Dr. L.C.'s sententious "gone forever" is true in the narrowly semantic sense that Adam Ayles's namesake shelf won't return AS WAS. More honest/ scientific is the postscript about the present "interglacial period": It appropriately torpedoes the insinuation that the former "Ayles" shelf won't have successors, since no one disputes that Earth's climatic history has been replete with glacial advances and recessions --- NONE triggered, in either direction, by ANYthing humans ever did or failed to do.

Bizarre, here as in other such "expert" pronouncements, is the absence of ANY mention of our planet's neighborhood furnace: The power with which the Sun floodlights us dwarfs by 17,900:1 ALL of mankind's energy output! In fact, our total energy production is barely 1% of just the observed up-down FLUCTUATION in the so-called "solar constant," i.e., the tiny cone of solar radiation aimed at Earth (scroll to mid-page at http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/klima2003/groessen.html ).

Wilfully to ignore solar waxing & waning, together with long-term variations in Earth's orbital plane (changing the angle of incidence of Ole Sol's rays), as well as orbital eccentricity and precession (see http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm ), is arrantly un-, even anti-scientific obscurantism. Its cousin, the notion that "maybe we're speeding up" or are capable of slowing down ANYthing cosmic, betrays pathetic, if not pathological hubris --- the hallmark of ideologues populating mediadom, politics and, alas, too much of today's "scientific" community.

Sincerely,
Hans-Udo Kurr
(retired U.N. Simultaneous Interpreter)

I am very suspicious of the 10% percent remaining number Considering that sat photos have only been around in a reliable fashion, and accurate human measurmeants are few and far between, there is no way anyone can accurately estimate the past size of the glacier. I would say 1960 would be the earliest baseline, and a few years prior to that a major fault occured- that is smack in the middle of the last PDO minimum. I seriously doubt anyone would aruge that 90% of the ice shelf melted in a 30 year period (the majority of recent warming has occured only since 1977).

Another curious thing that arises is the 3000 year estimated age of this ice shelf. The ice is based on a few pieces of ancient driftwood - diftwood that could have embedded itself into the ice only recently. We just don't know.

What we do have is a guess on the orginal size of the ice shelf (or is it really a glacier?) based on pure speculation. The age of this ice is based on a few pieces of embedded driftwood. Like all AGW stories, speculation and hype that passes as science gets reported.

My science teacher believes that global warming is not the problem. He had a graph that showed us that every 2-3 million years the earth goes through a phase.. meaning the 2-3 million years are warm..then the next 2-3 million years cool down.

but im still worried about global warming

Yep, it is only that fringe group known as scientists that believe in global warming.

I do not *believe* in global warming. What I do know and observe is an extremely rapid rise in observable climate phenomena, linked to human activity. I also observe both in data and on our family farm (200 years of one-family business), the effects of these phenomena and data. For a *science teacher* to refute this with such a shallow *belief* is just more data for the poor quality of science instruction in America.

Bottom line - Man gives himself way too much credit for having an effect on the earth. Who really cares if the temperature goes up a degree over ten years - The earth's temperature has been much warmer than it is now and man will have no effect on the temperature for the future.

Put aside your political bs and pat yourselves on the back for real changes such as cleaning up waterways and making it unpopular to litter. I realize that by putting aside the political bs you also must put aside funding for all your senseless studies. Do it anyway!

Just know - To the vast majority, people who preach about global warming are nothing more than a bunch of self serving whackos.
Al Gore - I rest my case.

"EJ"'s assertion that "scientists believe in global warming" quite mistakenly implies unanimity among climatologists on the "global warming" issue. Since even EJ surely will concede The Massachusetts Institute of Technology didn't win its global reputation with wannabe's, I invite EJ & like-minded folks to read what Richard S. Lindzen, MIT's Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, has had to say about the origins of the canard EJ and so many others have swallowed (http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html ).

EJ's contention also sidesteps or simply reflects ignorance of the fact that what many skeptics rightly challenge is the notion that what HUMANS - yes, ALL humans, collectively! - do or fail to do is anything more than an infinitesimally marginal factor in terrestrial climatic shifts as contrasted against the incomparably greater power that Nature's quintessentially CYCLICAL forces bring to bear. For some of the proof - yes, EJ, "tons" of evidence adduced by SCIENTISTS who refuse to kow-tow to fundamentally anti-scientific dogmatists pandering bogus Orthodoxy - please trouble yourself really to dig into the links my earlier post provided.

