Great article today about the future of biofuels and using specifically engineered crops, other than corn. This is on the Computer News site (CNET.com):
The University of Illinois UC's real-time Arctic Sea Ice maps show that the Arctic sea ice "may not" retreat as much as it did in 2007 since the July 27, 2008 sea ice is greater than it was last year on that date. This link lets you compare Arctic Sea ice extent on a day by day basis back to 1979.
I'd like to hear EDF's take on this since there was a recent trip to the Arctic by the head of Environmental Defense (his report didn't mention the sea ice, or at least I didn't see it). I know the long-term warming will continue but this shows me that winds and ocean circulation can also play a major roll in sea ice extent, not just man-made warming.
terry44, I realize that my post on Antarctic was too long and I would have edited it the next day if I knew how. It looked even longer since the columns on this blog are narrow. Next time I'll do the link and short summary only.
I agree with your statement:
"Why is everyone talking 60 to 70 years out? Isn't the current thinking that if we don't change our fossil fuel and carbon emission habits in 7 years, the oceans will have overflowed onto low lands by 2037? Please explain so we can all get on the same page. Thanks." I too would like to be on the same page.
>I am also interested in knowing what is blocking US farmers from growing sugar for sugar ethanol, which burns 7 times higher energy than corn, is cheaper to process, and is not so necessary for food.
I'd have to ask one of our agriculture experts to be sure, but I think it's because corn is heavily subsidized (Farm Bill) in a way that sugar is not. It's more profitable for farmers to grow corn.
A crop that's better than either sugar or corn for fuel is algae. We did a post on this:
To answer Stephen952, heat from ancient sources such as nuclear or fossil once released does not hang around in the form of heat but rapidly radiates to outer space. This is true even if it is trapped under a CO2 blanket in the atmosphere. However, the temperature under the blanket can get very high before a balance is struck. On Venus it melts lead, but the relaxation time is only days to months not eons. Even the trapping of latent heat in polar ice has a relaxation time of about a month. A small increase in temperature causes an enormous increase in radiation because it is a fourth power radiation law.
We have only three sources of energy, 1. fossil fuel; 2. solar which includes biomass, wind, hydroelectric, etc; 3. nuclear. Fossil fuel including coal combustion is a one way street that destroys natural atmospheric oxygen converting it to CO2. It also destroys a valuable resource for lubricants and other petrochemicals. Obviating these with breeder nuclear is an attractive alternative because they produce much less objectionable waste than the first generation U235 reactors. The French get 80% of their electricity this way and are on a fast track to manufacture hydrogen from nuclear heat which returns oxygen to the atmosphere. The burning of hydrogen releases water to the atmosphere which is reused to make more hydrogen. But even uranium will not last forever but could be a stopgap to put and end to fossil fuel burning while a final solar solution is sought.
Why is everyone talking 60 to 70 years out? Isn't the current thinking that if we don't change our fossil fuel and carbon emission habits in 7 years, the oceans will have overflowed onto low lands by 2037? Please explain so we can all get on the same page. Thanks. Terry
Could some people like "kenzrw" please limit their comments so we don't have to read such long opinions, and/or have articles rewritten here? We could use links to articles, if we choose. Isn't this blog for conversation and questions?
Like some people above, I want to know more about why the US isn't doing nuclear. The French have used our own US technology better than we do to create electricity; and they funnel their nuclear waste under farm fields to warm the earth so the plants think it's summer all year round and increase the yield. Can't we do that in Iowa and some of our northern states? But increase corn only for food, not biofuel.
I am also interested in knowing what is blocking US farmers from growing sugar for sugar ethanol, which burns 7 times higher energy than corn, is cheaper to process, and is not so necessary for food. Brazil is sitting pretty, except that they are filling the corn/soybean void created by our feckless corn ethanol boondoggle. How could we have gone so wrong, just because corn was there? Please help me understand.
Cancel the Farm Bill, save poor farmers here and abroad, save our money. Thanks. Terry
I am just a medical doctor so please bear with me. It seems to me that ALL of the processes that convert other forms of energy into heat might be of relevance. I acknowledge the greenhouse effect and the issue of CO2 but my perspective is this: The sun has been investing energy in our planet for so many years, causing the formation of chemical deposits like fossil fuels and applying some direct radiant heat. There are other materials in our world that predated the formation of the solar system like nuclear fuels. A steady state was reached when the radiant energy leaving us was equal to the radiant energy arriving minus what was being stored. Now, we are very rapidly unleashing these long-term stores and converting them into heat over a much shorter period of time. Nuclear fuel does the same thing! Here's the question: What is the relative importance of heat producton verses the impairment of shedding heat from our world? Are we creating too much heat from all sources?
