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glacier_kittyGlacial melting is not caused by global warming
One of the major achievements of mankind, over many centuries, has been the development of logical thinking processes. Science now has a well-established process of thinking patterns by which scientists work.
Some pieces of evidence that appear in scientific investigation may seem to be confusing. This is why the rules of logic have to be followed to ensure that there are no false conclusions.
It really amazes me – and also does not surprise me – when, in climate change discussions, completely illogical conclusions take hold in the public mind. It is amazing that basic logic escapes the public or is twisted without anyone seeming to care. On the other hand, it does not surprise me because there are elements in society which want false conclusions to be fed to the public so that they will toe the line of the propagators.
Let me now ponder the issue of claims of melting glaciers and melting ice, in general, that is blamed on global warming.
First, let us establish a fact that even the extreme green lobby does not dispute: total global warming over the last century has been less than 1 ºC; remember that figure – less than 1 ºC.
The properties of water and ice are well known. Ice melts at 1 ºC. Let us get that clear – to melt ice, the temperature has to go up past 0 ºC to at least ‘plus something’.
So, if the temperature of the air around a glacier is, say, –10 ºC or –20 ºC, then a rise in temperature to 1 ºC will bring the temperature up to –9 ºC or –19 ºC. That is far too low for melting to occur.
The number of people I come across who simply think that if air warms a little it will lead to glaciers melting is totally amazing.
So, let us imagine, on a given day, that the air temperature over a glacier does pass 0 ºC and goes up to, say, 2 ºC. Then we are above the melting point and melting can start. But what happens when night arrives? Usually, the difference between day and night temperature is significant, and so at night it will drop below freezing and the water will freeze to ice again. A temperature of 2 ºC is not going to result in some glacier coming apart.
Let me now bring in a very major factor. To increase the temperature of a cubic centimetre of water by 1 ºC requires one calorie of heat. So, putting 80 calories of heat into a cubic centimetre of water at a room temperature of 20 ºC will cause it to boil – it will reach 100 ºC.
Now for a major piece of important science. For one cubic centimetre of ice at 0 ºC to melt into a cubic centimetre of water, still at 0 ºC, an amount of heat of 80 calories is required. That 80 calories is required to get the molecules in the solid to ‘let go of one another’ so that they can flow and become liquid.
So, if air temperature above a glacier is, say, 2 ºC, then a huge amount of heat must be extracted from the air to melt ice, even if the ice temperature is right near 0 ºC. There will just not be enough heat, and any melted water will refreeze at night.
But some glaciers are undoubtedly receding. Indian researcher RK Chaujer produced a paper in 2009 titled ‘Climate change and its impact on the Himalayan glaciers – a case study on the Chorabari glacier, Garhwal Himalaya, India: Based on the dating of lichens developed on loops of moraines formed due to various stages of advance and retreat of the glacier’. The paper was published in Current Science.
Chaujer found that “research on various glaciers of the northern and southern hemispheres has shown that most of them started their retreat in the mideighteenth century, thereby indicating the end of the Little Ice Age Maximum, which suggests the possibility of a common trend in mountain areas of both hemispheres and the Himalayas”, indicative of a global phenomenon.
The Indian researcher concluded: “These results suggest that climatic changes in the world started during the early to the mideighteenth century.” This is long before the historical increase in the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) content could have been involved in the process of their retreat. Hence, it must be concluded that there is no compelling reason to believe that late-twentieth- century global warming has anything to do with glacial retreat.
So what is happening? We know that, when summer comes around, in glacial areas, glaciers retreat – they have always retreated. The primary mechanism seems to be the sun. The intense sunlight falling on the surface of the ice melts a fine surface layer. This water then runs down fissures, and eventually goes to the bottom of the glacier. There, the water lubricates the interface between the ice and the rock floor. The ice then slides more easily. Sunlight has a major impact and air temperature essentially nothing. When one watches videos of glaciers calving, one sees huge blocks as big as a house fracture off and fall into the ocean. This is not the ice melting – it is ice breaking off under the influence of gravity because it has been pushed out with diminishing structural support so that large blocks break off.
