Author Topic: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)  (Read 28184 times)

SupPadre

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #15 on: December 17, 2015, 02:47:24 PM »
Has anyone here read "Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface" by Willard Bascom? It was written before the global warming debate and he has some interesting ideas on sea level changes due to melting ice caps. I won't be able to reread the book before this weekend, but I believe his theory was that the weight of the Antarctic ice cap causes the land mass to sink, thereby raising the level of the sea. If the Antarctic ice cap were to melt, the land mass would rebound and sea levels would actually fall.


pdxmike

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2015, 03:29:39 PM »
Has anyone here read "Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface" by Willard Bascom? It was written before the global warming debate and he has some interesting ideas on sea level changes due to melting ice caps. I won't be able to reread the book before this weekend, but I believe his theory was that the weight of the Antarctic ice cap causes the land mass to sink, thereby raising the level of the sea. If the Antarctic ice cap were to melt, the land mass would rebound and sea levels would actually fall.
I love when people think differently than the standard way, even if it turns out they're wrong.  And it's exciting when they're right, especially since they face ridicule along the way.

In any case, I'm thinking of moving to an island in the next few years.  That way rising or falling oceans will have no impact on me, since the island will float up and down with the changing sea levels, so the shoreline will not be impacted.

Ichabod Spoonbill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2015, 05:28:43 PM »
There is a small amount of validity to the idea that once caps push down the earth. As far as I'm aware, they do that a little, in the order of a couple of feet. That's certainly not enough to rebound and affect sea levels, but it is measurable, with reeeeeaaaallllly sensitive gear.

Otherwise, that's pretty silly.
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robon

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #18 on: December 17, 2015, 06:26:15 PM »
10 years ago, the United States was the worlds biggest polluter as far as green house gases go. I actually think it was less than 10 years ago that the States had the top spot. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to absolve responsibility because another country contributes more to green house gases now. Even China is starting to realize they are going to have to change their ways. There is no one treaty or accord that is going to work for everyone, but initiative and leadership has to come from somewhere, and it's a fallacy to think that countries with gigantic emerging middle classes such as China and India are going to be able to fall in line as quickly as Westernized nations with much smaller populations. It has to start somewhere. We had our slice of the pie many years, many generations before countries such as India and China, and said, "this is how you eat pie mother f*ckers, and look how big our piece is!". We set the example.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2015, 06:32:28 PM by robon »

PonoBill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #19 on: December 17, 2015, 06:57:10 PM »
Not really silly, and not hard to estimate the effect--it would be huge--IF the ice mass actually declines, which it probably won't. Ice mass at the south pole has a profound effect on land under it, and even the shape of the earth, which is a flattened ovoid, not a sphere. First of all, it's a lot of mass, and second, it counts more at the poles.

The equatorial bulge is about 27 miles, and is caused by the inertial force of rotation (commonly and incorrectly called centrifugal force) which is substantial at the equator. Since the earth is rotating one revolution per 24 hours and it's 25,000 miles in circumference any point at the equator is moving about a thousand miles per hour. There is a difference in gravitational acceleration of about 0.02 m/s** between the equator and the poles--easily measured. I don't know what the ratios are for compression of the Antartic land mass vs. ice overburden, but it's bound to be substantial. That's seven million cubic miles of ice, about 30 tons per square foot.

As soon as you bring the Antartic into the global warming picture all the theories run in circles. The ice mass is likely to increase due to greater precipitation at the center of the ice sheet (warmer air transports more water). It all starts getting iffy. It's more than 60 percent of the fresh water on the planet. Since fresh water freezes and stays frozen at higher temperatures than brine, an increase of a few degrees has less of an effect on the center of the cap than it does at the periphery.

Doesn't mean we can all breathe a sigh of relief and go about our business. It just means it's complicated. Big surprise.

Global warming has advocates who are just as stubborn as the "deniers" (stupid name), who instantly reject any evidence that things might not be proceeding as predicted. Either camp seems to be a silly place to be to me.

Robon, the point is not that the US was not the largest contributor to greenhouse gases, it's that the Kyoto accord excluded China and India from any control measures, which meant it would have no significant effect on greenhouse gases other than as a tool of economic warfare applied against the US. That's just a little more obvious now, but it was a stupid result even then.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2015, 06:59:42 PM by PonoBill »
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eastbound

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #20 on: December 22, 2015, 12:56:42 PM »
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

FL, especially, south, is focked. Interesting read.

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Weasels wake

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2016, 09:27:09 PM »
Speaking of sea levels~
Here's some interesting news, they say it's temporary, but how could they know that when they just discovered it? 
I'll bet it's been like this for eons.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Parched Earth soaks up water, slowing sea level rise: study
 2/12/16

 Miami (AFP) - As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts said Thursday.

 Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth's continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science.

 This has temporarily slowed the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent, it said.

 "We always assumed that people's increased reliance on groundwater for irrigation and consumption was resulting in a net transfer of water from the land to the ocean," said lead author J.T. Reager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 "What we didn't realize until now is that over the past decade, changes in the global water cycle more than offset the losses that occurred from groundwater pumping, causing the land to act like a sponge -- at least temporarily."

 The global water cycle involves the flow of moisture, from the evaporation over the oceans to the fall of precipitation, to runoff and rivers that lead back into the ocean.

