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| The gravity of sea level change |
At other times the Internet can be a useful tool for exposing such mistakes (The Web Engenders Good Scientific Scepticism).
Self review and external criticism are both useful at times, but self realization gets the most attention since it is so rare (The Conversion of a Climate-Change Sceptic).
We can hope that those who call themselves climate scientists, but who are quacks, will do the same.
The reason that is less likely to happen in the global warming realm of that small group is that they are intellectually dishonest.
The sophistication of satellites that circle the globe quickly to report what cannot be reported by scientists riding about on a dog sled at the poles is overwhelming:
The planet's two largest ice sheets – in Greenland and Antarctica – are now being depleted at an astonishing rate of 120 cubic miles each year. That is the discovery made by scientists using data from CryoSat-2, the European probe that has been measuring the thickness of Earth's ice sheets and glaciers since it was launched by the European Space Agency in 2010.(How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume - 5). Another satellite which measures the Earth's gravity chimes in to tell us more:
Even more alarming, the rate of loss of ice from the two regions has more than doubled since 2009, revealing the dramatic impact that climate change is beginning to have on our world.
West Antarctica has lost so much ice between 2009 and 2012 that the gravity field over the region dipped, according to an announcement Friday from the European Space Agency (ESA). The conclusion is based on high-resolution measurements from satellites that map Earth’s gravity.What happens after the ice sheet melts or slides into the ocean is that mass is redistributed around the globe (ice becomes water or displaces water before it melts), changing the pressures on the Earth's crust (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
The gravitational fluctuation over the Antarctic Peninsula is small, but it’s further evidence that melting ice is fundamentally changing parts of the planet. (Discover, Antarctic Ice Melt is Changing Earth’s Gravity)
Although not designed to map changes in Earth’s gravity over time, ESA’s extraordinary satellite has shown that the ice lost from West Antarctica over the last few years has left its signature.
More than doubling its planned life in orbit, GOCE spent four years measuring Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail.
Scientists are now armed with the most accurate gravity model ever produced. This is leading to a much better understanding of many facets of our planet – from the boundary between Earth’s crust and upper mantle to the density of the upper atmosphere.
The strength of gravity at Earth’s surface varies subtly from place to place owing to factors such as the planet’s rotation and the position of mountains and ocean trenches.
Changes in the mass of large ice sheets can also cause small local variations in gravity.
Recently, the high-resolution measurements from GOCE over Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 have been analysed by scientists from the German Geodetic Research Institute, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Jet Propulsion Lab in USA and the Technical University of Munich in Germany. (ESA, GOCE)
Scientists who are knowledgeable in this area of science have been able to make successful predictions about the affect ice sheet melt can have on crustal dynamics (Global Warming & Volcanic Eruptions).
Deniers can't do helpful things like that because they suffer from the dementia of denial, a symptom studied by the discipline of Agnotology (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."
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