Over the weekend I prepared two blocks of ice in my fridge, with identical flat surfaces of about 20 cm2 each. I took a plank of wood and put it on the lawn by my swimming pool. I inclined the wood at about 30º. The wood was 40 cm wide. I put the two ice blocks at the top of the incline. I then placed a table in a position so that it cast a shadow over only one ice block. I sat with a stopwatch and waited. After a quarter of an hour, the ice block in the sun suddenly slid down the plank to the bottom. The one in the shade had not moved at all half an hour later.
In fact, the one in the shade had not moved at all another half hour later. I repeated the experiment a few times, with the same results. The air temperature here in South Africa on the day was 24 ºC – way above that of a glacial region. Remember that both blocks were in the same air temperature all the time.
So, Chaujer is correct: CO2 is not leading to melting glaciers – it has to be something else. I imagine it is sunlight. The more sunlight that falls on a glacier, the more it will move, owing to water lubrication. So, glacier movement is much more likely to be linked to the amount of cloud cover over a period than to any global warming.
Svensmark, of Denmark, proposes that cloud cover is linked to the sun’s magnetic influence over cosmic rays, which, in turn, influence total cloud cover. We need to think of melting ice in that context.
Thank you to whoever wrote this!! Finally some common sense haha. Now if everyone else would listen..
Mom's at work and Ryan and dad aren't really picture people :P
1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation
101. Life
101. Youth
103. Content
104. Change
105. Dreams
106. Pessimistic
107. Pirate
108. Novel
109. Doom
110. Garden
111. Sadness
112. Confusion
113. Freedom
114. Inevitable
115. Idle
116. Vampires
117. Convention
118. Roleplaying
119. Skull
120. Pain
121. Joy
122. Time
123. Warmth
124. Voodoo
125. Insomnia
126. Solitude
127. Zombies
128. Heaven
129. Evil
130. Weary
131. Candyland
132. Robot
133. Old-school
134. Patriotism
135. Flight
136. Movie
137. What if...
138. Batman
139. Dance
140. Oh, REALLY???
141. Play
142. Uh-oh...
143. Duel
144. coldness
145. Caption
146. Photo
147. Pants
148. Red
149. Fiesta
150. Percent
151. cute
152. playfullness
153. Stress
154. Froof
155. Mutation
156. Skeleton
157. Rock
158. Lies
159. Ninja
160. Message
161. Bugs
162. Effort
163. Band-aid
164. weird
165. Imaginary
166. Fly Me to the Moon...
167. Discovery
168. What?
169. Adhesive
170. Underworld
171. tropical
172. magic
173. Random
174. Video Game
175. Crisis
176. Insanity
177. Ice
178. Working Hard
179. Hardly Working
180. Sandwich
181. Clone
182. Clumsy
183. Keyboard
184. Hope
185. Song
186. Surprise
187. Cursed
188. Awesomeness
189. hate
190. Fire
191. Orange
192. Love
193. Annoyance
194. Misunderstanding
195. Fantasy
196. Puppy
197. Lost
198. Pie
199. Fate
200. Death
One of the major achievements of mankind, over many centuries, has been the development of logical thinking processes. Science now has a well-established process of thinking patterns by which scientists work.
Some pieces of evidence that appear in scientific investigation may seem to be confusing. This is why the rules of logic have to be followed to ensure that there are no false conclusions.
It really amazes me – and also does not surprise me – when, in climate change discussions, completely illogical conclusions take hold in the public mind. It is amazing that basic logic escapes the public or is twisted without anyone seeming to care. On the other hand, it does not surprise me because there are elements in society which want false conclusions to be fed to the public so that they will toe the line of the propagators.
Let me now ponder the issue of claims of melting glaciers and melting ice, in general, that is blamed on global warming.
First, let us establish a fact that even the extreme green lobby does not dispute: total global warming over the last century has been less than 1 ºC; remember that figure – less than 1 ºC.
The properties of water and ice are well known. Ice melts at 1 ºC. Let us get that clear – to melt ice, the temperature has to go up past 0 ºC to at least ‘plus something’.
So, if the temperature of the air around a glacier is, say, –10 ºC or –20 ºC, then a rise in temperature to 1 ºC will bring the temperature up to –9 ºC or –19 ºC. That is far too low for melting to occur.
The number of people I come across who simply think that if air warms a little it will lead to glaciers melting is totally amazing.
