If you’re like me, you may have run across a number of stories recently about how Antarctic ice is melting and causing sea levels to rise and how all this is proof of global warming.
Well, there’s another side to this story that you probably haven’t been told.
It’s true that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been losing mass, but what you likely haven’t heard is that the Eastern Antartic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is GAINING mass.
You also likely haven’t heard that hte EAIS is three times the size of the WAIS, and that the mass it’s gaining more than offsets the mass being lost by the WAIS. This means that, on a continent-wide basis, Antarctica has actually been GAINING ice mass.
In the map above, the minuses represent where Antactica is losing ice and the plusses represent where it is gaining ice (due to snowfall).
ALL THIS IS EXPLORED IN THIS VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE BY ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST DR. PATRICK MICHAELS.
Something that Dr. Michaels doens’t mention but that immediately struck me upon looking at the map is that the minuses tend to occur near the coast of Antarctica (Duh! That’s where the ice slides toward and falls into the sea!), and that the western part of Antarctica is shaped in such a way that may lead to it being Antarctica’s natural ice slough-off point.
I just hope that so much ice doesn’t slough off that it uncovers the hideous Plateau of Leng or Kadath of the Cold Wastes!
Everyone, repeat after me: I will not beleive ANYTHING appearing in the MSM, until it has been it has been vetted by the blogosphere.
Really, the MSM could not think their way out of a paper cup, if it were upside down.
Scientists are actually divided on whether the seas would rise or fall due to ice melting. Since ice takes up more volume than water, the seas could fall, rather than rise.
Huh?
Yes, ice is less dense than water. That’s why it floats. Part of the ice sticks up above the surface of the water. Water is displaced only by the volume of ice below the surface, not the volume of the ice above the surface.
Once the ice melts, it will take up less total volume — but all the volume will be “in” the water, rather than some of it being “above” the water. Thus, the water level will rise (since in effect some of the “water level” was up in the air before, suspended in ice crystals).
A simple experiment should illustrate this:
Empty a tray of ice cubes into a pot.
Fill the pot to the very brim with water, so that the tips of the ice cube are sticking up over the level of the rim.
Wait for the ice to melt — and the water to overflow the pot.
Wow, this map looks eerily similar to the bubblegum-stained modern art piece in Michelle’s recent post.
This means something…
This is important…
SDG: your post has “I did this once as a kid when I tried to stuff as many ice-cubes as I could in my glass of soda on a hot day and it melted and got all over mom’s favorite table and I got in really really big trouble” written ALL over it.
Steve,
I’m just stating that scientists are not in agreement on the effect of the so-called global warming. Some think it will rise, others think it will fall. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Ed: Not exactly, but yeah, I’ve seen the dynamic in question in action. 🙂
Anonymous poster: I didn’t shoot anybody. My post was a substantial discussion, not a personal attack. If you have any further info, I’d be curious to learn more about what scientists may have said this or what their thinking may have been.
I didn’t realize I was anonymous. I’m your former co-worker. Barbara
Steve,
O.K., I found an on-line source: http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=119
Scroll down to the section of the sea level falling.
I know that things are confusing when you are standing upside down on the South Pole,
but I do wish they had the correct longitude labels on that map.
Somebody needs to do better proofreading.
(And automated spell checking won’t catch this,
just like it won’t catch an error I saw last
night in a worship aid:
“Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the word.”)
Somebody, shoot Barbara. She should not be allowed near a key board attached to a modem if she’s going to post confusing materials.
SDG: Yeah. right. Your 🙂 has a gulity look about it.
Scientists are like Rabbis. Put two in a room and you get three opinions. (And a Jewish guy told me that joke, so I’m not making fun of Rabbis)
Holy crap, Ed. Your comment about Barbara was totally harsh and uncalled for. Can you say “Rule 1 violation”?
Hi, Barbara. (You can put your name in the “name” field below, and then you won’t be anonymous. (‑: )
Thanks for the link. It does indeed put forward arguments for why global warming might cause the sea level to sink — due to factors such as gases trapped below the surface that could be released by melting ice.
FWIW, my point was not what global warming would or wouldn’t do to the sea level. It was only with what the effect of melting polar ice would be, specifically due to the relative density of ice and water.
Insofar as melting polar ice is a factor at all, it would be in the direction of raising sea level, not dropping it. (Unless the ice is somehow being pushed down below the surface by something other than more ice, I guess.)
However, this in itself says nothing about whether global warming might or might not have other effects that could cause the sea level to sink anyway.
