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The Blueberry Pancake Theory of Climate Change

What do blueberry pancakes have to do with Global Warming? I'm glad that you asked.

Several years ago, I was talking with an astrophysicist acquaintance, and Mamikon explained his own theory of climate change. I hope that I've understood him correctly.

I don't see any of the prominent Global Warming mavens talking about the Blueberry Pancake Therory of Climate change. So I'll pass on the message, and give my own half-baked analogy for clarification.

Over long periods of time, the Earth oscillates into, and then slightly out of the interior of the planetary disk of our solar system. Why? Small sideways gravitational tweaks from Jupiter. In addition to planets and asteroids, the disk also contains dust. When the Earth is in the center of the planetary disk, there is more dust between it and the sun, and a slightly smaller proportion of the sun's light hits the Earth. This has a global cooling effect, even if solar output remains constant. By the same logic, Global Warming happens when the Earth passes out of the center of the disk. Here's an analogy.

The next time you make blueberry pancakes for breakfast, save one, and let it cool off. Then using a butter knife, cut out a 3-inch circular piece from the center, and feed that center piece to your Golden Retriever. You're left with a donut-shaped pancake. Next remove the lampshade from your living room lamp. Turn on the lamp. Hold the pancake ring around the light bulb. The light bulb will heat up the pancake ring unevenly.

Obviously, the part of the pancake ring closest to the bulb will heat up the fastest. More to the point, the blueberries on the outside of the pancake ring will heat up faster than the deeply buried blueberries that are the same distance from the lightbulb.

In this analogy, the lightbulb plays the role of the sun, the cooked pancake batter plays the role of the dust in the planetary disk, and the blueberries play the roles of the planets.

A similar thing may happen on a larger scale. The solar system may be a blueberry in the spiral 'pancake' of our Milky Way Galaxy. At times, gravitational tweaks may cause interstellar dust to enter the solar system, to prevent a small fraction of the sun's light from reaching Earth, and to result in temporary global cooling.

The majority of people on both sides of the Global Warming debate acknowledge that for big climate changes in the past, astronomical events were the most important drivers (with volcanism in second place). Most of the Global Warming alarmists and some of the Global Warming indifferentists assume that variations in the sun's output are the most important astronomical events that affect climate change on Earth. I question that platitude.

Notwithstanding the shrill rhetoric on both sides of the Global Warming debate, it's very possible that the Blueberry Pancake Effect is a major driver in our current round of climate change, and that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations are playing a secondary role, as they always have in the past, as part of a positive feedback loop.

The 'direct' measurements of solar output that we've been taking for nearly three decades have fluctuated in the same 11-year rhythm as the sunspot cycle, but have not changed enough to account for the global warming that we've experienced in recent decades. However it's possible that there's a subtle hysteresis effect at play. (Hysteresis is the one-word answer to the question about why it's usually hotter in Sacramento in early July than in late June, even though there's slightly more sun exposure in late June.)

It's possible that there's been no significant trend in true solar output above and beyond the usual solar cycles, but that the dust concentration between the Earth and the sun was decreasing, up until shortly before we started doing 'direct' measurements of solar output. If so, it may take some time for the Earth to come into dynamic thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. And most of the Earth will continue warming until we reach that point. Unless some other climate change mechanism kicks in!

Rather than jumping to premature conclusions, I think that we need to do more research into the Blueberry Pancake Theory of Climate Change, inter alia.

The one who will live will see.

Scroll down a bit, use the SLIDER on the flash "meter" to see how the ice meting have changed since 1980. And take a CLOSE look to see the difference between 2006 and 2007.

Arctic ice mass!

2006 - 5.9 million sq km
2007 - 4.2 million sq km

That's what i call difference, it's melting fast........


The latest IPCC report for the first time includes climate models that take into account two other ecological feedback mechanisms that accelerate global warming: the ability of the oceans and land to absorb carbon.

Another feedback mechanism in the Arctic.

The research team has reported the extraordinary warming of the soil in Svalbard during the winter of 2005-2006. The abstract mentions in passing that such events, if they continue into the future, will have ‘potentially damaging’ effects on permafrost. Why does this matter?

The matter at issue is methane. Looking recently at the surface temperature anomalies over huge areas of Central and Northern Siberia, with numbers exceeding +5C for sustained periods, there is an implication that what was observed at Svalbard (albeit in Winter) also holds true for very large areas where permafrost currently exists. Just last year, researchers at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, reported that methane release from permafrost degradation and the creation of lakes in tundra might be as much as five times higher than previously estimated. I cannot find any current numbers on atmospheric methane, or on emissions levels from Siberia, and we may well have to wait until the CDIAC or another agency publishes its annual summary early next year before we have the actual numbers. My guess is that they will show a rise in concentrations.