I would like comments on the accuracy of this article about Antartic ice I ran across today (July 2). It quotes in part Michael Oppenheimer of Environmental Defense Fund. Here's the link to the story and text of the story:
Scientists and others who work in Antarctica call it "The Ice."
As you fly here from New Zealand the immensity of the ice is overwhelming. For the last two hours of the eight-hour trip, practically the only thing visible out the airplane window is ice. Only a few bare mountain peaks hint that Antarctica is made of anything but ice.
Imagine the 48 states and maybe half of Mexico covered with ice and you have Antarctica.
It is a continent of about 5.4 million square miles, which makes it about one and a half times as large as the USA’s 48 contiguous states.
Ice, averaging 1.6 miles deep, covers 97.6 percent of Antarctica, giving it 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70 percent of all of the globe’s fresh water – in the form of ice.
If all of this ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise by about 200 feet.
Fortunately, even the most drastic scientific scenarios for global warming don’t envision Antarctica warming enough to directly melt all of this ice for at least hundreds of years, if ever.
In fact, one of the first effects of a warmer climate could be more snow for Antarctica, which would more than make up for melting ice. This would happen because warm air carries more water vapor to turn into snow.
Still, we can’t be sure all of Antarctica’s ice is going to stay frozen as the world’s climate warms, whether naturally or because of gasses humans are adding to the atmosphere.
While straightforward melting isn’t going to send water from Antarctica’s ice washing through the streets of New York City and London, nature may have other ways of putting water from some of the ice into the world’s oceans.
The weak spot could be the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. But even under the worst scenario with much likelihood of happening, ocean-front property owners won't have to worry about water from Antarctica any time soon.
Scores of scientists, technicians, and others are now living in tents and huts on that part of the ice, trying to determine just how much a threat it is to the world’s coastal areas. Antarctica’s "summer" from November into February is the research season on The Ice.
The Transantarctic Mountains separate the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The West Antarctic sheet covers the part of Antarctica south of the Pacific Ocean inland to the mountains and contains about 11 percent of the ice that sits on the continent.
Water from a melted West Antarctic sheet could push global sea levels as much as 20 feet higher than they would otherwise be.
Scientists say the West Antarctic sheet is more likely to collapse than the large East Antarctic sheet because its bottom is mostly below sea level. East Antarctica’s ice is mostly grounded above sea level.
Ice moves slowly
Ice moves slowly – a few feet a year - toward the edges of Antarctica much in the way pancake batter spreads out as you pour it on a griddle. Much of the West Antarctic sheet’s ice moves onto the Ross and Ronne ice shelves, which are floating on the ocean. These range from around 4,000 feet thick where they are connected to the ice sheet to around 600 feet thick at the ocean end. The Ross Ice Shelf stretches about 450 miles from the ice sheet to the ocean and is about 600 miles wide. The Ronne Ice Shelf is a little smaller.
If these shelves melted, as they could in a warmer world, ocean water would be able to lap directly at the bottom of the ice sheet, undermining it and allowing large chunks of ice to fall into the sea to melt.
The shelves could melt while the main ice sheet stays frozen solid because the are in warmer parts of Antarctica and because sea water eats at them from the bottom as well as the edges.
Icy rivers
Many scientists feel the key to figuring out how likely the West Antarctic sheet is to collapse any time in the next 200 years lies in the rivers of ice called "ice streams." Instead of moving toward the sea like one huge glacier, West Antarctica’s ice moves in streams; rivers of ice running between banks of ice.
"Since the ice is coming out in streams, it moves much faster and can respond more quickly. This might also give it the capability to go into a collapse," says Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., one of the scientists working in Antarctica this month.
Bindschadler and those working with him are placing Global Positing System receivers, which use satellites to determine location and elevation within inches, on the ice. Data from these instruments will show details of ice stream movement.
Another group headed by Barclay Kamb of the California Institute of Technology, is using hot water to drill to the bottom of the ice near the edge of one of the ice streams.