In fact, one of the scientists cited acknowledges that the smaller the ice caps, the higher the sea level — and actually argues that global warming might cause the ice caps to grow, thus lowering the sea level! The argument seems to be: The warmer the oceans, the more evaporation, and the more water winds up at the poles turning into ice.
I dunno, it sounds loopy, but certainly it’s far outside the scope of the question of what happens to the water level with ice melts. Melting ice, at least melting ice that’s not being held underwater by something other than more ice, makes water levels go up.
ummm. i’m confused. i’m the third one to chime in on the joke about “shooting the messenger”, and i’m the one whose violating the prime directive?
what we see here, L&G, is either SDG demonstrating that humor is hard to convey in the blogsophere, bereft as it is of nuance, tone of voice, gestures, etc, or we see EP missing the same point and taking offense at SDG’s post. one of us has CLEARLY missed the point. it’s immaterial who.
oh, of course, should it have been me, i apologize
Ed: I apologize for the tone of my rebuke. It was an overreaction partly due to the fact that I used to work with Barbara, and I’m sorry.
That said, the (apparent) tone and import of your own comment strikes me as more appropriate in a response to someone like Realist who is wilfully spewing link garbage around than to a well-meaning poster like Barbara. I appreciate you explaining the joke to me, which as you surmised I didn’t get. I still don’t think it’s funny. But again, I apologize for my tone.
“Underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic Ocean far stronger than anyone ever imagined! (This strongly confirms my belief that underwater volcanic activity is heating the seas; not human activity.)”
“No wonder the ice is melting!”
See http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressR eleases/2003/pressRelease20030718/index.html
(From the Max Planck Society, 18 July 2003, The Fiery Face of the Arctic Deep.)
Same thing happening in Antarctica?????
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/erebus/erebus.html
Nuts.
Nobody got my Close Encounters reference.
…oh.
Now I get it.
Okay. I’m a moron.
Ed: Even after your explanation I still didn’t totally get the joke. I still thought you were facetiously making a semi-non-facetious point. Didn’t realize you were entirely goofing.
You are smart, and I am dumb. Deepest apologies.
okey-doke. on with life. 🙂
The GRACE satellites (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) measured all of the Antarctica ice. The net change in the amount of ice is negative: Antarctica overall has lost ice.
GRACE is actually two satellites. They orbit one after another and measure the distance between them. As their orbit passes over the Earth, mass concentrations pull at the first satellite before they pull at the second. The first satellite shoots a bit ahead of the second, and the difference between the two is measured. When they leave the mass concentration behind, the first satellite slows down a bit relative to the second and they go back to their nominal distance.
Your source is wrong. Antarctica is losing ice.
The amount of ice lost is not known exactly. As Antarctica loses ice, the continent rises somewhat, having been relieved of the weight. There is a net loss of ice, but the error bars are from 72 to 232 cubic kilometers of ice per year. The best value is 36 cubic miles per year. The change in water levels from the Antarctica ice alone would be .2-.6 mm per year. The change in ocean levels from other sources ads to that, and the ice that was supposed to form on Antarctica and isn’t adds more.
For as long as the GRACE satellites were up, Antarctica has been losing ice.
Antarctica wasn’t supposed to lose ice. Due to global warming, it was supposed to have more precipitation on the interior and the net accumulation of ice was supposed to protect the oceans somewhat from the rise due to global warming. That part of the prediction was wrong, meaning the oceans will rise far faster than predicted.
Your one commenter who talked about the water rising or falling with the melting ice was speaking about a small effect. Icebergs are virtually fresh water. Oceans are salt. If icebergs were melting into fresh water, then a floating iceberg would not change the water level as it melted away. Icebergs melting into saltwater dilute the saltwater slightly, causing a slight drop in the water level. The original poster was correct, even if he didn’t understand it.
Ice from Antarctica isn’t floating. When it melts, it raises water levels, no matter what.
Dr. Patrick Michaels (author of the TCS Daily article you cite) either isn’t fully versed in the GRACE experiment or deliberately chooses to ignore important points and cherry-pick data. I have no way of knowing which.
The earlier satellite data is from a cruder system that doesn’t have the resolution of GRACE. That’s why GRACE was launched. GRACE is designed to deal with a number of effects. One of GRACE’s purposes is to gauge the error introduced by the atmosphere into the GPS system.
Dr. Michaels and the CATO Institute are well known. Michaels was one of the people pushing satellite data that seemed to discredit global warming…until the anomalies were explained. He tends to be a loner that’s considered well out of the mainstream.
OK, the simple experiment that SDG proposes won’t turn out like he suggests. If you do that, the water level will stay exactly the same assuming one thing: the ice is all floating (and that requires that none of it be touching the sides or the bottom).
