Alaska Glaciers - key indicator of climate change

[Saigon]

I live in Europe. I live in a country with 7 nuclear plants.

I also live in a country where both of the two major conservative parties have stated that human acitivity is involved in climate change.

By American standards, european conservatives are rabid liberals so claiming that your conservatives believe the hoax is like telling me that greenpeace believes the hoax.

That really is silly.

Is your point really that the GOP are the only real conservatives in the world?

Come on man - you can do better than that.

(I'll come back to a couple of the other points posted here tomorrow)

 

[wirebender]

That really is silly.

Is your point really that the GOP are the only real conservatives in the world?

Come on man - you can do better than that.

(I'll come back to a couple of the other points posted here tomorrow)

If you find the truth silly, so be it but it has been at least a decade since I have seen any politician in europe as a whole who even approaches what would pass as a conservative here.

Aside from that, attempting to use what politicians claim to believe for political expediency as an argument for science stretches credibility to the breaking point. One thing politicans here and europe and anywhere else for that matter have in common is that they are, as a group, political whores who will say anything for just a bit more power.

If you want to discuss the science, by all means, lets discuss it. But expressing the views of politicians as if they represented anything more than a lust for power is worse than a waste of time, it is mental masturbation.

 

[skookerasbil]

I dont have to present any links. Im too tired. They are out there..........but the onus isnt on me. /QUOTE]

Yeah...actually they aren't out there.

After I read the Arendt I went on to look at another half dozen reports on glaciers stocks around the world.

I've been to Chile, Argentina and New Zealand and had heard about the collapse of glaciers stocks there so found this an interesting element of the wider debate.

The facts are - 97% of glaciers globally are in retreat. Fact.

Show me where it is mattering s0n?? I mean shit.........even the president failed to mention "climate change" even ONCE in his SOTU address!!!

Nobody gives a rats ass except the environmental nutters.........a fact far more relavant than Alaska glacier banter.

 

[code1211]

Wirebender -

I can only say that my experience of the PhD process (i.e. my wife's work) is grueling and epic. Twice a year she is drilled for three days by assorted professors, who at times quiz her on work barely referenced in her footnotes and appendices.

That doesn't say anything about what she will do with the prestige of that degree after she has it.

The topic here is glaciers, btw, I'd rather leave other topics for other threads.

Sure the topic is glaciers, but the question is why are they melting. That goes to the science that the AGW community is pushing forward as an explanation. Clearly, that science is lacking. If the science is flawed, what is the point of making the argument?

I have never understood the thinking that someone who has spent 10 years studying a subject suddenly decides to produce fradulent research based on poor science once they graduate. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Most research units run according to the highest ethical standards - and thus most scientific reports they produce will meet those standards.

I don't think glaciers alone tell us why the climate is changing. What they do provide is one large piece in a puzzle - along with rising ocean levels and melting polar caps, ocean Ph, desertification and so forth. I prefer to view those as individual topics, and not just argue endlessly about CO2.

The sea level is said to be rising. If that is the case, there should be ample photographic evidence from around the world in the major coastal cities.

Can you please produce some of these before and after photographs?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Tell me, looking at the long term temperature history of the earth, what do you see in the present that is an any way unusual or unprecedented?

The fact that the melting pattern for glaciers is:

a) global

b) displays the same pattern globally.

During periods such as the Minoan, the melting patterns were often geographically isolated, particularly in the northern hemisphere.

Also:

Climate scientists now understand that the Medieval Warm Period was caused by an increase in solar radiation and a decrease in volcanic activity, which both promote warming. Other evidence suggests ocean circulation patterns shifted to bring warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. As we’ll see in the next section, those kinds of natural changes have not been detected in the past few decades. Charles Jackson noted that when computer models take into account paleoclimatologists’ reconstructions of solar irradiance and volcanoes for the past 1,000 years, the models reproduce the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. Those events turn out to not be random noise after all.

Medieval Warm Period not so random « Know

Global glaciers have been retreating for the past 14,000 years

 

[wirebender]

Global glaciers have been retreating for the past 14,000 years

Retreating for nearly 14,000 years. How surprising that they would still be retreating.

 

[bripat9643]

Where is the evidence for this theory?

