Uh-oh: "Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about seven times the size of Manhattan is 'hanging by a thread,' the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming." Just remember -- we can afford to pay any price for endless war in Iraq, but serious action to forestall catastrophic climate change is too expensive.
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Ice Shelf
27 Mar 2008 05:18 pm
Comments (60)
Quick look over there.
Okay, now that you are back, think about this: A Junior Professor of Political Science at St. Paul Community College says there is no global warming. Ha! There is no consensus. Also, scientists once said there might be a "new Ice Age." What do you say to that? Also, carbon is good for plants, why do you hate plants?
Quick look over there.
Okay, now that you are back, think about this: A Junior Professor of Political Science at St. Paul Community College says there is no global warming. Ha! There is no consensus. Also, scientists once said there might be a "new Ice Age." What do you say to that? Also, carbon is good for plants, why do you hate plants?
Give over, Matt. Next you're going to work the War into your explanation of the Nicks' continued implosion.
Not everything is related to Iraq.
Also, it's currently unseasonably cold in several locations in America. How can the world be warming if it's so cold in RANDOM CITY X in late March? Silly liberals.
Jesus is coming back soon, so why should we worry about the environment when we have so many foreigners to kill and so little time?
It's only 100 or 1000 years you serial exaggerator!!!
-John bombbombombbombbombIran McCain
But it snowed! In Atlanta!! QED!!!
Give over, Matt. Next you're going to work the War into your explanation of the Nicks' continued implosion.
Not everything is related to Iraq.
It's called "opportunity cost."
To listen to thousands of scientists working on a consensus document regarding vast and costly and dangerous consequences of not properly reacting to global warming would risk investing resources on a prediction that does not reach 100%.
However, to listen to talentless and serially wrong liberal hawks and mendacious right wing fruitcakes on the eventual payoff of the continued occupation of Iraq is entirely sensible and cannot be doubted as our futures are at risk.
Disaster Capitalism is the new black.
This calls for war with Antarctica.
Before anyone rushes to high ground, these ice shelves are already sitting on top of the sea, like ice cubes in a drink, and they have already raised the sea level as far as they ever will, whether solid or melted (google: Archimedes and "Eureka").
Fruitcake brigade aside, the most important objection to "curing" global warming is the claim that it would be cheaper to treat the symptoms than to slash our carbon output by 30-40%.
Neither side in that debate has managed to prove their case (the variance of the estimates is too high), so we're probably going to dither for the next ten years.
(And ML, the cost of carbon reduction is in loss of economic activity. There's no direct expense to the government beyond negligible enforcement expenses. So we're not talking a trade-off in the sense you and Matt are implying.)
Stupid ice.
I call on Congress to rename their french vanilla ice cream in their cafes to freedom vanilla frozen dessert.
JonF,
Good point, but as a harbinger if these ice caps are melting faster than predicted it isn't being paranoid to worry about big land based glaciers also melting faster.
Matt doesn't take the war analogy far enough.
Can we afford to spend trillions on a futile war to spread democracy?
can we afford to spend trillions in a futile attempt to stop global warming?
I tell ya, these non-libertarians get on their little moral crusades and they are willing to spend any amount to accomplish exactly nothing.
Never mind that Antarctica as a whole has cooled over the last several decades.
Remember, in the religion of global warming, anything that can possibly be linked to global warming is to be linked to global warming, anything to the contrary is to be ignored.
JonF - Not quite right. Only the submerged portion of the ice displaces water. The above-water portion will raise the water level if/when it melts. If they were truly sitting "on top" of the ocean, the entire melted amount would raise sea levels. Think of an ice cube sitting in an empty glass, and then it melts...
The climate models' temperature predictions for the sub-surface ocean and for the upper troposphere, compared to the actual observed temperature of the sub-surface ocean and the upper troposphere, have turned out to be as blatantly wrong as pre-war predictions the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators.
