Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Greenland's Melting

perhaps your are too far away to realise that those rivers were under the level of the sea during that hurricane. there was no way for the water to get out because the sea was coming in. also during a hurricane the sea is being pushed inwards and the water from the rivers are being pushed back by the wind. under normal conditions the water from the river would still flow into the sea with no problem. only during a hurricane would they be concerned with how high the rivers were.

actually if i understand the physics of the difference in weight, the additional weight of the water all over the world will push more magma under the unchanging weight of the land. it will not rise much, but it would do some. the thing is the weight of all the water in the area will push the magma under Greenland up as much as the ice is if not more. there will not be that much change. according to the link you posted, a 6 meter increase in the depth of the ocean will mean about a meter or less rise in the sea lvl. this over most of a century.

i believe the time-line they were using involved geological indicators for about 1.5 million year, during that time, they indicated that there were approximately 14 periods (if my memory is not mistaken on this, i was actually looking for some place they might be able to put an electromagnetic launcher) that the ice had appeared then disappeared.

also, just as a point of fact, technically, we are still in an ice age, just in interglacial period of one. as long as there is ice on Greenland, and ice in the arctic, and ice in Scandinavia, then we are in an ice age. this is actually the longest ice age in about a half billion years or so.

dehammer asks:
"show me in that quote where the person wrote it called him a crackpot."

Ok.

Go to google.com

Put in the following search criterion:
"Chylek" and "crackpot"

Now do the same thing at fazzle.com.

At fazzle the search will return 414,079 matches.

How about the other search engines too?

I'm amazed you couldn't do this yourself.


But PhD's are generally more generous in their language than to engage in name-calling at that level. But if you are in a university environment you will find it not uncommon to hear comments such as this:

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
~ Moses Hadas

ok, i tried that and you know what i found. not scicntist saying he was a crackpot, but scaremongering journalist trying to make anyone who did not agree with them sound bad. do they argue with the facts he raises? no. they ridicule the thought that the sun could have had any effect on the changes we are seeing.

perhaps you should check this out for some more understanding of why some people dont believe the polution is the main factor in the global warming.

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

heres a quote that might help

heres something else i think will show why some people are skeptical about it. there is a graph of the tempature of the last 100 years on this site that shows that while the tempature has risen, it has also fallen. max was an average of 54.8 in the 1930's and the lowest average was 49.8 in the 1910's. this data came from the national climate data center, noaa. its well established, but the scaremongers dont want it published very much.

in fact most of the links appear to have been to forum where people who are not scientist, are saying that he is a crackpot or that someone else is, but listing his name in the same post. if you had bother to check out a few of them that were not forums you would have found that Chylek was not always the one being called a crackpot. some of those actually agreed with him.

as to him standing on his own on this, check this quote out.

from http://www.nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/53/3622.html?1149192155

Hit this:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers_2.html
for the photos and a good story.
Go to http://earthquakeobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages.ph?img_id=10856 and follow up until you get to "Glacier Retreat". Prepare to be shocked, I sure was. It didn't look the way Hemingway descibed it when I saw it, but today, it's a downright dirty shame.

My trip was something I'll never forget. You know how you bond with total strangers during an experience like that? Everybody except myself was from Europe. I brought along a mini photo album to show people I met in Africa what life in Samoa is like. We slept on the ice field our last night up, it was Feb. 21, a Huge Full Moon. At just after 3:00 AM we made the final ascent, it was so bright you didn't need lights. We just about jogged all the way, we were scared we'd miss the sunrise. Just before the Sun rose, we saw Jupiter and Venus, almost in conjunction, just over the Sun on the Eastern horizon. They were in Superior Conjunction, on the far side of the sun, but at that altitude they were still very bright. It was indescribable, people were crying. We had a Swiss couple with us on their honeymoon, I thought they wanted to conceive a baby up there! Some (including me) had brought champagne with us.

Looking at these Satellite photos, however, it appears that those days are gone for good.

im glad you were able to enjoy it while its there. the world is constantly changing. it will likely disappear for a while then return one day. in the mean time, i suspect there will be other things to delight those willing to take the risk, time, and money to find them.

one major problem i have with that first link is that it claimes the global warming effect started in the 20th century. it started 18000 years ago.

the second link did not work for me.

My Architect buddy from Honolulu was there in '03, I think it was, and they could still see ice in all directions once they got on top of it. But they were only on ice for something like 3-4 hours. He said there's a big "dish" in the center of the field. It's not the "Exotic,Bucolic" experience it was back then, either. Restrooms, Barbeque Pits and Huts have been erected along the route, and they passed several groups going in the opposite direction along the way. What's next? A Quality Inn?

