How Is Greenland Dealing With Climate Change?

[rainman + 263]

Excellent story of Reuters

Nestled between icy peaks and lapped in frozen ocean waters, the tiny town of Tasiilaq in southeastern Greenland is home to some 2,000 people. Colorful wooden houses dot the sub-Arctic landscape battered by one of the harshest climates on the planet. But global warming is reshaping the world's largest island, causing the ice sheet to melt at a faster rate than previously thought, according to recent research. As scientists study the threats posed by a warming climate, some of the immediate effects of climate change have been a double-edged sword for some in and around Tasiilaq. Julius Nielsen, 40, who lives about 45 km (28 miles) from Tasiilaq, has been hunting and fishing in the area most of his life. "There's no snow, it's too hot and the water is not freezing," said Nielsen. A thin, frail ice sheet - or lack of ice - pose a big problem for locals like Nielsen who are not able to go hunting with their sled dogs, or have to take alternate routes.Continued global warming will accelerate thawing of the ice sheet and contribute to rising sea levels worldwide, scientists have found. A United Nations report released in October urged nations to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels in order to minimize global sea level rise, reduce flooding and the overall impact of climate change on the world's ecosystems. This would require global net carbon dioxide emissions to fall by about 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels. Nielsen said that, over the last 10 years, it has become increasingly hard to reach usual hunting grounds with sled dogs due to unpredictable weather, thinning ice or no ice at all.

 

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/greenlands-residents-grapple-with-global-warming?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

 

[Pavel + 384]

Someone said:  " Is there a better solution to climate change than starting a hedge fund that invests in farmland in Greenland....

[pinto + 293]

For the first time, scientists have identified why Earth wobbles as it spins.
- The decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main reason for the wobble, NASA says.

[50 shades of black + 254]

Same question:  Can we act in time to save the planet? And does the ozone hole make the ice caps melt faster? Same answer: I'm afraid, there is no solution with these world leaders 

[damirUSBiH + 327]

The Greenland ice sheet is the planet's second largest and now it's melting even in winter.... Bad sign.... Folks do not care...

[50 shades of black + 254]

Green electric energy generation (wind, solar, hydro-electric, nuclear) is available and assumes zero carbon emissions for comparison.

[ThunderBlade + 231]

 

9 minutes ago, damirUSBiH said:

.... Folks do not care...

Yep. Because for many of us, the reality of Climate change is still distant. I mean, people don't believe, and don't know nothing about this...

[pinto + 293]

Climate change is science, not opinion. 
NASA has announced : "Data from satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica  and Greenland  have been losing mass since 2002. Both ice sheets have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009." So,....

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

5 hours ago, rainman said:

Excellent story of Reuters

Nestled between icy peaks and lapped in frozen ocean waters, the tiny town of Tasiilaq in southeastern Greenland is home to some 2,000 people. Colorful wooden houses dot the sub-Arctic landscape battered by one of the harshest climates on the planet. But global warming is reshaping the world's largest island, causing the ice sheet to melt at a faster rate than previously thought, according to recent research. As scientists study the threats posed by a warming climate, some of the immediate effects of climate change have been a double-edged sword for some in and around Tasiilaq. Julius Nielsen, 40, who lives about 45 km (28 miles) from Tasiilaq, has been hunting and fishing in the area most of his life. "There's no snow, it's too hot and the water is not freezing," said Nielsen. A thin, frail ice sheet - or lack of ice - pose a big problem for locals like Nielsen who are not able to go hunting with their sled dogs, or have to take alternate routes.Continued global warming will accelerate thawing of the ice sheet and contribute to rising sea levels worldwide, scientists have found. A United Nations report released in October urged nations to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels in order to minimize global sea level rise, reduce flooding and the overall impact of climate change on the world's ecosystems. This would require global net carbon dioxide emissions to fall by about 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels. Nielsen said that, over the last 10 years, it has become increasingly hard to reach usual hunting grounds with sled dogs due to unpredictable weather, thinning ice or no ice at all.

 

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/greenlands-residents-grapple-with-global-warming?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

 

Does anyone ever wonder why Greenland was named Green Land? It is because it was much more green at that time. Climate has always changed and some just refuse to admit it. So called scientists are the best example. 

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian 

Florida mention: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian_Stage The last great flood. Sea level at peak was probably 4 to 6m (13 to 20 feet) higher than today (references in Overpeck et al., 2006), with much of this extra water coming from Greenland but some likely to have come from Antarctica.

See: Global Warming AKA Climate Change https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vHU2hHXebxpvExT7srNNnX-VM7Qn9Ak_ZmdKCIcUti8/edit

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by ronwagn
reference

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

Does anyone ever wonder why Greenland was named Green Land? It is because it was much more green at that time. Climate has always changed and some just refuse to admit it. So called scientists are the best example. 

