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.
27–I’ll second that nomination. Sad to see allegations and logic so poorly used. Best case–sleepy and posted too fast, or in some similar manner thinks its funny. Worse Case–an advocate of some part looking to hook the feeble. “The Worst Case in the World” (ala Keith Oberman) is he actually believes what he posts.
#27 – Mr. Fusion
Tee-hee… I’ll third that nomination.
#23….Phillep….Lets see, Fusion thinks your a moron, Fusion thinks you get your info from Rush Limburger, and Fusion thinks your obviously played up for effect examples were serious……yep…good work Dude, your obviously doing something right.
I went to Jaggerbush’s link as well and the first thing to catch my eye was the Mediveal Warm Period. Those sneaky Mediveal’s and their hummers have finally been flushed out.
Maybe someone could explain to me why when an unbeliever in the religion of global warming caused by man mentions things like the Mediveal warm period and the little ice age the true believers of man being the cause of everything from climate change to veneral warts always use the **localized** weather excuse. But when THEY make their dire end of days predictions, those predictions are WORLD WIDE, not localized as they claim anything that differs is.
All kidding aside though, you really do have to be a moron to not understand that Global warming is occuring. And it may be occuring much faster than what we thought just a year or so ago. You also have to have yopur head in the sand to not realize that even if we can’t stop or slow the warming, we can make life better by not polluting and spoiling the planet any worse than we already have.
But as to the causes, sorry true believers, I’m still not convinced that we are it(and since i think man is a pestilence on the planet, thats saying something), there have been to many such sudden, and yet unexplained climate changes in the earths history(when man was just scratching fleas in the trees, or not here yet) to lay this one at our feet.
But, I guess all these doom and gloomers need good paying jobs too, so who am I to say bullshit!!
The sky is falling. The sky is falling. ANYONE who calls you a ignorant moron for having doubts is an ignorant moron.
As an analogy….the elephant may indeed by dying of old age or disease. And the flees on its back are wondering if it’s their fault, and if there is anything they can do to prevent it. Analogy over. The world is full of these self-loathing experts that feel mankind is earth’s worst enemy. It’s too bad their equivalent in Politics, Law, and Medicine, aren’t as vocal. But I suspect that they don’t think of themselves as lowly as they do the rest of us. So this makes them fanatically dangerous. Like Cult leaders. Willing enough for the rest of us to sacrifice, while they live pretty damn comfortably. Guys like Al Gore seem to believe (or pretend to) that their crusade leadership makes up for their own large environmental footprint.
Lets not focus on only the negative side of rising ocean levels – there’s always an upside to everything – right?
1/ The US government doesn’t have to worry any more about rebuilding New Orleans (Woo Hoo! they say) – that frees up more money for the military – a real shot in the arm. I mean one just cruise missile is what, a million and change…right? Got Iran right around the corner and the US needs money for that!
2/ Think of all the new beach front properties the US will now have! WOW! Everyone knows it coming so its not like a hurricane. All the current rich beach front property owner wankers will have to buy new new beach front property (to continue to be wankers) and that alone will be a real boost the the US economy!
3/ Later all those ‘less rich’ wankers who did buy all new beach front property will later be high and dry if the climate gets back to normal and they will have to do it all over again! Brilliant!
4/ New technologies will develop like house raising platforms for those who don’t want to move – another boost to the economy!
5/ More CLEAN water in the ocean means it’s not so polluted as it is now!
6/ More water in the oceans means more fish and whales!
So I say lets get behind this and get ready for the new prosperity coming our way!! Woo HOO!!
Cheers
Oh BTW, I didn’t want you all to think that I’m against improving our effect on the environment. In fact I think we ought to have been driving electric cars by now. And restrict fossil fuel burning to things that do it far more efficiently. Like diesel trains and large trucks, and power plants. And build more geothermal power plants, instead of nu-cle-ar ones. And if the climate really is getting more violent, then Wind turbines’ output should improve.