Try punching Glacier Retreat on your Search Bar.

everyone wants to experience it before its gone. even if half the experience is artificial.

dehammer wrote:
"ok, i tried that and you know what i found. not scicntist saying he was a crackpot, but scaremongering journalist"

You read all 414,079 posts? Which speed reading class did you take?

If you can't understand that scientists referring to someone as fringe means crackpot then I can't help you but perhaps this can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackpot

DA Morgan, what is the difference between fringe and leading edge? Should we have continued to believe all those scientists that agreed that the world was flat? Or is it okay that we listened to the fringe who were on the leading edge who proved the general consensus to be wrong?

"But even if everyone agreed that global warming was something to worry about, would that necessarily make the theories that it was caused by cars and factories, any more legitimate? Does consensus equal truth? Not a chance, says Carter. "There was once a scientific consensus that the earth was flat, and that witches should be burned at the stake," he says. "Science is not about consensus but about empirical data, tested hypotheses and rational argument."

And given all the portentous environmental theories of the past--from DDT dangers to the ozone hole--that supposedly enjoyed scientific consensus at one point and yet turned out to be baseless (see sidebar for some more unfounded panics of the last century), it's not surprising that so many of us are unwilling to believe shaky scientific theories, even when they're held by a large number of scientists. Eventually, we figure, this disaster, too, will pass. And if there's one thing we do know with certainty, it's that, before long, there will surely be another to take its place." -- http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=print.print_article&article_id=1864

JMR:
your link did not work for me. All I got was a header and my print program came on. Any explanation?

Thanks,

Amaranth

did not have to read them all, all i had to do is look at the links. the great majority of them said "forum". when i did the search with a block on forums, there were very few (i believe 60)

no, fringe does not mean crackpot. crackpot in science is usually someone that does not have a clue what is going on and claims to be an authority on it. hmmm, wonder if i could get away with making a comparison. likely not. guess i will be good and not.

there are several fringes, most of them are likely to be unsuccessful in proving their point, but some of them are still valid. how about the wright brothers. they were on the fringe until Kitty Hawk. when was the last time you heard them called crackpots.

oh, the quote from that link is

until it is proven false, he is not a crackpot. considering the other evidence against those who are pushing the theory of 'only man made global warming', i think it would not be wise for them to do any name calling.

edit: i tried that link and if you take out the "page=print.print" it will take you to the index and not bring up the print program.

This link did not work for me. Do you have another?

Here is a link to the article without the print:
http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=1864

I like the print version since it is all on one page. I am registered, so I can see it no problem. If you don't want to register to see the article, here it is:

- - -

Global warming meltdown
Kevin Steel - Monday,31 July 2006

It's not just your imagination: global warming devotees are getting shriller in their calls for action. Al Gore, in his new movie An Inconvenient Truth, warns us we now have only 10 years left to fix the climate change problem. That's quite a bit shorter than the 50 to 100 years many were predicting barely a few years ago. And, in defending his film, Gore has publicly said that the debate on global warming theory "is over in the scientific community," and all those who continue to question it are "on the lunatic fringe." Here in Canada, the Sierra Club calls skeptics "crackpots." The federal Liberal party is noisily calling for the resignation of the environment minister, Rona Ambrose, because she dared to state the obvious, that this country cannot meet its Kyoto targets. And while the Conservative government has insisted that the Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction targets set by the former Liberal administration are unattainable (something that federal natural resources bureaucrats had concluded, even under the Liberal government, according to documents obtained by the National Post), the federal government's National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy produced a study on June 21 suggesting Canada could cut its emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, 10 times the amount required by the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, in June, Quebec announced it would introduce a carbon tax--one way for the government to cash in before the global warming theory falls apart completely. There seems to be an air of, well, desperation out there.

Tim Ball, a climatologist and former professor at the University of Winnipeg, has been fighting environmental hysterics for more than 30 years--he proudly reminds people he fought the global cooling theory popular in the 1970s--and he's noticed this desperation in global warming theory adherents. "Their positions are getting so extreme. Gore says there's 10 years left," Ball says. "Well, [David] Suzuki said there's 10 years left--the problem is he said it 20 years ago. So people are saying, 'Hang on a minute.'"

