Even if the earth temperature suddenly jumped 5 degrees, it would take hundreds of years before there was significant decrease in the amount frozen. So any year to year variation due to natural climate change will swamp any slow warming effect.

And THAT is without taking into effect the fact that Antarctica in many ways drives its own weather system. Antarctica is totally different from the Arctic. To assume they are the same is like assuming that New York is like LA because “they are both at opposite ends of the country”.

It’s actually quite complicated guys, and listening to your smart-alec remarks on this topic just shows that you really havent bothered to learn much about the topic before adding your opinions.

Hint: If you rely on television for your information, you will only ever get an oversimplified version of what is known. Journalists, after all, are experts in explaining what they don’t understand, to an audience that doesn’t understand it either.

“New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday”

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080710175751.a4ni0j9h&show_article=1

Could this be related?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080710175751.a4ni0j9h&show_article=1

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/current_anom_south0325.jpg

The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current Antarctic ice cover (just 0.1% of the extent last September). A very small piece broke off as an iceberg (37 square miles). Then only a small portion of it around 160 square miles partially disintegrated late this February into early March. That represents just 2.67% of the full Wilkins ice sheet and 0.01% of the total Antarctic icecover (0.003% of its level last September), a little like an icicle falling from a snow and ice cover roof. No big deal (unless you are standing beneath it).

And this winter is coming on quickly. Satellite images show the ice has already refrozen around the broken pieces and expanded. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere fall season and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.

Mt. Erebus, discovered by Captain James Ross in 1841 and named after one of Her Majesty’s Antarctic discovery ships under his command, was first climbed on March 10, 1908, by a party of geologists and scientists from Ernest Shackleton’s 1907-09

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_sc/antarctica_collapse_10;_ylt=AsM73U_YeRvtEkxg_LUgZzn0kPUI

Thanks for such a great summary.

Jim Peden
Editor
The Middlebury Community Network

And as far as carbon credits… Isn’t that like saying if I kill someone, as long as I have a child it all balances out??

This part of the article seems to indicate that the volcanism has been there for 25 million years, I would think probably since the opening of the Straits of Magellan.

“Volcanic eruptions were common during the past 25 million years, and coincided with the great period of climatic deterioration that resulted in the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet. Many of the volcanoes show the effects of interaction with ice. BAS has played a major role in describing these effects and modelling their influences on the resulting volcanic sequences. It is important to describe and understand these interactions in geologically recent times in order to predict future configurations of the ice sheet and its role in the global system.”

For this to be an ‘impact’ or be a ‘reason’ for ice loss in the Western Antarctic (as distinguished from the Antarctic Peninsula) it would have to have recently increased in activity. And there is no evidence of that.

The authors even state:
“However, it cannot explain the more widespread thinning of West Antarctic glaciers that together are contributing nearly 0.2mm per year to sea-level rise. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters.”

Interesting though isn’t it.
Nathan

I am fairly sure you guys have first hand knowledge of what is going on down there.
Hope the loss of the Russian camp won’t effect anyone. Something about lack of money.