But, you know, let's ignore that the predictions of the experts have been proven to be worthless, and do whatever they tell us about issues far outside their nominal expertise. After all, it's an emergency! An ice shelf that was already floating in the water has ceased to be stationary relative to land, and now will likely float in the chilly Antarctic water until the currents have it contact land and reattach itself!
Bluestreak: Are you trolling? This is a classic freshman physics question. An ice cube floating in water does not raise the level of the water when it melts. (The amount of water displaced by the below-the-surface portion of the ice has the same mass as the entire piece of ice. When the ice turns to water, it precisely fills the space formerly taken up be the below-the-surface-portion.)
This doesn't change the fact that this is bad news (viz., ice is melting faster than previously predicted, which includes glaciers).
Bluestreak,
The mass of the water displaced is equal to the mass of the bouyant object. Since in this case the object is a giant ice cube (i.e. water) sea level will be unaffected if and when it melts. Counterintuitive, but true.
We have climate data that we can rely on as accurate for the last 50 years or so, and semi-reliable data for perhaps a few centuries before that.
All the hysteria over warming is based on a very short span of time in a geologic sense. The main thing we can draw from this right now is that we don't know what we don't know.
BlueStreak --
To quote the article itself, "Ice shelves are floating ice sheets attached to the coast. Because they are already floating, their collapse does not have any effect on sea levels, according to the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey."
This isn't ice in an empty glass, this is ice floating in a glass that already has water in it. Under the law of buoyancy, the amount of water displaced by the ice cube is the same weight as the whole cube, both above and below the water line. When the ice cube melts, it becomes an amount of water equal to the amount of water the cube displaced. The result is no increase in water level. Ice is less dense than water; the volume taken up by the ice has shrunk when it melted, by exactly the amount the ice stuck up above the water.
So Bluestreak, when you set a glass of ice water on the table and go do something else for an hour, has it overflowed when you return?
Someone didn't watch their Mr. Wizard.
JonF is correct, but he overlooks the important implication. The part of the ice shelf that is over water slid there slowly, glacially, from the land. Its mass holds back the part of the ice shelf that is still above land. Because Antarctica is warming relatively rapidly, cracks are forming in this ice, meltwater trickles down through the cracks to the ground and makes a nice, slick, muddy lubricant to help the over-land part slide much more rapidly down to the sea, once the over-water part of the shelf breaks up and moves out of its way.
This article http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-unquiet-ice
by Robin Bell in the February Scientific American explains the seriousness of the problem. Money quote: "If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to disappear, sea level would rise almost 19 feet; the ice in the Greenland ice sheet could add 24 feet to that; and the East Antarctic ice sheet could add yet another 170 feet to the level of the world’s oceans: more than 213 feet in all."
Bell doesn't claim that this will happen by this Sunday, but that it's a concern. The Antarctic and the Greenland ice sheets are, measurably, on the move. It's for this reason that the British Antarctic scientists are reporting this ice shelf breakup.
This is why I advocate that Bush, Cheney and all the other global deniers be required to retire in Key West.
Since no one has responded to JonF's silly comment except BlueStreak, who just compounded the ignorance-
In fact, melting ice shelves are a major contributor to sea level rise. Not directly -- JonF is right about that -- but because one of the main factors determining how quickly glaciers sitting on land flow into to the sea is whether they are "capped" by floating ice shelves.
"If seagoing ice shelves break up, their enormous masses no longer hold back the flow of ice streams. The glaciers feeding the Larsen B ice shelf, for instance, accelerated dramatically after the ice shelf disintegrated in 2002. Thus 'uncorked,' the land-based ice streams and glaciers that were formerly held in check will likely speed their seaward migration, ultimately adding to the total volume of the sea."
From here, altho you could find something similar in just about any discussion of rising sea levels.
DuBaun beat me to it.
It's a good thing that all these people who religiously read right wing news sources are so much more logical thinking than the thousands of PhDs in climate science who actually understand the science behind the IPCC reports.