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian 

See: Global Warming AKA Climate Change https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vHU2hHXebxpvExT7srNNnX-VM7Qn9Ak_ZmdKCIcUti8/edit

 

I live in Queensland.  No queen has ever lived here. Therefore, using your logic climate change must be true.

Ron, I have many times asked that you provide the science you rely on for your claims, but you never do.  

If people are going to deny the science, then they should come up with reasonable alternative explanations for what we now know and what we are continuously measuring, such as rapidly warming oceans.  

[markslawson + 1,058]

2 hours ago, Red said:

I live in Queensland.  No queen has ever lived here. Therefore, using your logic climate change must be true.

Red - I'm living in Victoria at the moment and that's a nutty piece of reasoning if I ever heard it. Ronwagn is perfectly correct. Greenland got its name through a medieval piece of marketing. As for the climate variations. Sorry but Ronwagn is also correct. Note this section from the Wikipedia entry on Greenland.

"These Icelandic settlements vanished during the 14th and early 15th centuries.^[41] The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century—as much as 6 to 8 °C (11 to 14 °F) lower than modern summer temperatures."

Now if you want to dispute Wikipedia  because its Wikipedia that's fine. But the sources are given in the article and there's lots, lots more where that came from. No-one now dispute the climate periods known as the medieval warming period or the little ice age. 

[Red + 252]

 

6 minutes ago, markslawson said:

Red - I'm living in Victoria at the moment and that's a nutty piece of reasoning if I ever heard it.

Dead right - there is no logical link to the name of a country and climate change.

7 minutes ago, markslawson said:

As for the climate variations. Sorry but Ronwagn is also correct.

Again, correct - but that is not how climate science defines climate change.  Read exactly what Ron said, viz "Climate has always changed and some just refuse to admit it. So called scientists are the best example."  That is gross ignorance at its very best.

If there is a scientific basis for what is happening to global climate which is contrary to AGW theory I would be grateful to read about it.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

2 hours ago, Red said:

 

Dead right - there is no logical link to the name of a country and climate change.

Again, correct - but that is not how climate science defines climate change.  Read exactly what Ron said, viz "Climate has always changed and some just refuse to admit it. So called scientists are the best example."  That is gross ignorance at its very best.

If there is a scientific basis for what is happening to global climate which is contrary to AGW theory I would be grateful to read about it.

 

Red, I am trained as a physicist.  When I look at the inputs, what Man does is dwarfed by what Nature does.  I really have no enthusiasm for getting into it with  you, and I shall not, but suffice it to say that a trace gas, measured in parts per million for heaven's sake, is not going to suffocate the planet. Meanwhile, be happy it is warm.  the long-term trend for the planet is global cooling, on a massive scale.  The place will end up as the Ice Planet Hoth soon enough.

Incidentally, for you lurker readers out there, all these pronouncements about melting ice sheets in Greenland making the sea rise up by 75 feet (or whatever) is not assured, notwithstanding the stentorian pronouncements.  The reason is that melted ice does not end up as more seawater.  You get these warmer waters that are sucked up into the atmosphere by evaporation, that then goes with the moving air mass over the ocean until it hits land, and depending on where that is, it comes out as rain over ancient legacy aquifers, which end up getting recharged by the excess rainwater.  Lots of aquifers have been pumped down, and they await more rain to go capture.  It might surprise readers to be told that Saudi Arabia once supported six large rivers, with the land surface a lush savanna.  Same with most of North Africa.  There are glacial legacy aquifer lakes underneath the Sahara that hold almost as much water as the US Great Lakes!  There is so much water down there that in spots it comes right up to the surface and creates these oases.  And the current levels of those aquifers is way, way down; they can easily absorb all the water of the Greenland ice sheet and then some.  The scientists led by Hansen and his alarmisms do not account for any of that. 

The suggestion that melting ice causes global wobble is rubbish.  The wobble comes from uneven mass distribution in the earth's crust, generated largely by shifting tectonic plates.  The real biggie is the Indian Ocean plate, were India is pushing Northward and digging out this huge trench behind it.  the mass removed is pushed into the Asian Plate and has formed the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau.  The mass removal from the seafloor is so incredible that if you were to draw a "Great Circle" at sea surface over the South Atlantic and extend it over the Indian Ocean, you could drop a plumbline from that Circle line to the ocean surface in the Indian Ocean south of India and the distance would be about 187 feet!  The reason is the absence of mass reduces the gravitational pull, and the water is pulled by the greater masses elsewhere, with more gravitational pull.  These are the tidbits that the AGW scientists elect to ignore. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Red said:

I live in Queensland.  No queen has ever lived here. Therefore, using your logic climate change must be true.

 

You live in Queensland because the Queen of England proclaimed it her land.   "The Queen's Land."

