Links tagged “ice”

Paul Homewood: The point is admitted that it is actually warm water at a depth of about 300m which is undercutting the glacier. But it is physically impossible for greenhouse gases to have any measurable effect at all on waters at such a depth...

In reality, the scientists who wrote this study do not have a clue whether the retreat of the Denman is anything new or not, or whether the deep ocean temperatures are any warmer than before 1979. Or whether what they are observing is just a natural process.

They claim that since 1979, 250 billion tonnes of ice has been lost, equivalent to 0.5mm of sea-level rise. In other words, 1.3mm/C, hardly cataclysmic. They then go on to talk about a potential loss of 540 trillion tonnes, raising sea levels by 5 feet. Yet at current rates, it would take 2160 years for this to occur! As always with these sorts of studies, the authors refuse to say how long all this will take to happen.

Greenland: "Most of the ice loss is the result of receding glacier fronts, but the DMI confirmed in Nov 2018 that glaciers have more or less maintained their area since 2012. There is therefore no evidence of accelerating ice loss since 2003.

The claim that the Greenland icecap has been losing ice at a faster rate than in the 1990s is true, but it is also a red herring and has no bearing on future rates of loss. In 2003, scientists reported that Greenland had cooled significantly between 1958 and 2001. Unsurprisingly during this period of cooling ice loss slowed markedly. Since 2001, temperatures have recovered to levels generally seen in the 1930s and 40s (Fig 2), with a resultant increase in ice loss."

"Globally, sea levels have been rising steadily at a rate of about 2mm a year since the late 19thC, with a slow down between the 1960s and 90s. And, as the IPCC’s latest Assessment Report pointed out, the recent rate of rise has been similar to that between 1920 and 1950."