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

Data from a US space agency (Nasa) satellite show that the melting rate has accelerated since 2004.

If the ice cap were to completely disappear, global sea levels would rise by 6.5m (21 feet).

For the rest of the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4783199.stm

To see if your city will be underwater ...
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/researc..._old.htm#images

In other news:
Mount Kilimanjaro's Glacier Is Crumbling
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers.html

the major problem with this is that they ignore the fact that the ocean and the ice covered lands are on top of a sea of magma. right now the weight of the ice is pushing down on the land which pushes the magma from underneath the land to underneath the sea. as the ice melts, the land gets lighter and the sea gets heavier. that will push the magma from under the sea to under the land and push the land up.

the result is that the sea will get deeper, the sea lvl to the areas of ice covered lands will actually drop and probably rise a fraction of the predicted.

the thing is that it has happened before. even if it does rise the entire 6 meters, is it really going to have that great effect on anything. in America a few rich people will lose some of their wealth. in places like India where a lot of people live next to the sea, they will move inland. its not like its going to happen overnight. the amount of land that will be lose will not be that great. in fact most of it will be land that was created by rivers dumping their sediments into marshes which, once they are underwater will once again begin to grow from the sediments.

as far as Mount Kilimanjaro's glacers are concerned, dig a little and youll find evidence of their appearing and disappearing mulitple times in the last million year. when the area dries out, the glacers disappear, when they get wetter, they reappear. that areas has had many times of major drought in the past

dehammer wrote:
"in America a few rich people will lose some of their wealth."

If that is your definition of the loss of New York City and a substantial fraction of Florida I guess you're partially right ... the problem being, of course, that the rich people will move out and sell the land to the middle-class who will become poor people. The "rich people" won't be hurt.

dehammer wrote:
"dig a little and youll find evidence of their appearing and disappearing mulitple times in the last million year."

This may come as a shock to you but there were no humans with cities and economies during the "last million years" except for the last few thousand. That the fishes will get a bit more territory is not reason to be concerned. Could you at least pretend you care about the people in South Texas even if you don't care about the rest of the planet.

actually i do care about them. i care a lot about the poor people that will have to find other poor homes to live in.

did you really pay attention to those maps that you gave or did you once more just give a link without checking it out first. very little of new york will be put under the water, even at high tides and even if the sea raise the full 6 meters. in case you don't know the areas that are at risk in new york is mainly the docks and warehouse districts. the poor part of the city is well above that level. the part that will be at most risk is some of the high-rise areas, mainly because many of them have underground parking spaces, which will then be below sea level. the garages are not built to remain underwater. by the time the rich people will see any reason that they should move, their homes will not be worth near as much. a few people will sell their homes before its too late, and the prices crash. but they will be the exception. how would a middle class person be able to afford the rich home unless the price drops first. but then the people in the barrios and such would be able to afford them. its really not the poor of new york and Florida and places like that, that need your concern. a large part of India live in the lower land. they will be force to live more in the sea than they do now, or move inland. fortunately it will not be a fast occurrence, meaning that the people will have time to move. unfortunately, what it will likely take is a typhoon ripping thought that area, and that is where the lose of life will come from, not the raising sea. it will just make the typhoon worse.

as far as the shores of south texas, florida and new york, most of that is owned by the rich. they will bitch and moan how the rising sea is costing them millions and demand that the goverment spent billions to fix the problems. after living in houston and that area, i found few people in the middle class that could afford a beach front property. by the time you get far enough away to make it affordable, its well above the high water mark for a 6 meter rise.

like i pointed out, even if the ice does cause the sea to become 6 meters deeper its would not mean that the sea level would be that much higher on the land.

If I understand your statement, you are correct. At some beaches on the east coast a one foot rise will erode about a hundred feet of beach.

I don't know the answer to this one, but am curious. How high would sea level need to go to reach a subway entrance in NY?

Even if everyone affected in the US was 'rich' (which I disagree with) that was directly affected, it would still be an economic catastrophe.

weather rich or poor, displacing large numbers of people causes hardship. In countries in southeast asia the numbers of people displaced is staggering.

im afraid i dont have the answer to that. one thing to consider though, those entrances are relatively small. i really believe that there would have been some consideration of how high the water might get. those areas nearest the beaches would be on softer sandy ground, which you could not build a subway though. they are likely to be higher. also it would be easier to put something around them (likely sand bags at first, and concrete steps later) to stop storm surges. likely the first things to have problems would be the sewers and storm drains.

again, its a manner of how fast it happens. considering that they are talking about this happening over a century, it would not be that catastrophic. nor did i say they would be the only ones affected, just the vast majority would be the rich sea shore owners. they would find their homes losing value year after year. not that much, just continually over 2 or 3 generations. the real problem with the land would be the lost of wetlands. at least until the rivers made new ones.

yes, those in se asia would be the ones that suffered. part of my problem with the way da made the statement is that he seem to be saying that america would be the hardest hit and would suffer most. Its india that would take the greatest damage.

dehammer wrote:
"very little of new york will be put under the water"

Yes I did. I've also seen the full scale ones at the local NOAA office. Just one thing ... when you say "New York" are you referring to the state or the city? The city will not survive.