Regarding the floating ice theory: The antartic shelf isn't perfectly analogous to an ice cube in water. At one time it might have been, but over the millenia more ice matter has gathered on the surface. When a chunk breaks off, it typically sinks a few meters as a result.
However, it is true that melting artic and antartic ice aren't likely to cause significant rises in ocean levels because they are floating ice. The increase in ocean levels are likely to come from melting ice on land surfaces, like Greenland.
Regarding "Al's" comment that Antartica as a whole has cooled over last several decades, this is factually bullshit. The only people pushing this bullshit are those who selectively pick a few data points to fit their pre-determined opinion on global warming. The same people were recently arguing that the Earth had gotten cooler from 1998 to 2005 (selectively picking 1998, which was a very peak year in terms of global temperature, and ignoring the clear trend when all years were considered). Before that they were commonly arguing that satellite data proved the Earth was not warming (until that same data was correctly by the people who authored the original study).
Regarding "James Robertson's" comment: You clearly do no understand the science behind this but are merely repeating what you've heard. The accuracy of historical data is not just a matter of opinion -- it is something that can be measured and the accuracy and confidence can be expressed numerically.
It is worth noting that climate models have been subject to intensely rigorous analysis and testing. Models created in 1990 -- which were far less sophisticated than the models of today -- accurately predicted the subsequent rises in temperatures. The models included various scenarios -- the "most-likely" scenarios were very close to correct. (Note: In the Inhofe witchhunts on this topic, one of his invited guests misrepresented the 1990 models by misrepresenting [lying] that the "high" scenario was the most-likely -- you will still find this lie on various web sites, but you can also find the original predictions if you research).
It's no surprise that the same "scientists" who "debunk" climate change are in many cases the same ones who "debunked" the tobacco-cancer link and are part of the anti-evolution movement.
Never mind that Antarctica as a whole has cooled over the last several decades. Remember, in the religion of global warming, anything that can possibly be linked to global warming is to be linked to global warming, anything to the contrary is to be ignored.
One of my favorite conceits of the internet: "Don't trust scientists. Trust me, Random Message Board Commenter!
Regarding "Al's" comment that Antartica as a whole has cooled over last several decades, this is factually bullshit. The only people pushing this bullshit are those who selectively pick a few data points to fit their pre-determined opinion on global warming.
Uh, no:
If the whole of Antarctica were divided into a grid, said [John Walsh, a polar climate specialist at the University of Illinois in Chicago], about 60 to 70 percent of the squares would reveal a cooling trend, while warming would be seen in the other 30 to 40 percent of the overall area. "So there's a slight net cooling for the entire continent," Walsh said.
One of my favorite conceits of the internet: "Don't trust scientists. Trust me, Random Message Board Commenter!
But when it is something posted by Random Message Board Commenter Al, it is inherently trustworthy.
You did see how the same guy, a couple paragraphs down, said
"Antarctica is a tricky region and is more likely to do its own thing as the rest of the planet warms," he added.
(my emphasis added)
So Al... since you raise this guy as your expert, I assume you also believe that "the rest of the planet is warming?"
Yes, I do believe that the planet is experiencing a warming trend. And has been for the last 4 centuries or so.
Never mind that Antarctica as a whole has cooled over the last several decades.
Remember, in the religion of global warming, anything that can possibly be linked to global warming is to be linked to global warming, anything to the contrary is to be ignored.
Never mind that the models that climate scientists have used to describe AGW predicted just that.
The Northern Hemisphere is radically different than the Southern Hemisphere, climate-wise. Antarctica is a landmass while the Arctic is simply sea ice, and the Southern Hemisphere is a lot more water than is the Northern Hemisphere.
As far as heating/cooling goes, the part of Antarctica where this ice has broken up has warmed significantly.
Re: Only the submerged portion of the ice displaces water.
