Then what the hell are you posting about. And there are many places that do have rivers that are highly dependent on glacier runoff to keep them at sufficient levels throughout the year. As has already been posted with the chaotic effects of climate change then there is no way to count on snowpack and rainfall to keep important river systems running as you idiotically posted. You assume a normal hydrological cycle in a global climate that is in rapid transition to a different state. Just as the people in Fort McMurray found out as Alberta was hit with a drought starting in early spring. Having lived there and still having family I can tell you for certain the importance of adequate rainfall and when that fails the rivers that are fed from glaciers in the Rockies. But you seem to think this is some joke as your posts constantly show. You certainly don't seem to give a damn about anybody else. And not only are most of the glaciers on the globe rapidly disappearing, the polar ice sheets are losing hundreds of billions of tons a year going into the oceans. The Mekong Delta isn't going to be good for much of anything if it's under the ocean and it feeds many millions of people throughout Asia. Your posts are those of some psychopath who gets a kick out of all the damage being done in the name of "progress", citizenschallenge.pm on the other hand is constantly doing his best to present the growing catastrophe in an accurate light to lend one more voice to demands that something real be done. You on the other hand sit there throwing shit at people who actually care about something beyond themselves, like I said, you come off as a complete psychopath, so shut the hell up and let people who actually understand the issue and want to see sane policies implemented have their say and aren't drowned out by some of the sickest creeps to ever walk this planet. That includes Mike Yohe, neither of you come equipped with a conscience or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.cc - Oh, and you have yet to provide one shred of anything serious to support your blabberActually I did, for example the Mekong, which I described and linked. You guys are so worried about the glaciers in the Himalayas, and there was that nice map of rivers coming out of the Himalayas including the Mekong. Turns out that glaciers are not a factor of any significance to Mekong mass flow in the summer. Summer precipitation leads to flooding, not shortages. Oh, and then the 70% of fresh water in ice figure was trotted out. How stupid. Nobody is getting water from Antarctic ice. What, do you need some scientific study to tell you this? And one of the quotes tried to say that if glaciers disappeared the water resources would be gone. How ridiculous, as though it would stop snowing and raining because the glacier melts. You guys post nothing but irrelevancies and shallow pseudo science on the subject of glaciers as somehow essential for human water consumption, which clearly they are not. Your posts are like those of a Muslim claiming a scientific miracle in the Qur'an. When you actually read the link it turns out to be endless drivel that in no way supports the point at hand. Global warming is real. The greenhouse effect is real physics. Melting of land ice really raises sea levels. Rising sea levels will devastate coastal cities and lands. These are basic scientific facts. Anybody who denies them has their head in the sand or up their ass or wherever.
So while another psychotic climate change denier wants us to do nothing about the most important issue of our time, what do people who actually understand the issue say.
From the Columbia River basin in the U.S. to the Prairie Provinces of Canada, scientists and policy makers are confronting a future in which the loss of snow and ice in the Rocky Mountains could imperil water supplies for agriculture, cities and towns, and hydropower production.
Scientists say that each year, the Peyto is losing as much as 3.5 million cubic meters of water — roughly the amount the city of Calgary, population 1.2 million, consumes in a day. About 70 percent of the Peyto’s ice mass is already gone, a retreat that will soon have a profound impact on the Mistaya and North Saskatchewan rivers, which the glacier helps nourish.
The Peyto is a small example of much bigger things happening to glaciers and snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, which supply most of the stream flow west of the Mississippi River in the United States, as well as much of the water used in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Steadily rising temperatures are not only rapidly melting glaciers, but also have caused a 20 percent decline in spring snow cover throughout the Rockies since 1980, according to a study last year by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). That study said that equally as important as the decline of April snowpack is the timing of when that accumulated snow melts. As the Rocky Mountains warm, reduced winter snows are melting earlier in spring and summer, which can lead to a reduction in water supplies for drinking, irrigation, and hydropower production in key power-producing areas like the Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest. Runoff from snowpack alone provides 60 to 80 percent of the annual water supply for 70 million people in the American West, the USGS said.
