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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.
I think I’ll forget my plans to move down to the coast. Sounds like I’m safer here, 1000 metres above (current) sea level…
Never before happened! That sounds a little hard to prove. Perhaps they should add a time frame where they are sure it has never happened, like from 1950-2000.
This global warming debate is looking more and more like State of Fear by Michael Crichton. The ecos need to scare the population so they create natural disasters to convince everyone towards their agenda.
They certainly did things like that with spotted owls and other land management.
man the 21st century turned out to suck alot, didn’t it?
Utter rubbish. Fantasist science.
There isn’t enough data to model these changes. There will be a lot of unforeseen consequences. Permafrost melt is another potential disaster. There’s a lot of carbon sequestered in that frozen ground. Boreal forests may face extinction. I’m stocking up on xanax and morphine for the end times. The drought has even killed off the pot!
Now we know where all that ‘blue water’ comes from!
Wonder how many new (to our generation) diseases that is lurking in the ice…
Some hicks never could get their heads around the idea of the Spotted Owl being an indicator species. Their silly head may explode trying to imagine a .7,000 year time-frame.
Glacier National Park in Montana is a fitting emblem for the great change sweeping the world’s cold places. Dan Fagre has studied the glaciers in the park for 15 years. A scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, he has the numbers at his fingertips: 27 glaciers left in the park out of 150 a century ago, 90 percent of the ice volume gone. He gives the remainder another 25 years. “It will be the first time in at least 7,000 years that this landscape has not had glaciers.”
Oh, well.
Save the Earth! Bring on the new Ice Age! So we can cull the weak and infirm!
I want to buy a new snowmobile!
Whatever happens is inevitable. Rather than waste time in fruitless efforts to cool down the earth (we humans are so full of hubris), the sensible thing to do is plan for the changes. Start moving endangered areas inland from the ocean.
They’ll still be arguing about carbon and Koyoto, oil and China bla, bla, bla while the coast huggers get wet feet.
You’re right #10. I don’t think they’re anything anyone can do regardless of what/who is at fault.
While I think comments like #10 are minimal and incomplete, JimR is light years ahead of the Know Nothings whose idea of advancing their own understanding is to buy a new box of crayons – have another beer – and wait for a warning from Fox Snooze to break in on NASCAR coverage.
Hey god, in consideration of blog space and reader attention span, i like to keep my posts as minimal and incomplete as possible (and still get the gist across). 😉
Greenland didn’t get it’s name because of green ice.
#14 – GigG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Etymology
There are as many nay-sayers on human induced climate change as there are aye-sayers. To me, this usually indicates the true answer is somewhere in the gray area. A true scientist should draw conclusions from all available sources, not just those he thinks he likes.
ot — I’ve looked all over this blog, there’s no way to contact the editors or Dvorak (found an interesting new story link on RFIDs) other than comments; am I just missing something obvious?
#16 – Jim A – There are as many nay-sayers on human induced climate change as there are aye-sayers. To me, this usually indicates the true answer is somewhere in the gray area.
You pull conclusions from what Americans think?! In a survey of Americans aged 18 to 24…
I rather listen to someone who’s educated in the subject than some Joe Sixpack delivering unfounded nonsense.
#16. “I’ve looked all over this blog, there’s no way to contact the editors or Dvorak (found an interesting new story link on RFIDs) other than comments; am I just missing something obvious?”
This isn’t one of those kind of blogs. It isn’t modelled on a magazine, unless you call the National Enquirer, news. It’s basically Vizu/Adsense bait, a click harvester.
I agree with your sentiments about a global warming miasma, but it is really an indication of people’s disillusionment with science, that it hasn’t produced answers, only stunts.
Sorry, I should have been more clear in my posting. There are as many nay-sayer STUDIES as there are aye-sayer STUDIES. There are also many studies that are inconclusive on any point because of unavailable data and models that cannot take into account the responsiveness of a large scale system that is not fully understood.
It’s always good to respond to a post with a basket of statistics as most reporting is done these days, it helps to dumb down the populace with useless numbers. There is no basis for comparison in the article — the sample was 510 “young people”, what were the demographics, were they from many schools spread over all the states (which would be an average of 10.2 people per state, very telling indeed.) Hence why I take every single “survey” done with a grain of salt.
Quite elitist comment by the way, very telling.
#18: “science… hasn’t produced answers, only stunts”
Says a guy typing on his computer on the Internet! Probably while he’s microwaving a burrito.
Dumbass.
#19, Jim,
Yes, but you’re new here so we will overlook your elitism.
We should be cutting emissions, not because of “global warming” but because it is good for everybody.
Anyone who says Global Warming does not exist, is just ignorant. You can debate the causes and the cures, but it is a very real phenomenon. Weather models from the 80s are proving very acurate so far. We are quickly losing our ice caps.
