NYT: Maybe Greenland Isn't Melting After All

NewsBusters ^ | 7/03/2008 | Noel Sheppard

[ETL]

Ice melts in the summer? Wow.

And volcanic activity has a 'melting effect' on ice?? Who knew! LOL!

From Ohio State University News, Dec 2007...

EARTH'S HEAT ADDS TO CLIMATE CHANGE TO MELT GREENLAND ICE

COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Scientists have discovered what they think may be another reason why Greenland 's ice is melting: a thin spot in Earth's crust is enabling underground magma to heat the ice.

They have found at least one “hotspot” in the northeast corner of Greenland -- just below a site where an ice stream was recently discovered.

The researchers don't yet know how warm the hotspot is. But if it is warm enough to melt the ice above it even a little, it could be lubricating the base of the ice sheet and enabling the ice to slide more rapidly out to sea.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hotgreen.htm

[nuf said]

Check this link out A-B182, sez ice melting on north pole due to underwater volcanic activity.

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/5589

[ETL]

"The Land That Time Forgot"

"Negotiating an underwater tunnel [beneath the ice] to gain the island's interior, those aboard U-33 are amazed to discover a tropical prehistoric world kept warm by volcanic forces. Here dinosaurs that should be long extinct live and roam, as do a curious race of humanoid savages that appear to exhibit all the various phases of Man's evolutionary development. To survive long enough to repair and replenish the U-boat, wartime enemies must put aside their differences and cooperate with one another. But not everyone is playing from the Kumbaya songbook... The Land That Time Forgot is a thoroughly old fashioned sci-fi/fantasy adventure of the type they weren't really making anymore even in 1975. A lot of this has to do with the script sticking to Burroughs' Victorian style. (His Caprona tales were first published in 1918; as late as World War II he'd still be cranking out novels in the writing style of the 19th Century.) The film's a throwback to the likes of the original King Kong and potboilers such as Unknown Island (1948) and The Land Unknown (1957), only in color."
http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/cult_movies/land_time_forgot.htm

Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
June 25, 2008 | AFP

Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.

Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.

But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.

What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080625/sc_afp/sciencegeologyoceansvolcano

[Irish Eyes]

Now if we can just back the awards and money given to Al Gore for pushing this scam.

[Robert A Cook PE]

As Creighton wrote a few years ago, about half the world's glaciers are expanding, and about half are retreating.

The democrats and socialists only get flown to those that are retreating. the newspapers only write about those they can get pictures of - with (democrat politicians standing in the forefront.)

[SunkenCiv]

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[cogitator]

Feel free to re-ping the group that you pinged to (and my thanks for doing so) to alert them to this additional information. I did some searching, and the picture is not as rosy as might be believed from Mr. Noel Sheppard. The main thing to note is that there's a difference between melt and ice sheet flow. Greenland is still melting, and at an increasing rate, which is actually one result reported in the paper itself.

So for perspective:

Greenland Ice Sheet Slams the Brakes On (the last two paragraphs have a dissenting viewpoint)

From dotEarth (Revkin's blog):

A tempered view of Greenland's gushing drainpipes (recommend reading the whole thing -- particularly the 10:15 PM update and notably posts 94 and 140 in the discussion).

This is a quote from post 94 in the discussion. I underlined a couple of noteworthy words and bolded a particularly noteworthy phrase:

"First of all, the measurements were made on a transect that was oriented East-West at a latitude of 67 deg. N on the East coast of Greenland. This region has been identified by three seperated bodies of measurement as being roughly in mass balance (no net melting or ice accumulation). The 2006 reports of acceleration of ice mass loss have been located on the West coast of Greenland, and thus the measurements made by these authors (that average ice velocities have declined slightly) do not represent a contradiciton to the overall state of an increase in the rate of mass loss on the Greenland ice cap. The authors may have had a good reason for measuring here as opposed to West Greenland. For one thing, their data collection was established in 1991, more than a decade before GRACE measurements identified accelerating ice loss in Western Greenland. This work is a continuation of a long term project."

The next paragraph of this post indicates that in the paper itself, the authors measured a 17% increase in "surface loss" due to "surface melting" over the 17-year period of the study.

So, in summary, it's a dang shame when this science thing gets in the way of a perfectly good skeptical talking point (even though the NY Times provided it).

[FBD]

RE: >”I did some searching, and the picture is not as rosy as might be believed from Mr. Noel Sheppard. The main thing to note is that there’s a difference between melt and ice sheet flow. Greenland is still melting, and at an increasing rate, which is actually one result reported in the paper itself.”<

-dang, Cog! always the pessimist!
;^D

[JSteff]

“How about the ice free North Pole?”

Jeez, I have been watching that live video feed from the Artic day and night for weeks now. It is wearing me out but I don't want to miss it when it does happen.