After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.

Well, it is only fitting that the prize is awarded by the wrong people to the wrong people. That is an excellent way to make sure the wrong message is delivered.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the perversity.

Sharon Astyk wrote this morning:

Well, Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize, something I'm more than a little ambivalent about. On the one hand, they both did an enormous amount to draw attention to climate change, and that's really important.

On the other hand, in re: Al Gore, I'm reminded of what Tom Lehrer said when Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize, that it made political satire obsolete.

I mean the man was a participant in the Clinton policies that, among other things, allowed half a million kids in Iraq to die from sanctions.

But then again, I would have thought "never was a Nazi" was a criteria for Pope, and that's clearly untrue. And obviously the "never was a mass murderer" bar for the Nobel Peace Prize, if it ever existed, is long since broken. Probably my standards are too high.

Yes, non-linear does indeed seem to be the order of the day.

As I point out (and this just infuriates some people): "The numbers and the laws of physics do not care one wit what you or I think about them or whatever meaning is assigned to them or to the person discussing them.

They simple are and that's really all you need to know."

Hmmm... what would one well placed suitcase nuke be able to do to the ice shelf? One nuke can destroy a city center and contaminate a wide area but sticking it where it can cause a huge area of ice to crash into the ocean seems like it would exponentionally increase the damage. Terrorists seem to really like methods that leverage into higher degrees of damage.

Of course I could be way off on scale here about the force needed to cause such an event. I just remember a few years ago talk of part of the Canary Islands possibly breaking off and causing a tidal wave that would wipe out the eastcoast of North America.

I am not so sure about this whole tidal wave business in connection with tidewater glaciers.

When something that big moves horizontally it moves very fast in terms of geological time, but not that fast. I think rapid ice sheet slide is something like kilometers per day rather than kilometers per year, and probably not the many multiple kilometers per hour needed to generate a tsunami.

Calving events can and do create fairly impressive waves in constrained spaces but the energy isn't there for an ocean spanning slosh - they're impressive, but local events. The Lituya Bay tsunami is of this type, but it began at the head of the fjord, with the high sides and constrained spaces making it more impressive than had the collapsing face been directly on the sea. This was not an ice event but rather unstable rock, the similarity is found in the scope of the event.

Someone references the La Palma volcano collapse - this definitely the hand of $DEITY slapping the surface of the Atlantic, should that come to pass, but the events are totally different. When La Palma lets go it'll be similar to the event at Lituya Bay in Alaksa in that its rock, and on a much larger scale, but the physics are just not the same.

A La Palma eruption will drop a massive amount of volcanic rock from a pretty good height essentially instantaneously - E = 1/2 M * V^2. A tidewater glacier is basically a long tube of ice on an inclined plane - so we're talking about the kinetic coefficient of friction between this flexible ice mass and its fjord. Ice is brittle on a small scale and brittle when not under pressure, so the sheet won't simply slide into the sea wholesale, it'll break up as it exits the fjord the glacier has carved. The calving events may produce impressive local waves but they'll be just that; local events.

As further proof I'll offer that there are many studies regarding the effects of ice dams failing and large glacial lakes draining on land as well as current photos of glacial dams blocking fjords with locally impressive results, but I've never seen any suggestion that ocean spanning tsunamis would result from rapid ice sheet draining other than here on TOD.

I would welcome proof that this is possible, as many have seen that televised special about the Lituya Bay and La Palma tsunamis, and being able to connect the Greenland sheet draining to that simple, visual reference point might get folks moving who are currently sitting on their hands. I just don't think an ice sheet draining is an ocean sized tsunami producing event.

If I'm not mistaken this whole idea of massive parts of either Greenland or Antarctica ice sheets (excepting the Ross Ice Shelf) sliding off the land into the ocean is impossible because they are in fact so heavy that the land mass they sit on is depressed -- in some instances below sea level!

Here's is one quick google link about Greenland describing this fact: http://www.greatestplaces.org/notes/g_land.htm

"The bedrock beneath the ice is an eastern extension of the Canadian Shield, the expanse of ancient granite rock that makes up much of Canada's vast interior lowland plain. The surface of the bedrock is far from even. In some places it lies below sea level, while elsewhere it rises up to form high mountain ranges. (The highest peak in Greenland, Mount Gunnbjorn in the eastern coastal range, reaches 12,139 feet.) In overall contours the land surface beneath the ice is more or less saucer-shaped, with a central depression bordered by mountain ranges."

The same is true of Antarctica which I read about many years ago. A little common sense and readily available geologic knowledge here should dispell once and for all this wild notion.

However, of greater concern would be the affect of weight loss displacement upon the tectonic plate system across the globe. I fully expect that more and likely greater events of earthquakes and volcanism will result from all this ice sheet loss as the tectonic system adjusts to the changing pressure from this land loss of ice.

God only knows when this may be evident, but like everything else happening in this ice sheet meltdown regard, we'll find out sooner than later.

To quote a little more from the article linked above:

"Until 2004, the glacier mass in the southeastern part of the island lost about 50 to 100 cubic kilometres (12 to 24 cubic miles) per year. After this date, the melting rate accelerated to 300 cubic kilometres per year. It's a jump of 400 percent, which is very worrying," National Space Center head researcher and project chief Abbas Khan told AFP.

The ice cap, located in Greenland, is melting four times more rapidly than at the beginning of the decade according to the study. Glaciers in southeastern Greenland release icebergs into the sea, corresponding to a giant ice cube measuring 6.5 kilometres (4 miles) per side.

"It's an alarming development," Khan said. "We do not know if it is due to global warming or other factors."

The results of the study were made in conjunction with US-based University of Colorado and published Thursday on an online edition of Geophysical Research Letters magazine.

Anyone know just how many asserts, heck large portions of major cities, as well as population, there are between 0 - 18 ft above the current sea level?

A perfect time for geo-engineering. Just cover the ice with solar powered refrigeration units.
We are so screwed.

I am a strong believer in assigning credit and acknowledging precedence, so forgive my oversight. Please amend to:

As first noted by Archemedes, and recently applied to the Greenland Ice mass by Leanan and others,...

I've often suggested that we need a shotgun and a bow season here to control that pest known as the "family law attorney". Opposable thumbs are the only thing keeping those critters from being hunted to extinction. I'm actually a bit curious to see how that whole "business" works in the world that is coming at us - a woman attaches one of those blood suckers to her husband's business out of spite and instead of a reduced standard of living she'll get no standard of living ... the destruction that goes into demand destruction.

I agree that an abortion while married would be a joint decision or there would be some serious consequences.