Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away

[RufusEarl]

Great piece from today’s LA Times on the demise of the Greenland Ice Sheet. This is a pay site, sorry no free link.
Published on Sunday, June 25, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away
The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet


by Robert Lee Hotz


JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland — Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier.

Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water.

"My God!" Zwally shouted over the hornet whine of the engines.


WATER PROOF: Greenland is losing 52 cubic miles of ice each year, more than anyone anticipated. The amount of freshwater ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has almost tripled in a decade. Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted. (John McConnico / AP)

From satellite sensors and seasons in the field, Zwally, 67, knew the ice sheet below in a way that few could match. Even after a lifetime of study, the raffish NASA glaciologist with a silver dolphin in one pierced ear was dismayed by how quickly the breakup had occurred.

Wedged between boxes of scientific instruments, tent bags, duffels and survival gear, Zwally had no room to turn inside the cramped passenger compartment of the twin-engine Otter. He passed the whiskey bottle over his shoulder to geophysicist Jose Rial from the University of North Carolina, squeezed on a jump seat between a surveyor and a sleeping climatologist.

Homeward bound — windburned, bone-chilled and greasy after weeks on this immense ice cap tilted like a beret flopped across the top of the world — they all had been in a celebratory mood.

[marmar]

1. At this rate, Florida will become Atlantis before we know it....

and there will be no need to rebuild New Orleans because all of S. Louisiana will become a coral reef.

[Solon]

2. One thing that worries me is the pollution afterwards...

I mean, look at New Orleans with all that oil and other containements that flushed into the Gulf. The dead zone south of New Orleans was bad before, imagine its size NOW. Now imagine that a hundredfold, worldwide, this will be a mass extinction not seen since the non-Avian Dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. Its a desparate situation.

[bunkerbuster1]

3. My local paper buried this on page A5 today.

But they put a nice blurb for JonBenet's mom's passing on the front page because, after all, that's ever so much more important.

Ladies and germs, your so-called liberal media!

[dipsydoodle]

4. This is from SEVEN years ago.......

Yes - 1999 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/291120.stm

and here's another from 3 years ago : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3090279.stm

and this is only ? 5 months old : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/2006/01/060130_icecap.shtml

I have yet to see An Inconvenient Truth but presumably that also mentions the Greenland ice cap - would be disappointing were that not to be so due to its significance.