Comments on: The Iceflow Cometh

By: Steve Norton

Steve Norton — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:34:04 +0000

I’ve just read your article and found it very interesting but also frightening.I have seen documentaries about greenhouse gasses,methane?,which is frozen at the bottom of the sea and locked up in permafrost,results from the ice-core drilling that show rapid change in the environment, the drastic reduction of ice in the Arctic and ice sheets breaking up etc and read articles such as yours. The thing i worry about is all these studies seem to be seperate from each other, as your article says ’something is missing’.Why? I am not a scientist but all these changes put together seem to be having a ’snowball’ effect and the predictions on time/effect are not taking this into account.

By: lil_miss_geekiness

lil_miss_geekiness — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:41:36 +0000

STOP ARGUING JUST LISTEN TZO WHAT THE POOR WOMAN SAID! (you’re gonna drive me to lick a window!)

By: john desmond

john desmond — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:02:04 +0000

None of the articles I’ve read anywhere regarding the possible effects of a large ice melt mention whether the ice cores taken at the Antartic and Greenland show any gaps in the data meaning that those particular areas have at some point partially remelted.
Would the absence of any gaps, thus indicating a continous uniterrupted buildup of ice through the warming cooling cycles, indicate that each warming cycle was trending to a lower peak than the previous one? Missing ice could indicate that each peak was increasing.

By: Kristin Phillips

Kristin Phillips — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:32:23 +0000

The last paragraph of the article was altered to reflect Michael Oppenheimer’s comment. Oppenheimer used the date of 125,000 years ago in an interview, not 125 million years ago as the article initially stated. The error was mine. Given the changed date, the allusion to dinosaurs living at the time of this sea level was removed since dinosaurs were not still roaming the earth 125,000 years ago. All other text is original.

By: Kristin Phillips

Kristin Phillips — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:07:58 +0000

Thank you for catching my error — I appreciate the fact that you read this piece and that you corrected my conclusion.

By: michael oppenheimer

michael oppenheimer — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:48:03 +0000

There is in error in this otherwise interesting piece on ice sheets and sea level rise. The last time global average sea level was 4 to 6 meters higher was 125,000 years ago, not 125 million years ago. That’s long after the dinosaurs expired (about 65 million years ago). Global average temperature 125,000 years ago may not have been much different from what it is now but the Arctic was much warmer and central Anarctica was moderately warmer. Sea level was higher due to a reduction of ice in Greenland and perhaps Antarctica, but much of those ice sheets still remained. Still, we could return to such polar warmth within this century; at that point, it would be likley that sea level would begin to rise, perhaps rapidly compared to the recent past, eventually reaching 13 to 20 feet higher than today.