So, let us imagine, on a given day, that the air temperature over a glacier does pass 0 ºC and goes up to, say, 2 ºC. Then we are above the melting point and melting can start. But what happens when night arrives? Usually, the difference between day and night temperature is significant, and so at night it will drop below freezing and the water will freeze to ice again. A temperature of 2 ºC is not going to result in some glacier coming apart.
Let me now bring in a very major factor. To increase the temperature of a cubic centimetre of water by 1 ºC requires one calorie of heat. So, putting 80 calories of heat into a cubic centimetre of water at a room temperature of 20 ºC will cause it to boil – it will reach 100 ºC.
Now for a major piece of important science. For one cubic centimetre of ice at 0 ºC to melt into a cubic centimetre of water, still at 0 ºC, an amount of heat of 80 calories is required. That 80 calories is required to get the molecules in the solid to ‘let go of one another’ so that they can flow and become liquid.
So, if air temperature above a glacier is, say, 2 ºC, then a huge amount of heat must be extracted from the air to melt ice, even if the ice temperature is right near 0 ºC. There will just not be enough heat, and any melted water will refreeze at night.
But some glaciers are undoubtedly receding. Indian researcher RK Chaujer produced a paper in 2009 titled ‘Climate change and its impact on the Himalayan glaciers – a case study on the Chorabari glacier, Garhwal Himalaya, India: Based on the dating of lichens developed on loops of moraines formed due to various stages of advance and retreat of the glacier’. The paper was published in Current Science.
Chaujer found that “research on various glaciers of the northern and southern hemispheres has shown that most of them started their retreat in the mideighteenth century, thereby indicating the end of the Little Ice Age Maximum, which suggests the possibility of a common trend in mountain areas of both hemispheres and the Himalayas”, indicative of a global phenomenon.
The Indian researcher concluded: “These results suggest that climatic changes in the world started during the early to the mideighteenth century.” This is long before the historical increase in the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) content could have been involved in the process of their retreat. Hence, it must be concluded that there is no compelling reason to believe that late-twentieth- century global warming has anything to do with glacial retreat.
So what is happening? We know that, when summer comes around, in glacial areas, glaciers retreat – they have always retreated. The primary mechanism seems to be the sun. The intense sunlight falling on the surface of the ice melts a fine surface layer. This water then runs down fissures, and eventually goes to the bottom of the glacier. There, the water lubricates the interface between the ice and the rock floor. The ice then slides more easily. Sunlight has a major impact and air temperature essentially nothing. When one watches videos of glaciers calving, one sees huge blocks as big as a house fracture off and fall into the ocean. This is not the ice melting – it is ice breaking off under the influence of gravity because it has been pushed out with diminishing structural support so that large blocks break off.
Over the weekend I prepared two blocks of ice in my fridge, with identical flat surfaces of about 20 cm2 each. I took a plank of wood and put it on the lawn by my swimming pool. I inclined the wood at about 30º. The wood was 40 cm wide. I put the two ice blocks at the top of the incline. I then placed a table in a position so that it cast a shadow over only one ice block. I sat with a stopwatch and waited. After a quarter of an hour, the ice block in the sun suddenly slid down the plank to the bottom. The one in the shade had not moved at all half an hour later.
In fact, the one in the shade had not moved at all another half hour later. I repeated the experiment a few times, with the same results. The air temperature here in South Africa on the day was 24 ºC – way above that of a glacial region. Remember that both blocks were in the same air temperature all the time.
So, Chaujer is correct: CO2 is not leading to melting glaciers – it has to be something else. I imagine it is sunlight. The more sunlight that falls on a glacier, the more it will move, owing to water lubrication. So, glacier movement is much more likely to be linked to the amount of cloud cover over a period than to any global warming.
Svensmark, of Denmark, proposes that cloud cover is linked to the sun’s magnetic influence over cosmic rays, which, in turn, influence total cloud cover. We need to think of melting ice in that context.
Thank you to whoever wrote this!! Finally some common sense haha. Now if everyone else would listen..
