Is Global Warming Real?

Reader Coments

Jan Wolter on unknown date:

I need to undertake a serious update of this essay. The estimate that it would take 1000 years to melt the Greenland ice sheet, for example, is probably misleading. New studies show that as ice resting on dry land begins to melt, a layer of water forms between the bottom of the ice and the land. This effectively greases the hillsides, causing the ice to slide down off the land and into the ocean much faster than anyone previously guessed. Once the ice is floating at sea instead of resting on the land, it immediately contributes to raising the sea level, even though it hasn't melted yet. The thousand year estimate assumed that the ice would just sit there slowly melting and slowly raising the sea level. But if the ice breaks up and goes to sea without melting, the sea level rise could be much faster.

---

Anonymous on unknown date:

The likely slowdown in the Gulf Stream is only one the most widely reported predicted effect of global warming. There are many, many currents that influence weather, e.g. the Benguela and Agulhas currents of the south-eastern tip of Africa. Little appears to be known about how they might shift as a result of global warming, and what this might due to the climate there.

---