They will learn more about the ground up rock and water that seems to make it easier for the ice to slide over the underlying rock. Heat from the Earth below warms the bottom of the ice sheets to around 30 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to melt ice that’s under great pressure there.
While the hot water drills blast a hole to the bottom of the ice in a day or so, other researchers are using special drill bits to pull up cores of ice that span from the top to the bottom of the ice sheet. This ice began as snow that fell on Antarctica thousands of years ago. Its chemical makeup and the dust and other materials in it have stories to tell about past climates, which could shed light on the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Right now scientists aren’t sure whether the total amount of Antarctic ice is increasing or decreasing, but either way, it’s close to being in balance. Icebergs, sometimes huge icebergs, are always breaking off, or "calving" from, the ice shelves. At the same time, snow falling on Antarctica is replacing the ice that floats away in the icebergs.
Those who study the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have many opinions about what it’s likely to do.
But, "one outcome that may be put aside for the moment, because no convincing model of it has been presented, is a sudden collapse that causes a level rise in the coming century," says Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Oppenheimer is not among the scientists working on The Ice, but wrote an article for the journal "Nature" last May summing up the state of West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
No matter what happens, he says, "it would take at least several hundred years for the ice to melt. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight."
Rising water
About the worst scenario those who study the ice see is for a warmer climate to cause the Ross Ice Shelf to quickly grow thinner and disintegrate. Without it, the Ice Sheet begins collapsing and melting ice causes global sea levels to rise as much as 20 feet in 250 to 400 years.
Another possibility is that the ice sheet is inherently stable. Under this scenario, the over-the-ice streams slow down, which reduces the amount of ice going into the ocean. The extra snow falling on Antarctica from warmer air more than makes up for the melting ice and actually slows sea level rise.
Oppenheimer thinks the most likely scenario is for melting to gradually increase during the coming century with the Ross Ice Shelf finally gone in about 200 years. During this time the Antarctic contributes up to seven or so inches a century to global sea-level increase as warmer air continues adding more ice to Antarctica.
But, other effects including the expansion of ocean water as it warms up, increase sea levels by much more. With the Ross Ice Shelf gone, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet begins collapsing, which takes another 500 to 700 years. During this period, melting Antarctic ice adds around 20 to 50 inches a century to global sea levels.
"My son is six months old, Oppenheimer says. "Assuming he has children when he's 30, and his children live 75 to 80 years, my grandchildren will be here" when a melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could begin affecting the world. "The grandchildren of people living today will be affected. We have an obligation to them."
An unparalleled opportunity exists to set not just the US but whole world on a new course of greater significance than the exploration of space. This opportunity is presented by recent technological developments. One was just announced.
• Livermore National Labs has demonstrated a Prius, converted to run on hydrogen, got the equivalent of 65 miles per gallon of gasoline at the energy conversion rate 3 times better than gasoline by weight. The car ran 650 miles (1000 km) on a tank full of hydrogen. {See: https://www.llnl.gov/str/June07/Aceves.html. }
• Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique, CEA, in France has a time line to demonstrate large scale hydrogen production by 2012, not 2052. A closed circuit process requires water in and produces hydrogen and oxygen out. The oxygen can be released to the atmosphere rather than present energy sources that are a one way street of oxygen in and carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. Vehicles burning hydrogen as a fuel consume the oxygen in a closed cycle and release water to the atmosphere. The CEA process uses a fixed amount of two catalysts that are continuously recycled and do not require replenishment and are not released to the atmosphere. {Google search all: “Massive production of hydrogen process developed at CEA”}
• France already produces 80% of its energy from breeder reactors that convert all of the uranium 238 and 235 to low atomic weight elements. The short radioactive half life waste does not require the large dumps of 100,000 year half live waste that were required by the first generation of U235 fission reactors which gave rise to the justifiable political opposition to them. France has standardized the breeder reactor design so that staffs are not required to learn a diverse range of competing nuclear technologies inviting the operator error that caused Chernoble. Reactors of this type can supply all of the world’s energy needs for the indefinite future with little dangerous waste. {My précis of a seminar given by Jasmina L. Vuijic, Department Chair, Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley.} I add: This will allow time to develop alternate solar power sources such as the algae production of hydrogen or gasoline. If we wait for them it will be too late.