The other big indicator is that global warming adherents have all but given up on "global warming" as a term. "Now it's 'climate change,'" Ball says. That, says Ball, allows proponents to say that any change at all in the weather is the fault of humans; if it's getting warmer, cooler, wetter, drier, this is all part of the same process. "When it was just 'warming,' they got stuck because the earth has been cooling since 1998, even though CO2 from humans has gone up. And what was it that Huxley said? 'The bane of science is a lovely hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact.' So they switched to 'climate change' and they fall apart there because the climate is always changing, always has and always will," says Ball.

So is support for global warming theory on the wane? Not if you ask John Bennett, senior policy adviser for energy at the Sierra Club in Canada. "Despite the politics in Canada, we've been getting lots of positive response to our outrage with the government. The latest polls I've seen show that support for Kyoto is still in the 80s and 90s [per cent]. So I'm really convinced there has not been any change in the public will on this, but we do have problems with political will," Bennett says. And what does he think of the growing number of respected scientists who are now stepping forward to challenge the theory itself? "These guys are just crackpots who are just fronting for those who have an interest in the fossil fuel industry. But there is nothing they have to say that is credible whatsoever," he says.

Crackpot is not a term anyone could reasonably use to describe Petr Chylek. He's an adjunct professor in the department of physics and atmospheric science at Dalhousie University, and a past senior chair in climate research at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A specialist on the subject of the Greenland ice sheet, he certainly does not believe global warming is caused by CO2 generated by human activity, though he is willing to admit that, in the scientific community, scientists who oppose the hysteria are still in the minority. "But if you look at the scientists who dissent, really, these are the leaders in their fields," he says confidently.

Chylek is particularly upset with the way global warming supporters have been misrepresenting data to support their cause. For instance, in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claims that between 1992 and 2005 the melt area of Greenland increased drastically. This is technically correct, Chylek says. But Gore fails to mention that a volcanic eruption from Mount Pinatubo in 1992 caused temperatures to become depressed all over the earth; the years following were naturally warmer. "He's comparing 1992 with 2005," says Chylek. "If he would compare 1991 with 2005, he would find that the Greenland melt area in 1991 was larger than 2005. So he just picks the special year 1992, when the melt area of Greenland was very, very small due to the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption. And this lets him show and pretend that this difference between 1992 and 2005 is due to global warming and that's completely untrue," Chylek says.

Chylek can't help but be amused at the accusation that those who oppose the global warming theory are shilling for the oil industry, he says. In his entire career, he has been supported by governments, not once receiving a penny from industry.

If anything, the increased shrillness of global warming theory devotees may be a sign of scientific weakness, says Chylek. "What is very discouraging is that many people who strongly support global warming caused by carbon dioxide are trying to suppress scientific discussion," he says. Legitimate scientists welcome challenges that test their theories. They can help make a scientific argument stronger. "You have to think about it [the opposition], discredit it eventually, and then go forward. But if you try to suppress dissenting opinion, it shows that you are really weak in your positions," he says.

But, in many cases, Canadian scientists had little choice but to toe the line of the previous federal Liberal government. Environment Canada transformed into a church of global warming theory, and researchers looking for funding were frozen out unless they signed on to the official dogma. "Obviously, if you are against the measured direction pushed for by governments, it will slow down your professional progress," Chylek says. "You will have difficulty at university getting tenure, you will not be getting grants, et cetera." But he says that friends of his, who have since retired, have come clean with doubts about anthropogenic global warming. "So now they say, 'Now I am retired; now I can say what I really think,'" he says.

Tad Murty is one former government scientist now speaking out about flaws in the global warming science. Murty retired from his position as a senior research scientist in meteorology and oceanography at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 1994. A specialist in storm surges (tsunamis, hurricanes, et cetera) he is now an adjunct professor in earth sciences and civil engineering at the University of Ottawa. Currently, Murty's leading an international scientific team that includes the United Nations and the Canadian Weather Service, in the preparation of a storm surge manual following the Asian tsunami. He doesn't adhere to the global warming theory at all. "I really do not see any evidence that humans are influencing, through carbon dioxide emissions, the global climate," Murty says.

So, the supposed scientific consensus on global warming may be breaking down (on June 22, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel officially debunked environmentalists' long-held claim that the Earth is the warmest it's been in a thousand years). But what of public opinion? "I am not convinced that global warming alarmism has ever received the support of a majority of people in the major western democracies, despite the best efforts of the various interest groups, abetted by the surprisingly uncritical complicity of the press," says Bob Carter, a professor of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia, and an opponent of global warming theory.

