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Comparative photos of Mount Everest 'confirm ice loss'

kaya'08

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Photos taken by a mountaineer on Everest from the same spot where similar pictures were taken in 1921 have revealed an "alarming" ice loss.

The Asia Society (AS) arranged for the pictures to be taken in exactly the same place where British climber George Mallory took photos in 1921.

BBC News - Comparative photos of Mount Everest 'confirm ice loss'

The issue here is, we are in July, and the world over is far warmer due to the natural cycle of the seasons (Northern hemisphere regions anyway).

The article claims repeatedly the photos where taken in the exact same place George Mallory took the photos in 1921 but fails to mention that George went in June, a naturally cooler month than July, or if this year is on average warmer than 1921 for whatever natural/coincidential anomalie.
 
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BBC News - Comparative photos of Mount Everest 'confirm ice loss'

The issue here is, we are in July, and the world over is far warmer due to the natural cycle of the seasons (Northern hemisphere regions anyway).

The article claims repeatedly the photos where taken in the exact same place George Mallory took the photos in 1921 but fails to mention that George went in June, a naturally cooler month than July, or if this year is on average warmer than 1921 for whatever natural/coincidential anomalie.

Aha, whatever it takes to advance Gore's theory (No not that other one of sticking his tongue down someones throat), but his Global warming theme!
 
Two data points don't really tell us a whole lot. Nothing actually.

BUT - thanks for posting, Everest is beautiful!
 
It's just like Mt. Kilimanjaro and others. The ices builds, it recedes, it builds, it recedes. Just as it has for millions of years.
 
_48381193_009812565-1.jpg



BBC News - Comparative photos of Mount Everest 'confirm ice loss'

The issue here is, we are in July, and the world over is far warmer due to the natural cycle of the seasons (Northern hemisphere regions anyway).

The article claims repeatedly the photos where taken in the exact same place George Mallory took the photos in 1921 but fails to mention that George went in June, a naturally cooler month than July, or if this year is on average warmer than 1921 for whatever natural/coincidential anomalie.
Couple points:
1) This year is far warmer than 1921. In fact, 2010 is on track to set yet another new record. (Jan-June, globally the hottest on record)
2) This loss of ice we've seen is far, far beyond the scope of monthly or even yearly variation. Just being June vs July or Cold Year vs Warm Year could not possibly cause a loss of ice on this scale. You'd need years and years of consistently warmer weather for this to happen.
3) These photos are not intended to be scientific proof of global warming, just proof that we're losing ice on this particular mountain.
 
I regret not being well enough to go to at least the first base camp on Mt. Everest, but seeing it off in the distance was enough.

When I was in Nepal, a lot of people told me about how the climate of the nation was changing for the worst. The summer I was there, the Northern rains never came and so an entire rice crop died, and it never happened on that scale before. They were in the process of applying for food aid from the UN. In the South, where it is normally dry, they had flooding and a cholera epidemic.

The world's valley civilizations, like India (the Indus), China (the Yangze), and Egypt (the Nile) are all at risk of losing major water resources once their nations' glaciers completely melt, and they are melting quite rapidly. In the West we are still having our quaint little discussions about whether or not climate change is happening but in those nations the governments are already well aware of future water resource shortages. Actually, the U.S. government is also beginning to encroach more and more into the Great Lakes because of dwindling resources in other areas.

I really do believe that future wars will be fought over things like water, not oil.
 
Couple points:
1) This year is far warmer than 1921. In fact, 2010 is on track to set yet another new record. (Jan-June, globally the hottest on record)
2) This loss of ice we've seen is far, far beyond the scope of monthly or even yearly variation. Just being June vs July or Cold Year vs Warm Year could not possibly cause a loss of ice on this scale. You'd need years and years of consistently warmer weather for this to happen.
3) These photos are not intended to be scientific proof of global warming, just proof that we're losing ice on this particular mountain.

The only difference in snow is there is a bit less on the mountain top and on the floor. I dont see how a warmer month wouldn't cause this loss in ice. Why would it need years of consistent warmth?
 
The only difference in snow is there is a bit less on the mountain top and on the floor. I dont see how a warmer month wouldn't cause this loss in ice. Why would it need years of consistent warmth?

