From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) some “could be might be” research with a possible conclusion. I wonder why there doesn’t seem to be evidence for a complete melt long ago in this paper: New study shows temperature in Greenland significantly warmer than present several times in the last 4000 years. And I laughed out loud at this line: “In contrast, if global warming would be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years.” Amazing how that 2°C lines up with with activist memes, doesn’t it? Oh, and Milankovitch cycles, natch.
The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed. Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea-level rise of several meters and therefore it potentially affects the lives of many millions of people.
The time it takes before most of the ice in Greenland is lost strongly depends on the level of warming. “The more we exceed the threshold, the faster it melts,” says Alexander Robinson, lead-author of the study now published in Nature Climate Change. In a business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions, in the long run humanity might be aiming at 8 degrees Celsius of global warming. This would result in one fifth of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2000 years, according to the study. “This is not what one would call a rapid collapse,” says Robinson. “However, compared to what has happened in our planet’s history, it is fast. And we might already be approaching the critical threshold.”
In contrast, if global warming would be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years. Still, even within this temperature range often considered a global guardrail, the Greenland ice sheet is not secure. Previous research suggested a threshold in global temperature increase for melting the Greenland ice sheet of a best estimate of 3.1 degrees, with a range of 1.9 to 5.1 degrees. The new study’s best estimate indicates about half as much.
“Our study shows that under certain conditions the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible. This supports the notion that the ice sheet is a tipping element in the Earth system,” says team-leader Andrey Ganopolski of PIK. “If the global temperature significantly overshoots the threshold for a long time, the ice will continue melting and not regrow – even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its preindustrial state.” This is related to feedbacks between the climate and the ice sheet: The ice sheet is over 3000 meters thick and thus elevated into cooler altitudes. When it melts its surface comes down to lower altitudes with higher temperatures, which accelerates the melting. Also, the ice reflects a large part of solar radiation back into space. When the area covered by ice decreases, more radiation is absorbed and this adds to regional warming.
The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate. This model performs calculations of these physical systems including the most important processes, for instance climate feedbacks associated with changes in snowfall and melt under global warming. The simulation proved able to correctly calculate both the observed ice-sheet of today and its evolution over previous glacial cycles, thus increasing the confidence that it can properly assess the future. All this makes the new estimate of Greenland temperature threshold more reliable than previous ones.
Article: Robinson, A., Calov, R., Ganopolski, A. (2012): Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet. Nature Climate Change [doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE1449]
Weblink to the article once it is published: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NCLIMATE1449
For further information please contact:
PIK press office
Phone: +49 331 288 25 07
E-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
It’s worse than we thought!
The PIK is a stain on Germany’s scientific reputation.
Is that 50 years or 50,000 years? The Europeans use a decimal for a comma.
“therefore it potentially affects the lives of many millions of people”
Lots of things affect people’s lives. Like the sun coming up every day.
50,000 years from now, we should be in the middle of the next ice age, with most humans living around the equator. Oh wait, CO2 is going to keep us all warm by the camp fires. Never mind.
The item says;
“In a business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions, in the long run humanity might be aiming at 8 degrees Celsius of global warming. This would result in one fifth of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2000 years, according to the study. “This is not what one would call a rapid collapse,” says Robinson. “However, compared to what has happened in our planet’s history, it is fast. And we might already be approaching the critical threshold.””
So, we “MIGHT” be approaching the “critical threshold” that would induce a change over so long a time that few if any people would notice it.
But wait! The item also says;
“The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate.”
Oh! In that case “their insights” are merely their opinion which they programed into the computer.
This item is a poor attempt at justifying more research funding. The only polite and appropriate response is, ’Must do better’.
Richard
50,000
REPLY: Yeah I noticed that too. Its European – A
Ah, a “novel computer simulation”. That’s all right then, would hate for them to use an “old, disctrdited computer simulation”
“using a novel computer simulation”
Had to get all the way to the end of the article to get my guffaw !!
(I dunno . . . sometimes I just get tired of ya, honey . . . it’s – Ah – your hair spray . . . or something.)
Ever since I read this garbage this morning in the paper, I have been thinking of that line in ‘Plastic People’ by Frank Zappa. That said, the rest of the song also kind of matches my mood of annoyed boredom with the never ending torrent of intellectual diarrhea from the greenies and their alchemists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoOwQd-1Hrg
For extra fun, swap the word ‘people’ with science, and other adaptations also suggest themselves aplenty.
Yeah, right. A bunch of matrices punched itno a computer programme can prove Global Warming. When will these people learn! De ja vu. Pocket OED, 1925: “Novel, of new kind, strange, hitherto unknown, fictitious prose”. “Simulation, feign or pretend to have or show, wear the guise of or act the part, counterfeit, having the appearance of, shadowy likenes of, mere pretence, unreal thing”. Don’t shoot the messanger I didn’t choose the damned words, they did!
On another note, isn’t the Greenland icesheet actually in a trough due to its weight bearing down on the rock strata beneath, meaning you just get one hell of a big pond when it all melts? Then it will pour into the oceans as the rock gradually recovers, or will it? Water is heavier than ice! Ditto Antractica?
pwl says:
March 12, 2012 at 8:29 am
Is that 50 years or 50,000 years? The Europeans use a decimal for a comma.
Fiftythousand. I found a German article in Die Welt. Not a translation error.
“using a novel computer simulation”
From which work of fiction did they obtain it?
Writing 50,000 years in europe does not make sense unless you mean 50 years and even then it’s wrong. We write 50 000 years. The comma is redundant.
So I did read the whole article and feel like
I will never get those minutes of my life back. All of that just to find out it is a novel computer simulation.
Nonsense! The Greenland ice core data show that almost all of the past 10,000 years was warmer than present and the ice sheet didn’t disappear. The ice core data show periods of warming many times more intense as recent warming without melting the ice sheet. So much for computer modeling! Look at real data if you want to predict real events.