I suggest a return to high school physics, because what you have just said is 100% wrong. The entire mass of the ice (or anything else floating on water) acts to displace the liquid below it. You can even try this at home: put an ice cube in a glass, fill the glass (slowly) with water until it just reaches the brim. Come back in a couple of hours after the ice melts: no liquid is slopped over (note: you may find some dampness due to condensation on the outside of the glass).
Now as for Antarctica: it unlikley to get warm enough there to melt its ice caps directly, though that doesn't mean there isn't a potential problem. Antarctica lies in darkness half the year-- it gets really cold there as a result. Moreover unlike the Arctic it is largely cut off from the wind patterns and ocean currents that could bring in warmth from more temperate climes. Super-cold air sinks, like a rock, at the continent's center and rushes outward, creating ferocious winds blowing away from the south pole. Almost all precipitation that falls in Antarctica falls as snow. But very little falls: Antarctica is also one of the world's most arid deserts. Under global warming somewhat more percipitation may fall, due to increased evaporation rates from the surrounding oceans. Hence the glaciers may thicken (in fact this has even been observed). But that may be a problem: Some of Antarctica's coastal glaciers are none too stable. Increase the ice pressure from the interior and pieces of them may break lose and cascade into the ocean-- and that will increase sea levels.
Yes, I do believe that the planet is experiencing a warming trend. And has been for the last 4 centuries or so.
Well, not really. The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon. Nor was the Medieval Warm Period. Global temps warmed rapidly following the retreat of glaciation and then bobbed around for several thousands of years. Then, boom. The recent warmth started getting measurable in the 40s, fell back a bit, then took off in an obvious way in the late 70s.
It's useful to remember that things don't warm randomly. There has to be a reason. The obvious source for the recent warmth is the extra 1.7W/m2 per year due to the increase in greenhouse gases. Scientists have been looking for other vectors but nothing is really on the horizon. That 1.7W/m2 just happens to be almost exactly sufficient to account for the 1.1C increase in our temps. More increases in GHGs? 1.8C-4.0C more warming.
Okay I'll bite... you intrigue me, Al. Because anybody reading the article you linked to can pretty clearly see it is written by scientists who believe man-made global warming is happening, but make the point that Antarctica is a tricky place to evaluate.
So my question is, do you just not believe humans are capable of affecting the earth in such a fashion? That it absolutely has to be a natural occurrence?
The same people were recently arguing that the Earth had gotten cooler from 1998 to 2005
Eschewing, of course, the fact that 2005 eclipsed 1998.
The climate models' temperature predictions for the sub-surface ocean and for the upper troposphere, compared to the actual observed temperature of the sub-surface ocean and the upper troposphere, have turned out to be as blatantly wrong as pre-war predictions the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators.
Wow, that sounds pretty critical, because, you know, we spend so much of our lifetime in the upper troposphere and sub-surface ocean. In any case, try reading Chapter 8 of Working Group I's report and then get back to us.
But, you know, let's ignore that the predictions of the experts have been proven to be worthless, and do whatever they tell us about issues far outside their nominal expertise.
Nice logical leap from a modeling prediction about the upper troposphere and subsurface ocean to all predictions by all the experts. Predictions that happen to be confirmed not just by temperature data, but by observations of glacier retreat, species migration, and so on.
After all, it's an emergency! An ice shelf that was already floating in the water has ceased to be stationary relative to land, and now will likely float in the chilly Antarctic water until the currents have it contact land and reattach itself!
Isn't it great when someone tops off a string of ignorant comments with something they consider a real zinger!
Actually, the largest part of global warming theory is not based in measurements of past temperatures, but a physics model of the Earth's heat balance.
Far from being controversial and based in delicate measures of ice cores & the like, it's fairly akin to calculating the amount of heat produced by, say, an internal combustion engine, and then to analyze the cooling processes available in order to keep the engine from burning up.
