Planet Earth Does Not "Lose" Ice

Breaking news: planet Earth does not "lose" ice or water.  Ice either melts into water and is stored in the oceans, lakes, rivers, atmosphere or underground reservoirs.  When ice is not melting, water is being added to glaciers as snow and ice.  This cycle of cooling and warming, melting and freezing, has been going on essentially since the creation of the Earth.  Note this has been going on longer and is controlled by forces far greater than humans burning fossil fuels.

Here is a summary of what is known as the Earth's Hydrologic Cycle, taken from this blog.  You can do a search of this blog and find much more.
Peter

The Earth's Hydrologic (Water) Cycle - Pete'sPlace

Jan 24, 2008

It seems a refresher course in the basics of the Earth's hydrologic cycle is in order. First of all, it needs to be understood that there is a finite, or relatively fixed amount of water on or in the Earth. This does not, has not, and can ...

http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/

Chilling Report: Earth Loses 300 Billion Tons of Ice Each Year

Takepart.com – 6 hrs ago

It is amazing to see because it feels so clearly out of place, but in some spots along Antarctica’s coast you can actually find hints of grass and other plant life—green evidence that in parts of the long-frozen continent the ice is thinning, and fast.

 

But just how much ice is being lost? A new, ten-year study conducted by Bristol University’s Glaciology Centre says that between Antarctica and Greenland, the answer is 300 billion tons a year.
That’s a lot of ice cubes.

In scientific terms, a decade makes for a short study; this one can’t forecast whether this kind of loss will sustain into the future. (Though reasoned experts believe it will and may even accelerate.) But if it continues at this pace, goodbye Miami, Hong Kong, New York City, etc., as well as the homes of hundreds of millions who live on estuaries, deltas, coral atolls and great city river basins around the globe.

The two massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica combined—the ice in Antarctica is three miles thick at some places—contain 99.5 percent of the earth’s glacier ice. If it were all to melt (which would admittedly take centuries), sea levels would rise by 500 to 600 feet.

I’ve been to Antarctica on a couple dozen different trips, mostly along it’s long, skinny Peninsula, which because it is surrounded by warming ocean on both sides is the area most-impacted by the planet’s changing climate. It’s there each austral summer that more shorelines are exposed thanks to disappearing ice, and where you find hints of plant life. (How did the seeds get there? Most likely hitchhiking on fishing boats and visiting tourist ships, both growing in numbers.)

Another satellite study, conducted over the past 20 years by NASA and the European Space Agency, confirms the Bristol study, reporting that the planet’s ice sheets have melted faster in the last 20 years than in the last 10,000.

According to this study, melting ice from both poles has been responsible for a fifth of the global rise in sea levels since 1992. The rest was caused by the thermal expansion of the warming ocean, the melting of mountain glaciers, small Arctic ice caps and groundwater mining. The share of the polar ice melt, however, is rising and most concerning.

When it comes to Antarctica, though, it can be tricky to generalize. It is a huge continent; the U.S. could easily fit inside its borders. In the huge area of East Antarctica, where the ice is mostly above sea level, the air temperature is also much lower, and the experts do not expect the ice to melt on account of rising temperatures. In this part of Antarctica, the ice sheet is actually growing as a consequence of increased snowfall.

But today, using a variety of satellite reports and on-the-ice studies that have been going on for many decades, even conservative scientists say sea levels are rising 60 percent faster than what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2007.

North Atlantic Sediments....yet more

Here is yet another article demonstrating global warming and cooling going on long before man's usage of coal and oil.
Peter


Science 17 February 1995:Vol. 267. no. 5200, pp. 1005 - 1010DOI: 10.1126/science.267.5200.1005
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Articles
Iceberg Discharges into the North Atlantic on Millennial Time Scales During the Last Glaciation Gerard C. Bond 1 and Rusty Lotti 1
1 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
High-resolution studies of North Atlantic deep sea cores demonstrate that prominent increases in iceberg calving recurred at intervals of 2000 to 3000 years, much more frequently than the 7000-to 10,000-year pacing of massive ice discharges associated with Heinrich events. The calving cycles correlate with warm-cold oscillations, called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, in Greenland ice cores. Each cycle records synchronous discharges of ice from different sources, and the cycles are decoupled from sea-surface temperatures. These findings point to a mechanism operating within the atmosphere that caused rapid oscillations in air temperatures above Greenland and in calving from more than one ice sheet.
Submitted on October 17, 1994Accepted on December 28, 1994

