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Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

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Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#91

Post by earthscienceman »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #41

This is a very important project. There is a joke in here about "why not wait 2 years for the ice to melt off if you wanted to look at the mud underneath?" But as the article states, "'This will change climate models because it redefines our basic understanding of how ice moves,' explains Dorthe Dahl-Jensen." Much, if not the majority, of climate science is the creation of models (differential equations mostly) that…

You're adding important context but I would like to clarify something to highlight just how complex climate change really is. I also am going to make a few related comments, as I do most of my research on melt in Greenland. Full disclosure: I do know some of the people in this article but I have never been to eGRIP specifically. I will be in Greenland in a week nearby though.

   No matter what the far future holds, the near future holds more violent storms as storms are powered by the temperature differentials of the air, land, and sea.
This is true, sort of. There's a lot nuance needed for this broad statement. In particular, "Arctic amplification" means that the pole-to-equator temperature gradient is actually weakening. If you were inclined to believe the covid lab leak theory you would also be inclined to jump on this and say "then the extreme storms are nonsense". However, what's really happening is that the waves in the upper atmosphere ("Rossby waves") are getting more wave-y. Which is really saying that additional energy from CO2 warming is resulting in stronger transport and more significant variability. It's not resulting in larger gradients. Although sometimes the gradients are also extreme.

Climate is a question of two things, time scales and spatial scales. Dumping a bunch of CO2 in the atmosphere messes with both.

I also want to point out that this isn't the first time a core has been dug to the bed of the Greenland ice sheet. It's also not the second. Some comments seem to be implying this. I have a bad taste for science reporting/announcements like this that fail to provide context. Of course this is important work but it's following up and improving on several previous deep core drilling experiments. We still have many samples from these previous cores. This is still a very good thing to research and will hopefully provide important new insight. But there is significant previous work it builds on [1]. And the title kind is vague enough that outsiders/the public might not understand that.

Also also, to be a little vitriolic, the IPCC Matlab code is a crime against humanity and fuck Mathworks.

[1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210315165639.h...

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#93

Post by warning26 »

viscanti wrote: post #90
snowwrestler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People worry about accelerating climate change now because we live here now. It’s not a theoretical science thing. We have farms and cities and towns and bridges and dams and reservoirs in particular places, and we are accelerating the depreciation of many of them. The result will be tremendous loss of wealth, movement of populations, and the associated social consequences of those. Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we l…

> Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves. Yeah. The argument that single cellular life or some small animals might survive and eventually evolve into something else is a bit weird for people who are hoping they don't die out like many species have in the past when there have been major changes to climate and carbon levels.

Exactly. People often get lost in this "we must save the planet" argument, but realistically, the planet is gonna be fine.

Preventing climate change is about saving humanity, not the planet.

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#94

Post by dakial1 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #55
sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

[flagged]

Not all natural disasters can be pinned into global warming (earthquakes for example), also some weather related disasters are caused by cyclical patterns (e.g. El Niño), but certainly the higher frequency (and potency) of some weather related disasters are already linked to human influence: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662

Is not doomsday as the world won't change overnight, but some areas of the globe will suffer a lot from the higher intensity of the weather and this will probably create a lot of global challenges and might bring (mostly) overcome tragedies, like widespread famine, back to the news

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#96

Post by mariuolo »

monero-xmr wrote: post #55
sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

[flagged]

It's true the Earth has been much warmer and much colder, but it's also true we haven't always been there.

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#97

Post by rolph »

newfonewhodis wrote: post #49
sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

I'm not a scientist so I'm curious why this is interesting.

the drilling allows sampling of environmental components over extended period of time. this meas a historic record of, gases, ash, soot, pollen, spores, silt, insects, plant animals, metals, salts.....

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#98

Post by mytailorisrich »

sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

Iirc, the CO2 concentration now as been pumped up higher than it was then, which is in part what is worrying because temps might then potentially shoot even higher.

Bottom line: we need large scale carbon capture quickly because even if we reach net zero CO2 will take millenia to drop back to the level it was pre-industrial revolution.

Edit: I wouldn't focus on "pre-industrial levels" specifically, the point is that there is too much now so we most likely want concentration to drop as soon as possible.

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#99

Post by anigbrowl »

monero-xmr wrote: post #55
sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

[flagged]

The doomsday cult

Oh shut it. You can't have any knowledge at all about this issue and not appreciate that the problem is not temperature as such but the rapidity of the change - over 150 years rather than 15000. Your troll post is an insult to intelligence.

Folks, don't waste your time trying to reason with such bad-faith arguments. It's a form of theft, because the time cost to refute bullshit is about 10x that to spew bullshit. And the above post is just that - bullshit.

Before someone invokes the HN guidelines and talks about curious conversation, recognize that throwing phrases like 'doomsday cult' into a discussion of a serious scientific project that has hit a milestone after many years of effort has only one purpose, and that is to derail. Flagging and downvoting are all very well, but there are also times when it's necessary to call bullshit.

Re: Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock

#100

Post by toss1 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #55
sgirard wrote: post #7

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

[flagged]

Yes, there have been warm and cold intervals in the past.

NONE of them happened at anything approaching the RATE of today's anthropogenic warming.

Our climate is warming literally orders of magnitude faster than any previous change. This is overwhelming the ability of ecosystems to adapt.

Moreover, this is entirely preventable — we're doing it, we can stop it.

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