But what scares me is what might be proposed as a drastic solution to global warming. And how, since the US is the “richest nation”, we must sacrifce the most to save the world. Well we saved nearly everyone else ass in WW2, by being the richest nation. And we nearly single-handedly created the Internet. But now, we’re the bad guy. So give up and your cars and go stand in bread lines. So China can have a crack at polluting the world to death.
All we keep hearing in the news are all these dire warning of doom. And I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, as to what are their proposed solutions. And who has to suffer the most, inacting them.
And when are all these eco-scientists going to be heading for the Virgin Isles to ride it out? Same place all those L&S bozos went.
And also BTW, I was wondering why my local CW station ran that “Waterworld” movie late last night (7th)? It would have had anything to do with in new concern about Greenland’s glacers? What timing, eh?!
Global warming. Data since the 80’s is fitting some (not all) computer models for a warmer earth and we are really doing what we can…
then…BOOM!
Krakatoa (Krakatau) does its really big bang that it didnt do in 1883 which Lowered global temperatures by 1.2C and we have a ice age.
The 1883 eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulphur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere creating more high level cirrus clouds containing sulphuric acid. The resulting increase in cloud cover reflected more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cooled the entire planet until the suspended sulphur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.
Nuclear Winter models were based on this event as cloud cover is increased caused by the massive burning on a global scale from multiple nuclear blasts reflects sunlight causing net cooling .
It has been shown that Krakatoa has some really big eruptions much larger than the 1883 event which cycle over thousands of years or so. It it thought that it was one such event which triggered the last Ice Age Based on the what some feel is a cycle we could be due for another really big BANG. The really big 2005 Earthquake is on the same fault line as Krakatoa.
But wait a minute!! All that shit is not CO2!! The global cooling was caused by suspended aerosols thrown into the air from global conflagration or volcano(s) which caused the clouds and the cooling.
We all know that a rise in CO2 in the air causes a green house effect and that means we get warmer.
MIT has some ideas about this.
“Clearly, without a proper treatment of both layer clouds and convection, model predictions of climate are uncertain. Cloud effects are so much larger than the anticipated effects of added greenhouse gases, that small changes in the cloud picture can easily alter predictions of global warming. In addition, existing methods of representing convection and clouds are crude, and, in some cases, can be shown even to be qualitatively incorrect.”
http://web.mit.edu/cgcs/www/clouds.html
So what do we know for sure? What the government says or what the brainiacs say? I am personally 50/50 on this.
Cheers
#37 “So China can have a crack at polluting the world to death…”
…by manufacturing all the stuff that the very rich Americans (and everyone else) no longer manufactures but still wants to buy. So we should damn those Chinese for doing that?
Should we also damn the Chinese too for even thinking about getting hold of any of that stuff that they make for Americans and the rest of world?
Glenn E…That is basically what you are saying, yes? If so is that a fair comment?
Cheers
Hey #30 you still knew what it was…right? Bellend!
Cheers
#16 DU contact can be found here 😀
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/misc/masthead.html
Cheers
I’m pretty amazed by some of the early comments on this thread. I’m glad some of the sane have taken up the responsibility of refuting some of these inDUHviduals.
I would like to point out here that global warming skepticism has clearly taken on the dogma aspect of a religion. I won’t call it a religion as there is no set of rituals and other aspects of religion.
However, with each new supporting piece of data and with the overwhelming scientific data, each time a new piece of supporting data comes out, the “I still want to have 5 kids, drive my big-ass SUV, air condition to 65 in summer and heat to 80 in winter” crowd still manages to go into their standard denial mode.
I wonder if there’s some correlation between climate change skepticism and having kids. Perhaps that would make it harder to accept that one’s children will live in a world with catastrophic problems. Perhaps it is just that people can’t even accept the possibility that we may be actively causing the demise of our civilization. I don’t know.
However, what I do know is that we-the-idiots don’t know science when we see it. We don’t see facts even when they’re right the fuck in front of our noses.
