I noted yesterday this story in Slashdot:
Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years
The CBC reports on new research that shows thousand-year-old ice shelves (much different than sea ice) are breaking up and have been reduced by half in a region of Canada over the last six years. ‘This summer alone saw the Serson ice shelf almost completely disappear and the Ward Hunt shelf split in half. The ice loss equals about three billion tonnes, or about 500 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.’ More detailed pictures can be seen at The Conversation, with a quote from Professor Steven Sherwood, Co-Director of the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre: ‘The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.
Meh. Last year it was Manhattan Island units, this year it’s Giza pyramid units. I suppose we can designate symbols for these: // and Δ
Whatever you call it, I call it the “Terrifying Petermann glacier ice chunk 2.0“, dubbed “deniersberg” by feckless Congressman Markey, which later refroze in the Nares Strait ice before it could wreak havoc on worldwide shipping. Before the satellite era we weren’t watching this stuff, so we really only have a few years of observations. Glaciers calve ice into the sea, its what they do. It has been going on for millions of years. By the logic presented in The Conversation, some might argue though that the glacier berg that sunk Titanic was payback for coal use. Just reading through the author list, and you’ll understand why.
Of course the science says, nothing to see here move along.
Papers, like “Late Pleistocene-Holocene Marine Geology of Nares Strait Region“, from Mudie et al., don’t leave much doubt about what was the past climate of the region:
Palaeoceanographic reconstructions from dinocyst assemblages show that from ~6.5 to 3.3 ka BP, there were large oscillations in summer sea surface temperature (SST) from 3 °C cooler than now to 6 °C warmer, and that variations in SIC ranged from two months more to four months less of heavy ice compared to now.
Imagine my surprise though, when I discovered the majority of early commenters at Slashdot taking this article to task. Usually they eat this stuff up. Here are some of the comments:
Re:”These observations should dispel…” (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30, @03:44PM (#37571112)
So I’m not one who tends to dismiss things that experts outside my field say, but this statement is quite a blatant fallacy: just because it’s been that way for thousands of years doesn’t mean that any change is certainly not natural. It’s these types of statements that cause so many to lose credibility. It doesn’t give me much faith in someone’s ability to interpret complex data when he can’t even construct a valid deduction from simple facts…
Uh, Greenland redux? (Score:5, Insightful) by arpad1 (458649) on Friday September 30, @03:39PM (#37571068)
How about a bit less in the way of hysteria? All the folks who were having kittens over the phony reduction in the Greenland ice sheet are looking like schmucks now so perhaps a few people, like the editors of Slashdot for instance, could forgo schmuckdom by not engaging in heavy breathing ahead of the facts?
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful) by avandesande (143899) on Friday September 30, @03:43PM (#37571104) Journal
These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.
So you are saying that if there was natural global warming these ice shelves wouldn’t melt? That’s pretty amazing!
Bad phrasing (Score:3, Insightful) by OverlordQ (264228) on Friday September 30, @03:47PM (#37571162) Journal
‘The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'”
How’s that saying go, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The Andes used to be under water for thousands of years; the continents used to all be one big land mass. If we lived back then I’m sure we’d be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.
Dont jump from “There used to be ice, now there isn’t.” to “We did it”
These unique and massive geographical features that we consider to be a part of the map of Canada are disappearing and they won’t come back
Alarmist.
The researchers say their disappearance suggests a possible return to conditions unseen in the Arctic for thousands of years.
So there used to be conditions where they would have melted anyways, climate changed and they appeared, now they’re disappearing again and you say we’ll never see them again?
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And those comments are just the tip of the iceberg. More here.
The Petermann glacier is part of the Greenland inland ice sheet which advances at about 1km per year. Where it meets the Arctic ocean, it extends into the sea as a floating ice tongue. When the ice tongue becomes too large, it breaks off (calves). This happens regularly every few years or so. Last time the ice tongue managed to grow to an exceptional length of 70 km before calving. This is what gave rise to the ‘terrifying’ giant iceberg. The only surprise is that it managed to grow so much before calving
This is not a freak event, it is part of the natural process and it will continue to happen whilst the glacier continues to grow. It is a symptom of the glacier growing, not of it receding.
Jason – “My moto is “the average person is a moronic herd animal”.
AGW is the perfect example of that lack of thinking”.
Jason,
We all agree . . .
For a refreshing view of natural change, witnessed, photographed, and documented as it happened, read the stories by Diana and Brad Thayer as published in the Atlin Whisper, a news sheet published in Atlin, BC. It records the collapse of an ice dam and the sudden draining of a glacial lake at the snout of Llewellyn Glacier. Beautiful photos, great story told first person, no moralizing, just a very powerful, natural change.
http://storage.ubertor.com/cl1890/content/document/929.pdf
http://storage.ubertor.com/cl1890/content/document/933.pdf
Thanks tty 😉
I looked into Meuller – one of the authors – and in 2003 he published a doom and gloom paper on the Ward Hunt ice shelf in GRL.
http://www.cen.ulaval.ca/warwickvincent/PDFfiles/175.pdf
Seems as though (as tty points out above) the melting was well underway in the 1890s and that the remaining 6 ice shelves are mere remnants of a much more extensive ice mass along Ellsemere Island. Meuller also points out that these ice shelves do not grow from the glaciers attached to them but instead from snow accumulation and basal accumulation of sea ice.
Meuller points out that because of the drop in precipitation these ice shelves will never recover.
I saw that article last night and had the exact same reaction. The small percentage of comments lambasting the majority “deniers” were actually all written by just a handful of repeat-posters.
“So you are saying that if there was natural global warming these ice shelves wouldn’t melt? That’s pretty amazing!”
This has to be a candidate for quote of the decade.w
OK, I’m a simple thinker, and generally apply simple solutions to what seems to be simple problems (works most of the time, until some moron complicates it) 🙂
Is it not possible that these huge chunks of ice are just too big and heavy and break up at the weekest point? Thereby creating ice islands.
Just simply thinkin’ out loud. (Which is a fairly simple think to do, but tends to complicate things, these days) 😉
Anthony,
You’ll see similar blossoms of understanding at Digg, Fark, Reddit, etc. Keep up the push I’m certain the scale is about to tip. The emotional knee jerk reaction to the hysteria is dying down and people are starting to investigate now that they understand their own money is on the line.
Is the ice calving or receding? Receding is obviously a sign of melting. Isn’t calving common when the ice is growing? It grows at the source and calves at the end?
Ooh … the twin towers icon might be a bit overboard there, Athony. Good points, though!
Yessah! the comment about “Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift” struck a chord. Here’s an idea, Anthony: How about setting up a new feature for your site called ATD Science, to which bored, scientifically literate readers might submit tongue-in-cheek “science” mocking and mimicking the pseudoscience of AGW.
I might work one up myself.
Did you realise that the building boom in Los Angeles and the influx of very heavy tourists and their vehicles at certain times of the year are leading to minute, but “statistically relevant” isostatic compression of that sensitive contenental shelf and exacerbating the San Andreas fault? Every earthquake from that region that hits the news is another harbinger of the enormous man-caused disaster that is looming, in which half of California is going to hive off into the sea! Be afraid. Be very afraid! And call your congressman!
… except of course we’d work it up properly with graphs, scary statements from expert geologists, actual rock core analysis that “shows the ATD fingerprint”, photographs of cliffs crumbling into the sea and great chasms opening up mid-continent, sink holes and so on. Lots of bandwidth possible here.
Pyramids make a refreshing Change to the BBC’s number of Wales scale.
One thing I’ve learned about watching the interest in ice sheets is that calved ice generates cash cows thanks to our generous but nearly broke government treasury.
“The researchers say their disappearance suggests a possible return to conditions unseen in the Arctic for thousands of years.”