You're underestimating the volume of ice we're talking about, which is understandable given the poor resolution of the older photo. (edit: also the scale of that mountain is not easily seen from the photo) It's a crapload of ice, and it never really gets "warm" at that altitude. The average temperature in July at the summit is -19C
 
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You're underestimating the volume of ice we're talking about, which is understandable given the poor resolution of the older photo. (edit: also the scale of that mountain is not easily seen from the photo) It's a crapload of ice, and it never really gets "warm" at that altitude. The average temperature in July at the summit is -19C

Judging from the photo the ice on the floor which has receded doesn't look like much ice to me anyway.
I know -19 is cold! But, as the temperature drops, so would the magnitude of the ice, right?
 
Is this a situation where the ice has been receding since the last ice age ended?
 
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Judging from the photo the ice on the floor which has receded doesn't look like much ice to me anyway.
I know -19 is cold! But, as the temperature drops, so would the magnitude of the ice, right?

It's a huge mountain with a huge amount of ice on it.

Is this a situation where the ice has been receding since the last ice age ended?

Probably. Although it has probably accelerated in recent decades like most other areas.
 
In the West we are still having our quaint little discussions about whether or not climate change is happening.
Of course climate change is happening. The climate is ALWAYS changing. Has been for millions of years. Why do people assume there should be some steady state?

The debate is not whether "climate change is happening" but whether we're bringing about significant warming through use of fossil fuels.
 
Of course climate change is happening. The climate is ALWAYS changing. Has been for millions of years. Why do people assume there should be some steady state?

The debate is not whether "climate change is happening" but whether we're bringing about significant warming through use of fossil fuels.

If by "debate" you mean "people paid by the oil industry dispute the effects of fossil fuels."
 
If by "debate" you mean "people paid by the oil industry dispute the effects of fossil fuels."
The proportion of Americans who think that the earth is warming due to human activites is somewhere in the range of 50%. Are you really trying to suggest that there's no real debate because millions are being paid by the oil industry to dispute the effects of fossil fuels?

Maybe you're trying to insinuate that only scientists - certain scientists at that, are qualified to debate the topic. Is this where we get the wiki link to studies showing that the small proportion of scientists who receive their funding to study anthropogenic climate change belive that climate change is anthropogenic?
 
Greenland was first inhabited about 4,500 years ago. The earliest residents arrived from the west, but either left or died due to periods of exceptionally cold weather and/or poor hunting. Signs of their presence have been found near Maniitsoq. The region seems to have then been uninhabited for about 3,000 years.

The next migration came from the east, following "Erik the Red" Thorwaldsson's exploration of the southern coast of Greenland between 982 and 985 AD. In 986, he led a group of Viking families from Iceland, and settled at Brattahlid, traditionally known as Qassiarsuk (route map). The climate at this time was very warm, much wamer than it is today, and crops were able to do well. It seems likely that the name "Greenland" was given to the country, not just as wishful thinkful, but because it was a climatic fact at that time.

The History of Greenland - ExploreNorth

Damn those Vikings and their SUV's.
 
So apparently the climate is not a static, stable system? Who knew?
 
Global warming is a real thing, the approach is wrong..The planet will be just fine, it's the things that are living on the planet that won't be.
 
Obviously, not the Global warming idiots.

Though the beginning of the Cenozoic - the Paleocene - was cooler than the hottest part of the Paleozoic, it was much warmer than today. Oxygen isotope ratios show the ocean was 10° to 15° Celsius warmer than today. For Americans who know nothing of metric units, that's 18°-27° Fahrenheit warmer than now. That's hot!

55 million years ago, at the very end of the Paleocene there was an drastic incident called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. You can see it as the spike labelled "PETM" on this graph. Ocean surface temperatures worldwide shot up by 5-8°C for a few thousand years - but in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F). This caused a severe dieoff of little ocean critters called foraminifera, and a drastic change of the dominant mammal species. What caused this? Maybe a sudden release of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide from volcanos, or a "methane burp" released from gas hydrates on the sea floor. People have indeed found drastically different carbon isotope ratios at this time.

