US finds massive melt at Greenland ice sheet June 30, 2011 Source The Greenland ice sheet has been found to be melting much faster than previously thought. THE Greenland ice sheet melted at the fastest rate since 1958 last year while Arctic sea ice shrank to the third-smallest area on record... While cyclical patterns affected weather in 2010, analysis shows trends that scientists link to global climate change, according to the study released yesterday by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .... ''This report makes one thing very clear: global warming isn't coming, it's already here,'' Democrat Representative Edward Markey of the House Natural Resources Committee, said. ''The slow boil of the Earth is now rolling, and now we need to find ways to turn down the heat, and fast.'' The Greenland ice sheet melted at the fastest rate in 53 years, with the melt area about 8 per cent larger than the record set in 2007, according to the report. .... In March, an American National Aeronautics and Space Administration-funded study said ice losses in Greenland and Antarctica were accelerating, suggesting the United Nations' estimates for sea-level rise are too conservative. A UN panel on climate change predicted in 2007 that global sea levels would rise by 18 to 59 centimetres this century.
You are kind of big on global warming threads James . What do you want to do about it ? Faggle says we are just coming out of the ice age , or still coming out of the ice age . What do you think about that ? Do you think humans can do something ? My suggestion is to relocate out of flood plains and get away from the beach house . WE want a shrubbery . Hot longer growing seasons now that could be positive for animal life as a whole . Ever think about that . Bigger fauna , bigger everything . Like Dinosaurs . God would that be a bar-ba-que or what . A cow as big as an elephant. Think of the tenderloins on that baby. So we get more rain more heat more plant growth , Milder winters. What is the down side ? Loss of land for human habitation , Displaced animals that die off from lack of adaptability ? What else ? We could name the pros and cons and see who is for and who is against based on the pros and cons . Global Cooling or global warming " which do you prefer
Cut emissions of greenhouse gases. It has certainly been hotter on Earth during certain periods in the past than it is now. Yes. Humans are causing the problem, and can act to ameliorate the effects. It is quite important, however, to act quickly, since acting later will be far more costly and may not work. [quote\Hot longer growing seasons now that could be positive for animal life as a whole. Ever think about that . Bigger fauna , bigger everything . Like Dinosaurs.[/quote] There was more oxygen in the air during the dinosaur era. Also, you forget that hotter earth also means more deserts, and less land due to higher sea levels. I'm not sure what the net effect on the land area available for cultivation would be. Hotter summers. Drought. Rising sea levels. Ocean acidification. More intense and damaging weather events such as hurricanes. Just for starters. It depends on how much. I wouldn't be too keen on an ice age. Ironically, global warming may create an ice age in North America if the Gulf Stream shuts down.
We're headed into a glaciation. It was going to take a few thousand years. That trend is being interrupted by a brand new event, with no precedent, that will take place over a couple of hundred years.
We are going in and out of heating and cooling for many millions of years. One measurement, the oxygen isotope ratio or delta value, measured using a mass spectrometer on melted samples of the ice, gives us an indication of the temperature at the time the ice was deposited as snow. Measuring the delta value at many depths through the ice core is equivalent to measuring the air temperature at many times in the past. Thus, a climatic history is developed. Climatic temperature against time from delta measurements taken on the ice core drilled at the Russian station, Vostok, in central Antarctica (Figure 2). Available data from this ice core so far extends back about 160,000 years. However, drilling of the core still continues, and it is expected that, when drilling is completed in a few years time, an age of 500,000 years will have been reached. Starting on the right-hand side of the graph at about 140,000 years ago, the climate was about 6°C colder than it is today. This was an ice age period. Then at about 130,000 years ago, there was a quite rapid warming period until about 125,000 years ago, when the climate was, perhaps, 1°C or 2°C warmer than today. These short warmer periods are called inter-glacials. We are in an inter-glacial now. From 120,000 to about 20,000 years ago, there was a long period of cooling temperatures, but with some ups and downs of a degree or two. This was the Wisconsin Period, known as the last Great Ice Age. From about 18,000 or 19,000 years ago to about 15,000 years ago, the climate went through another warming period to the next inter-glacial, - the one we are now in. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image![/IMG] http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...iPX4DQ&usg=AFQjCNEa64rTw726xt9aTlbdAjEajmCXhA So while these climate changes have been happening all along Carbon Dioxide levels are going way up over the last 100 years. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Good suggestion. But what do we do in an area where six million people are living on that "beach" and have nowhere else to go? Not everyone can just abandon their summer home. Every significant climate change in the geological record has been accompanied by mass extinctions. In most places, more heat = less rain. This old planet is doing a pretty good job of providing us with air, water, food, warmth, fuel, raw materials and homes. I'd prefer to screw with it as little as possible.
Slowly. Over many thousands of years of gradual temperature change. This one is taking hundreds - maybe dozens. There's no precedent for it.
