GoodMorning! "Highest icefields will not last 100 years, study finds"

"The world's highest ice fields are melting so quickly that they are on course to disappear within 100 years, driving up sea levels, increasing floods and turning verdant mountain slopes into deserts, Chinese scientists warned yesterday"

***

"If the climate continued to change at the current pace, he predicted that two-thirds of China's glaciers would disappear by the end of the 2050s, and almost all would have melted by 2100.

"Within 20 to 30 years, we will see the collapse of many of the smaller glaciers," he said. "Within 60 years, we can predict a very significant reduction in the volume of high-altitude ice fields."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0%2C12996%2C1311574%2C00.html

keep it going, happy repubs! your own babies will live in hell-world
and you dont give a crap as long as you get to drive that hummer.

We might want to hold off a little blaming anything for this one. I've always said, "it's hard to say what's happening in the climate now, is not just part of a cycle that has gone on for much longer than our recorded 110 years or so."

First, it's not "Climate Control" -- that's for air conditioning systems.

Second, we may have only been keeping temperature data for 110 years (and I think it's longer than that), but scientists have done enough sampling of many different things (ice cores, tree rings, and probably other things) to know something about the climate over tens of thousands of years.

Third, it doesn't matter whether or not there IS a warming trend that is part of the natural cycle. The CO2 emissions are a contributing (or causative) factor. Only those "scientists" who are first and foremost ideologically driven (that is, not scientists at all) think otherwise.

Not a good debut post, I have to say.

Edited to add: Even our current administration's own study said yes, global warming is real, and yes, human activity is at fault.

crap!! being a red neck kills me sum times. I agree with you though, there are scientist who can make educated guesses of what used to be, however, they can only guess what the climate was like with in a few thousand years or so the further back in history you go. They can't say for sure what the detailed climate cycle has been.

Again sorry, for dis-agreeing on this one, I don't want to make you or anyone upset. I simply try and think about things logically, but of course I'm no geological guru.


By the way, this forum is pretty cool, there are a lot of different views to everything. It's GREAT!!

Scientists and have them speculate on what is going on and what the causes and solutions might be. If the consensus is overwhelming it would seem prudent to recognize their combined wisdom. I am sure there are many people who feel they are so much smarter than the worlds leading scientists and suggest they are far more knowledgeable but I don't find their argument compelling. I also believe the world is a globe and evolution is fact not fantasy.

lets just keep burning fossil fuels unitl we're SURE its melting the glaciers. when will that proof come?

dude, the rapture IS NOT COMING. better to CONSERVE crude NOW, and SLOW the rate of change (which is unprecidented). but no, hairless apes will go on breeding & eating & polluting, and make the planet uninhabitable for all species. it won't matter to the planet; the earth will just start over like it did after the dinosaurs.

its US the tree hugging terror lovers are trying to save.

Continuous ice-core records of the atmosphere - that is, actual atmosphere samples - show that current CO2 content is far beyond the natural variations shown going back over 400,000 years. It's now about 40% higher than it's been for that entire period.

As ice-core projects in both Greenland and Antarctica race to the very bottoms of the ice caps, we'll soon have completed a direct timeline of atmospheric samples going back more than 800,000 years, and scientists suspect that it will show much the same evidence.

Proxy atmospheric data - comparative amounts of carbon & other elements in fossilized seashells, sediment and stratigraphic data, ocean floor core samples and plenty more - suggest that Earth has not seen this high a CO2 concentration since the beginning of the Eocene - that is, in the last 55 million years.

It's not just atmospheric data -

1. Oceanographers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany in summer, 2004, discovered a rapid temperature increases in the oceans north of Iceland. In the space of a single year, water temperatures rose by just over 1 degree Fahrenheit as deep as 500 meters below the surface. It doesn’t sound like much, but this is a profoundly rapid warming by ocean standards.

“Higher Water Temperatures and Reduced Ice Cover in the Arctic Ocean”, Alfred Wegener Institut fur Polar und Meeresforschung, 27 August 2004, http://www.innovations-report.de.html/berichte/geowissenschafter/bericht/32875.html

2. Qori Kalis glacier in Peru has been retreating since 1963. What’s interesting, though, is that the rate of horizontal retreat increased 3,200% between 1997 and 2000, an absolutely tremendous acceleration.

“Ice Caps In Africa, Tropical South America, Likely to Disappear Within 15 Years”,. NASA Earth Observatory, 18 February, 2001, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2001/200102184538.html

3. The summer of 2004 brought more new record temperatures to Alaska. Prince of Wales Island hit the all-time record high for the state at 103F, while the coastal town of Ketchikan hit another all-time high of 93. Rivers and streams around the state capital of Juneau saw runs of pink salmon. There are no pink salmon runs near Juneau - the fish, in other words, were showing up in the wrong streams to spawn. The Mendenhall Glacier, also near Juneau, retreated over a tenth of a mile and lost 50 vertical feet in the course of a single summer.