Greenland ice sheet may melt completely with 1.6 degrees global warming
What happened to the 2 C? Would it have anything to do with the fact that we have been cooling for the last decade and 2 C seems far out of reach?
I would settle for a decent prediction of tomorrow’s weather………….
“Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. ”
Isn’t that pretty much all we need to hear?
“The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate.” Novel, indeed. File under fiction
Phew! Fifty…thousand! Almost had me going there…
And where do they get 8C from? Was someone playing ‘Doom’ instead of the ‘climate simulation’? (Oops, pretty much the same thing nowadays…).
Shouldn’t these computer models be called computer games? Must be fun to play around all day long, get impressive highscores, even paid for in a kind of scientific career … and being chief climate advisors to the German government. Would be funny if not that expensive and dangerous.
So, the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund proposed $100B USD per year to combat global warming – http://unfccc.int/cooperation_and_support/financial_mechanism/green_climate_fund/items/5869.php .
Multiply that value by the 50,000 years needed to melt the Greenland ice sheet, and… wow – that’s a lot of zeros ($5,000,000,000,000,000 USD) in unadjusted dollars, too!
think this is on topic, can someone explain this?
is the white ice or snow?
if snow seems the ice cover has increased, snow does not stay on water very well 🙂
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=03&fd=06&fy=1979&sm=03&sd=06&sy=2012
@Adder V
“We write 50 000 years. The comma is redundant.”
Isn’t the space redundant as well?
Being an American, the value 50.000 corresponds to fifty, not fifty thousand. When I first read this post, I thought the scientists(?) had the time the Greenland ice would finish melting accurate to 0.001 years–roughly a third of a day or 8 hours. Like the PGA advertisement–these guys are good. However, real scientists would have had the end of the melt accurate to a few seconds. /sarc
When climate scientists admit they were wrong: when they admit that they couldn’t predict the climate, that they vastly over stated the likely effects and most importantly it was wrong to mix science with eco-politics.
When they have the honesty to admit they were wrong where it is bleeding obvious they were wrong, then we might just, …. just … believe them about the future, where we won’t know if they are wrong until like exaggerated global warming, it was all too obvious for anyone except a blind idiot.
But will they admit they were wrong? No!
So, why on earth should anyone pay any heed at all to their non-science?
Ah, yes, Serreze & his “death spiral”, Wadhams & his “In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly.” It’s odd how there came to be ice up there at all, when it simply can’t form if there’s no ice up there already. Perhaps the Earth was created with ice-caps already in place. Isn’t that what they’re implying?
“Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed.”
Uh? The globe has warmed 0.8 degrees in a DAY. Hmmm. Yup, we’re [SNIP: language. C’min, we’re a family blog here. Think of the children! -REP] . It’s all over.
“In a business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions, in the long run humanity might be aiming at 8 degrees Celsius of global warming. This would result in one fifth of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2000 years”
CAGW’s climate sensitivity is now 8 C? What happened to IPCC’s 3.0 ~4.5 C?
Why stop at 8.0 C? Why not input 18 C into this new “novel” computer model and really be cooking.
I see a Nobel Prize in the making here…..
You gotta love what passes for *sigh*ence these days…
According to this
http://www.real-science.com/tying-1974-arctic-fraud
we might as well throw out all the crap from ALL the ice extent sites including NSDC, even our friends DMI and NORSEX ice extent, CT of course. Even with their trick to hide the previous decline from 1974 onwards, they will be getting very very desperate now as NH ice has returned to normal levels even with their tricks. Watch out for adjustments to increase the melt, be very very wary…..You see a normal NH ice will really really hurt the whole AGW theme meme LOL
““using a novel computer simulation””
I wish that they would put that crap at the beginning of those articles so that we would not have to waste time reading the rest of it!
“Novel” as in fiction.
If this interpretation of the Vostock ice-core is correct…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
…a 2C rise in temperature would appear to be the trigger which sends the Earth plunging headlong into its next glaciation.
dccowboy says (March 12, 2012 at 9:00 am)
“We write 50 000 years. The comma is redundant.”
Isn’t the space redundant as well?
———
In the UK we still use commas.
What should be made redundant: the nuts in the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Credit where credit is due, glass is half full etc. The article did manage to avoid describing the simulation as “state of the art”.
dmacleo its snow but look at the ice it appears much thicker now (but less extent than 1979). The AGW had been arguing that its gotten thinner thinner more junk…If you take a look at NORSEX ice extent you will see that currently NH ice extent is completely NORMAL. based on their own baseline which is an attempt to make sure all recent years look like melting more and more but refer to this
http://www.real-science.com/tying-1974-arctic-fraud for the real story
““If the global temperature significantly overshoots the threshold for a long time, the ice will continue melting and not regrow – even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its preindustrial state.” ”
Makes one wonder how it formed in the first place.
They also seem to think that heat has a residue that will prevent future growth ???????
Now they are just making s**t up wholesale, mysteriously suggesting that our (sniff) ice sheets will never form again, under any conditions. (yanking of hair)
I love the reference to tipping points, of which they know nothing. More “we do not really know anything, but what if” non-science, bogey,man in the closet fear-mongering.
Shameless. It’s amazing what scientists will write when they know a positive peer review is guaranteed in advance.
I hope to have the mortgage on the Hilton Head beach house paid off in just about 50,000 years.
High school journalism washouts.
“If you are going to write an article intended to motivate people into flapping their arms and run in circles crying about the sky falling on their heads, you never, ever, use the following words: likely, could, might, or maybe.” Horace Greeley inventor of yellow journalism.
My favorite quote from the article is the following” humanity might be aiming” this little, indefinite, wishy washy statement tries to put all the blame on mankind, and yet fails miserably, owing to author’s failure to believe in his own article, or his desire to cover himself if it all goes wrong. If you really believe, you never use that terminology. You would write “humanity is aiming” replace all the “coulds” with are, etc.
