The good news is that sea level rise is very slow.Oh but extreme storms and storm surges are very fast. And salt water intrusion into aquifers is very insidious. And coastal marshes, don't rebuild on human time scales.
Stardust either missed this on the other thread (the one that started out about Mars) or he is ignoring it.
Glaciers store about 69% of the world's freshwater, and if all land ice melted the seas would rise about 70 meters (about 230 feet).But glaciers don't produce water, so storing water is apparently irrelevant and mentioning sea level rise is a distraction from Stardusty's picayune statements.
This one’s actually a bit off topic.
Has more to do with science’s march forward and the latest in dating approaches.
I found it a fascinating video, I think some of you folks might agree
Science Bulletins: Shrinking Glaciers—A Chronology of Climate Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48ikKLGUhNsPublished on Jul 20, 2012 Analysis of Earth's geologic record can reveal how the climate has changed over time. Scientists in New Zealand are examining samples from the rocky landscape once dominated by glaciers. They are employing a new technique called surface exposure dating, which uses chemical analysis to determine how long minerals within rocks have been exposed to the air since the glaciers around them melted. Comparisons of this data with other climate records have revealed a link between glacial retreat and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air, findings that are informing scientists' understanding of global climate change today. Science Bulletins is a production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), part of the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History. Find out more about Science Bulletins at http://www.amnh.org/sciencebulletins/.Oh yeah, ... Then there was that misleading portrayal of the situation in Antarctica. This notion that the Antarctic's ice mass is increasing because of snow fall, comes from one rather confusing study that seems to mix up sea ice with continental ice - and it's been much critiqued and many who understand the details say it's been grossly misrepresented in the Press, er PR campaign. There are dozens of studies revealing serious net glacial mass loss - need to put one on curious, but inconclusive study on any pedestal. The snow fall has a huge impact on seasonal sea ice… big shit, it melts every year anyways. Oh and this past year ice sheet shrank from previous highs. One thing that never ceases to shock me is how oblivious people can be regarding the difference between snow and glacial ice that is millennia old. Come on, get a grip and think about it a little. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/questions/formed.html http://www.livescience.com/23163-glaciers-respond-quickly-climate-change.html But beyond that their have been startling multiple studies massive glacial melt not just on the West Antarctic Peninsula, but also within the huge East Antarctic Continental area. These glaciers are in motion and given topography they are a genuinely slippery sliddy slope (see, Trouble at Totten Glacier, for details) For more details and sources for serious scientific information see
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/miscommunication-increasing-antarctic.html Here's a highlightI) The real physical proxy for any global temperature change would be the solidity of the ice cubes that have been fairly stable for millennia, heck for tens and hundreds of millennia in some cases. Trouble at Totten Glacier YaleClimateConnections | April 14, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDB_C-jwkU ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ TimeLapse: Watch 27 Years of 'Old' Arctic Ice Melt Away in Seconds Our World - News | Feb 21, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZovcCxftAY ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ NASA | Measuring Elevation Changes on the Greenland Ice Sheet NASA Goddard | March 25, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S4T2Q8sBW8 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Bonus How Life Lives in the Coldest Oceans : Documentary Life in the Antarctic Ocean Bottom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_TUczqRA0 | 52:29 Putin Ferguson
Stardust either missed this on the other thread (the one that started out about Mars) or he is ignoring it. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthglacier.htmlThanks :) I'm liking this little collection of learning resources.Glaciers store about 69% of the world's freshwater, and if all land ice melted the seas would rise about 70 meters (about 230 feet).But glaciers don't produce water, so storing water is apparently irrelevant and mentioning sea level rise is a distraction from Stardusty's picayune statements.
If the glacier melts completely then the precipitation will feed the rivers directly, either as rain runoff or snowpack melt. Duh.Since you're being a smartass I'll return in kind. Anyone with half a brain can think about this for two seconds and figure out that if glaciers melt completely coastal cities worldwide will be underwater, displacing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. This is so blindingly obvious that only someone willingly ignorant of reality could argue otherwise. Your smug ignorance does not change this. Shame on you! Only glaciers in the United States matter. psik
Good points Dusty. I wonder what the people around the world who live in the same situation as the 100,000 residents in river valleys around Mount Rainier think? Let’s use a volcano top to store millions of tons of water. What could go wrong with that? http://glaciers.uoregon.edu/hazards.html http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/volcanoes/vmor.html http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647958-two-hundred-years-ago-most-powerful-eruption-modern-history-made-itself-felt-aroundDarroS - If glaciers melt completely coastal cities worldwide will be underwaterFinally a factually true statement from you guys, took you long enough. But that has not been the argument up to this point, as valid as this new argument of yours is. The argument thus far has been that glaciers in inhabited zones somehow provide water for people, which they clearly do not. As a conditional statement, your conclusion is inescapable in this new point. But glaciers are not melting globally, only some are melting and the most important land ice we have in avoiding sea level rise is actually growing and thus causing sea levels to drop! This is an unexpected result of warming, apparently. It seems that global warming is increasing precipitation over Antarctica so sea level rise is being mitigated by this meteorological effect, at least for now. It is too early to declare we are out of danger. This Antarctic ice growth might be an inflection point, only a temporary set of conditions. Over the long term global warming is virtually guaranteed to lead to sea level rise. The good news is that sea level rise is very slow. Most of the constructions in America right now were built in the last decades or in the last 100 years. If we build inland we will move inland over time. More good news is that vast areas of this planet are locked in ice or so cold as to be unfit for agriculture. As temperatures rise more land will be opened up and the grip of cold will be loosened, which will be a very good thing in those vast regions, not a good thing in areas already hot and made even hotter or for presently inhabited lands that get flooded. Global warming will bring about a mix of benefits and problems, but on a time scale that humans can readily adapt to.