Sincerely,
HUK

Hans,

Thanks for the links. I wasn't familiar with all of them. I am skeptical (to the complete annoyance of several on this site) of GW and how the "Theory" has been presented. The links you provided speak toward some of my major concerns with the GW Theory.

As it is presented to the general public, GW is shown as the result of a closed system - greenhouse gases, only emitted by humans by the way, are reported as the only cause of rising "observed" rising temps. I have not seen the impacts of solar output variability, variations in the orbit plane and planetary tilt, interstellar dust accumulation in the atmosphere addressed much at all by BW proponents. Likewise, cycles of heating and cooling which occurred sans humans in the past are suddenly (and humorously) both caused by and controllable (slowing, stopping or reversing GW)by humanity. How absurd!

I look forward to other information you may post in the future.

Hey Samm,

You don't need to worry about global warming even if it is real - it just isn't going to make much difference in your life. A degree or two increase in temperature is not going to change much. Just think about how cool it is in the morning and how much warmer it is in the afternoon; a change of 10 to 20 degrees, right? That is not a problem, so a degree or two is not a problem either.

Your science teacher is right. Our climate is always changing (also called dynamic). Some scientists speculate we are coming to the end of an ice age, most don't know one way or the other. We don't have the temperature data or the technology to say either way. Contrary to what you hear in the news, our scientific knowledge is very limited. Just listen to the weather reports and then record how often they are correct. You'll find they can't correctly predict the weather past about 9 hours in the future. Knowing that, there is no reason to believe they can predict our weather or climate 50 or 100 years into the future.

You have more important things to consider Samm; dating, getting good grades, what you want to do with your life (a tough choice for young people). Don't let the doomsayers get you down - they seem to enjoy scaring children with their nonsense. Sure, our scientists know a lot of things, but they don't know everything, and they can't predict the weather worth a hoot. So, ignore them and enjoy yourself. Life is good.

Hans, I wonder if you would please explain to us how phenomena with periods of 100,000 (Eccentricity), 41,000 (Axial Tilt), and 23,000 (Precession) years help explain the dramatic changes observed in Arctic ice shelves in the last ONE HUNDRED years.

Wilfully to ignore solar waxing & waning, together with long-term variations in Earth's orbital plane (changing the angle of incidence of Ole Sol's rays), as well as orbital eccentricity and precession (see http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm ), is arrantly un-, even anti-scientific obscurantism. Its cousin, the notion that "maybe we're speeding up" or are capable of slowing down ANYthing cosmic, betrays pathetic, if not pathological hubris --- the hallmark of ideologues populating mediadom, politics and, alas, too much of today's "scientific" community.(emphasis mine)

I note with interest the second paragraph of your very informative link to the Milankovitch Cycle page:
It is of primary importance to explain that climate change, and subsequent periods of glaciation, resulting from the following three variables is not due to the total amount of solar energy reaching Earth. The three Milankovitch Cycles impact the seasonality and location of solar energy around the Earth, thus impacting contrasts between the seasons.

At first blush, it appears that the authors of your very own link are guilty of your "arrantly un-, even anti-scientific obscurantism" charge.

I actually DID read the links you posted, all the way through. It appears to me that they describe two essentially independent phenomena, a fact explained rather succinctly in the above excerpt from the Milankovich Cycle reference.

The overwhelming majority of the relevant scientific communities have presented what is, to me, compelling evidence in support of the "notion that what HUMANS - yes, ALL humans, collectively! - do or fail to do is [something] more than an infinitesimally marginal factor in terrestrial climatic shifts"

I invite you to challenge that evidence, or offer an alternative explanation for it. Simply claiming your belief as "fact" is not, in my view, persuasive.

This may be what EJ was attempting to say.

Tom,

naively, it turns out, yours truly assumed the link illustrating the, dare I say, astronomically gargantuan disproportion between the Sun's and our own collective power output would suffice to refute the, IMHO, fatuous "yes, but" assertion thrown into the otherwise neutral brief on Mylankovitch that I offered in the other link. That said, let me quote from another commentary on that trio of cycles - whose interactions, I hasten to add, still aren't fully understood: "Ultimately, ocean circulation and ice volume are being controlled by atmospheric dynamics that must be sensitive to Milankovitch
variations in incoming solar radiation" (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:UXmzP-iPu-4J:www.maureenraymo.com/2003_Raymo%2BNisancioglu.pdf+NY+Times:+Milankovitch+cycles+successfully+correlated+to+ice+ages&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=11&client=firefox-a). The plain-English message here, I submit, is that variations in solar energy reaching Earth ARE decisive and what we ants do/don't do is not. Moreover,..

