Posted on 02/23/2014 6:55:32 AM PST by BenLurkin
Top boffins from the British Antarctic Survey say that the Pine Island Glacier - famous as a possible major cause of global-warming-powered sea level rises - was melting just as fast thousands of years ago as it is melting today.
This paper [just published] is part of a wide range of international scientific efforts to understand the behaviour of this important glacier," explains Professor Mike Bentley, one of the leaders of a BAS effort to find out what's going on with the PIG.
"The results are clear in showing a remarkably abrupt thinning of the glacier 8000 years ago," adds the professor.
The Pine Island Glacier has been much studied over the last two decades, as the rate of ice melting into the sea there has accelerated during those years. Many scientists have theorised that this might be due to global warming caused by human burning of fossil fuels. It's been suggested that the PIG on its own might cause sea levels to rise by several centimetres this century (for background the seas rose about 17cm in the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects this to increase massively this century, though there's plenty of research to suggest otherwise.) In any case it appears more and more likely that the rapid melting of the PIG's sea ice shelf from the early 1990s to 2010 would have happened anyway, regardless of humanity's carbon emissions. Hearteningly perhaps, the Antarctic sea ice area continues to increase overall, global warming or no.
The new BAS research is published in premier boffinry mag Science. ®
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Boffins again...
Top boffins, no less. Anything like odd bodkins?
I think boffins are like puffins, but less puffy.
They need to go the way of the great Auk which apparently wasn’t as great as it thought it was.
“Boffin” is a Britishism for “scientist”, generally garbed in a white lab coat and speaking some sort of incomprehensible jargon.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the suns planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
The Supreme Court needs some educatin’...laws of nature 101 might be a good start
A grade school science course would work too.
or as I always like to ask the foaming AGW folks.... what ended the last ice age?
How about inhaling and exhaling for Show and Tell in kindergarten.
LOL!!!
Up - Down
Top - Bottom
Charmed - Strange
They come in many flavors!
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Most telling is the history of the melt of Glacier Bay. The glacier filled the bay in 1750. The map shows the steady retreat of the glacier since its discovery. Anyone believing in AGW should be shown the map you get on cruises into the bay. It has retreated from the bay and into canyons around the bay,.
"The results are clear in showing a remarkably abrupt thinning of the glacier 8000 years ago," adds the professor... In any case it appears more and more likely that the rapid melting of the PIG's sea ice shelf from the early 1990s to 2010 would have happened anyway, regardless of humanity's carbon emissions. Hearteningly perhaps, the Antarctic sea ice area continues to increase overall, global warming or no.
|
I think its got something to do with how hot the sun is.
Taken in total the description of climate by today’s warming faithful is not unlike the blind men describing the elephant. Al Gore’s charge is examining the elephant’s rear end which occasionally releases a burst of global warming to fall upon his head.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.