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Near-synchronous interhemispheric termination of the last glacial maximum in mid-latitudes..
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Widespread evidence of 1500 yr climate variability in North America during the past 14 000 yr.
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Calving glaciers.
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Late Pleistocene glacially-influenced deep-marine sedimentation off NW Britain: implications for the rock record.
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Grain-size characteristics and provenance of ice-proximal glacial marine sediments.
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Timing of Millennial-Scale Climate Change in Antarctica and Greenland During the Last Glacial Period.
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Hydrological Impact of Heinrich Events in the Subtropical Northeast Atlantic.
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Were the North Atlantic Heinrich events triggered by the behavior of the European ice sheets?.
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Ice-flow stages and glacial bedforms in north central Ireland: a record of rapid environmental change during the last glacial termination.
A. M. McCABE, J. KNIGHT, and S. G. McCARRON (1999)Journal of the Geological Society 156, 63-72 Abstract » PDF »
Early-Holocene aridity in tropical northern Australia.
J. Nott, E. Bryant, and D. Price (1999)The Holocene 9, 231-236 Abstract » PDF »
Abrupt Climate Events 500,000 to 340,000 Years Ago: Evidence from Subpolar North Atlantic Sediments.
D. W. Oppo, J. F. McManus, and J. L. Cullen (1998)Science 279, 1335-1338 Abstract » Full Text »
Cyclic sedimentation on the Faeroe Drift 53-10 ka BP related to climatic variations.
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Natural gas hydrates: searching for the long-term climatic and slope-stability records.
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Thermohaline Circulation, the Achilles Heel of Our Climate System: Will Man-Made CO2 Upset the Current Balance?.
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A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates.
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Dating and rhythmicity from the last deglacial cycle in the British Isles.
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Response: Testing for Bias in the Climate Record.
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Abrupt changes in marine conditions, Sunneshine Fiord, eastern Baffin Island, NWT during the last deglacial transition: Younger Dryas and H-0 events.
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Shelf erosion and glacial ice proximity in the Labrador Sea during and after Heinrich events (H-3 or 4 to H-0) as shown by foraminifera.
A. E. Jennings, K. A. Tedesco, J. T. Andrews, and M. E. Kirby (1996)Geological Society, London, Special Publications 111, 29-49 Abstract » PDF »
Deglaciation of the inner Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotia: correlation of terrestrial and marine glacial events.
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Rock (mineral)-magnetic properties of post-glacial (16-0.5 ka) sediments from the Emerald Basin (Scotian Shelf), Canada.
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Late Quaternary glacial history and short-term ice-rafted debris fluctuations along the East Greenland continental margin.
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Late glacial air temperature, oceanographic and ice sheet interactions in the southern Barents Sea region.
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Interhemispheric Correlation of Late Pleistocene Glacial Events.
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Global Cooling? It has happened before

The Earth has obviously gone through countless, remarkable periods of both warming and cooling. What should give us pause for thought is these occurred long before man began burning lots of fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We're not even really sure warming is even occuring and there are obviously factors at work other than man and our pathetically minor input of carbon dioxide.

From a friend, here is a summary from a presentation on the television History Channel about the affects of what is now known as "The Little Ice Age".

A gem off the History Channel this morning.

Consequences of the
Little Ice Age.
It began in the 1300s, wiped out the Vikings in Greenland,
defeated the Spanish Armada, keeping England English, spread potatoes across
Europe, won our Independence, defeated Napoleon, started our westward migration, and created Frankenstein.
It was believed triggered by an increased incidence of Krakatoa-scale volcanic eruptions: 5 per century as compared to the usual 1 per century. And on top of
this: 5.April 1815 came the explosion of Mt Tambora
on Sumbawa, Indonesia. 36 cubic miles of debris were sent up to 15 miles
into the stratosphere. This is 100x the ash of St Helens.
A dusty fog hung all summer over N. Europe. It snowed. In Hungary the snow was brown. Agricultural resources already devastated by Napolean's march into Russia were ruined by the cold. People starved.
As the "year without summer" began in 1816, Percy Shelley, his 19yr old wife Mary, and their friend Lord Byron, went on vacation to Lake Geneva. But it was too cold and grim to go outside. So the three decided to amuse themselves indoors w/ a
contest to see who could write the scariest story.
Mary won.

The potato was brought to Europe from the new world by early Spanish
explorers. But it was culturally out of whack with traditional staples and
was quickly opposed by the clergy who called potatoes the "devil's crop". People starved when crops failed but potatoes were still avoided.
Then came the 30 Years War. A traditional strategy of warfare in
those days was the burning of crops. This destroyed surface crops like the
grains. But potatoes live underground out of touch of burning, and
freezing. Hence, thanks to the 30 Years War, potatoes
finally became accepted as a staple in Europe.

One consequence of global warming is global cooling, considered the bigger threat to survival since it wipes out food supply. The warming causes the cooling owing to glacial snow melt changing ocean salinity which interrupts temperature conveyor currents that currently keep the northern latitudes warm.
Pentagon commissioned a study of the coming ice age scenario. This is raising concern about threats to world order. It is based upon an actual catastrophic temperature change of 802 yrs ago that created anarchy worldwide and changed history. Temp dropped 9 degrees in one year. Rivers froze, crops failed, people starved, nations were drained of resources. Breakdown of societies resulted.
Skirmishes, civil wars, and invasions broke out over resources and water.
This time around it will be worse.
Pentagon is interested to determine how the destabilization will play out and what role the U.S. will have in maintaining world order during the chaos. Likely the U.S. will be soley responsible and plans need be on the shelf.
China a volatile flashpoint. By the scenario, civil war erupts. Chinese Army threatens to invade Russia for it's gas. There will be virtual full scale civil invasion of the U.S. from Latin America. U.S. Navy heads for Gulf to protect Saudi oil resources.

It is not yet clear whether we are going into hyperwarming or hyper cooling. Arguments still out. Behooves to be more cautious w/ possible human influences on global environment