You guys have a great blog here. I'm with the Brookings Institution, and we just released a report about carbon footprint in cities around the U.S. I'd be interested to see what your take is on the report. It can be found here: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/05_carbon_footprint_sarzynski.aspx
I would be interested in someone creating a worldwide surface temperature graph for the past 100 or so years, TAKING OUT LaNina and ElNino ocean temperature effects. Is there such a chart available?
With rising food prices, biofuels are taking a big hit in the media as a primary contributor. Unfortunately all biofuels are being lumped together as problematic but it seems to me that corn based ethanol is the biggest problem, while biodieselfrom used vegetable oil and soybeans is harder to implicate. As prices for rice and other stapes are rising too, is there good data to say that biofuels are really causing the problem? I would love to see an article addressing the available data on this topic.
Corn as biofuel mess….is this causing more warming because of crop management (cutting down trees to plant corn, destroying rainforests to grow corn and other crops for fuel, etc)?
Here's a very good article from Natural News regarding this and other planetary problems:
Among other things, he says:
"I am an advocate of the idea that Mother Nature needs to be granted legal standing. I believe that humans do not automatically "own" nature, and that we cannot simply cut down forests, bulldoze mountainsides, fish the oceans, build dams and engage in other highly disruptive activities without first getting permission and paying royalties to a global Mother Nature Authority that stands up for the rights of the planet."
[…] member border2 posted this idea to our Suggestion Box: I think it could be useful/interesting to have some sort of a comparison or perspective of how […]
Is this a space for ideas or a space to comment on the above piece about heating from inside Earth? I wish it were clearer as it makes me hesitate.
But not to the point of not writing!
I have done an internal Search to see what has been written, if anything, in this Blog about nuclear energy. It drew a blank.
As an organization that is a self-appointed opinion-maker (and that is okay but it is always a good idea to let people know this rather than assume superiority of quality of opinion) I would like to know where Env Defense stands on the important question of electricity from nuclear reactors - and how that stand supports, or detracts from, or is neutral on the question of an effective energy policy for both delivering what people want and saving the Earth Community.
Wow, that was a long sentence but it just about works!
I have strong views in favor, I should say at the outset, which means that I am now especially interested in how the Env Orgs are performing as opinion-leaders, & as political players with some power to halt or hasten clean carbon-free energy from nuclear physics.
As we all know there is an overwhelming concern for the earth the warming that is going on presently.
I write this as careful as possible to insure that you read it through.
Thinking of the earth and it's outer crust and the heat that is generated inside the core I can not help but wonder how the heat remains within the crust. Obviously in the early stages of the earths beginning there were explosions and gas that came from within the earth. As plates struggled to be on top and earthquakes were an everyday event the earth was growing. Billions of years passed with flooding and the earths disfigurement and a calm fell over the world. Now years later the earth has been warming.
If you will consider, oil, sludge and coal as a retardant to the heat from the center of the earth you may start to see a trend. Think of the oil as radiator fluid cooling the outreach of the heat from within. Now think of the vast oil reserves in Alaska, the ice that is melting the icecaps, changing the weather patterns and being, my belief, global warming.
As we deplete our oil researves we will see more heating, but not from above…but from below
Best Regards,
Greg W. Andress
Mineral Leasing / Seismic QC .
Home:
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21 Responses
Comment from kenzrw
August 5th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Great article today about the future of biofuels and using specifically engineered crops, other than corn. This is on the Computer News site (CNET.com):
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10005414-54.html?tag=nl.e433
Very positive outlook.
Comment from kenzrw
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
The University of Illinois UC's real-time Arctic Sea Ice maps show that the Arctic sea ice "may not" retreat as much as it did in 2007 since the July 27, 2008 sea ice is greater than it was last year on that date. This link lets you compare Arctic Sea ice extent on a day by day basis back to 1979.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=27&fy=2007&sm=07&sd=27&sy=2008
I'd like to hear EDF's take on this since there was a recent trip to the Arctic by the head of Environmental Defense (his report didn't mention the sea ice, or at least I didn't see it). I know the long-term warming will continue but this shows me that winds and ocean circulation can also play a major roll in sea ice extent, not just man-made warming.
Comment from kenzrw
July 17th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
terry44, I realize that my post on Antarctic was too long and I would have edited it the next day if I knew how. It looked even longer since the columns on this blog are narrow. Next time I'll do the link and short summary only.