But glaciers are not melting globally, only some are melting and the most important land ice we have in avoiding sea level rise is actually growing and thus causing sea levels to drop! This is an unexpected result of warming, apparently. It seems that global warming is increasing precipitation over Antarctica so sea level rise is being mitigated by this meteorological effect, at least for now.Nonsense! What sources are you basing your opinion on? Please provide your papers sir. It's also obvious, from your broken record responses, that you haven't taken the time to read and learn from any of those items I've linked to.
But glaciers are not melting globally, only some are melting and the most important land ice we have in avoiding sea level rise is actually growing and thus causing sea levels to drop! This is an unexpected result of warming, apparently. It seems that global warming is increasing precipitation over Antarctica so sea level rise is being mitigated by this meteorological effect, at least for now.Nonsense! What sources are you basing your opinion on? Please provide your papers sir. It's also obvious, from your broken record responses, that you haven't taken the time to read and learn from any of those items I've linked to. Check the links he provided, CC. I believe he was using sarcasm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkUkVxM6R8o
cc - The complete melting of the Lewis Glacier resulted in a 75% decline in late summer streamflow at Lewis Lake.So, the Lewis glacier was not essential to late summer stream flow, since the stream still flowed in late summer.
These glaciers store as much water as all of the states lakes, rivers, and reservoirs combined, and 25% of the North Cascade region’s total summer water supply.No mention of groundwater, which is an enormous storage system, nor any mention to increases in reservoir levels as snowpack melts a little faster than glaciers in the summer. 75% of summer water is presently stored outside of glaciers. If glaciers disappear snowpack will still take time to melt and rain will continue to fall. Snow and rain will recharge the groundwater system more readily when the glaciers get out of the way, and runoff will also be captured in reservoirs a higher levels once the glaciers are gone. Glaciers are not even remotely essential for human water availability for 99.9% of the world population. A few mountain people will have lower streams in the summer.
cc - and it is suggested that summer runoff will further decrease in these rivers if precipitation and discharge from thawing permafrost bodies do not compensate sufficiently for water shortfalls.Asian people know how to build dams. It's not like these glaciers are going to disappear next year. If it is observed that water is rushing down the river in spring and then the river is very low in summer there is an amazing technology you may have heard of, it is called a "dam". Also, they can get electricity from a dam so they don't have to burn more coal, kind of a twofer. Glaciers are not even remotely essential for human water supply. They are replaceable by human technology and natural storage systems such as lakes and especially groundwater.
So how do you propose damming Greenland?cc - and it is suggested that summer runoff will further decrease in these rivers if precipitation and discharge from thawing permafrost bodies do not compensate sufficiently for water shortfalls.Asian people know how to build dams. It's not like these glaciers are going to disappear next year. If it is observed that water is rushing down the river in spring and then the river is very low in summer there is an amazing technology you may have heard of, it is called a "dam". Also, they can get electricity from a dam so they don't have to burn more coal, kind of a twofer. Glaciers are not even remotely essential for human water supply. They are replaceable by human technology and natural storage systems such as lakes and especially groundwater.
hackr - Shame on you! Only glaciers in the United States matter.Actually, glaciers are non-essential for water supply of humans globally.
Except for the 370 million people worldwide who live in arid regions near mountains and depend upon glacier runoff for drinking water and crop irrigation.hackr - Shame on you! Only glaciers in the United States matter.Actually, glaciers are non-essential for water supply of humans globally.
cc - It’s also obvious, from your broken record responses, that you haven’t taken the time to read and learn from any of those items I’ve linked to.Au contraire, I have learned more instances where alarmism sells. I have learned that many people are fooled by the word "source" as it is employed in the fallacy of equivocation. Lake Itasca is the "source" of the Mississippi river just as glaciers are the "source" of the great rivers of South Asia. Of course, "source" in terms of headwaters only means the uppermost elevation of a river, its starting point, not where the vast majority of the river water comes from. River water comes from its entire drainage basin, not simply its headwaters or "source". If you could cut off the headwaters of a river it would still be filled by its drainage basin which is how most of the water actually gets into the river, not from the "source" in terms of its headwaters. I have learned that lots of people write very shortsighted tunnel vision articles about things they claim are essential but really are not.