Instead, we flock to the dark ages. We flock to creationism, rename it to Intelligent Design, and pretend it’s science. We rail against evolution. In short, we pretty much want to go back to the good old days when god was in control and we could all sit around going wubbabubbabubba and knowing beyond all reason that everything would be ok ’cause god loves us.
Perhaps we deserve what is coming.
#34 – Johnson,
It’s ok to have a few doubts. Yes, the vast majority of climate scientists on the planet could indeed be wrong. However, that seems like a bad bet to me. In fact, betting our very lives on it seems stupid in the extreme.
If you don’t believe it’s the vast majority, just make sure that when you hear about conflicting evidence that you can find it with a search on google scholar.
http://scholar.google.com
Peer review may not be perfect, but skeptics are believing blog posts reprinted on senate websites over peer-reviewed science. I think the skeptics in this bunch need to learn a bit about the quality of data sources.
#42, Scott, wubbabubbabubba
how on Earth did you guess my full first name?? 🙂
There’s a good article on the other site about the demise of future ice ages: http://tinyurl.com/2hyfml
#43 The reference I cited was from a MIT study. #38
“Cloud effects are so much larger than the anticipated effects of added greenhouse gases, that small changes in the cloud picture can easily alter predictions of global warming.”
As new evidence through continued research becomes available even the most acceptable theories continue to be put to the test. Some are reinforced, some fail and some are modified – that’s the advancement of science.
I question all theories as they are just that, theories. Gravity is debated, our own physical existence (quantum theory) is debated, the speed of light is debated. Hell, even the vary make up of light is still debated for 300 years and counting.
Planetary climates, one of the most complex models to simulate with near infinite variables is far from being definitive. I agree that it is an important issue and it won’t hurt to do something about it with the information at hand…but.
What I worry about is that when something becomes political it stops being science and when it stops being science it becomes religion and damn we have enough of that. 😉
Cheers
#42, Scott,
I would like to point out here that global warming skepticism has clearly taken on the dogma aspect of a religion. I won’t call it a religion as there is no set of rituals and other aspects of religion.
You might be overlooking the way iHotAir(YOP) worships Hummers and Expeditions.
#46 – Mr. Fusion,
Don’t exaggerate. He said he has an Avalanche. The EPA fuel efficiency for one is 15 – 21 MPG, that’s not so bad when compared to a Model T Ford at 25 MPG. Were you really expecting technological advances from the U.S.?
Were you really expecting Americans to be capable of making up their own minds and deciding that we want better than what the U.S. car manufacturers are pushing on us?
(tangent, but back on course for the real conversation)
Remember, we are a people that can’t even trust our own senses. If McD’s tells us a Big Mac tastes good, we run out and buy them, despite the observable fact that they are crap and can be replaced with better and cheaper food (go to Chinatown in any major city, for example).
Likewise, when people see crap like this (http://tinyurl.com/ynoggu) on a senate website and it talks about the study being submitted to Energy and Environment, people never realize that this is essentially a press release by Exxon/Mobil. No one notices that, not only has this pub not yet published the particular article, but that it is a vehicle for fossil fuel press releases in a pseudo-scientific looking rag of a paper with no peer review process at all.
And, likewise, when we see a lot of ads on TV for huge gas guzzling piece of shit vehicles that roll over and kill their occupants, we all want them. Yay US!! We know our vehicles are the best because corporate america tells us so. They wouldn’t lie for money.
(/tangent)
BONGGGG, BONGGGG, BONGGGG…..
Calling all the the Church of Global Warming (TM) . Services are held at least weekly at the DU Blog. Please come and praise the virtue of sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice alone, because Mankind is Evil (TM) and never forget – “We’re all gonna die.” Amen.
#48 – iGW,
When you are the one contradicting current science, doesn’t that make your beliefs the ones that are religious and irrational in nature?
“We’re all gonna die.”
Well, last I heard, the death rate around here is still one per person …
Growing up with global warming is for sissy nannies – try growing up with bow tied civil defence workers playing basket ball and not a wooden desk in sight to duck and cover!
