http://www.trimble.com/gps/index.shtml

The capability has existed for a long time. I worked a surveying project over twenty years ago, establishing baselines at closed landfill sites for MNPCA,that was speced at 5mm+/- 3ppm. We used 4 units which cost about $100K each[ two on known reference points, two on the unknowns ] with 1 hour occupation times and about 2 weeks of post processing of the data. Newer equipment and techniques make it faster, but still require fairly sophisticated and specialized skills to achieve that level of accuracy.

From the article linked to by Lucy above.

Water-logged sea ice also may explain why sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing. This occurs when the weight of accumulated snow presses down on a slab of sea ice until it’s nearly submerged. When that happens, waves cause ocean water to spill on top of the ice and into the snow, forming a layer that eventually freezes and becomes “snow ice.”
So, global warming is not only thought responsible for the melting of Arctic ice over the last few decades, but the observed increase in the ice at Antarctica, too.

Anybody have any idea how much snow cover would be necessary to nearly submerge floating sea ice? My impression is that even in coastal areas snowfall annually is in the 2′to3′ range, which at the temperatures of Antarctica would be equivalent to maybe 2 or 3 inches of water or less. This wouldn’t seem to provide enough mass to submerge sea ice.

Clarification: I was appreciating your humor (in agreement).

“There’s something bugging me about the concept of Post Glacial Rebound (PGR) in Antarctica…

“If Antarctica was once buried under a deeper and more extensive layer of ice during a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum,” several thousand years of ice deposition should be missing from the Votok and other ice cores starting in the Holocene… But there isn’t any missing section.”

Dave, I think you’re missing something here. Just because there’s less ice over Antarctica now than during the Last Glacial Maximum does not mean that an entire layer of ice just melted away. I don’t think ice ever melts in the interior of Antarctica. What happens is, the weight of ice from later years compresses the ice below it and pushes the edges outwards toward the coasts, where it eventually calves off and becomes icebergs. But some portion of the ice from each year remains, buried under tens of thousands of years of additional ice, in the interior of the continent. During the Last Glacial Maximum, the water surrounding Antarctica was cold enough that the ice didn’t calve off as much, so the extent of the ice became greater. But also, the larger extent allowed the ice in the interior to build itself deeper. When the Last Glacial Maximum ended, the ice didn’t just melt away from the interior. Instead, rising water temperatures of the oceans surrounding Antarctica caused more of the coastal ice to melt, and break off. The smaller extent of the ice sheet could no longer support the tremendous weight of ice on top of the continent, and so everything spread out more, which, of course, exposed more ice to the coastal areas, where it too could melt. Eventually, the warming that ended the LGM caused the total extent and depth of ice over Antarctica to decrease significantly, but NOT by melting large volumes of ice in the interior.

Does that make more sense?

If the distance between the earth and the Sun increased by 300,000 miles a millennium, as these global warming quacks claim in their article, then in 100,000 years, the earth would be 123,000,000 miles from the Sun, and temperatures would be slightly warmer than those encountered on Mars and we would have long since frozen to death, even if everyone helped prevent global freezing by driving a Hummer.

“WAGN ? I think I would avoid accronyms with WAG in them. Although there are a number of networks like the GHCN in which WAG would be an appropriate one.”

I was thinking the same thing, regarding WAG Network. I mean, sheeze. I want to respect the science here, but…c’mon!

“Nice – almost ROTFL here, at the 2+2=5 “simplification”.

–
Meanwhile, belief in truth & reality remains an option for some …”

Not sure I understand you here Paul. Are you saying that *I* am guilty of oversimplification, and not believing in truth and reality? Or that the alarmists are guilty of same?

From the article linked to by Lucy above.

Water-logged sea ice also may explain why sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing. This occurs when the weight of accumulated snow presses down on a slab of sea ice until it’s nearly submerged. When that happens, waves cause ocean water to spill on top of the ice and into the snow, forming a layer that eventually freezes and becomes “snow ice.”
So, global warming is not only thought responsible for the melting of Arctic ice over the last few decades, but the observed increase in the ice at Antarctica, too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/10/the-polar-ice-conundrum.shtml

Trevor (12:01:08) “You can’t have it both ways, alarmists. If [....], it’s global warming. If [....], it’s global warming. If [....], it’s global warming. [...]“

Nice – almost ROTFL here, at the 2+2=5 “simplification”.

But two plus two can equal five, for extremely large values of two.

These days, of course, any value of ‘two’ that is ‘adjusted’ by Al Gore Warmists will almost certainly be ‘three’ anyway, or course. So it’s even worse than we thought – it’s six!

Vaughan, P.L. (2009). 11.1 Year Cycle in Solar System Dynamics.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/VaughanPL2009_11.1aCycleSSD.htm
(freshly updated – more updates forthcoming…)

Noted!