Himalayan glaciers actually GAINING ice, space scans show
A new study of survey data gleaned from space has shown a vast region of Himalayan glaciers is actually gaining ice steadily, mystifying climate scientists who had thought the planet's "third pole" to be melting. The study was carried out by comparing two sets of space data, the first gathered by instruments aboard the space …
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Re: So which is it?
'Its a case of who you believe, scientists and journalists or some ex- navy type with opinion bigger than his intellect?'
Name calling and insulting someones intellect (whether true or not in your opinion) is the worst possible way to prove your case.
Re: So which is it?
'Cherry picking is a common tactic of denialists.'
Yes, you're right to a point. However, it's also a common tactic of those proposing it as well. Take the University of East Anglia hiding data, ignoring some and emails showing they were carrying out a campaign of ignoring what didn't suit them. All are guilty and nothing in this area is transparent as almost everyone has something to gain from their angle.
Re: So which is it?
"Take the University of East Anglia "
You mean the CRU that has been investigated by eight separate committees and exonerated by all of them of any fraud or scientific misconduct?
Perhaps you should consider actually reading something rather than relying on the witless rumour-mongers down the pub.
Re: So which is it?
The most interesting facet of climategate was there was no gate. Multiple reviews all found the science was sound. The deniers deny even these findings. That's when you know you've hit upon a real denier - when multiple lines of evidence don't stick.
Re: So which is it?
Well since you believe those with "big" intellects know everything about everything, then it is "they" (scientists) who actually have caused the problem we are now facing. "They" have managed to invent every conceivable product which man and the environment now suffers from. Why is it you continually blame "people". We aren't the ones who have rained down a holocaust of chemical pollutants on the world. Apparently "science" still can't cure cancer and still denies chemicals are harmful. WTF do we need yet another boatload of nitwits tellings us the obvious. We can start by just laying waste to all the scientists who keep improving our lives, then and only then will we see a genuine reduction in pollutants and "incurable" disease.
Good news for snow leopards.
The real beasts that is, not the OS (which by all accounts was and is doing well).
Also good news for the scientific debate. Basing theories on shaky data is like building on quicksand. Better data are always a boon.
It's only part of it
It's only part of the it and that area is near pakistan, you know the area that for a few years had extra rain and flood. Rain moved to moutains, got colder, snower, more ice, blah blah.
Realy nothing to see here, but when it comes to climate we have had many years of panic as the day was hotter than yesterday type statistics so was bound to happen.
"which had assumed that the Asian glaciers were melting away rapidly"
Um, they are, just because one area of the Himalayas has been proven to be an anomaly doesn't mean the rest is, still, after the last global warming rant by the same author I assumed that the Reg had gone all Sauron and started employing trolls.
Here we have
Lewis Page flying yet again in the face of a multi billion $ industry and expecting to be taken seriously.
Doesn't he realise that the new ice is warmer than the old ice and warmer ice spread out further than colder ice is warmer so the earth's warming must be accelerating at an alarming rate and the global warming budget must be doubled immediately and the time targets halved and doubters would be burned at the stake if they promise not to give off greenhouse gasses during the burning.
I'm fed up with all the hype and giving governments excuses to tax us for eating hot (global warming because they had to be heated) pasties.
Re: Here we have
"...Lewis Page flying yet again in the face of a multi billion $ industry and expecting to be taken seriously...."
The combined proven assets of the fossil fuel industry is TWENTY SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS.
Fossil fuels are subsidised globaly to the tune of 420 BILLION DOLLARS per year.
So please - enough with this ridiculous "scientists are only saying this for the money" nonsense. It's simply insulting to everyone on both 'sides' of the debate. Grow up. Show us your scientific references for your position and refrain from making libelous and completely unsubstantiated assertions in a public form if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
So either put up or shut up.
Climate scientists get paid a pittance by comparison to oil compnay PR and spin doctors let alone thier CEO's. They don't get a penny of the fabled 'grant money' themselves - that goes towards buying sattelites and radio sondes etc.
