For more than two million years the Greenland Ice Sheet has stood the dramatic changes of several ice ages and warm periods in between them
Its thickness varies from 1½ km to slightly more than 3 km. Therefore on top of the sheet the temperature is 10 – 20 degrees C lower than at sea level.
+ – + – + – +
I have received several suggestions to translate some posts of this blog to English. Maybe this is going to be the first-off of some English posts. However it is not a translation of a Swedish post. It is the consequence of a failure:
I have seen the Economist called “the best weekly in the World”. However, when it comes to climate, it is totally committed to belief in the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions. Hence, this weeks issue runs three articles on the Arctic:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21721379-current-trends-arctic-will-be-ice-free-summer-2040-arctic-it-known-today
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721364-commercial-opportunities-are-vastly-outweighed-damage-climate-thawing-arctic
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721365-and-sea-levels-rise-arctic-melts-worlds-weather-suffers
The last one airs the dangers of rising sea levels, of which I have strong feelings, so I tried to post a comment. I was invited to be the first to comment. I did not know the procedure well enough, so my comment did not appear. (If you have the know-how, please let me know.)
So I decided to post my comment here:
+ – + – + – +
The article is based on several unsubstantiated assumptions and speculations. Its heading is sheer speculation. In order to predict future development it is essential to know the history very well.
- Ice sheet melting
The Greenland ice sheet has been growing the last year.
The natural laws of science limit the possible rise of sea levels to one millimeter more than today’s 1 or 2 mm per year even if the global temperature were to rise by 2 or 4 degrees C.
Melting of sea ice does not influence the sea level at all. It floats on the sea.
Any contribution to a rise must come from the ice sheets on land, on Greenland. This has a thickness of 1½ – 3 kilometers and some more at the very center. At those heights the air temperature is 10 – 20 degrees lower than at sea level. This means that even in a 4 degrees warmer climate the temperature on top of the ice sheet will exceed the melting point only very few hours in a year, if at all. The volume so melted will be insignificant.
Consequently, melting of the ice sheet mainly takes place near the ground along the front of the ice sheet.
- Sea level since the ice age
The sea level was 120 meters lower than today at the height of the last ice age. The global temperature is estimated to have been some 8 degrees lower than today. The ice sheets covered large parts of Siberia, Northern Europe, Greenland and parts of North America.
A dramatic temperature rise caused the ice sheets to melt, which took place at their extended fronts from Siberia to Alaska. The maximum rate of sea level rise amounted to 10 millimeters per year.
- Greenland ice sheet melting
Melting of the Greenland ice sheet will take place only around the southern half of the island. The rest is too close to the pole. The length of the ice sheet front is very small compared to those of the ice age sheets.
Heat transfer from warm air to the ice sheet takes place only on the small area of the front. The natural laws of science limit the amount of heat transferred.
The length of the front is a small fraction of the ice age fronts. These generated a rise of 10 millimeters per year. Greenland is so much smaller that no more than 1 millimeter per year is possible today, if the global temperature rises several degrees C.
- The global temperature
There are no other indications that the global temperature will rise than IPCC:s “climate models”, which are based on computer simulations assuming carbon dioxide is the dominant driving force of the climate. These are proven totally irrelevant by the stable temperature the last 20 years.
Measured data of the sun’s behavior shows that it is entering a passive phase similar of that 200 years ago. Then the climate was quite cool, what is the most likely outcome for the next few decades.
There are no reliable data supporting the assumed temperature rise.
- Exaggerated worries
The article excells in speculations of disasters, sea level rise, flooding, extreme weather, cold snaps, disturbed monsoon, etc.
These speculations are based on erroneous conditions: Rising global temperature, disappearing ice sheet on Greenland. They are completely irrelevant.
It appears that the main purpose of the speculations is to entice the scientificallly ignorant politicians of the Arctic Council to finance more research of the demonstrated useless kind.
- There are NO greenhouse gases
The hypothesis of the IPCC is that a small warming effect of carbon dixoide will be reinforced by the more powerful water vapor. In reality it is the other way around.
The Nobel laureate Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988) taught at the Caltech, Calilfornia Institute of Technology, and dealt with carbon dioxide and the Arrhenius hypothesis long before the IPCC was formed.
He notes that the spectral band of water vapor is overlapping the narrow band of carbon dioxide. As there is many times more water vapor than carbon dioxide in the air, it will be the water vapor that picks up the energy in that band. There will be nothing left to carbon dioxide.
However, he adds: The effects of this process will not be noticed because of the turbulence in the atmosphere. He means that the 33 degrees C, that the ground is warmer than the equilibrium temperature in space, depends on gravity.
This is further explained by several modern scientists, google “catling tropopause” and “jelbring atmospheric mass”.
Robinson-Catling have studied the atmospheres of planets and moons in our solar system. They have found that the warming of the ground is independent of the mix of gases. There is no effect of carbon dioxide.
They conclude that the equlibrium space temperature is found on the height, where the atmospheric pressure is around 0,1 bar, 11 km on earth. Molecules that are boxed downwards from there gain energy from gravitation. On the way down to the ground the pressure rises and so does the temperature in full accordance with the general law of gases.
There is NO greenhouse effect.
There are NO greenhouse gases !
The article must be considered Fake-News.
Sture Åström
by 