All the evidence I've seen indicates the MWP was global. There's plenty of supporting evidence. There is plenty of evidence that the Earth was warmer in the past than it is now, like ice-man who was buried under ice for 5000 years until it melted away to reveal his remains.

Tell me, looking at the long term temperature history of the earth, what do you see in the present that is an any way unusual or unprecedented?

The fact that the melting pattern for glaciers is:

a) global

b) displays the same pattern globally.

During periods such as the Minoan, the melting patterns were often geographically isolated, particularly in the northern hemisphere.

Also:

Climate scientists now understand that the Medieval Warm Period was caused by an increase in solar radiation and a decrease in volcanic activity, which both promote warming. Other evidence suggests ocean circulation patterns shifted to bring warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. As we’ll see in the next section, those kinds of natural changes have not been detected in the past few decades. Charles Jackson noted that when computer models take into account paleoclimatologists’ reconstructions of solar irradiance and volcanoes for the past 1,000 years, the models reproduce the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. Those events turn out to not be random noise after all.

Medieval Warm Period not so random « Know

 

[Old Rocks]

We've been repeatedly assured that the only thing driving climate change is CO2 emitted by man's activities.

That is complete and utter garbage.

I have never heard ANYONE suggest that CO2 emitted by man was the only cause. There will always be variations in natural cycles of CO2 release, plus volcanic activity etc etc.

Um, tell it to East Anglia, IPCC, NASA and Old Rocks

And once again you are full of shit, Frankie Boy. The words that I have used are the same as those used by the scientists studying the changing climate. The primary driver of todays warming are the GHGs emitted by mankind. However, never fear, if we warm the Arctic enough, we will take a back seat to the CH4 and CO2 emitted by the permafrost and ocean clathrates in that region.

 

[Old Rocks]

In the past, when CO2 levels were where they are today, the sea level was 25 meters higher than today.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTTlAAiwgwM&feature=relmfu]AGU FM11 - Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes - YouTube[/ame]

 

[daveman]

In the past, when CO2 levels were where they are today, the sea level was 25 meters higher than today.

AGU FM11 - Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes - YouTube

Then, since the sea level is 25 meters below the level at that time, CO2 cannot be the cause.

Obviously.

 

[Saigon]

The sea level is said to be rising. If that is the case, there should be ample photographic evidence from around the world in the major coastal cities.

Can you please produce some of these before and after photographs?

Is that a serious question?

Just thinking of places I have been to recently - I suppose Rotterdam, Bangladesh and Mozambique were the places that it has been most evident. But then there is also Kiribati, Nauru...a host of other island nations.

I'm really surprised people haven't heard about this.

 

[Saigon]

Typical leftists.

That really is a terribly childish response.

Is there a left wing position and a right wing posiition on gravity?

Scientific proof does not rely on politics, and isn't - IMHO - a political subject.

The fact that you feel scientific proof relies on political opinions says quite a lot about how you read science, doesn't it?

 

[Saigon]

Not in climate science. In climate science, data from computer simulaitons is accepted as observation, hiding data, distorting data and tampering with data are widely accepted norms within the field.

There is absolutely no proof of that whatsoever - nor have I ever seen it suggested by a reputable source.

Faced with overwhelming scientific evidence you have two choices - read the science, or reject the science without reading it.

I'm puzzled you seem to have chosen the latter.

 

[Saigon]

I'd be very interested on seeing anything which suggests that South American or New Zealand glaciers were in retreat during the Minoan Period.

That's an easy one. Take a look at the respective warm periods over the past 10K years and tell me how a warming period of the magnitude of the Minoan could possibly be local, or hemispherical in nature. And again, the minoan signal in the graph below is from the Vostok ice cores. Tell me how you believe such a warming compared to today could not result in retreating glaciers.

There is such a thing as common sense here and looking at a warming of that magnitude and claiming that it wouldn't have resulted in glaciers retreating to a greater extent than today pushes the notion of common sense. Further, didn't I give you an article describing archaeological finds dating back to the minoan warming in peru? The glacier had to be absent for the find to be laid down.

I do think this is a good post (which is why I wanted time to read it more carefully), and I do think you make a good point here about the Minoan Period very likely having a global impact.

But given the Minoan Period is largely associated with sunspot acitivty - why do you feel it is relevant to the situation we face today?