Even I make three times what a climate scientist makes and I don't have to cope with death threats from people who are so terrified of the coming change they would rather kill someone than face up to reality.
Then lets take the financial incentive away
And see if the results change.
That's a nice scientific approach don't you think?
Re: Here we have
The reference for the position is the emails etc. from the University of East Anglia. There's a source for you. Effectively, they show they refused to release data to outside scrutiny and admitted playing down other interpretations etc. to further their case. Guess where a load of grant money went!!
As I explained earlier, without grant money, the scientists are made redundant and therefore no grant, no personal salary. My sisters been there and done it. You can print figures like $27trillion all you like, but where's your reference for that? Where's your reference to $420billion subsidy? An interesting take on the word subsidy?
The reality is, the fossil fuel companies actually like climate changes. It's good for them. No technologies being proposed so far are going to reduce consumption in the slightest and the constantly increasing taxation (caused by the climate change furore) hides their profits etc. and makes them less of a target. You may notice that none of them are particularly fighting the climate changes agenda with their PR departments. If anything that could possibly work well and threaten their market comes up, they simply buy it and then leave it to rot or make it into another profit stream. Simple. They don't loose out of any of this.
'They don't get a penny of the fabled grant money themselves - that goes towards buying sattelites and radio sondes etc.'
I'm reliably informed by my sister that in the area of genetic research (and she tells me scientific research in general), this is not true and that without grants, her salary disappears rather quickly. The grant goes to the university normally and through them to her salary...not direct.
As I said in another post, people just need to go with climate change and stop fighting it all the time. We can learn a lot from the past, including this. One of the things that made humans so successful is our ability to change and adapt.
Re: Then lets take the financial incentive away
Unfortunately, politicians only know how to take financial incentives away by taking the finances away. This does change the scientific outcome, in that there is less science. Please do not give the powers that be any ideas
Re: Here we have
Disclosure: I think AGW (anthropic global warming) is probably real. I think the solution with be geo-engineering rather than going back to an agrarian culture, or reducing population by 40%.
There is money talking on both sides. The AGW mob have (generally ) more dedicated zealots who lie because they care. The non AGW mob have more money, and more willingness to defend the money.
I think characterising the AGW lot as money grubbing because they are paid is an ad hominem attack which reflects more on how the attacker views the world than those they are attacking. However some of the AGW lot are crap scientists despite making their living doing that, because they 'interpret' data which is of insufficient quality and quantity to be reliably interpreted, and make unwarranted (not necessarily incorrect, but insufficiently robust) assertions.
That the issue is 'nothing less than crucial to the future of humanity' is completely irrelevant. That humanity finds it perfectly sensible to take a 'precautionary principle' approach to genetic modification, and yet finds nothing weird about conducting a global experiment on the very habitat we need is simply an example of why we are all such interesting conversationalists, and generally crap logicians.
To address Mad Mike's point that I am answering - whilst at the same time making my own point about the quality of the debate;
You attack the previous poster for quoting numbers without references, and then without references say 'yeah, but they don't care anyway' - in your opinion. At least the numbers are checkable (or uncheckable - in which case call BS) - whereas your assertion that power companies are unthreatened by tax rises and AGW furore is simply that, an assertion, and frankly not a very credible one.
Your sister may be an excellent scientist, and she may be well aware of her terms of employment, but that is purely empirical data with no reference point. Again, useless for furthering debate.
Finally - my own assertions are entirely opinion (except when they aren't), and I have done no fact checking whatsoever, but at least I already know this, and won't get upset when someone (hopefully) points it out.
Re: Then lets take the financial incentive away
What financial incentive are you talking about?
I've never seen anybody put forward a practical method by which the supposed financial distortion of peer-reviewed science is happening. The finances of all the major funding bodies are public both in terms of where the money comes from and where it goes. The finances of all reputable universities are public. The review processes of all reputable journals are public (although typically the reviewers themselves are officially anonymous). I don't see queues of lowly academics at the Bentley showroom up the road. What are they spending all their ill-gotten warming money on? Corduroy elbow patches and chalk?