Stark Dickflüssig says (March 12, 2012 at 9:11 am)
Perhaps the Earth was created with ice-caps already in place. Isn’t that what they’re implying?
————————-
As per design specs?
If the ice sheet melts, the archaeologist’s will be dancing in the streets doing digs of the buried Viking settlements. This means that being ice free is not unprecidented.
RE: The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate.
(Light Humor) There may be a correlation between increased CO2 and bad computer simulations.
Chapter 1
Once upon a time there was a man…………..a big man, a great man who made a scary movie. The movie was so scary that it made everybody in the world empty their bank accounts, wallets and cookie-jars and give all their money to scientists with novel computer simulations.
Chapter 2
Uhmmmm……………………………….uhmmm……………its coming……………….
At what point does a computer program get promoted from model to simulator? Doesn’t the term simulator imply more street cred than deserved?
FONT FEEDBACK
This article has all comments in faint caps. Preceeding article was normal. The one before that was faint caps. No pattern.
Reading the faint caps causes eyestrain!!
I’m using IE8. But I’ve had other computer issues, so who knows where the problem lies.
IanM
And after I posted my comment that all comments to this posting were in faint caps I skimmed up and found the text is normal! But after making a comment one is put onto a new page, so that might be the cause for the “cure”…..
IanM
In other news from PIK, earth’s atmosphere would be liquified if the planet was catapulted into an orbit beyond Jupiter…
@Stark Dickflüssig says:
“… Perhaps the Earth was created with ice-caps already in place. Isn’t that what they’re implying?”
Could be. They’ve borrowed the methodology of Creationism, might as well borrow the dogma, too.
More computer simulations which bear no resemblance to what happens in the real world based on history of past events. They really haven’t a clue and are simply pushing the CAGW propaganda agenda. Fools…
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg716/scaled.php?server=716&filename=kobiashietal2011b.gif&res=medium
Graph courtesy T Kobashi et al – 2011. Geophysical Research Letters 38:
“High variability of Greenland surface temperature over the past 4000 years estimated from trapped air in an ice core.”
Assuming we don’t get another ice age during that time. 😉
(comma inserted for clarity).
So, are they (PIK) stating a steady temperature state of 2°C from pre-industrial (1800’s)? So according to the most noted temperature chart around, Mann’s Hockey Schtick Graph, we are already 0.4°C there. I don’t see in the article where they are looking for a 2°C (or 3°C per IPCC) change PER CENTURY. So are they abdicating the 2-3°C increase per century, in favor of another plateau (like the one we are currently experiencing) and a stable temp of 1.6°C from our current ‘norm’? Heck, with the expanded growing season and expanded agricultural acreage, I’ll take another 1.6°C and hold there.
pwl says:
March 12, 2012 at 8:29 am
Is that 50 years or 50,000 years? The Europeans use a decimal for a comma.
The British use a decimal point to denote decimal places. The Continental Europeans all seem to like using a comma, to denate all sorts. 50,000.00 would be 50, 000,00 on the mainland, the decimal just to 2 places as per usual. As a structural engineer we have recently upgraded, if that can be the correct term for it, to use the “Eurocodes” for structural design. The grave concern (literally) was that those of us in the UK, that is the regional satellite island state within the PDRofEU, would get rather confused adjusting to using a comma as opposed to a decimal point. So they actually relented & we silly old Brits can now carry on using a decimnal point, not a comma! I see the Euro is hanging on for grim life! Ho hum.
An interesting feedback mechanism…
Ok, I’m sold. /sarc According to that theory, once you lose the ice sheet on Greenland, it is impossible for it to grow back. The only problem with that conclusion is that Greenland at least once before, and probably many times, had forests. (Science Daily July 5, 2007.)
Could it be that the tipping point that could CREATE a 3000 meter high ice cap on Greenland is a climatic event worth worrying about?
Death by a thousand paper cuts!!
By the time all the ice melts we’d have already run out of fossil fuel 49.800 years before that anyway, apparently. (That’s 200 years from now)
Just a thought! What is the opposite of a textbook Green House Effect?
I don’t suppose they mentioned how clouds behave in their simulation, and how they know how they behave. Or maybe there aren’t any clouds around a big chunk of ice.
@More Soylent Green! says:
“At what point does a computer program get promoted from model to simulator? Doesn’t the term simulator imply more street cred than deserved?”
A “model” is a mathematical description of some entity. It may or may not have a temporal component. e.g. An atmosphere model might describe temperature and pressure as a function of altitude.
A “simulation” is built from interrelated models run over time. e.g. If you add a model of hourly insolation to the atmosphere model, you get simulation that gives you pressure and temperature at altitude as a function of sunlight.
If you want increased fidelity, you add optical properties of the atmosphere at altitude, how they change in response to insolation, humidity, water vapor transport, geographic location, etc.
Those are very simple examples, but you should get the idea.
A simulation gets (street cred” through the process called “Independent Verification and Validation” (IV&V). None of the climate “simulations” have been through this, which is why people like me consider them evidence of junk science.
Richard S Courtney says:
March 12, 2012 at 8:37 am
“This item is a poor attempt at justifying more research funding. The only polite and appropriate response is, ’Must do better’.”
Richard, I know you are a polite man, but I would prefer to just say “Thanks for your effort, but your services will no longer be needed”
I thought Ice started melting at 32º, is it now going to start melting at 30º?
Discover Channel had a program about a Save-The-Ice project that went to Greenland, at one of the dozen or so major choke points that export 85% of Greenland’s sea-ice. In March they covered ten hectares with white canvas. By September the ice under the canvas hadn’t melted and was three feet higher than the surrounding ice.
