The life cycle of a glacier hinges upon ocean evaporation, wind transfer of moisture in the air & cooling to create snow fall on land. It's a very slow cycle.
The ice in Antarctica does increase seasonally, but it's only superficial sea ice formed when the pole experiences 24 hour darkness and therefore, temporary. The Antarctic is currently losing 220 gigatons of ice per year, up from 43 gigatons only 10 years ago. We can accurately measure this from dedicated satellites launched to monitor sea level and ice depths. The rate of ice loss appears to be increasing and there are no reputable sources that suggest otherwise. You're correct that there is a consensus of around 90%, a high enough figure to be pretty confident that the current warming is indeed man-made. Other explanations have been considered such as solar activity, natural cycles in our orbit around the sun or increased volcanic output and none have been found to effect the atmosphere as much as we are experiencing. Computer simulations have become surprisingly accurate. We know that carbon dioxide is a 'greenhouse gas' since the mid 19th century and we've been able to accurately measure the levels for at least 100 years. Using ice cores and sediment cores that trap tiny amounts of our atmosphere within them we can infer carbon dioxide levels back to the last ice age 22,000 years ago and beyond. This is how we know carbon dioxide levels have dramatically increased since the Industrial Revolution. Temperatures didn't begin to increase significantly at the time because the amount of pollution we were banging out was actually blocking solar input, in that the clouds were so thick they were blocking the sun. Petro/chemical companies conducted their own studies into this in 1968 and found that increased fossil fuel use would be detrimental to the environment. https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/16 Of course as this was not great for their business it was largely covered up at the time. The genie is out of the bottle and we do indeed have no right to tell other countries how to expand their economies. However, as we are currently generating renewable power such as wind or solar at a cost that is less than fossil fuel generation, it is in our best interest to share this technology and invest in developing economies. China is only emitting a little more carbon dioxide than the UK and they have a population of nearly 1.4 billion compared to our 67 million. While they are still using coal as a major source of power generation, they have installed more renewable generation in the last few years than the USA has ever done. India will be forced to change as large areas are already becoming uninhabitable and there are major water shortages in cities. Increased world population is also undeniably increasing pressure on the planet's energy demands. However research suggests that the population is stalling worldwide. The UK's population is only increasing because we live longer and because of immigration. Birth rates are actually falling and that is a trend that is beginning to show all over the world, even in Africa where only 50 years ago mothers were having 8 to 10 children and now are down to 2 to 3. Education and birth control are major drivers behind this trend. The world population shows signs of stabilising in the next 50 years. In fact if Texas was made into a city with the population density of New York, you could accommodate every living person there. Obviously, this is unpractical but if gives a sense of the population of the planet today.
Not sure where you're getting your info from but no way is China only emitting a little more co2 than the uk. please log in to view this image Birth rates are not falling in Africa not by a long way. https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/
My apologies, you're quite correct, I've missed out two important words comparing the UK and China, per capita. The Chinese are just ahead of the UK in emissions per person. please log in to view this image However, I am correct in stating that world population is stabilising. I'll let the late Hans Rosling explain.
My post wasn't saying both ice caps are about to melt and release all their stored water immediately. I was replying to the ill thought out jug analogy. As there is, according to the experts, a lot more ice out of the jug than in it. The jug analogy is both wrong and simplistic. That's nothing personal against you. You seem a reasonable person.
Not my words but something I came across while roaming through the internet. Thought provoking. All this hoo ha about action on climate change is exposed as nothing more than empty rhetoric in this anaylsis on the Wrong Kind of Green website Therein lies the problem with the Paris Agreement; it is a fantasy which lacks any actual plan of how to achieve the targets for emissions reductions. There are no mentions of GHG sources, not a single comment on fossil fuel use, nothing about how to stop the expansion of fracking, shale oil or explorations for oil and gas in the Arctic and Antarctic. Similarly, there are no means for enforcement. Article 15 on implementation and compliance establishes an expert committee that will be ‘non-adversarial and non-punitive’, which means that it has no teeth and can do nothing about non-compliance. Then, there is Article 28, which offers the withdrawal option without any sanctions. Everyone seems to have already conveniently forgotten how Canada backed out of the Kyoto Protocol in order to frack on a massive and environmentally catastrophic industrial scale. I've often wondered about all these great agreements and protocols, what are they all about? Lots of noise and ringing pronouncements but where's the beef? Worryingly, the only result we can see is a grand push to replace oil with electricity as an energy management system in the countries that can afford it, or think they can. The environmental issues involved in doing so are never aired, instead we have an unholy alliance of governments, big business and NGO's pushing us in a direction that suit's their various agendas rather than any public discussion or debate on the tremendous changes being foisted on society. And the CO2 level? That just keeps on rising.
When I first saw this, my immediate reaction was that it was from some sort of Chris Morris inspired black comedy. Turns out, according to several press reports, to be a plant from La Rouche PAC - a pro-Trump political network. Even in the darkest hours of Jam, I can't imagine Chris Morris could have come up with something as peverse as DT.
Funniest news item for ages, worthy of a Carry On film. Ageing academic eco warriors in charge of a high pressure hose and get owned by it. I bet the Old Bill chortled like **** when they got there and found the daft old ****s covered in snide claret, like naughty kids in an unattended nursery school.