 

[Saigon]

Global glaciers have been retreating for the past 14,000 years

You mean except for the ones which grew steadily throughout the 19th century.

On the good side - this is an issue which we can settle quite quickly.

Studies of glacier history throughout the world have shown that, following glacier recession at the end of the last glacial age, mountain glaciers expanded in size during the last three millennia, many reaching their greatest postglacial size during the last 700 years. This recent interval of glacier growth, widely referred to as the Little Ice Age, culminated in major glacier expansions during the early to middle 17th century and the early to middle 19th century. Since about 1850, glaciers worldwide have experienced fluctuating retreat, so that today we commonly see belts of sparsely vegetated deglaciated terrain beyond receding ice margins. Whereas the largest glaciers have retreated a mile or more during the past century, some small glaciers have disappeared entirely in recent decades in response to the general 20th century warming of the climate.

http://faculty.washington.edu/scporter/Rainierglaciers.html

I do think this establishes exactly why many experts are so concerned about the current trends....

 

[code1211]

That is complete and utter garbage.

I have never heard ANYONE suggest that CO2 emitted by man was the only cause. There will always be variations in natural cycles of CO2 release, plus volcanic activity etc etc.

Um, tell it to East Anglia, IPCC, NASA and Old Rocks

And once again you are full of shit, Frankie Boy. The words that I have used are the same as those used by the scientists studying the changing climate. The primary driver of todays warming are the GHGs emitted by mankind. However, never fear, if we warm the Arctic enough, we will take a back seat to the CH4 and CO2 emitted by the permafrost and ocean clathrates in that region.

Primary driver?

After this top driver, where does the Sun fall on the ranked list of climate drivers?

 

[code1211]

In the past, when CO2 levels were where they are today, the sea level was 25 meters higher than today.

AGU FM11 - Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes - YouTube

And in every case, the temperature rose to thaw sequestration sites and the CO2 rose as a component of the air a result of its release from the soil.

Throughout the history of the planet, the amount of CO2 in the air follows the temperature, not the reverse as the "science" of AGW now claims.

 

[code1211]

The sea level is said to be rising. If that is the case, there should be ample photographic evidence from around the world in the major coastal cities.

Can you please produce some of these before and after photographs?

Is that a serious question?

Just thinking of places I have been to recently - I suppose Rotterdam, Bangladesh and Mozambique were the places that it has been most evident. But then there is also Kiribati, Nauru...a host of other island nations.

I'm really surprised people haven't heard about this.

Then post the photos.

I have seen pictures of the boat houses in Herculaneum which were near the shore 2000 years ago and they still are.

The Castillo on the Florida coast in St. Augustine was built there in abut 1600 give or take and the Castillo and the coast are pretty much where the Spanish King left them.

Coney Island in New york is pretty much the same size and shape that it used to be, but it's no longer an island.

Many Pacific Islands have been held up as evidence that the sea is rising, but it turns out that most of these examples are the result of the land sinking. That's why I want pictures of real live continents on continental shelves where the water is rising to engulf the cities.

At the conservative end of the scale, the water has risen by 8 inches since 1900.

This amount of rise would be easily shown at any coastal city. If it is actually happening, of course.

Show it.



Then & Now: The Castillo - Castillo De San Marcos National Monument

 

[code1211]

Typical leftists.

That really is a terribly childish response.

Is there a left wing position and a right wing posiition on gravity?

Scientific proof does not rely on politics, and isn't - IMHO - a political subject.

The fact that you feel scientific proof relies on political opinions says quite a lot about how you read science, doesn't it?

The fact that you think AGW and Gravity are equally well proven is a political posture.

 

[code1211]

Not in climate science. In climate science, data from computer simulaitons is accepted as observation, hiding data, distorting data and tampering with data are widely accepted norms within the field.

There is absolutely no proof of that whatsoever - nor have I ever seen it suggested by a reputable source.

Faced with overwhelming scientific evidence you have two choices - read the science, or reject the science without reading it.

I'm puzzled you seem to have chosen the latter.

The science has applied flawed logic to an existing natural trend and proclaimed that the science is supported by the trend.

When asked to make predictions, the science misses by about 100% and the natural trend, the one that was pre-existing, rules the increase.

I am puzzled, also.