First - and, for all of us, fortunately - all three Mylankovitch cycles ARE very drawn-out, as have been Earth's past cycles of glacial advance and recession. Obvious as it is that humankind didn't & couldn't trigger those remote, but unquestionably cataclysmic comings and goings, I'm baffled by your apparent lack of curiosity as to what did & could. Surely you don't see Earth as a closed, self-sufficient eco-system, the corollary being, "Why bother looking at the Sun"�

Second, you gratuitously imply that I claimed the Mylankovitch cycles drive SHORT-term climatic gyrations that, alas, do govern the babble of rabble-rousing pols, their media pals, researchers feeding both these cohorts while feeding off taxpayer $$$ mislabeled "government grants" AND of the groupies parroting that troika. Third, you carefully ignore the Antarctic, where NASA - not, say, Exxon - data (http://www.klimanotizen.de/html/newsletter_10.html scroll appx. 1/3 page down for two color-coded maps and www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html: "Satellites show overall increases in Antarctic Sea Ice Cover Around Antarctica") show COOLING for all but the Peninsula --- dramatic enough, since it blows to smithereens a tenet ("polar amplification," as in BI-polar!) central to "greenhouse" theory.

Let's by all means now turn to the past 100 years and the Arctic, starting with the past 30 or so: 1979, after all, saw the first satellite-based observations --- and the baseline for "Arctic meltdown" footage with which the "we're-to-blame" lobby loves to terrorize the ignorant (http://www.everybodysweather.com/Static_Media/Polar_Ice_Cap_Melter/). PBS isn't on anybody's list of putative pollution lovers, hence it's a relief that NOVA revealed the early 1970's brought to the Arctic several years-without-summer, roughly paralleling what trapped the Franklin Expedition back in the mid/late 1840's (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3307_arctic.html). Those early '70's thus set an ABNORMALLY ice-choked stage for those first satellite pix...which warming-fanatic fear-mongers and U.S.-bashers are now passing off as a mythical "norm"! I hope the disingenuous manipulation to which I've just pointed makes you at least a tiny bit angry at those behind it.

Farther back in the century, the still-unbeaten hot '30's came decades BEFORE the on-set of mass automobile travel in America (with its CO2-spewing concomitant), while the cold '70's came about a generation AFTER that watershed. I hope, again, the fact that the INVERSION of ALLEGED cause and CLAIMED effect thus displayed will make you question at least a tiny bit the vitriol heaped by the hothouse lobby on anyone unwilling to submit.

Sincerely,
HUK

There may be scientific discussion over the causes of global warming (man vs natural cycles), but there's little doubt that the world, is in fact, warming. The evidence is overwhelming, and comes from scientists around the world.

It's a bit amusing, though, to read strong opinions that 6 billion humans can't have an affect on their climatological environment. We've made a pretty big impact on earth in every other way, why not climate? Consider the following:
- Extinction of thousands of animal species
- Mercury in seafood
- Destruction of coral reefs
- Man-caused spread of invasive species of plants and fish
- Acid rain
- Polluted rivers and oceans
- Loss of beaches from man-made structures and activities
- Loss of forest land
- Heat island effect

The point is, we live in a finite world, and we're reaching the point that our activities are going to have an impact on our climate. And to think otherwise is just wishful naivety.

Just to build on Greg's last point, the worldwide fallout resulting from unrestrained atmospheric nuclear testing during the fifties is certainly measurable and certainly has a measurable (and measured) effect on human cancer rates. It takes a rather dramatic leap of faith to assert that other environmental effects do not also result.

Hey Greg,
You are right about a few of your points but way off on a few as well.

As a scuba diver, I can guarantee you that a hurricane can and has destroyed reefs and a much faster rate than man ever could. Look at the reef off of Aruba for an example.

As far as losing forest land. When's the last time you flew across the U.S. ? I forget the exact number but actually a very miniscule percentage of the U.S. is developed. All you see is trees! Furthermore, trees that are used for paper, lumber etc. are planted specifically for that purpose and re-harvested at a later date.

Certain parts of the world still live like animals and always will. For the most part the United States has done more than any other industrialized nation in the world to take care of the environment and make it better.

