Why are the glaciers melting?

Aero · Post by **Aero** » Fri Jan 14, 2011 7:01 pm

It seems reasonably certain that glaciers and ice caps are melting. Of course the AGW crowd blame greenhouse gasses for this but I wonder if another mechanism might be the cause. That is, increased dust in the atmosphere (resulting from deforestation, for example), settling out on the ice. The dusty ice absorbs fractionally more solar heat than clean ice resulting in fractionally more melting. It seems to me that this mechanism would increase the melt-water like compound interest increases debt.

Cleaning the dust out of the atmosphere seems to be easier than removing excess CO2. At least the dust will settle out or precipitate with rain in a few years. Replacing the ground cover over the bare earth is a different (political, economic) problem.

necoras · Post by **necoras** » Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:20 pm

Because it's warmer of course. You're probably also correct that an increased albedo is having some effect. The soot output of India and China is almost certainly having an effect on glacial melt.

The real issue isn't whether or not the world is warmer than it used to be... It almost certainly is. Rivers that froze thick enough to drive cannon over in the 1700s don't anymore. So what? Climate changes, it's in the definition. The real issue isn't even really whether or not it's our fault. The issue is whether or not the changes will be bad or good in the short term, and what we want to do about them.

On the one hand we can spend a few trillion dollars crippling our economy (that seems like a bad idea to me, but then I like my modern conveniences). Or, we can wait and see, while developing some buffer technologies. Increased efficiency is almost alway a win. Disruptive energy techs (such as fusion) will make a planetary change easier to whether.

It would also be worth doing research into geo-engineering technologies. Stratospheric S2O has been suggested, but didn't we spend a lot of money scrubbing that from our smoke stacks to stop acid rain? Orbital mylar might work, but my favorite concept are the fleets of ships that aerosolize seawater and pump it into the upper atmosphere, decreasing the albedo of however much sea area we want. It's relatively cheap, and you can turn it on or off with the flip of a switch. After all, what happens if we like it warmer?

GIThruster · Post by **GIThruster** » Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:35 pm

The ice caps are shrinking in surface area only. They are thickening and the ice is growing, not shrinking. For the last 11 years, the Earth has been in a cooling period. It is not warming. The closest correlation we have for this is that the Sun itself is currently in a cool period.

Carbon is not an important greenhouse gas. Water vapor is so much more important that it dwarfs carbon contributions to completely unimportant. Particulates are important, but they come primarily from things like deserts and volcanoes, not human activity.

Anyone who wants to look can find these facts all over the web. AGW is a bogus argument from bogus science that people made up 20 years ago and then started selling in the political arena. The Japanese rightly laughed at the Americans and Europeans for buying such garbage science in complete denial of the scientific evidence.

The Earth is currently COOLING, not warming.

djolds1 · Post by **djolds1** » Fri Jan 14, 2011 10:15 pm

necoras wrote:Because it's warmer of course. You're probably also correct that an increased albedo is having some effect. The soot output of India and China is almost certainly having an effect on glacial melt.

In the Northern Hemisphere. Antarctic ice has been thickening.

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Fri Jan 14, 2011 10:44 pm

I recall an article that found soot on glaciers and showed the source of it--soot from Chinese engines and plants was getting over here even and causing some trouble.

necoras · Post by **necoras** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 1:15 am

@djolds1 True, except for the portion above the volcano. I was referring to the over all climate in the past several centuries. It's difficult to really define trends of less than 100 years or so.

djolds1 · Post by **djolds1** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 2:45 am

necoras wrote:@djolds1 True, except for the portion above the volcano.

True that the Antarctic Peninsula shows some ice loss.

necoras wrote:I was referring to the over all climate in the past several centuries. It's difficult to really define trends of less than 100 years or so.

True. And the Earth has been warming ever since the end of the LIA. Remind me why this is the Apocalypse again?

necoras · Post by **necoras** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 3:55 am

@djolds1

I never said it was the Apocalypse. I believe that the Earth's climate is much more dependent on cyclical influences from the oceans and the sun than anything we've done. Can humans affect the climate? Certainly. Have we? I'm not convinced. I'm also not convinced that a slightly warmer climate is a bad thing.

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:28 am

Wasn't there a study recently about the possibility that AGW's saving us from trend towards icy climate?

olivier · Post by **olivier** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:25 am

djolds1 wrote:Antarctic ice has been thickening.

At which timescale? Do you have any reference on this?

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:19 am

I thought the Antarctic Ice has actually been thickening and deepening the last two years.

Can we have some data, please...?

The only way I can see where it would thicken and recede was if the sea was getting colder and the surface of the ice was getting warmer.

The 'icing on the cake' was that an observation ship that took a load of VIPs to see how the ice was receding, only to come across ice fields that were further out than normal, and that the ship promptly hit .. and sunk.

djolds1 · Post by **djolds1** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:27 pm

necoras wrote:@djolds1

I never said it was the Apocalypse.

Nor did I intend to imply you had - see the emoticon.

necoras wrote:I believe that the Earth's climate is much more dependent on cyclical influences from the oceans and the sun than anything we've done. Can humans affect the climate? Certainly. Have we? I'm not convinced. I'm also not convinced that a slightly warmer climate is a bad thing.

Agreed in all particulars.

olivier wrote:
djolds1 wrote:Antarctic ice has been thickening.
At which timescale? Do you have any reference on this?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/co ... hicker.htm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/17/r ... shrinking/

olivier · Post by **olivier** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:55 pm

Thanks for the links!

happyjack27 · Post by **happyjack27** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:07 pm

GIThruster wrote:The ice caps are shrinking in surface area only. They are thickening and the ice is growing, not shrinking. For the last 11 years, the Earth has been in a cooling period. It is not warming. The closest correlation we have for this is that the Sun itself is currently in a cool period.

firstly, the second law of thermodynamics works across surfaces not volumes, so surface area change is what you'd look for, not volume change.

secondly, 11 years? you are totally on the wrong scale, dude.

happyjack27 · Post by **happyjack27** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:16 pm

happyjack27 wrote:
GIThruster wrote:The ice caps are shrinking in surface area only. They are thickening and the ice is growing, not shrinking. For the last 11 years, the Earth has been in a cooling period. It is not warming. The closest correlation we have for this is that the Sun itself is currently in a cool period.

firstly, the second law of thermodynamics works across surfaces not volumes, so surface area change is what you'd look for, not volume change.

secondly, 11 years? you are totally on the wrong scale, dude.

this is what you are talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

notice the period is about 10 years, so your choice of 11 years as a "cooling period" was quite unfortunate given your (false) assertion that the closest correlation is to solar cycles. you'd have to pick a span of no more than half that for it to even be _possible_ for the _sun_ -- not to mention the earth, by extension -- to be in a "cooling period".

this is what "climate change" refers to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

notice the time scale is different by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. and the role that solar cycles play on global temperature is all but invisible compared to the overal total variation.