On Sunday a funeral was held in Iceland to commemorate Okjokull, what was once a vast glacier, reports the Associated Press. It was estimated to span 15 square miles (38 square kilometers) in 1901. It now takes up less than half a square mile (under 1 square kilometer), according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson presented to the audience, which included Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and around 100 others, a death certificate for Okjokull. In a symbolic move, a plaque was planted with a message to future generations. It reads:
"Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it."
The funeral is actually a few years late, as Okjokull lost its glacier status in 2014. Since jokull is Icelandic for volcano, the former glacier now just goes by Ok -- named after the volcano it rested atop.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:39PM (46 children)
So you had a glacier born sometime around 1300 during the Wolf Minimum that lost a bit and then grew even more during the Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton minimums, then melted as we hit the modern maximum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg [wikipedia.org]
Damn you Sol!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:43PM
Don't blame the Sun. Earth is an opt-in subscriber to the Sun's energy. If Earth isn't happy with its decision it can go hang out with its buddies Neptune and Uranus as they check out the view while looking up Saturn's rings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:49PM (4 children)
No, you did it by driving to work today.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:59PM (3 children)
The jokes on you! I called in sick today because I was depressed about Mr. Melty, the glacier that died.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @07:44PM (2 children)
Damn you got me, but don't you mean Melty McMeltyface?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:31PM (1 child)
I almost used that, but his face is all gone. Ironically, Boaty McBoatFace may be sailing on Melty McMeltFace's face right now.
(Score: 1) by kramulous on Tuesday August 20 2019, @05:15AM
Motorboating.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 19 2019, @06:49PM (22 children)
Ah yes, a recurring 12 year cycle is definitely responsible for this 700 year trend!
Every even 6 years: The solar maxima is going to disprove global warming!
Every odd 6 years: The solar minima is going to disprove global warming!
I'm sure THIS TIME it'll totally pan out for you!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday August 19 2019, @08:32PM (7 children)
Last time a (the same?) AC dumbass raised this point, I went down a rabbit hole on that claim looking into its history.
It(at least the sunspot variation of it) was originally proposed by a PhD astrologer to prove how celestial bodies could dictate life on earth. But don't worry, after the last 2 times getting he wrong, he refined his prediction so that the next local maximum was after his death.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:50PM
Is that because someone finished him off for being a dumb ass?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:53PM (4 children)
What in the world are you talking about? To begin with, there is no PhD in astrology. Your post goes downhill from there.
I think you are having trouble distinguishing between your TDS fever dreams and real life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:59PM
Ick, here is hoping /. opens AC posting again.
(Score: 4, Touché) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 19 2019, @11:35PM (2 children)
Either that or ikanreed's very point is that the entire "theory", as well as it's author's supposed "degree", are both totally fake, and you're just to fucking thick to figure that out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:47PM (1 child)
That is obviously his point. The problem is the failure of his "history" to be real. It is difficult for me to understand how so many people can be on this site with the same poor reading comprehension, so I suspect some sock puppetry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:52PM
Yes, because illiteracy is proof of a puppet wearing a sock over his eyes!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:59AM
Fortunately, there's a great self-help book [metabunk.org] for dealing with this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:56PM (4 children)
Strawman, this was explained to you previously.
Whatever causes the longer term cycle associated with mini-ice ages is different than what causes the more frequent 8-14 year cycle.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 19 2019, @09:13PM (2 children)
Global warming is wrong because we're going to have a mini ice age ANY DAY NOW.
Congratulations, AC, I didn't think it was possible to come up with a dumber hypothesis than the sun spots one but you proved me wrong!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @10:56PM
Wasn't AGW disproven with ClimateGate? Seriously, it's a religion with you people.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:10PM
You've got a serious strawman problem. I think you may be insane because all I see post on here is arguments with yourself all day. To be fair you do take other people's posts as input but then transform it into a retarded strawman so you can feel superior or something.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 19 2019, @09:49PM
So you're saying it's turtles all the way down?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 19 2019, @09:05PM (4 children)
You do realize that none of the phenomena mentioned by the AC have anything to do with the 12 year cycle - much less last only 12 years or are a cycle?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 19 2019, @10:52PM (1 child)
I guess the fact that they all occurred during some multiple of appx. 12 years is just a coincidence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:03AM
Pretty much. After all, everything is appx. multiples of 12 years for a loose enough approximation.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:46PM (1 child)
You mean the phenomena listed at this link?