Go to Mexico, Africa India or any third world nation and look at the pollution produced by factories or by the lack of sanitary sewers and people washing clothes upstream of where the sewage comes in.

Everyone wants to act as if America is this tyrant in the world with no regard for their fellow humans or the environment. I realize you are speaking about the world as a whole and you are partially right. Just realize that mother nature has substantially more power than 6 billion humans and can destroy whatever she wants in a fraction of the time of what it would take the human race collectively.

Look at the toxic emissions from one volcanic eruption, the path of destruction of a hurricane, tornado or the occasional tsunami. My point is once again that man is but a spec on this planet and the amount of time we will live on this planet is miniscule. Therfore the effect we have on the planet is minimal although extreme in certain localized areas throughout the world.

The gulf of Mexico at New Orleans is losing coastline at an alarming rate and has nothing to with man. The ocean is taking the coastline and man was dumb enough to build a city below sea level (and dumb enough to rebuild it) so if mother nature decides to take that coast - she will!

In closing, don't worry too much about the plight of the planet. It will be fine and long after we are all gone. It's in better shape than when we found it and plants, animals, ice shelves etc. will continue to go through cycles. Cycles that will include flourishing, decline maybe extinction but everything goes through cycles.

Greg, Tom,..:

Thought-provoking list, that! Well, since some/all of you may well, like yours truly, be participating in this discussion (of a sort) because you're also, like me, forking over a few bucks a month to subscribe to Accu-Professional...because you're also interested & literate enough in things CLIMATOLOGICAL, it's amusing to see a conflation of the unquestioned ability we DO have to sully & wreck what's 'round us...with power ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than ALL we can bring to bear. Hurricanes come to mind:

"Even smaller hurricanes pack a mind-boggling amount of power. The heat energy released by a hurricane equals 50 to 200 trillion watts - or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes (http://www.ucar.edu/news/features/hurricanes/)." Maybe THAT's why folks like me find Gorian antics so amusing....no, frightening, really...because of the one-sided straitjacketing their rabidly one-sided preachments threaten to impose (see the water pollution item from your list, below).

Do let's take a look at your list, now, starting with the last item:

The URBAN heat island effect, I couldn't agree more, reflects the fact that people most certainly can & do affect, even radically, the surface environment surrounding any given meteorological station: Every metropolis, obviously man-made, compounds massive asphalting, underground heat-piping, plus huge numbers of solar-heat-absorbing & -retaining buildings, with millions of tightly packed human beings...creating hot spots (http://eetd.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/LEARN/). Understandably, THAT part of "human-induced," namely, the impact humankind IS having on LOCAL/ MICROclimates, the "we-re-to-blame" gang hardly ever whispers about. Could that (otherwise bizarre) omission reflect the fact that most stations included in global composites are in towns and cities...which inevitably will generate MORE heat, the BIGGER they get? Any rational, unbiased observer will accept as common sense that for comparability, for a REALISTIC assessment of temperature trends, you have to correct for this urban heat island effect. Exactly how and how much, of course, is an inevitable and, yes, inevitably controversial corollary.

If you're a parent, like me, you sure have no excuse for being indifferent to mercury in seafood -- and, trust me, avoiding THAT sort of contamination, right along with growth hormones & antibiotics pumped into poultry, etc., ranks high on MY list of priorities when it comes to food-shopping.

If, like me, you live amidst, rather than just talk/write about forest lands, you sure DON'T want them decimated --- and, indeed, forward-looking CONSERVATION is another of my own watchwords. By contrast, the short-sighted PRESERVATIONIST - i.e., "don't touch a single tree!" - approach that turns tangled, overgrown woods into powderkegs just waiting for the "right" thunderstorm...is among the causes pushed by urban elites utterly divorced from reality, while cushily insulated from the recurrent infernos their pet-poodle pols foist on folks "out there," i.e., out HERE.

As for water pollution - which, of course, I abhor - decades of first-hand professional exposure leave me astounded at the ferocity with which self-anointed champions of purity savage, for instance, our domestic "oil patch"...while remaining spinelessly and oh-so-hypocritically silent about the ravages the Chinese Empire, a.k.a. "People's Republic," has wrought on the ecosystem within its imperial borders - notably including conquered Tibet - and is sure to continue to wreak, not least by "virtue" of its damnable exemption from "Kyoto"!