Way back when.  Common enough, in those days.  The King of Spain never lived in Hispaniola, either.  "His Spain."

[Red + 252]

21 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

You live in Queensland because the Queen of England proclaimed it her land.   "The Queen's Land."

Way back when.  Common enough, in those days.  The King of Spain never lived in Hispaniola, either.  "His Spain."

There I am dreaming of all the queens here, and being mislead.

[Red + 252]

26 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

copied below with my comments in red

When I look at the inputs, what Man does is dwarfed by what Nature does. Absolutely!  I really have no enthusiasm for getting into it with  you, and I shall not, but suffice it to say that a trace gas, measured in parts per million for heaven's sake, is not going to suffocate the planet.  With respect, that is not at all scientific, and one need only look at how fractional CFC contributions put a hole in the ozone layer. Meanwhile, be happy it is warm.  Never an issue in Australia  the long-term trend for the planet is global cooling, on a massive scale.  Due to well known Milankovitch cycles The place will end up as the Ice Planet Hoth soon enough.  If you regard millennia as "soon"

Incidentally, for you lurker readers out there, all these pronouncements about melting ice sheets in Greenland making the sea rise up by 75 feet (or whatever) is not assured, notwithstanding the stentorian pronouncements.  I have never read that in an IPCC Report, although it is theoretically possible into the distant future. The reason is that melted ice does not end up as more seawater.  In fact most of it does, because the hydrological cycle in somewhat invariant.You get these warmer waters that are sucked up into the atmosphere by evaporation, that then goes with the moving air mass over the ocean until it hits land, and depending on where that is, it comes out as rain over ancient legacy aquifers, which end up getting recharged by the excess rainwater.  Lots of aquifers have been pumped down, and they await more rain to go capture.  It might surprise readers to be told that Saudi Arabia once supported six large rivers, with the land surface a lush savanna.  Same with most of North Africa.  There are glacial legacy aquifer lakes underneath the Sahara that hold almost as much water as the US Great Lakes!  There is so much water down there that in spots it comes right up to the surface and creates these oases.  And the current levels of those aquifers is way, way down; they can easily absorb all the water of the Greenland ice sheet and then some.  A source for that would be handy. The scientists led by Hansen and his alarmisms do not account for any of that. Whereas in fact the science has addressed these issues in considerable detail. 

The suggestion that melting ice causes global wobble is rubbish.  Agree- the opposite is in fact true... as you point out...The wobble comes from uneven mass distribution in the earth's crust, generated largely by shifting tectonic plates.  The real biggie is the Indian Ocean plate, were India is pushing Northward and digging out this huge trench behind it.  the mass removed is pushed into the Asian Plate and has formed the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau.  The mass removal from the seafloor is so incredible that if you were to draw a "Great Circle" at sea surface over the South Atlantic and extend it over the Indian Ocean, you could drop a plumbline from that Circle line to the ocean surface in the Indian Ocean south of India and the distance would be about 187 feet!  The reason is the absence of mass reduces the gravitational pull, and the water is pulled by the greater masses elsewhere, with more gravitational pull.  These are the tidbits that the AGW scientists elect to ignore.  Climate science is relevant to climatic effects, and none of this paragraph seems relevant.

[markslawson + 1,058]

23 hours ago, Red said:

Again, correct - but that is not how climate science defines climate change.  Read exactly what Ron said, viz "Climate has always changed and some just refuse to admit it. So called scientists are the best example."  That is gross ignorance at its very best.

If there is a scientific basis for what is happening to global climate which is contrary to AGW theory I would be grateful to read about it.

Red - again, sorry but you've got your story quite twisted. Its not so much that the change is contrary to AGW theory but whether current change is natural or due to some form of human action. Of course the AGW models can be poked and prodded to simulate current climate conditions (the medieval warming period is considered natural, the argument is about the last few decades). Even then the real argument is about whether climate models can be used to forecast anything useful or whether they are a waste of time.. A related argument is whether current warming is an any way exceptional or different. leave it with you..  

[Red + 252]

9 minutes ago, markslawson said:

Red - again, sorry but you've got your story quite twisted. Its not so much that the change is contrary to AGW theory but whether current change is natural or due to some form of human action. Of course the AGW models can be poked and prodded to simulate current climate conditions (the medieval warming period is considered natural, the argument is about the last few decades). Even then the real argument is about whether climate models can be used to forecast anything useful or whether they are a waste of time.. A related argument is whether current warming is an any way exceptional or different. leave it with you..  

There is no science capable of showing that the present change is "natural" (ie. without human interference). 

The argument about the "models" is based in how accurately they project future climate.  Ensembles are being used to present the probability of their outcomes being as proposed.  I think you need to read more science as you seem unaware of what models are able to do.

