Big Oil to research and publish evidence against the theory of manmade global warming. Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same, but in support of manmade global warming,”

www.globalwarminghoax.com...

Hmm odd that the massive increase in co2 has led to little sea level change? Hmm if I was not mistaken, I would say that the sea level has just continued to rise as it has over the past milleniums? C02 has done little to affect it!

reply to post by CaptainCaveMan


Exactly man, I refuse to pay any carbon taxes. IT TAXATION ON BREATHING!!!!!

reply to post by CaptainCaveMan


I don't think anyone disputes the cyclical nature of Earth's climate. I think the argument is that humans are accelerating the change, and this acceleration can have severe consequences for us - as in, once a certain threshold is reached, billions of people will basically be screwed. Not to mention, it could cause mass extinctions of many species. I think Discovery did a report on this...7 degrees of exctinction or something like that. They showcased how the Tibetan glaciers are melting, and if the glaciers melt, the Ganges would dry up, and the Ganges is the primary water source for over a billion people. Basically, there'd be 1/6 of our planet dying of thirst. Asia would become a bloodbath of wars over water.

I'm not a hippy or an environmentalist, but I just don't see the problem in trying to clean up after ourselves. Even if global warming is hocus pocus, why shouldn't we move to cleaner energy and consumption?

reply to post by Saf85



Saf as I said walk away blushing,

What you are stating has no relevance at all to understood and accepted even before GW climate.

BACK ON TOPIC

Where has the Glacier in the Himalayas gone?

Please also look into funds your website before you blush further???

Do you really really know who set up and funds that group???

It's quite a joke in many circles actually and often mentioned....lol

Really, like the way you think that melting glaciers cant affect weather ahem cough blush...

Spend your time educating yourself and not embaressing yourself really.

Elf

BACK on TOPIC why is this glacier melting?
What does it mean to India and China?

If you want to discuss GW per se in this thread please show where what I have posted as real science, has been shown not to be correct, those actual papers, findings and results not broad statements.

that is how real science is done, I am sure you know that?

Disprove within the peer review of what I have posted, or do it yourself from your own actual measurements expeditions and results, or get Back on topic.

What happened to the Tibetan glacier?

Why has it melted quicker than any other glacier recorded worldwide yet?

Elf.

[edit on 27-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

reply to post by MischeviousElf


"Why has it melted quicker than any other glacier recorded worldwide yet?

Elf. "


Maybe because its closer to the equator than the north or south poles? Heck, maybe thier height from sea level may also contribute. Either way, the earth is not ment to sustain 6 billion humans, or are we a animal thats "too big to fail"? lol. Humans would be much better off as a nomadic culture anyway. If your water source goes away, then move. If war doesnt kill most of us nature will, so who cares why its melting, just deal with it.

OK, there's been a lot of data posted here, so I'm gonna take this one step at a time.

The Himalayan glaciers are indeed responsible for supplying water to a very large section of the world. That is without doubt. They are apparently melting, although I am taking that statement at face value for now. Now as to the age, the radioactive indicators may or may not be a good dating method worldwide. They have been used in other areas, but I am not 100% convinced that they are applicable at the highest point on earth. I would like to find some corroborating data on these methods, but I have a problem keeping more than 200 tabs open in Firefox at the same time. So for now I will just say I am assuming for the time being that the data mentioned is verifiable.

Where I am getting lost is the concern over Global Warming and CO2 levels. I found this article (thanks to ProfEmeritus in another thread):

Second only to the melting of the Arctic ice and those "drowning" polar bears, there is no scare with which the global warmists, led by Al Gore, more like to chill our blood than the fast-vanishing glaciers of the Himalayas, which help to provide water for a sixth of mankind. Recently one newspaper published large pictures to illustrate the alarming retreat in the past 40 years of the Rongbuk glacier below Everest. Indian meteorologists, it was reported, were warning that, thanks to global warming, all the Himalayan glaciers could have disappeared by 2035.

Yet two days earlier a report by the UN Environment Program had claimed that the cause of the melting glaciers was not global warming but the local warming effect of a vast "atmospheric brown cloud" hanging over that region, made up of soot particles from Asia's dramatically increased burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk.../opinion/2008/11/23/do2310b.xml

So we have a competing theory as to the cause of Tibetan Glacial melt. Now as to the OP's link claiming globally rising temperatures are to blame (this is on page 2, linked in the source link):

"At the highest elevations, we're seeing something like an average of 0.3 degrees Centigrade warming per decade," Thompson said. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects 3 degrees of warming by 2100. But that's at the surface; up at the elevations where these glaciers are there could be almost twice as much, almost 6 degrees."

Source: dsc.discovery.com...

0.3° per decade. The accepted melt time is 40 years, or 4 decades. 4 x 0.3° = 1.2° total temperature change globally. That means, assuming fresh water, the glacial ice that has melted would have to already have been at a temperature of no less than -1.2°C. Actually, it could have been a few degrees cooler since the lower atmospheric pressure at that height would have an effect on the freezing point of water, but still the glacial ice would have to have been within 1.2° of the freezing point. Sorry, just not enough heat energy available from accepted global temperature rise, and that does not account for the latent heat of fusion which would have to be added for the phase change to occur.