For about $100 billion we could keep all the checkpoints covered with enough canvas to halt entirely the glacial advance through them, by depriving them of lubrication by meltwater. That’s a lot cheaper than emission reductions, since it goes directly to the danger of sea-level rise. Good thing the sea level is actually going down!
Of course, there’s no accelerated mass loss and there will be no Greenland warming, but it’s nice to know that we could save Greenland if we had to.
“timescale of 50.000 years,” and according to the article, .8 of the 1.6 degree warming needed has already occured..
50,000 years makes no sense, and they should know it. In 50,000 years, the earth will be well into the next glacial period. They say the ice will melt “fast,” and we’re already 1/2 way the the 1.6 needed to melt the ice…I’d bet they really meant 50 years.
Message to self: Next time start at the bottom of article. 😉
Ken Hall says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:18 am
I wish that they would put that crap at the beginning of those articles so that we would not have to waste time reading the rest of it!
====================================================
Whenever I hear the “doom and gloom” stories about AGW, I always presume that “model” will be in there!!
thanks Stomata,
was noticing the thickness too.
as far as more snow, well it does not stick on unfrozen earth to well so I suspect (assume, maybe in error) its well frozen below it and it will solidify into ice at some point. does here (maine) often at least, suspect it acts the same up there 🙂
will check that link too, thanks.
Ian L. McQueen says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:50 am
“I’m using IE8. But I’ve had other computer issues, so who knows where the problem lies. ”
That’ll be with windoze then. Dual boot Linux Mint (uses Firefox as standard) & xfce desktop environment. My 3 yr old laptop with dual core T6500 now runs as fast as a 2nd gen i5. Enjoy!
Is there another climate conference happening? I have seen a bu***load of these silly studies hitting google news in the last week. Or is it just the fast response team pushing the BS out the door to help offset the negative press they have been getting.
I had a flash back from my school period (late 1980’s, 9th grade, final year at primary school, Sweden), where we are in a physics class calculated how much energy is required to transfer water from one state (melting, freezing …)to another (state). We calculated not larger volumes than one liter, due to complexity.
If they have performed their calculations after an improper linear calculation, I can understand their results (ie. to melt 1 m3 requires 1000 times more energy to melt than 1 liter – wrong!), But it is in reality something quite different, since the surrounding ice cools and the surrounding ice in turn cool the latter and the surrounding ice in turn cool the latter and …. With snow on top, we also need to take into account the insulating effect, correct?
And yes, Alan the Brit @ 8:44 am, Greenland looks like a bowl beneath the ice.
dccowboy @ 9:00 am: Usually yes, numbers are separated, however, in this way when there is an obvious risk of misreading (at least in Sweden).
dtbronzich @ 9:38 pm, Yellow Journalism? Connection to the yellow snow? 😉
Don’t get hung up on the comma. A little thought before writing would avoid ruining the thread.
50,000 has to be 50.000 no matter which system otherwise it would be 50.000 english form.
Germans and Austrians write number almost the same way, as do Swiss and Lichtensteiner. In Germany it is DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norm), and after that Duden, who determine how. (DIN also defines the size of paper that practically everybody uses).
In Switzerland the “Bundeskanzlei” is the model, and the have to set French, Italien and Romantsch standards, too.
Swiss may write 50 000 or 50’000 and normally use the comma (except in banking).
In algebra the little cross for multiplication can be mixed up with the variable x, so a point is used instead..
Bob Diaz, it was some time ago that I came across the correlation between piracy and global warming http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/001857.php.
Given the recent upturn in piracy in the Indian Ocean, is it any surprise that the planet is now cooling?
Ms X will take 2,8 years to finish her studies, and in this time she needs 12 sets of pill per year, which cost 9,00 $ each. By multiplying 2,8 by 12 and by 9 she gets 3’000 $ total:
2,8 . 12 . 9,00 = 3’000
In German this is called a “Kommafehler” (comma mistake).
“…using a novel computer simulation…”
They weren’t satisfied with getting a Nobel Peace Prize for their “science”, now they’re trying for the Nobel in literature (in the fiction category).
dmacleo says:March 12, 2012 at 8:58 am
think this is on topic, can someone explain this?
If you are referring to the snow, that was added intermittently in 2004, becoming a permanent feature by 2005.
Do these people ever get off their duffs and actually DO RESEARCH? Or are they only capable of thinking up more scare tactics and punching numbers into a computer to produce “validation” of their WAG?
The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate. … All this makes the new estimate of Greenland temperature threshold more reliable than previous ones.
Yawn…. More computer models claiming to be more reliable than the old models. Been there, done that, declined to buy the souvenir teeshirt and baseball hat.
When will they learn that we are not impressed with “data” from models? Anyone can create a model. Over the course of my career, I have coded dozens of models. The hard and expensive part is validating a model against real world empirical data. Please don’t even try to tell me that your new model was “validated” against the previous models. It’s a circular argument which carries little (i.e., no) weight with me.
BTW,
Q: Does anyone ever create a model *less* reliable than the previous ones?
A: Yes, it happens all the time! But no one ever admits to it!
I got a call one day. I’ve no idea where the company got my number from, but my bank was the only place that knew I was investing in a workplace retirement plan besides work.
The salesman starts off talking about the real power of asset modeling and forecasting asset growth and how their very expensive program also allowed back casting and how for a small yearly lease fee ($300) I would get their updates.
“What’s back casting?” I asked. “Oh”, says the salesman, “that allows you to perform whatif scenarios to learn from past mistakes”.
I ask the inevitable question; “are you telling me that your program accurately predicts future asset growth?” The salesman responds “No, of course not. No program can do that”.
“Silly me”, I thought. “So, if I understand it; your program allows me to list assets and enter annum growth rates and the program calculates the results?” “Exactly!” responds the salesman. “And you can provide me a list of satisfied owners of your program?” I ask. “Sure can,” the salesguy responds and proceeds to rattle off a list that I remember included Warren Buffet and several large banks.
