Volcanoes melting Arctic ice cap?

Well I suppose we will now be blamed for creating the Volcanoes

:alien:

 

Yeah, I posted that recently. Interesting theory, but some around here reflexively dismiss anything from Fox or IBD, missing the point that most MSM's ignore that and similar stories.

http://priuschat.com/forums/environ...and-ice-core-analysis-shows-2.html#post659444

 

Maybe this will help the closed minded reflex dismissal syndrome regarding the story.

[FONT=&quot]Volcanoes Erupt Beneath Arctic Ice - Yahoo! News

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25419241/wid/11915773

Sorry I couldn't find the story on the beloved Clinton News Network. Ironically the author has many other articles on the Clinton News Network.

[/FONT]

 

I sure am glad I don't get my news from such garbage sources as general mainstream media.

Do you guys sit at Denny's late at night playing Magic "The Gathering" and devising anti-global warming schemes?

 

Not be be a naysayer, but consider the source: No, not Fox news which is indeed always suspect, but who only served as a conduit for the "story" No look at Imaginova corp and see who is behind it. Turns out it is Lou Dobbs.

Now if you also read the bit, you get the only quote: "Scientists don't see any significant connection, however.

"We don't believe the volcanoes had much effect on the overlying ice," Reeves-Sohn told LiveScience, "but they seem to have had a major impact on the overlying water column."

As is typical with such sources, context is something that exists only in a scrabble game. You guys should learn to read outside the box occasionally. If you only read and believe your own opinions, you aren't likely to grow in your understanding of the world. I find that the most stimulating reading is that which goes against my own opinion. Well researched, well written information can lead us to a more complete truth.

Icarus

PS The Yahoo news story is produced by "LiveScience.com" A quick search of their site reveals a major connection to ExxonMobil Corp. As I said folks, do a bit of homework and consider the sources of your drivel! The sooner you realize that most publications have an agenda, (good or bad depending on your view) the sooner you can make INFORMED choices about what is really true!

 

It is interesting and yet another peice of the cycle of our oceans 'climate'. Yet one more reason to be careful about adding yet another factor to the heating.
(unless someone has finally proved that CO2 really doesn't absorb long wavelength radiation)

 

LOL.

Hey f8l what took you so long? Eating breakfast? Usually you're Johnny on the Spot with these fun conversations.

So what garbage source do you use to get your news? Enlighten me.

 

Icarus, reading inside the box (last sentence of the OP link) shows the sources to be NASA, NSI and WHOI, not Lou Dobbs as you claim:

"The research, detailed in the June 26 issue of the journal Nature, was funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation and WHOI."

Also, another source reporting the same story has a slightly different take:

"However, some still question how heated water even if it is carried away does not have some impact on the immediate area."

Arctic Volcanoes Have Been Erupting for Past Decade - DigitalJournal.com: The Power of Citizen Journalism

Edit: In response to your PS, the Yahoo story was written by Jeanna Bryner, a widely published author and freelancer. Sometimes a cursory search before posting can broaden one's outlook beyond an ingrained agenda:

Jeanna Bryner - Google Search

Not to be a naysayer...

 

Just more denialist nonsense. Take an isolated fact, blow it out of proportion, don't check with the scientists, don't check your numbers or facts, then claim that those who don't swallow that claptrap are closed-minded.

Let's get the facts on the table. Yep, volcanic activity, more than a mile under the surface, in part of the Arctic ocean. Been well documented since 2001. The novelty here is that they now find some glassy rock fragments. Before this, they thought that the lava just oozed out, now they have evidence that it sometimes explodes out. Just to be clear, when the scientists said "violent eruptions", they didn't mean "large eruptions", they mean that the lava does more than just ooze out the cracks. The phrase, quoted in the article referenced above, was that it might sometimes pop like a champagne cork.

Next, check what the scientists who made this discovery actually said with regard to the ice, as quoted in the article referenced in the post above. They said:

"We don't believe the volcanoes had much effect on the overlying ice,"

If these guys thought they had any reason to think that they could explain the melting ice, it's a pretty fair bet they'd claim it.

Why don't they think the volcanoes explain the ice melt. After reading the postings on realclimate.org to get a handle on this, I take away the following. You'll have to read through that to get to the original citatations.

RealClimate

First, the volcanoes/vents are not located anywhere near where the biggest ice melt took place last year. They're in the wrong place.

Second, the actual measured emissions from these vents appear small. Here's a quote, per realclimate, from the people who discovered these vents, as quoted on realclimate:

“Much to their surprise, scientists aboard the 2001 cruise dredged up rocks from the Gakkel Ridge that appear to have been chemically transformed by hydrothermal venting. Sensors on their dredging lines also detected whispers of warmer water, chemicals, and particles that are present in plumes of vent fluids that billow out from small vents (the emphasis is mine).â€

So, when directly measured, the output of the vents were described in language suggesting that their output is small (and is, as noted in the realclimate discussion, 3 to 5 km under the surface).