“Record Highs Make 2004 a Summer to Remember,” Elizabeth Bluemink, The Juneau Empire, 13 September, 2004, http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/091304/loc_recordhighs.shtml

4. In August, 2004, scientists from Norway discovered a species of mussel found off France or the east coast of the United States. What was interesting was that they found them in the Svalbard archipelago, which straddles 80 degrees North and lies only about 600 miles from the North Pole. Svalbard was also completely free of sea ice this summer for the first time in centuries.

“Mussels found near North Pole in global warming sign,” 21 September 2004, Reuters, http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27235/story.htm

5. Seabird colonies in Scotland, England and the North Sea islands suffered reproductive failure approaching 100% for nearly all species and all colonies this summer. Scientists believe that the collapse came from the disappearance of the sandeel, a small fish vital in the seabirds’ food chain. They also believe that warming North Sea and English Channel waters, now home to semi-tropical species like squid, seahorses, anchovies, sardines, wrasse and octopus, likely play a role in the collapse of the sandeel.

“Seabirds in Crisis over Food Shortage,” John ross, The Scotsman, 29 July 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=866762004&20040729112145

“Exotic Species are now Catch of the Day,” John Vidal, Guardian UK, 23 August, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1288558,00.html

6. Atmospheric CO2 content has been rising for centuries. Since 1958, it has been continuously monitored by Dr. Charles Keeling and his team at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Keeling’s results show an increase from about 315 parts per million in 1958 to 367 parts per million in 2000, and ice core data show that CO2 content during the preindustrial age hovered between 275 and 280 ppm.. New data show a nearly 40% increase in the rate of buildup of atmospheric CO2 in the years 2002 and 2003, rising to three parts per million for two years straight. And a three-kilometer ice core drilled in Antarctica – direct physical evidence - shows that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have not been this high for at least 800,000 years.

“Melting Ice” The Threat to London’s Future,” Paul Brown, Guardian UK, 14 July, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/,03604,1260750,00.html

Please note that these are only a few of the most recent reports that something is going seriously haywire with the planet's climate - there are hundreds and hundreds of other examples in the scientific literature.

The jury's not out. It rendered its verdict a few years back, and the only question now is what we propose to do about that verdict.

Baffin Island, in case you were wondering, lies in the Canadian Arctic at 73N Latitude.

The Inuit have no name for this insect, since they've never seen it before.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x14617

its creepy, how the people do it.
and meanwhile
tick, tick, tick... time wasting away.

yeesh help! let me offa this planet they are crazy!

- like lava that overtakes roads and then the plants coming back in.

It's going to be painful, though.

Living more naturally seems like the only way. I'm afraid instead of people trying to live more naturally - we'll just see more divisiveness - haves and have nots - Wars, etc.

Like Cheney saying early in his term - something about "we don't need to conserve energy", as if only "girly-men" would think such a thing.

:hi:

like hundreds of thousands of year's ago. Massive volcanos and meteorite hits that cause the sun to blocked. The earth healed herself and just restarted. We, however, will probably not be so lucky. Pollution could very well cause incredible weather events - like many more hurricans due to warmer water.

I wish we could see the future - just to know what happens. Will the entire West become a vast desert? Will the whole Eastern coastline and Florida become huge swamps? Arctic will no longer have snow and ice.

Great Salt Lake was once a huge inland sea. Things change.

As much as I'd like to blame just repugs, I've seen polls of DUer's showing 30~40% drive SUVs.

I personally drive an Escort wagon, and would never drive a gas-guzzler. I try to bike and use transit when I can.

From what I've read, most climatologists believe human fossil fuel use is at least partially responsible for the warming, but that there may be a cyclical component as well, so I think it's a bit unfair to beat up on the newbie here for pointing that out in an admittedly snotty way.

It's also been suggested that the recent warming may shut down the gulf stream and bring about an ice age.

I have 2 kids, and I'm MUCH more worried about them living in a world with no jobs and no freedoms than living in a hotter or colder world. Humanity will adjust to the changing climate. We will have no choice.

I'm all for laws that would penalize ownerd of gas-guzzlers, etc. but any real acttion taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions would have huge deleterious economic effects, and those hurt by it would certainly be the poor. So unless those who promote solutions to climate change also come up with economic solutions as well, it will be difficult to even get all democrats on board.

Last, China, with THRICE our population is now kicking into economic high gear, buying cars and increading industrial production at record rates. Even if the west starts to rein in its production, doing so with China, whose millions are just getting a taste for the western consumerist lifestyle, will be difficult to say the least.


These climate scare threads, while infformative, are also not all that productive if they just say "see how the freepers in their H2s are ruining the world?" It's ALL of us, and you know it.

of which most DU'ers are NOT.
(they always vote wisely)

but if they are involved in political roadblocking - well screw em too =p

are a pretty good indicator of our commitment to the causes we claim to espouse.

I personally recycle, drive an economy car, etc. , but an awful lot of us don't.

And I'll bet a few of us might defect if the penalties on SUVs I advocate were a real possibility.

I hate it, but it's true. The democratic party is most certainly better than the GOP on evironmental issues, but we've got a long ways to go...