“Of what use is that program to me?” I ask. “I have a spreadsheet that does exactly that and it doesn’t cost $300 per year and I’d be happy to share it with the big guys”.
“B B But, this program does accurate hindcasts and will keep you up to date on your current asset status and allow you to plan your financial future”. “So?” Says I, “I can check my status online anytime and my spreadsheet will allow anyone to play fantasy asset trading”. “Fantasy asset trading is still fantasy no matter which direction you want to cast it”. “I got better places to put my money and it ain’t in your pocket.”
That final response got me a curse and the phone slammed down in my ear.
A model or a simple spreadsheet can be the most accurate calculation machine in the world. Fantasy is fantasy whether you’re positing (guessing) -3 or +12 degrees in your personal software playground. Who cares? Obviously this, I’m sure, well funded ‘research’ doesn’t allow anyone to decide if they’re planting wheat, rye or moss in Greenland.
“Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea-level rise of several meters and therefore it potentially affects the lives of many millions of people.”
The perfect profit opportunity, following the demonstrated ethical and moral principles of the proponents of AGW. Buy millions of Greenland’s current ice covered frozen inland acres at below dirt-cheap prices, wait for AGW to melt said acreage**, the melted ice water to raise oceans levels, thus displacing millions of people from their beachfront properties, then make a killing selling those displaced people – 50’x100′ plots on said acreage at drastically inflated prices.
**Ensure and accelerate AGW process by increasing CO2 production using GW funding to lower MPG of vehicles, remove carbon scrubbers from power plants, and switch plants to highest CO2 producing fuels.
Is this another scare story about the Greenland ice sheet meting? I think this scare can be put to bed.
For all that I think of the bias of the BBC, they did once had a programme called ‘Hardtalk’ (God bless them). In one episode, Gert Leipold, then executive director Greenpeace, is caught in a lie about Greenland ice sheet disappearing within 20 years. Because, surprisingly, the BBC interviewer decides to pursue this allegation (surely against BBC policy?) and the executive director of Greenpeace is caught in a lie and has to back down. He ends up by admitting that the Greenland ice sheet is not going to disappear at all.
If anyone has missed this embarrassing Greenpeace lie, then you can see it here in this 90 second Youtube clip.
This is worth your subscription to Youtube or the BBC licence fee. and 90 seconds of your time. Well worth watching as Greenpeace have to finally admit they made it all up.
The director of Greenpeace then tries to defend his lie by saying that “ As a pressure group, we have to emotionalise issues and we’re not ashamed of emotionalising issues.”
The best way to deal with these cuddly groups is simply not to donate any more money to them.
That picture of Greenland from space is amazing. The atmosphere is very thin, oceans so shallow, compared to the globe. The space is very cold, the globe is very hot from inside.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , another place that simply does not need to exist if there is no CGW , so guess if their interested in ‘finding it ‘ or not ?
Bunch of bureaucrats. No CAGW, no bureau.
First they claim, “Our study shows that under certain conditions the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible… will continue melting and not regrow – even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its preindustrial state.”
Then they claim, “The simulation proved able to correctly calculate both the observed ice-sheet of today and its evolution over previous glacial cycles, thus increasing the confidence that it can properly assess the future.”
How is it possible that their computer simulation could successfully reproduce the “evolution” of the ice-sheet in the past but is incapable of reproducing it in the future, even after the climate returns to normal? If the Greenland ice sheet evolved once, why couldn’t it evolve again under similar conditions? They seem to be implying that glacial cycles are a thing of the past even if CO2 returns to its historical level. What is their basis for that idea and why is it valid for them to put that assumption into their simulation program?
Sea ice in Davis Strait looks like record high. If those two open pockets near Svalbard ans Novaya Zemlya would close, total arctic ice would be very high.
Nobody plays “Doom” anymore. It might have been “Left 4 Dead”.
Actually, I believe the numbers for the melt rates. 2000 years to melt the Greenland ice sheet if we get 8C of warming sounds reasonable. But I don’t think that there is even a remote chance that we will ever get 8C. First of all, we will run out of oil in the next 100 to 200 years. Second of all, the effect of increasing CO2 is a logarithmic increase in temperature – meaning that we get less and less effect for every PPM that we add. And third of all, climate sensitivity is likely between .6C and 1.5C per CO2 doubling.
I also don’t believe the “If we loose it we’ll never get it back” part. If the albedo argument is true, then we should never have been able to get out of the ice when we had snowball earth, and we should never have been able to glaciate when we had aligators living near the poles.
This mob are called the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact…I think that explains everything.
They’re hardly likely to publish a piece saying ‘ so far as we can ascertain the increasing concentration of C02 in the earth’s atmosphere appears to be having little IMPACT on the Greenland Ice Sheet’…now, are they!!
Tenuc said @ March 12, 2012 at 10:06 am
So we were doomed ca. 1,000 BC and again ca. 900AD. Not much point in trying to do anything about it then.
That would be a comma as decimal symbol. Fifty thousand should be 50000. I am Norwegian and officially we use a comma, but I always use full stop anyway 🙂 Much easier.
Well, gol’ dingit!
I’ll just go check out Greenland in 50,000 years and we’ll see who is right! I’ve got it marked on my pocket planner – in ink.
Who’s with me on this?
The Wicked Greenland Soothsayers of the West say “I’m Melting”
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2012/03/12/the-wicked-greenland-soothsayers-of-the-west-say-im-melting/
by pwl
How much energy is required to melt all the ice in Greenland?
How much ice is there in Greenland?