Scientists say that British Columbia’s 17,000 glaciers — both in the Rockies and along the Pacific coast — are losing 22 billion cubic meters of water annually. That’s equivalent to refilling a 60,000-seat football stadium 8,300 times.
Groundwater is unlikely to make up for the shortfall in most places. According to a Geological Survey of Canada study, the Milk River aquifer, which supplies water for many users in Alberta and Montana, is 30 meters lower or more in some sub-basins than it was in 1937, largely because of overuse that occurred between the 1930s and the mid-1990s. Even users in the seemingly water-rich Columbia River Basin on the west side of the Rockies are getting worried. The U.S is attempting to renegotiate the 50-year-old Columbia River Basin Treaty that was initially designed to deal with flood control, hydroelectric development, and irrigation along the 1,200-mile waterway that flows from the Canadian Rockies through Washington and Oregon.Basically what the climate change deniers are saying here is they couldn't care less if millions of people are deprived of the necessities of life, no one can live without water. How does that not make someone a psychopath?
Go back to the OP, the facts support what CC posted completely.
What we have is the same psychopaths who show up to disrupt any real discussion on climate change and its catastrophic consequences for eventually billions of people worldwide showing up to attack one of the most effective posters on the issue here.
Why would someone do this.
- First off fossil fuels are an over $1 trillion a year industry, an industry that spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to fund PR groups that are almost entirely focused on distorting the science on anything that affects the bottom line of certain sectors, primarily the fossil fuel sector.
- Secondly, can you imagine the class action lawsuits that are inevitable when even the most skilled liars on the planet are not able to fool enough people that there is no fundamental crisis and that their employers aren’t responsible. There are trillion dollar lawsuits coming, and sooner than some expect, that’s enough to get the psychopaths behind climate change denial all in a lather. We won’t be able to reason with them because they are about as far beyond reason as it’s possible to get, otherwise they wouldn’t be working so diligently for the destruction of their own and many other species. What we can do is keep pointing up how and where they lie and why.
- Thirdly some people hate other people and more or less openly work for their destruction.
Keep it up CC, you stand for the only things that really matter in life, that is each other. The psychopaths can’t stand that, it reminds them just how hollow they truly are.
Glaciers form a winter storage/summer release system of tiny worldwide proportions for human consumption. Even if the glaciers disappeared there would still be snowpack melt, lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater storage plus summer precipitation to provide summer water. The assistance from glaciers in these few rivers is not even remotely essential to human consumption needs.
Global warming is real. The greenhouse effect is real physics. Melting of land ice really raises sea levels. Rising sea levels will devastate coastal cities and lands. These are basic scientific facts. Anybody who denies them has their head in the sand or up their ass or wherever.The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. He's arguing that glaciers are "not even remotely essential to human consumption needs" but melting glaciers "will devastate coastal cities and lands." I do not understand how someone can acknowledge that melting glaciers will devastate coastal lands while arguing glaciers are not essential. Stardusty is focusing on one picayune point and has been ignoring all we've told him about the ramifications of lusing glaciers. At least he finally admitted publicly that disappearing glaciers will cause devastation. Now he just think about the consequences of 370 million people around the world losing their water source.
DougC - you come off as a complete psychopathWell, with carefully reasoned argumentation such as that I guess you have most assuredly proved your points!
Then what the hell are you posting about.I was over on another thread and made the factual point that glaciers are not essential for human water consumption. Somehow that statement was so disturbing that some guys decided to start a new thread just to "counter" my simple statement of fact. Since then you guys have posted irrelevant maps, and text almost entirely off this particular point, and links to more such articles that also do things like equivocate between "source" meaning headwaters and "source" meaning the mechanism for obtaining the major mass flow of the river. Then you guys went all off on green house gases lots of stuff, fine, but not the topic of the thread. Now, I suppose, if we really squint our eyes and look at some particular short stretch of a a river just at the foothills of a mountain before the river joins its broader drainage basin and we consider that after the glacier melts the snowpack might melt sometime in mid summer and if that area is one of the few mountainous regions on earth that has snow in the winter but no rain in the summer then conceivably given all those narrow specifics there could be a very few isolated people who have a shortage for a month or two each year. I guess that tiny number of people are going to have to build a dam, or a cistern, or drill a well. That's an if times a maybe times a tiny little area. Meanwhile the whole rest of humanity has not experienced any loss of essential water supply.