If I had a few spare billion, could you explain exactly how I would go about perverting a scientific consensus? Because without some mechanism then all the accusations of bias and gravy trains are empty bluster.
Re: Then lets take the financial incentive away
"If I had a few spare billion, could you explain exactly how I would go about perverting a scientific consensus?"
If you had a few spare billion - like, say, off the top of my head, the fossil fuel industry - you could "pervert" the scientific consensus - or even just change it - by the simple method of providing funding to groups of scientists to produce hard, undeniable science, independent of the current political elite. In no time at all, your true climate science - which would be completely independent, remember, of the horribly biased, political-gravy-train-funded nonsense produced by the so-called "scientists" of the "consensus" - would fill the journals. People would soon see that the "scientific consensus" was clearly completely fabricated by those fat-cat "scientists" and their left-wing paymasters.
Come to think of it - why haven't those saintly oil executives already done this?
Re: Then lets take the financial incentive away
IIRC there is a strong body of evidence, inspected in court, that tobacco companies managed scientific evidence about nicotine and the damage that smoking causes. Scientists who found the data equivocal got funds from various "philanthropic" organisations funded discreetly by tobacco companies. Public pressure groups in favour of smoking were set up and indirectly funded by tobacco money.
Given a few billion, you can find ways to slow down peer-reviewed science, get scientists talking in the media about the lack of data, or questioning the basis on which the data was collected, etc. And you can stimulate public debate quoting the scientists in your camp, to generate pressure to remove funding from the various institutes of health and Universities that had scientists who didn't favour your views.
Despite which, most scientists engaged in the research found that smoking was damaging and nicotine addiction was part of the reason that smokers continued to smoke. The smoking lobbyists did slow the eventual impact, the business did make profits in the extra years it won from this tactic (which was itself documented by tobacco companies and revealed in court), and the courts eventually fined them loadsamoney. And you still find people arguing that smoking is non-addictive and that it is harmless and just a way for governments to raise taxes, and that no business would damage its' own consumers. This is case where shorter term interests in financial performance overwhelmed ethics and longer term interests, and deniers were influential in slowing the whole thing down.
And the whole "they're paid they must be lying" meme is probably because of some bad economics - you know that "science" which makes assumptions that it then uses as if it was data? The core of much modern economic thinking is that humans are rational actors. It's an assumption, not a truth. People are emotional creatures. Ask anyone in marketing and their main daily activity is to get people to use emotional judgements when that sells, or to to try and engage their rational selves when that sells better. Every day, marketeers disprove the idea that humans are rational and make rational decisions. But it is still the big idea that "everyone knows" from economics. The point of science is to create a process to subject flawed human opinion to some rules that make the opinions speak less than reality. It's slow, painful and argumentative, but its the best approach humans have developed so far.
Re: Here we have
@John Stirling.
I work for a power company in the UK. They are making large amounts of money out of man made global warming (as are most). I don't know specifically about the oil industry (for instance), but the lack of their PR departments going into overdrive suggests they either don't care (and don't see it as an issue) or don't believe there is anything they can do to stop (unlikely with their budgets). So, the former is suggested. I know what's happening in my company and know what's happening in most of the other UK power companies. The tax rises actually provide them with more profit as they are used to subsidise things like wind farms etc. which make huge profits whilst delivering relatively little power and are wholely uneconomic without subsify. So, the companies don't care about the tax rises, as they tend to be the ultimate recipient!!
Yes, I don't have empirical evidence for everyone, or a survey etc. of scientists, but I do have someone who knows from a major UK university (old school university, not new school) and therefore have considerably more knowledge and backing than the completely unbacked assertions made by the person I was responding to. I wasn't trying to be 100% scientific, but simply giving a far more educated angle.
Re: Here we have
@Mad Mike
Hahahaha. That's the weakest argument from authority I've ever seen. You work for a power company and you know somebody who works at a university. Brilliant.
The concensus amongst physicists is that faster than light travel is impossible but I once worked with a bloke who had a minor speaking role in Star Wars so I know better.