Automobile manufacturers do this all the time using theoretical physics without wrangling about whether or not their "models" are really, really, really, really right. If they did not, engines would simply seize or catch fire all the time for a failure to calculate needed cooling.
It goes like this:
(1) The Earth gets all of its heat from the Sun. That energy arrives in the form of radiation which travels through space and which either enters or is reflected away by the Earth's atmosphere.
(2) Energy which enters the Earth's atmosphere heats the Earth. (The heat from the Earth's core is essentially meaningless for surface matters.) For this reason the Earth is not a cold, icy, lifeless sphere. Some of that heat is re-emitted as a form of light -- infrared photons.
(3) The only way in which that Sun-derived heat energy can ever leave the Earth is through one major mechanism, given that space is pretty much a vacuum and therefore regular cooling cannot take place, and given that the Earth's gravitational field keeps the atmosphere pretty much in place: the release of infrared photons, some of which leave the Earth's atmosphere (after much misdirection, absorption & re-emission, etc.).
When those IR photons leave the Earth's atmosphere into space, they take their heat energy equivalent with them.
(4) The gases in the Earth's atmosphere are able to change the rate of the probable release of IR photons into space.
(5) CO2 is one of those gases which can change that IR release probability rate.
(6) If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the rate of IR photon release is slowed. There is no other option.
(7) If the rate of IR photon release is slowed, the Earth must heat. There is no other option.
So while an increase of CO2 is not responsible for directly heating the Earth via its atmosphere, it does lower the rate at which Earth's heat energy is released into space (cooling), which is the same thing as heating.
If you slow the rate at which a system cools while keeping the rate of heat production (or in the case of Earth, heat energy absorption), that is the same as increasing the rate of heat addition.
In fact I am curious as to how the Earth could somehow NOT heat if the rate of its single cooling mechanism is slowed.
If you're curious, check out NASA's Earth Observatory site on the subject.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/global_warming_update2.html
No worry, no worry. The Earth is only getting warmer to prepare it for the triumphant return of Christ Jesus. He lived in Israel and he likes warm weather. Please continue to kill Muslims while we wait for him to come back.
The most interesting post so far came from heedless. I'll quote it.
"Fruitcake brigade aside, the most important objection to "curing" global warming is the claim that it would be cheaper to treat the symptoms than to slash our carbon output by 30-40%.
Neither side in that debate has managed to prove their case (the variance of the estimates is too high), so we're probably going to dither for the next ten years."
I wish he had cited a discussion, because this does seem to be where the main debate will take place, once we kick the Republicans out of the White House.
Incidentally, my understanding is that sea level (though a dramatic and telegenic issue) will actually lag behind a lot of other changes -- rainfall patterns, fire patterns, desertification, extinctions. So the argument about ice cubes is not pressing. Worry about the Colorado River instead. Also worry that the changes may become self-reinforcing at a certain CO2 level, perhaps not too far from where we now are.
Re: The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon. Nor was the Medieval Warm Period.
Neither will "global" warming be literally global: some areas may well get colder (though overall the average for the planet will warm). The term "global climate change" is probably more accurate. By the way, the Little Ice Age did have global effects, including a drying up of much of North America that brought about the decline of both the Anasazi in the Southwest and the Mississippian proto-civilization. The climatic upheaval also caused famines in China and contributed to the decline of the Mongol Empire on the Eurasian steppe.
Just remember -- we can afford to pay any price for endless war in Iraq, but serious action to forestall catastrophic climate change is too expensive.
But don't we have to take over lots more countries than just Iraq to make sure they're all getting their CO2 output down? Endless war in Iraq would appear to be a bargain in comparison -- unless of course we just sign for a new CO2 treaty to castrate our own economy and ignore other countries that either opt out or cheat.
"...a physics model of the Earth's heat balance..."
Thank you for your post. This is why is global climate chnage is actually reatively easy to understand. The earth is most definitely aquiring energy. The scientists can quantify that energy and where it goes, thus the heat balance. Human contribution to this energy aquisition is clear.
