Do you think “climate change” will lead to a rise in global sea levels of up to 3 feet, as some climate studies have suggested, by the year 2100? If you do, fine, but it won’t come from melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the Antarctica ice sheet. Verifiable data shows that the Antarctica ice sheet is INCREASING in size, so that’s out of the equation. Let’s take a look at what’s going on in Greenland, where some melting is occurring. Here’s the facts from a variety of sources and condensed in Wikipedia.
“The Greenland ice sheet is a vast body of ice covering 660,000 sq mi, roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet is almost 1,500 mi long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 680 mi. The thickness is generally more than 1.2 mi and over 1.9 mi at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover 29,000 and 39,000 sq mi around the periphery. If the entire 684,000 cu mi of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 24 ft.
In 2006, estimated monthly changes in the mass of Greenland’s ice sheet suggest that it is melting at a rate of about 57 cu mi per year. A more recent study, based on reprocessed and improved data between 2003 and 2008, reports an average trend of 47 cu mi per year. These measurements came from the US space agency’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite, launched in 2002.”
While I question the math that the Greenland ice sheet is “only” 684,000 cubic miles (it’s much larger), let’s go with that. At a melting rate of 47 cubic miles per year, per the latest satellite date, it would take 14,553 YEARS for the ice sheet to completely melt and add 24 feet of global sea rise. And that’s assuming NOTHING but ice sheet melting for that entire time. No exceptions, no accumulation. Just melting.
Now, I need the Warmers to explain the source of where a possible 3 foot rise in global sea levels by the year 2100 is going to come from. I’ll lower the bar to 3 inches. Ready, set, explain.
I shoveled 9 inches of snow last night. It took me over 2 hours to drive home through an ice storm on Tuesday night. It is 5 degrees this morning, on March 6. That broke the all-time low record by 5 degrees.
Bring on global warming. Please!!!!!!
Greenland’s ice is supported by land. Anything that melts goes into the sea and raises it. Antarctica’s expanding ice is floating on the ocean and its freezing (or later melting) has no effect on sea levels.
Politics & Global Warming
We find that registered voters are 2.5 times more likely to vote for a congressional or presidential candidate who supports action to reduce global warming. Further, registered voters are 3 times more likely to vote against a candidate who opposes action to reduce global warming.
Many Americans are also willing to act politically:
• 26% are willing to join or are currently participating in a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming;
• 37% are willing to sign a pledge to vote only for political candidates that share their views on global warming;
• 13% are willing to personally engage in non-violent civil disobedience against corporate or government activities that make global warming worse.
The study also finds that while Democrats are more convinced that human-caused global warming is happening and more supportive of climate and energy policies than Republicans, there are deep divisions within the Republican Party. In many respects, liberal/moderate Republicans – about a third of the Republican party – are relatively similar to moderate/conservative Democrats, while conservative Republicans often express views about global warming that are distinctly different than the rest of the American public.
For example, among registered voters:
• 88% of Democrats, 59% of Independents and 61% of liberal/moderate Republicans think global warming is happening, compared to only 28% of conservative Republicans;
• 81% of Democrats and 51% of liberal/moderate Republicans are worried about global warming, compared to only 19% of conservative Republicans;
• 82% of Democrats and 65% of liberal/moderate Republicans support strict carbon dioxide emission limits on existing coal-fired power plants to reduce global warming and improve public health, compared to only 31% of conservative Republicans.
The report includes an executive summary and many more interesting findings about how Democrats, Republicans and Independents think about global warming, what policies they support or oppose, and the different types of political activism they are willing to engage in.
– See more at: http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/politics-and-global-warming-spring-2014/#sthash.fz99pf3a.dpuf
I’ve had to read far more than I ever cared to about “climate change” in the past few days, as I’ve researched a thought leadership position for the CEO of a large company. I find it all incredibly difficult to believe in, especially the human-driven (anthropogenic) cause of it.
Instead, I see evidence that climate is changing; it’s warming in some areas and cooling in others. We know from history that regions that were once lush, agrarian areas are now deserts. There is more natural activity (earthquakes, volcanoes, solar emissions, crust shifts on the ocean floor) than ever, which makes me think the earth is just going through another cyclical change. There’s nothing we are doing to effect it, and the only thing we can do to combat it is to adapt as these natural changes occur.
@Thinker: +1,000 !!
“…we are just a bad case of fleas.” ~George Carlin
Warmer westcoaster. Any comments? Sound of crickets so far.
@SSS: I’ll see ya and raise with this piece of truth….
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html
Wow, Westcoaster weighs in with satellite data from JULY 2012. BFD. From his link:
“This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland’s weather since the end of May. “Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one,” said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate.”
So what? The important stat is how much of the Greenland ice sheet is LOST ANNUALLY, YEAR IN AND YEAR OUT, to melting, not a one-time event that shows widespread melting in the middle of the fucking summer.
