ahh...if greenland is rising rapidly that would increase the elevation of the ice sheet, and therefore it would be exposed to colder temperatures. in other words at some time the negative feedback will allow the ice to become stable again instead of melting...or at least this is my theory. also is there any evidence that greenland is even close to being as warm as it was during the medevial warm period?

Reply: It is the bedrock that is rising at a quicker rate.

Usual nonsense of taking a couple of isolated measurements over a very short time period, jumping to pre-conceived conclusions, and tying it to global warming.

It is just as plausible an explanation that increasing ice in the center of Greenland is causing a bowl shaped deformation. i.e. sinking in the middle causes rising on the edges. Anyone who has jumped on an inflatable raft in a swimming pool is familiar with this. If one part of a land mass goes down, something else will have to rise up to compensate. We know that ice is increasing in the center of Greenland.

the post-glacial rebound of northern Great Britain is causing a corresponding downward movement of the southern half of the island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

Are plate tectonics ruled out here? That sounds more reasonable to me than some melting ice.

I'm no expert in this area, but it appears that two factors are in play, boyancy and the Eath's resiliency. An increase in boyancy suggests more density of the ice sheet. Since water is more dense than ice (water expands when it freezes), this phenomenon is compatible with the melting of the ice sheet. I don't think one has to propose resiliency to be operative here, but it is interesting.

Anyway, if indeed that is the case, and that has been demonstrated by satellite photografts and other measurements, then there ultimately will be less ice, not more exposed to colder temps, which would not act as a negative feedback.

Seem logical? Any physicists are welcome to weigh in.

Nature seems to be providing us with positive feedbacks, not negative. I suspect that the negative feedbacks will likely come via the Sun, with reduction in sun storminess or changes in the relectiveness of the atmosphere. Hopefully, inventive minds will find other man-made solutions. But they won't matter if we continue to do things to overwhelm them.

This paper is somewhat pathetic in it's child like examination of this issue. Floating upward ... how about isostatic adjustment. It would be nice to see at least one reference to the isostatic rebound that has occurred since the last ice age but hey this is GLO-BULL warming science so we don't need to check past studies or even worry about accuracy. We have data since 2001 ... 6 whole years worth and that is enough for someone like Revkin to spot a trend & draw a conclusion.
Interesting stuff about water greasing the base of the ice sheets!! May work for alpine glaciers but continental ice sheets are a tad more complex. I noticed on the accuweather blogs recently that the Greenland summit station was - 54 to -56 C ... not too much melting happening this week.

Speaking of floating, the UN IQ seems to be floating close to zero.

"I was told by scientists that the entire Western Antarctica is now floating. That is a fifth of the continent. If it broke up, sea levels may rise as much as six metres," Mr Ban said after being briefed at the Chilean, Uruguayan and South Korean bases during a day trip to King George Island, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2852908.ece

A few minor problems. First the IPCC now says Antarctica is not warming. Second, if the ice sheet actually was floating as the Honorable Secretary General says, then it couldn't raise sea levels by breaking up or melting. Third - sea ice is at record levels around Antarctica indicating cooling air and water.

We have incompetent scientists leading blind bureaucrats. Albert Einstein said "Two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure about the universe."

Is this not isostatic uplift? as a land mass loses ice then the land will rise or rebound from this weight loss. Equally as ice increases, the land mass is forced down under the increased weight. The area where i live in Scotland is still rising (couple of millimeters per year)as a result from the end of the last glaciation.
It is quite a reasonable assumption that the same would go for Greenland. Even though there is still a huge amount of ice remaining on Greenland, it may still be experiencing uplift from the last glaciation when the amount of ice would have been greater, this coupled with the present ice melt could explain the current acceleration in uplift.

you know, as I recall, either PH, or another skeptic commented that if the ice melted, the land would rise and the net change in water elevation would be greatly reduced by it. Gotta admit, I found that to be hilarious and unlikely. This in spite of the fact that I know the earth does move in response to a change of load.

