We've been told that Greenland is thinning at the margins,and the glaciers are retreating, but while all this is happening the icecaps are now apparently thickening. This is according to a new article in Science as reported by ABC Online:
"Greenland's icecap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists says.
The 3,000-metre thick icecap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about seven metres.
Satellite measurements showed that more snow was falling and thickening the icecap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science.
Glaciers at sea level have been retreating fast because of a warming climate, making many other scientists believe the entire icecap was thinning.
"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 cms a year or 54 cms over 11 years," according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and US institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup centre for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway.
However, they said that the thickening seemed consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture.
That extra moisture falls as snow below 0 degrees Celsius."
And some Australian climatologists have said that as it gets warmer it might get wetter. Is it still raining in Perth?
Malcolm - I'm sorry but he is he is advancing arguments that have been long dispatched.
He provides no references for his CO2 saturation assertion.
The temperature after the CO2 argument has another side which to be fair he would have to acknowledge and discount/defeat/argue on. It's not reasonable to think that the CO2 would start the warming from equilibrium but moreover an orbital variation would start it and then a reinforced CO2 feedback effect would set in.
In terms of my references being definitive or not - you'll notice in realclimate considerable arguments against the authors at times. Some vigorous. Some defended. It's far from being all one way and clear cut.
If there are clear errors of other evidence - advance it... I have to say I found one of my CO2 satuation references most interesting as it advanced my understanding no end. I learned something new about the intimate details of the physics.
The CO2 photosynthesis stuff is interesting and references are fine but where does it lead - will plants relieve us from rapidly rising CO2 - "no". and if you research closer to home - Australia FACE (free air carbon dioxide) experiments things are not as simple as they seem ecologically.
http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/ras/ozface/
You can also Google ... FACE experiments CO2..... if you want international study reports in free air.
I'm happy to debate any aspect with you. My reponse is primarily to the assertions of his paper not his references some of which support his argument, others are just "interesting" i.e. "did you know"s...
Just because he may quote some references that stack up - it doesn't mean his own argument necessarily does. That's not a logical a priori position.