http://www.nature.com/news/2006/0602...060227-10.html

Basically, they measured the gravity over the Antarctic, corrected for plate shifts, and determined that there's an overall loss of mass down there. It corresponds to up to 0.4 mm rise in ocean levels per year. (I notice that they didn't give a range on that, while their results are presented as a range -- I assume they used the bigger number for that estimate).

Any thoughts? Does this indicate a larger trend of global warming? Human-induced global warming? Or is the amount of observed melting insignificant in the larger context? Or is it that we can't say anything without historical data?

I'm assuming they mean "several hundred kilometres."

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"It's turtles all the way down."

You should really continue this on one of the numerous Global Warming threads.

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That’s about 1 inch in 10 years and 10 inches in 100 years. Has anyone measured a 10 inch rise in any shoreline during the past 100 years?

It's an exponential rise, not linear. Personally, I don't see much hope for the future of this planet. It's a terrible world our kids are inheriting. I'm glad I don't have any, or I'd feel very very guilty...

Hum,
I heard that the Greenland ice sheet would add 6.5 metres to the sea level,
The Antarctic melted i guess would add ten times as much....60 metres.

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Sounds right...

They may be wrong, 0.4 mm/year is more than worst-case scenarios suggest. Also, according to another probe's measurements (can't remember the name...) Antarcic ice sheet is actually thickening (which too may be caused by global warming).

Melting the whole Antarctic ice sheet is not realistic, unless something really catastrophic happens (for example, vast amounts of methane released into the atmosphere). However, the Western Antarctic ice sheet is much more unstable than the far larger eastern one. AFAIK it has melted several times since Antarctica froze.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Over 100 years? Probably not accurately. The steam-powered satellites way back then were so crude.

NASA News: NASA Satellites Measure and Monitor Sea Level

In the last fifty years sea level has risen at an estimated rate of 1.8 mm (.07 inches) per year, but in the last 12 years that rate appears to be 3 mm (.12 inches) per year. Roughly half of that is attributed to the expansion of ocean water as it has increased in temperature, with the rest coming from other sources" said Dr. Steve Nerem Associate Professor, Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, University of Colorado, Boulder.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Well, there’s just so much ice. I don’t think the oceans can rise more than about 300 feet if all the ice melts. Anyway, we’ll all have refrigerators and nobody uses the Antarctica area now anyway. Maybe we can visit the place when it warms up a little. I live at 5,000 feet, so I’m not worried. Also, all the frozen land I own in Northern Canada will soon become a resort area!

Dang! When I was a boy, I used to hear those things chugging overhead! They were slow and noisy. They sounded like a steam train climbing a hill. We used to try to out run them with our horses, but they always got a little ahead of us.

Only the coastal areas will be under water when it's all done anyways, it's not like the world is going to flood people....

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IIRC, about a third of the world's population lives at a coast.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Yep, and 99.9% of those people can move. So whats the problem there?

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Are you joking?

You really don't think it would be difficult to relocate a third of all the people on Earth?

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Money. Poor people can barely afford ocean-front property. Rich people can, though, so they insist we save their shorelines from moving inland to make poor people owners of oceanfront property, while they live in houseboats

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Not at all...look, this increase is hardly noticeable over a LONG period of time, people would only have to move over many generations, the biggest problem out of the entire thing is the increasing effect on the gulf stream, now THAT is a problem.

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Good luck with Bangledesh.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

unfortunately, this study is based on only 34 months of data... less than 3 years. take it with a grain of salt, particularly since the average as estimated by GISS shows antarctica cooling, still, by about 0.04 C per decade (hardly measurable)...

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

don't some scientist still say that we are still coming out of the last ice age, and that it is perfectly logical that the earth is getting warmer because of that?
personally, i think we humans give ourselves too much credit for being able to alter the earth. sure, some of the stuff we are doing as a species can't be good for good ol' mommy earth, but i don't think that, on the whole, we are doing too much bad, either.
like George Carlin (who is a very, extremely liberal person, btw) said in one of his comedy specials a while back (or something like it, anyways).
"to the earth, we are a minor infestation".

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Glad to see that not everyone believes crap when they read it.

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Well, no, that doesn't make much sense. We've already been long past where we should have been based on the last few interglacials. And the atmosphere is quite different now than it was during the previous interglacials.

It is very comforting, though, to believe that we can pollute as much as we want and nothing bad will happen. I can understand wanting to think that way.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

It must be frustrating to be smarter than all the scientists who write articles in Nature or Science. How do you stand it?