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg
Hmm....what happens if I click close on that picture?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:57PM
Note that in your link is the mention of "activity labels". That would be long term solar activity changes like the Dalton Minimum, etc. Nowhere does Wikipedia claim that these long term effects are solar cycle-derived. Nor is it implied by what happens to be in a Wikipedia link.
Nor even if your assertion was true, rather than merely a brazen display of how stupid you can be, would it be relevant. The phenomena still happened, whether it's based on solar cycles or not.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by bradley13 on Tuesday August 20 2019, @06:32AM (3 children)
AC isn't talking about a 12 year cycle - have a look at the link provided.
Leaving AGW aside for the moment: the earth has been warming naturally for hundreds of years. Glaciers were receding before people started putting large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is indisputable fact. AGW is also a factor, also pushing towards warming. But that's too complex a story for one-neuron journalists to understand, so they blame/credit all of warming to human activity. Which is incorrect.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:39PM
This is the VERY FIRST sentence in the article that picture is attached to:
"The solar cycle or solar magnetic activity cycle is a nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:24PM (1 child)
Regardless - https://skepticalscience.com/What-would-happen-if-the-sun-fell-to-Maunder-Minimum-levels.html [skepticalscience.com]
Basically the change in solar output is almost insignificant. So you're technically correct but effectively wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:25AM
Unless, of course, it's not almost insignificant. Even the IPCC grants a significant (though by their estimates considerably smaller than anthropogenic) contribution of solar influx to the global warming of Earth since the beginning of the Industrial Age. The Maunder Minimum would have been an even larger difference in solar influx than that. How much we don't know, since we've never measured solar influx during such a situation. But it apparently is large enough that a chain of these solar minima coincides with a climatic event called the "Little Ice Age" with notably lower temperatures in the northern hemisphere (basically the usual mid-latitude places where a little more snowfall can happen and shift climate significantly through positive feedback).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 19 2019, @07:14PM (15 children)
That must be some really yummy sand! Don't you think you should come up for air now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @09:03PM
They made the mistake of burying their head in sand and then inserting into the rectrum. The friction alone makes it unlikely they can ever pull their head out of their ass.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Monday August 19 2019, @09:08PM (13 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @09:55PM (12 children)
Go away, we like living on a habitable planet thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:26PM (10 children)
Its hilarious that you think:
1) The tiny amoutns of CO2 humans may have added to the atmosphere could make the planet uninhabitable
2) Humans won't need to adapt to abrupt climate change in the future (much worse than this slow change over centuries non-threat)
There are ancient roman ruins completely underwater... You need to dive to look at where people used to live.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 20 2019, @12:03AM (1 child)
There are also drowned villages in the English channel. From memory, it seems that you could have walked from today's British Isles to the continent, all those years ago.
https://www.livescience.com/1759-stone-age-settlement-english-channel.html [livescience.com]
That quote should be corrected to something like, "This is the only site of it's kind, that we are aware of." It's probably safe to say that there are other sites in the English Channel that were drowned. This particular site may be the most permanent settlement to have been drowned - or it may not.
But, yeah - climate change is nothing new, nor is sea level rise.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @02:25AM
Yes, there are many places like that all around the world:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland [wikipedia.org]
Climate change is a thing, and it is coming no matter what humans do.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday August 20 2019, @06:01PM (6 children)
Right, right. You mean this slow change?
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
The earth is not infinitely large. CO2 we have produced is significant. Don't be part of the problem.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @07:37PM (5 children)
Yes, I am concerned about the earths crust slipping on its axis moving Antarctica to the equator, the sun going micronova for 10 seconds and melting the near side of the moon while igniting fires all over the earth, an asteroid plummeting into the Pacific Ocean causing a tidal wave that circles the entire globe.
Huge climate changes in a matter of minutes or hours scare me, not tiny changes over the course of decades or centuries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:20PM (1 child)
You must be Pepe the frog, not even aware you're being boiled yet.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:27AM
Boiled by slightly warmer water that one can easily hop away from, should they ever desire to do so? The frog in boiling water analogy is so broken here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:37PM
Here is some frog sauce you can baste yourself with https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-half-a-billion-bees-dropped-dead-in-brazil-within-3-months-and-environmentalists-are-worried/ [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:28PM (1 child)
OK, suit yourself. These changes are not tiny, just because our measurement scale reads it as "1 degree every few years." When the migrant caravans double and triple in size, boosted by people looking for stable food supplies because crops won't grow anymore, you might change your mind. Hopefully you have awesome things going on in your life that make your ignorance worthwhile.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:33AM
Note here that the first 1 degree took over 150 years and the logarithmic correlation of CO2 equivalent concentration with warming even in the face of accelerated growth rate of greenhouse gases emission, means the next one is going to take a bunch of decades too. That's what a very dishonest "few years" is.