Your idea about "whether current warming is an any way exceptional or different" has been done to death in the literature - there is no evidence that the planet can "naturally" warm if it receives less energy from the sun (see also Table 3 at page 7).  The planet is appreciably warmer now than in the 1970s despite receiving less energy over that period.

[NickW + 2,714]

On 1/10/2019 at 11:19 PM, markslawson said:

Red - I'm living in Victoria at the moment and that's a nutty piece of reasoning if I ever heard it. Ronwagn is perfectly correct. Greenland got its name through a medieval piece of marketing. As for the climate variations. Sorry but Ronwagn is also correct. Note this section from the Wikipedia entry on Greenland.

"These Icelandic settlements vanished during the 14th and early 15th centuries.^[41] The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century—as much as 6 to 8 °C (11 to 14 °F) lower than modern summer temperatures."

Now if you want to dispute Wikipedia  because its Wikipedia that's fine. But the sources are given in the article and there's lots, lots more where that came from. No-one now dispute the climate periods known as the medieval warming period or the little ice age. 

If it was one lovely Green pasture back in 1400 can you explain how it accumulated Glaciers 2km thick when precipitation away from the coast is just a few hundred mm per year. 

 

[Red + 252]

40 minutes ago, NickW said:

If it was one lovely Green pasture back in 1400 can you explain how it accumulated Glaciers 2km thick when precipitation away from the coast is just a few hundred mm per year. 

 

Yes.

[NickW + 2,714]

On 1/10/2019 at 3:28 PM, Pavel said:

Someone said:  " Is there a better solution to climate change than starting a hedge fund that invests in farmland in Greenland....

Great investment tip there.

I've just invested for my Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandchildren as thats how long it will take for Greenland to extensively form farmable soils

Edited January 12, 2019 by NickW

[NickW + 2,714]

15 hours ago, Red said:

Yes.

Hmm. 

My understanding is that as a continental climate the interior of Greenland is effective a polar desert in regard to precipitation so there is no way glaciers of the depth and scale seen today could form over several centuries as you would need tropical levels of snowfall equivalent. 

Furthermore I understood the age of the glaciers is 100,000 plus years. Whatever has been happening on the coastal margins, influenced heavily by oceanic currents the climate in continental Greenland has been fairly stable over that time period. 

Edited January 12, 2019 by NickW

[NickW + 2,714]

On 1/10/2019 at 11:19 PM, markslawson said:

Red - I'm living in Victoria at the moment and that's a nutty piece of reasoning if I ever heard it. Ronwagn is perfectly correct. Greenland got its name through a medieval piece of marketing. As for the climate variations. Sorry but Ronwagn is also correct. Note this section from the Wikipedia entry on Greenland.

"These Icelandic settlements vanished during the 14th and early 15th centuries.^[41] The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century—as much as 6 to 8 °C (11 to 14 °F) lower than modern summer temperatures."

Now if you want to dispute Wikipedia  because its Wikipedia that's fine. But the sources are given in the article and there's lots, lots more where that came from. No-one now dispute the climate periods known as the medieval warming period or the little ice age. 

I think the nonsense that Ron is attempting to promote is that Greenland was not covered in Glaciers back in the Middle Ages. The reality is that the Green reference in Greenland is to the coastal margins which were subject to more frequent variations with changes to oceanic circulation. 

[markslawson + 1,058]

22 hours ago, NickW said:

If it was one lovely Green pasture back in 1400 can you explain how it accumulated Glaciers 2km thick when precipitation away from the coast is just a few hundred mm per year. 

NickW - of course it wasn't a lovely green pasture back in medieval times. The point was that it was warmer as previously pointed out. I don't know where you got the idea about changes in ocean circulation patterns you note in another post, but climate was only one factor in the Norse abandoning their settlements. Changes in trade - notably trade in ivory - was a huge factor. Here is a quite fair article in a popular science magazine which sets out the factors. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear

Leave it with you.

[Red + 252]

1 hour ago, markslawson said:

NickW - of course it wasn't a lovely green pasture back in medieval times. The point was that it was warmer as previously pointed out. I don't know where you got the idea about changes in ocean circulation patterns you note in another post, but climate was only one factor in the Norse abandoning their settlements. Changes in trade - notably trade in ivory - was a huge factor. Here is a quite fair article in a popular science magazine which sets out the factors. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear

Leave it with you.

The myth that climate science deniers perpetuate is that Greenland proves something that upsets the AGW apple cart.

However, Saqqaq settled there around 4500 years ago.  Furthermore, the warmest period between then and now had no known inhabitants (ie. between the Dorset and Norse).  Add to that the fact that what was happening in Greenland was not indicative of what was necessarily happening in Europe, let alone the rest of the world.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (winds and not ocean) significantly affects the coastal climate of Greenland.