“Ugh, Grog, quick get Mammoth skin. Glacier melts. Must be Ogg’s fault. He burning wood again.”

“*grunt*, no, Og, must be mammoth farts. Must kill off all mammoths!”

Stipulating AGW is valid (which I sincerely doubt), I would much rather see some solution other than that advocated by Kyoto or the Stern Review. Any solution.

Why would we want to mitigate that?

The nuttiness gets worse every year.

(My guess is that they are trying to hype up these solutions, so that when it is shown that global warming has stopped, they can claim credit.)

Combining comments from Anthony about sublimation and yours about air temps over glaciers, how about this? The screen is there to prevent lower humidity air from replacing the saturated air over the glacier. I don’t see how this would reduce melting, though.

Thanks for the extra info!

“I think there is a narrow point in a valley that the screen is placed in to block the flow of air above the glacier. By trapping a layer of air above the glacier, heat gain might be reduced. Just a guess. I don’t see how else a small screen could work.”

You mean trapping this air loaded with CO2 that will reflect back radiation and melt the glacier more?

The whole thing is bizarre. The only thermodynamic reality would be if the glacier was melting by convection, air above the melting point of ice continually flowing over the surface, and this flow is interrupted.

If it is melting by retaining radiation( soot), or excess sun radiation, only a shade could help as somebody here observed.

We need temperatures over the glacier. The average global temperature at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
at 1 km height is always below the melting point ,4C .( that is why glaciers survive in the mountains) so I cannot see how the glacier could be melting from convection and be protected by aerodynamic means.

I certainly appreciate your point.

Generally when one says historic, it refers to something actually written down in someone’s history. Unfortunately, no one recorded what was going on at the time of the Iceman’s internment.

Another critical factor in his preservation was the placement of his remains in a shallow depression in the rock. Thus melting water tended to gather in a pool about the remains, which would freeze in the winter. Also, moving snow and ice would pass over the body.

You might want to get the book “The Man In The Ice” by Konrad Spindler. I was fascinated enough by the story I obtained a copy for my own library.

Here’s the passage covering the discovery:

“Later, Helmut Simon would describe their discovery to us like this: ‘From a distance of 8 or 10 metres we suddenly saw something brown sticking out of the ice. Our first thought was that it was rubbish, perhaps a doll, because by now there is plenty of litter even in the high mountains. As we came closer, Erika said: “But it’s a man!”‘ Helmut Simon immediately ran back to get the Austrian couple, from whom they had parted shortly before. But they were no longer in sight.

Sticking out of the ice is a leather-brown round bald skull with a medallion-sized injury. Also visible are the shoulders and back, draped against a rock. The face is immersed in water, with dirt around the chin. The arms cannot be seen, and seem to be missing. Because of its delicate proportions, Erika suggests that it is the body of a woman.”

The book is a great read.

Oh here’s the fun part:

“The intersection of the red cross on the stone on which the corpse had lain is exactly 92.56 metres from the state frontier, on Italian territory.”

How could I forgotten that detail?

I guess he was going to be treated to pasta and wine instead of strudel and beer.

Certainly if he had been exposed to the air earlier, nothing would have survived; or at least not as much as they did get.

I do know the snow and ice levels were very low that summer in the Alps because our hosts commented on the fact. There was extensive coverage of the effects of the oil fields being set on fire by Saddam when he exited Kuwait. I seem to recall a Nature article on the distribution of the soot reaching all the way up to Europe.

…Yes, we can mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Perhaps you should argue with Prof. Freeman Dyson. Note especially the second paragraph.

“Neil, I’ll refer you to the IPCC AR4; the case and conclusion is laid out plainly there.”

I’ll refer you to Anthony’s posting called “The Tale of the Hockey Stick.” That accounting alone, at the least, shoots a big hole in AR4.

There is a place for environmentalism but, similar to religion, that place is not in government regulations. And more importantly, nothing man will ever do short of thermonuclear war, will ever change the climate of this planet in any direction we would desire, whether we wanted eternal snow or Eden-like warmth.

Re New Scientist, I’m not a subscriber but managed to skim the “Climate change: The next ten years” story in the paper edition when I was in the supermarket last week.”

See how far New Scientist has descended as a meaningful magazine; it is now hawked in supermarkets alongside national Enquire, which at least has the attribute of being entertaining.

See how far New Scientist has descended as a meaningful magazine; it is now hawked in supermarkets alongside national Enquire, which at least has the attribute of being entertaining.