And not because most of it isn't more than 18' above the hudson river. Rather because the bridges, tunnels, and other infrastructure would be unstable and cease to exist. Manhattan is an island dehammer: An island.

dehammer wrote:
"they will bitch and moan how the rising sea is costing them millions and demand that the goverment spent billions to fix the problems."

On this you are correct. Perhaps you forgot who it is that is paying those taxes. Or should I say paying the interest on the money borrowed since we are currently trying to max out the country's credit card.

BTW: The average elevation of New York City is 10 meters. That is only 12 feet higher than the 6 meter rise expected if Greenland melts.

Source:
http://www.bycitylight.com/cities/us-ny-new_york-facts.php

And please pay attention. The 6 meters is JUST Greenland. If Greenland melts it will not do so in isolation. There will also be melting of arctic sea ice, Scandinavian ice, European ice (the Alps), and antarctic ice.

perhaps ive misread the maps, but every map ive seen shows that only part of new your city is on the islands of manhattan and staten. also by reading the map that you pervided it showed that a good part of the city would survive a large (6m) increase in sea level.


notice that instead of saying 18' above sea level you said 18' above the hudson river. the river flows down hill so it is not the measuring stick that should be used. its sea level were discussing here. lets stick to that. where the bridges and tunnels are less than 6 meters above sea level, they would require some thing to make them more useable or rebuilding. if this would happen in a matter of hours, or even a few days, then there would be major problems. what were discussing is over a century or at least 50 years by all accounts that you have shown. most of them say 1 cm a year rise in sea level. at that rate, those bridges will be destroy by time long before the sea takes them out. or perhaps a hurricane will cause them to have to be rebuilt.

again notice the word average. that means if there is some at sea level then some of it is at 20 meters. that is considerable higher than 12 feet.

yes and if the scandinavian ice melts, the land will rebound by rising up as the weight of the ice is transfered to the ocean where it will push the magma under the land. same with antartica and europe. IF the ice were to melt in one year, then we'd be in big trouble since the mamga would not likely more as fast. with it spread over a century, then the magma will compensate, and push the land higher compensating for a lot of that ice melt, if not all of it.

"Data from a US space agency (Nasa) satellite show that the melting rate has accelerated since 2004." -- DA Morgan

Just a question... why did you pick 2004? Greenland has been affected greatly by a volcano that erupted in 1992. If you compare today's rate with 1991, we are still in better shape. How sure are you about your data and your conclusions? Without examining that first, all the hoopla about rising sea levels and which cities will get wiped out is pointless.

J M Reynolds,
You can edit your own posts by clicking on the paper and pencil icon.

Just a suggestion.
Amaranth

Greenland melting may not connect with the Average Joe, the scope is to great, the event too protracted. In 1997 I did the trek up to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It takes three and a half days to reach the top, a day and a half to get back down. the group I was in was very fit, we pushed the ascent so we could watch the sunrise from Mount Uhuru. Along the way, you pass these glacier faces. They aren't as big as the ones you see in the Canadian Rockies or Finland, I guess, but they are impressive in their own right. Anyway, on the way down we hit a gravelly spot where the face of the glacier had collapsed. Huge boulders of ice, some as big as a School Bus, had come down covering an area of about four acres. We had passed this spot less than 36 hours earlier; if we had been there, we'd have all been killed. As it turns out, the glaciers had been melting at a vastly accellerated rate for the previous five years. The ice shelves were only 15% as large as when they were first surveyed, back in 1912 or something. Also, as the glaciesr melt, the dust inside the ice becomes more and more prevalent, making the glaciers darker and causing them to melt even faster. A microcosm of the Polar Caps, if you will.

