All In One Boat

“Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.”

Getting to Zero

My eye was caught this weekend by the colorful earthmap and short blurbs of planetary events put out by Earthweek.com. It’s always an interesting place to visit with colorful icons and short paragraphs about bird-life, rampaging bears, severe storms, rising waters. Come to think of it, there is scarcely ever any good news, perhaps because when life is good it is simply normal: the monarchs awaken and fly away; the polar bears find their food; the trees re-leaf in the spring. No news there.

The lead this week was “Glacial Surge” and a short bit about a British Antarctic Survey report saying that an enormous area of glaciers, high on the west antarctic land-mass had moved from a 1% per year slippage to 7%. If the trend continued, sea levels, from this ice-mass alone, could rise 10 inches over several decades. If neighboring glaciers follow, the rise could be 4-5 feet. The immediate thought of course, is “global warming!” Even a respected science reporter like David Perlman leaves that impression. A little scratching around says it ain’t necessarily so.

The report from BAS isn’t available online so it’s hard to know what it says, and with what emphasis. A few popular press reports get right that one, at least, of the investigators, Julian Scott, doesn’t think global warming is at play. The surrounding atmosphere is not warming, he is said to say. Others bury this relevant information deeper in the piece, leaving the impression that the slippage is another example of the main narrative: global warming.

Following a BBC article all the way through we learn that one mechanism might be “a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier. There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow.” But that begs an answer to the question: why now? Has the deep ocean current always been there and yet not had this effect? Has there been in the past, more sea ice to protect the glaciers? Or is the current newly come to the area and if so, why? And if it is new, or its actions new, wouldn’t this be related to larger climatological forces? Warmer air is not the only measure of climate change. The question is not asked and so we are left with worse than a mystery, the unasked question.

Another interesting discovery is that the area has a history of volcanic activity. Eruptions are known to have happened 2,000 years ago. It is possible, but unproven, that geothermal activity has increased this year. I suppose it is also possible that the geothermal activity is the same as it has been but the ice more susceptible to its heat. All yet to be discovered, but again no article asks if any such investigations are underway.

The danger of sea rise is still there, of course, whether the ice slippage is caused by geothermal, direct global warming, or a response to climate change related only in the third degree. Ten inches of water around the globe is a lot in terms of lateral reach and disruption of lives. So setting aside the blame you, blame your mother arguments for a while, what are the decision makers doing?

The British team has left a GPS device anchored to the ice to measure it’s slippage over the next months, so we’ll know something by summer and fall. I’d like to know what the scientists are looking into — what is the cause, to the best available knowledge, of this Texas two-slip? I’d even more like to know what the sand-bagging and marshland creating plans are in places I love.

From Andrew Revkin at the NY Times:

“The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.

“Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way,” read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

… More clucking about the cold is likely over the next several days. The Heartland Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to environmental problems, is holding a conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change.

The event will convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a dizzying range of views on the changing climate — from those who see a human influence but think it is not dangerous, to others who say global warming is a hoax, the sun’s fault or beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate scientists and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics’ last stand.”

Skeptics Skepticize