A bit old perhaps

Take a look at this.

BERKELEY, CA —Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling trends. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have been able to quantify the feedback implied by past increases in natural carbon dioxide and methane gas levels. Their results point to global temperatures at the end of this century that may be significantly higher than current climate models are predicting.

Using as a source the Vostok ice core, which provides information about glacial-interglacial cycles over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers were able to estimate the amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the principal greenhouse gases, that were released into the atmosphere in response to past global warming trends. Combining their estimates with standard climate model assumptions, they calculated how much these rising concentration levels caused global temperatures to climb, further increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and so on.

“Our results reinforce the fact that every bit of greenhouse gas we put into the atmosphere now is committing us to higher global temperatures in the future and we are already near the highest temperatures of the past 700,000 years,” Torn said. “At this point, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is absolutely critical.”

Read it all here. Interesting reading.

Interesting point Larry. Perhaps it's a mix of both, our CO2 emissions collides with earth natural warming and amplifies it?

Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave

Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen's University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.

"This was exceptional for a place where the normal average temperatures are about 5C. This year we frequently recorded daytime temperatures of between 10C and 15C and on some days it went as high as 22C," said Scott Lamoureux, a professor of geography at Queen's.

From the air, the evidence of climate change is striking

Even this far inland, in this changed climate, we are witnessing a dying glacier. Separated by the rising temperatures from its source on the ice cap, it is collapsing at extraordinary speed, feeding roaring rivers which in turn pour into the fjords beyond. The spectacle is both beautiful and wrong.

Glacial ice does not look like any other ice. It is a haunting blue, as its density absorbs every other colour of the spectrum. That density itself is a product of its age and the large ice crystals that scatter blue light to incredible effect.

This natural show of light and colour is seen to best effect in the collapsing ice caves that stud the disintegrating tongue of the glacier. Hollowed out from below by melt water, these holes, large enough to fly a helicopter into, form perfect expanding circles, with spiralling blue canals that carry pools of water from the glacier's surface and out, eventually, into the rising seas beyond.

Climate change disaster is upon us, warns UN

A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change "mega disaster", the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned.

Sir John, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.

'No Sun link' to climate change

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

"This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood, from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.

Read rest of the text by using the link.


The report explains that rising temperatures, coupled with the thawing of frozen land or permafrost, are leading to the creation of new and expansion of existing lakes in places such as Siberia, which are releasing bubbles of methane, estimated to be 43,000 years old.


Thawing Siberian bogs are releasing more of the greenhouse gas methane than previously believed, according to new scientific research.

Scientists from Russia and the US measured methane bubbling from a number of thawing lakes. Writing in the journal Nature, they suggest the methane release is hastened by warmer temperatures, positively feeding back into global warming. Methane's contribution to present-day global warming is second only to CO2.

Boreholes in permafrost in Svalbard, Norway, indicate that ground temperatures rose 0.4C over the past decade, four times faster than they did in the previous century.

Water vapor feedback and global warming

A methane feedback from the past strikes again

Bogs, not oceans, may have been the source of an increase in atmospheric methane

What triggered the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) about 55 million years ago, which saw the fastest period of warming documented in Earth's geological history? The PETM is associated with a rapid rise in greenhouse gases, particularly methane -- but the big question is where did the methane come from?

bog.jpgThe most common answer has been the ocean (methane hydrates), but new research in Nature casts doubt on the ocean theory -- instead finding chemical evidence that the methane came from terrestrial sources, bogs, which were themselves stimulated by rising temperatures -- an amplifying feedback. The lead author says:


Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming

K. M. Walter1, S. A. Zimov2, J. P. Chanton3, D. Verbyla4 and F. S. Chapin, III1

Large uncertainties in the budget of atmospheric methane, an important greenhouse gas, limit the accuracy of climate change projections1, 2. Thaw lakes in North Siberia are known to emit methane3, but the magnitude of these emissions remains uncertain because most methane is released through ebullition (bubbling), which is spatially and temporally variable. Here we report a new method of measuring ebullition and use it to quantify methane emissions from two thaw lakes in North Siberia.

We show that ebullition accounts for 95 per cent of methane emissions from these lakes, and that methane flux from thaw lakes in our study region may be five times higher than previously estimated3. Extrapolation of these fluxes indicates that thaw lakes in North Siberia emit 3.8 teragrams of methane per year, which increases present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands (< 6–40 teragrams per year; refs 1, 2, 4–6) by between 10 and 63 per cent.

