Posted on 08/11/2006 10:49:56 AM PDT by cogitator
Actually, there were plenty of glaciers in Viking times -- as well as significantly more green land than today.
The main reason for the name is that Eric the Red was a quintessential real-estate promoter. He wanted settlers, and he figured "Greenland" would sound good to people living in "Iceland". In a later age, he might have made a bundle selling Florida swamp land.
Stop placing leaves in plastic bags. Free the leaves!!!
What's the problem here?
I'm not so sure. I remember reading in one of the Sagas that Leif Eriksson decided to call it Greenland because his father Erik hinn Rathi found that the name "Iceland" discouraged settlers. Greenland was warmer in those days, certainly, but not warmer or greener than Norway.
Probably; they've been pretty busy trying to keep up.
Yarrr!!
Just Yarrrrr!
I have personally done gravity measurements. Establishing a bias free set of measurements is exceedingly difficult.
Just read "Collapse" by jared Diamond and you can learn everything you wanted to know about Greenland and climate change.
And yes gentlement the ice sheet melting is very bad news.
This is very bad news. You inability to grasp it only shows your ignorance of the subject.
ping
. . . the shrinking ice sheet now contributes about 0.02 inch (0.5 millimeter) . . .
When it comes to significances I reckon it's all relative.
60 cu miles out of 600,000 is very bad news?
I'm agnostic on ice sheet melting, until I see where the trends are in another hundred years.
Neither the time series data (temperature record) or physics are very compelling right now.
Key lines from the article:
"Any tiny change in the distance can be used to infer the surface mass change,"
Observation: How accurately can the data really be trusted based on "inference" from data?
Next, it says, "The Greenland ice sheet is melting three times faster today than it was five years ago, according to a new study." and then later says "Chen and his University of Texas colleagues analyzed the gravity measurements over Greenland between April 2002 and November 2005".
Now, I'm not a mathematition by trade, but that suggests a maximum of roughly 3.5 years, not five.
Then, it says, "GRACE has only been orbiting Earth for three and a half years, not long enough to determine if the increase in melting is due to global warming or natural variability, the University of Texas's Chen says."
In other words, we just started using this stuff and we don't know how to interpret the data yet or even if it is accurate. No story here - yet.
And this: "History and physics and recent observations tie warming to ice shrinkage,"
Someone needs to post that picture of "Captain Obvious" here.
And the last line of the article: "projections of future climate change indicate continued warming over Greenland if greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked".
This is a total logical leap totally unrelated to the article. Nowhere does the data suggest anything about greenhouse gasses.
Oh, and I save the best for last: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/07/ice_sheets_thickening/
That does it! No sleep for me tonight!
It is the speed of melting. Is that someting that you do not get?
Also, the melting goes directly into the lovely heat transfer mechanism we call the Gulf Stream. A major disruption of which (lot of cold low salinity water) would have major implications for the European economy. Although you may not care about that, you should, because it would majorly disrupt the gloabl economy.
So the question is what caused that global warming?
Answer: The sun! who's temperature is not constant.
Only very near the coast on the very south.
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