At the same time, hundreds of feet inland and deep underwater where even remote-controlled submersibles cannot venture, the warming ocean is also chipping away huge swaths of Antarctica’s frosty underbelly. According to a new study published yesterday (April 2) in the journal Nature Geoscience, ice is receding deep below eight of Antarctica’s largest glaciers at an alarming rate — roughly five times faster than it should be. If this marine ice recession continues, it could lead to a total collapse of the world’s largest ice sheet, the study found. [Images of Melt: Earth’s Vanishing Ice]
“Our study provides clear evidence that retreat is happening across the ice sheet due to ocean melting at its base,”
Whenever a climate alarmist makes a claim that CO2 is somehow causing some disaster, one must always refer back to the mechanism by which CO2 can cause the effect.
The one and only mechanism by which CO2 can affect climate is through the greenhouse gas effect. CO2 “thermalizes” long-wave infrared radiation (LWIR) between 13 and 18µ, that is it.
The blackbody temperature of “thermalizing” 13 thru 18µ LWIR is -80°C. Anytime a Climate Alarmist makes a claim, simply ask the question “how does “thermalizing” 13 thru 18µ LWIR cause that effect?”
The introductory graphic makes an observation that Antarctic Ice is melting FROM BELOW. Climate Alarmists will seize upon this observation and undoubtedly blame it on CO2 caused climate change.
“Experts” skilled in climate sophistry like Dr. Myles Allen could very easily present the undeniable fact that Antarctica ice is disappearing, blame it on CO2, and face very little if any opposition.
No one ever asks the all-important question of “how does CO2 cause it?” CO2 can’t and doesn’t cause glaciers to melt from below, some other natural phenomenon must be the cause.
Warm water is melting both the Arctic and Antarctic ice. For CO2 to be the cause, one has to demonstrate how CO2 and LWIR between 13 thru 18µ can warm the oceans. It doesn’t.
LWIR between 13 thru 18µ does not penetrate or warm water. High-energy visible radiation warms the oceans. If the oceans are warming, it is due to more visible radiation reaching the oceans. CO2 is transparent to incoming visible radiation.
This is the elephant in the room for the Climate Alarmists. The oceans control the global climate and temperature. The oceans are the Earth’s thermostat.
To explain the global climate you have to explain the oceans, and CO2 can’t explain what is happening in the oceans. If you can’t tie the ocean warming to CO2, you can’t tie global warming and climate change to CO2.
The problem is that Climate Science’s foundation is dishonesty and deceit. Just recently, Climate Sophistry was in full view out in San Francisco’s California vs Exxon trial.
There was absolutely zero effort by the climate alarmists to present “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
There were countless misrepresentations, omissions, and distortions, all made because the climate alarmists believed that they would never have to face the question “how does CO2 cause that observation?”
Fortunately, Judge Alsup had done some homework and asked two very insightful questions.
- “What caused the Ice Age?”
- “How did the Ice Age end?”
There is absolutely no mechanism by which CO2 would increase in a cyclical pattern before temperatures to pull the globe out of an ice age, and there is no mechanism by which CO2 would decrease in a cyclical pattern before temperatures to plunge the earth back into an ice age.
CO2 has never in world history triggered the end of countless ice ages and the natural warming that occurred, and never in world history has CO2 suddenly decreased in advance of a cooling period to plunge the globe back into an ice age.
In fact, at least according to the ice core record going back 600,000 years, all ice ages began WHEN CO2 was at a peak. Just look at Al Gore’s charts.
Clearly, temperatures and climate have been very volatile over the past, and none of the previous ice ages and interglacial warming periods were caused by man-made CO2. None, nada, zip.
Clearly, there are powerful natural forces that warm and cool the globe, and none of them is man-made CO2.
Additionally, CO2’s mechanism is to warm the atmosphere. There has been no atmospheric warming in Antarctica in over 100 years. Isolating the impact of CO2 on atmospheric temperature reveals no warming at all over the past 50+ years, even with the sizable increase in CO2.
These facts will never be mentioned by the Climate Alarmists, they focus on sophistry, not science.
Read more at CO2 Is Life
If a Arctic Tern to speak he would inform you that the ice in both poles is getting thicker after all these birds are the worlds champion traveler going from pole to pole
I like how the author claims that Antarctica’s ice is retreating five times faster than “it should be”. As if anyone could claim to know what something like that “should be” in the first place. Again, the left’s hubris knows no bounds.
As stated by Sonny, recent discoveries seem to show a strong correlation between Antarctic plate tectonics/geothermal activity and ice fractures, but such logic is simply inconvenient for some. It’s much easier it seems, to blame such things on SUVs in America…
One thing the alarmist can not explain is why all of Antarctica isn’t experiencing the same melting. The deep melting only happens under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The rest of Antarctica isn’t impacted. If climate change were the cause, we would expect the whole continent to be involved. There have been many studies indicating that there is significant geothermal activity, and we would expect this to be localized.
Will the researchers stationed in the Antarctic put any effort into the geothermal factor? Seems that the melting is concentrated in one area.
The Green Nut is by far they most deranged thing out there and beyond all hope of recovery