WP: Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at Loss: "Highly disruptive" sea level rise?

Antarctic Glaciers' Sloughing Of Ice Has Scientists at a Loss
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007; Page A02

Some of the largest glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are moving in unusual ways and are losing increased amounts of ice to the sea, researchers said yesterday.

Although the changes in Greenland appear to be related to global warming, it remains unclear what is causing the glaciers of frigid Antarctica and their "ice streams" to lose ice to the ocean in recent years, the researchers said.

"In Greenland we know there is melting associated with the ice loss, but in Antarctica we don't really know why it's happening," said Duncan Wingham, an author of the review released today in Science magazine. "With so much of the world's ice captured in Antarctica, just the fact that we don't know why this is happening is a cause of some concern."

The Antarctic ice loss, which Wingham said is not caused by melting but rather by the pushing of ice streams into the ocean by several glaciers in the west of the continent, has picked up speed in recent years. But Wingham said that because researchers did not have good measures of the depth of the Antarctic ice shelf until about 10 years ago, scientists do not know whether this is a natural variation or a result of human activity....

***

Because such a large percentage of the world's ice is found in those two locations, scientists are carefully watching for signs of increased ice loss. If that process accelerates, researchers say, it could result in a substantial, and highly disruptive, increase in sea levels worldwide....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR2007031501063.html?nav=most_emailed

if the best deniers can do is that sad, "the great global warming swindle" there's not much left to deny with.

How about the Alabama and Mississippi coastlines? Sheesh.

Progressives don't wish mass death on ANYONE.

it's all a matter of time.

I'm feeling rather pessimistic about the whole thing and just think of all the garbage, toxic waste, etc that'll get into the oceans if they do rise.

lets hope the Hedge Fund Mansions are the first to go....

http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w367/history/greenwich,CT-estate.jpg

The Reichwing Hartford Courant used Ned Lamont's Greenwich against him, in the run-up to the 2006 'elections.'

It'll be too late for man at that point.

with the galatic center. A huge black hole centered in the middle of the Milky Way..the Mayan calendar (dresdan codex) says the world ends that day. We drown.

I don't know if they're right but they did predict the EXACT DAY the Spanish arrived. Very spooky!

and The Mayan Calendar running out actually around(now or let's say early 00's) I think that stuff is fascinating, but I hate to fixate on things like that....remember the law of attractions....

What I think is probably going to happen is a pole reversal. That could explain why the poles are melting. I think it's interesting as Hell. I'm not fixated but I have to look. I'm a curious person with no will power not to.:freak:

I surely don't find New Age BS "interesting as Hell." Stay away from that nonsense unless you want your brain to rot.

Those wackos think that the planet is going to turn over or some such nonsense.

and pole reversals probably take several years - they're not an instantaneous event. As the Nova site you link to says: "Reversals take hundreds if not thousands of years to complete".

that time as we know it ends. Not that we die or humanity ceases to exist.

...that I fully plan to attend...

;-)

So it won't be particularly close on that date, and its position moves very slowly.

August 13, 2010:

http://www.gaiamind.org/aug13-2010.html

the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

No wonder we're still barbaric.

:eyes:

i didn't know that there were still people that take that astrological bullshit seriously.

THAT'S what worries me...

Wouldn't the earth-sun-galactic-center alignment happen every year?

I try to be open to new ideas, but I just don't get this sort of reasoning.

Back in '82, there was a very rare alignment of the planets. Some people were predicting all sorts of horrible things, saying the tidal forces would rip the planet apart. I think we'll be just fine.

And the beginning of something new. :)

could be quite off... it might be 10 years or 20 years which means the world that you and I know will be quite changed

England will be mostly Gone
many islands GONE under water...
like JAPAN

China will lose much also
Bejing Shanghai Hong Kong

Bangladesh Sri Lanka ...Gone

Australia will be a lot smaller

America will lose much of Florida

Its one thing to lose Artic Ice and greenland Ice

but to lose lots and lots of Antartic Ice

WHOAH

all of this is in Inconvenient Truth

the u.s. won't just lose most of florida- manhattan, houston, big chunks of san francisco and los angeles, new orleans, boston...and lots more besides that.

Always good to know that someone's hanging out in E&E!

:toast:

It is the end of Summer in the Antarctic, thus its ice is at it minimum. Next Week the days will start to become SHORTER and the temperature will start to DROP. Ice that has melted will refreeze. As most people know, when water freezes it expands. When the newly froze ice expand it might add enough pressure to the ICe Sheets to cause them to break down. That would be the final push (The real cause is the increase heating of the earth, the freeze-Break I am talking about is the icing on the cake, not the Cake itself).

Now come about a month the water would be froze permanently till next year (When it will start to re-melt again). This is the theory of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) will break and has broke before (In spring when the amount of ice is at its smallest amount). Come the end of April the danger period would have been past, the WAIS would NOT be melting ice that has been frozen for decades if not centuries (And thus exposing even older ice to the affect of melting), but freezing water that will met net summer (and this pattern of winter expansion of the Ice Sheets and the melting of the Ice Sheet in Summer has been going on since the time the West Antarctic last broke up and melting into the Southern Ocean.

Now I am NOT saying the Ice Sheets and Ice Shefves of the West Antarctic will melt this year, what I am saying if the WAIS should ever break up it will be during the time period when the ice is at its Minimum which is always March through April of every year.

wanted to canoe to work and school.

The reason for the acceleration could well be the melting of the
Antarctic sea ice, e.g. in the Ross Sea.
Without these massive ice sheets there is nothing to
prop up the inland ice.
So if the sea ice is getting thinner, which it is...

Also see the website of the latest Antarctic drilling core expedition
http://www.andrill.org