“The Greenland ice sheet (Kalaallisut: Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,235 sq mi), roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres (7,005 ft).[1] The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.24 mi) (see picture) and over 3 km (1.86 mi) at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres (29,344 and 38,610 sq mi) around the periphery. Some scientists predict that climate change may be about to push the ice sheet over a threshold where the entire ice sheet will melt in less than a few hundred years. If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (683,751 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (23.6 ft).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
2,850,000 cubic kilometers of ice in Greenland.
So claim of a 100 years to melt 2,850,000 cubic kilometers of ice. Hmmm… we’ll get back to that.
How much energy to melt ice?
“When ice melts, it absorbs as much heat energy (the heat of fusion) as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, while its temperature remains a constant 0 °C.” – wikipedia on ice
Ok, that’s very cool, it takes a lot of energy to melt ice. Pardon the pun.
“The enthalpy of fusion is the change in enthalpy resulting from heating one mole of a substance to change its state from a solid to a liquid. The temperature at which this occurs is the melting point. The enthalpy of fusion is a latent heat, because during melting the introduction of heat cannot be observed as a temperature change, as the temperature remains constant during the process. The latent heat of fusion is the enthalpy change of any amount of substance when it melts. When the heat of fusion is referenced to a unit of mass, it is usually called the specific heat of fusion, while the molar heat of fusion refers to the enthalpy change per amount of substance in moles. The liquid phase has a higher internal energy than the solid phase. This means energy must be supplied to a solid in order to melt it and energy is released from a liquid when it freezes, because the molecules in the liquid experience weaker intermolecular forces and have a larger potential energy. When liquid water is cooled, its temperature falls steadily until it drops just below the freezing point at 0 °C. The temperature then remains constant at the freezing point while the water crystallizes. Once the water is completely frozen, its temperature continues to fall.
…
To heat one kilogram (about 1 litre) of water from 283.15 K to 303.15 K (10 °C to 30 °C) requires 83.6 kJ.
However, to melt ice and raise the resulting water temperature by 20 K requires extra energy. To heat ice from 273.15 K to water at 293.15 K (0 °C to 20 °C) requires:
(1) 333.55 J/g (heat of fusion of ice) = 333.55 kJ/kg = 333.55 kJ for 1 kg of ice to melt
PLUS
(2) 4.18 J/(g·K) = 4.18 kJ/(kg·K) = 83.6 kJ for 1kg of water to go up 20 K
= 417.15 kJ
Or to restate it in everyday terms, one part ice at 0 °C will cool almost exactly 4 parts water at 20 °C to 0 °C.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_fusion
Ok, so we need to know the temperature of the ice in Greenland in order to calculate how much energy it takes to melt it. Most likely it’s not all one temperature. It must vary.
We can simplify for starters assuming the ice is 0c. Of course this assumption is being generous and will likely dramatically underestimate the amount of energy required to melt all the ice in Greenland, but heck this is a quick back of the envelope calculation.
2,580,000 cubic kilograms of ice is a mass of 2.85×10^18 kilograms (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2850000+cubic+kilometers+ice+in+kilograms).
Using equation (1) above we find that 333.55 kJ for 1 kg of ice to melt and we have 2.85×10^18 kg of the darn stuff which means that to melt it we need to input 333.55 kJ * 2.85×10^18 kg which is 9.51×10^20 kg kJ (kilogram kilojoules). That’s a lot of energy required.
9.506×10^20 kg kJ to melt all the ice in Greenland. For those challened by scientific notion, that is 950,600,000,000,000,000,000 kJ to melt the 2,580,000 cubic kilograms of ice.
Wolfram Alpha reports that that amount of energy, http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282.85×10%5E18%29+*+%28333.55+kJ%29, is:
3) ~1.9 x estimated energy released by the Chicxulub meteor impact;
4) ~24 x 2003 estimated energy in world’s total fossil fuel reserves;
5) ~37 x 2003 estimated energy in world’s coal reserves.
Ok, that is a huge amount of energy.
Could we intentionally melt all the ice in Greenland if we wanted to?
How?
“Nukes of course! They are the practical answer to every mega engineering problem. Wikipedia informs us that approximately 2,100,000 TJ (2.1 * 10^6 terajoules) of energy has been released by all the nukes ever tested by humans. Converting terajoules to kilojoules is done by multiplying by 10^9, that’s then ~2.1 x 10^15 kJ of energy from all nukes detonated on, above or in the Earth/Ocean.”
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/02/22/how-could-we-melt-enough-ice-for-a-20ft-rise-in-sea-levels/
So all the nukes every detonated generated ~2.1×10^15 kJ of energy and it would take 9.506×10^20 kJ to melt Greenland. Wow, we couldn’t do it with all the nukes ever detonated!!! We’d need 452,677 (4.527×10^7) times as many nukes!!! That’s a SIX ORDERS of MAGNITUDE larger amount of energy required! We don’t even have enough nukes to do the job.
Does Mother Nature have enough energy in the Earth System to melt that much ice? Over what time period?
Note that the volume of ice in Greenland would drop the temperature of four times the volumn of water at 20c to 0c with this melting. What effect would that have?
Is there any physics that would have the ice melt faster? How much more energy is required? What if it’s flowing water over the ice? Does that make it melt faster? It would still need the same amount of energy would it not? Ice causes the air temperature to be cooler thus limiting the rate of melting further.
About the only way that we could melt all the ice in Greenland is to manouver an asteroid the size of the Chicxulub and get it to drop on Greenland. Baring unpleasant side effects of doing that it would get the job done quickly. No doubt about that.
So how can Mother Nature do this? Where does the Earth Climate System have a spare 9.506×10^20 kJ kicking around?
The Climate Scientists claim that it could do that in 100 years? Really? There’s really 9.506×10^18 kJ of extra energy kicking around in the Earth’s Climate System to do that? Really? Please oh where are you energy?
So if the Earth’s atmosphere did warm up and Greenland started melting like crazy, four times the volume of water that melted would drop from 20c to 0c in the process and that would alter the temperature of the oceans on a global scale which would cool the planet and stop or dramatically shift the atmospheric temperatures likely enough to stop the warming. So maybe this is part of the climate negative feed back system?