At the start of the Eocene, the continents were close to where they are now, but the average annual temperature in arctic Canada and Siberia was a balmy 18° C (65° F). The dominant plants up there were palm trees and cycads. Fossil monitor lizards (sort of like alligators) dating back to this era have been found in Svalbard, an island north of Greenland that's now covered with ice all year. Antarctica was home to cool temperate forests, including beech trees and ferns. In particular, our Earth had no permanent polar ice caps!

temperature
 
Global warming is a real thing, the approach is wrong..The planet will be just fine, it's the things that are living on the planet that won't be.

It is the height of human conceit to think we have anything to do with climate change, and the height of stupidity to think we could do anything about it. It's natural, and it will happen time and again.
 
So apparently the climate is not a static, stable system? Who knew?

Moon, we're not even discussing that. Even the pro-Global warming "is happening" people know its a volatile system.

The question is, have we sped it up, or is what we are currently experiencing a man-made phenomena which ALSO occurs naturally, or is it just part of a pattern we have witnessed in our ancient past?

There is facts to suggest it is happening, facts to suggest is isn't, facts to suggest it happens either way with or without our CO2 emissions. You cannot come to a conclusion today, and neither can i. One day we will find out, however.
 
It is the height of human conceit to think we have anything to do with climate change, and the height of stupidity to think we could do anything about it. It's natural, and it will happen time and again.

No, it is the height of human conceit to think that we can do whatever we want and the earth will just adapt; it is the height of human conceit to think that we can continually exceed the limits of the earth's natural bounty each year and expect the system to recover; it is the height of human conceit to think that we ourselves are immune from the effects of our own polluting.

Even if the American right wants to continue to water down the climate change debate in order to subjectify it for political reasons, there are plenty of other valid, proven reasons to reduce the output of human pollution. Never before in human history has cancer, heart disease, diabetes, genetic disorders, infertility, and mental illness been as high as it is now.

One in three people develop heart disease or stroke in their lifetimes and the age bracket is becoming younger each year; one in four will get cancer. How long will we wait before we decide to change our lifestyle of excess? When it's one in two? Or every person?

Honestly. How long are the apologists and deniers going to keep spinning the propaganda that things are going to be ok? They're not. The industrial revolution is only a couple of hundred years in the making, and the consumer era is about 50 years in the making. Fossil fuel use has the same shelf life. Our entire paradigm of how we think things should operate is going to come crashing down, the only thing we have a choice in is whether the transition is smooth or if it will be traumatic.
 
So apparently the climate is not a static, stable system? Who knew?

And amazingly things like asteroids hitting the Earth, volcanoes and quite possibly human activity can affect the climate.
 
The proportion of Americans who think that the earth is warming due to human activites is somewhere in the range of 50%. Are you really trying to suggest that there's no real debate because millions are being paid by the oil industry to dispute the effects of fossil fuels?

Maybe you're trying to insinuate that only scientists - certain scientists at that, are qualified to debate the topic. Is this where we get the wiki link to studies showing that the small proportion of scientists who receive their funding to study anthropogenic climate change belive that climate change is anthropogenic?

Well, first of all, in a scientific discussion the public's opinion is not particularly important. Although this does bring up an interesting point: While obviously not funded by the oil industry, the America public does have a bit of a stake in this. People are resistant to the idea that their way of life is harmful to our future. Next, this may shock you, but people who do research on climate might actually be the best qualified to comment on changes in climate. I know skeptics like to trot out that "30,000 scientists sign petition opposing AGW," but you'll have to forgive me for not really caring what a guy with a bachelor's in metallurgy thinks about climate science.

Still, kudos on the attempted straw man. It's the scientific skeptics who are getting the oil funding, not the American public.

But really, none of that is important. The science is important. Skeptics always attempt to confuse the issue with politics and made-up scandal. Rather than addressing the science, you've just hedged your bets by making an insinuation that climate scientists are paid to do climate science, and therefore can't be trusted. That's not an argument, that's plugging your ears and saying "LALALA CANT HEAR YOU." You've just pre-judged the discussion as being already won because the other side doesn't have credibility, and yet you use the word "debate."