We find that thawing permafrost along lake margins accounts for most of the methane released from the lakes, and estimate that an expansion of thaw lakes between 1974 and 2000, which was concurrent with regional warming, increased methane emissions in our study region by 58 per cent. Furthermore, the Pleistocene age (35,260–42,900 years) of methane emitted from hotspots along thawing lake margins indicates that this positive feedback to climate warming has led to the release of old carbon stocks previously stored in permafrost.

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER OVER-SEXED?

Stephen H. Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change, at Stanford University, is an opinion leader in the Global Warming alarmist camp. His earlier research conclusions suggested that human activities may contribute to an Ice Age in the near future. Some Global Warming indifferentists have jumped on Schneider's about-face. I don't see anything wrong with changing one's opinion, in the light of new evidence. However I do take issue with another of Schneider's pronouncements.

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both." (Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989)

Yes, Schneider is saying that it's OK to dumb down for the benefit of the Great Unwashed. But he's also saying that it's OK to be dishonest, in the sense of sexing up the data. Sexing up science news is nothing new; it happens all the time, with or without Schneider. This is one of several reasons why so much popularized science reporting is garbage. I have a big problem with this kind of scientific dishonesty, and with Schneider's endorsement of it.

As an historical reminder, the Bushies sexed up the data from intelligence reports from the Middle East, in order to drag us into the Iraq War. True, signing on the dotted line of the Kyoto Protocol, on the basis of scientific fraud, would not be an unmitigated disaster, like the Iraq War. But I believe that in our democracy, both Congress and the public have a sacred right to freedom from deliberate disinformation from our government and from people who call themselves scientists.

I was posting about how fast the artic is melting in an other forum.

Arctic ice mass!

2006 - 5.9 million sq km
2007 - 4.2 million sq km

The answer from one scientist was, - It's actually a good thing that the ice is melting. Then he presented some arguments for that. What he completely forgot is that the whole planet is affected by this.

If the Arctic is melting completely several negative things are a fact.

The black seawater is absorbing more of suns energy then the ice (the albedo effect), that means global warming is gonna be even faster then now. Another negative thing as a cause of this is that the oceans are less capable to transport CO2 in the deep.

The third negative thing is that several animal arts are going to get extincted.

The only arguments he had was economical.

Global Warming News!

Drought worsened greenhouse gases

A new NOAA study, appearing in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how a prolonged drought in North America in 2002 cut the continent's natural uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) in half, leaving more than 360 million tons (330 million metric tons) more of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere.

The amount not absorbed that year is equivalent to annual emissions from more than 200 million U.S. automobiles.


Flying foxes fall prey to Earth's rising temperature

Flying foxes have been dropping off trees and dying in droves because of the effects of climate change, researchers say. More than 30,000 of the fruit bats are estimated to have died since 1994 in heat waves associated with global warming. Mass deaths from heat stress have occurred at least 19 times since 1994, as opposed to only three anecdotal reports of similar flying fox deaths before then. The bats started to die as temperatures approached 42C, the study in Australia found. They are the first large mammal other than humans to be shown to suffer mass mortality during a heat wave.


Global warming sends salamanders packing

A genetic study of the salamander family that encompasses two-thirds of the world's salamander species shows that periods of global warming helped the amphibians diversify and expand their range from North America into Europe and Asia, where pockets of them are still found today.

Interestingly, while one period of warming allowed some salamanders to move northward into Asia via an arctic land bridge, the next warming period may have facilitated their return to North America.

The global warming that spurred the dispersal and evolution of these salamanders, however, took place in the distant past, over the course of tens of thousands or even millions of years, allowing the slow-moving salamanders time to seek suitable habitat farther north. This contrasts to today's warming, which may amount to a similar 6-8 degree Celsius rise, but in just a few hundred years.


Indonesia's corals threatened by climate change

But scientists fear many of Indonesia's pyschedelic reefs, already significantly damaged by blast fishing and pollution, now face an even graver threat: global warming.

Over the years, rising sea temperatures have led to severe coral bleaching in some of the most spectacular reefs off the palm-fringed islands of Sulawesi and Bali that are home to exotic fish like the brightly coloured clown fish and scorpion fish.

And environmentalists say if quick steps are not taken to stop the destruction, many reefs across the sprawling archipelago of about 17,000 islands could disappear in the next few decades.


Cyprus churches to pray for rain

The Orthodox Church of Cyprus has ordered priests to pray for rain to end one of the island's worst droughts.