Re: Then lets take the financial incentive away
You mean don't pay scientists? Do you include doctors in that? How about geologists looking for oil? Are you paid to do anything constructive?
AGW->more moisture in the air->more snow->more glacier
also,
AGW->more heat->less glacier
Heads I win...
Re: AGW->more moisture in the air->more snow->more glacier
ya, because doubling rainfall, and increasing the temperature at 15,000 ft from -40 c to -30 c would cause much melting.... not.
Re: AGW->more moisture in the air->more snow->more glacier
Indeed having a warmer moister world will lead to more high altitude ice. It also means low altitude ice melts and flows faster. The global sea level depends upon the amount of ice held and stability of ice sheets in the Western Antarctic as the rest of world ice doesn't add up to much in comparison. It's also possible that AGW threatens reductions of sea level, with massive costs dredging in order to keep existing ports operational. For most places in the short-medium term whether sea levels rise or fall will probably be dominated by local plate tectonic movements, determining whether land locally is rising or falling.
This has been known for years
This has been known for years its just someone actually proved the trust fund grant grabbers wrong!!! They know there is not a problem but being told there is creates large sums of cash. Its easy to manipulate people with this sort of propiganda. How many people have seen taxes go up for "green reasons". its the same as drilling for oil they claim there is a shortage and there is issues getting it out and thats why they "are forced" to up prices yet somehoe every year make record profits again! the best bit is because its so easy to fool people if you speak out and say the truth you get branded a consumer pig that does not care for the plannet when in reality 99% of the eco options do more damage ie hybrid cars and solar panels that are destroying the earth. Its about time the world open there eyes and stop eating up the crap we get force fed. The best bit is they always reply well you can see it happening, really can you cos you didnt did you now f off.
Re: This has been known for years
Now try saying that in a Vicky Pollard voice
The models say the glaciers are melting therefore nature is wrong and the models are right. Don't let facts get in the way of a pay check /sarc
Look at history (geological that is)
In all this, you simply have to look at history. Areas of the world change over geologic time and have done forever. There have been both warmer and colder times (whether global or local). There have been times with more rain and less rain. There has been more CO2 in the air and less etc.etc. What we're seeing here has all happened before and will happen again in the future. Climate change (in general) is perfectly normal and part of the natural cycle for the Earth as has been shown for millions of years. Nothing to see here.
Used to be that civilisations knew this and simply adapted. Water levels rise a bit, move inland some (hence evidence of civilisations found underwater). Rain levels go down and land becomes desert.......move. etc.etc.etc.
Now, two things have happened. Firstly, people no longer want to adapt and want everything to stay the same. Well, stop living in a fantasy land and get real. We're just beginning to understand it in this country. They've stopped trying to defend all the tiny bits of land threatened by the sea and are instead moving people. Not a lot, but in a few areas. You can try and fight nature, but you'll never succeed. So, people have to simply realise they need to adapt and move etc.
Secondly, politicians have become involved. A politicians fundamental job in this country is to control people and take as much money from taxpayers as possible and spend it as they will. Every scientific scare story in history has been used by them to justify tax rises and changes etc. Lead in petrol, remove it. Unfortunately, unleaded has more benzene. Lead will reduce your intelligence over a long period. Benzene just gives you cancer!! That was a result.....not.
Climate change.......just blame humans. Then, a whole raft of ideas and taxes become available. Any fuel that is burnt is the work of the devil and must be taxed to the hilt. Smart meters will no proven point are foisted on everyone. Each has a big kill switch......control. CFL lighting, which is horrible, is forced upon everyone. Climate change is used to justify so many controls and taxes it defies belief. Yet, we could simply change with it.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"...There has been more CO2 in the air and less etc.etc. What we're seeing here has all happened before..."
There has never been this high level of CO2 in the atmosphere in the history of human evolution.
Last time it was this high the planet was so hot it was unfit for human habitation.
The climate doesn't care where the CO2 comes from. Whether it's because of a natural Milankovitch Cycle thawing the permafrost or humans burning 29 billion tons of fossil fuels per year. It heats up just the same.
You're right - it's all happened before - over and over again.
