1930s photos show Greenland glaciers retreating faster than today

[Will E Worm]

1930s photos show Greenland glaciers retreating faster than today

But nobody thought it was a big deal

Recently unearthed photographs taken by Danish explorers in the 1930s show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers.

The photos in question were taken by the seventh Thule Expedition to Greenland led by Dr Knud Rasmussen in 1932. The explorers were equipped with a seaplane, which they used to take aerial snaps of glaciers along the Arctic island's coasts.

After the expedition returned the photographs were used to make maps and charts of the area, then placed in archives in Denmark where they lay forgotten for decades. Then, in recent years, international researchers trying to find information on the history of the Greenland glaciers stumbled across them.

Taken together the pictures show clearly that glaciers in the region were melting even faster in the 1930s than they are today, according to Professor Jason Box, who works at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State uni.

There's much scientific interest in the Greenland ice sheet, as unlike most of the Arctic ice cap it sits on land: thus if it were to melt, serious sea level rises could occur (though the latest research says that this doesn't appear to be on the cards).

It's difficult to know exactly what's happening to the Greenland ice in total and very different estimates have been produced in recent times. However Professor Box says that many glaciers along the coasts have started retreating in the past decade.

It now appears that the glaciers were retreating even faster eighty years ago: but nobody worried about it, and the ice subsequently came back again. Box theorises that this is likely to be because of sulphur pollution released into the atmosphere by humans, especially by burning coal and fuel oils. This is known to have a cooling effect.

Unfortunately atmospheric sulphur emissions also cause other things such as acid rain, and as a result rich Western nations cracked down on sulphates in the 1960s. Prof Box believes that this led to warming from the 1970s onward, which has now led to the glaciers retreating since around 2000.

Other scientists have said recently that late-20th-century temperature rises in the Arctic may result largely from clean-air legislation intended to deal with acid rain: some have even gone so far as to suggest that rapid coal- and diesel-fuelled industrialisation in China is serving to prevent further warming right now.

Still other scientists, differing with Prof Box, offer another picture altogether of Arctic temperatures, in which there were peaks both in the 1930s and 1950s and cooling until the 1990s: and in which the warming trend which resulted in the melting seen by Rasmussen's expedition actually started as early as 1840, before the industrial revolution and human-driven carbon emission had even got rolling. In that scenario, variations in the Sun seem to have much more weight than is generally accepted by today's climatologists.


At any rate, the new information from the old Danish pictures adds some more data to the subject. The new study by Box and his co-authors is published by Nature Geoscience, here.

Article

 

[lurkingdirk]

Are you supporting the concept of global warming these days, Will?

 

[Will E Worm]

Are you supporting the concept of global warming these days, Will?

Not at all. This just shows how stupid the idea is.

Al Gore supports more money in his pocket, not global warming.

 

[ralph furley]

Not at all. This just shows how stupid the idea is.

Al Gore supports more money in his pocket, not global warming.

stfu u retardican. nobody's falling for your stupid propaganda asshole

 

[Will E Worm]

stfu u retardican. nobody's falling for your stupid propaganda asshole

Excuse me!? :nono: Do not attack other members. I am not a modern Republican.

I am not spreading propaganda. Do not be afraid of the truth.

 

[Red Spyder]

^ And again, another subject where the libs' minds are completely made up. You can show then the evidence that all of these climate events are natural but they just won't listen, in fact, they'll just impune it as nothing more than propaganda produced by "big oil" or "big industry". Their minds have closed. But of course, the propaganda produced by the environmental fund raising industry is taken as gospel truth and those of us infidels who don't swallow it are nothing but neanderthals. Remember, Will, Mother Earth is their God, so by attacking the theory of man-made global warming you're attacking a tenet of their pseudo-religious beliefs. It'd be like someone telling you and somehow using Bible passages to try and convince you that Jesus was gay or something.

 

[Will E Worm]

^ And again, another subject where the libs' minds are completely made up. You can show then the evidence that all of these climate events are natural but they just won't listen, in fact, they'll just impune it as nothing more than propaganda produced by "big oil" or "big industry". Their minds have closed. But of course, the propaganda produced by the environmental fund raising industry is taken as gospel truth and those of us infidels who don't swallow it are nothing but neanderthals. Remember, Will, Mother Earth is their God, so by attacking the theory of man-made global warming you're attacking a tenet of their pseudo-religious beliefs. It'd be like someone telling you and somehow using Bible passages to try and convince you that Jesus was gay or something.