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

not all the scientists that post in science and nature are right, and not all agree in the flawed science that makes headlines. so your statement fails on two accounts 1) they aren't always right and 2) not ALL agree.

really, that's almost as bad as saying "it's settled" when referring to this topic. it's as if you think these are the only guys that get it right? what, just because science or nature publish something we have to just ignore the scientific method or real mathematical analysis?

the undying problem with both science and nature is, unfortunately, profit motive. they are both, btw, getting beat up for a failure to fully vett their articles (poor peer review) and, more importantly, failing to comply with their own guidelines regarding data archiving and reproducibility. in fact, freeman dyson, et. al. recently sent a letter to the NAS regarding just such an issue... no sir, it is not settled, and yes sir, nature and science are most definitely wrong sometimes.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

The Himilayas are melting as well. Many BBC sites will attest to this fact. That the Sun is the culprit is without doubt to me. Whether we can make a difference by regulating fossil fuels is very argumentative. Some of the Eskimo elders predicted this long before the oil wells started popping up on their lands. It's definitely "Nature's Way of telling us...somethings wrong."

or something is normal...

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

Hardly.

See

Thin Ice, Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains

Or, listen to a recent discussion on Science Friday:
Melting Glaciers

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Certainly it is possible that a study published in Nature is flawed.

However, Nature is overwhelmingly a good source of information.

If you know that a published study is wrong, you should write a detailed letter to the editor explaining the problem. I'm sure the peer reviewers would like to know about a mistake they let get through.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

actually, that's the problem right now... they (science and nature) are coming under fire for letting their peer review process slip in favor of either pre-disposed ideas (ideology) or simply profit motive. they have been slapped several times for failing to live up to their own standards recently. hence the open letter from dyson (did you read it?).

also, while you may not know this, many counter arguments to the standard dogma have been published in the past year, and the skeptic view of "more research is necessary" is becoming more and more popular as the truth about the misdeeds of the so-called "experts" comes out.

i mean, c'mon, a study of 34 months of data being used to chart a historical trend in which we know full well multi-decadal as well as multi-century cycles exist (and many much longer and many much shorter, for that matter)? that's laughable.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

if you're trying to argue that climate change is not normal, then you have zero ground to stand on.

re your link: give me a break. is that your evidence? a book?

if climate change is not normal, please explain to the rest of us how the medieval warming period or little ice age occurred without human influence? also, please explain why global temperatures dropped from the late 30s till the early 70s in spite of monotonically increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere.

re your second link: give me a break number 2. glaciers started melting looooong before humans were able to influence the climate. also, only a small percentage of glaciers in the world are even studied. also number 2, they STILL don't fully understand what causes glaciers to cycle. oh, note that last word, CYCLE. i.e. they do this all the time. not a surprise that the same author is present in both links, btw...

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

And of course, if we study 10% of the glaciers in the world (scattered around the globe), and 80% of them are melting, then that is statistically insignificant. Give me a break, indeed. What do you expect, every glacier being studied? There are about 80,000 to 160,000 glaciers in the world (depending on your definition of course), so if 8,000 of them are studied, then I do think that that is quite significant.
And glaciers and the climate do it all the time, changing. In what way does that have a bearing on the current change? What do you base your unstated conclusion on that this change is identical to previous ones? There is a new unknown in the equation, which may influence the result.
The glaciers have been discussed before, and it was quite clear that a majority (and a large majority) are receding, and are doing so quite fast. Furthermore, a large number of glaciers can't be studied anymore, as they have already disappeared (e.g. 110 of the 147 glaciers in the Glacier National Park).

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Before everyone gets too excited about the prospect that we might all be about to die as usual, it is worth noting that there is some selective observations about these conclusions. For starters, the Western Ice Sheet has shown a decline in ice according to the Velicogna and Wahl study, but the much larger Eastern Ice Sheet has shown no real trend, which somewhat mitigates the impact of this.

But more importantly, this study lasted less than three years, which is nothing more than a snapshot. A study by Davis last summer which used over 20 years as their period of study reached some important conclusions that must be considered to bring Velicogna and Wahl into context.

Davis observed reduction in the smaller Western Ice Sheet as V&W, but they also observed a much larger increase in mass in the more important Eastern Ice Sheet. Around 2002, Davis found that overall Antarctic ice mass was at a record high. 2002 was when the V&W study began. Basically, they've chosen a rather unrepresentative starting point, kind of like temperature records beginning during the pullout from the Little Ice Age. It's fallacy of limited scope to conclude that Antarctica is now on the way out on the basis of this unrepresentative study.