Perpetual Innovation

Category: glaciers

  • Ain’t no Global Warming Here. {insert your facts here}

    In comes another commentary saying 10 reasons why there is definitely no such thing as global warming. This one includes evidence that the mooses (moose population) are doing much better. Huh!…
    I simply direct people to look at the multiple databases of actual real-live data related to each and every conceivable measure of global warming. Look at the data yourself. Draw it out, and then start discarding junk that misrepresents the facts. There are between 2 and 6 sets of data available for each of the things you might consider related to global warming. Let’s say: earth temperature, air temperature (lower, middle, upper atmosphere), ocean temps (surface & deep), ice packs of glaciers melt offs (ice extents and ice thicknesses)… Not only are these not pretty pictures (graphs really), but some show acceleration. 🙁 

    Here’s what the facts show: Climate Change (unarguable fact, happening everywhere), Global warming (fact), Acceleration of global warming (less easy to prove, but visible), Human cause of climate change (lots and lots of correlations, but not an exact cause-and-effect). Check out Global Warming at Wikipedia (the best summary of information available).
    Catastrophic Human Caused…. {whatever} … This is a matter of probabilities here, but the chances get uglier and uglier once the facts on the ground get uglier.
    Humans causing massive disruptions to each and every one of our earth systems. We’re not just disrupting them, we are breaking them.
    Give a look at the WikiBook by Hall (2013 and updated in 2015). It has a foreword of his own text and thoughts followed by active links into current Wikipedia pages (articles). This way each and every page is totally up-to-date. Wikipedia is the best single source/compilation of information in the world about each of the topics listed. If you question the facts in the articles, then complain. Even better, if you question the facts, research them and post a substantiated correction to the article.
    Each page has hundreds, if not thousands of followers. And the editorial review for these mature pages is very tight. It is not really possible for a Green-Greenie or a King-Coal Denier to jump in and put crappy miss-information.
    In fact, if you find that the facts are wrong or misleading on any of the pages, let us know, and we will gladly assist with the correction(s).
    Check it out, here’s The Sustainability WikiBook: www.tinyurl.com/SustainyBook  Scroll to the bottom for an organized table-of-content set of links to Sustainability information in Wikipedia.    Expect each of the links to have been updated repeatedly within the last week or so as new facts/figures and research become available and contributors update the Wikipedia store of knowledge.

    There’s a very good source that shows graphs, charts and facts related to climate change and those who would deny it exists:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/  It has lots of real information combined with debunking bogus arguments. This is a great source of facts. Visit with an open mind. 

    Make no doubt about it, being wrong about the warming of the planet would make lots of people including the SustainZine folks very happy. Unfortunately the facts don’t lead that way. What seems like a bit of a slowdown in the rate of temperature increases, does not hold up under careful scrutiny. Contributions to what seems like a minor slowdown of the up-rise in temperature are illusive one you factor in mild solar activity, volcano activity and increased pollution (from China and India’s coal).

  • Another massive meltoff of Antarctic glacier. Really ugly likely outcomes.

    The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse. http://wapo.st/19rU1xp
    Wow. Another area, like the west of antartcica, could result in massive ice melt from the ocean side up!
    Each shelf/sheet could add about 10 feet to ocean rise, maybe 25% more for the northern hemisphere.
    Ouch!

  • WMO Warns Lima Delegates 2014 May Be Hottest Year | Climate Central

    WMO Warns Lima Delegates, 2014 … Hottest Year in History!:-( | Climate Central:

    Ouch, this is really really ugly, the data related to 2014 as the hottest year in modern history.

    Double to the angst is the melt-off of the Antarctic.

    Here’s a discussion about both.

    The period between April and September, according to NASA GISS was the hottest in 120 years. Most (?all?) of the months since April will set all time heat highs, as well.

    Fortunately an El Nino weather pattern did not develop this year or the year-end temperatures would be even higher.