 Just how much effect on sea level rise this kind of land storage would have has remained unknown until now because there are no land-based instruments that can measure such changes planet-wide.

 The latest data came from a pair of NASA satellites launched in 2002 -- known as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

 Researchers learned that the "water gains over land were spread globally, but taken together they equal the volume of Lake Huron, the world's seventh largest lake," said a NASA statement.

 Researchers said the findings will help scientists better calculate sea level changes in the years ahead.

 "These results will lead to a refinement of global sea level budgets, such as those presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which acknowledge the importance of climate-driven changes in hydrology, but have been unable to include any reliable estimate of their contribution to sea level changes," said senior author Jay Famiglietti, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

 "But we'll need a much longer data record to fully understand the underlying cause of the patterns and whether they will persist."

http://news.yahoo.com/parched-earth-soaks-water-slowing-sea-level-rise-231245199.html
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PonoBill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2016, 11:26:21 PM »
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-siege-of-miami

FL, especially, south, is focked. Interesting read.

That was interesting? Seemed like rambling nonsense to me. Over the last 50 years the sea level has risen eight inches. That doesn't say that bad shit isn't happening, but that article is blather.
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eastbound

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #23 on: February 14, 2016, 06:35:10 PM »
i found the piece quite interesting and intelligent--that"s why i linked it--in fact the author is possibly the foremost acclaimed journalist writing on the environment and related sciences today--so, your distaste is somewhat unique PB--and her recent pulitzer prize wasnt a fluke--but hey if it's blather to you, move on--she's not lacking for interested readers--and Miami is in fact focked, now, in the case of many neighborhoods, and soon for most of south florida
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PonoBill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #24 on: February 14, 2016, 07:32:25 PM »
Call me old fashioned. My notion of journalism is stories that have a premise, some exposition, and a conclusion. I recognize the format of this story--the basic Kabob. Stick stuff on the skewer until you run out of room. I don't find it meaningful. The underlying theme is that global warming is destroying Florida, which might be true, but there's no explanation--even a sketchy one, for the current phenomenon and its dramatic disconnection from actual seawater level changes.

So what did you learn? 

I'm a lot less impressed by Pulitzers than I once would have been. Find someone even slightly conservative who has won one in the last twenty years even for something as lightweight as an editorial cartoon. I could care less about the bias, self congratulatory stuff is always inside baseball. Still, like the Nobel peace prize, it used to mean something. Now not so much.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 07:43:55 PM by PonoBill »
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robon

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #25 on: February 14, 2016, 08:17:43 PM »
Bret Stephens is a conservative and won the Pulitzer in 2013. Not necessarily a fan, and I don't follow American Politics or columnists all that closely, but remember the topic of conservatives rarely winning the pulitzer and his name came to mind.

PonoBill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #26 on: February 14, 2016, 09:02:35 PM »
Four in 31 years (out of 651). Yikes, it's a flood. But yes, Robon, Bret Stephens is one of the four. I'd call him more of a contrarian than a conservative, but that's just me. I don't really know what a conservative is anymore. I think the only remaining ones are Libertarians, and they're nuts.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 09:16:25 PM by PonoBill »
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Ichabod Spoonbill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #27 on: February 15, 2016, 05:42:55 AM »
I remember being conservative meant someone whom you could have a conversation with. No secret I lean liberal, but when I talked to conservatives who disagreed with me, there was always a sense of agreement on certain things, like the purpose of government, or the meaning of American citizenship. Traditional conservative leaders always, to me, to understand that they were responsible not just for the people who voted for them, but everyone under their constituency. Now people who call themselves conservative seem to want to excommunicate or exile anyone who isn't ideologically pure.

I've known many conservatives whom I greatly respected. My professional teaching mentor was a conservative, and she was a terrific person to learn from. I'll always be grateful for her generosity. One of my closest colleagues at my school — a very skilled special education teacher — was conservative. We got angry with each other from time to time, but there was always great mutual respect. I get that vibe from Bill. I haven't met him personally, just his brother, but we have disagreed about things like education, but at the end of the day we're just a bunch of people who like to paddle together, and that's what really matters in the end.

I think a lot of people have forgotten about the social contract. There are probably many left-leaning people who have done the same. No matter what your beliefs, we're all sailing this huge ship called America. Yes, at times we'll fight, but we're all in it together.
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PonoBill

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #28 on: February 15, 2016, 09:05:55 AM »
An unfortunate reality of the radicalization of America. Political thought has largely become political belief. I'm always interested in people's thoughts.
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Pierre

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Re: NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice ( 2 days ago)
« Reply #29 on: February 15, 2016, 10:33:19 AM »
Simple thermodynamics:  as global temperature increases, whatever the reason, air can contain more water, and when reaching cold areas, snowfall is increased. As soon the snow does not melt, ice accumulation increases... as long global warming do not transfom that snow and ice into rain and water!!!
getting out of the CO2 debate, the only solution is to accumulate more water in the land. means reforest the planet, and make desert green( using sea humidity condense, it could be made without fuel, just wind and sun), stop planting for biofuel or palm oil etc but for food, restrict erosion, etc... some countries drown under flood while others miss water.
However most important at same time is to cut:kill all agro-chemiical giant/poisoners and let local, natural, private agriculture alive, promoting local independance, killing food traders and monopolies.
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