NASA Finds It's the Final Act for Larsen B Ice Shelf

And the theory is that reducing the ice shelves will increase (and already is increasing) the density of the Antarctic continent:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/04/130401-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-science-environment/

Temporarily.

Equilibrium will solve that.

You can only deny climate change for so long.

The climate has been cycling for billions of years. Long before man began fouling the planet.

Some maybe, not most.

Where is the data that you base that cheesy conclusion on?

Cheesy?

Data?

You sound like Andy the German. Demanding "proof" when you offer none.

Why not ask tcmtech where his "data" came from.

I would actually be worried if the climate DIDN'T change, considering the history of the planet.

I would rather have warming than cooling. I lived 2/3 of my life without air conditioning when it was warm, but none without heat when it was cold.

Yes, nature changes things all the time. But so do humans. And we know historically that humans are capable of major changes on the Earth. Look at Australia, the Gobi Desert, the Fertile Crescent, the loss of 90% of all fish in the oceans, the ozone hole, just to name a few.

If your car starts overheating the day you did some home repairs, normally you suspect that something you did is the root cause. Especially if you were working on the radiator.

A rise in temperature was predicted a hundred years ago by Sibelius based on chemistry of CO2. Releasing gigatonnes of CO2 is basically humans tinkering with the Earth's radiator. And now that the temperature is rising you might think that that first place to look is to see if the CO2 is the cause, and those who do the math say yes. But those who don't do the math say no, it's not our fault, the temperature rises and falls naturally, or we like it hot, or you can't prove that the math is complete, or God is doing it.

Absolutely correct!

IMHO, we (humans) are simply "± noise" riding upon Mother Nature's very long time-frame cycle changes.

We all know that the notorious North Dakota tire burner is pro-global warming. I think he wants to see cactus and Armadillo on his land.

Fact is, nobody actually knows if, or how much, mankind has or will affect the climate of our world.

I laugh at anyone who says mankind/Co2/the industrial revolution/fossil fuel/air pollution has no effect on the climate.

You don't know that. I don't know that. No one knows that.

Anyone who says the do know is a fool.

I'm in total agreement that climate cycles are real. They've been happening for many millions of years, if not billions.

The widespread use of fossil fuels is only 200 years old. It may make a difference in the grand scheme of things, it may not.

The presence of 7,000,000,000 people on the planet is not trivial!

We'll never know.

Yep. Agree 100%.

Affirmative.

Eventually the planet will reset itself.

I believe that a catastrophe will happen that wipes us all out, like the dinosaurs and eventually a new life form will rise up and be the dominant species.

Our solar system has 7 healthy planets and one with parasites growing on it.

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure. ( Quote from Agent Smith)

You're a plague and we are the cure. ( Quote from Agent Smith)
And you know what Neo did to Agent Smith don't you?

Quite. The concept of homo sapiens being the predominant life form on this planet ad infinitum is both abstruse and rather arrogant. This planet will get rid of it when it has had enough of it.

The collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf is yet more evidence that our climate is changing. Whether climate change is accelerated by human intervention or is just part of a natural cycle does not alter the fact that this change will have more impact on us as a species than any similar change that has happened in the past. The evidence suggests that rather than simply warming up the planet, climate change involves more extreme weather conditions. The droughts will be longer, the floods more frequent, winters longer or shorter disrupting growing seasons. Living in Dakota, you have less need to worry about sea level rise than those in Florida, New York or California, but an increase in the number and severity of tornadoes may be very significant. The crops we now grow have higher yields but at the expense having a narrower tolerance to changes in temperature and water supply. Our infrastructure, be it transport, communications or power supply is more vulnerable than ever to severe weather. We no longer have the option of just moving to higher ground if sea level rises, and ask the residents of New Orleans if building a levy is the answer. None of these changes that affect how sever the impact will be can be attributed to nature, they are all down to us. Other countries will be hit harder and sooner than we wealthy nations in the west, but Europe is already struggling to cope with an influx of a few million migrants from Africa and the Middle East. Sea level rise will displace a few billion. Most thinking people don't share your head in the sand attitude.

"Nobody here is denying that the climate is changing."

Well, we have a few Climate Change Deniers here on the board, but I'll bet they'll also have issue with the age of the Larson B shelf. How can it be ten thousand years old when the UNIVERSE is only six thousand?

But then, I won't name names here, I don't want to be accused of 'bear bating' the Young Earth Creationists.