Third, there's a whole lot of cold water and ice in the arctic ocean, and it would take an implausibly huge amount of hot lava to melt the icecap. Several people did several independent calculations and came up with the same answer. If the eruption were somehow as large as Vesuvius (yet somehow went unnoticed), and all the heat somehow made it up to the surface, that would have accounted for less than 1% of the total ice loss. There is no way that eruptions of that magnitude would have gone unnoticed, and there is doubly no way that there is enough volcanic activity to account for the preponderance of ice loss in 2007.

Finally, here's a very good question-and-answer from experts on the arctic ocean, on this exact question:

Whats Up With Volcanoes Under Arctic Sea Ice - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog

They make the point fairly clearly that whatever heat is released from those volcanoes doesn't make it up to the surface because the ocean is pretty strongly stratified in that region.

In fact, they directly measured the temperature profile of the ocean waters there, and they directly showed that the heat is not moving up toward the surface. Here's the quote:

"It occurs to me that we have primary evidence that heat from the bottom is not reaching the ice. Temperature profiles from virtually everywhere in the Arctic Ocean display a maximum temperature at a depth from 200-400 [meters]. This is associated with the Atlantic Water entering the basin from the Norwegian Sea. Fundamental laws of physics require that below the depth of this maximum, the heat flux is downward. Very near the bottom temperatures have been found to increase with depth indicating a small upward heat flux from geothermal sources, which help to heat only the very deepest water."

The volcanic vents were found to be discharging "whispers" of warm water. Theory suggests and direct measurement shows that the heat from those volcanoes is not making it to the surface. Even if it did, it would take an implausibly huge amount of volcanic activity to melt as much ice as melted last year.

Hope that's good enough. If you want to persist in believing that volcanoes are causing the loss of the polar ice cap, there's not much I can do beyond having put you in possession of the facts.

 

No need to be defensive, nobody claimed this topic as proof, only another possibility for the open-minded to consider. Note that the OP was posed as a question, not a statement of fact.

 

Thank you chogan. I was looking for my Nature issue to see what was actually said instead of what the spin was. Appreciate the info.
And for those that don't like 'realclimate.org' feel free to follow their references.

 

LOL

I had to wait for your response because I have the other guys on /ignore. You're not so bad so I actually read your posts (and Viking's).

My news generally comes from either scientific journals or from professionals. I talk to so many people at work and in the field that if something interesting pops up and then I go and research it. I do not watch regular tv or the news "channels" unless my roomates have it on and I'm walking by.

I'll admit that by waiting until papers are published or word gets around the scientific community I am a bit behind on current topics but that also carries with it the benefit of avoiding hyperbole.

 

Oh, tit for tat. Read the first four posts again. We have a Fox News article that quotes the scientist responsible for this most recent finding as saying that this has no bearing on the melting of the polar icecap. And this is first spun by Fox (mid-ocean ridge a few hundred yards tall = "Huge Volcanoes"), then by the OP ("anti-Human Induced Global Warming viewpoint") Followed quickly by terms like "reflexively dismiss" and "closed minded", to describe people who won't take Fox News spin as gospel. Sheesh.

 

Thanks for posting the RealClimate web site.

It is human nature for people to believe what they want to believe and grab at anything that might support their position. Not sure why this is. Maybe it is a failing of our educational system.

Remember when it came out that smoking would increase your risk of lung cancer? Oh, that can't be true, because I just smoked A cigarette didn't contract cancer the next day. Had a woman at work think that global warming would be great because it would be nice to have Michigan winters 2 or 3 degrees warmer. They are so cold.

 

I wasn't suggesting that Lou Dobbs et al did the research, but rather they published the piece. Reading the research in the peer review journal is a much better way to get information rather than spin. (I confess, I have NOTE read the peer review journal on this subject, as I suspect few have).

As for Jeanna Bryner, once again, was well respected as she may be in your eyes, consider the source. In addition to Lifescience.com, she ALSO works for Imaginova.

All I am saying is while the underlying science may or may not be good, the PR world of mass media publication, be it Lifescience.com, or Fox or CNN, or Sierra Club very often have an agenda and therefore a spin. I have no doubt that there are undersea volcanoes in the Arctic, and that they may indeed be responsible for some portion of Arctic sea ice melting, BUT, to claim from that, that human causes are therefore insignificant are intellectually dishonest.

Icarus

 

Clinton News Network??? I see only one highly opinionated program in CNN and that's Glenn Beck.

 

I am talking about the news reporting not the silly programs on news channels. We must be watching different CNN's. CNN is the second most liberal biased news network behind the Anti Bush Channel (ABC). Although the Conservative Bashing Channel (CBS) comes in a close third and is also slanted towards the left. If one cannot see the extreme liberal biased views of the news and the comments on these channels they are only hearing the news and not listening.

 

From the body of the fox news article.

"With news this week that polar ice is melting dramatically, underwater Arctic pyrotechnics might seem like a logical smoking gun.

Scientists don't see any significant connection, however."

Who are you going to believe? Smelly scientists or the Fox news team?

 

Smelly, government funded scientists.