    The consistent march of the oceans to higher temperature is doubly scary. It should take years, if not decades for rising temperatures to make a dent in the ocean temperatures. If the oceans are, on average 2 miles deep, it should take a long time for warming at the surface to permeate down to the depths.

    Thermal expansion is scary. A 1 degree increase in surface temperatures, on average, should eventually result in about 2 feet of rise at the ocean surface due to thermal expansion as water gets warmer. This may take many years, but the increase is “baked in” if surface temperatures stay the same (or continue rising).

    But doubly worrisome are the ice sheets in Antarctica (and Greenland and Iceland) which are ice sheets on top of land. The Arctic in the north is generally ice on top of water, so when the ice melts up there, as it is rapidly doing, it does not affect ocean levels (directly).

    A study accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica is melting quickly and at an increasing rate. They found that the ice loss was equivalent to the volume of Mt Everest every 2 years.


    The accepted draft of the article is here: paper…

    Too bad. After seeing some encouraging studies that suggested that there might be a bit of a hiatus to the march of global warming, some of the more recent measures are not so good.

    Ouch!:-(

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Visuals of the planet changes

    These visuals of the planet changes over the last 30 or 40 years are impressive, to say the least.
    http://nbcnews.to/1uxF6ZM
    Here are some cool time lapse photography using satellite imagery over the last few decades.
    Check out the Amazon!
    Check out the glaciers!
    Ouch!
    Double ouch!

  • Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans From Polar Melt – NYTimes.com: … Implications

    Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans From Polar Melt – NYTimes.com:

    Or: http://nyti.ms/1sEIHC3 

    Studies published in the journals Science (here) and Geophysical Research Letters  (here) magazine find that the antarctic is melting, probably at a very very fast pace. The terms “beyond the point of no return” and “unstoppable” are used to describe the collapse of this glacial area in Antarctica. How long it will take is harder to predict.

    This really scares the bejeebers  out of everyone. Let me summarize a few reasons why this is bothersome:
    * It seems that arctic (north) should be shrinking a little and the antarctic (south) should be expanding if there were no human factors influencing such. So the shrinking/melt-off in the south would/should have to overcome this tilting effect of the earth, and then some. (This “effect” is something for people far smarter than I to explain.)
    * The north pole is now becoming more navigable, longer in the summer as the ice sheets melt off. China, for example is planning to navigate through a north passage for 3 months a year and avoid bringing oil from Russia through the Suez Canal, essentially cutting the trip in half (and maybe making twice 6-months worth of oil runs.
    * The melt off in the north pole is not as worrisome in terms of direct ocean level rise because much of the ice is over water, so the conversion from ice in the north pole to water is not a big deal related to ocean rise (although the resulting warming of the oceans from more heat absorption and less glacial reflection definitely is).
    * The antarctic is mostly over land. The melting of the Antarctic glaciers results directly into a rise in the sea levels.
    * Combine that with apparent acceleration effect, as the glaciers melt, they move faster and faster, accelerating the depletion process.
    * Thermal expansion. As ocean and land become exposed by the melting ice sheets, the ocean, land and air all become warmer. In the case of the oceans, water expands. If the average dept of the oceans are 2 miles, the oceans levels should rise at about 2 feet for every increase in (water) temperature of 1 degree Centigrade.

    At this rate, the best case by the IPCC of 2 degrees C increase in global warming has got to be very unlikely. The worst case scenarios of business as usual (BAU) of 3 to 4 degrees or more seem to be the most likely… The 4 degree increase would result in about 9 feet (or 3 yards) increase in sea levels.

    That means that by the end of the century, water-front cities will have new waterfront. Venus and New York will be new shapes and sizes. The Florida Keys will be less than half their current size.

    Some of us would argue that Business as Usual is not working so well, especially if you care much about your grand kids and great grand kids.

    Keywords: Antarctica, Arctic, business as usual, glaciers, Global Warming, IPCC, North Pole, sea levels, thermal expansion,

    ‘via Blog this’