Mom's at work and Ryan and dad aren't really picture people :P
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation
101. Life
101. Youth
103. Content
104. Change
105. Dreams
106. Pessimistic
107. Pirate
108. Novel
109. Doom
110. Garden
111. Sadness
112. Confusion
113. Freedom
114. Inevitable
115. Idle
116. Vampires
117. Convention
118. Roleplaying
119. Skull
120. Pain
121. Joy
122. Time
123. Warmth
124. Voodoo
125. Insomnia
126. Solitude
127. Zombies
128. Heaven
129. Evil
130. Weary
131. Candyland
132. Robot
133. Old-school
134. Patriotism
135. Flight
136. Movie
137. What if...
138. Batman
139. Dance
140. Oh, REALLY???
141. Play
142. Uh-oh...
143. Duel
144. coldness
145. Caption
146. Photo
147. Pants
148. Red
149. Fiesta
150. Percent
151. cute
152. playfullness
153. Stress
154. Froof
155. Mutation
156. Skeleton
157. Rock
158. Lies
159. Ninja
160. Message
161. Bugs
162. Effort
163. Band-aid
164. weird
165. Imaginary
166. Fly Me to the Moon...
167. Discovery
168. What?
169. Adhesive
170. Underworld
171. tropical
172. magic
173. Random
174. Video Game
175. Crisis
176. Insanity
177. Ice
178. Working Hard
179. Hardly Working
180. Sandwich
181. Clone
182. Clumsy
183. Keyboard
184. Hope
185. Song
186. Surprise
187. Cursed
188. Awesomeness
189. hate
190. Fire
191. Orange
192. Love
193. Annoyance
194. Misunderstanding
195. Fantasy
196. Puppy
197. Lost
198. Pie
199. Fate
200. Death
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-07 07:39 pm (UTC)Your information, while absolutely correct, only focuses on a very small piece of the picture. If I was giving my 3rd grade class a demonstration on ice and melting point, yoursis the information I'd use. For someone as interested in glaciers as you are, I can only assume you know that their melt is not only tied to the temperature directly on top of them though, but also including dew point/humidity, supercooling properties, water temperature, etc. By the information you posted, ice can ONLY melt when it is above 0C, correct? Then, continuing that train of though, ice can ONLY form when it is less then 0c as well, right? But this too is wrong. For example, ice can form on the leeward side of a tree in above freezing temperatures do to the wind causing local evaporation, which lowers the temp of the liquid to below freezing, forming ice, while the ambient temperature stays above freezing. What results is ice formation in above freezing local temperatures. The same works in reverse. Also, again in contrast your basic idea of "ice melts at above 0, and that's all that con affect it" - what about water that is below freezing, yet still in a liquid state? Again, this is clearly contradictory to your information, yet commonly occurs, leading one to understand that there are many more things in play then just static temperature.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-07 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-07 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-07 08:34 pm (UTC)My dad is a meteorologist, so I know a bit about how complex weather systems are on this planet, and I therefore believe that what is happening with glaciers and icebergs and climate change and so forth is also very complex and probably not directly tied to human activity, though human activity certainly is a factor. However, it is a factor that we can directly control. We can't control sun cycles, but we can control carbon emissions, deforestation, etc.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-10 02:15 am (UTC)OMG my brother is also definitely not a picture person haha. :P
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 06:32 am (UTC)"Ice melts at 1 ºC"
Two reasons why this is partially incorrect. Ice melts at any temperature above 0, so while it does melt at 1°, it also melts at 0.1°, 0.01° and 1x10^-100°. Moreover, we're talking about pure water here, without any minerals and soil mixed into it. Since we're talking about 'ground level' ice, it's bound to do some ion exchanging with the soil underneath, leading to a decrease in melting point. A readily available pollutant to pure water is table salt, which can lower the melting point to below -2°C.
Also, while the increase in CO2 can be deemed problematic, it is solvable. Plants and trees still consume a whole lot of Carbon Dioxide for us. While that makes deforestation all the more a problem world wide (*mumbles something about , the bigger chemical problems are the methane and nitrous gases being released into the atmosphere via incomplete combustion processes and lousy catalysis. An abundance in CO2 will be swiftly rectified by mother nature by millions upon millions of creatures suffocating slowly. Not a nice thought, but at least that problem fixes itself. XP
But hey! As long as big shot company bosses can make others believe their own version of the truth, and still make a lot of money from it, things really aren't bound to change too fast.
On a slightly more positive note, temperatures have only risen ~0.72°C since they started recording it in 1895, so the process is slow, and scientists might make a decent breakthrough with the proper funding and mindset. :3