WHY GREENLAND & ANTARCTIC ICE SHEETS ARE NOT COLLAPSING August 30, 2009
Posted by honestclimate in Discussions.Tags: climate change, global warming
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WHY GREENLAND & ANTARCTIC ICE SHEETS ARE NOT COLLAPSING
Via NZ Climate Science
Posted 29 August 2009
“The global warming doomsday writers claim the ice sheets are melting catastrophically, and will cause a sudden rise in sea level of many metres. This ignores the mechanism of glacier flow which is by creep: glaciers are not melting from the surface down, nor are they sliding down an inclined plane lubricated by meltwater…Variations in melting around the edges of ice sheets are no indication that they are collapsing. Indeed ‘collapse’ is impossible.” – Cliff Ollier and Colin Pain, writing in the newsletter of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.
LINK to download pdf
An Honest Climate Debate 
Excellent treatise on glacier dynamics. Cliff Ollier and Colin Pain explain in understandable terms why glacier thickness varies and that the main process i internal creep and not surface melting.