I could pursue this...but maybe there's no real point: Neither my observations on "polar amplification" nor on the Antarctic COOLING that surely DISproves it have drawn ANY response --- though folks TRULY interested in climatology should at least TRY to come to grips with that little dilemma.

HUK

Greg, concerning your list:

Extinction of thousands of animal species - is unprovable. The studies and numbers you see are the result of statistical research which is complete BS. Until you have some empirical evidence that we are causing extinctions in those numbers it's just more eco-wacko nonsense used to scare people.

Mercury in seafood - According to seafood.ucdavis.edu/Pubs/mercury.htm, "Swordfish and tuna are the only commercially popular fish that may have a mercury content above 1 ppm. These two species accumulate mercury as they grow larger because they consume large amounts of small fish.

Commercial fishermen capture tuna and swordfish at sea, far from any source of industrial pollution. The mercury in their system must come from natural sources. For years, we have probably eaten tuna and swordfish with mercury levels above FDA's limit without harmful effects. Analysis of museum specimens of tuna caught from 1879 to 1909 reveal that they contain levels of mercury as high as those in fish being caught today. Scientists therefore conclude that mercury levels in tuna, and probably swordfish, have not changed in the past 100 years." We are also more stringent than the Europeans in our mercury level guidelines, though we have changed them as our knowledge about mercury and our ability to test for it has increased.

In addition, mercury is a naturally occurring metal in our environment that will be there weather we have anything to do with it or not. I suggest you read the article, it is very interesting.

Destruction of coral reefs - Mark handled the coral reef issue quite well, but I'd like to add that coral reefs in the US and Australia are protected by law. I expect that is true of many places around the world.

Man-caused spread of invasive species of plants and fish - You know some plants and animals and most especially microbes are just natural hitch hikers. Take burrs for example; they are designed to stick to fur and feathers so the plant can spread its seed far and wide. Floods from rain in Maine back in 2005 (I think, could have been 2003) caused some dams to be breached in the back country and pike entered trout waters where they have been fat and happy ever since. Also, Lake Erie is clean today because of the zebra mussel, and the small mouth are fat and happy because of the goby, but neither of those speciecies (zebra and goby) were intentionally brought over here. They hitched rides on cargo vessels.

Are you going to blame whales and basking sharks for spreading barnacles around the world?

Acid rain - I am all for scrubbers on coal plants, but the earth also vents sulphur dioxide and other acid rain chemicals all on its own through volcanoes and other sources like the geologic pools in Yellowstone. Also, the US has some of the largest coal resources in the world, and it is mostly what is considered "clean burning" coal. So with oil prices high, nuclear, the cleanest power source, out of favor, we should be burning a lot more coal.

Polluted rivers and oceans - It is illegal to pollute the waters in the US, and most of our waters have recovered quite well from our previous actions. You have to go to other countries, and typically 2nd tier and 3rd world countries to find what you are talking about. So why don't you go there and bang on them? We have no control over it.

Loss of beaches from man-made structures and activities - Where? Every coastal community in this country is concerned about erosion of beaches. They know what butters their bread. The only thing I know destroying beaches are hurricanes and the movement of the Gulf Stream farther out into the Atlantic and away from Cape Cod - which is losing beach as a result, and has been losing beach for at least the last 100 years. Did we cause that too? Of course not.

Loss of forest land - False. We have more forestland and trees in this country now than we did at the beginning of the 1800's. This is a fact you can check out for yourself. after all Greg, you can have your own opinion, but you may not have your own facts.

Now if you are talking about the Amazon or where ever - I don't know, but neither do you because you don't live there. And as far as the Amazon goes, those people are cutting trees to grow food so they can live. After they deplete the soil for their crops, they go cut out another area and plant there. The area they left quickly regrows with forest that actually like the poor soil, and it regrows in about 6 months. Do you have a problem with people wanting to survive?

Heat island effect - It is a local phenomena, and there is no proof that effects the overall climate. Empirical evidence shows that it has no effect at all on the rural areas surrounding cities.

But you know what Greg? Ants, bees, and birds also change their environments in order to live. As nations become more wealthy, they can afford to become more environmentally conscientious. But while they are poor and more concerned with surviving, it is unreasonable to expect them to put in the same kind of controls that we enjoy here. Most of the world is poor and for that reason alone, it won't happen for a long time.

You know the eco-wackos could do something to help some of those poor nations by urging them to use DDT to help