What does new glacier data mean for the climate debate?

[xocet]

15. What you say may - indeed - be true, but the question was not so narrow....

The actual question really is: What does the new data mean to people who are studying the issue?

Here is an answer from the article:

What does new glacier data mean for the climate debate?
Leo Hickman

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But does this surprising discovery mean that the world's glaciers – often described as climate change's "canaries in the mine" – are not in fast retreat as a result of warming temperatures, as has long been presumed?

Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado, one of the study's authors, warned against this conclusion: "Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year. People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before." He added: "It is awfully dangerous to take an eight-year record and predict even the next eight years, let alone the next century."

Bamber said the data from the study should not be interpreted to mean that climate change has been "overblown in any way". He said: "It means there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought. Taken globally all the observations of the Earth's ice – permafrost, Arctic sea ice, snow cover and glaciers – are going in the same direction."

A breakdown of the data does, indeed, show huge regional variations and uncertainties about the rate of decline in ice mass across the world's largest GICs. Whereas the wider Himalayan region recorded, on average, no appreciable loss, regions such as Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica saw significant declines in ice mass. In total, the world's largest GICs lost between 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater. This is causing sea levels to rise by about 1.5mm a year on average, concluded the study, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/10/glacier-data-climate-change-debate

Do you have a more considered response than your previous one - a response that might address the newly reported results in the context of the accumulated body of data? Whether you do or not, the whole article is worth reading since it does offer such considered responses.

Beyond that, do you know a lot of people who have "adopted climate change as their religion"? Do you post your opinion against them or against the very notion of climate change? Inquiring minds want to know...and - yes - that pun is intended for you.