Aug 9, 2010

Greenland Glaciers! Oh Nos!

Anthony Watts posted a mention that a glacier calve broke off on his blog the other day.

A Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan, UD scientist reports it last happened at this scale in 1962. BTW it fractured, not melted, and in case some people forget: glaciers calve to the sea there, it is what they do.

That's how glaciers work. Snow falls in the interior and the ice spreads and moves towards lower elevations- where it breaks off or melts. Next winter, snow will again accumulate in the interior.

The Greenland ice sheet has been exceptionally cold this summer.

But you won't hear the media mentioning that today -- oh no. It's Global Warming! It's the End of the World! You assholes driving SUV's have killed us all!!!

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) suggested a novel use Saturday for a 100-square-mile ice sheet that has broken off Greenland. “An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country,"
Markey said in a statement. (From The Hill) Markey, who got the science wrong, and the Hill doesn't seem to have checked very far, either.

PS - Peru is having record cold that has killed hundreds. And, as mentioned here before as well, Mars and the other planets are warming.

PPS - Double media points: As it turns out, the new ice island was born just in time for the 35th anniversary of the scientific paper that coined the term "global warming." On August 8,1975, the journal Science published the article entitled "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" by Wallace Smith Broecker of Columbia University! So now it's news!

No comments: