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Some interesting points to be noted in quotations from an article by:
Colin Woodard San Francisco Cronicle Monday August 21, 2000
Slowly But Surely, Iceland Is Losing Its Ice Global warming is prime suspect in meltdown(hasty retreat? how do we know it was hasty, have we measured it retreat at a slower pace previously? No!)Jokulsarlon, Iceland -- From the gravelly, newborn shores of this frigid lagoon, Iceland's Vatnajokull ice cap is breathtaking.
The vast dome of snow and ice descends from angry clouds to smother jagged 3,000-foot-tall mountains. Then it spills out from the peaks in a steep outlet glacier 9.3 miles wide and 12.4 miles long -- an insignificant appendage of Europe's largest ice cap despite its impressive size.A hundred years ago, however, there was no lagoon here. The shoreline was under 100 feet of glacial ice. The outlet glacier, known as Breidamerkurjokull, extended to within 250 yards of the ocean, having crushed medieval farms and fields in its path during the preceding centuries, a time now referred to as the Little Ice Age. (emphasis added, take note of the past conditions)
Today, Breidamerkurjokull's massive snout ends about two miles from the ocean. In its hasty retreat, the glacier has left the rapidly expanding lagoon, which is filled with icebergs calved from its front. The lagoon is 350 feet deep and has nearly doubled its size during the past decade. Every year, it grows larger, threatening to wash out Iceland's main highway. (emphasis added)
There is no doubt about it: Iceland and much of the rest of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions are warming up.(rapid retreat by who's standard and measurements? Is this just an emotive ploy to mislead you?)
Average winter surface temperatures in the Arctic have increased by two degrees centigrade during the past century, melting ice caps, glaciers, sea ice and permafrost.
During the past two years, researchers have concluded that:
-- Arctic sea ice shrank by 14,400 square miles per year from 1978 to 1998, a 6 percent reduction overall.
-- Sea ice thinned by about 40 percent in recent decades, from an average of 10.2 feet in the period from 1958 to 1976 to about 5.9 feet from 1993 to 1997. Current thinning is estimated at about 4 inches a year.
-- Since 1993, the Greenland ice cap -- the Arctic's largest -- has thinned by more than 3 feet a year on its southern and eastern edges.
-- Iceland, which brushes against the Arctic Circle, has seen a 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit rise in average summer temperatures since the early 1980s. The glaciers that cover 11 percent of the country have been in rapid retreat since 1995. (emphasis added)
And in an unprecedented development reported late last week, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the North Pole.
Year by year, a new landscape scrolls out from underneath -- land farmed by Iceland's early settlers but buried under hundreds of feet of glacial ice in the intervening centuries. (emphasis added)So it was warmer in medieval times, therefore it is almost certain that there was open water near the pole during summer.
Scientists think the changes are coming in part from global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from cars, factories and burning rain forests. But researchers cannot be certain. (emphasis added)
Many of the researchers who made the recent discoveries point out that there are large variations in the natural climate cycles in the Arctic, and that in most cases reliable data goes back only a few decades or even less.``The Earth is continually going through long-term changes in periods lasting decades or even centuries,'' said William Krabill of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's facility at Wallops Island, Va. (emphasis added)
Krabill, who helped discover the thinning of the Greenland ice cap, added: ``We definitely have a warming trend, but one of the questions scientists are trying to answer is how mankind's activities contribute to this trend, which may have been occurring already.'' (emphasis added)
His research team is able to take detailed measurements of the Greenland ice cap from a specially equipped P-3 aircraft; they show the edges rapidly retreating every year.
``It could be that the ice cover has thickened and thinned a couple of times in the 45-year record we have,'' he said. ``When we have a full, year-by-year record we'll know better how to interpret these observations.''The changes wrought by the rising temperatures are dramatic.
In the 250 miles between Breidamerkurjokull's lagoon and Iceland's capital of Reykjavik, the main highway passes another dozen outlet glaciers and two ice caps.Motorists cross vast gravel wastelands swept clean of vegetation by frequent and violent glacial floods. They pass terminal moraines: tall gravel ridges plowed to their present positions by advancing glaciers when Iceland's climate cooled in the 15th to 19th centuries. The glaciers have fallen back a kilometer or more this century as the climate warmed, briefly cooled, and recently warmed again. (emphasis added)
Year by year, a new landscape scrolls out from underneath -- land farmed by Iceland's early settlers but buried under hundreds of feet of glacial ice in the intervening centuries. (emphasis added)
``We're seeing a major shift in our climate,'' said glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson, who monitors glaciers for the National Energy Authority in Reykjavik. ``But we don't know what causes that. There are many factors in nature that easily overwhelm the greenhouse effect.'' (emphasis added)
Chronicle Foreign Service
Consider it carefully.
What does it tell you about the past?
Was it warmer?
Do we fully understand why the glaciers extended, and the climatic forces involved that cause this? NO!
Was it our fault that glaciers crept over the farm land in medieval times?
Could we have stopped their advance?
Is it our fault that they are receding again towards their previous warmer climate position?
NO!
Sea level rising.
It is easy to fool those who live far from the sea. Those who live near the sea can easily check the sea level by searching out older wharfs, jetties and other land marks that show the old sea levels to be the same as at present.
Some countries such as Holland would go into panic mode if the sea levels did increase, as much of their land is reclaimed from the sea and still below sea level. The London area is just above sea level with much of the dock area close to sea level, this is common all around Europe. If these and other european nations have no actual evidence of the sea rising then it hasn't anywhere else. As there is no panic from them then I am sure that any change is miniscule. Also there would be a panic on locally if the sea had risen even half a metre, but the beaches are the same at low and high tide as they have been for over a hundred years. An earthquake in the 1840's raised some of our harbour and surrounding land, but other cities weren't affected.
Some points to keep in mind:
If it was recently raised above sea level, and the sedimentary material that was laid down under the sea is still permeated with water then the island is sitting on soft water soaked sediment.
The weight of the land above the water, and the weight of the mass of the base of the island compress as the sediment is heavier than water. this causes a slow flow of water out of the base, depending on the porosity of the material. Also depending on the slope and drop off of the sides of the island, the pliability of the sediment could enable the actual sediment to shift outwards, also having the same effect. Most of the islands are small and some are very long narrow strips. This means that some of the islands could well disappear below the sea because:
This means it is not our fault ! It is not Global Warming !
Further to this it has been reported that the ice is receding in Greenland and they can now grow potatoes, which has not been possible since the times of the Vikings. So what does this show about global warming? Just that the world is in a cycle well beyond our control, and is returning to a climatic condition that was the normal thousands of years ago. We think it is warming because we personally have only experienced the present colder climate. Glaciers are warming and receding, but if in a few hundred years or so the worlds cycle returns to a colder phase, then the glaciers and ice will reform as they have been, and people will complain that the world is getting cold, and invent such terms as "global cooling", and probably blame the same gases. And again:
We cannot control Global Warming !
Some years ago I read that Mount Erebus in the antarctic puts out more greenhouse gases in a fortnight than the human population produces in a year. Scientists researching down there said they could not tell where the gases went ! But the mountain is directly under the great ozone hole that the world leaders are making you worry about. They hope that by all these fears about greenhouse gases and global warming, to be able to better control you, to achieve their aims, which are not for your benefit, but theirs.
If all that greenhouse gas is being ejected right under the ozone hole, and there is little exchange of atmosphere between the northern and southern hemispheres, then ask yourself where the gases go and what causes the ozone hole. It varies a bit from year to year, but then so does the output of the volcano. Most of the greenhouse gases we produce are produced in the northern hemisphere. The way the wind circulates keeps northern and southern hemispheres separate as there is little mixing at the equator, so most of the wind returns to its own half. In which case the main ozone hole should be in the northern hemisphere, over the pole, if we are responsible, but there is no sign of it. probably because there is no volcano belching out greenhouse gases near the north pole. But I have also heard that water vapour is the main greenhouse gas. The sun goes through an eleven year cycle, which will have some effect on the radiation that the earth receives and therefor its temperatures. The greenhouse gases people are blaming temperature changes of less than one degree C, so it would be hard to be certain of the exact cause as radiation effects the upper atmosphere, which is where the problem begins.
Just in case your are half asleep I will say it again:
We cannot control Global Warming !
and the ozone hole is not our fault either. !
(But it is still a good idea to conserve our resources.)
Carbon Credits The new taxation system.
If our Government is stupid enough to get us involved so that we have to buy "Carbon Credits", perhaps running into hundreds of millions of dollars per annum, Who gets the money?
Is it used for reducing the unproven global warming "problem", or does it go into some UN slush fund to be used to tighten the UN grip on the nations? Is the whole idea of carbon credits just to impoverish the nations, to be better able to control them, along with many other laws and restrictions?
That has given you some ideas to think about and research. Research from as many different sources as you can, not just the ones that support your present understanding. They may make you feel comfortable, or apprehensive, but that might not be what is true.
regards,
Alfred.
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