http://deepseanews.com/2011/11/confronting-climate-contrarianism-iii-data-realism-and-the-rabbit-hole/
A glacier in Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier, has a large crack in it, and is apparently just about ready to snap off a chuck of ice 300 square miles in size. In case you wondered, no, this is not the largest chuck of ice to break of Antarctica in recent years.
There are two versions of regarding this upcoming event.
1. just part of natural cycles, don't sweat it.
2. Nope, it's not part of natural cyccles, because scientists have studied the underside of the glacier, and have determined that it is being eaten away by seawater which has warmed in recent years. As a result, the glacier is now moving seaward at a speed of 4 kilometers per year- twice as fast as it was moving a few years ago. This is not an isolated event, this is one event inside a trend.
They call it Global warming- the first word is global. It's not just warming at the north pole, with the result that the polar sea is expected to be ice free in summer within 20 years. It's also warming at the other end of the planet. If Antarctica were to completely melt, there would be enough ice changed into seawater to raise sea level by some 200 feet. That could take a couple centuries- but in the end, we are talking about the abandonment of every major coastal city on our planet.
I'm not trying to alarm you, just trying to educate you.
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Comments: 20 ( 2 removed by Chris Wiegard )
key concept. The current state of global warming science portrays the temperature rise as open ended. Humans are not used to thinking in terms of centuries, but I get uncomfortable thinking of today's 7 billion population being driven down by starvation and weather disasters by several billion between today and say, year 2500.
Is anyone expecting that to happen?
It is a very big bucket of ice, but it is getting warmer.
Certainly. But do scientists really expect Antarctica to completely melt? Is the earth going to warm that much?
Explain to me why anyone would think the ice is NOT going to melt. It's not as if it's rocket science.
No, that ain't how reality works . . From the linked article;
"The neighboring Pine Island glacier has been undermined from below by warmer ocean water speeding the melting and discharge of the glacier as a whole. Scientists used a remote controlled submarine in 2009 to study underneath the Pine Island ice shelf and discovered a ridge about half the size of the one anchoring the Thwaites glacier. They estimated the Pine Island glacier detached from this ridge in the 1970s starting the process of ocean water undermining the glacier."
It's a process, a natural process . . Snow falls on the land, and eventually makes it back down to the sea. Been going on for billions of years.
Many [1000's] of these Global Scientist are saying we will enter cooling period in 15 years.
So, I lean neither in agreement or disagreement as they say the verdict is still out.
define "many." Climatologists who deny the existence of global warming are a relative handful, worldwide.
"We are only experiencing cyclic changes in the Solar System with alignment of planets, sun flares, and earth changes that have occurred several times throughout earths history."
Nice crock of bulls***, but sorry, that's not what the climatologists are telling us. Thanks for your inaccurate science "lesson."
"Many [1000's] of these Global Scientist are saying we will enter cooling period in 15 years."
name one who is a climatologist. Have you heard of Richard Muller yet? Nope, of course not.
"So, I lean neither in agreement or disagreement as they say the verdict is still out."
again with the B.S. Your entire rant was dedicated towards undermining the authority of real science, then you sanctimoniously claim to be objective.
Sickening hogwash. Go read a book.
"The reason man has not seen such is that they were not on earth during the Jurassic Period."
Man has most certainly seen such . . the "Medieval" warm period, and the "Roman" warm period, were long periods of warmth like we now enjoy . . There may have been dozens of brief stretches such as we have experienced recently, it just wouldn't show up thousands of years later as anything significant . . The temps have only gone up about 0.6 degree centigrade since the turn of the twentieth century (with a cooling period in the midst), this is not a big event on geologic timescales, or even human ones. The big deal with the made made CO2 global warming idea was predicted catastrophic warming, not anything actual.
“We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it's very exciting for us," IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told CBS News. "It's part of a natural process, but it's pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/antarctic-crack-iceberg-nasa-video-pine-island-glacier
natural process, not so much. Satellite measurements of thinning ice. international team will do some drilling to attempt to put denialists to bed.
What an absolutely ignorant statement.
The fact that you even mention the "30,000 scientists" fake list is ample proof that you don't even know enough to know how ignorant you look by mentioning it. Go ahead, look it up. It's a fake list put together by a guy who sells survivalist gear using a faked "paper" that was intentionally made to look like a PNAS article when in fact it was not published anywhere and rife with such deliberate inaccuracies as to signify fraud. And less than 30 of the "30,000" are even claiming to be working in climate sciences - the rest are veterinarians, doctors, engineers, BS biologists, math teachers, and myriad other people who have done absolutely zero research in climate.
Seriously. You couldn't have looked any more uninformed.
The rest of your comments are equally false and ignorant.