Greenland Tremors

In case you’re wondering, I’ve been travelling for the last two weeks, and haven’t been able to update my blog. But I’m back home now, so here’s the latest…

In a fascinating paper published last year (Ekstrom et al. 2006, Science, 311, 1756), geophysicists at Harvard investigated a new class of seismic events: glacial earthquakes. These were identified only as recently as 2003 (Ekstrom et al. 2003, Science, 302, 622), and are dramatically different from other types of earthquakes. For one thing, their “characteristic period” of vibration is not less than one second, as is typical of earthquakes, but very long — on the order of 30 to 60 seconds. For another thing, all detected events of this type are associated with mountain glaciers in Alaska or with glaciers and ice streams along the edges of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

Crisis?

Is global warming a crisis? Of course not!

What a silly idea! It’s obviously the scheme of a bunch of socialists/communists who want to destroy our prosperity and knock us back to the stone age.

Don’t believe those idiots. Like the hapless poor in New Orleans, who have the gall to think that Hurricane Katrina was a “crisis.” Or the naive Europeans, who when they suffered a heat wave in 2003 that killed 30,000 people, somehow think that was a “crisis.” Or the morons in Australia, the ranchers and farmers suffering what the Australian government calls the worst drought in 1,000 years, who somehow think it’s a “crisis.”

The Long, Hot Winter

A lot of us in the U.S.A. just went through a rather chilly February. It wasn’t a record-breaker; in fact, according to NOAA it was the 34th-coldest February out of 113 on record. I’ve seen a lot of Februarys, and I’ve seen colder. But it was pretty chilly.

Swindlers

Many of you have seen, or heard about, a recent program on British TV titled, “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” It claims that global warming isn’t a real physical phenomenon, that instead it’s a “swindle” perpetrated by the climate science community.

Must Read

I regulary use the tag surfer to monitor global warming related posts. I found one today that is such an outstanding post, I couldn’t help but recommend it. It’s from surf.bird.scribble by Hugh Powell, and it sums up things so intelligently and perceptively … I wish I’d written it! Definitely worth a read.

It’s a Gas

I’ve often stated that we are sure the increase in atmospheric CO₂ is due to human activity because of the relative abundance of different isotopes of carbon in the CO₂. There are two stable isotopes of carbon: ¹²C, and ¹³C. They differ mainly in their weight; ¹²C weighs 12 atomic mass units (amu) while ¹³C weighs 13 amu. Most carbon is the “normal” isotope ¹²C, but about 1% of earth’s carbon is the heavier ¹³C.

Questions and Answers

A recent blog post purports to offer “great questions and statements” about global warming. Actually, it’s a thinly veiled attempt to cast doubt, and not even a very sophisticated attempt at that. But no matter; I’ll answer the questions anyway.

Fast CO2

A lot of the fuss over global warming has to do with proposals to limit CO2 emissions. One of the dangers of CO2 is that it is a greenhouse gas. As such it contributes to global warming (in fact, it’s the single biggest contributor). The simple, and unfortunate, fact is that we can’t meet the threat of global warming without reducing our CO2 emissions.

Another danger of CO2 is that it tends to dissolve in ocean water, and this changes the acidity of ocean water. In particular it threatens to dissolve the calcium carbonate shells that many marine creatures use to build their skeletons. Some of those creatures are fundamental to the base of the ocean food chain. So, increased CO2 threatens to undermine the ocean food chain, and you can bet that spells trouble for us land creatures as well.