That's an unforgettable trip, BTW, if you get a chance, if you're ever in East Africa,(Tanzania)go for it. I paid $105 back then. I understand the trip costs close to a grand these days. Insurance?

there is a major difference between kilimanjaro and greenland. that mountain ice cap comes and goes with the humidity of the region. It has disappeared and reappeared many times before. the largest contibuter of its loss is the loss of forest, largely due to accidents from the bee farmers trying to smoke out bees. Also as the lake nearby shrinks (as it has many times before) there is less humidity to create clouds to protect the ice. in addition when its dryer there is more dust to help melt the ice.

dehammer wrote:
"notice that instead of saying 18' above sea level you said 18' above the hudson river. the river flows down hill so it is not the measuring stick that should be used."

When sea levels rise they back up rivers and the rivers rise. Or did you miss what happened to the Mississippi during Katrina? Perhaps it was too small and insignificant to noticed in Texas. ;-)

dehammer wrote:
"yes and if the scandinavian ice melts, the land will rebound by rising up as the weight of the ice is transfered to the ocean where it will push the magma under the land."

And since there is no permanent ice to melt on the Atlantic seaboard of Gulf of Mexico that land won't rebound will it?

John Reynolds asks:
"Just a question... why did you pick 2004?"

I didn't. I found an article interesting and posted a link. If you find something referring to a different year feel free to add it to this thead or create one of your own?

Pick 2004? Do you think I control the national reseach agenda?

John Reynolds wrote:
"If you compare today's rate with 1991"

And the supporting evidence that this is true is where? What source or you quoting? Can you provide a link or is this just your personal opinion?

Thanks Wolfman.

Every five years or so I visit the Columbia ice field in the Canadian Rockies between Banff and Jasper. I first visited the glacier field in 1963.

There is now a sign in the middle of a field of glacial rubble marking where the location was in 1963. It is a very long walk from there to where the ice is today.

It is a very long sad walk.

Not that it is melting. Climates change. But the degree of melting within the scope of a single human lifetime ... very very sad.

This link illustrates it reasonably well.
1942:
http://www.visualsunlimited.com/browse/vu439/vu439597.html
1970: http://www.visualsunlimited.com/browse/vu439/vu439595.html
1992: http://www.visualsunlimited.com/browse/vu439/vu439593.html
2000:
http://www.visualsunlimited.com/browse/vu439/vu439592.html

Below are two paragraphs and a link to the article I was referencing:

- - -

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.
- http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=print.print_article&article_id=1864

John Reynolds wrote:
"Crackpot is not a term anyone could reasonably use to describe Petr Chylek."

Actually it is. And he has been called that by his peers. Here's just one example from Colorado State University.

And yet there was Los Alamos National Laboratory climate scientist Petr Chylek last week, standing before a gathering of his colleagues to explain that Greenland isn?t actually warming.

What gives?

Chylek is a dissenter from the scientific mainstream. While most scientists think greenhouse gases are responsible for changes already seen in Earth?s climate, Chylek believes the ?data are inconclusive.?

?You really cannot say for certain what is causing current climate change,? Chylek said in an interview.

Source:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/index.php?s=global+warming&submit=Search&paged=2

So yes he IS considered, by most in the field, to be a crackpot.

A better question would be whether there any among his peers agreeing with him. The the answer is a few ... VERY VERY FEW.

De Hammer:
Kili's Ice Fields vanish and reappear in the normal course of events? Perhaps you don't appreciate what I saw - MASSIVE chunks of ice covering an area the size of three Football fields, that weren't there yesterday. I just logged onto a couple of related sites - One photographer had the same experience as us in 2003 except the wall fell while they were in sight of it! He has photos to prove it. On the other site, it looks like it's a foregone conclusion that the ice will all be gone by 2020. A colleague of mine made the trip in June of 2000, BTW, and his group saw nothing like that. But don't be surprised if they close the trail for being too risky.

As far as the Glacier vanishing and reappearing, core samples indicate thet the ice is 11,500 years old, coinciding with the last Ice Age. What sort of time frame did you have in mind?

Wolfman,
Could you post the links to the sites you report on? It would be most interesting to be able to review them.

Thanks.

Amaranth

show me in that quote where the person wrote it called him a crackpot. they did not as far as i could see. they said that he is a dissenter. nor is he the only one. ive given you links before to others, all of whom you indicated were not acceptable for reason that had nothing to do with the person. one i remember you said was not acceptable, because the people that owned the site was of the wrong political party. another you claimed was not acceptable because the people that owned the site it was posted on were paid by the oil industry (which was actually incorrect, as all of them were former employees of the oil industry, not current. the fact that the people that made the post were scientist who's studies were not paid for by the oil company was not even discussed. in another thread i gave you several post about different people who claimed that it was not sufficently proven what was the main cause.

the point is that there is a cycle to things that causes the ice to melt away and return. trying to claim that the melt is due only to mans polution is wrong. its no better than the scaremongering going on in the tabloids.