You dismiss the 370 million people who depend upon glaciers for fresh water as inconsequential. I'm with Doug. You come across as a psychopath.DougC - you come off as a complete psychopathWell, with carefully reasoned argumentation such as that I guess you have most assuredly proved your points!
DougC - the loss of snow and iceConflation. If less snow is falling then that means less water downstream because precipitation is the source of the mass flow of a river drainage basin, not glaciers. The loss of ice will be very good for the land it presently covers. Ice is deadly to nearly all life. As the ice retreats that land will be opened up to life.
Peyto is losing as much as 3.5 million cubic meters of waterLosing how? What good does it do locked up in a piece of deadly ice? Yes, the glacier is losing its water mass, so what? Water frozen in a glacier only kills nearly all life on the land it covers.
Mistaya and North Saskatchewan rivers, which the glacier helps nourish.A few short stretches of river might become 3 seasonal. There are lots of places where rivers are 3 seasonal. Have you ever hiked the Sierras in the summer? Dry stream beds. Also, lots of life. Life does not dry up and blow away in regions with 3 season streams.
glaciers and snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, which supply most of the stream flow west of the Mississippi River in the United StatesConflation, again, as all your links you seem to think are so great are suffering from. Snowpack does indeed contribute to water supplies because precipitation is the source of our water for human consumption. Calling a glacier a source of water is like calling a lake a source of water.
Basically what the climate change deniers are saying here is they couldn’t care less if millions of people are deprived of the necessities of life, no one can live without water. How does that not make someone a psychopath?If there is more usage than precipitation recharge groundwater will fall, that is simple arithmetic. Nothing in your article says millions of people are going to be deprived of water, that is just your hyperbolic fear mongering hand wringing nonsense. Here you can learn something about the water cycle. Warning, this is fact based information, so there is very little mention of glaciers as being important to river flow, because they almost always are not. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclesummary.html
DarronS - You dismiss the 370 million people who depend upon glaciers for fresh water as inconsequential.I dismiss that figure as hyperbolic irrational nonsense completely unsupported by facts or reason. That number is based largely on the equivocation between "source" as in headwaters and "source" as in the source of the mass flow of water in a river. Precipitation is where our freshwater comes from, and precipitation comes primarily from ocean evaporation, which is likely to increase with increasing temperatures. Yet the Henny Penny folks bent on declaring the sky is falling seem to think that warming means drought. Here you can learn something about the water cycle, but this is fact based information, not scare mongering, so you probably are not interested. For example, the USGS states that water flow in a river is due to precipitation over its watershed. Gosh, what a controversial concept. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclesummary.html
DarronS _ The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. He’s arguing that glaciers are “not even remotely essential to human consumption needs" but melting glaciers “will devastate coastal cities and lands." I do not understand how someone can acknowledge that melting glaciers will devastate coastal lands while arguing glaciers are not essential.That's because you can't seem to understand that about 90% the ice in the world is in Antarctica, about 10% is in Greenland, and less than 1% is everyplace else. So more than 99% of ice in the world is unavailable to human beings because almost nobody lives in Antarctica and Greenland. Do you really need me to explain these gradeschool science facts to you? Glaciers have virtually zero value for supplying water for human consumption which is why they are not essential to humans for their water consumption needs. Spend less time on climate panic scare sites and more time learning actual science and maybe it will help you sleep better at night instead of dreaming up problems to worry about. You can start here: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleice.html