Libertards have minds now? :1orglaugh

It's clear global warming and cooling are all cycles. :hatsoff:

 

[vodkazvictim]

^ And again, another subject where the libs' minds are completely made up. You can show then the evidence that all of these climate events are natural but they just won't listen, in fact, they'll just impune it as nothing more than propaganda produced by "big oil" or "big industry". Their minds have closed. But of course, the propaganda produced by the environmental fund raising industry is taken as gospel truth and those of us infidels who don't swallow it are nothing but neanderthals. Remember, Will, Mother Earth is their God, so by attacking the theory of man-made global warming you're attacking a tenet of their pseudo-religious beliefs. It'd be like someone telling you and somehow using Bible passages to try and convince you that Jesus was gay or something.

So you're saying that the Swiss are wrong and that global warming is ENTIRELY natural?

 

[Red XXX]

What you need to look at is the mass balance of the glacier, there has been negative mass balance for many glaciers over the last couple of decades - but mass balance does relate to some degree on snow deposits over many thousands of years, so retreat can at times reflect weather conditions many thousands of years back! It is far to simplistic to look at pictures over a very short period of time and conclude it is a result of man! There is some very bad science around the global warming question full stop .....

 

[Rattrap]

Ah, global warming.

Let me ask you (all) this: we know we consume far more than we need to, and that consumption has very real, very bad effects on our environment. Air quality, water quality, landfills, etc. These are not debatable. Then there's also this very good chance that it's fucking with our atmosphere, accelerating natural cycles to unnatural levels that many species we depend on can't cope with.

With that in mind - even if our actions aren't a heavily contributing factor in climate change - would it be so bad if we wasted less?

 

[Master Roshi]

and apparently Al Gore does not believe his own lies because he still owns a few mansions on the coastlines SMH

 

[Red XXX]

consumption has very real, very bad effects on our environment. Air quality, water quality, landfills, etc. These are not debatable.

Why are these not debatable?

There's some debate as to whether sulphur pollution from China's coal fired power stations is actually helping to keep the planet cooler than it should be naturally at the moment and that cleaning up chinese power supplies may infact increase global warming. By taking every argument as a 'given' and not fully understanding what we are doing at present we could quite easily make matters far worse rather than better.

We know so little and understand even less about how our climate actually works to say things are not debatable is very short sighted - after all it wasn't so long ago that the world was flat and it was all created in 7 odd days!

 

[Rattrap]

Why are these not debatable?

I'm not talking about effects on the over all climate when I talk about certain aspects of pollution. I'm talking about the more specific instances - we dump something in a river, half the river ecosystem dies and people get sick from swimming in it. Loads of specific instances where pollution and waste is obviously bad to the immediate environment. These aren't really debatable; what their measurable effects on the over all climate is, are.

I've yet to hear of landfills having any benefit to anything whatsoever. To be fair, I haven't looked much.

There is all sorts of wacky (clarifying: not necessarily wrong!) science for numerous theories regarding climate change. I read an article in a paper a few years back talking about creating an artificial ash umbrella by spewing tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere to create a similar (as I understand it) cooling effect as your China example. Maybe it would work - as you say, we don't understand all the variables to know what would happen if we tried.

Regardless, one way or the other, our levels of waste and consumption are not sustainable and will come to an end. There aren't any 'if's' about it, short some miraculous breakthrough in energy generation. It probably won't be soon, but it could be sooner than we'd like to think.

 

[bobjustbob]

It's pretty arrogant to think that humans have any control of the future of this planet. We are nothing but a speck on the time-line here. The only things we are capable of doing is to help keep ourselves going. Ice ages and asteroids later we are here.

Let's say that in 30 years global warming efforts by us stops the trend and now the planet is cooling. Cooling too fast. What do we do now? Start polluting again? All we can do is be a little cleaner in the way we do things and waste less. That's it. The planet will take care of it's self.