Click here to enlarge photo
The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.
Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low.
Melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier “to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.”
The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes – an extraordinary event.
Veli Kallio, a Finnish scientist, said the quakes were triggered because ice had broken away after being fused to the rock for hundreds of years. The quakes were not vast – on a magnitude of 1 to 3 – but had never happened before in north-west Greenland and showed potential for the entire ice sheet to collapse.
I know it’s weird my brain works in terms of movie plots; but – a real disaster could occur before anyone cranks out a film.
Scott, it’s my lunch break, and i’m hooked on this crap.. ok? 🙂
Just a quickie here, but Stephen McIntyre is NOT an employee of the Northwest Exploration Co. as you stated above, and he has impressive credentials.
Also 21st Century Science & Technology’s “assumptions of modern scientific dogma, including quantum mechanics, relativity theory, biological reductionism, and the formalization and separation of mathematics from physics.” does NOT mean they don’t believe in those things. A lot of quantum mechanics is not understood, but it works and thats good enough for practical use (computers) but not valid from a pure scientific view. There are a assumptions of quantum mechanics that they feel should be proven before being used as fact. In other words they are hard core scientists… the opposite of what you presumed.
#97 – MikeN,
The hockey stick graph paper in and of itself is a minor issue in climate change. There are many other supporting papers and few detracting ones. It is entirely possible that they simply elected to use text rather than the using the graph because of the political controversy in the popular press that ensued.
$98 – JimR,
Re: Lunch: me too.
Re: McIntyre, I copied that from the published article, right from the header. I don’t make this shit up.
Re: Quantim mechanics. It’s still one of the most tried and proven theories we have. So is relativity. That they disagree at singularities and both break down means that we need a new theory that will encompass both and be able to handle the singularity case. This may be string hypothesis; it may be something else we haven’t thought of yet. Just as Newton’s laws of motion remain excellent everyday approximations, relativity and quantum mechanics will likely live on long after a TOE or GUT is found, assuming we live long enough to find one that works.
Re: 21st Century, that’s just a bunch of serious bullshit. They are, quite simply, not on the list of peer reviewed publications. Thomas posted them on this site in response to a request for discussion of peer reviewed articles. Anything in that rag fails.
I’m extremely progressive, but am not willing to throw away the scientific method that has proven highly effective at divining information from our incomprehensibly vast universe.
Of course I don’t thing that you make that shit up. That’s an old article. prior to 2003 he was an officer or director of several small public mineral exploration companies and he started Northwest Co., but he quit when they were taken over in 1998. So to be precise, he doesn’t work there now
As for bias, ALL the contributors and IPCC themselves have biases, the major one being “group think” bias. Step out of line and you may as well commit suicide. Right?
Back to work now For me. It’s so hot out today, I’m almost extinct.
#101 – JimR,
That article is from 2005. The important point being that he was employed by them when he wrote the paper and is likely still getting his research funded by an industry with a strong profit motive for disproving global warming.
#100
I’m at work now so additional research will have to wait until this evening. However, I found the 21st article through a search on scholar.google.com. There appears to be a bit of ad hominem going on here with dissenting articles. Frankly, the funding of the research should not make any difference. What matters is the science and data involved.
> Your second link seems to be about the
> controversies that exist over the precise
> magnitude of change, not over whether
> the change is happening.
This is THE fundamental issue with global warming; not whether it is happening and not even whether humans are contributing to it. The core issue is the *degree* (and exact cause) of the anthropomorphic effect. As I said, smoking cigarettes effects the environment but the effect is so small as to be inconsequential.
#103 Thomas,
Holy shit!! You’re right. I wonder why google scholar includes that self-proclaimed non-scientific rag. I apologize for doubting you on that.
If your only question is how much will the temperature change, the articles I’ve been reading have all been vehemently criticizing the IPCC for underestimating the problem. They have shown repeatedly that the observed change by 2007 was, by all measures, either greater than the high range of IPCC forecasts or completely above and outside the range.
I’m at work too and will try to post some links later.
I love all the pro-pollution posters here….
The best bet for mankind’s long term survival on this planet is to not to completely frell it up with excrement and stupidity.
If mankind can even come close to zeroing out its contamination of the earth, the better the chances of survival….
The more crap, the less chance for survival….
And as Americans, it seems that the easier and dirtier a solution is, the better for the Imhofians…
The canaries are sounding warnings throughout the globe…..and a bunch of fools are deaf to it….
I for one applaud that Britain has proposed a ban on plasma TVs. I’d rather have greenhouse gas limits that hurt the rich rather than the poor. Let’s go after private jets next. Plus a tariff on all those luxury good should at least cut down on transportation costs.
Here is another article although it too is written by Ross McKitrick who is one of the authors of the original critic.
What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?
One of my biggest complaints with the global warming argument is that it is based on temperature readings that are questionable in accurately measuring temperature without bias from other factors and knowing all of those factors is even more difficult. For example, Mann’s hockey stick is only designed for North American tree rings and that means his assumptions could be unreliable when extrapolated globally.
There is plenty of data indicating a warming trend and an anthropomorphic effect. I’m just still not convinced that the anthropomorphic effect is significant enough nor that anyone has a clear solution other than dismantling the energy sources of the industrialized world.
Another argument to the the global warming argument is the opportunity cost of a mistake is incredibly high. Clearly if global warming is caused primarily by industrialization and if the doomsayer’s predictions are accurate, then the countries around the world must do something. That means industrialized countries like China have to essentially go back into the dark ages until alternative, non-polluting and sufficient effective energy source can be developed. However, If the global warming doomsayers are wrong about the extent or cause of the effect, trillions will be wasted that could have been used for far more productive purposes like paying off the national debt, providing clean water to places around the world, finding a cure for the various cancers or AIDS etc. There is an extraordinarily high risk in spending trillions on a solution that might not work. In addition, there is a sort prisoner’s dilemma dynamic that occurs in that it is in each country’s best economic interest to let the other countries restrict their CO2 output first even though it is everyone’s best interest for everyone to do so.
This can’t be one where the scientists think they know. They have to know for sure and a precise cause must be found or else we could end up bankrupting the world’s economies on a wild goose chase.
#106
> I for one applaud that Britain has proposed a ban on plasma TVs
What a silly idea. Do you think for a second that this ban will have any effect on preventing the rich from bringing a TV into the country purchased elsewhere? Not to mention, that LCDs are quickly overtaking Plasmas in quality and *that* more than anything else will limit their purchase. It would have been smarter to place a higher tax on plasmas than to waste law enforcement resources by banning them.
may i use your melting caps picture for a project if i add your URL
You guys just love to hear yourselves talk, and basically say useless stuff. The warming is here. It will increase for the foreseeable future. We are in big trouble, and we need to look at how to deal with higher temps and higher sea levels. Obviously, it is too late to avoid those. Have you guys never thought about the fact that the world’s economy is based on all of those container ships that go to all of the world’s ports that will be under water? Hello!
Why did the Roman Empire fall? Because they let their distribution systems fail.
the earth naturally goes into periods of heating and cooling. there is no such thing as human-caused global warming. And besides, the #1 cause of “global warming” is cow farts. they release more methane into the atmospherer than anything else