From the article:"U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month global warming, blamed mainly on burning fossil fuels, could raise sea levels by 50 cm to 2 meters (20 inches to 6 ft 6 in) this century -- higher than most experts have predicted."
Get out the waders, something is happening.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090923/sc_nm/us_climate_antarctica
In fact, ice flows speed up because of a greater volume and weight of ice pushing them down."We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow," he said in a statement.
University of California - UC Newsroom | Scientists Detect Thickening of West Antarctic ice SheetScientists Detect Thickening of West Antarctic ice Sheet
The stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet has long been a concern because of the potentially catastrophic rise in sea level that would result from its collapse. Researchers at UCSC and NASA now report that, contrary to previous studies, at least one part of the ice sheet is actually growing rather than shrinking.
Assistant professor of Earth sciences Slawek Tulaczyk and Ian Joughin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used satellite radar images to map the flow of ice in the ice sheet and estimate how its mass is changing. They reported their findings in the January 18 issue of the journal Science.
"The West Antarctic ice sheet has been retreating for several thousand years, so to look now and see that it is growing is staggering to me," Tulaczyk said. "Within the past 200 years, the ice sheet seems to have switched fairly rapidly from a negative mass balance to a positive mass balance."
Antarctica's huge ice sheets are fed by snow falling in the interior of the continent. The ice gradually flows out toward the edges. The West Antarctic ice sheet is considered less stable than the larger East Antarctic ice sheet because much of it rests on land that is below sea level, and parts of it, called ice shelves, are floating on the sea.
A positive mass balance means that more ice is accumulating than is leaving the ice sheet. The reason, according to Tulaczyk and Joughin, is that major ice streams have slowed or stopped moving altogether. Ice streams are fast-moving currents of ice within the ice sheet that carry large volumes of ice out onto the floating ice shelves.
Earlier work by Tulaczyk may explain why the ice streams are slowing down. The ice streams slide over a bed of sediment saturated with liquid water, but an ice stream will grind to a halt if its bed becomes cold enough for the water to freeze. Tulaczyk showed that thinning of the ice sheet allows more heat to escape from the bed, eventually leading to freezing conditions.
The ice sheet has been retreating and thinning since the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. The changes now being detected by Tulaczyk and Joughin may signal the end of this process.
"It is either some kind of short-term fluctuation that we don't quite understand, or it's a trend and we just happened to come along at the right time to observe an event that only happens once in 10,000 years," Tulaczyk said. "To think that it just happens to be doing this now when we can observe it leaves me feeling a little queasy," he added.
One reason for that queasiness is that no one is quite sure what the long-term implications of these changes may be. Tulaczyk noted that if the ice streams continue to slow and stop, the ice shelf that covers the Ross Sea is likely to break up. The removal of the lid of ice that currently covers the Ross Sea could have significant effects on global ocean circulation and the global climate, he said.
Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.
However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".
Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.
"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.
Calling it insignificant is again being ignorant of ecological responses. Ask the forest industry in BC.
I thought this thread was about Glen Beck.
Yet, the Al Gore acolytes hijacked one more thread.
Back to topic: The only people who are afraid of Glen Beck are those who have a reason to be afraid.
This thread should be called Tonington and the climate of fear.
Tonnington, the only people who try to denigrate Glen Beck are the one who have something to be afraid of what he says.
Those are the people who are AFRAID of Glen Beck.
I heard that he's a Moron.
Or maybe that was Mormon.
Tonnington, the only people who try to denigrate Glen Beck are the one who have something to be afraid of what he says.
Those are the people who are AFRAID of Glen Beck.
Exactly, the guy's a nitwit. Why be afraid of a nitwit?Back to topic: The only people who are afraid of Glen Beck are those who have a reason to be afraid.
I heard that he's a Moron.
Or maybe that was Mormon.