It's the heat balance that trips most doubters up. They either haven't had to perform such calculations or don't understand the mathematics (as El Cid suggests, very fundamental mathematics). One more fundamental that some seem not to understand or are foolishly willing to ignore; when you add energy to a system, it becomes more chaotic. As was said previously, some regions/hemispheres/ecosystems may not be impacted, while others may be devasted.
Oh, and on NPR today they were interviewing one of the scienctists studying this portion of Antarctica. The portion that separated was in fact the "cap" of the glacier, holding it in place.
heedless: (And ML, the cost of carbon reduction is in loss of economic activity. There's no direct expense to the government beyond negligible enforcement expenses. So we're not talking a trade-off in the sense you and Matt are implying.)
Sure, but you could spend government money on subsidies to compensate actors who made sacrifices to reduce their carbon emissions. You could also invest that money in the development of technologies that would make it possible to cut carbon emissions while preserving economic growth.
Funny how so many of the climate change deniers (Al) are the same people who loved the Iraq invasion and now love the endless occupation.
With Iraq, all that was needed to launch a trillion-dollar war that has cost thousands of lives and accomplished little, was scant, exaggerated, questionable evidence. And even now, any objective analysis is outweighed by the "romantic" glory of warfare as experienced from a safe distance by lifelong cowards, and the whole issue of how the war started is brushed under the rug as irrelevant.
Yet on the issue of our planet's climate, mountains of evidence and vast scientific consensus are written off as inadequate or "inconclusive" by such brilliant scientists as Tom DeLay, Glenn Beck, and Dennis Miller.
A significant portion of the trillion dollars blown on Iraq - not to mention the trillions to be spent on the upcoming Iran war - could be diverted to nanotech research, which would eliminate the issues of global warming and much else by 2050.
Failing that, by 2050 or 2075, humans will be obso anyway - and the replacing species won't care about global warming.
"But don't we have to take over lots more countries than just Iraq to make sure they're all getting their CO2 output down? "
Umm, no. Just look at modern trade policy. We really do have mechanisms to enforce trade regulations that stop short of war. Like the enforcement of any law or regulation, they don't work perfectly, but they work pretty good. For example, if a French company steals intellectual property from an American company, we have courts to resolve the issue. We don't simply invade countries every time there are such disputes. The same mechanisms can be used to enforce environmental policies.
"unless of course we just sign for a new CO2 treaty to castrate our own economy and ignore other countries that either opt out or cheat"
We don't really have to ignore countries that don't comply. We can apply punitive tariffs to such countries to offset the competitive advantage of non-compliance. But we do have to come up with a flexible definition of compliance. The Kyoto Treaty has been criticized because countries like India were not included. The reason is that rather than set up a per capita limit on carbon emissions, developed countries insisted that every country lock in their current emissions. This was extremely unfair to developing countries. For example, the typical Indian uses 1/20th of the energy that the typical American uses. The Kyoto Treaty would have locked in that ratio and forever kept India in it's current state of appalling poverty while Americans would be granted their current wealthy status. So it's understandable that India would balk at such a treaty. But just because the Kyoto Treaty was inherently unworkable does not mean the ALL possible treaties would have similar problems.
Climatologists already predicted that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean will remain cold during the initial stages of global warming, http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/02/antarctica-is-cold/
Oh, yes, we'll "adapt" to the new conditions. 400,000 years is long enough; time to evolve into new forms of heat-loving life. Indeed.
We definitely see no definite signs of climate change, anyway.
No reason to be alarmed. Please stay calm and go shopping.
Well, not really. The Little Ice Age was not a global phenomenon. Nor was the Medieval Warm Period.
JonF commented on this above, but I reiterate - whether it is a "global phenomenon" or not is not relevant. No warming is going to be a completely "global" phenomenon - some places may get a lot warmer, and some places may cool a bit (as is noted above with respect to Antarctica). But both northern hemisphere and global temperatures have increased since about 1600 or so.
