Posted on 10/30/2007 12:27:54 PM PDT by Kimmers
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently returned from a junket to Greenland, where, among other things, she says she "saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality." True enough, Madame Speaker, but you didn't see.
New satellites tell us that Greenland -- mainly southern Greenland -- is shedding ice at the rate of 25 cubic miles per year. If Greenland lost most of its ice, sea levels would rise 20 feet or so. Greenland is by far the largest mass of ice in the Northern Hemisphere, with roughly 10 percent of the world's total.
Greenland's total ice volume is 680,000 cubic miles, and it is losing four ten–thousandths of its ice per year. Do the math. That works out to 0.4 percent of its total mass per century.
Never mind that the most recent study of Greenland indicates that even this minuscule rate may have slowed. Pelosi is falling victim to the common misconception that a slight, additional warming of Greenland will lead to the biblical flood, pronto.
Greenland warmer for 50 years
That's the horror–show scenario driving the hysteria. How well does it stack up against the facts?
Data from the United States' National Climactic Data Center show that temperatures in Greenland for the last decade are hardly unusual when compared to temperatures for the last 100 years. The period from 1915 through 1965 -- an entire half–century -- was about two degrees warmer than it is today.
Where, at that time, was the catastrophe? With the exception of a few geographers, no one noticed. Where was the acceleration in sea-level rise? There was none. In 1948, Hans van Ahlmann published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society commenting upon the loss of ice from coastal fjords and the arrival of fish associated more with warmer waters, noting that there was an increase in habitable land.
In 2000, Glen MacDonald and several coauthors published an eye–opening perspective on the climate history of the Eurasian arctic in the highly respected journal Quaternary Research ("quaternary" is the era of recent ice ages, beginning about 1.8 million years ago) in which they examined radiocarbon dates of old trees deposited in the tundra, far north of today's northernmost trees. In that region, the tree line is generally over 100 miles south of the Arctic Ocean. But for much of the era from 3,000 to 9,000 years ago, the forest extended right to the sea.
Summer temperatures -- the same ones that melt Greenland's ice -- are what determine the Northern treeline. MacDonald had to conclude that "Over much of northern Eurasia [during that period], summers may have been 4.5 to 12.6°F warmer than today."
Moreover, they wrote that the only way this could occur was if there was a massive incursion of warm (Gulf Stream) water into the Arctic Ocean. How does such water get there? By passing between Greenland and Europe. It's the only way.
So Greenland had to have been much warmer than it is now for six millennia. Again, where are the records of unprecedented rises in sea level? There aren't any, because there wasn't any. Sea levels rose to roughly where they are today.
A deafening silence
The true history of Greenland makes one thing clear: there's no climate emergency, and therefore no need to legislate draconian regulations on energy use that will dramatically affect almost every aspect of our lives. Further, no one has demonstrated that we even have the ability to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the amount necessary to curtail a substantial portion of Greenland's future warming.
If you can't do something, why bother? Symbolism costs money and takes away the capital that could be used in the future for investment in real, though yet unknown, energy technologies.
If Pelosi wants to do something about the Earth's climate, rushing the world toward a failed policy rooted in junk science is about the worst thing imaginable.
This article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on June 13, 2007.
POGW Ping.
Pelosi is not falling victim to anything...she supports GW for the Carbon Tax it might bring. Fact: "Greenland's total ice volume is 680,000 cubic miles, and it is losing four ten–thousandths of its ice per year. Do the math. That works out to 0.4 percent of its total mass per century". Pelosi doesn't want to see facts............
My Greenland story on my FR profile. Click my name below.
There is a grave, and unscientific fiction/myth about ice/glacier “melts” in the northern latitudes - an assumption that it is 100% “melting” due to warmer water that is taking place and no suggestion that evaporation is even involved.
But, as this great true science article suggests, that in as much there was once a greater degree of “melting” that had taken place over the northern latitudes and no records of huge corresponding rising sea levels at that time, evaporation into the atmosphere appears to have taken the largest measure of the lost ice.
That evaporation became clouds, which in some measure became rain and apparently a very large part of it in the past became our well known land-locked large fresh water lakes (one in Irkutsk is more than a mile deep) as well as filling many underground acquifiers. The assumption that all rain goes to the sea is also not scientific.
Therefore, there is no way to calculate the super-dynamic and infinitely variable way in which earth’s ecosystem will absorb “melting polar ice” and no way at all to translate any amount of that melting to a particular and specific affect on sea levels. There is no formula or algorithm that contains any scientific facts or truth to it for such a calculation. You could just as well use a weegee board.
The arrogance of man has created the religion of “man-made” global warming and all it’s offshoots of scientific myth.
It sort of matters how this ice is being "shedded." If chunks of it are falling off into the ocean and becoming icebergs it actually means there must be more ice accumulating and forcing the old ice to the periperphery. This is harldy an indication of "warming." The alternative would be that the ice is melting and water is dribbling off into the oceans though it would be strange to refer to this as "shedding."
ML/NJ
Doink.
Major points to consider. Do we know the earth’s capacity to take up waters from the “big melt” ? Obviously not.
I read your entire profile and I am waiting for the book so I can read more.....you kept me laughing, thank you
Mother Nature will take care of the excess water. She will simply grow more sponges in the ocean.
.....Bob
The reason the northern lands shed icebergs is pressure from above the ice pack flow caused by HIGH LEVELS OF NEW SNOW PACK. This pack pushes the ice flows down where they just naturally break/fall off.
During a recent Alaska trip, Natl Forest/Natl Park rangers explained this situation. In all cases, they poo-pooed the notion of ‘abnormal’ warming.
Yes, they explained, icebergs were breaking off farther up the valleys but that was because the forces from above were causing the breaks.
Thank you .....Bob
Re: growing more sponges in the ocean.
The human race, meanwhile, is trying to produce more sponges in Washington, DC.
Remember, Brewster’s Millions? One of the ideas he blew money on was to float large chunks Greenland’s Ice to Africa to be bottled for drinking water. Why not bottle it up there and ship it?
The stories on your profile page had me ROTFLOL.
Look, Al Gore’s an idiot, but he stumbled on to this one. Put it into the “even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile” category and move on. Anthropogenic global warming is probably real—and the results could be mind-numbing. Of course the melting starts slowly, but its not going to be linear. Come on, this whole denial thing, just because the D’s claimed it first, is ridiculous. God Bless Newt, Crist, and Arnold for putting humanity before politics.
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