Thursday’s article on the impact of global warming on Greenland totally glossed over the impact of the melting ice sheet on the rest of humanity. Today, the same Post writer, Doug Struck, gets it right:
Too bad this story was buried on page 11 while the flawed story was on the front page where Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) couldn’t miss it (but could misquote it). Today’s story has other interesting and scary facts:
Greenland’s ice cap contains 800 trillion gallons of water and several outlet glaciers, huge rivers of ice that act as faucets from the ice cap. Those faucets are running faster. The Jakobshavn Glacier … has doubled its speed in five years and every day dumps enough ice into the sea to supply 20 to 30 New York Cities with water.
How fast is the “fastest-flowing glacier in the world” moving? A remarkable 135 feet per day, which 5.6 feet per hour or more than an inch per minute — you can watch it move. The glacier is moving faster than U.S. climate policy.
Semi-kudos to the Post.
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The other point the press and even advocates tend to miss is this: If conditions are sufficient to melt Greenland’s ice sheet, then large parts of the Antarctic ice sheet will also melt. It’s no more possible for it to remain unaffected, than it would be for one ice-cube in a glass to melt, while a second experiences no melting. The reason this is important is that sea level rise from melting Greenland’s ice sheet will never be 23 feet — it will be 23 feet plus the additional contribution from whatever the increased melting in Antarcta contributes — empirical data from the Geologic record suggests that if Greenland were to melt, it would mean a 50 to 60 foot rise in sea-level from the additonal melting in Antarctica.
This is the difference between losing a part of Manhattan, and loosing just about all of it.
Then the clowns at MSNBC muck it up again…
[quote]SAN FRANCISCO – Global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in.
In recent years, Greenland’s ice has been melting more and flowing faster into the sea — a record amount of ice melted from the frozen mass this summer, according to recently released data — and Earth’s rising temperatures are suspected to be the main culprit.
But clues to a new natural contribution to the melt arose when scientists discovered a thin spot in the Earth’s crust under the northeast corner of the Greenland Ice Sheet where heat from Earth’s insides could seep through, scientists will report here this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. [/quote]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22246005/