Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 09/07/2010 10:00:37 AM PDT by Arkancide
Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.
In the last two years, several teams have estimated Greenland is shedding roughly 230 gigatonnes of ice, or 230 billion tonnes, per year and West Antarctica around 132 gigatonnes annually.
Together, that would account for more than half of the annual three-millimetre (0.2 inch) yearly rise in sea levels, a pace that compares dramatically with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.
But, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.
This is the term for the rebounding of Earth's crust following the last Ice Age.
Glaciers that were kilometers (miles) thick smothered Antarctica and most of the northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of years, compressing the elastic crust beneath it with their titanic weight.
When the glaciers started to retreat around 20,000 years ago, the crust started to rebound, and is still doing so.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
D@mn warmal globing!!!
HAHAHA
Al’s house of global warming cards is falling down.
Amateurs, they forgot about the glacial isostatic adjustment.
So to put it in layman's terms, the heavy ice pushes down on the Earth's crust, so even though there's less water (because it's in the form of ice), the sea levels don't fall. So in the reverse, with less ice pushing down, the earth's crust "rebounds" back upwards and even with the additional water (from the melted ice), the sea level changes are mitigated.
Proving once again, the climatological systems are just too complex to make human-based calculations on, even with our most powerful computers.
The argument is over and the alarmists lost.
I’ve not collected my bets yet but it’s over.
Whether variations in the sun explain it or the researchers have shaded the truth to gain additional funding and so there is no data to support anthropological warming, it’s over.
Let’s worry about the real problems
—details, details-—
I can’t believe I misquoted Clinton’s “better put some ice on that!”
Well, they have to come up with something to explain why all the flooding they predicted isn’t happening.
It seems that the real story is that this team is just declaring that the current isostatic models (e.g., perhaps IJ05--Ivins and James, 2005 for Antarctica?) are incorrect, and therefore saying the corrections applied are incorrect.
The “estimate of ice loss” should be labeled “estimate of ice gain”. Glacier Girl landed and was left behind on the Greenland ice sheet in 1942. She was recovered from beneath 270 feet of ice 50 year later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_girl How on earth did that aircraft get under 270 feet of ice in 50 years (5.4 feet of ice per year) if the ice sheet is shrinking?
0.2 inches? Try 0.002 inches (49 micrometers).
"Researchers at the University of Leeds calculate that around 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs each year are melting into the sea every year in the Arctic and Antarctic. This is causing sea level to rise by just 49 micrometers per year - around a hair's breadth."
"At that rate it would take 200 years for the oceans to rise by 1cm as a result of melting sea ice. If all the floating ice in the world melted it would cause sea levels to rise by just 4cm. In comparison if all the ice on land melted it would cause a rise of 70m. Sea levels will also rise as the oceans get warmer because of thermal expansion."
For reference, Water has a mass of 1,000 kilograms per cubic meter, or one metric ton per cubic meter (ice is a touch less dense, but let’s ignore that for ease of calculation). There are one billion cubic meters per cubic kilometer (1,000*1,000*1,000). Antarctica has about 30 million cubic kilometers of ice.
1,000,000,000 * 30,000,000 = 30,000,000,000,000,000 (30 quadrillion) tons of water
What’s a hundred billion tons of ice lost a year? 1/300,000,000 of the ice we have there.
But oh no, that’s still a hundred billion tons of fresh water going into our seas every year upsetting their delicate balance! Yeah, but the oceans have 1,300,000,000 cubic kilometers of water. The entire Antarctic ice cap is about 2% of the ocean volume, and at current rate it’ll take 300 million years to melt. I highly doubt the oceans of 300 million hears ago had the same salinity as they do today. In fact, back then Antarctica likely had no ice and had a temperate climate.
You are absolutely correct. People like Heidi Cullen on the Weather Channel should lose their accreditation for continuing to push the Man Made Global Warming fraud.
The ice is vacillating all over the place or their theories are. It’s like when Yeshisassisfat died. He’s dead. He’s alive! He’s dead. He’s alive! He’s dead.......
Forget going green -- Earth doesn't care ( We are Doomed ...Commentary of how many ways)
This seems like a Biggie...
But....but....I thought the science was settled.
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