CO2 levels go up - so does the global temperature. Every damn time so far.
What makes you think it isn't going to happen this time?
Peer-reviewed science papers only please.
By the way - the last time the temperature changed at one thousandth of the speed it is changing now there was a mass extinction of 90% of all life on Earth. On the land and in the oceans.
Nature doesn't **** around and we are poking her with a stick.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
'There has never been this high level of CO2 in the atmosphere in the history of human evolution.'
Unscientific and irrelevant. Human history is a tiny proportion of the history of this planet and hardly geologic time.
I'm not really sure why you're asking for peer reviewed scientific papers as you haven't supplied any to date either!! You seem to expect others to provide a higher level of proof than you're willing to provide yourself!!
Try looking here:-
http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/temperature-and-co2-concentration-in-the-atmosphere-over-the-past-400-000-years_25ae
This shows temperatures and CO2 concentrations over a few hundred thousand years from the Vostok ice core. It shows a -9 to +4 (approx) change from current for the extremes. It also shows that more recently, the temperature isn't peaking as previous spikes would suggest.
However, as I said in all this, humans simply need to use their ability to adapt. By the way, which CO2 and temperature change are you referring to that wiped out 90% of all life on earth?
Peer-reviewed scientific papers only now please.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
@Mad Mike,
"However, as I said in all this, humans simply need to use their ability to adapt".
I'm all for adapting in terms of effect (rising temp., sea levels etc). I'm less inclined to "adapt" in the *perceived* cause (CO2). I'd like to go for a walk in the lake district without myself and my dog needing to wear an oxygen mask.
I think it's inevitable we'll need to adapt - and I think everyone knows that if AWG is true, then we've already gone past the point of not adapting anyway. But at the same time we should all be doing everything we can to ensure we create the cleanest energy possible, reduce the amount of rubbish we dump into landfill, and generally all try to "do our bit". If not for the planet (or to stop/reduce the speed of global warming), then for our own well-being and enjoyment of our natural spaces.
We need to get past this "it's all a hoax!", or "see, told you so, we're all f**ked!", and start thinking about adapting (because either climate change is happening because it's influenced by human activity OR its a natural cycle that will happen anyway), and creating clean energy (because regardless of whether climate change is influenced by human activity or not, we're going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway).
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"CO2 levels go up - so does the global temperature. Every damn time so far."
I know there's a correlation, but I thought research had shown that CO2 lagged warming ... a hell of a trick if it caused warming.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"humans simply need to use their ability to adapt."
To adapt, perchance to evolve; Ay, there's the rub,
For in that evolution and change, what warts may come,
When we have shuffled off these 46 chromosomes,
Must give us pause. Lest we become most lazar-like,
With vile and loathsome crust, on all our smooth bodies..
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"Unscientific and irrelevant. Human history is a tiny proportion of the history of this planet and hardly geologic time."
You can't turn round and berate someone for pointing out that the CO2 changes are not just unprecedented in human history, but even in human evolution, when you were the one to raise human history in the first place. You claimed: "Used to be that civilisations knew this and simply adapted. Water levels rise a bit, move inland some (hence evidence of civilisations found underwater). Rain levels go down and land becomes desert.......move. etc.etc.etc.""
In fact the CO2 changes are not just unprecedented in the timespan of human evolution, they may indeed be unprecedented in earth's history. When has the Earth faced a doubling of CO2 in just 3 centuries? There is no known past example of it doing so. This very well may be the first time it ever has happened. That's a far cry from your claim that "What we're seeing here has all happened before and will happen again in the future...Nothing to see here."
There is also another reason why the situation is unique and cannot be compared to the past so easily: we have 7 billion humans on the planet now and a huge amount of infrastructure built up in position of current climate, such as hundreds of cities near sea level.
The Earth's climate has been reasonably stable for the past 10,000 years. The real big climate changes happened before that. That's before civilization. I know correlation doesn't equal correlation but you have to wonder if the timing of the emergence of civilization and an unusually stable period in terms of climate might be related, and if so what that would mean to suddenly enter such a rapid and large climate change for effectively the first time in human history.