I reiterate - whether it is a "global phenomenon" or not is not relevant. No warming is going to be a completely "global" phenomenon - some places may get a lot warmer, and some places may cool a bit (as is noted above with respect to Antarctica).
The term "global warming" is misleading; the science is not. The current science on climate change reflects exactly what you're saying.
But both northern hemisphere and global temperatures have increased since about 1600 or so.
Yes, but they are changing at a more rapid rate now.
So my question is, do you just not believe humans are capable of affecting the earth in such a fashion? That it absolutely has to be a natural occurrence?
I believe there are both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic components. I also believe the science isn't very good at separating the two.
There are a lot of reasons to think that humans are playing an important part in causing the earth to warm. The collapse of a small ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula isn't one of them, though, seeing as how antactica is, as a whole, cooling (even if the peninsula itself is warming).
JonF commented on this above, but I reiterate - whether it is a "global phenomenon" or not is not relevant. No warming is going to be a completely "global" phenomenon - some places may get a lot warmer, and some places may cool a bit (as is noted above with respect to Antarctica). But both northern hemisphere and global temperatures have increased since about 1600 or so.
Well, there's a trough there, but temps rose and fell after that. Your graph's of a hodgepodge of sources, and the coldest temps for one of those is in the 19th century. As for what's "relevant", I don't think an anonymous lawyer from New Jersey is really in a position to say.
I've seen a graph of a composite of the projections about global warming. I'd assumed that since some areas would warm well above the average that there would be some areas that would, in fact, drop in temp. At first, yes. Antarctica, for example. Further along, not so much. The most exteme ones showed two little dimples of cooling, one around the Bering Sea and the other between Iceland and Europe. If we go past 4.0C there won't be any little dimples of cooling.
Your skepticism about what's anthropogenic and what's natural should come to terms with the fact that the 1.7W/m2 of extra-energy in the atmosphere and oceans due to the increase in CO2, year-in and year-out, is just enough to have caused a warm-up in temps of 1.1C. Which, coincidentally, is how much we've warmed. Climate skepticism is like looking at a corpse with a bullet in its head and a gun nearby and wondering if it actually got hit by a falling safe.
There are a lot of reasons to think that humans are playing an important part in causing the earth to warm.
I appreciate your answer. Since you referred to belief in global warming as a "religion," I assumed that meant you looked down on human efforts to reverse it. Now I'm not sure.
So if you believe human behavior is partly responsible in causing the earth to warm, do you also believe we should try to use science to fix it and/or change our behavior to reverse it?
Yet again, the relevant science is missed by Matt, in favor of trying to get more governmental power exerted. Why is the western ice shelf shearing? Well gee, do you suppose that the volcanic activity there might have something to do with it? In the real world, sure. In the delusional world Matt inhabits, the volcanic heat is less relevant than CO2. From the "Science Daily" article:
The West Antarctic rift is a region of volcanic activity and crustal stretching that is roughly the size of the western United States (from Salt Lake City to the Pacific Ocean).
So, how exactly are carbon trading schemes going to affect that volcanic activity?
Yet again, the relevant science is missed by Matt, in favor of trying to get more governmental power exerted. Why is the western ice shelf shearing? Well gee, do you suppose that the volcanic activity there might have something to do with it? In the real world, sure. In the delusional world Matt inhabits, the volcanic heat is less relevant than CO2. From the "Science Daily" article:
The West Antarctic rift is a region of volcanic activity and crustal stretching that is roughly the size of the western United States (from Salt Lake City to the Pacific Ocean).
So, how exactly are carbon trading schemes going to affect that volcanic activity?
Comments closed April 10, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
When dikes and dams have to be built, and cities, railroads, ports, and roads moved, I'm sure that a certain company with H in its name will be there with its hand out. Remember, emergency work costs double!
Posted by sunsin | March 27, 2008 5:30 PM