The polling data backs up Carter. The BBC World Service released in January the results of a poll on the most significant events of 2005. The survey of 32,439 people in 27 countries asked, "In the future, when historians think about the year 2005, what event of global significance do you think will be seen as most important?" The war in Iraq and the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia came out on top, both at 15 per cent. Global warming trickled in at three per cent, behind the London bombings (four per cent) and just ahead of the avian flu (three per cent). The Pew Global Attitudes Project, a worldwide public opinion survey of 90,000 individuals, released results on June 13, and found "no evidence of alarm over global warming in either the United States or China--the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. Just 19% of Americans and 20% of the Chinese who have heard of the issue say they worry a lot about global warming--the lowest percentages in the 15 countries surveyed. Moreover, nearly half of Americans (47%) and somewhat fewer Chinese (37%) express little or no concern about the problem."

But even if everyone agreed that global warming was something to worry about, would that necessarily make the theories that it was caused by cars and factories, any more legitimate? Does consensus equal truth? Not a chance, says Carter. "There was once a scientific consensus that the earth was flat, and that witches should be burned at the stake," he says. "Science is not about consensus but about empirical data, tested hypotheses and rational argument."

And given all the portentous environmental theories of the past--from DDT dangers to the ozone hole--that supposedly enjoyed scientific consensus at one point and yet turned out to be baseless (see sidebar for some more unfounded panics of the last century), it's not surprising that so many of us are unwilling to believe shaky scientific theories, even when they're held by a large number of scientists. Eventually, we figure, this disaster, too, will pass. And if there's one thing we do know with certainty, it's that, before long, there will surely be another to take its place.

A HISTORY OF FREAKING OUT:

In 1841, Charles Mackay published his famous and enduring work on mass hysteria, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. A century and a half later, the moral of the book still offers a useful lesson to modern readers: popularity and truth don't necessarily go hand in hand.

Not that anyone listens to Mackay. In fact, if the English poet and journalist were alive today, he'd easily have a steady diet of material to put out an updated edition every year. He could even fill an entirely new book with all the doomsday hysteria, environmental and otherwise, the world has endured over the last half century. Here are just a few of the frights we've seen come and (unfailingly) go.

ALIEN INVASION: In 1938, Orson Welles broadcast on radio a reading of H.G. Well's sci-fi novel War of the Worlds. It caused mass panic in New York and New Jersey when many mistook the stories of alien invasion for fact. Thousands fled the cities to escape the extraterrestrial attacks.

DANGEROUS DDT: In 1962, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring kick-started the environmental juggernaut by twisting science to argue that synthetic pesticides, particularly DDT, were ruining our ecosystem (she claimed DDT made the shells of birds' eggs thinner). With ominous chapter titles, such as "And no birds sing" and "Elixirs of death," Carson offered a powerful, emotional argument that led to the banning of DDT in most countries. Her book has since been debunked by scientists (though that didn't stop Al Gore from writing the introduction to a 1994 reissue), but not before the bans on DDT (which had been effective in killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Africa and Asia) led to the preventable malaria deaths of nearly 90 million people, mostly children--so far.

GLOBAL OVERPOPULATION: Like the DDT scare, fears that the Earth would be overrun with more people than it could ever hope to sustain began with a book. Paul Ehrlich's 1968 The Population Bomb predicted mass starvation and environmental disaster, as the world ran out of food and was swamped with garbage. In the nearly 40 years since, the world's population has nearly doubled, but, by and large, food production and global standards of living are the highest they've been in history.

A NEW ICE AGE: Before everyone started worrying about global warming, they were worried about global cooling. The theory that the oceans would turn into skating rinks reached its apex in the 1970s.

In the July 1975 issue of International Wildlife, in an article entitled "In the Grip of a New Ice Age," Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, wrote: "The facts have emerged, in recent years and months, from research into past ice ages. They imply that the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

ACID RAIN: Once mankind averted the next ice age, by doing absolutely nothing about it, we realized, in the early 1980s, the real imminent and catastrophic danger: acid rain, from the sulphur dioxide in car exhaust, manufacturing emissions, et cetera. Kids were driven to nightmares over all the lakes and trees that would be scorched by toxic raindrops. Eventually, researchers--and time--would prove the doomsday predictions wildly overblown.

THE OZONE HOLE: Before we had time to breathe a sigh of relief over the end of ice ages and scorched earth fears, humans had a new apocalyptic threat with which to contend. In the early 1990s there was suddenly a huge hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica and we were told that we'd all soon develop skin cancer. Actually, it wasn't quite so sudden: scientists noticed it on satellite images as early as 1979, but panic set in when it appeared to grow, right around the time that Mount Pinatubo, the Filipino volcano, erupted in 1991, spewing chlorine into the atmosphere. Still, westerners readily accepted responsibility for the stratospheric rupture. Based on misinformed media hysterics resulting from two inconclusive and unsupportable press releases from NASA, we blamed our decadent modern air conditioners, Styrofoam and hairsprays for releasing chlorofluorocarbons, which supposedly harmed the ozone layer. In 1992, U.S. Congress passed laws demanding industry phase out chlorofluorocarbon use. Yet, between 1996 and 2001, the hole in the ozone kept growing. Then in 2002, it started to shrink again. And after that it grew. Turns out no one can say with any certainty what's going on.