Every time an interesting skeptic's scientific argument comes up, I read it thoroughly. I'm very interested in the topic and have a pretty insatiable curiosity. The next thing I do is poke around google looking for someone to respond to that skeptic's arguments. Every single time I manage to find a pretty handy and thorough debunking. Most of the time, the skeptic's flaws are a result of straight up misrepresentation of findings of actual scientists. My personal favorite is the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle," where they took scientist's words out of context so as to mean the exact opposite of their intent, terminated a graph of solar energy at 1980 because after that year the data clearly deviates from the point they were trying to make, and even straight up falsified data on a temperature chart and falsely attributes the chart to NASA.

Other times, it's a mistake. One guy ran a very complex and well-done calculation that showed mankind's contribution to global warming was .5%, based on CO2 emissions and their relative strength in climate forcing. Two glaring errors were made: He ignored an entire half of nature's carbon cycle, where every year plants across the globe absorb CO2 from the atmosphere in order to grow, and he also made some ocean CO2 circulation calculations that would only hold true if the ocean was already saturated. (it's not)

Others engage in what I call "flak," throwing up accusations that point towards uncertainty but never actually addressing the impact of that uncertainty. Anthony Watts is a rather prominent skeptic. He ran a project where people went around photographing temperature stations in an attempt to prove that the stations are unreliable and therefore the temperature record is unreliable. It's true that there are quite a few stations out there that don't meet the established standards, as urban sprawl or new construction do change over time. What he didn't bother to tell you is that even if you use only the stations that his team labeled as "good" or "best," and re-run the temperature chart, you get an identical chart.

Then there's the cherry-pickers. If you've ever heard "global warming stopped in 1995," you're a victim of this. First, this is based on the Daily FMail misrepresenting a quote made by a scientist, but it's also blatant cherry picking. Since 1995 was a particularly warm year, if you pick a time-span from 1995 to ~2005 (I forget exactly which year) you get "no statistically significant warming." This doesn't mean no warming, in fact in the very next sentence of the interview that Daily Mail "quoted," the scientist states that the warming was .12C per decade during that period. "Not statistically significant" means that you can't establish a warming trend at the 95% confidence level because it's a short timeframe and global average temperture is a "noisy" signal. (temperature varies from year to year, longer periods are needed to smooth these variations and establish an actual trend) Another great cherry-pick is saying that "1934 was the hottest year on record!" Well, yes, in the United States it was. The US compromises only 2% of the planet, though. Globally, the hottest years on record have all occurred in the last decade. 2010 looks to be breaking the record yet again.

To suggest that scientists are unreliable because they're paid to do science is ludicrous. If that's the logic you're going to use, you're going to have to be skeptical of literally everything any scientist has ever said. Also, don't watch television. Everyone you see on it is paid to say what they're saying.

You can't counter science with politics. Reality does not have a liberal bias.

I wrote a post on some of the basic science behind the theory, but nobody reads the environment forum so I'm going to blatantly plug my own writing here.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/envir...-some-basic-empirical-evidence-favor-agw.html
 
No, it is the height of human conceit to think that we can do whatever we want and the earth will just adapt; it is the height of human conceit to think that we can continually exceed the limits of the earth's natural bounty each year and expect the system to recover; it is the height of human conceit to think that we ourselves are immune from the effects of our own polluting.

Even if the American right wants to continue to water down the climate change debate in order to subjectify it for political reasons, there are plenty of other valid, proven reasons to reduce the output of human pollution. Never before in human history has cancer, heart disease, diabetes, genetic disorders, infertility, and mental illness been as high as it is now.

One in three people develop heart disease or stroke in their lifetimes and the age bracket is becoming younger each year; one in four will get cancer. How long will we wait before we decide to change our lifestyle of excess? When it's one in two? Or every person?

Honestly. How long are the apologists and deniers going to keep spinning the propaganda that things are going to be ok? They're not. The industrial revolution is only a couple of hundred years in the making, and the consumer era is about 50 years in the making. Fossil fuel use has the same shelf life. Our entire paradigm of how we think things should operate is going to come crashing down, the only thing we have a choice in is whether the transition is smooth or if it will be traumatic.

Do you drive a car? Live in a house? Buy your food at the store? Spend time posting on debate forums?

Practice what you preach before you preach it.
 
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