I have to agree. Please see the following links for reference. It does shed some additional light on rising sea levels and 'man made' 'climate shift', 'climate change', and 'global warming'... take your pick... Lol.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/18/volcano-under-antarctica_n_4295985.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131118-antarctica-volcano-earthquakes-erupt-sea-level-rise-science/

http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/geophysics/science-active-volcano-west-antarctica-01555.html

Pretty sure this guy has been stealing all the ice...

Mother Nature's "average" = position midway between maximums and minmums over the eons.

What I am saying is that as the climate changes the conditions in some places become more favorable than in others.

As one who lives where the changes are showing themselves to highly favorable I take the side of saying stop trying to change things. I like what I see and I like where it's going here.

Nobody cared about making my areas climate better or anyone else's for that matter since the beginning of time yet now as others perceive their climates are drifting even the slightest bit less favorable they are expecting people like me to give up what we are gaining in order to keep their status quo where they want.

Stuff you. I want mine better and bugger off to those who think I and others should give up what we are gaining so that they may keep their live the way they were.

On behalf of those who have lived in less favorable climates and are now seeing more favorable conditions set in stuff all of you who think we care if yours gets worse. You obviously didn't care about ours when it wasn't so nice.

BTW ~10,000 years ago when that ice shelf was apparently not where it is now where I live was under a mile or more of solid glacial ice. Do you really think anyone here wants that coming back?

Unfortunately, we still don't care about you. Neither does Mother Nature.

Maybe you should burn some sacrificial tires to appease her.

I figure that if you get your way, I may have some beach front property in Kingman AZ. and can just move to Minnesota when it doesn't stay frozen there all winter.

We'll see.

"Unfortunately, we still don't care about you. Neither does Mother Nature."

That's the whole basis behind the climate change issue.

Mother nature doesn't care about any of us and the half of those who see potentially beneficial changes coming their way have no interest in helping those who perceive their climate as getting worse to try and keep things as they were.

At best we can think that we are influencing mother nature to roll the dice a bit more to the left or to the right but in the end the dice are still going to land where they land whether we like it or not.

Heck the act of trying to deliberately influence the roll itself has just as high of probability of making things land where we don't want as if we had done nothing. Personally right now the dice are landing slightly more in my sides favor so why would we want to influence things to swing that favor away from us?

You don't hear people on the winning side of the lottery complaining that they shouldn't have won and someone else should have so something needs to be done about it do you????

Give us some solid credible scientific proof and we will listen. Being the majority of us here are of engineering and scientific mindsets we are willing to listen to different views provided they have credible data to back them up.

By credible data what we need to see are numbers comparing human sources to natural sources with the min and max variants and measurement percentages of error shown for fair comparison being that's the only way to give each source fair comparative levels.

Nature actually dumps crude oil and many other hydrocarbons along with greenhouse gases into the environment at levels far exceeding our human screw ups. The only difference is nature has it spread out globally and our accidents are typically in far smaller spaces.

BTW the Love canal disaster was cleaned up decades ago and we as a society have since learned from it.

Also most Hummers get better average fuel mileage than most full sized pickups of which out number them by the millions in the US alone.

Now as far as my personal stand on this goes to be honest I used to be on the believers side, before becoming a strong skeptic, and put a fair amount of effort to and research into finding the data to back up my views.

The problem I ran into was when fair unbiased scientific analysis of the numbers and procedures used to get those numbers were factored out they made it impossible to for me to use as proof being everything we humans do on the grand scale of things came in way below natures min max variants even with heavy margin of error assumed on the data collecting processes.

What I am saying is that it's not that we are not measurable but when fairly weighed against nature's upper and lower ranges of natural variation putting we humans values into the mathematical aggregate status.

Think of this way. Say you are hauling dirt in a large dump truck. The average load weight is 40,000 pounds with a +- variance between loads of 5000 pounds and the scales being used have a possible error on reading of up to 30% above or below the actual value. Now every time the truck gets loaded you toss 2000 - 3000 pounds of your own dirt in the truck as well.

Does your addition to each load count, being you are measurable, even though on the load to load min max variances you fall well below limits of gross range of weight variances that are occurring without you?

How about this... NASA Finds It's the Final Act for Larsen B Ice Shelf.

How about the melting of the nothern polar ice cap?

These changes are happening faster than at any other in history. We, as the engineers and scientists have to ring the alarm bells for society, because no one else is going to do it for us.

"These changes are happening faster than at any other in history."

No, the individual change you are observing right now is happening faster that ever recorded before.