I shoveled 9 inches of snow last night. It took me over 2 hours to drive home through an ice storm on Tuesday night. It is 5 degrees this morning, on March 6. That broke the all-time low record by 5 degrees. – Admin
My son and I put in 3 hours each behind the shovels the other day. Neighbor drove by in a Bobcat and offered to clear the rest of the driveway. The snow was drifted between 2 and 3 feet deep. I traded him a bottle of schnapps for clearing my driveway…
Yesterday morning, it was -6 F. No wind at all and perfectly clear. It looked like the fuckin’ ice planet Hoth outside… weird shit happens with the atmospherics when conditions are like that. Real still with minus cold…
Every surface – fences, trees, railings, etc, was covered in 2 inch long feathers of ice crystals, which melted and disappeared within minutes of the sun hitting them.. yes, I got pictures.
Fucking global climate warming change assholes…. I had to ride a fucking TaunTaun to the store for milk..
It is already proven (with scientific and photograhic evidence) that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet how has increasing volumes of relatively water sea water flowing beneath it, as well as snow melt fresh water streams and rivers that are slow but during unstabilizing the entire sheet. Further, arial surveys over the Greenland ice sheet show hundreds, if that thousands of holes in it that permit summer run off to drain down them, hence flow under the ice sheet, melting the anchors (ever so slowly) that anchor both ice sheet and glaciers to the underlying rock.
Estimated sea rise for the loss of the Antarctic ice sheet is a worldwide 6-8./. If Greenland’s Ice sheet goes, the estimated amount of fresh water therein will rise the oceans of the world u to 16 feet. Together upward of 24 feet of sea rise can be expected.. When? Who the fuck knows. 200 years, 1000 years. 25 years. But, unless climate change to the warmer side is halted, the human race has some significant adoption of new paradigms to face in future generations.
In addition, loss of Arctic ice will shut down the “conveyor belt” (Gulf Stream) flowing from the southern seas, North along the East Coast of America and on to keep Great Britain a temperate climate. The loss of that conveyor belt of ward water will put Great Britain and Northern Europe into a deep freeze where survival is probably impossible.
Climate deniers, one and all have their heads up their ass. It doesn’t matter what it causing the change – from atmospheric pollution to simple population pressure on agriculture practice. There are thousands of reasons by human activities (and perhaps cosmic ones too)are forcing the changes and unless we get a handle on it, 200 years from now, the world population will be 1/2 or less than what it is today.
Have a pleasant evening!
MA
Sorry for the typos. I’m getting old and fumble fingers. Try and translate as best as possible..
MA
“It doesn’t matter what is causing (climate) change …… unless we get a handle on it …..”
—-Murky
Well, yes, it does matter. You mentioned cosmic activities as one of the possibilities for climate change. How the fuck do we “get a handle” on cosmic activities?
Also explain how we get major carbon dioxide emitters and air polluters, such as China, India, and Russia on board to reduce their emissions when they have no intention of doing anything meaningful to reduce their carbon footprint. It would be national economic and financial suicide for them to do so, and whatever kumbaya treaty they may sign would be meaningless and unenforceable.
In the meantime, the good old USA continues with a fool’s errand of trying to save the planet and fucks the poorer and middle classes with higher electric and transportation bills, smashing the coal industry by throwing tens of thousands of people out of well-paying jobs, blocking any mining activities on public lands (more lost jobs), and subsidizing with tax dollars the building of multi-billion dollar solar and wind farms that produce, wait for it, just 5 stinking percent of our electricity only when the sun shines and the wind blows.
Your turn, Muckster.
Some of you (SSS) won’t see the forest for the trees until you’re treading water:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29462-greenland-reels-climate-disrupting-feedbacks-have-begun
“Every year that passes sees Greenland ice getting darker and darker, as more and more dust (from Siberia) accumulates on the surface, and more and more energy is captured, melting more and more ice.”
—-from Westcoaster’s linked article
Re the statements in the article. How in the fuck do you propose to stop dust from Siberia from accumulating on the Greenland ice sheet? Really, now. It’s Siberia. Part of Russia. What are you going to do? Tell Putin that fucking dust from his country is leading to global warming and climate change. He’d laugh in your face and kick your silly ass out of the country.
More to the point, the article NEVER says how much of the Greenland ice cap is LOST FOREVER TO MELTING ON AN ANNUAL BASIS. Never. Just bullshit about moss and lichen and ice cores. And totally unproveable statements about what the ice cap looked like 150,000 years ago and skipping right past the Medieval Warming Period of 800-1200 AD, which is an inconvenient truth to the Warmers. Scandanavians settling in coastal areas Greenland and Labrador. Milder climate. Vineyards. All that shit. Then it got colder, and whoosh, they were gone.
You’re supporting a destructive path for our country, Westcoaster.
I would LOVE it if you were right about the Antarctic not losing ice. But that is PURE nonsense. The VOLUME of ice has be DECREASING in the Antarctic. Now….the SEA ICE has expanded SLIGHTLY over the last couple of decades…..but the VOLUME of ice in Antarctica is DECREASING (that’s what happens on a warming planet).
Unfortunately….the 3 feet of sea rise will happen (Miami will thank you I’m sure:)…..