Archbishop Chrysostomos II, the church head, urged priests to pray together on 2 December for rainfall to end a drought that had "blighted" the land.

The archbishop said Cypriots were "justifiably anxious" over the threat to water supplies and agriculture.


This winter may be warmest ever

The Northern Hemisphere is the warmest this year since record-keeping started 127 years ago, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
Temperatures for January through October averaged 1.3 degrees above the norm. If the trend continues, the year could break the record for the warmest set in 2005.

The Southern Hemisphere is its ninth-warmest since record-keeping began, the center said. Worldwide, this is the third-warmest year through October.

The USA has also seen warmer temperatures recently: The period from January to October was the seventh-warmest since records began in 1895, according to the national data center. The warmest for that period was in 2000; the second-warmest was in 1934.

More news.........

Nuclear industry may running out of steam

Rumours of a nuclear power renaissance have been greatly exaggerated. So says an audit of the nuclear power industry released on Wednesday.

The report, commissioned by The Greens, a European parliamentary group, points out that many ageing reactors are due to close before 2030, and that 338 new ones would have to be built just to replace them.


Kyoto Not Enough To Curb Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2007) — Kyoto was a valiant first attempt to tackle global carbon emissions, and support for the Kyoto Protocol is still needed in the international community, but it will not be enough to make a breakthrough with climate change.

BUSH THE ENVIRONMENTALIST?



Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects

By DAN FROSCH
Published: June 27, 2008

DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.

Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

Water use can be a factor as well, especially in the parched areas where virtually all of the proposed plants would be built. Concentrating solar plants may require water to condense the steam used to power the turbine.

“Reclamation is another big issue,” Ms. Resseguie said. “These plants potentially have a 20- to 30-year life span. How to restore that land is a big question for us.”

Another benefit of the study will be a single set of environmental criteria to weigh future solar proposals, which will ultimately speed the application process, said the assistant Interior Department secretary for land and minerals management, C. Stephen Allred. The land agency’s manager of energy policy, Ray Brady, said the moratorium on new applications was necessary to “ensure that we are doing an adequate level of analysis of the impacts.”

In the meantime, bureau officials emphasized, they will continue processing the more than 130 applications received before May 29, measuring each one’s environmental impact.

While proponents of solar energy agree on the need for a sweeping environmental study, many believe that the freeze is unwarranted. Some, like Ms. Gordon, whose company has two pending proposals for solar plants on public land, say small solar energy businesses could suffer if they are forced to turn to more expensive private land for development.

The industry is already concerned over the fate of federal solar investment tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. The moratorium, combined with an end to tax credits, would deal a double blow to an industry that, solar advocates say, has experienced significant growth without major environmental problems.

“The problem is that this is a very young industry, and the majority of us that are involved are young, struggling, hungry companies,” said Lee Wallach of Solel, a solar power company based in California that has filed numerous applications to build on public land and was considering filing more in the next two years. “This is a setback.”

At a public hearing in Golden, Colo., on Monday, one of a series by the Bureau of Land Management across the West, reaction to the moratorium was mixed.

Alex Daue, an outreach coordinator for the Wilderness Society, an environmental conservation group, praised the government for assessing the implications of large-scale solar development.

Others warned the bureau against becoming mired in its own bureaucratic processes on solar energy, while parts of the West are already humming with new oil and gas development.

Craig Cox, the executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, a renewable energy trade group, said he worried that the freeze would “throw a monkey wrench” into the solar energy industry at precisely the wrong time.

“I think it’s good to have a plan,” Mr. Cox said, “but I don’t think we need to stop development in its tracks.”

http://tinyurl.com/67ayy3

Vast Antarctic ice shelf on verge of collapse



Latest sign of global warming’s impact shocks scientists

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf — about 6,180 square miles (about the size of Northern Ireland)— was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread — we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."

Aircraft reconnaissance

The BAS scientists sent an aircraft out on a reconnaissance mission to survey the extent of damage to the ice shelf.

Jim Elliot, who captured video of the breakout said, "I've never seen anything like this before — it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble — it's like an explosion."

An initial iceberg calved away from the Wilkins Ice Shelf on Feb. 28. A series of images shows the edge of the ice shelf proceeding to crumble and disintegrate in a pattern characteristic of climate-caused ice shelf retreats throughout the northern Antarctic Peninsula. The disintegration left a sky-blue patch of hundreds of large blocks of exposed old glacier ice floating across the ocean surface.

By March 8, the ice shelf had lost just over 160 square miles of ice, and the disintegrated ice had spread over 540 square miles. As of mid-March only a narrow strip of shelf ice between Charcot and Latady islands was protecting several thousand more kilometers of the ice shelf from potentially breaking up.