I agree with your statement:
"Why is everyone talking 60 to 70 years out? Isn't the current thinking that if we don't change our fossil fuel and carbon emission habits in 7 years, the oceans will have overflowed onto low lands by 2037? Please explain so we can all get on the same page. Thanks." I too would like to be on the same page.
Comment from Sheryl Canter
July 17th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
terry44 wrote:
>I am also interested in knowing what is blocking US farmers from growing sugar for sugar ethanol, which burns 7 times higher energy than corn, is cheaper to process, and is not so necessary for food.
I'd have to ask one of our agriculture experts to be sure, but I think it's because corn is heavily subsidized (Farm Bill) in a way that sugar is not. It's more profitable for farmers to grow corn.
A crop that's better than either sugar or corn for fuel is algae. We did a post on this:
http://environmentaldefenseblogs.org/climate411/2008/05/08/algae_biodiesel/
Comment from geeper
July 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
To answer Stephen952, heat from ancient sources such as nuclear or fossil once released does not hang around in the form of heat but rapidly radiates to outer space. This is true even if it is trapped under a CO2 blanket in the atmosphere. However, the temperature under the blanket can get very high before a balance is struck. On Venus it melts lead, but the relaxation time is only days to months not eons. Even the trapping of latent heat in polar ice has a relaxation time of about a month. A small increase in temperature causes an enormous increase in radiation because it is a fourth power radiation law.
We have only three sources of energy, 1. fossil fuel; 2. solar which includes biomass, wind, hydroelectric, etc; 3. nuclear. Fossil fuel including coal combustion is a one way street that destroys natural atmospheric oxygen converting it to CO2. It also destroys a valuable resource for lubricants and other petrochemicals. Obviating these with breeder nuclear is an attractive alternative because they produce much less objectionable waste than the first generation U235 reactors. The French get 80% of their electricity this way and are on a fast track to manufacture hydrogen from nuclear heat which returns oxygen to the atmosphere. The burning of hydrogen releases water to the atmosphere which is reused to make more hydrogen. But even uranium will not last forever but could be a stopgap to put and end to fossil fuel burning while a final solar solution is sought.
Comment from terry44
July 16th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Why is everyone talking 60 to 70 years out? Isn't the current thinking that if we don't change our fossil fuel and carbon emission habits in 7 years, the oceans will have overflowed onto low lands by 2037? Please explain so we can all get on the same page. Thanks. Terry
Comment from terry44
July 16th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Could some people like "kenzrw" please limit their comments so we don't have to read such long opinions, and/or have articles rewritten here? We could use links to articles, if we choose. Isn't this blog for conversation and questions?
Like some people above, I want to know more about why the US isn't doing nuclear. The French have used our own US technology better than we do to create electricity; and they funnel their nuclear waste under farm fields to warm the earth so the plants think it's summer all year round and increase the yield. Can't we do that in Iowa and some of our northern states? But increase corn only for food, not biofuel.
I am also interested in knowing what is blocking US farmers from growing sugar for sugar ethanol, which burns 7 times higher energy than corn, is cheaper to process, and is not so necessary for food. Brazil is sitting pretty, except that they are filling the corn/soybean void created by our feckless corn ethanol boondoggle. How could we have gone so wrong, just because corn was there? Please help me understand.
Cancel the Farm Bill, save poor farmers here and abroad, save our money. Thanks. Terry
Comment from stephen952
July 16th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I am just a medical doctor so please bear with me. It seems to me that ALL of the processes that convert other forms of energy into heat might be of relevance. I acknowledge the greenhouse effect and the issue of CO2 but my perspective is this: The sun has been investing energy in our planet for so many years, causing the formation of chemical deposits like fossil fuels and applying some direct radiant heat. There are other materials in our world that predated the formation of the solar system like nuclear fuels. A steady state was reached when the radiant energy leaving us was equal to the radiant energy arriving minus what was being stored. Now, we are very rapidly unleashing these long-term stores and converting them into heat over a much shorter period of time. Nuclear fuel does the same thing! Here's the question: What is the relative importance of heat producton verses the impairment of shedding heat from our world? Are we creating too much heat from all sources?