Pre-history was nomadic peoples. Who knows what hellish changes they lived through in terms of climate change. The mere fact they survived hardly tells us anything.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"There have been both warmer and colder times (whether global or local). There have been times with more rain and less rain. There has been more CO2 in the air and less etc.etc. What we're seeing here has all happened before and will happen again in the future. Climate change (in general) is perfectly normal and part of the natural cycle for the Earth as has been shown for millions of years. "
As was pointed out, "There has never been this high level of CO2 in the atmosphere in the history of human evolution." That means, it is not clear that the biosphere will be able to sustain 7 billion people as the climate shifts far more rapidly than many species can adapt.
Another problem with this argument is that the last time CO2 levels were really high and the Earth was really warm, the sun was 10% dimmer than it is today. We need lower CO2 levels now than in the distant past in order to just maintain the SAME climate.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
@tgm
I agree we should all try and reduce our impact on the planet. That can never be a bad thing, but we're going about it in completely the wrong way due to money. Wind farms never will remove our need for fossil fuels. We'd simply need too many and they are too unreliable. Other technologies are far better. Wave and tidal power. Harder to achieve, but far better power output and above all else, reliable. Photovoltaic..........very poor return. Solar furnaces etc........much better returns and more practical. We're currently running headlong towards primarily windfarms, but we'd actually be a lot better off burning fossil fuels for a few more years, perfecting wave and tidal etc. and then getting rid of fossil fuels (for power generation at least), altogether. But the climate change furore causes everything to be done tactically rather than strategically. All wind generated electricity needs another form (normally fossil and nuclear) backing it up. Expensive and very wasteful. Do you know how much electricity was produced by wind farms during the last couple of cold snaps (as in significant snow on the ground over the UK). Bugger all!!
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
@NomNomNom.
I simply said that civilisations moved when the climate changed. It wasn't a reference specifically to CO2, but in general for all climate change and indeed geological change. If a volcano starts erupting, do you try to stop it, or simply move the people elsewhere?
CO2 levels have been much higher in the past. Rate of change is questionable as accurate enough data to identify short term changes cannot be provided by ice cores etc. which identify averages over hundreds or thousands of years. So, rate change is complete unknowable in the past, except the very recent past. You cannot say that because there are no known examples in the past that it cannot therefore have happened when the scientific methods to determine it don't work for the vast majority of earth history. Indeed, the ice cores (one method) only go back a relatively short period of time as the poles have spent more time (geologically speaking) without ice than with!! Our current ice covered poles are actually the exception rather than the norm in that respect. That's why they think there's a lot of oil under the Antarctic......it used to be tropical rainforest!!
Yes, there are 7 billion humans on the planet now and someday someone will have to realise that numbers cannot increase forever. Is the practical limit 14billion, 10billion, maybe 5billion, maybe fewer? We have to accept that population HAS to be limited at some point and that may even be lower than the current number. The cities near the sea can be rebuilt elsewhere. The money being poured one way or another into fighting climate change would easily pay for a few hundred to be moved. Ask China who build cities and move populations all the time.
10,000 years is an irrelevant timescale except to humans. The climate has been stable for periods of a 100,000 years or even millions of years in geological past. Saying that the real big climate changes happened before that rather denies that they're happening now, or is the current one not really big? Climate changes will occur (big and small) as long as the earth exists for a whole load of reasons. The Sun itself will change output continuously over time (and that will affect it) and will ultimately (probably) swell into a red giant and burn the earth to a frazzle. That's a big climate change. Maybe billions of years in the future. The point is, no eco system and no climate ever stands still.
Yes, pre-history was nomadic people and they probably did live through hellish times. What does it tell us? They were able to adapt in various ways to stay alive. They moved, over time their genetic makeup and traits changed etc.etc. That's what it tells us.
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
@Bob 18.
Yes, not in human history, but we have to get over this idea that humans have to survive. We don't and nature knows it. Do we know if the biosphere can actually support 7billion people at the moment? What about the famines etc. Maybe nature is trying to tell us something. There has to be a limit somewhere and it could be anything, including less than 7billion.
