21 Replies to “I Amuse Myself”

  1. If there’s anyone out there that’s great in math… If Antarctica is only losing the equivalent weight of Mr. Everest every two years, how many years until the entire earth is buried under x miles of ice?

  2. According to Brian Williams there are 2 researchers that have observed the disintegration of the ice. It’s caused by global warming. There’s no stopping it now. So no sense in carbon taxes and such. That won’t change anything. I’m glad they cleared that up.

  4. A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that it will be gone in twelve years.
    The numbers I used are 7.7 million square miles, average thickness 4 feet, Antarctic ice volume about 5800 cubic miles. Volume of a cone (Everest) 1/3*pi*r^2*h and I ballparked a height of 3 miles and a radius of ten miles giving a volume of about 300 cubic miles. Since water weighs about 60 pounds per cubic foot and rock weighs about 150 pounds per cubic foot (ballparking here, remember), that means that we have to divide by three for the weight difference. 5800/300 means that Antarctica has about 20 times the volume, divide by three because he said “equivalent weight” and it will be all gone in about six two-year periods. We have twelve years left to enjoy the Antarctica.

  5. Q: If you’re standing at the south pole, how do you find west Antarctica?
    A: You use your moral compass.

  6. It appears that the article on NBCnews is dated for May 12th 2014. Even the NSIDC says there is more ice than the 1981 -2010 average, and that update was as of today on the NSIDC website

  7. Before I worry about global warming in West Antartica I’ll wait until the major hotel chains decide to put resorts down there.

  8. You might want to get another envelope. The volume of ice in the Antarctic is estimated to be almost 7 MILLION cubic miles…..not 5,800 cubic miles as your “calculation” suggests. Although you just might be having us on.

  9. Yes. Antarctic ice is about 2 miles thick. In fact it has the highest average elevation of any continent

  10. Antarctica is gaining ice and at a record extent since satellite records began in 1979.
    West Antarctica sits above an undersea volcanic chain and has experienced local geothermal warming.
    Only the truly stupid hold up Antarctica as an argument for AGW.

  11. Three miles is only 15,840ft, IIRC the height of Everest is 29,029ft so your volume for the mountain is off by almost half. Also the ice sheet volume for Antarctica is 6.5 million cubic miles. That would mean there are 10,833 ‘Everests’ in the Antarctic ice cap.
    What Al Gore and all his buddies don’t understand is that glaciers calve icebergs because of increased cold. Snow lands on the ice cap and accumulates causing pressure so that glaciers flow to the sea. If the snow melts and evaporates there is less weight and pressure to cause the glacier to flow to the sea and therefore less icebergs.

  13. Height above sea level doesn’t define the volume of the mountain, as the base is not at sea level. Don’t know the height of the base or we could model a cone volume.
    I think the real point is that the warm alarmists are always coming up with these meaningless non-comparables.

  16. McCoy’s tweet makes no such distinction…..but in regard to sea ice, the British Antarctic Survey using a new underwater robot suggests the sea ice may well be considerably thicker than first thought.

  17. Sea ice, eh? Sea levels will rise 13 feet, eh? Well that’s the old ice cubes melting in my glass of scotch argument that we sceptics won a nearly decade ago. No, my glass of scotch does not overflow when the ice cubes melt and NO, global warming has not been happening for over 17 years.
    At least these silly biotches are back to using the term global warming so we can go back to recycling our winning arguments.

  18. At this rate of warming all the Antarctic ice will be all gone within 750,000 years!!!
    Bad human, bad human.

  19. Predictions of sea level rise are vague at best.
    Indications are that Ice Sheet thickness is increasing, increased elevation of the South Pole and Greenland summit. Sequestering water in such land ice sheets must have an influence on sea level. The last glaciation (Wisconsin?) lowered sea level by about 200 feet.
    Chip:
    Good stuff….that sub-ice volcano chain is an inconvenient truth that is not mentioned or is suppressed by the watermelons.

  20. The calculation for the amount of ice at Mount Everest assumes that the entire mountain consists of ice. In reality it is mostly earth and rock which happens to be covered by ice and snow, therefore the actual amount of ice in the original “estimate” has zero relationship to reality.

  21. Joey, From the National Snow and Ice Data Center:
    While thickness varies significantly within both regions, Antarctic ice is typically 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) thick, while most of the Arctic is covered by sea ice 2 to 3 meters (6 to 9 feet) thick.
    Al, The mountain itself is about 15,000 feet. It rests on a base of earth that is about 15,000 feet high. I used the rough mountain height.
    That being said, google also tells me that the Antarctica contains about 6.5 million cubic miles of ice, so obviously the numbers for ice thickness don’t tell close to the whole story. Not sure how the ice thickness could be three feet and have 6.5 millions cubic miles of ice, since 7.7 million square miles should mean that the ice is a mile thick. Something doesn’t add up.
    But to bring this into further perspective, from Cato Institute:
    The global oceans are vast. Adding a “Mount Everest-sized amount of ice every two years” to them results in a sea level rise of 0.02 inches per year. But “New Study Finds Antarctic Glaciers Currently Raise Sea Level by Two-Hundredths of an Inch Annually” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation