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VAST CHUNK THREATENING
Gaia is in a stomping mood:
A vast chunk of Europe’s most ill-famed mountain threatens to break loose and crash down in the next few days, a geologist monitoring the situation told the Guardian on Friday.
Hans-Rudolf Keusen said 2m cubic metres of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland - twice the volume of the Empire State Building - was rapidly working its way loose. He said the mountain appeared to have cracked open as an indirect result of global warming.
Via Brian J. In other globey warmalising news, don’t miss Philip Stott’s ten final proofs of global warming. (Also, you may now download Philip’s ‘Sinfonia Concertante’ for B flat Clarinet from his online Music Box. Needs percussion, but you can still dance to it.)
UPDATE. According to an expert panel convened by the BBC, climate computer models are dodgy, climate science is immature, and nobody is certain of anything much:
There was acknowledgement that some areas of climate-related science remain substantially uncertain. The behaviour of forests and the impacts of rising greenhouse emissions on oceans were two fields picked out as needing further study.
Hans von Storch from the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany, cautioned against making public statements on the basis of science that is not fully mature.
Early computer models of climate, he said, had predicted increases in storminess, which had not shown up in later, more sophisticated models.
“So as long as we simply play around with these models as toys and enjoy ourselves and develop our knowledge, that’s fine,” he said.
“But if we at the same time go out and speak to journalists and say ‘therefore we will have this and that disastrous event’, I think we are doing a disservice to the public.”
“According to an expert panel convened by the BBC, climate computer models are dodgy, climate science is immature, and nobody is certain of anything much: ...”
Well, yes, but the preponderance of the panel and article still says not only that warming is occurring (and considering evidence from elsewhere in the Solar System, I lean that way) but that it is caused primarily by anthropogenic CO2 generation and can be fixed: this is where I am in conflict with them, until they can prevail on auto manufacturers and oil companies to reveal how they are transporting their goods to Jupiter and Mars and to whom they are selling.Posted by John Anderson on 2006 07 08 at 02:20 PM • permalinkHans-Rudolf Keusen said 2m cubic metres of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland - twice the volume of the Empire State Building - was rapidly working its way loose.
Then maybe they ought to stop climbing on the damn thing.
[rolls eyes at rhhardin] If it makes you feel better, Mr. Misogyny, I’m terrible at math. But my daughter and granddaughters excel at it.
You know, I finally understand why New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain fell off in ‘03. I thought it was God smacking the flinty denizens for the hubris of having put stoneboy on their state quarter. Now I realize it was Gaia showing them what real flintiness is.
The next person to do a stupid “first!” comment will find his comment time-changed to appear at the bottom of all the other comments.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 07 08 at 07:41 PM • permalinkNow I’m not very good at German, but I’m pretty sure Hans Von Storch translates as Hans The Stork.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 07 09 at 01:55 AM • permalink“Climate change ‘real and severe’”
Just in case you missed the title of the article..
2.. I thought Jupiter and Mars had different atmospheres anyway. Some thing trivial like when, how and where they accreted. Minor stuff like that. Oh, and the possible fact that there were no cyanobacteria (or the local other worldly equivalents) to begin the process..2m cubic metres of rock and assorted hard stuff is quite a bit to fall down from a mountain.. Especially if you are beneath it.
But why are they worried, happens all the time doesn’t it?? Aren’t mountains always melting?RebeccaH Not that I’m calling (drpoll) an ignorant jerk, or anything.
As a geologist of 30 years standing…. I am.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 09 at 11:18 AM • permalinkYou’re quite right drpoll, everything has been exactly the same forever.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 07 09 at 11:27 AM • permalinkIf Addamo fails to show, there’s his faithful sidekick, drpoll.
I thought Jupiter and Mars had different atmospheres anyway. Some thing trivial like when, how and where they accreted. Minor stuff like that. Oh, and the possible fact that there were no cyanobacteria (or the local other worldly equivalents) to begin the process..
Correct. But the comment by John in #2 has to do with temperature. You should go outside sometime, and look up. If the sky is dark, go back to bed for 6-10 hours, and try again. You’re looking for a huge bright thing in the sky, puts out a lot of light and heat. It’s called “The Sun”, and there’s some evidence that it’s warming up. And not due to anthropogenic influences, I must note.
Unless you think that planets generate all of their own heat by chemcal processes, that is. In which case, you are hopeless.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 09 at 11:34 AM • permalinkHmmmmmm…....on second thought, you are hopeless, drpoll. And I concur with SCD, even though I’m an engineer, and not a geologist.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 09 at 11:36 AM • permalinkThe Real JeffS — Actually, it IS mankind’s fault the sun is heating up. We’ve driven up the price of oil so high it had to switch to nuclear, and you KNOW how unreliable those things are…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 11:55 AM • permalinkHow in the hell can part of a mountain melt? Aren’t mountains made of granite and other hard things? Otherwise, wouldn’t Hannibal just have been able to tell his men to start a forest fire, so’s he wouldn’t have needed elephants to cross the Alps?
Did global warming cause the Friso quake of Ought-Six?
Or perhaps the Chicago Fire, instead of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow?
ushie, mountains don’t melt in the sense that icebergs do. Mountains are always falling apart; plate tectonics push the mountains up, the weather weakens the material, and gravity brings the stuff down.
This is a natural phenomena, present through out the world. Anyone claiming otherwise is a fool.
I think it highly irresponsible of Keusen to attribute the pending Eiger slide to global warming. This particular fault could have started thousands of years ago, and merely showed up on the surface recently. Keusen probably doesn’t know as well, since he didn’t know this problem existed until a few weeks ago.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 09 at 02:17 PM • permalinkOops, sorry, ushie, I gotta re-tune my Anti-Idiot Troll Filter™ again. I’m taking comments too literally.
No, wait, the filter needs to be cleaned out. EEEEWWWWWWW!!! Gross, is that ..... no, I won’t say it.
Back later, folks.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 09 at 04:23 PM • permalinkThe enviro-disaster blockbuster version of this event will be coming out soon:
“Rubble without a Cause”
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 07 09 at 09:22 PM • permalink22.. Thanks to TRJ for the Sun Thingy info (** See later.) But I think you are wrong about nobody thinking that mountaisn (or even mountains) were melting and falling down. It’s been reported/mooted for a few years now. Maybe not in Engineering Monthly though?
26/28.. Wow, thanks for that reminder. Think I remember learning about that in junior school, must have forgotten. Silly ‘ol me.
“..I think it highly irresponsible of Keusen to attribute the pending Eiger slide to global warming. ..” Probably about as irresponsible as it is denying that mankind is contributing..
Think your filter must be working in some sort of inverted fashion and transfering the idiot factor inwards..27.. Ouch, that really cut to the quick. So wickedly sharp too.. Shame you had to explain it though..
******************************************
Now here is a really interesting situation. Following your re-education of moi, I checked out “sun warming up” and came up with Telegraph (vfrw newspaper..) article..
Quote..
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures…
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of “greenhouse gases”, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth’s temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
Now, this is the problem that now faces all you naysayers out there.
This man, a mere “director of the renowned Max Planck Institute” says quite clearly (at least to my way of reading it) “it was impossible to say which had the greater impact [Sun or CO2].”
Here is my question..
Which of those factors would it be reasonable to asssume that we EARTHLINGS could modify?
Here is the Logical Conundrummy thingy..
Which piece of information are you going to ignore now?
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First! And, I am Brian J. I wonder just what the relative masses of a chunk the size of the Empire State Building, and an Alp, are.