Comment from Sheryl Canter
July 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
We've posted a lot about what's happening in the Arctic and Antarctic. You can find the posts here:
http://environmentaldefenseblogs.org/climate411/category/science/arctic-antarctic/
Comment from kenzrw
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 am
I would like comments on the accuracy of this article about Antartic ice I ran across today (July 2). It quotes in part Michael Oppenheimer of Environmental Defense Fund. Here's the link to the story and text of the story:
http://world-360.blogspot.com/2008/07/answers-to-sea-level-rise.html
July 2, 2008:
Answers to sea level rise
Scientists and others who work in Antarctica call it "The Ice."
As you fly here from New Zealand the immensity of the ice is overwhelming. For the last two hours of the eight-hour trip, practically the only thing visible out the airplane window is ice. Only a few bare mountain peaks hint that Antarctica is made of anything but ice.
Imagine the 48 states and maybe half of Mexico covered with ice and you have Antarctica.
It is a continent of about 5.4 million square miles, which makes it about one and a half times as large as the USA’s 48 contiguous states.
Ice, averaging 1.6 miles deep, covers 97.6 percent of Antarctica, giving it 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70 percent of all of the globe’s fresh water – in the form of ice.
If all of this ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise by about 200 feet.
Fortunately, even the most drastic scientific scenarios for global warming don’t envision Antarctica warming enough to directly melt all of this ice for at least hundreds of years, if ever.
In fact, one of the first effects of a warmer climate could be more snow for Antarctica, which would more than make up for melting ice. This would happen because warm air carries more water vapor to turn into snow.
Still, we can’t be sure all of Antarctica’s ice is going to stay frozen as the world’s climate warms, whether naturally or because of gasses humans are adding to the atmosphere.
While straightforward melting isn’t going to send water from Antarctica’s ice washing through the streets of New York City and London, nature may have other ways of putting water from some of the ice into the world’s oceans.
The weak spot could be the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. But even under the worst scenario with much likelihood of happening, ocean-front property owners won't have to worry about water from Antarctica any time soon.
Scores of scientists, technicians, and others are now living in tents and huts on that part of the ice, trying to determine just how much a threat it is to the world’s coastal areas. Antarctica’s "summer" from November into February is the research season on The Ice.
The Transantarctic Mountains separate the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The West Antarctic sheet covers the part of Antarctica south of the Pacific Ocean inland to the mountains and contains about 11 percent of the ice that sits on the continent.
Water from a melted West Antarctic sheet could push global sea levels as much as 20 feet higher than they would otherwise be.
Scientists say the West Antarctic sheet is more likely to collapse than the large East Antarctic sheet because its bottom is mostly below sea level. East Antarctica’s ice is mostly grounded above sea level.
Ice moves slowly
Ice moves slowly – a few feet a year - toward the edges of Antarctica much in the way pancake batter spreads out as you pour it on a griddle. Much of the West Antarctic sheet’s ice moves onto the Ross and Ronne ice shelves, which are floating on the ocean. These range from around 4,000 feet thick where they are connected to the ice sheet to around 600 feet thick at the ocean end. The Ross Ice Shelf stretches about 450 miles from the ice sheet to the ocean and is about 600 miles wide. The Ronne Ice Shelf is a little smaller.
If these shelves melted, as they could in a warmer world, ocean water would be able to lap directly at the bottom of the ice sheet, undermining it and allowing large chunks of ice to fall into the sea to melt.
The shelves could melt while the main ice sheet stays frozen solid because the are in warmer parts of Antarctica and because sea water eats at them from the bottom as well as the edges.
Icy rivers
Many scientists feel the key to figuring out how likely the West Antarctic sheet is to collapse any time in the next 200 years lies in the rivers of ice called "ice streams." Instead of moving toward the sea like one huge glacier, West Antarctica’s ice moves in streams; rivers of ice running between banks of ice.
"Since the ice is coming out in streams, it moves much faster and can respond more quickly. This might also give it the capability to go into a collapse," says Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., one of the scientists working in Antarctica this month.
Bindschadler and those working with him are placing Global Positing System receivers, which use satellites to determine location and elevation within inches, on the ice. Data from these instruments will show details of ice stream movement.
Another group headed by Barclay Kamb of the California Institute of Technology, is using hot water to drill to the bottom of the ice near the edge of one of the ice streams.
They will learn more about the ground up rock and water that seems to make it easier for the ice to slide over the underlying rock. Heat from the Earth below warms the bottom of the ice sheets to around 30 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to melt ice that’s under great pressure there.