The region where the Wilkins Ice Shelf lies has experienced unprecedented warming in the past 50 years, with several ice shelves retreating in the past 30 years. Six of these ice shelves have collapsed completely: Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

Antarctic warming

The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century until it began retreating in the 1990s. A previous major breakout occurred there in 1998 when 390 square miles of ice was lost in just a few months.

"We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing it to break up," Scambos said.

The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere; temperature records show that the region has warmed by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit during the past 50 years — several times the global average and only matched in Alaska.

Other parts of Antarctica, including the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, seem to be more stable, though areas of melt have been observed in recent years.

Melting in the Antarctic is different than the recent record melt in the Arctic. Antarctica is composed of ice sheets, or huge masses of ice up to 2.5 miles thick that lie on top of bedrock and flow toward the coast, and ice shelves, the floating extensions of ice sheets. Arctic ice is primarily sea ice, some of which persists year-round and some of which melts in the summer and freezes again in the winter.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23797247/

Let's also not forget one little interesting tidbit...

The earth's crust is essentially a series of thin solid plates floating on top of a giant ball of molten rock... a liquid.. And like anytime when you have a chunk of solid floating on a mass of liquid, if you push down on one part of it, another part of it lifts... or if you lift a part of it, another part depresses..

So what happens to the relative "stability" of the arrangements of plates when, in a relatively short time, geologically speaking, a few billion tons of weight is no longer sitting in the same place that it used to be sitting?

Of course, an "ice shelf" isn't particularly sitting on a chunk of the actual crust, per se... it sits on the seawater, which disperses the weight over a much wider area... fluid dynamics and all that bit... But the one bit that seems to be forgotten, is that the ice shelves actually *hold back* the continental ice mass.. They provide a resistance to what is essentially a couple of *MAMMOTH* glaciers that cover the Antarctic continent.. and flow downhill from the continental mountain ranges towards the sea...

Last statistics I read, from about a year ago, showed that the continental ice mass in Antarctica had already sped up 6 fold in its march to the sea.. And that was before this most recent bit of "shelf breakup"... Now factor in that the Larson C ice shelf.. the "Big Daddy" is expected to disintegrate as well in the next couple years...

ooh, we could have some interesting geological bits from that, methinks..

Arctic Ice the Size of Florida Gone in a Week
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Global ... 433&page=1

Humans cause climate change, US body accepts

AS THE Bush administration enters its final months, the US Climate Change Science Program has issued a report concluding that computer models do effectively simulate climate. It also accepts that the models show human activity was responsible for the rapid warming of the 20th century.

The report is the 10th of 21 due to be issued by the body, which the sceptical Bush administration set up late in 2002 to review the validity of climate-change science before making policy decisions. At the time, environmentalists accused the administration of using the programme as a way to drag its feet on the issue.
"Greens accused Bush of using the programme as a way to drag his feet on climate"

"The evidence is pretty convincing that the models give a good simulation of climate," lead author David Bader of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California told reporters last week. He concedes that the report did not examine predictions of future climate change. Nor did it address policy issues, which will be left to the next administration.

http://environment.newscientist.com/art ... cepts.html

Climate Change: When It Rains It Really Pours

ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2008) — Climate models have long predicted that global warming will increase the intensity of extreme precipitation events. A new study conducted at the University of Miami and the University of Reading (U.K.) provides the first observational evidence to confirm the link between a warmer climate and more powerful rainstorms.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144240.htm

Bush in Scandal Over G8 Climate Change Comment
http://globalwarminglife.com/articles/p ... 080711535/

Climate change: Prepare for global temperature rise of 4C, warns top scientist
Defra's chief adviser says we need strategy to adapt to potential catastrophic increase

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... matechange

Bush Administration Kills Climate Program for Developing Countries
http://heatisonline.org/contentserver/o ... ache=False

NOAA Forecasts Even Stronger Atlantic Hurricane Season For 2008 Than Earlier Predictio
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114131.htm

Birds Move Farther North; Climate Change Link Considered

ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2008) — A study by researchers at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) has documented, for the first time in the northeastern United States, that a variety of bird species are extending their breeding ranges to the north, a pattern that adds to concerns about climate change.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 182238.htm

Arctic sea ice melting faster than expected

If the pattern continues, warming effects could reach up to 900 miles inland, melting permafrost.
http://features.csmonitor.com/environme ... -expected/



US military launches war on global warming
http://environment.newscientist.com/cha ... news_rss20