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Ice Loss due to Climate Change

+Philip Plait is a rock star when it comes to communicating facts about science, but G+ architect +Yonatan Zunger's comments in his forward of Phil's post are worth reading as well:
https://plus.google.com/103389452828130864950/posts/Te7SP28U1W1

Reshared post from +Philip Plait

Global warming: New study shows massive ice loss at both poles

Bad global warming news: A new international study done by 47 researchers from more than two dozen facilities has the most accurate measurements of polar ice yet, and shows that we're losing ice from both the north and south poles at an ever-increasing rate. Overall loss is 3x faster than it was in the 1990s, and Greenland alone is losing ice at a rate 5x faster. The West Antarctic ice sheet, a vast reservoir of ice, is losing a staggering 65 billion tons of ice per year.

Climate change deniers can kiss their ice goodbye.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/11/30/global_warming_is_melting_greenland_and_antarctic_ice_and_contributing_to.html

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Jeff Sullivan

Jeff Sullivan leads landscape photography workshops in national parks and public lands throughout California and the American West.

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  • The deniers I know will cherry pick some contrary data bit & hang their whole argument on it.

  • +Jeff Sullivan don't you know that there's NO SUCH THING as "global warming" ??? C'mon maaan, it's a complete myth fabricated by the "bleeding heart liberals" & those pathetic "treehuggers" based on "junk science", not reality !!!
    lmao ... I can assure you I am only kidding but it's quite unfortunate that many people actually feel that way.

  • I can't see why there are still people that don't believe this is happening.  There's still time to correct it, but we have to escalate our efforts.

  • People hear what they want to hear +Doug Thompson, especially when "skeptical" propaganda is broadcast on "news" channels...
    The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University looked at that blatant mismatch between reality and what was reported to the public, and presented the following findings:
    http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/assets/pdf/Nieman%20Reports/ProfCorner/NR05W_Global_Warming.pdf

    Disinformation, Financial Pressures, and Misplaced Balance
    A reporter describes the systemic forces that work against the story of climate change being accurately told.
    By Ross Gelbspan 
    http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100591

    Global Warming: What’s Known vs. What’s Told
    ‘Americans could be forgiven for not knowing how uncontroversial this issue is among the vast majority of scientists.’
    By Sandy Tolan and Alexandra Berzon 
    http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100596

    Knowing Uncertainty for What It Is
    In reporting on the science of global warming, journalists contend with powerful, well-funded forces using strategies created by tobacco companies.
    By David Michaels 
    http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/topics.aspx?id=100171

    If people dig a little deeper into the scientific basis for one side vs. the other, we've all seen arguments criticizing this study or that study, but the basic conclusion of climate science that the earth is warming overall doesn't rely on any one scientific study.  At a high level, there are at least 10 lines of evidence, from 47 independent data sets.  The 10 indicators are:

    - Land surface air temperature as measured by weather stations. You know all those skeptic arguments about how the temperature record is biased by the urban heat island effect, badly-sited weather stations, dropped stations, and so on? This is the only indicator which suffers from all those problems. So if you’re arguing with somebody who tries to frame the discussion as being about land surface air temperature, just remind them about the other nine indicators.
    - Sea surface temperature. As with land temperatures, the longest record goes back to 1850 and the last decade is warmest.
    - Air temperature over the oceans.
    - Lower troposphere temperature as measured by satellites for around 50 years. By any of these measures, the 2000s was the warmest decade and each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the previous one.
    - Ocean heat content, for which records go back over half a century. More than 90% of the extra heat from global warming is going into the oceans – contributing to a rise in…
    - Sea level. Tide gauge records go back to 1870, and sea level has risen at an accelerating rate.
    - Specific humidity, which has risen in tandem with temperatures.
    - Glaciers. 2009 was the 19th consecutive year in which there was a net loss of ice from glaciers worldwide.
    - Northern Hemisphere snow cover, which has also decreased in recent decades.
    - Perhaps the most dramatic change of all has been in Arctic sea ice. Satellite measurements are available back to 1979 and reliable shipping records back to 1953. September sea ice extent has shrunk by 35% since 1979.

    Science isn’t like a house of cards, in that removing one line of evidence (eg. land surface air temperature) wouldn’t cause the whole edifice of anthropogenic global warming to collapse. Instead, “land surface warming” is one of more than ten bricks supporting “global warming”; and with global warming established, there is a whole other set of bricks supporting “anthropogenic global warming”. To undermine these conclusions, you’d need to remove most or all of the bricks supporting them – but as the evidence continues to pile up, that is becoming less and less likely.
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/evidence-for-global-warming.htm

    A somewhat more in-depth, "intermediate level" summary, with links to additional detail, appears here:
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/evidence-for-global-warming-intermediate.htm

    I found this information while starting out as a skeptic, looking for the scientific support for the non-warming side of the "debate".  I failed to find any credible scientific support at all for the skeptics' side (although I found a lot of blatantly mis-represented science actually supporting the conclusions of climate change and man-made causes), so I was forced to re-evaluate my position on the topic.  I've continue to look for hopeful developments for another 14 years or so, but the news from peer-reviewed scientific studies published in leading journals just keeps getting worse.

  • Volcanoes burp out 100x more CO2 in a year than everyone and their grandmothers cars combined so I am a bit skeptical that we are the soul cause of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for green energy and not having a carbon footprint. But have you guys seen the change in the sun as well? There's a lot more CME's from the sun that can cause a ton more damage to our Earth than we can in such short amount of time. Again not saying you are wrong, not saying I'm right.

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