While the hot water drills blast a hole to the bottom of the ice in a day or so, other researchers are using special drill bits to pull up cores of ice that span from the top to the bottom of the ice sheet. This ice began as snow that fell on Antarctica thousands of years ago. Its chemical makeup and the dust and other materials in it have stories to tell about past climates, which could shed light on the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Right now scientists aren’t sure whether the total amount of Antarctic ice is increasing or decreasing, but either way, it’s close to being in balance. Icebergs, sometimes huge icebergs, are always breaking off, or "calving" from, the ice shelves. At the same time, snow falling on Antarctica is replacing the ice that floats away in the icebergs.
Those who study the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have many opinions about what it’s likely to do.
But, "one outcome that may be put aside for the moment, because no convincing model of it has been presented, is a sudden collapse that causes a level rise in the coming century," says Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Oppenheimer is not among the scientists working on The Ice, but wrote an article for the journal "Nature" last May summing up the state of West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
No matter what happens, he says, "it would take at least several hundred years for the ice to melt. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight."
Rising water
About the worst scenario those who study the ice see is for a warmer climate to cause the Ross Ice Shelf to quickly grow thinner and disintegrate. Without it, the Ice Sheet begins collapsing and melting ice causes global sea levels to rise as much as 20 feet in 250 to 400 years.
Another possibility is that the ice sheet is inherently stable. Under this scenario, the over-the-ice streams slow down, which reduces the amount of ice going into the ocean. The extra snow falling on Antarctica from warmer air more than makes up for the melting ice and actually slows sea level rise.
Oppenheimer thinks the most likely scenario is for melting to gradually increase during the coming century with the Ross Ice Shelf finally gone in about 200 years. During this time the Antarctic contributes up to seven or so inches a century to global sea-level increase as warmer air continues adding more ice to Antarctica.
But, other effects including the expansion of ocean water as it warms up, increase sea levels by much more. With the Ross Ice Shelf gone, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet begins collapsing, which takes another 500 to 700 years. During this period, melting Antarctic ice adds around 20 to 50 inches a century to global sea levels.
"My son is six months old, Oppenheimer says. "Assuming he has children when he's 30, and his children live 75 to 80 years, my grandchildren will be here" when a melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could begin affecting the world. "The grandchildren of people living today will be affected. We have an obligation to them."
Comment from geeper
June 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
An unparalleled opportunity exists to set not just the US but whole world on a new course of greater significance than the exploration of space. This opportunity is presented by recent technological developments. One was just announced.
• Livermore National Labs has demonstrated a Prius, converted to run on hydrogen, got the equivalent of 65 miles per gallon of gasoline at the energy conversion rate 3 times better than gasoline by weight. The car ran 650 miles (1000 km) on a tank full of hydrogen. {See: https://www.llnl.gov/str/June07/Aceves.html. }
• Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique, CEA, in France has a time line to demonstrate large scale hydrogen production by 2012, not 2052. A closed circuit process requires water in and produces hydrogen and oxygen out. The oxygen can be released to the atmosphere rather than present energy sources that are a one way street of oxygen in and carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. Vehicles burning hydrogen as a fuel consume the oxygen in a closed cycle and release water to the atmosphere. The CEA process uses a fixed amount of two catalysts that are continuously recycled and do not require replenishment and are not released to the atmosphere. {Google search all: “Massive production of hydrogen process developed at CEA”}
• France already produces 80% of its energy from breeder reactors that convert all of the uranium 238 and 235 to low atomic weight elements. The short radioactive half life waste does not require the large dumps of 100,000 year half live waste that were required by the first generation of U235 fission reactors which gave rise to the justifiable political opposition to them. France has standardized the breeder reactor design so that staffs are not required to learn a diverse range of competing nuclear technologies inviting the operator error that caused Chernoble. Reactors of this type can supply all of the world’s energy needs for the indefinite future with little dangerous waste. {My précis of a seminar given by Jasmina L. Vuijic, Department Chair, Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley.} I add: This will allow time to develop alternate solar power sources such as the algae production of hydrogen or gasoline. If we wait for them it will be too late.
