Global Warming Update

Global warming crisis mongers like to point to Greenland and Antarctica as places where warming is clearly demonstrable. The ice packs are melting, they say, and that is proof of warming. That kind of evidence seems to be what convinced Sen. McCain to jump on the loony tunes express, at least he makes frequent reference to having seen ice sheet melting in person.

Well, interesting new information has been coming to light suggesting that geothermal processes are at least partially responsible for the dramatic melting Sen. McCain saw.

First there is this from 1997:

Researchers on a cruise have confirmed that a hot mud volcano on the sea floor between Greenland and Norway is oozing mud, seeping gas and spewing a gas-laden plume of warm water into the North Atlantic. Frozen methane hydrate caps the volcano, whose slopes are inhabited by a new species of tube worm most closely related to a group found in Antarctica.

Read it here.

Not important in itself except to show that geothermal action is taking place in the region. Now consider this:

Scientists have discovered what they think may be another reason why Greenland 's ice is melting: a thin spot in Earth's crust is enabling underground magma to heat the ice.
They have found at least one “hotspot” in the northeast corner of Greenland -- just below a site where an ice stream was recently discovered.

The researchers don't yet know how warm the hotspot is. But if it is warm enough to melt the ice above it even a little, it could be lubricating the base of the ice sheet and enabling the ice to slide more rapidly out to sea.

Read it here.

And this:

Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes.

In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.

"This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said.

Read it here.

Aha! Yet another potentially huge factor that the climate researchers neglected to include in those computer models on which the climate change hysteria has been based. Maybe those projections are not as accurate as they thought.

Back to the drawing boards?

We can hope.