I agree with #10, it is probably too late to do anything about Greenland. Losing the arctic ice cap will do nothing to sea levels, but losing Greenland glaciers could raise sea level world wide by 20 feet, which could be disasterous for Miami, and Manhattan, and London, and Hong Kong etc. If the Antarctic continent also melts, a 20 feet rise in sea level will become permanent.
If the cold water from the melt shuts down the Atlantic Gulf Stream, Europe could be in for really cold winters for a while too.
Oh, yeah. Citing Wiki.
Hmmm, bottom of the first paragraph: ” It should also be noted, however, that the southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer, and was likely even greener in Erik’s time because of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Following the MWP link: “It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying “…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Medieval Warm Period’ appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries”.”
Well, most of the claims regarding past temperatures are likewise drawn from similar isolated regions, so the same thing can be said of all arguments citing temperatures over the last thousand or so years.
Oh, and “spotted owls”? The USFS limited their study to old growth forest, so all that study did was show that spotted owls don’t do so well in old growth.
LOL, I can show cockroaches are near extinction, by doing a study of their population on the Matanuska Glacier.
Hey, has everyone heard about how the Marbled Murrelet only nests in old growth trees? Why, clear cutting is so bad that even the Marbled Murrelets out in the Wester Aluetians are endangered!!!
Uhm, the only plants that are even technically trees out in the Aluetians are dwarfed Alder, willow, and a few odd introduced species that don’t do so good. And it’s not because the Aluetians were clear cut, either.
I doubt the Marbled Murrelet nests in old growth Cow Parsnip or Blue Berry bushes.
My take on environmentalists and conservationsists is that they are overgrown, immature little brats that want to be able to control other people. They don’t really care /what/ they tell other people to do, so long as they get to order others around.
I saw this link / explanation on another blog and listened in — excellent review from scientist responsible for many of GB’s antarctic research projects:
Bottom line is volume of each of three major ice sources to “mean sea level” would be : 0.5 meters = all world’s mountain snow and glaciers7.0 meters = Greenland ice sheets, and 60.0 meters for Antarctica glaciers! (Yes :60.0)So even a 10% change that effects the Antarctic ice mass would would out-do ALL the rest of combined ice sources effects to sea level.
P.S. Washington DC is only one foot above sea level!
SURF’s UP….What a wake this is going to cause…
What a wave….
Let the cataclysm begin… there’s waaay too many humans anyway.
What we really need now is a couple of strong pandemics, combined with earth and social changes that utterly disrupt our current way of living.
Bring earth population back down to a billion or so people.
It will make for a better future for humanity in the long run.
It’s going to happen… we are within ‘peak oil’ already, and agriculture can’t be sustained anywhere near current levels without oil. We are primed for the next mutant disease, like ‘Airborne AIDS’, to wipe out 1/2 the earth’s population.
Humanity is about due a good cleansing by now anyway… look anywhere and everywhere for the reasons why.
#23, Philleep,
I hereby nominate you for the moran of the week award.
Oh, and “spotted owls”? The USFS limited their study to old growth forest, so all that study did was show that spotted owls don’t do so well in old growth.
Uuuhh, Philleep, Spotted Owls live in old growth forests. They are not doing so well for a couple of reasons, most significantly including clear cutting of old growth forests. Which USFS study? There has been several.
LOL, I can show cockroaches are near extinction, by doing a study of their population on the Matanuska Glacier.
Is the Matanuska Glacier the natural habitat of the cockroach?
Hey, has everyone heard about how the Marbled Murrelet only nests in old growth trees? Why, clear cutting is so bad that even the Marbled Murrelets out in the Wester Aluetians are endangered!!!
Marbled Murrelets might live or nest in the Wester Aleutians. (wherever that might be). In fact, however, they are rare even in the Alaska Panhandle. Try a little further south to find their natural habitat. They are also having issues because their habitat is being clear cut.
Uhm, the only plants that are even technically trees out in the Aluetians are dwarfed Alder, willow, and a few odd introduced species that don’t do so good. And it’s not because the Aluetians were clear cut, either.
Very true. Totally irrelevant to either the Marbled Murrelet or the Spotted Owl since neither live within several hundred miles of the Aleutians.
My take on environmentalists and conservationsists is that they are overgrown, immature little brats that want to be able to control other people. They don’t really care /what/ they tell other people to do, so long as they get to order others around.
Environmentalists and conservationists DO have their facts right though. They also don’t get their information from Rush Limbaugh or whatever other Radio-head bullshit artist is spouting off this week.
My reference to spotted owls had nothing to do with global warming. Rather, various environmentalists would go out into the woods and pretend to make owl calls when the government scientists were around to affect their policies against logging. They even caught some government EPA folks in the act some years back.
#16: Guess you didn’t look hard enough at the obvious place. The first item on the left side under Blog Info is About Us.
Hey #10, you spelled Kyoto wrong you dingbat!