DarronS - Except for the 370 million people worldwide who live in arid regions near mountains and depend upon glacier runoff for drinking water and crop irrigation.After the glacier melts they can still use the snowpack runoff and rain runoff for drinking water and crop irrigation. Glaciers produce no water. Water comes from precipitation. So, 95% of the world does not get its drinking and crop irrigation water from glacial runoff by your own figures! And of the 5% how many will be unable to drink water and irrigate their crops from continued river flow, lakes, groundwater, melting snowpack, reservoirs, and local precipitation?
As unpopular as Stardusty Psyche is, I can’t deny that he/she makes some sense.
The source of a river can be where it originates, but that doesn’t mean that the bulk of the water in it comes from there. Obviously rivers get larger the longer they flow due to more and more water being added by the environments they flow through. And the percentage of glacier water flowing through inhabited lands is very small since the vast bulk is found in the arctic and antarctic. So global glacier run-off might be an impressive number, but when you look at how much is usable by us, the number is far less impressive.
Where glaciers come into play is during the hottest and/or driest times when their water, as minimal as it is, is the only water around. Even a trickle can mean life or death to local populations. As the glaciers disappear, so will many people.
And as a means of measuring the advance of climate change, they are an easy-to-understand gauge. We have the Columbia Glacier between Banff and Jasper here in Alberta, and my mom has photos of her there as a kid showing that the glacier is now only a tiny fraction of what it was 50-60 years ago.
It’s possible to be partially right, and I think Stardusty Psyche is.
DarronS - So how do you propose damming Greenland?So now there is a drinking water shortage in Greenland? You seem to invest a large portion of your life dreaming up non problems to worry about.
As unpopular as Stardusty Psyche is, I can't deny that he/she makes some sense. ... Where glaciers come into play is during the hottest and/or driest times when their water, as minimal as it is, is the only water around. Even a trickle can mean life or death to local populations. As the glaciers disappear, so will many people. ... It's possible to be partially right, and I think Stardusty Psyche is.Hmmm. Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion from the paragraphs I skipped. But beyond that, what you are missing is those glaciers are the foundation to hydrology and regional weather patterns* that go back millennia, There are subtle impacts (as those links I've offered, help explain!!!) on all sorts of levels and systems that dusty is totally blissfully oblivious to, but that are critical to watershed, community success and sustainability. This totally casual, superficial dismissal based on shear ignorance and disinterest, that dusty champions is disgusting because it so grossly dumbs down what's going on here. * though those are being disrupted for a entire suite of reasons.
Hmmm. Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion from the paragraphs I skipped. But beyond that, what you are missing is those glaciers are the foundation to hydrology and regional weather patterns* that go back millennia, There are subtle impacts (as those links I’ve offered, help explain!!!) on all sorts of levels and systems that dusty is totally blissfully oblivious to, but that are critical to watershed, community success and sustainability. This totally casual, superficial dismissal based on shear ignorance and disinterest, that dusty champions is disgusting because it so grossly dumbs down what’s going on here.This is such a vague, confused, rambling, and pointless babble that all I can do is wait for some specific foolishness to refute.
Dusty the key to CC post is in the starting post in the two terms. “Dumb down" and “Republican/libertarian". What CC stated was that Republican/libertarian’s think “Glaciers are not “essential", taken from the first post. The post is not really about glaciers or global warming as much as it was meant to be about how the Republican/libertarian’s “Think Tanks" and Faith Based institutions have “dumb down" Americans. Now the key to understanding the post is the word CC used, “Vociferous". Search the word “Vociferous + Glacier" and you get hits from Democratic Caucus and Climate Change dealing with melting glaciers. Now add the term “Dumb down" to the search and again you get democratic, Climate Change and a conspiracy by anti-environment and anti-climate changers. You covered all the logical points about glaciers on a science and technology bases for this type of forum. And that got you on a spacecraft to Mars and a personal mental evaluation from CC. The point being is that your responses were without malice and covered the task of rationalizing the effects of glaciers on an overall world base as a form of water storage. And CC’s reports talked about the effects of the loss of the water storage systems over time. But I really don’t get the feeling that CC wants to talk about the science and technology of glaciers as much as create a political argument as noted in post #2. I am not trying to pick on CC. You are new to the forum and I wanted to give you a little insight.Hmmm. Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion from the paragraphs I skipped. But beyond that, what you are missing is those glaciers are the foundation to hydrology and regional weather patterns* that go back millennia, There are subtle impacts (as those links I’ve offered, help explain!!!) on all sorts of levels and systems that dusty is totally blissfully oblivious to, but that are critical to watershed, community success and sustainability. This totally casual, superficial dismissal based on shear ignorance and disinterest, that dusty champions is disgusting because it so grossly dumbs down what’s going on here.This is such a vague, confused, rambling, and pointless babble that all I can do is wait for some specific foolishness to refute.