Robert Innes
rinnes@mcn.org
Comment from erin
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
You guys have a great blog here. I'm with the Brookings Institution, and we just released a report about carbon footprint in cities around the U.S. I'd be interested to see what your take is on the report. It can be found here:
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/05_carbon_footprint_sarzynski.aspx
Comment from kenzrw
May 30th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I would be interested in someone creating a worldwide surface temperature graph for the past 100 or so years, TAKING OUT LaNina and ElNino ocean temperature effects. Is there such a chart available?
Comment from Sheryl Canter
April 28th, 2008 at 11:09 am
We have a post on biofuel from corn in the works.
Comment from tmeyer
April 26th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
With rising food prices, biofuels are taking a big hit in the media as a primary contributor. Unfortunately all biofuels are being lumped together as problematic but it seems to me that corn based ethanol is the biggest problem, while biodieselfrom used vegetable oil and soybeans is harder to implicate. As prices for rice and other stapes are rising too, is there good data to say that biofuels are really causing the problem? I would love to see an article addressing the available data on this topic.
Comment from kenzrw
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Corn as biofuel mess….is this causing more warming because of crop management (cutting down trees to plant corn, destroying rainforests to grow corn and other crops for fuel, etc)?
Here's a very good article from Natural News regarding this and other planetary problems:
Among other things, he says:
"I am an advocate of the idea that Mother Nature needs to be granted legal standing. I believe that humans do not automatically "own" nature, and that we cannot simply cut down forests, bulldoze mountainsides, fish the oceans, build dams and engage in other highly disruptive activities without first getting permission and paying royalties to a global Mother Nature Authority that stands up for the rights of the planet."
Very good read, even though it's kind of scary:
http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html
Pingback from Climate 411 » Picturing 21 Million Barrels of Oil - Blogs & Podcasts - Environmental Defense Fund
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
[…] member border2 posted this idea to our Suggestion Box: I think it could be useful/interesting to have some sort of a comparison or perspective of how […]
Comment from Sheryl Canter
April 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
We haven't talked about nuclear power in the blog, but here's a Q&A from the main EDF site:
http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentid=4470
Comment from carolinew
April 5th, 2008 at 12:43 am
Is this a space for ideas or a space to comment on the above piece about heating from inside Earth? I wish it were clearer as it makes me hesitate.
But not to the point of not writing!
I have done an internal Search to see what has been written, if anything, in this Blog about nuclear energy. It drew a blank.
As an organization that is a self-appointed opinion-maker (and that is okay but it is always a good idea to let people know this rather than assume superiority of quality of opinion) I would like to know where Env Defense stands on the important question of electricity from nuclear reactors - and how that stand supports, or detracts from, or is neutral on the question of an effective energy policy for both delivering what people want and saving the Earth Community.
Wow, that was a long sentence but it just about works!
I have strong views in favor, I should say at the outset, which means that I am now especially interested in how the Env Orgs are performing as opinion-leaders, & as political players with some power to halt or hasten clean carbon-free energy from nuclear physics.
Comment from greg
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
Please read this email.
As we all know there is an overwhelming concern for the earth the warming that is going on presently.
I write this as careful as possible to insure that you read it through.
Thinking of the earth and it's outer crust and the heat that is generated inside the core I can not help but wonder how the heat remains within the crust. Obviously in the early stages of the earths beginning there were explosions and gas that came from within the earth. As plates struggled to be on top and earthquakes were an everyday event the earth was growing. Billions of years passed with flooding and the earths disfigurement and a calm fell over the world. Now years later the earth has been warming.
If you will consider, oil, sludge and coal as a retardant to the heat from the center of the earth you may start to see a trend. Think of the oil as radiator fluid cooling the outreach of the heat from within. Now think of the vast oil reserves in Alaska, the ice that is melting the icecaps, changing the weather patterns and being, my belief, global warming.
As we deplete our oil researves we will see more heating, but not from above…but from below
Best Regards,
Greg W. Andress
Mineral Leasing / Seismic QC .
Home:
333 Denman Cove
Auburn, New York ♦ 13021
Phone: (315)-282-7502
Cell: (501)-428-5397
Email: TeamAndress1@gmail.com
The "Greatest" gift to give is Forgiveness
Comment from Sheryl Canter
February 14th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Unfortunately, the messages in our Suggestion Box were a casualty of our move to a faster server. Please post more! We may not respond to every suggestion, but we read them all and a number of our posts were inspired by your ideas.
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