So for perspective:
Greenland Ice Sheet Slams the Brakes On (the last two paragraphs have a dissenting viewpoint)
From dotEarth (Revkin's blog):
A tempered view of Greenland's gushing drainpipes (recommend reading the whole thing -- particularly the 10:15 PM update and notably posts 94 and 140 in the discussion).
This is a quote from post 94 in the discussion. I underlined a couple of noteworthy words and bolded a particularly noteworthy phrase:
"First of all, the measurements were made on a transect that was oriented East-West at a latitude of 67 deg. N on the East coast of Greenland. This region has been identified by three seperated bodies of measurement as being roughly in mass balance (no net melting or ice accumulation). The 2006 reports of acceleration of ice mass loss have been located on the West coast of Greenland, and thus the measurements made by these authors (that average ice velocities have declined slightly) do not represent a contradiciton to the overall state of an increase in the rate of mass loss on the Greenland ice cap. The authors may have had a good reason for measuring here as opposed to West Greenland. For one thing, their data collection was established in 1991, more than a decade before GRACE measurements identified accelerating ice loss in Western Greenland. This work is a continuation of a long term project."
The next paragraph of this post indicates that in the paper itself, the authors measured a 17% increase in "surface loss" due to "surface melting" over the 17-year period of the study.
So, in summary, it's a dang shame when this science thing gets in the way of a perfectly good skeptical talking point (even though the NY Times provided it).
RE: >”I did some searching, and the picture is not as rosy as might be believed from Mr. Noel Sheppard. The main thing to note is that there’s a difference between melt and ice sheet flow. Greenland is still melting, and at an increasing rate, which is actually one result reported in the paper itself.”<
-dang, Cog! always the pessimist!
;^D