March 27, 2008
Burlington, Washington
Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University, author of 8 books, 150 journal publications with focus on geomorphology; glacial geology; Pleistocene geochronology; environmental and engineering geology.
extracts
Look at history, where we are in 2008, and where weve been. If you go back to the beginning of the century, there was a really deep cold period from about 1880 to 1910, and then it warmed until about 1945. Most of the global temperature records are set in the middle of the 1930s when it was warmer than now. And the same is true in Greenland--the temperatures in the 1930s were warmer than they are now. In ~1945, we did a flip to thirty years of global cooling. The time of maximum CO2 emissions started in 1945 and temperatures should have shot up, but we cooled off. Thats an anti-correlation. In 1977, we got warmer and warmer. If we look back 500 years, the trend of 1977 to 1998 is not unique to this century. For about 500 years we have 30year periods where it gets warm/cold, warm/cold.
As an aside, you know the big news from the Antarctic about the Wilkins Ice Shelf breaking up? The headlines in some news media was something like Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapses. Its not the ice sheet, which is 15,000 feet thick. What were talking about is really thin shelf ice along the margin which has been warmed by ocean water. Weve had thirty years of global warming, and the water has gotten getting warmer. So what? The truth is, the main Antarctic ice sheet is getting colder. The snow records show the same thing. The ice is not shrinking, its growing. Al Gore says its 40 degrees down there and everything is going to melt and the sea level will rise. Hansen has said the sea level could rise as much as 250 feet. Its insane! Absurd!
KLC: They love talking about the area that sticks out into the Pacific-Atlantic intersection.
DJE: The shelf ice is really thin. In terms of total volume, its nothing, a fraction of one-percent. It doesnt mean anything. Its what youd expect if you have warm ocean water. Its impressive because it has a broad area, but it is really thin. The climate is not warmer down there, the surrounding ocean is warmer. Al Gore was quoted as saying something about talking to somebody who said it was thawing in Antarctica where it was something like 40 degrees. Someone bothered to look up the temperature. At that point on the ice cap it was 47 below zero. The caller was down on the coast someplace by the nice warm ocean water.
Look at Greenland. Both Gore and Hansen talk about glaciers sliding into the sea. Thats crazy. No glaciologist in the world would subscribe to that nonsense. Glaciers dont do that. Two-mile thick ice, almost three-miles thick in Antarctica, flows like really thick taffy, and it doesnt slide anywhere. Its like saying Pikes Peak is going to slide into the Gulf of Mexicoit isnt going to happen.
KLC: They cant talk about the Arctic, they have to talk about ice on land, Greenland for example.
DJE: There are no glaciers in the Arctic. Theres a big noise that Gore and Hansen made about melting in Greenland. There is melting along the edges, but the ice is growing in the middle, like Antarctica. To discuss Greenland temperatureswe had global warming from the turn of the century to the 1940s, then Greenland experienced the same global cooling that everyone else did from 1945 to about 1977 and its been warming since then. The interesting thing is, it was warmer in Greenland in the 1930s than it is right now. Theyre saying its never happened before? It happened in the 1930s.
and the debate continues!!!!!!