Cheers
I think Hollywood needs to make more big budget diaster flicks again so all the nut jobs that can’t live without looming catatrophes will be distracted so we don’t have to listen to their nonsense. The earth is getting warming, great I hate the cold anyway, the seas will rise, great ocean fron property will be more availble. Everyone seems to forget that the human races one great trait is survival. The world may not look the same but we tend to adapt and move on, of course some individuals may not…
One more little point for the climate change skeptics in the bunch. I realize that climate science is not as well proven as any of relativity, evolution, natural selection, or quantum theory. However, it is more than just a good bet that it is far better proven than the causes and effects of many illnesses. Further, it is sure to be much clearer than the question of whether a particular course of medical treatment will actually help rather than harm you.
So, please stop going to your doctors immediately. You can’t trust them. The opinion on whatever condition(s) you may have are in far more question and up for far more debate than anthropogenic climate change. The course of treatment is in even more serious doubt, hence the fact that the 5% of the world population in the U.S. uses 56% of the world’s medication. True there are areas that can’t afford their meds. But, add up all the populations of all of the first world nations, see if we come up as 56% of the total. I’m somehow betting not.
So, if you have a fever of 105, don’t worry. I’m sure it’s not really happening. If it is, I’m sure you’ve had a fever of at least 100 degrees before. So, temperature variation is normal and natural in the human body. Besides, there’s probably nothing you can do about it anyway.
#50 – Phillep,
My greatest hope for the future is that humans figure out a way to increase the planet’s temperature.
You’re missing something here. 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. Most of the food, i.e. life, on the planet is in the ocean. If we ignore, for a moment, the more than half of life on the planet that is bacteria, which will be fine, then we can keep in mind that as ocean water warms, it gives up oxygen.
This is why the areas of rich ocean life are all in waters far from the equator. Sure, near the reefs, there is a lot of biodiversity. But, in the tropics, get away from the reefs and it’s a desert. That’s why the whales may give birth there, but they feed in far northern and southern waters, not at the equators. It’s also why tropical waters are clear. They’re relatively lifeless. Northern and southern waters are green and nearly opaque due to all the life in them.
55 million years ago, when the poles were a temperature we consider tropical now, the oceans were largely dead to about 60 degrees north and south latitude. And, since the earth is wider at the middle, this means that the only the much smaller areas near the poles had rich life. And, as the oceans become more acidic, by absorbing CO2 into CaCO3, many shellfish will be completely unable to form a shell.
Lastly, do not be fooled into thinking that our growing regions on land will simply shift and still leave us with the same level of food production. This will not happen. Plants do not just need carbon dioxide. They need water and top soil. Some areas will have heavier rainfall, causing flooding and soil erosion. Some will have less rainfall causing drought, fires, wind erosion, and no crops. Both of these things are already happening.
#52 – KVolk,
Everyone seems to forget that the human races one great trait is survival.
This is yet to be proven. We are, thus far, a very short-lived species. We have been around for 200,000 years or less. Compare that with horseshoe crabs, crocodilians, sharks, turtles, and many many others. Remember that time period I mentioned above, 55 million years ago. We weren’t here. We don’t know whether we can survive that. We almost died from a probable large volcano eruption 70-80,000 years ago. There were only 3-7,000 humans on the planet after that one. We certainly didn’t survive the last eruption of the Yellowstone caldera 600,000 years ago.
We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Actually, we’re the cause. Large warm blooded species tend to fare very poorly in mass extinctions. We are a large warm blooded species. I wouldn’t bet on us for the long haul.
I think we can all agree that Global climate change is a reality. The disagreement about the cause is subject to some debate.
The undeniable fact is that we humans are having a significant environmental impact regardless of it’s effect on global climate.
That orange haze you see at the horizon is evidence of out impact on the very air we breathe. The Eutrification of our Fresh water lakes and coastal marine waters are further undeniable evidence of OUR impact on our environment.
