Tag: Greenland

Kiwiblog kobblers

New Zealand’s leading right wing blogger, National Party spinmeister and opinion poll guru David Farrar, this morning allowed himself the luxury of a rant about the New Zealand Herald‘s coverage of a new paper on sea level during the late Pliocene. In a post teasingly titled “Alarmist bullshit“, he manages to demonstrate his rudimentary grasp of the facts, misunderstands the real story behind the new research, and ends up shooting himself in the foot. Here’s David in full flow:

Anyone who thinks public policy today should be based on a forecast of what the climate might be in 5,000 years is nuts. Look at how the world has changed in just 100 years let alone hundreds or thousands. Hell in 1,000 years we may be living on Mars.

The Herald should be ashamed for saying that the projected increase could “dramatically transform” our coastal boundaries. A change over 1,000 years+ is not dramatic. It’s like saying the separation of Gondwana was dramatic.

20 metres is a lot of sea level rise. Here’s what 20 metres would mean for my nearest city, poor old quake-plagued Christchurch, courtesy of the Firetree sea level rise calculator. The central business district is under water, the new shoreline well to the west. At a rough guess, I’d say 80% of the city is flooded, and Banks Peninsula is an island once more.

I think that can be reasonably described as a dramatic transformation of the South Island coastline, even if it does take 1,000 years to happen. DPF might like to note that coping with two metres per century sea level rise is nobody’s picnic. But his misunderstanding runs deeper…

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Primary gifting period comes but once a year

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It will, with luck, be a quiet Christmas chez Hot Topic. A small family gathering instead of the usual table groaning with relatives, but I will shortly have my hands deep inside a turkey, and we will all be reminded that my mother makes the best mince pies in the world. Then it will be time for the cook (for it is me) to retire to the hammock in the shade of the birch tree with a book and a glass of wine and fall asleep. A very merry primary gifting period to all of Hot Topic’s readers and contributors. Normal service will be resumed when my liver has recovered and the mince pies are all gone.

Below the fold: B B King!

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Science sidelined at Durban

An image that has lingered with me from all the reports of the Durban conference was the Democracy Now interview with a somewhat disconsolate Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair. He was at Durban to represent the science, a rather thankless task since he detected very little interest in what the science has to say.

“I’d like to see the science driving some of the discussions and the decisions that are taken. I’m sorry I don’t see much evidence of that right now.”

He pictured the delegations being confronted with the scientific reality every day and how that might affect the progress of their negotiations.

“[There’s a] complete absence of discussion on the scientific evidence that we have available   I would like to see each day of the discussions starting with a very clear presentation on where we are going, what it’s going to mean to different parts of the world and what are the options available to us by which at very little cost and in some cases negative cost we can bring about a reduction in emissions   I would like to see an hour, hour and a half, every day being devoted to this particular subject   I think then the movement towards a decision would be far more vigorous, it would be based on reality and not focusing on narrow and short-term political issues.”

Nothing remotely like that happened of course, and Pachauri vented his exasperation:

“Actually, to be honest, nobody over here is listening to the science.”

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Dramatic Pictures of Petermann Glacier Ice Loss

Jason Box has provided startling photographs which document the ice area detachment, four times the size of Manhattan Island, that occurred on 4 August, 2010 from the Petermann glacier in northwest Greenland. Photos taken in 2009 are matched with photos of the same area taken on 24 July this year.  Here’s an aerial oblique front-on view taken by Jason Box Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University on 5 August 2009:

And here’s the ‘after photo’ to pair with it taken by Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University, Wales, on 24 July 2011: Continue reading “Dramatic Pictures of Petermann Glacier Ice Loss”

The Fate of Greenland

The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate ChangeGary Comer was a wealthy retired American who found on a private voyage in 2001 that he was able to easily navigate the normally ice-bound Northwest Passage in northern Canada. It perturbed him that he could do so and resulted in his substantial funding of scientific research into the global extent of abrupt climate change. Glaciologist Richard Alley, oceanographer Wallace Broecker and geologist George Denton were leading scientists in the research he funded, and are co-authors with editor Philip Conkling of a newly published book which draws on the past decade of their and others’ work. The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change is a handsomely produced volume, lavishly illustrated with stunning photographs, many of them taken by Comer himself.  It’s written for a general audience, albeit at times requiring close attention from readers when the complexities of some of the scientific detective work are explained.

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