On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Jerry Barnes <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Another inconvenient truth?

Neat study, thanks. I don't understand what is inconvenient about it
though. It may or may not be correct (I'm sure others will try and
duplicate the findings) but it doesn't seem to do anything to dispute
a grand notion of anthropogenic climate change.

It says that the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers are not melting as
fast as some recent studies have shown. That would be a very good
thing because, as this article notes, the IPCC report uses estimates
of glacier melting that are *lower* than what the recent studies have
shown. So if this new study is correct, then glacier melting rates in
Antarctica and Greenland (it does not seem to address other glacial
areas) would probably be closer to what was presumed in the IPCC
report than what many had feared they actually are.

One thing that I thought was interesting about the article was their
wording on sea level change. It said:

"If the figures for overall sea level rise are accurate, icesheet loss
would be contribute about 30 percent, rather than roughly half, to the
total, said Vermeersen. The rest would come mainly from thermal
expansion, meaning that as the sea warms it rises."

So the authors of the study haven't even concluded that their revised
estimates of glacial melt will change predictions on sea rise. I
suppose that that kind of makes sense. The faster that the Greenland
ice cap melts, the more cold water gets pumped into the ocean, keeping
its temperature down. If the melt happens more slowly then the
temperature could rise more quickly thereby causing additional sea
level rise due to thermal expansion. Makes sense but I hadn't really
thought about the tradeoff between input of additional fluid water
versus rise due to water temperature change.

Interesting, thanks.

Judah

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