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?
Phil
Do you read the references before toss them out as a point of argument.?
I dont think any of the papers you referenced are anywhere near as definitive and certain as you infer.
Rather than being hoary old chestnuts as you call them, they look like matters of continuing debate with good arguments either way.
Malcolm
- pretty easy to dispatch
Basically 3 old hoary chestnuts
(1) Temp rise after the CO2 - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13
(2) CO2 saturation
-http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
-http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm
-http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142 see comment 54 !
(3) Plants – well different plants will respond depending on whether C3 or C4 metabolism. Rangelands may be covered in C3 woody weeds. And you need the rainfall to go with it or CO2 won’t help. But regardless the CO2 is going up up up – plants aren’t flattening the curve are they? Anyway big topic if you want to Google C3, C4 plants, climate change …
You said it was peer reviewed - just pointing out that it is not. Of course that doesn't mean it may not have any merit. Just that it isn't. Lots of people write papers with references but that doesn't make their paper itself peer reviewed. We should discuss it on its merits.
And to be fair dink - I could have obfuscated and said your link is a dud - you simply made a small typo - but I have provided the right link for more discussion.
So work me through the saturation references and argument and whatever else you think has merit.
1. His referenced papers would have been peer reviewed. Go on, now tell me his own paper has no intellectual merit whatsoever because it hasnt of itself been peer reviewed, even though the conclusions/evidentiary matters are based upon peer reviewed documents.
2. See references provided previously.
3. Well if one can't determine how natural variabilty takes place then it is all rather dubious. Saying so isnt a criticism of science or anybody... it is called being truth full
For some reason your link didn't work ... I Googled noworry.htm and found it...
http://www.astro.uu.se/~l/noworry.htm
(1) peer reviewed my foot
(2) who says we're saturated ?? references ??
(3) nobody is denying past variability - past regional variability - but that's not a useful argument - you need some drivers to explain then and now - just saying well we don't know isn't very scientific ?
Despite all the palaver posted above, it still leaves the question.
How did Greenland get its name in the first place.? It of course implies that the place was very different when it was so tagged, and when the vikings colonised it. Natural variability is it not?.
Also, came across this paper with all its references. Seems all very sensible to me.Peer reviewed as well.
http://www.astro.uu.se/~1/noworry.htm
Entitled "Why we don't have to worry about Co2."
That should stir them up.
And the artful dodger runs away - to make little quips another day ....
Phil,
amazing, self recogintion!
Anything else I could, or might, comment on.........
pales.........
Louis - you don't use any reasoning - just little quips - and then change topic !
If you were a scientist you would critique and expand on issues.
And "pits of vipers" - any basis for that comment ?
And,
Phil,
I have never criticised your references, just stated that some are ignored.