The volume of water that a floating item displaces is the amount of water that weighs the same as the item displacing it. Said another way, if you were to take a boat and put it on a scale, weigh it and then weigh the amount of water that the boat displaced when floating, they’d both weigh the same.
In the case of an ice cube, because of the above principle, when it melts it will displace the same amount of water because of the conservation of mass. The difference is that it will have shrunk to now barely fill that “hole” as opposed to sticking out of the water when expanded into ice.
But you don’t have to believe me. Try the experiment yourself. Just make sure that none of the ice cubes are touching the bottom or wedged against the side of the bowl/cup.
All of that said, SDG is right that ice is less dense than water and that if you melt the ice earth’s caps the water level is likely to rise because some of that ice is not floating and is resting on the ground (the bottom of the cup so to speak).
I am glad the author wrote this in the second paragraph:
Natural variability is sufficiently large on yearly and multidecadal time scales that it is simply impossible to conclude that anything other than natural variability is at play in either of these two stories.
There may or may not be global warming, but it is surely unwise to claim that the “warming” is caused by man’s activities.
I just have to laugh at this group- http://www.christiansandclimate.org/
The same love for God and neighbor that compels us to preach salvation through Jesus Christ, protect the unborn, preserve the family and the sanctity of marriage, and take the whole Gospel to a hurting world, also compels us to recognize that human-induced climate change is a serious Christian issue requiring action now.
(emphasis mine)
Archimedes’ Principle. Useful for measuring density.
Ken,
Freshwater is less dense than saltwater. Therefore, when it melts, it takes up a greater volume than the equivalent weight of saltwater. According to Dr. Peter Noerdlinger, the effect will be about 2.6%.
I just hope that so much ice doesn’t slough off that it uncovers the hideous Plateau of Leng or Kadath of the Cold Wastes!
Hey! I think I had a dream about that place once and . . . Uh-oh. Here come the horrible nightmare visions! (It’s called life, sit down!)
I just hope that so much ice doesn’t slough off that it uncovers the hideous Plateau of Leng or Kadath of the Cold Wastes!
Once again, Superman’s super-intelligence shines through – his Fortress of Solitude is at the North Pole, not the South Pole.
Yeah Rob, that’s true. In fact, boats that travel from the equator to the poles actually float higher and lower as they “sail” from one extreme to the other. A lot of tankers have marking on the sides that help indicate the salination of the water.
However, I was speaking just to the experiment that SDG mentioned, which should all be fresh water.
That saide, in the last paragraph of my post I did make concessions to the fact that the melting of the polar ice caps would indeed like make the sea level rise and I didn’t want to complicate the issue with lots of the reasons this might be and stuck to the one that is related to the experiment being discussed which many believe will be the largest factor in determining sea level. Salination is one of those that could go both ways because large amounts of salt trapped inside the ice caps could have the opposite effect on the sea level.
Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
“Nuts. Nobody got my Close Encounters reference.”
I totally did, Tim J! I was gonna comment on it, too. Very nice!
Oh, do NOT patronize me!
🙂
Last time I checked, as ice melts the water level stays the same. That’s why ice floats; as it melts it stays at the same bouyancy, so the surface level stays the exact same. If the glass overflows, that’s because the water expanded slightly due to warming; not because the ice cube melted.
For the volume of ice above sea level because it is supported by land, and not floating, the seas will rise, less the diminishment of volume that ice expands during freezing.
The problem with school is it does not teach people to think. It gets them to memorize, so we end up with a bunch of data spouting imbiciles who can’t hold a conversation of intellectual thread.
From today’s (March 8), Astronomy Picture of the Day:
” Is the continent at the end of the Earth slowly melting? For millions of years, Antarctica, the frozen continent at the southern end of planet Earth, has been encased in a gigantic sheet of ice. Recently, the orbiting robotic GRACE satellite has been taking sensitive measurements of the gravity for the entire Earth, including Antarctica. Recent analysis of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data indicate that the Antarctic ice sheet might have lost enough mass to cause the worlds’ oceans to rise about 1.2 millimeters, on the average, from between 2002 and 2005. Although this may not seem like much, the equivalent amount of water is about 150 trillion liters, equivalent to the amount of water used by US residents in three months. Uncertainties in the measurement make the mass loss uncertain by about 80 trillion liters. Pictured above is an iceberg that is a small part of the Antarctic ice sheet. Future research will likely focus on trying to better understand the data, take more data, predict future trends, and understand possible effects of these trends on the future climate of our entire home planet. ”
Note the large uncertainity in the measurement!!!