I started a few years ago studying environmental science in college. Unlike I do not reject facts that contradict my beliefs.DarronS _ The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. He’s arguing that glaciers are “not even remotely essential to human consumption needs" but melting glaciers “will devastate coastal cities and lands." I do not understand how someone can acknowledge that melting glaciers will devastate coastal lands while arguing glaciers are not essential.That's because you can't seem to understand that about 90% the ice in the world is in Antarctica, about 10% is in Greenland, and less than 1% is everyplace else. So more than 99% of ice in the world is unavailable to human beings because almost nobody lives in Antarctica and Greenland. Do you really need me to explain these gradeschool science facts to you? Glaciers have virtually zero value for supplying water for human consumption which is why they are not essential to humans for their water consumption needs. Spend less time on climate panic scare sites and more time learning actual science and maybe it will help you sleep better at night instead of dreaming up problems to worry about. You can start here: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleice.html
Glaciers have virtually zero value for supplying water for human consumption which is why they are not essential to humans for their water consumption needs.There certainly seems to be some ignorant people in the world:
Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2008/update71
Long known as the “roof of the world," the Tibetan Plateau is about the size of Western Europe and supplies water to nearly 2 billion people in Asia as the source of several major rivers, including the Yangze, Mekong, Salween (Gyalmo Ngulchu), Indus, Brahmaputra and Yellow rivers.http://www.voanews.com/content/melting-tibet-could-threaten-billions-of-people/3075426.html Maybe you should tour Asia and bestow your enlightenment upon them. psik
DarronS - I started a few years ago studying environmental science in college The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. He’s arguing that glaciers are “not even remotely essential to human consumption needs" but melting glaciers “will devastate coastal cities and lands." I do not understand how someone can acknowledge that melting glaciers will devastate coastal lands while arguing glaciers are not essential.Either you are just making up your story about college study or you are a very poor student. Water for human consumption cannot come from ice in Antarctica or Greenland. Do you understand this, oh environmental college student? If all the ice in Antarctica and Greenland melts sea level will rise dramatically. You understand that, right? If the glaciers in other parts of the world melt there will be almost no effect on sea level rise because they are a tiny percent of total land ice. Can you grasp this arithmetic? Glacier melt that flows down rivers on inhabited continents and ice that melts or calves into the ocean from Antarctica and Greenland are 2 very different things because of the vast difference in their volumes and physical locations relative to humans who might consume that water. Is that understandable to your student brain? What part of this don't you get about these basic facts?
The rainy season in China is May and June in areas south of Yangtze River, and July and August in areas north of it. The huge river system receives water from both southern and northern flanks, which causes its flood season to extend from May to August. Meanwhile, the relatively dense population and rich cities along the river make the floods more deadly and costly. The most recent major floods were the 1998 Yangtze River Floods, but more disastrous were the 1954 Yangtze River Floods, killing around 30,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze Hackr - deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.The Yangtze does not suffer from low water in the summer. It rains in the summer. The Yangtze watershed is vast. The glacier melt is only a tiny fraction of the mass flow of the river. There are already dams on the Yangtze to even out the flow of water and control flooding. You guys are very credulous and susceptible to fear mongering by hack "environmental" sites that thrive on publishing preposterously shallow panic nonsense.
Hackr - Long known as the “roof of the world," the Tibetan Plateau is about the size of Western Europe and supplies water to nearly 2 billion people in Asia as the source of several major rivers, including the Yangze, Mekong, Salween (Gyalmo Ngulchu), Indus, Brahmaputra and Yellow rivers.You really are a credulous person. "source" in this sense means headwaters, not where most of the mass flow of the river comes from. If the glacier is not there then the snowpack will still melt and summer rains will still fall. The vast majority of the mass flow for these rivers is from precipitation over the whole watershed for each river, not the tiny amount from the "source" which is only the little bit of mountain headwaters flow. Summer flooding is a problem controlled by dams already built. You swallow scare tactic bullshit hook line and sinker. Think for yourself and study something about the water cycle and the watersheds of the rivers you cite before you hysterically cry about the "threat to billions of people".