GLOBAL WARMING: Take the fears of a new ice age that pervaded the 1970s, replace "global cooling" with "global warming" and you've got the world's hottest new fear: that too much gas production--from car emissions to industrial processing--has created a layer of insulation over the earth, making it into one big greenhouse. There are too many potential flaws in this theory--and it remains a theory--to go into here. One is that the largest period of greenhouse gas growth occurred during the industrial boom between the 1950s and the 1980s--the period in which we were told temperatures were dropping dangerously. Meanwhile, official U.S. National Climate Data Center thermometers show that, between 1998 and 2005, the earth cooled slightly. Fears of a new ice age, anyone?

A website whose lead story is:

"Some may consider prostitution immoral. But is it moral to keep it illegal?"

Is not my idea of where to go for science news.

considering that few places are willing to post a theory that says basically "there is not danger, dont worry" where else are you going to go to read it. most places that post news want things that make people worry. they have no interest in posting articles that says "there is nothing to worry about, move on". you have a history of attacking the site owners rather than discuss the articles that are posted on those sites. Is THAT your idea of scientific discussion.

The Western Standard is a news magazine. It presents the other side of the story that we in Canada don't get from the Main stream media. That article on prostitution that you sluffed off has to do with "violence against prostitutes--and even the serial murder of prostitutes." I guess you are for that eh DA? The fact that a news source has other types of articles other than just scientific should not allow you to close your mind.

The scientists in Canada get funding only if they research in support of the current fad of the day. In this case, it is Greenhouse gasses. The article you did not read is a story about scientists who are speaking out against global warming now that they have retired and are free to speak their minds. They no longer have to worry about funding from the government. THe article cites several sources. Attack those sources if you can, not the messenger.

sorry, john, da has proven that it does not matter what the sourse is or the subject matter is, if the presentation is not by his standards there is nothing there to discuss. opps sorry for the large pools of sarcasm laying around this post.

I've come to the conclusion that I don't understand global warming studies at all.
I know it's utterly idiotic to look at the local weather the way some people tend to do (ie: It's hotter this year than last year! GLOBAL WARMING! Or This winter is colder than last winter! TAKE THAT GLOBAL WARMING!), so I try to look at a long period of time.

So, I looked at the last 100 years, which really in the grand scheme of things isn?t nearly old enough to see an actual trend. No 100 year estimate I've ever seen actually promises that the temperature readings they've taken are representative of a GLOBAL temperature change, because that's vital to good data on global rather than regional warming. I didn't have high hopes for that, considering 100 years ago I somehow doubt there were satellites in space taking readings.

Not to take away from your article, apparently Greenland is melting at a pretty good clip; at the very least Greenland looks like it?s getting warmer, now and in very recent history. It?s a bit amusing that they have an estimate on how high the ocean would get if ?the trend continues?, which I can only assume they meant all the ice melts away and Greenland becomes a tropical paradise with pretty birds and palm trees, when if that happened I would expect Canada, Russia and the poles would have melted by then as well, making that little number from Greenland pretty inconsequential. I understand it?s simply to dramatize the finding, hit the emotions of the reader and make it stick in people?s brains. I just find it funny to think about it to its logical conclusion.

So. I don't understand it at all. I don't understand the confidence with which the arguments are presented when everyone acknowledges the fact that we only started looking a few years ago. It seems strange that so many things on this planet take a ridiculously long time to happen, and yet we expect the last 30 years of research to tell us conclusively that we're ruining everything.

There's quite a powerful political influence on the topic as well. There are those who will simply NOT ACCEPT any argument presented, period, on both sides of the issue and those are the ones who have the public eye. I think that political influence is making it harder to see real science vs junk science in the issue.


Here's a nifty chart: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/anomalies.gif
Just nifty, although it doesn't say how the temperature readings match up to an actual "global temperature."

Thanks for reading.

John Reynolds wrote:
"The Western Standard is a news magazine."

I know what it is. I live two hours drive from the Canadian border and spend a lot of time in the lower mainland.

See if you can find it in a science magazine.