You all are not coming up with any pros here . Whats up with that ? A room full of pessimists. We should list both . O.K. I guess I am the only one with a positive out look . I know it is localized weather here right now . I just want to gloat. I know it is wrong . It is just above 60 right now . Love it . Not to hot and not to cold . Warm enough for shorts and not warm enough to brake a sweat . Now the year I built the dairy featured on the discovery channel . Me and Brian Me star worker of all time worked the 4th of July and it was 107 . That was way hot . 500,000 years now that is not very long in the scope of earths existence. How about when oil was being formed . Algea blooms was is not . Wonder how hot it was then ? O.K. O.k I heard it All . After all my daughter is a fish wildlife biologist. She was lecturing Me while some of you were twinkles in your mommies eyes . The unprecedented parts of your response are more alarmist in there nature. I don't burn plastic like eco tourists. I do care after all . I also think the more money you make the guiltier you are for environmental degradation . Yeah the richer you are the more you consume . The more you consume the more gas is burned in transportation . Typically the house is bigger to and in need of more energy to heat. Now if I could get you all to move in a 250 sq. ft. concrete bunkers like USaid has approved for the Haitians at the tune of 1500 units with out electricity , but you do get a shitter and a vanity and this is all for 7 people per unit we might be talking about carbon foot print reduction. Good enough for Haitians should be good enough for every one don't you think? Whose ready to move in one ? I will reserve you one . We can build you one in your own home town . We will make your town the next boom town Concrete bunkers for sale
The chlorine insecticides, like DDT, are known to move through the food chain and to make bald eagle lay paper thin shelled eggs or poison the milk of the Inuit (Eskimo) women. The amounts thrown on the fields may look minute but once these carcinogens enter the food chain in small levels, starting with the microscopic algae, it binds to the fat molecules and reaches an increasingly higher concentration (a process named biomagnification) while moving from algae to larvae, fish and eagle or to seal and Inuit. That's why they were banned in the 70's in U.S. Thousands of everyday chemicals have been checked for their safety by assessing how easily they dissolve in water versus fat. The water-loving ones do not build up in the food chain. But this approach ignores another way for accumulation: air. A new research has assessed how easily a chemical travels from the lungs into the air versus how easily it dissolves in fats and water. It appeared that thousands of contaminants can build up in air-breathing animals, if not water-breathing ones. Many chemicals that dissolve relatively easy in water can persist in the air, accumulating "specifically in nonaquatic food webs: mammals, birds, human beings. In mammals and humans, we don't breathe water, we breathe air," said lead researcher Frank Gobas, an environmental toxicologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His team checked about 12,000 chemicals under review by the Canadian government to assess their environmental and health effects; about 30 % of them could be stored by air-breathing organisms. One example is the pesticide lindane, employed on crops but also to treat head lice, which does not accumulate in fish but it does in Canadian wolves that had eaten caribou, which in turn had been feeding on lichen. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...jOnODQ&usg=AFQjCNHru6R3jqNAdopRljFhll-QpCAuaw
This sounds like myth spinning . Gradual change ! Speculation change is more like it . The Yucatan asteroid event I do believe was immediate climate change. I also believe that volcanic activities come and go on a regular bases that alter climate some what abruptly. I don't think we know what will happen is the bottom line . I do my part to stop change , but you know I am getting mighty tired of being a lone wolf and sometimes think I should just hang it up , get my share of the doe and sell out. It does pay better after all . Then I can consume in mass destruction
Both. Life evolves to fit a niche. Change that niche and it has to evolve again - and often that evolution occurs because one goes extinct and a better adapted life form takes its place. Really? If the Mojave Desert goes from an average of 110 to 114 in the summer, you think you are going to get more humidity, bigger strawberries and more cows there? We're not talking about flood plains.
Only for an eyeblink in terms of geological time. That asteroid would have caused a kind of "nuclear winter" for a year or two at most. Human contributions to carbon emissions are thousands of times greater than volcanos.
Sometimes when the truth is told no one can accept it. I'm only showing what has been researched and found to be happening. I'm sorry that I cannot bring you anything positive about the ecological damages humans have been doing and continue to do even now when we know better. If there was something that could be seen as positive I guess that might be we are now scientifically certain we are destroying ourselves faster than we are fixing the problems, but at least we are trying to fix them but a little to late it would seem.
He didn't say that volcanoes contributed to CO2 emissions, but to climate change. Which they can indeed do. And do so dramatically. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-volcanoes-affect-w Note that the impact of that one volcano was greater (as far as relative temperature change in the NH) then 100+ years of changes induced by land use changes and GHGs. Cooling the earth appears to be an easier proposition then warming it. Arthur
Increases in Net Primary Productivity (total Terrestrial Plant mass) http://thecastsite.com/sourcecontent/Nemani - NPP Study.pdf http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MITJPSPGC_Rpt12.pdf
adoucette: You picked one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history for your example. I don't disagree that volcanos can cause temporary cooling. In fact, that's exactly what I wrote in my previous post. Did you have a point?
Yes, Me talked about volcanoes causing climate change and you responded that Humans contribute 1000's time more CO2. But so what? The fact is that humans generate 10,000 times as much CO2 but Volcanoes cause their impact mainly by dust and Sulfuric Aerosols and not by CO2, so your relating those too is not important. The point is that Volcanoes are indeed capable, as Me suggested, of causing rapid climate change. And NO, that's not what you wrote in your previous post, the cooling you mentioned had to do with an Asteroid not a volcano. The main difference between our growing CO2 levels is that modern volcanic activity tends to be limited in duration and extent, but still a major volcanic eruption could cause significant global cooling and global crop loss for a year or more. Arthur
Notice how this manages to imply that since volcanoes contribute to climate change, rather than CO2, that CO2 isn't a cause of climate change. But 1) volcanoes do emit CO2, and 2) CO2 level does affect the climate. Then: So the human contribution to climate change is much larger than the contribution from volcanoes? Or are you really just trying, in your usually subtle manner, to discredit the whole AGM theory? You know that increased CO2 levels will help plants to produce more biomass. Do you know what the upper limit of atmospheric CO2 is, so that plants start to produce less biomass, though? I mean, rather than just presenting the first part (the "good" part) of the argument?
