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Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and do it PDQ! : Comments
By Mike Pope, published 28/4/2009The effect of the increasingly rapid depletion of glaciers around the world has the potential to be disastrous.
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For more detail on the past 10 years take data from the ASCII files and graph them in a ordinary office EXCCEL. The one hold out centre is Goddard which insists that temperatues are level pegging with a slight decline since a peak in 2005.
This business about glaciers melting faster than expected is, in fact, the last piece of alarmism global warmers can point to, but the interaction between glaciers and melt water may be far more complicated than expected. The apparent acceleration of glaciers in some areas may be temporary.. see New Scientist issues of 19 November 2008 and 03 July 2008 (accessible online) where they discuss meltwater lubricating the base of the glaciers in Antartica and Greenland. It is possible it all may be a delayed reaction to what was an undoubted warming phase up to 2000 or so.
All that is arguable, of course, but you are still left with the problem that, if glaciers are melting faster than expected, sea levels are simply not behaving as they should.
See the University of Colorado site which tracks sea level heights with two satellites http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.pdf
Sea levels have been increasing at the rate of 3.1mm a year (0.31 metres over a century) since the mid-90s, not much has changed at all.. if anything there was a recent fall in that trend before it reverted to the mean.. when you see a genuine acceleration in sea level increases then get alarmed. Until then all this stuff about sea level increases counts as speculation based on projections. Forget them.