Which will come from bad agricultural practices like pumping out the aquifers or destroying the top soil, not from climate change.
They would need to be wrong first. The hysterical bullshit surrounding climate change is a huge part of the reason we're not going along.
My money is on a developed world economy. It's the most awesome game in town even with climate change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:29PM
1 - not tiny amounts
2 - not a valid point here
CO2 is only one of the problems. The insect population in North America has been hammered by widespread pesticide use, the oceans are warming and acidifying causing multitudes of problems, massive extinction of species, massive pollution of our environment across the board.
Just the bees dying off could cause a massive ecological collapse, same for a lot of possible outcomes from our pollution. Not to mention the rapid pace of change makes it very difficult for species to adapt.
I doubt the human race will go extinct from a truly uninhabitable planet, so I'll grant you I was a bit hyperbolic, but you're just being obtuse pretending it is not big deal. Never in recorded human history have we reached a point like today or caused as much destruction as we do now, so you're just making an ass out of u and me. At least climate scientists have data and models to explain their positions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:29PM
Go on a trip: https://www.boatinternational.com/destinations/mediterranean-yacht-destinations/of-the-best-mediterranean-underwater-ruins-to-dive--26093/frame-3 [boatinternational.com]
This is going to happen again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:01PM
Herpy derpy doooooo
Gee, if only scientists knew about such things!
Note the last sentence. Also, the difference in solar energy between the minima and maxima is quite small, and again, the models account for the change in TSI.
Time for you idiots to stop playing "gotcha" with shit you don't even understand. There is a reason experts tend to have that PhD in front of their names.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Monday August 19 2019, @06:58PM (2 children)
"Jökull" is Icelandic for glacier. "Eldfjall" (literally "fire mountain") is Icelandic for volcano.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday August 19 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
As for TFS though, I don't think it's a translation error so much as a transposition error. If you swap "volcano" and "glacier" and it makes a bit more sense: "Since jokull is Icelandic for
volcanoglacier, the formerglaciervolcano now just goes by Ok -- named after the volcano it rested atop."UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:30AM
A volcano resting atop another volcano—wow!
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Monday August 19 2019, @07:15PM (2 children)
I went to Iceland in April (highly recommended vacation, quite inexpensive from Portland Oregon), and saw multiple glaciers. All of them have long fields of rubble and some moss/lichen that must be crossed in order to approach the glacier, because they have all receded that much.
Most glaciers around the world are experiencing this. Here is the wikipedia article covering the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday August 19 2019, @09:26PM (1 child)
Anyway - back on topic - even in that timescale, it's quite shocking to see how far some of the glaciers have receeded, but the process has now reached a rate where you can quite clearly see a marked difference year to year. I have a photo I took a few years back of my guide's superjeep taken atop a glacier at one location about 10km or so from the coast and it looks like there is ice all the way to the sea (there's not, it's probably about 500m or so but I was in slight dip, and it looked impressively wild). Almost exactly two years later, I recreated that photo with his current superjeep and the view is now just a thin coating of morraine over bedrock with a few residual spots of dead glacier in the hollows protected from melting by a gravel coating over the top. Over dinner, my guide's father claimed that the glacier would extend into the Atlantic during the winters of his childhood, leaving their farm completely cut off from the west of Iceland by land. In *his* father's time it was often apparently like that in the summer.
As you say, most glaciers are experiencing this, and there are plenty of articles showing before and after shots at numerous locations around the world, but they really don't prepare you for the impact of seeing the process firsthand, let alone the sheer pace it's happening at.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @02:37PM
If you ever watch a ice cube melt. It melts faster towards the end.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:12PM
Sorry, Someone had to do it
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Monday August 19 2019, @09:10PM
I am sure Icelanders treasure ice more then anything else offered by nature.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday August 19 2019, @10:29PM (1 child)
Are they going to issue birth certificates when we enter the next ice age?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @11:24PM
You don't know what you'll do next year, much less predict what will happen in thousands years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:13AM
When that volcano exploded I got stuck in some s*** hole for two weeks. Is Iceland going to reimburse me for that? Now they are whining about some glacier. You can buy a 5 lb bag of ice for like $1 at the supermarket.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 20 2019, @04:36PM
I took my family hiking in Lake Louise in Banff National Park last month, and the glacier at the top of the valley is almost gone. 30 years ago when I was a kid it extended almost all the way down to the top of the lake. It made me sad, so I can't blame the Icelanders for marking the occasion of their loss.
Washington DC delenda est.