The last time CO2 levels were really high, the Earth was a few degress (on average warmer) and the sun was 10% dimmer. OK. So, what are you going to do when the sub becomes 10% brighter in the future? Go and fix the sun or adapt? I would suggest the former is a little difficult, in which case, it leaves only one option!!
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"I simply said that civilisations moved when the climate changed"
and I am simply saying that civilizations have never had to cope with a proper climate change. all the climate changes since human civilization have been relatively minor.
"Rate of change is questionable as accurate enough data to identify short term changes cannot be provided by ice cores etc. . which identify averages over hundreds or thousands of years."
That's good enough resolution to detect such spikes which take thousands of years to dissipate. Also this isn't dependent on ice cores anyway. A CO2 spike was identified 55 million years ago that took place over a few thousand years. But still slower than the current rate of increase.
Not only is there no evidence for a CO2 jump this fast there is also no known natural mechanism for one to occur short of epic level stuff like a catastrophic volcanic mega eruption.
"They were able to adapt in various ways to stay alive. They moved, over time their genetic makeup and traits changed etc.etc."
So if 3 billion out of 7 billion humans die is that the kind of acceptable "nothing to see here", "it's happened before" kind of thing you are envisioning? I mean if you take a very distant view it is truely irrelevant because as long as 4 billion survive the human race survives and has "adapted"
Re: Look at history (geological that is)
"What we're seeing here has all happened before and will happen again in the future."
Are you saying the Cylons are causing climate change?
Reading around a bit...
I think perhaps Lewis has not quite given us the whole picture. This article ought to be titled 'Some Himalayan* glaciers might posibly be gaining a small amount of weight"
*Well, near enough anyway.
From the summary of the original scientific article:
"The globally averaged mass balance of glaciers and ice caps is negative. An anomalous gain of mass has been suggested for the Karakoram glaciers [...] Here, we calculate the regional mass balance of glaciers in the central Karakoram between 1999 and 2008, based on the difference between two digital elevation models. We find a highly heterogeneous spatial pattern of changes in glacier elevation [...] The regional mass balance is just positive at +0.11±0.22 m yr−1 water equivalent [...] Our measurements confirm an anomalous mass balance in the Karakoram region and indicate that the contribution of Karakoram glaciers to sea-level rise was −0.01 mm yr−1 for the period from 1999 to 2008, 0.05 mm yr−1 lower than suggested before."
Or, paraphrasing somewhat, "Ice in general is melting faster than it is forming. Of course it's not melting absolutely everywhere, and in a particular area of the Karakorum region some difficult measurements and calculations indicate that on average glaciers appear to be growing slightly. Although they could in fact be shrinking."
I'd recommend reading the BBC article for a more balanced viewpoint:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17701677
Re: Is there any point me posting any clarifications on yet another disingenuous knobwit blog?
I think someone hit a nerve.
C.
Re: Is there any point me posting any clarifications on yet another disingenuous knobwit blog?
Ah, the Samantha Brick come-back. Nicely played.
Re: Is there any point me posting any clarifications on yet another disingenuous knobwit blog?
"I think someone hit a nerve."
Well at least one of the staffers is brace enough to admit that Lewis is a troll. Thanks.
Re: Re: Is there any point me posting any clarifications on yet another disingenuous knobwit blog?
I was referring to you.
C.
Re: Is there any point me posting any clarifications on yet another disingenuous knobwit blog?
... says the Mod with the bee in his bonnet.
Some things never change, and the lack of critical thinking exhibited by Lewis Page in his typically breathless anti-science reporting is one of them.
The Himalayas are around 1million km2. According to Lewis, the area surveyed in the article is only 5,615 km2, which by my reckoning is around half of one percent. So much for Lewis's "vast region"...
He does-
report on a lot of 'anti-science'.
Mainly about AGW.
Confused of cricklewood
How do the glaciers thicken, pray tell, when the level of precipitation is about the same as the Sahara?
Best I can imagine is moisture laden air condensing on to the glacier surface.
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