"Greenland glacier 'melting rapidly'"

[bloom]

July 22, 2005

From: Agence France-Presse

A GLACIER in Greenland is melting very rapidly and has accelerated its slide sliding into the sea, Greenpeace said.
The environmental group said the "dramatic" discovery proves that immediate action is needed to stop climate change.

"Preliminary findings indicate Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier on Greenland's east coast could be one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world with a speed of almost 14 kilometres per year," scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship in the Arctic said today.

In 1988, the glacier was advancing at just five kilometres per year, the scientists on the Arctic Sunrise ship said, citing satellite imagery.

"This is a dramatic discovery," said Gordon Hamilton of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine in the United States, who took the measurements on the glacier on Greenland's east coast.

<>Any change in the glacier's speed would be very significant in terms of sea-level rise, Greenpeace said...

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16011501-23109,00.html

[wli]

1. GHG effects not immediate

We're committed to something like a century of this activity before things stabilize IIRC.

[EC]

2. better start dumping salt into the oceans to keep

the saline at correct levels...:sarcasm:

[wli]

3. better think about coastal communities first

A lot of people are missing the point that we're committed to a lot of this and need to deal with coastal land submerging, agriculturally fertile regions moving pole-ward (and deserts expanding), and so on.

[Delphinus]

4. Well,

since we're the ones who have "stymied" the Kyoto pact, then maybe Greenlanders ought to come over here and make us see the light. We're harming not just ourselves, but the entire globe.