Gosh, if all of the ice melts maybe we'll start to have to deal with landbergs as the calve off of the floating island. LOL

A 4 cm/year lift is not likely to be a sufficient amount to increase cooling of the Greenland ice sheet. I suspect that it would have to be on the order of hundreds of meters per year to significantly cool the ice due to an increase in altitude.

Greenland appears to be floating upwards � its landmass is rising up to 4 centimetres each year, scientists reveal.

This sentence is rather misleading (Surprise!!! Who would have thought?). It turns out that as you read on down through the article, six paragraphs down you see this sentence "...have found that the southeastern tip of the country is definitely rising upwards."

So now Greenland's land mass has been reduced to the southeastern tip. The rest of the article is about meltwater, moulins, and a rehashing of previous studies.

I would like an estimate of what percentage of Greenland is rising at this "unprecedented" rate.

Reply: Paul, I had that same thought when i posted this, because it just focuses on the southeastern tip. Brett

Mr. Bllom, I'm sure, will entertain us with many articles showing that the Greenland ice cap is melting on at least one day every year, adding to this catastrophe in the making.

(off topic)

Uh oh!! Looks like Yellowstone is rising at an even faster rate (7 cm/year)!

At this rate, the ice cap over Yellowstone will cause a sea level rise of... never mind. There isn't an ice cap on Yellowstone. Better hope that we don't have another caldera forming event there or we will be in for a nuclear winter the likes which hasn't been seen for... well, 642,000 years!!

There has been no increase in icebergs off of Greenland, in fact they are about average and well below record levels the last few years. This is the best indicator of glacial ice movement and does not corroborate the author's conclusions.

I have a brillant idea, that will help solve the melting problem and the drought in the SE. Let's tow the melting iceburgs down to the southeast US and let them melt on the parched southeast. That way the oceans won't rise and the drought will be eased.

PH:

Thanks for the link, funny article. I especially like that the scientists chipped out the old glacier ice to fill the guys drink. Talk about hypocrits, I thought the ice was sacred. The funniest part is that if the UN guy had watched his old ice melt in his glass of booze, he would have noted that the level of the liquid would not have changed thereby discounting his statement to the press.

Ooop...need to get the scowl back on, would hate for anyone (David) to think I don't care about the good Earth. Bad humans, bad humans. LOL

Hi Guys,

May be the lower parts of Greenland by the shoreline might be getting warmer due to the AMO but in the last 70 years there has not been much net temperature change. The interior ice sheet of Greenland is getting thicker and the uplift is most likely due to the rebound from the last ice age. See the links below for more in depth reading if you care to.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Greenland_vs_AMO.jpg
https://www.cresis.ku.edu/knowledge/newsletter/old/Icebreaker_fall_06.html
http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMILF638FE_planet_0.html

Admittedly an ice core is only a single point (place) measurement, but if you believe the ice core temperature record, then the Greenland ice is not much warmer now than in the late 1800's, when it was the coldest it's been in 10,000 years.

You AGA deniers are funny. You even deny the Science. Just goes to show how an unscientific mind works.

the polar ice caps melt

Inverse correlation of temperature vs. number of pirates
http://www.americanthinker.com/piratesarecool4.jpg

Would I be correct that the rising of Greenland will increase the volume of the ocean basin and compensate slightly for the extra water flowing into the ocean.

When are they going to open the vacation resorts on Greenland as a result of Global Warming?

David S.,

Care to elaborate or are you just one of those drive-by commenters?

Patrick H.,

That looks like a better correlation than Republican members of Congress. However, many members of Congress are also pirates. Does the number also include those Pirates in Pittsburgh and at DisneyWorld?

I very much like Patrick Henry's analogy of Greenland being like a person getting into the middle of a life raft, and the edges rising. Continental Plates are partly rigid, partly flexible. (For a while I lived in Golspie, at the top of Scotland, and the raised beaches up there are impressive.) The link he gives is very interesting.

