Credit: NASA GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio Data Source: Airborne Topographic MapperAny change is important since a smaller ice sheet could result in higher sea levels.
“A conservative estimate, based on our data, indicates a net loss of approximately 51 cubic kilometers of ice per year from the entire ice sheet, sufficient to raise global sea level by 0.005 inches per year, or approximately seven percent of the observed rise,” Bill Krabill, project scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA., said.
“This amount of sea level rise does not threaten coastal regions, but these results provide evidence that the margins of the ice sheet are in a process of change,” Krabill said.
“The thinning cannot be accounted for by increased melting alone. It appears that ice must be flowing more quickly into the sea through glaciers.”
Do The Arithmetic (an analysis)
Either no one proofread the material or they didn't know arithmetic. I suspect the latter is true of most believers in global warming.
The web page doesn't give data on the portion of the global ice sheet that is in Greenland, but for the combined Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets they claim 30 million cubic kilometers of ice.
Greenland is roughly 2 million square kilometers and Antarctica is about 13 million. Greenland is 15% the size of Antarctica. Greenland is probably less than 4 million cubic kilometers of ice, by using those two numbers.
The image above shows the additions and subtractions from the Greenland ice sheet annually. The web page claims that there is a net decrease of 53 cubic kilometers of ice per year in Greenland.
They are talking about 53 cubic kilometers out of 4 million cubic kilometers. The idea that anyone could measure 53 cubic kilometers of net ice melt per year (.00001, one hundred thousandths of the total) is absurd.
The further idea that this incredibly insignificant amount of ice from the net melt of Greenland could create a trend of .005 inch per year rise in the oceans is even more absurd.
That would be .5 inch in a century. Half an inch increase in a century in oceans that already vary with tidal action by 45 inches twice a day every day is quite hard to picture as a global danger.
Posted by Michael Phillips on Feb 18, 2006 at 11:17 AM
Memo to "60 Minutes" and Scott Pelley ... Do The Math, Michael Phillips has!
ht: "Gods Of Commerce"
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