I just checked the National Weather Service. Clipped portion of the report:

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHEYENNE WY
0928 PM MDT SAT MAY 09 2015
...RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM RAINFALL SET AT CHEYENNE WYOMING AIRPORT...
A RECORD RAINFALL OF 1.02 INCH(ES) WAS SET AT CHEYENNE WYOMING
AIRPORT TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.75 SET IN 1933.

Is the entire planet receiving recorded history maximum precipitation?

Nope.
http://www.infowars.com/is-this-global-drought-being-caused-by-the-systematic-destruction-of-the-hydrologic-cycle/

What piece of data is going to be enough to convince you that we indeed have a problem? When the entire northern polar ice cap is melted, will you step outside and say, "well it's nice here." These are global issues and we are supposed to be the informed ones.

I never said 'we' don't have a problem.

Problem = A source of perplexity, distress, or vexation

Problems don't always have solutions.

What is the biocapacity of our mother ship? I have seen an estimate (saw this on the 'net, in fact) that the earth will be carrying 9.3 Billion human souls by the year 2050.

Now, THIS is a problem that contributes directly to another problem: I=PAT

It is your contention that variations in nature are so large that human interaction with the environment is insignificant, and that our methods of measurement are so course that it is not possible to separate natural variations for those caused by us. I disagree and offer the proof you seek with an instance that happened on your doorstep. The 1934 dust bowl engulfed all of North Dakota. It was created by a drought and bad land management which is direct human intervention. The droughts of 1910 and 2012 did not create dust bowls because in 1910 the land was not farmed as intensively and by 2012 farmers had learned how to manage the land more effectively. 71% of the USA was affected by the 1934 drought and if your parents or grandparents lived in the area covered by the dust bowl their lives were seriously compromised and possibly some members of your family died of starvation. With such proof still within living memory of some of your older neighbors, I find your insistence that statistics are needed to establish the facts staggering.

" I disagree and offer the proof you seek with an instance that happened on your doorstep. The 1934 dust bowl engulfed all of North Dakota."

And things have been getting better here ever since so why exactly would I want to change it back?

You said if someone brings out some credible scientific proof, you will listen. Then when someone did, you went back to your earlier position that global warming is good for North Dakota so why should you want to prevent it for the whole world.

If you want an discussion based on the science, then stick to the science. If you want a discussion based on being selfish, then stick to being selfish. But don't mix the two up.

Based on the science, I suspect that North Dakota is not as perfectly isolated from the rest of the world as you believe. Droughts in California can affect the food supply of the entire US. Heat waves in the Midwest could wipe out an entire wheat or corn crop, like they did in Russia. The melting of the Greenland Ice sheet combined with the melting of the Arctic Ocean surface ice could stop the thermohaline currents in the northern Atlantic, thus triggering an ice age in your own backyard. (The currents have faltered a few times in recent years, but not yet actually stopped.) According to ice core data, an ice age can sometimes start in the space of two or three years, rather than over a period of decades or centuries. You might be overrun by hordes of Canadians, until you have to join the hordes yourself.

The droughts of 1930 and 1931 did not produce dust bowl conditions. The drought of 1934 did. In that two year interval a tipping point had been reached that triggered the disaster. Back then scientists did not know enough about tipping points to be criticized for predicting what would go wrong. In 1934 the annual rainfall in Nebraska only dropped from 20" to 14.5", so why was that the tipping point for crops to fail leaving exposed topsoil to be eroded away? Today science has moved on but not by much. All today's scientists can do is point out that we are moving towards another tipping point that will encompass not just 100million acres of America but a large proportion of the planet. They do not know where those tipping points are so they cannot predict if we will all die of heat stroke or starvation before or after failure of the Atlantic Hermohaline throws us into another ice age. They can't even reliably tell you if we are having a significant influence on events, so why not just sit back and let it happen, we can't do anything to solve it. Well I don't agree with that either. After 1934 to US government bought up 11.3million acres of land and replanted native grasses to re-stabilise the top soil. A human intervention of just over 10% was enough to recover the situation and prevent North America becoming the next Sahara. Intervention after the tipping point was reached. In China the "one child policy" has has reduced population increase from an annual rate of 1.9% to 0.7%. That 0.7% is largely due to the increases in the average lifespan over the same period as the current birth rate would show an annual decrease in population. The Chinese government has staved off much of the hardship that would have befallen it's population if it had not acted. Intervention before the tipping point was reached.