Greenland Glaciers Retreating - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Dudesky · #1 06-04-2012, 10:02 AM

Quote:

It now appears that the glaciers were retreating even faster eighty years ago: but nobody worried about it, and the ice subsequently came back again. Box theorises that this is likely to be because of sulphur pollution released into the atmosphere by humans, especially by burning coal and fuel oils. This is known to have a cooling effect.
Unfortunately atmospheric sulphur emissions also cause other things such as acid rain, and as a result rich Western nations cracked down on sulphates in the 1960s. Prof Box believes that this led to warming from the 1970s onward, which has now led to the glaciers retreating since around 2000.
Other scientists have said recently that late-20th-century temperature rises in the Arctic may result largely from clean-air legislation intended to deal with acid rain: some have even gone so far as to suggest that rapid coal- and diesel-fuelled industrialisation in China is serving to prevent further warming right now.
Still other scientists, differing with Prof Box, offer another picture altogether of Arctic temperatures, in which there were peaks both in the 1930s and 1950s and cooling until the 1990s: and in which the warming trend which resulted in the melting seen by Rasmussen's expedition actually started as early as 1840, before the industrial revolution and human-driven carbon emission had even got rolling. In that scenario, variations in the Sun seem to have much more weight than is generally accepted by today's climatologists

1930s photos show Greenland glaciers retreating faster than today ? The Register

Comparison Study:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1481.html

Air&Road · #2 06-04-2012, 10:24 AM

I think that the most interesting thing about Greenland is in spite of the claim of global WARMING, Greenland used to be GREEN, before it got too cold for anything to grow!

Just sayin',

elchivito · #3 06-04-2012, 11:36 AM

Careful study of the history will show that Greenland did have some open fjords that had trees and grasses growing, but it's an oversimplification to say that Greenland used to be green. Fluctuations in the ice sheet have happened more than a few times, but's it's never come close to going away. Eric The Red is said to have named it Greenland not so much as an accurate description of the place but rather as a way to encourage colonization by people who'd never seen it.

The quoted portion reminds me of that Woody Allen movie from long ago that takes place in a future where they're all eating pork chops and smoking cigarettes because they'd discovered that they're actually good for you.