I thought the conditions thousands of years ago were of continental ice sheets. So global warming means means colder UK winters and the return of glaciers in North America.
I do apologise for my previous post. I should not have confused surface area ( a Wales) with Volume (a Pyramid).
But I do welcome the latest measurement standards and suggest that temperature is recorded in a Brass Monkeys’ balls scale.
Safe from incorrect contractions, hopefully. I was hoping you might learn, but I guess not.
This is the “tipping point” for AGW that they’ll never recover from! It’s one thing to have a bunch of icy skeptics on a site like wattsupwiththat, but if they’re on slashdot too now it’s PROOF that global warming is not accepted science and is therefore false. I know several scientists or science hobbyists who frequent that site, so I think it’s fair to say that there is not a consensus about global warming among scientists.
When I was reading the /. post and comments what was most stunning was the major shift in attitude from earlier articles where just about all the participants supporting CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture with scathing attacks on anyone (such as myself) posting critical comments. Now we actually see relevant and cogent arguments supporting critical rational evidence based science in many of the participants comments. That’s a sea change for such a cynical crowd as Slashdot’s.
zac says:
…But I do welcome the latest measurement standards and suggest that temperature is recorded in a Brass Monkeys’ balls scale.
This idea has merit, but as a regular Brass Monkey attendee ( http://www.brassmonkeyrally.org.nz/ ) I can assure you that the error bars for this temperature scale would be very large.
Oh My Gawd, we’d all better watch out for another massive ice shelf break-off, which might then cause another Titanic Disaster…… Like the Disaster that was the Film “Titanic II”. Here is a comment from Internet Movie Database (IMDB) on that particular sequel……
“Not only a waste of a hour and a half of my evening but quite possibly of my entire life! It was so painful I do not believe I could begin to adequately describe the trauma I now feel – I genuinely write this as a warning to my fellow human beings who value their sanity. Never in my life have I seen work (of any form) of such poor quality. Having only just finished viewing this film I feel the need for a shower and referral to a good psychiatrist. I’ve been more entertained watching paint dry – and a tin of paint could produce/direct a better cinematic experience. Simple put, if 0 out of 10 was I option I’d have awarded that instead – I want my 1.5 hours back!! THE HORROR, THE HORROR!!”
……. Just like the “Horror” of watching the AGW Fraud disintegrate and the Warmist Advocates carry on as usual, as though nothing at all had happened to expose their multiple scams.
Anthony, you jested ….
” …….. then I’m sure we’d be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.”
But it could be a “reality”……
Anthropogenic Continental Drift: An Incoherent Truth
by Ivan Betinov – 1/7/2008, 10:25 pm
http://thepeoplescube.com/current-truth/anthropogenic-continental-drift-an-incoherent-truth-t1668.html
REPLY: Better get your fact straight, I never wrote that on this thread. – Anthony
Someone posted a link to Watts Up With That article “Icy Skepticism hits Slashdot” as a comment on cited Slashdot article and received a score of “1”. LOL
REPLY: Lots of other comments got zero, many comments also got 1, means nothing except to snarkmeisters like yourself – Anthony
The melting of 1000 year old ice sheets on a ten year time scale disproves 2 ideas popular around here:
1. That it is warm now because we are at the peak of a 20/40/60/80/whatever natural warming cycle.
2. That it is as warm now as the medieval warm period 1000 years ago. Remember that even if the ice did melt 1000 years ago it would have to have started refreezing immediately after the MWP ended.
LazyTeenager says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Where does it say the ice shelves “melted”. It says that they “broke up”. Not exactly the same phenomenon, don’t you think? There is more involved here than mere air temperature, I am sure you will agree.
Jeff Alberts says:
October 1, 2011 at 1:46 pm
REPLY: Thanks Pedantic Man. The world is safe from contractions, thanks to you. – Anthony
Safe from incorrect contractions, hopefully. I was hoping you might learn, but I guess not.
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So, your mission is to teach ?
Teach me something.
That’s why I’m here.
Instead of your website.