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 CCF Editor's Note: Andrew Revkin, the NY Times official global warming doomsayer, has a piece that shows 17 years of satellite measurements of western Greenland's ice movement/melting, and that it is simply a summertime phenomenon. In fact, the overall speedup of ice melting and flowing to the sea is NOT occurring and in some places retreating. Oops. As even Revkin admits, the Greenland ice sheet is the most "vivid" symbol of global warming and used by GW "campaigners" to spur others into action. But just to make sure Revkin's groupies readers don't become placated, the now-standard warning is attached: This study in no way should be used in a manner inconsistent with global warming alarmism.
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I have a story coming tonight in print
on a new paper tracking the impact over time of those iconic drainpipes
for meltwater forming each summer on the warming flanks of the vast Greenland ice sheet. Here’s the nub, with varied reactions coming from glaciologists later:
One of the most vivid
symbols of global warming used by scientists and campaigners to spur
society to curb climate-warming emissions is photography of gushing rivers of meltwater plunging from the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet into the depths.
Recent studies have shown these natural drainpipes, called moulins,
can speed up the slow seaward march of the grinding ice by lubricating
the interface with bedrock below. The faster that ice flows, the faster
seas rise. Now, though, a new Dutch study of 17 years of satellite
measurements of ice movement in western Greenland concludes that the
speedup of the ice is a transient summertime phenomenon, with the
overall yearly movement of the grinding glaciers not changing, and
actually dropping slightly in some places, when measured over longer
time spans.
The work, the authors and other experts caution, does not mean that
more widespread surface melting could not eventually destabilize vast
areas of the world’s second-largest ice storehouse. But for the moment,
the study, which is being published in Friday’s edition of the journal
Science, throws into question the notion that abrupt ice losses in
Greenland are nigh.
“The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity
appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on
the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next
decades,” said the paper.
The study was led by Roderik S.W. van de Wal of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research of the University of Utrecht. More coming anon. Source
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