Greenland's Thawing ice alarms scientists: "losing the equivalent of Lake Houston every 6 hours"

Houston Chronicle ^ | Aug. 14, 2006 | ERIC BERGER

[rface]

I think this is a lot of water - so I look up Lake Houston and convert the size of the lake (acres) into square feet and then kinda guess at the average depth (I guessed an average depth of 10 ft) and I come to a figure of about 5 trillion cubic feet......which I convert to gallons.

I come up with about 37 trillion gallons in Lake Houston.

Greenland is losing 37 trillion gallons of fresh water every 6 hours......it wouldn't take to long for this total of water to equal a gazillion gallons!!!

Maybe I did some math wrong - but ....is something screwy here?

[SlowBoat407]

Fear-pimps!

[cripplecreek]

I'm thinking there's a new real estate market waiting to open up in Greenland.

[Names Ash Housewares]

I cant stress this strong enough. WE MUST ALL BECOME PIRATES!!! JOIN US MATEYS! Join us and stop global warming. THE DATA HAS SPOKEN!

[yobid]

And just where is all the water going? I mean it's not lost, is it? It's gotta be somewhere.

[Republicus2001]

Water is never lost

[Hunble]

... more hyper-short-term claims from GRACE. Are their PGR models any good? Don't know but we do note with raised eyebrow that a patch of open sea in the North Atlantic also "got shorter" with an anomaly of -90Km3/year in the region around 52N, 40W (areas in the Davis Strait & the Norwegian Sea also showed "losses" of -40Km3/year and -50Km3/year, respectively) while the North Sea south of Reykjavik actually got taller (+40Km3/year). Some mighty funny goings on in the North Atlantic -- or not.

[kabar]

Greenland icecap growing thicker

[BikerJoe]

I'll worry about global warming when the Greenland ice has retreated to where it was 1000 years ago, when GREENLAND got its name.

[RoadTest]

"Greenland's Thawing ice alarms scientists"

These "scientists" should have been around when the ice sheet over Michigan melted! Would they have been "alarmed"!

[Vaquero]

Hell I can't wait......waterfront property....Yeehaaa!

[delphirogatio]

I thought the same thing,only I have a math disability. :o) Then I thought, "yeah, yeah, yeah, the freakin' sky is falling again. Next!"

[avg_freeper]

"He added, however, that there are limitations on the new research. The satellites only began collecting data in 2002, making it difficult to discern whether the recent ice loss is part of a long-term trend."

So in summary:

Even though we're completely full of shiitake, you should continue fantasizing about the global warming myth.

[bybybill]

Greenland`s lost water is at my house but don`t tell anybody

[scory]

So Greenland will return to the state it was in when the vikings first ran into it back about 1000 years ago. It didn't get its name for its gigantic glaciers.

[samm1148]

Your math sounds good. Don't know how much water is up there but whenever I hear a sensational comparison like that I have to scratch my head and wonder: Is that a made up number to sell something?

Got this from a gubmint site:

"The total water supply of the world is 326 million cubic miles (a cubic mile is an imaginary cube (a square box) measuring one mile on each side). A cubic mile of water equals more than one trillion gallons."

I haven't used scientific notation in twenty years but it sounds like that would be equal to the entire water supply of the world in 48 hours. (someone smarter than me please check my math--I can't remember if I the exponents are added or multiplied).

[mad_as_he$$]

This article is Horse$hit. The melting is caused by the extreme activity of volcanic vents nearby that have started discharging 10 times the normal flow of very hot water. They also fail to mention that the Antarctic is putting ice on at record levels. More global warming lies.

[texas_mrs]

We could use that water in Texas - a helluva drought going on here now.

[DBrow]

No, the ice sheets have been shrinking since the end of the last Ice Age.

We may not be happy if the Greenland sheet melts, but I doubt it is humans doing it.

http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/greatlakeskids/greatlakesmovie5.html

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/specmap_graph.html

On the graph above, note that the cycle went to "less ice" last time, than we are currently at now. So it's not surprising that the ice melts.

Adapt or Die.

I calculated the amount of energy needed to melt ALL of the Greenland ICe, using estimates of ice volume and density (and cross checked the Ocean Will Rise 22 Feet Claim, it checked out).

So anyway, I calculated the heat energy to bring the ice up to zero C, then melt it, and I got 200 Billion Barrels of crude oil. Just to melt the ice- if we actually went and did it, there would be trucks and power plants and wire and all that that probably would take 50% more energy.

Look up Milinkovitch Cycles, they explain lots of the Earth's climate on a big scale.

[Ben Mugged]

And just where is all the water going? I mean it's not lost, is it? It's gotta be somewhere.

It went back to where it came from 50,000 years ago. The earth is in a temperature cycle. It's been doing this for millions of years. Yes, we are in a warming trend, probably caused by a cycle of the sun and somewhat unrelated to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where do they suppose the carbon dioxide on the floor of the oceans came from? Atlantis? This is Chicken Little scientists waving their hands in the air over something they need to learn to live with.