hackr - Maybe you should tour Asia and bestow your enlightenment upon them.I don't need to, they know how to control water without my help. The Yellow river is on your list of how billions are supposedly threatened. Here is a list of dams on the Yellow river Sanmenxia Dam (1960; Sanmenxia, Henan) Sanshenggong Dam (1966) Qingtong Gorge hydroelectric power station (1968; Qingtongxia, Ningxia) Liujiaxia Dam (Liujia Gorge) (1974; Yongjing County, Gansu) Lijiaxia Dam (1997) (Jainca County, Qinghai) Yanguoxia Dam (Yanguo Gorge) hydroelectric power station (1975; Yongjing County, Gansu) Tianqiao Dam (1977) Bapanxia Dam (Bapan Gorge) (1980; Xigu District, Lanzhou, Gansu) Longyangxia Dam (1992; Gonghe County, Qinghai) Da Gorge hydroelectric power station (1998) Li Gorge hydroelectric power station (1999) Wanjiazhai Dam (1999; Pianguan County, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia) Xiaolangdi Dam (2001) (Jiyuan, Henan) Laxiwa Dam (2010) (Guide County, Qinghai) Yangqu Dam (2015) (Xinghai County, Qinghai) Maerdang Dam (2016) (Maqên County, Qinghai) The Chinese do not need me to tell them that water varies a lot seasonally and the way to put that water to use is to build dams. They already have 16 hydroelectric dams on the Yellow river alone. The Chinese will be able to capture snowpack melt and precipitation all year long, even out its flow, and put the water to good use. The Chinese do not need a glacier to control water in the Yellow river. Scare stories about supposed threats to billions are just pablum for the credulous, which sells, and you bought it.
You swallow scare tactic bullshit hook line and sinker. Think for yourself and study something about the water cycle and the watersheds of the rivers you cite before you hysterically cry about the "threat to billions of people".That's not going to happen with most of these folks. They started out scared shitless about one thing and keep shifting to other things. And they try to get other people to believe it..just like true Fundies and Evangelicals.(that some of them used to be.) It's the mindset. The personality type. They stripped themselves of religion and found a new thing to hysterically proselytize about. Threats to billions of people! Right....They have to have a common fear. Something they can warn everyone about. Billions and billions! :lol:
You swallow scare tactic bullshit hook line and sinker. Think for yourself and study something about the water cycle and the watersheds of the rivers you cite before you hysterically cry about the "threat to billions of people".That's not going to happen with most of these folks. They started out scared shitless about one thing and keep shifting to other things. And they try to get other people to believe it..just like true Fundies and Evangelicals.(that some of them used to be.) It's the mindset. The personality type. They stripped themselves of religion and found a new thing to hysterically proselytize about. Threats to billions of people! Right....They have to have a common fear. Something they can warn everyone about. Billions and billions! :lol:Vyazmamizzamoe you get more pathetic all the time. Can you point to one of your posts that's offered any substance? Or is playing the kid with the pea shooter all you can manage?
Check out V’s comprehension skills:
It's the mindset. The personality type. They stripped themselves of religion and found a new thing to hysterically proselytize about. Threats to billions of people! Right....They have to have a common fear. Something they can warn everyone about. Billions and billions! :lol:Now V, that's what mindless drivel looks like. But then, right-winger folks have given up on honesty representing what others are trying to explain. They think free speech mean facts can be altered at will, etc. etc.
That's what you get for making assumptions. I was invited to join two honor societies and finished college with a 3.72 GPA.DarronS - I started a few years ago studying environmental science in college The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. He’s arguing that glaciers are “not even remotely essential to human consumption needs" but melting glaciers “will devastate coastal cities and lands." I do not understand how someone can acknowledge that melting glaciers will devastate coastal lands while arguing glaciers are not essential.Either you are just making up your story about college study or you are a very poor student.
Water for human consumption cannot come from ice in Antarctica or Greenland. Do you understand this, oh environmental college student? If all the ice in Antarctica and Greenland melts sea level will rise dramatically. You understand that, right?Now you're just being a condescending asshole.
If the glaciers in other parts of the world melt there will be almost no effect on sea level rise because they are a tiny percent of total land ice. Can you grasp this arithmetic? Glacier melt that flows down rivers on inhabited continents and ice that melts or calves into the ocean from Antarctica and Greenland are 2 very different things because of the vast difference in their volumes and physical locations relative to humans who might consume that water. Is that understandable to your student brain? What part of this don't you get about these basic facts?i love this coming from someone who has openly dismissed facts in favor of his ideology.
What’s the point of this thread, anyway?
Lois
What's the point of this thread, anyway? LoisTrying to educate some folks that Glaciers are more than the water that comes out of your tap. Also, I think it's turned into a pretty cool collection of sources regarding learning about glaciers. Something anyone who's curious can cull through and learn from, and through the learning, be in a better position to understand the importance of glaciers.