All this from a desire to do a back of the enveolop calculation. Damn us system scientists and engineers, always with our back of the envelop calculations. If you find any mistakes or have additional calculations please please comment.
Peter
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2012/03/12/the-wicked-greenland-soothsayers-of-the-west-say-im-melting/
Richard S Courtney says
So, we “MIGHT” be approaching the “critical threshold” that would induce a change over so long a time that few if any people would notice it.
———–
Aahhh! The good old
1. throw a moral outrage hissyfit if the scientist express uncertainty.
2. also throw a moral outrage hissyfit if the scientist express certainty.
I call this tactic the” get em coming and going” technique. Seen it all before. Some guys tried it me once. They ended up on the wrong end of a court case. Didnt work them either.
Richard S Courtney says
Oh! In that case “their insights” are merely their opinion which they programed into the computer.
———-
[SNIP: LT, I’m sure Dr. Courtney has heard about physics. Please dial back the snark when addressing fellow commenters. Thank you. -REP]
SAMURAI says: (March 12, 2012 at 9:13 am)
“Why stop at 8.0 C? Why not input 18 C into this new “novel” computer model and really be cooking.”
That feature will be in the sequel, when Hansen’s boiling oceans are modelled properly.
Look, we’re wasting time with this. I’ve just produced a Carbon Reducing Anthropogenic Program which models global heat and reduction strategies and provides methodologies to vary global temperature for optimum human and green requirements. I’ve just turned the temperature down by 3 degrees just in case. So all’s well, we can get back to what we were doing before. If you need it turning down another notch or two just give me a bell and I’ll sort it out.
I’m just working on an acronym for my model before launching an investment scheme. There’s a great deal of interest so far from the usual suspects.
Without a doubt, terabyte analysis of plate tectonic dispositions 14-million years from now show North and South America plus Greenland firmly migrated to Gaia’s equatorial regions, thereby exhibiting “global warming” by purely geophysical processes vs. atmospheric/oceanic circulation patterns.
Not often do we encounter asininities certifiable through the Pleistocene to its succeeding geologic era. PIK’s utter hogwash is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
Clarification to March 12, 2012 at 2:27 pm: “The Climate Scientists claim that it could do that in 100 years? Really? There’s really 9.506×10^18 kJ of extra energy kicking around in the Earth’s Climate System each year for one hundred years to do that? Really? Please oh where are you energy?”
50,000 years would require 1.901×10^16 kilojoules each year of energy focused on melting the ice in Greenland, which is 9 times the energy of all the nukes ever detonated each year for 50,000 years.
Oh, over 50,000 we’d have another ice age or two… setting back any such calculations… not only that the melting ice would lower the temperature of four times the volume of the ice from 20c to 0c thus altering the ocean temperatures thus stalling any global warming (mann made or not) and thus a rapid warming could or would likely bring on a swing via ocean cooling to a new ice age sooner thus there would be no 50,000 or 2,000 or 100 years of super warming!!!
“to restate it in everyday terms, one part ice at 0 °C will cool almost exactly 4 parts water at 20 °C to 0 °C.”” – see equation (1) and (2) above in prior comment.
The fact of melting that much ice would by the simple physics of ice melting cause a huge negative cooling feedback effect as four times the volume of water compared with the ice that melted cooled the oceans which would cool the atmosphere ending the warming rather quickly. It would have to be a really slow melting to avoid that.
A really slow melting by definition isn’t a problem. 50,000 years is a non problem. 2,000 years is highly unlikely due to the amounts of energy required.
100 years to melt Greenland is pure fantasy unless an asteroid hits Greenland, and in that case we have a few bigger problems to deal with to say the least.
Could would might may can possibly imagine doomsday act now and fork over all your money to save us all. Hurry. There is no time left.
“if global warming would be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years.”
That should be “if global warming WERE limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years.”
General rule of thumb: no “would” in the “if” clause.
LazyTeenager:
I quote your post at March 12, 2012 at 2:28 pm in full.
“Richard S Courtney says
So, we “MIGHT” be approaching the “critical threshold” that would induce a change over so long a time that few if any people would notice it.
———–
Aahhh! The good old
1. throw a moral outrage hissyfit if the scientist express uncertainty.
2. also throw a moral outrage hissyfit if the scientist express certainty.
I call this tactic the” get em coming and going” technique. Seen it all before. Some guys tried it me once. They ended up on the wrong end of a court case. Didnt work them either.”
———————-
And I call your post Bollocks.
Can we call it quits now are do you want to continue to embarrass yourself?
Richard
Yawn – the only thing at risk of meltdown is my brain from the alarmist CAGW hype, oh, and possibly the alarmist media keyboards (e.g. Black et al) furiously reiterating this cr@p as fast as they can……….
50,000 years ? – OMG, quick let’s act now!
OK, ok…. sigh… I give up. I’ll do it. Yea yea… I will this time, don’t worry…
It has to happen sooner or later anyway, so I might as well start at this very moment. Sigh….
So were did I leave these books… see… hmm… hope I put some subroutines on those floppy’s I still have somewhere…
Wait a minute… a lot has happened since…no no you guy, not these old languages any more I am afraid… you have to go for new ones… what have we now… fancy names… Perl… maybe first C++ though… basic stuff needed… R… wait a minute.. Ruby… wow, if only for that name…
Stop. Stop right there. Think. THINK. Start at the start. What is the start of it all, what will dictate your actions? This is it:
GOAL: a climate model that will DICTATE the climate. That’s what a climate model is nowadays, isn’t it? We have progressed so far with our computing power and programming, it’s not we have to simulate any more, now we can dictate… and with all these models dictating CAGW of course we need to counterbalance these idiots… can you fancy… they all are dictating now CAGW. Why is it not one of them dictates CAGC? Can’t they think? Don’t they realize what they are doing? Don’t they realize it will be a catastrophe this way? Oh well, somebody should be the first one, so I guess that’s me…
Now let’s see… it should be a model, so I’ll have to work in a modular way I think. Modules, modules… wait… yeah… I wanted to try that program anyway… “Pure Data”… like that name!… it’s modular… very flexible for programming… it’s interactive…. it’s mainly for multimedia… that’s even better… climate is kind of a multimedia event nowadays isn’t it?? YEAH! Pure Data it is! If needed, I can substitute temperature for sound frequencies. I mean, temperature=mean random oscillation of particles=frequency. Yes!