Anyone who has ever kept a closed system aquarium as an ecosystem experiment knows how this ends up.
Our planet is just a rather large aquarium after all.
Misanthropic Scott, let me first say that in no way do I think little of you. your posts on other subjects are well backed up with available information and you are a well spoken and intelligent individual. But on the issue of global warming I think you have taken a very prejudiced stance to the issue and your common sense is being compromised by sensationalism and political propaganda.
If a scientist has nonconformist data to present, they immediately become an outcast in the (IPCC) science community. The IPCC members go as far as taking data from contrary science and re-applying it in a different way to make it seem like the contrary science was wrong. What has actually happened is that the data is shown to be subject to interpretation. These actions can be considered pack mentality and oppressive.
In fact all the data collected thus far is subject to interpretation… like most data of relatively new science… because you never know when completely new and sometimes contrasting data will present itself. What troubles me most is that the IPCC thinks it knows it all already. If I ask all of the climatologists to predict the weather for next week, their accuracy will be 50-50 at best, as it always is. Ask for any week of next month and their accuracy goes way down. Go out a year and it’s a shot in the dark. 20-50 years? What a joke.
Lets take a look at the current situation. What came first, the warming trend or the prediction from “science”? The warming trend of course. So it’s warming up, and what an opportunity. Scientists scramble to say it will warm up some more and why. Brilliant. They can’t predict the weather for next week with any startling accuracy but once they see a short term pattern all the theories come out of the woodwork and they are 100% sure of themselves and if anyone questions this new-found wisdom, well damn them!
And you sir, are their poster boy. If a contrary opinion is posted of what may be happening to our earth based on some of those nonconformists, sauteed with a distrust of the powers involved, you browbeat and belittle in loyal IPCC form. For instance on this thread alone, all data nonconforming or fence-sitting posters are insane, religious nuts, SUV-driving energy-wasting overpopulators. Well I can assure I’m none of the above and I disagree with you.
Based on the climatology track record, I have less than a a 50-50 feeling that they have it right this time, mostly because of the pompous, know-it-all attitude emanating from the IPCC gang of power hungry thugs trying to silence the nonconformists. But to think you / they have a chance in hell of changing ANYTHING in a meaningful way on this earth by demanding and screaming and browbeating is pure fantasy. It doesn’t matter if man is responsible or not, the ball is rolling and it will stop when it dam well pleases. You may as well go to Greenland and try to plug that glacier with a piece of gum.
Oh, but we have to TRY do we? lets take trillions and trillions of dollars… the iou’s for manual labor… and risk it all on magically becoming carbon based carbonless wonders to thwart what we are pompously 100% sure will stop climate change for the entire earth. ——- Let’s NOT take that money and do certain, practical, problem-solving things like move New Orleans upstream.
—Let’s tell 3/4 of the world’s population who are living in dirt and finally see a hope for some comfort in their lives.. not 2-3 generations from now… NOW, that WE want YOU to forego the energy needed now to be as well off as the USA please. We have what we want but the rest of you stay the way you are until WE the rulers of earth get everything under control.
— Lets convince all underprivileged consumers in the USA to go without affordable necessities or even the cheapest attainable luxuries, while the fat cats wear rolex and eat off fine porcelain, because buying from China supports global warming/ climate change. Yah right, that’s going to happen.
Dream on.
# 53 MS
Scott comparing humans to crabs for longevity is sensless, other than being alive, the two species have very little in common when it comes to survival needs unless you believe in some of the outrageous claims that Malthusian diaster mongers propogate. The die back of the human species at this point won’t be climate related.
If we didn’t survive the volcano you cite from 600,000 years ago why are we here?
We are the only species capable of going to another place to live that is not on this planet which gives us uch greater odds for survivability long term say a millineum. We are the only species that can look into the future and make educated guesses about what we need to do in the short term as well say over the next 250 years.
