Even if you don't believe in apocalyptic scenarios, I think there is reason for concern, and that we should try to minimise the effects of GW. Funny, you talk like if you are very knowledgeable about climatology... I have no reason to believe that you know more about the subject than, say, Varwoche...
I do, Orwell. I participate by special invitation (representing Argentina along with astrophysicist Silvia Duhau) in a closed forum where the topmost climate, and atmospheric scientists, oceanographers and geologists from all over the world, conducted by Finaland's Timo Hameranta, Moderator of the global scientific discussion group "Sceptical Climate Science"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics . Unfortunately, you cannot read the discussion as you need apply for a special invitation, according to your scientific credentials. Try it, and maybe you will be accepted for discussion.
There you will find well known people has James Hansen, Kevin Trenberth, Gavin Schmidt, Stephen Schenider, a long etc, from the warmer’s side; and for the other side scientists as Tim Ball, James Taylor, William Kinninmonth, Bob Foster, William Gray, Hans Erren, Hugh Elssaeser, Fred Singer, Chris de Freitas, Louis Hissink, Richard Courtney, etc, etc. many of these “sceptics• contribute with their work to the IPCC chapters.
The flawed paper being presently discussed in the media is also matter of discussion in the forum. A random pick of some comments there is shown here:
“It's not clear from the abstract if this estimate of 220 km^3 refers to the Greenland-wide mass balance or just to the discharge term via coastal glaciers. If the former then it's massively in conflict with the recent results from Johannessen (Science Oct 2005) which claims a 10 year increase of 5.4 mm/a or 8 km^3/a. Perhaps someone with access to Science could post the information which it is - mass balance or discharge.”
Assuming mass balance, at the 220 km^3/a rate it will take 10,000 years for the ice sheet to disappear and that would contribute about 0.7 mm/a to global mean sea level which is towards the top end of the IPCC range for 1990-2100 of -0.2 to +.9 mm/a from Greenland ice.
If it's the discharge term then, to compute sea level rise, the rate of discharge has to be adjusted for the precipitation input which has been assessed to be about 600 km^3/a or three times the alleged ice loss which. Given the trivial ablation rate, this implies a calving+runoff that is much much too low if Johannesen is about right about mass balance.
Of course the measurement of precipitation as snow is notoriously problematic, especially in windy situations. Greenland is unusual among landmasses that the mass balance term is measured more accurately than either input or output. And that is the number that matters for sea level rise anyway: the common preoccupation with what is happening at the coastal margin is misplaced - it's an irrelevance.
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“The latest issue of Science contains a paper by Eric Rignot and Pannir Kanagaratnam claiming that glaciers along the periphery of Greenland are melting at a rapidly increasing rate. Another paper on this subject was published by Science just last year. Ola Johannessen did not consider direct ice lost by glaciers into the ocean but instead only focused on elevations changes. Johannssen showed that increasing snowfall in Greenland was leading to greater ice accumulations than had previously been measured and this was acting to slow Greenland's contribution to sea level rise. It was conspicuously ignored in this new report.”
The linK: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=021706G
“Against Hansen's claims others report that "Greenland's ice cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wild predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming...." – the Norwegian led team of climate scientists at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, October 2005.
It is also known that: "Since 1940 the Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2° C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987..." - P. Chylek et al. Climatic Change, March 2004.
Try your hand at answering these messages and see if you qualify for joining the tribe at the forum.
Enough for one post. I hope you will analyze it and digest the information.