Don’t worry guys. Models for CAGC are on the way. Pure Data. Swing it out, be cool! The future is ours!
You see? It’s not that difficult. Don’t be shy. We all have our private supercomputer now. Just make your own model! 😉
A videotale from an 3 cm in diameter, tre kilometer long ice-drilling in Greenland, named NordGrip.
The first video start at 4:15 with Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Associate professor, curator, Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen
http://youtu.be/c0midUwYMS4
http://youtu.be/2iq7fEVwnsk
http://youtu.be/nGA4Clu4-V8
http://youtu.be/Lza3iCtGAZQ
If we could control the climate, how should it then be? As during the ice age, the Stone Age, the 1600s, the 1800s? wave
This is ‘scientific’ support (ie made up) which can be used in AR5 to bolster the absurd EU target of limiting any global warming increase to less than 2°C.
Anthony, I think “research” should be in quotes in your first sentence. Or replaced by “speculation”.
These are the same scientists who projected what Lisa’s teeth would look like if she didn’t get braces.
Linear to infinity! Negative feedbacks don’t exist!
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=glacier+girl&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=
Or just switch to Firefox or Chrome. No need to jump through major flaming hoops for a simple fix.
Anything is possible says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:20 am
If this interpretation of the Vostock ice-core is correct…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
…a 2C rise in temperature would appear to be the trigger which sends the Earth plunging headlong into its next glaciation.
————————————————————
The graphs are certainly fudged, and admitted lower down the page to be retouched.
If you measure the scales you will find that they differ by a proportion sufficient to apparently show the peaks of the CO2 graph just before the peaks of the temperature, how convenient —–
but then it is Wikipedia.
This vast land was named during the MWP by the Viking discoverers because it was–well, green not white.
So to summarize there findings…..
Ice melts faster the more you heat it and
If the temperature stays high, water won’t freeze.
Earth shattering insights from a novel computer program indeed. I can still fell the foundations of the scientific world shaking …….
“The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed.”
Well then, we have already reached the critical threshhold then of 0.8 C. And with all that heat in the pipeline we are doomed I tell you. Oh wait, I forgot that since we have reached the edge of climat armageddon, the ocean Sea Level rise has been flat for six years.
“The scientists achieved their insights by using a NOVEL computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate. This model performs calculations of these physical systems including the most important processes, for instance climate feedbacks associated with changes in snowfall and melt under global warming. (You know, huge predicted droughts because, of course, all this extra w/v in the atmosphere would stop all snow from ever falling on Greenland again) IN THE END THE SCIENTISTS REACHED THE CONCLUSION THAT IF AL GORE WAS ENTOMBED WITHIN THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET, THE “GORE EFFECT” WOULD PREVENT THIS DISASTER.”
There, I repaired this paragraph from the article.
Reblogged this on Erafoxtea66's Blog.
Save the world with love it !.
pwl says:
March 12, 2012 at 2:27 pm
If you find any mistakes or have additional calculations please please comment.
I did not double check everything, but some things caught my eye. However these do not affect the main thrust of your valid point.
2,580,000 cubic kilograms of ice is a mass of 2.85×10^18 kilograms
Did you mean cubic kilometers of ice?
333.55 kJ * 2.85×10^18 kg which is 9.51×10^20 kg kJ (kilogram kilojoules). That’s a lot of energy required.
You are mixing up units here. You should be multiplying kJ/kg x kg which gives kJ, a unit for energy.
Note that the volume of ice in Greenland would drop the temperature of four times the volume of water at 20c to 0c with this melting.
That may be true, but what relevance does this have for Greenland? If we could somehow take all of this ice and drop it into the ocean at the equator, that would be one thing. Or if an extremely warm gulf stream could make it underneath all that ice to melt it, that may also have some relevance. But if I am not mistaken, all ice from Greenland would have to melt by being warmed by air. So it would be more meaningful to say what volume of air at 20 C gets cooled to 0 C for each volume of ice that melts at 0 C.
Julian Braggins says:
March 12, 2012 at 10:31 pm
“Anything is possible says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:20 am
If this interpretation of the Vostock ice-core is correct…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
…a 2C rise in temperature would appear to be the trigger which sends the Earth plunging headlong into its next glaciation.
————————————————————
The graphs are certainly fudged, and admitted lower down the page to be retouched.
If you measure the scales you will find that they differ by a proportion sufficient to apparently show the peaks of the CO2 graph just before the peaks of the temperature, how convenient —–
but then it is Wikipedia.”
Wow! Great find, Julian! PURE BLACK PROPAGANDA AGAIN!
Regarding the lecture on northern vs southern hemisphere oscillation of temperature. Just a minor detail, the Vikings did not start to grow potatos again in Greenland. There were no potatoes in Greenland, or Europe for that matter, in 900 AD. So that makes it a first.
GIGO
Can’t base this study on real data and proxies because they show this is opposite of the truth.
Another problem is that let’s pretend that the Greenland continent is going to melt, the pole’s seasonal icing would absorb that melting too. The poles still get months of darkness which leads to their seasonal icing, they’ll freeze more (make more ice) if there’s more to freeze.