BlueBear
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Post by BlueBear on Jan 5, 2016 6:06:47 GMT -8
I saw that Swiss news feed, but I need to email them with a correction. They mention the layer of firn is "up to 80 cm thick." (Roughly 2.5 feet.) It's more like 80 m (~250'), a big difference.
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BlueBear
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Post by BlueBear on Jan 5, 2016 6:11:39 GMT -8
Ha! Mine too, except mine was a Yahoo! news feed. Just curious, where's the Yahoo! News story? I hadn't seen that. It's good to keep loose tabs on press stories because they don't always get the story quite right (depends on the attention of the writer).
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amaruq
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Post by amaruq on Jan 5, 2016 6:22:27 GMT -8
Thanks BB and Tigger. The information and photos are great. As an engineer, I'm appreciating both the scientific method and purpose (as explained by BB) as well as some of the more practical challenges (as explained by Tigger).
I can see that it's hard work, but it still looks like fun. Perhaps that's my bias for everything frozen.
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BlueBear
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Post by BlueBear on Jan 5, 2016 6:41:41 GMT -8
I can see that it's hard work, but it still looks like fun. Perhaps that's my bias for everything frozen. It probably is, but I get it. I think it's great. It'd be difficult putting in that much effort and discomfort and time away from family if (a) I didn't love doing it, and (b) I didn't think it was vitally important. It takes a certain mindset. When selecting team members, especially rookies (there are a lot of folks I've had to politely turn away at various times), I definitely lean strongly toward individuals with heavy backcountry experience, be it backpacking or mountaineering or expedition climbing, what have you. I need a team of folks who can weather a storm with a smile, both literally and figuratively. We all know plenty of people who aren't up to that task. It takes a certain type of person. I can tell you though, being in charge is a lot less fun than it looks. It's my job to keep the budget in the black, to work out team issues, get our permits submitted, progress reports to the funding manager, purchase *everything*, send returns when the vendor gets our orders wrong, handle Univ finance dep't audits, argue with finance bean-counters about why insulated mugs actually *are* necessary field supplies even if they have our team logo on them, and make all parties happy while doing it. About 80% of the bull**** I get to deal with never gets seen anywhere. It was more fun when I was just a lowly field student with no managerial duties. But then again, I asked for it. I really have zero room to complain, at all. None of it happens without all that.
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Post by graywolf on Jan 5, 2016 6:55:14 GMT -8
Thanks BlueBear and Tigger, after reading the articles and both of your postings I now know more about the Greenland Ice sheet and Firn than ever. That is very important work you both are doing and I have a lot of respect for you. And thanks for the pictures Tigger. They really show the difficult conditions you must work in.
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Jan 5, 2016 7:17:38 GMT -8
Just curious, where's the Yahoo! News story? I hadn't seen that. It's good to keep loose tabs on press stories because they don't always get the story quite right (depends on the attention of the writer). Damn. Now I can't find it. Maybe they changed the headline because the article I saw had "sponge" and "Greenland" in the title. It was in the Yahoo! News - Top Stories section of my Yahoo page. If it helps, here is a list of related articles "linked" to Yahoo news: news.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=uh3_news_vert_gs_trfont_e&type=2button&p=sponge%20greenland
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Post by graywolf on Jan 5, 2016 7:45:23 GMT -8
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tigger
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Post by tigger on Jan 5, 2016 8:12:31 GMT -8
Mike - You might recognize the author...LOL! Dirk van As
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Jan 5, 2016 8:27:37 GMT -8
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BlueBear
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Post by BlueBear on Jan 5, 2016 8:45:11 GMT -8
Mike - You might recognize the author...LOL! Dirk van As I do. There's a number of small press stories out, both statewide and across the pond, and all of them have snippets of quotes from one or more of us. Babis has a radio interview this morning, as does Roderick van de Wal (you haven't met him). The press release graywolf just posted from ScienceDirect was taken from Dr. Liam Colgan's press release at York University in Toronto, where he now works as an Ass't professor. He's a great guy, and may be joining us for some (or all) of our work this coming Spring 2016, you might get to meet him. The melt-channel photo is from Dirk van As, taken from a helicopter in 2012, flying over areas affected by this phenomenon (where water *should* percolate and refreeze but obviously isn't any more) en route to maintaining a weather station that summer. I never got any good summer pics as we're there in the Spring. I spend my summers home with my kids. This paper seems to have made some news, but the work is far from over. I'm getting another paper out soon that maps this out where it can be seen from ice-penetrating radar across all of Greenland's periphery. That's about all I'll say about that until it's submitted and passed peer review (a necessary step, the paper may be changed some by then), but this story isn't done. A couple of the guys and I have a pretty good idea of other curious things happening up high as well, also likely caused by this melt, which may or may not make it into data-collection plans for this coming field season. Perhaps 2017 though, we'll see. They might require another proposal depending on the costs. Ah, that's the other thing. Proposals... so, so, so much work. But that's the way this runs, and campaigns like this don't happen without 'em. - Mike
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balzaccom
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Post by balzaccom on Jan 5, 2016 9:04:38 GMT -8
Thank you guys for sharing all of this stuff with us. I'm loving every minute of it!