How is the ice thickness measured in the center of Greenland? If it is measured by GPS satelite, isn't there a possible arguement that the ice isn't getting thicker, but the whole continental plate is rising? I expect to hear this arguement sooner or later, and would like to have an answer handy, if there is one.

I will of course head north to study the center of Greenland myself, if the grant is large enough. A little extra money will be necessary, for I will need to travel by way of Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, in order to check out reports that this arctic warming is actually caused by blonds.

Caleb,

The ice is getting thicker in central Greenland. The effect of this is to depress the land underneath it. The amount of depression = (increased ice depth) * (ice density) / (mantle density).

Thus 1m of additional ice will depress the land underneath it by about 30cm. This skews satellite observational data because the increase in elevation is less than the increase in ice depth.

As the mantle underneath gets pushed down, it creates a highly viscous and slow moving wave radiating outward through the mantle, which may well explain the increase in elevation seen in this study.

Patrick.

Thanks for the info.

The entire subject of the geology of how the bedrock is moved up and down and sideways by ice-caps is fascinating. As I mentioned, I could see visable evidence in Scotland that the land was still lifting, and had lifted in the recent past. What I didn't know was that London was sinking. This suggests that the European Plate has some flex to it, and that, as Scotland was burdened by ice during the last ice age, not only did London rise, but the entire English channel may have risen and been a land bridge.

Then, when the ice melted, the process reversed, (helped along by the seas slowly rising hundreds of feet.) The Dutch got very good at battling the rising sea with dikes, but there is lots of interesting lore (that sounds a bit like Atlantis) about people who lost the battle. The Frisian people built raised towns and have plenty of tales of floods, and a reason they influenced European history may be because they had to move to higher ground as their land became islands.

While the sea rose gradually for the most part, I heard an interesting theory suggesting an icecap plugged the Baltic, forming a huge lake. When the English Channel began subsiding, the ice-plug remained to the north but let loose all at once down the English Channel, creating a situation similar to what created the Scablands of the Pacific Northwest. This theory suggested that the subsiding of the English Channel wasn't slow and gradual, but a series of jolts, which made the crumbling of the ice dam all the more dramatic. The jolts not only lowered the channel but raised the Baltic, which emptied the lake faster, which reduced the weight pressing down to the north, which led to the next jolt. The entire huge Baltic lake thus emptied very swiftly, contributing to a sea level rise of several feet, which led to the Black Sea filling and the story about Noah.

I should confess at this point that I made this whole theory up. No one will fund my trip to Greenland, so I have to make up theories without much reserch, but studying Global Warming is making me good at making up theories. The idea occurred to me because when I was in Scotland there were still very small earthquakes, which were said to be the land shrugging off the after-effects of the huge burden of ice it once bore, even after thousands of years.

Even if this particular theory cannot be verified by science, it is obvious that mankind went through huge climatic changes. It is likely the best archeological sites are under hundreds of feet of sea water, where the coasts used to be.

I wonder how the ancient people responded to the changes. I hope they didn't do anything dumb, like sacrificing perfectly good virgins to appease the gods. We of course are far too modern and intellegent to sacrifce virgins. With us it will be SUV's, and change hasn't really even happened yet!

Caleb,

SUV's are just the "tip of the iceberg." Hillary and Obama have promised to sign an agreement committing the US to reducing GHG by 80% before 2050.

Some simple math - US population is expected to increase 30% during that time, so the per capita reduction would be considerably larger than 80%. Agriculture currently generates 20% of our GHG. Thus an 80% reduction would require that we completely ban all industry, transportation, electricity, gas, coal, housing, fire and breathing. We would also have to reduce our agriculture by 30%.

In other words, Hillary and Obama's plan would require that the United States be removed from the map, and that the entire population be eliminated.

Patrick Henry,

You're preaching to the choir. I'm trying to make a go of the family farm, and that's why the climate concerns me. When it comes to people who have never farmed telling me how to farm, the