From MischievousElf's source about the possibility of oceanic rises up to 1.5m (4.5 feet):

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.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com...

The diameter of the earth is approximately 7900 miles, making its radius 3950 miles. Using the formula for surface area of a sphere ( A=4(pi)r² ), we can calculate the surface area of the earth to be about 196,000,000 square miles. The ocean surface is roughly 2/3 of that, or 130,000,000 square miles, leaving 66,000,000 square miles of land. In order for the ocean levels to rise by 4.5 feet worldwide, an amount of ice equal to the water in 110,800 cubic miles would have to melt. That equates to a sheet of ice worldwide covering every single land mass over 9 feet thick, if the surface land area did not shrink with the rising water (which of course it would). Keep in mind that oceanic ice will not affect the sea level, because ice displaces an amount of water equal to the amount of water it holds (you can see this by filling a glass with ice water and marking the water level; let the ice melt and the water level will not have changed). There's not that much land-based ice in Antarctica!

In other words, the article MischieviousElf referenced cannot be taken completely seriously.

originally quoted by MischieviousElf
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...:

Actually, salinity lowers freezing point. A drop in salinity will raise it. think anti-anti-freeze.

But the information you posted from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute appears basically correct. A large freshwater lake around the Hudson Bay area did apparently spill into the North Atlantic and lowered the local salinity levels drastically. This caused the water density to decrease and slowed the Gulf Stream to a crawl until the salinity levels could stabilize, and did indeed apparently drop temperatures in the Northern Atlantic area. This was due to the Gulf Stream stopping, however, which was due to a sudden rapid influx of fresh water that threw off the density/temperature-driven oceanic current system unique to the North Atlantic. In the first place, while this did make life very harsh for a short time, the Gulf Stream is still with us today; it restarted as soon as the salinity stabilized, with no assistance form anyone. Secondly, in the Himalayas or the Antarctic, there is no such warming oceanic current to concern with. Any oceanic currents would receive a small increase over a period of time from river-borne meltwater in the Himalayas, which would probably not stop them as the sudden influx did to the Gulf Stream.

Now, as to www.whoi.edu...

During the last four decades, oceanographers have observed large changes in the distribution of salinity, which appear to be related to the gradual warming of the atmosphere

and

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.

Well, he's right about water requiring much more heat energy than air in order to raise its temperature. But as to the warming ocean depths and changes in salinity? Well, there's another viewpoint:

When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before. No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors.

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys' findings? Because in five years, the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters' hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, "there has been a very slight cooling," according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

Source: www.nationalpost.com...

So who do we believe? Well, a close observation of Will Curry's words gives us a hint. Remember I said he was absolutely right about the heat energy of water being higher than that of air? He was, but in the Himalayas, there is no body of liquid water to melt the ice. That means that the amount of heat energy the air would need in order to thaw the ice is many times the heat energy it would need to simply raise its temperature by 0.3° per decade, and here again, this does not even address the energy required to change phase to liquid water. So here, even William Curry states (albeit unwittingly) that the air temperature from Global Warming is not enough to cause the Himalayan glacial decline.

Wow, over 9000 characters and counting... think I'll take a break here and wait for a response (or at least my fingers to start working again).

TheRedneck


[edit on 27-11-2008 by TheRedneck]

reply to post by TheRedneck


Excellent Post star from me,

Nearly 4am here up at 6.30 I will debate hopefully properly and reply later.

My bad faux pax lower/higher freezing point, typing on the fly as such... also watching someone carefully in the family who is ill.

Friend or Foe I am sure I will make that choice later when more awake

A lot of posters on this thread should see how its really done when looking at these things, by taking rednecks example.


Kind Regards,

Elf.

[edit on 27-11-2008 by MischeviousElf]

reply to post by MischeviousElf

You are too kind, friend Elf. I look forward to your reply.

TheRedneck

its kind of a shame as those galciers are responsible for the fresh drinking water of around two billion people,when they go,thats alot of thirsty people.

perhaps creating a tesla dome around each of them will block out the sunlight that would normaly melt them as tesla domes block out all forms of electromagnetism,aka the suns energy.

thats right tesla domes can cure global warming,blotting out the sun in a designated location beneath each scalar waves 200mile dome for a given period of time,say every 10 minutes of an hour should be enough.
it would even save greenland,the artcic,everything..........
................
.......but oh wait scalar waves have been massivly supressed by our future cos,you know,there damn right the best thing since sliced bread in helping humanity you know,curing cancer,creating free energy and such........and the supressions been going on since they were first discovered by maxwell in the mid 1800s,long before any cia or mic could do the supression.

I miss michivous evils attmepts to convert ppl to the new age religion of global warming... Well since he never did come back, we can all assume he had no valid counter arguement to therednecks ace post.

Since no one has any interest in this thread anymore we can now abandon it with global warming having met his match on ATS!

reply to post by Saf85


Childish triumphalism only proves one thing: ignorance.

MischeviousElf and theRedneck have shown mature and healthy mutual respect. The fact is they both acknowledge the debate is far from over. While that does not prevent them having strong convictions is does mean they don't delude themselves they can 'prove' their case and end the debate here on ATS.

Long live the debate!