And thanks for the work. Sure hope it helps convince a few people that we need to pay attention to this!
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BlueBear
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Post by BlueBear on Jan 5, 2016 9:24:29 GMT -8
Ahh... good times. You know you've hit something important when deniers drop everything they're doing and point their guns to shoot you down, lol. Yesterday, less than 8 hours after the paper's release, the popular denier website "Watt's Up With That" posted a rebuttal to our paper, titled "Failed claim right out of the gate: Climate change altering Greenland ice sheet & accelerating sea level rise". This website specializes in misstating scientist's findings in papers, and then using out-of-context snippets from other papers to "disprove" any paper related to global warming, all the while claiming the data is on their side. They misinterpret and misuse data, trying their best to look like a legitimate science-news website. (They're not... they don't honestly report science, they try to destroy it and confuse people about what it really says.) It's actually an effective strategy. Confusion is far easier to sow than clarity. In this case, the website author (Anthony Watts, the former meteorologist with no degree who claims to know more about all climate issues than all scientists combined) decries how badly we've failed. He cites a small handful of other studies and quotes from scientists (some I know personally) showing the phenomenon we describe in the firn did NOT actually cause the widespread Greenland melt in 2012. Which isn't what our paper says at all. He's thoroughly confused about the difference between "melt" and "runoff", which are different things. We never say ice lenses in the firn caused the widespread melt in Greenland in 2012, but the phenomenon did contribute more runoff from that melt, as the video I posted in the OP describes. He's barking up an idiot tree he invented, and there are plenty who lap that up. He doesn't cite anything in the paper itself, just quotes the abstract and press releases, which (given the speed which he posted it) tells me he didn't even read the paper. Then again, neither do any of his readers. That's not their business. There'a small army of Twitter warrior-accounts mobilized too, re-tweeting the WUWT article dozens of times to anyone who posts a Tweet about our paper. They're trying to bury this as quickly as they can, even if their argument is based on a really stupid premise. It's what they get paid to do, and have been doing it for years. It's part of what you deal with in this line of work, being called a liar and/or an idiot in precisely the field where you really know your stuff. Anthony Watts doesn't know the first thing about ice sheet surface-mass-balance, but he tries very hard to pretend like he does online. Good times. - Mike
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on Jan 5, 2016 9:34:36 GMT -8
Mike, thanks for sharing it all--including the frustration with the deniers and the ways they warp reality (I am struggling to understand the ways their minds must work. Or not). What you are doing is important work, and fascinating. Keep it up!
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T4
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Post by T4 on Jan 5, 2016 11:00:08 GMT -8
Very cool (literally) and interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
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Post by Sleeping Bag Man! on Jan 5, 2016 13:16:38 GMT -8
BooBear,
I don't know if this is any consolation, but I doubt there is any occupation or field of endeavor that is immune from this plague.
People who achieve, build, innovate, CREATE, and generally produce anything of real value will always be nitpicked, kibitzed, doubted, and flamed by spectator parasites on the sidelines. People who only possess the imagination to criticize what other people do.
I have yet to build a piece of software, commercial or custom, that didn't result in both high praise by people who understood the value, and pissant bitching from the peanut gallery. When you ship 1.0 they whine about what should be in 2.0. When you ship 2.0 they whine about what should be in 3.0.
My brother is an epidemiologist who has spent most of his career in sub-Saharan Africa fighting HIV/AIDS...in recent years the final frontier in combatting the epidemic is is getting male sex workers to come out of the shadows to get testing, treatment, and preventive education/supplies. So that's what he studies. Despite demonstrably saving lives, he gets grief from all over (including our own family) from people who think his time would be better spent convincing them not to be gay in the first place.
Anyways...not that I've ever come to peace with this. No matter how old and supposedly wiser I get, it still makes me want to hit people with shovels or crap on their porches. Just speaking up in case you feel alone. :-)
Folks like you and my brother are the people I respect most in the world.
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