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Bob Bingham Blog page.

A series of opinion pieces on, mostly climate change and related subjects to do with New Zealand.

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Larsen C ice sheet breaking up?

20/2/2015

44 Comments

 
Rising sea level is becoming an even  greater threat amongst all the problems with climate change. Most of the big ice sheets have very few records because they are so inaccessible but, despite their size, 
they are very sensitive to minute changes in temperature and yet they are vital to our lifestyle and civilisation.

Research by D. JANSEN, B. KULESSA, P.R. SAMMONDS, A. LUCKMAN, E.C. KING, N.F. GLASSER has uncovered a disturbing situation.

http://www.igsoc.org:8080/journal/56/198/j10J001.pdf
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West Antarctica is a huge ice sheet held in position by a string of islands and as it projects into the Southern Ocean, towards South America, it is vulnerable to the changing temperature of wind and water.


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Larsen A and B have already collapsed and now a large crack has appeared in Larsen C. If this crack progresses on its trajectory it would break off an estimated 6400 Sq Km or 12% of the ice sheet or it may take a shorter route and release 9%

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The problem appears to be that, In common with many other ice sheets, warmer ocean water is melting the ice from below and detaching the ice from its grounding line making it vulnerable to breaking and also melting from above due to an increase in wind patterns. 
These Antarctic ice sheets are vitally important to the rate of sea level rise because, although this ice is already in the water and will not in itself add to the rise, it is holding back the glaciers from the land-ice and past history shows that when this buttressing by the sea ice disappears the land ice speeds up its journey to the sea. 
Everyone will be looking at Larsen C, especially as the Pine Island ice sheet is also melting rapid from below and is in terminal decline.

 Who knows what else is happening in this hard to reach region? 
This video helps explain some of the problems.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMJpqxFaMqk


44 Comments

Oil as a resource.

17/2/2015

0 Comments

 
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Chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Ben van Beurden made a speech at the International Petroleum Week advocating that oil companies take a greater role in climate change. As we have seen in recent times oil is a diminishing resource with a volatile price and its value to society is too great to abuse it.

Oil is a fantastic, compact and powerful source of energy which we have squandered by selling it at a very low price and much of it has been wasted.

It may not be a message that people want to hear but we should raise the price to conserve its use and expand our use of electric transport powered by renewable energy. This would reduce our CO2 emissions and eke out what reserves of oil we have left.



0 Comments

Climate change threats video.

3/2/2015

2 Comments

 
Climate change threats video.
For those who prefer a video here is a fifteen minute presentation of the main points. 
2 Comments

    Bob Bingham 

    Occasional blog posts on topical news items concerning the climate.  Please click the RSS feed to receive updates.

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