Thin Glaciers Get Thinner in Antarctica

Reuters ^ | 9/24/2004 | Maggie Fox

[TChris]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of Antarctica's glaciers are melting faster than snow can replace them, enough to raise sea levels measurably, scientists reported on Friday.

Measurements of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea, on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica, show they are melting much faster than in recent years and could break up.

And they contain more ice than was previously estimated, meaning they could raise sea level by more than predicted, the international team of researchers writes in the journal Science.

"The ... Amundsen Sea glaciers contain enough ice to raise sea level by 1.3 meters (4 feet)," the researchers wrote in their report.

"Our measurements show them collectively to be 60 percent out of balance, sufficient to raise sea level by 0.24 mm (nearly 0.01 inch) per year," they added.

[Freedom_Isn't_Free]

No need to worry ... surely when the sky falls it will keep the sea level from rising too far!

[koolaidsmile]

place some rocks in the salad bowl with the tops of the rocks protruding above the top of the water, and then put some of the ice on top of those rocks and not just in the water. That way, when the ice on top of the rocks melts, the salad bowl will over-flow.

Mmmmm! Sounds Atkins friendly! I'm using iceberg lettuce, but which dressing should I use?

[myrabach]

and we have this to worry about too..

http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/~heiney/jokes/dihydride.html

[Sam Cree]

Yeah, I think this round of global warming started something like 300 years ago, so the only question is whether or not man is having an additional effect on it.

I believe the majority of the scientific community thinks not, but the majority of the media and Hollywood thinks yes.

[Darksheare]

Coolbeans.
The Sherpa's could fish for sea bass.. from Everest's peak.. while underwater..

[pepperdog]

"the once hot and fiery caldera on MT St, Helens is now covered in 600 feet of ice"

Really? Are you joking or is it really snow cover now??

[branch1]

http://www.john-daly.com/

[spodefly]

I'm using iceberg lettuce, but which dressing should I use?

French. :)

[PeterFinn]

"Try this experiment...
Place a lot of ice cubes in a bowl (large salad bowl), then fill with water until the ice floats.

When the water over flows the bowl, that's when you can panic, It won't happen though. It's called Displacement. The ice floating in the water already has taken the space of the melt water that will replace the area the ice has taken up. Water level will not increase."

Which is true in the Arctic where all of the ice floats on water. A few months ago the global warming weenies said North Pole ice floes were melting and the world was doomed. Ten year old kids knew they were wrong.

So they moved their fallacious argument to the South Pole where about 70% of the ice is above sea level. It still ain't gonna happen, but the logic isn't so fatally flawed as with their last fairy tale.

[Zavien Doombringer]

Good one!

[Labyrinthos]

An unbiased reporter might write "After thousands of years of abnormally cold weather, global tempretures are gradually warming to their historical norms, causing the polar ice caps to melt and ocean levels to rise to their pre-ice age levels..."

[Zavien Doombringer]

well, at least we could see the Yeti try to swim

[Darksheare]

True.
There was the 'mini' ice age that froze the Vikings out of North America, and that ended a couple hundred years later.
So we are due for a warmup and then another ice age.
The only question is how long it will take and what it will look like.
I'm wondering if wacky weather, like what has been the recent experience lately, is the precursor to an Ice Age.
There weren't any records kept 'round the world when the last one hit, so no data to compare exists.
Hmm.
This is out of my scope of ponderment.

[Gary - Peters]

Tree Hugging Green-Psychos make me sick with their non-science of our society's greenhouse, CO2 crap about how we're warming the Earth. TOTAL B.S. !!!!!

Anyone with half a brain who has been to the Smithsonian, or bothered to research the thermal history of the Earth would immediately come to the conclusion that every ~hundred million years the Earth cycles up and down in temperature by several degrees. The Earth is significantly cooler than it has been in the past. Overall, as a billion years have passed, the earth is predictably cooling off. You can't stop it, Thermodynamics dictates that heat flows from that which is warmer (the Earth's core) toward the cooler (the cold of space). The Earth is not a perfect thermos bottle.

We just happen to have passed a minimum in the predictable thermal cycle of the Earth. The periodicity of this thermal profile is repeated many times and is fairly constant. The Earth is now warming up to the next minor maximum, which will be by several degrees over the next numerous millenia, BECAUSE IT'S SUPPOSED TO !!!!!!!!!!

And the mass of the earth and power involved in this phenomena is so great that man would have to try pretty damned hard to have any measurable deliterious impact to it at all.

I actually traveled to DC to get numerous photos of the thermal cycle charts to set my beliefs straight, and as a degreed scientist and life member of the American Geophysical Union, I don't think I'm speaking out of my anal orifice, like the majority of these false scientist types who perpetuate the myth that the existence of man is bad to the planet's thermal nature.

Looking at the Earth's planetary thermal cycle through its history, and noting that man has only existed with an ability to modify his environment in the past <100,000 years, and I can't find the least bit of a glitch in the charts to indicate that man even exists on the planet Earth differently than has existed in the previous billions of years.

I hope some of yo out there remember this and perpetuate the facts the next time some anti-mankind idiot in California wants to make a movie about the imaginary disaster "Day after Tomorrow", just remember it's only science FICTION - a fictitious story - get it !!!

Anyone is free to express their opinion, but not everyone who has an opinion in which they feel strongly has a right to be correct. Being correct, or even being taken seriously, is not a right - something our actor classes in California ought to learn.

Otherwise, leave the real science to the real scientists !!!!

[HEY4QDEMS]

I remember watching a documentary about the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Of th four known seismic areas along the ridge, two of them have become active in the last fifty years spewing super heated water around 700^o F.

I know the ocean is big and thease regions are very small, but over fifty years they must have some impact.

[Darksheare]

Read it.
Thanks!

[Heyworth]

That's actually a very good movie, more a journalistic procedural than a sci-fi movie as reporters in London try to discover why the weather is getting hotter and hotter and government leaders are stonewalling. Turns out simultaneous Russian and US nuclear tests on opposite sides of the world have wobbled earth out of orbit and it's now circling the drain into the sun.Nonsense, of course, but a good movie nonethless. Featuring a young(er) Leo McKern.

[Darksheare]

LOL!
Give 'em surfboards, bet they could rip a curl like mad.
/ joke.

[Zavien Doombringer]

I have been surfing for years...the image of a Bigfoot surfing just made me loose yet another keyboard...

Imagine having a natural wetsuit...I could surf Jersey's SandyHook all year!!!

[Zathras]

Of course they don't tell you that there is a volcano under that glacier.