JimR,
What exactly are you reading that makes you think this? Have you looked at what is in the peer-reviewed scientific journals? Do you think that on this one subject alone out of all of science there is some global conspiracy? If so, why on this and not on something truly controversial like String Theory (or more accurately string hypothesis)?
On so many other topics, scientists fight bitterly back and forth in the peer reviewed publications? What do you think is different about climate change?
As for predicting the weather, remember:
Climate is what you expect.
Weather is what you get.
Weather is also a local phenomenon and is very difficult to predict. In fact, predicting the specific local effects of climate change is extremely difficult for all of the reasons you mention. However, predicting the overall climate, the global mean temperature, is not very difficult at all.
Think about why venus is warmer than earth. Despite its dramatically higher albedo than earth’s, making it actually receive less sun at the surface than earth even though it’s closer to the sun, it is much hotter than earth. Why? Because of runaway greenhouse effects. It has much higher carbon dioxide than earth.
Why is earth’s surface temperature a balmy average 15 degrees celsius rather than a cold -18 degrees celcius as would otherwise be expected based on the amount of sun that reaches our planet? Because of greenhouse gases.
How is it that anyone could believe that the earth will not be warmed by adding more greenhouse gases? I can’t imagine.
It’s not just IPCC Jim; it’s by far the vast majority of climate scientists on the planet. Could they be wrong? I certainly hope so. Would I bet the life of our species on it? You bet!! But, only if I thought that it would get rid of us without hurting a lot of other species that I love a lot more than I love our own.
We’ve already earned our place in history as the cause of the sixth great extinction on this planet. Let’s do what we can to minimize the damage.
#56 – KVolk,
You made the statement ‘the human races [sic] one great trait is survival.’
What exactly did you mean by that? I compared the longevity of the human species (200 thousand years) to horseshoe crabs (400 million years) as a means of discussing survival.
What is your measure of survival?
#56 – KVolk,
Sorry. I guess I clicked too soon.
We didn’t survive the volcano 600,000 years ago because, oh yeah, we weren’t here then. Our species had not yet evolved.
We are the only species capable of going to another place to live that is not on this planet which gives us uch [sic] greater odds for survivability long term say a millineum. [sic]
A millennium is your idea of a long time? We’ve survived 200 of them. As I pointed out though, horseshoe crabs have survived 400,000 millennia.
You need to get a sense of scale. Might I suggest a trip to the Total Perspective Vortex?
As for moving off planet, just where the hell do you think we can go? We don’t even have a rocket that can take us to the moon anymore. We certainly can’t live anywhere else.
Do you think we can terraform another planet? This one came that way and we’re not even succeeding it keeping it that way. I think you’ve been reading too much science fiction and too little science.
As for 250 years, we probably won’t make it that long. But, that is short term. Even millenia are short term. You have a very anthropocentric view of the world, of time, and of survival.
#59 – MS
I guess you wouldn’t be a misanthrope if you didn’t see the future with such a dim view for the species. The whole issue for me around the global warming piece is how it’ s morphed into this Chicken Little the sky is falling schtick and I think that is a bunch of self deluding, jello spined, sad excuse for a perspective there is but it seems that some one always has to be screaming about the next disaster even when they don’t happen.
Why is always so easy to believe the worst and not the best? or the most likely? You know 1000 years ago no one had heard of space flight or automobiles or refrigeration or vaccines or computers so 1000 years from now I think the same will have happened. That scares people I think more than predicting the next famine, die back, etc and that is just another coping mechanism. It’s easier to be scared all the time then hopefully and I for one don’t want to participate in that kind of crap.
#61
>>”The whole issue for me around the global warming piece is how
>>it’ s morphed into this Chicken Little the sky is falling schtick…”
Agreed.
I think with the war on drugs and the war on terror at all time low popularity levels a new enemy is required to polarize the American people.
The new enemy of freedom will be enviro-terrorists who doom us all with their irresponsible acts of consumption and improper disposal. Mind you these enviro-terrorists will be identified as individual humans rather than corporations.