Chain Reaction Shattered Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf 232
New submitter Jim McNicholas writes "At the end of the summer of 2002, all 3000 lakes on the Larsen B ice shelf drained away in the space of a week. And then the 2,700-square-kilometre ice shelf, which was some 220 metres thick and might have existed for some 12,000 years, rapidly disintegrated into small icebergs. The draining of one lake on an ice shelf changes the stress field in nearby areas, causing a fracture circle to form around the lake."
It would be great (Score:2, Insightful)
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Watching a train wreck while you are on the train is one hell of a show, eh?
If a combination out of the methane feedback
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/24/arctic-ice-free-methane-economy-catastrophe [theguardian.com]
and the lag of the temperature increase that is caused by the greenhouse effect mentioned here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html [skepticalscience.com]
happens, then we may have already triggered a number of positive feed backs that will be imposs
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I guess the real question is thus: is methane enough worse of a greenhouse gas than CO2, to warrant extracting it and burning it all just to combine it with oxygen, so that you'd get water vapor and CO2.
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Nope. Because trying to extract it is likely to result in a major release. Methyl cathlates are a bit fragile, expecially when they get warmer. And the ocean's been warming.
P.S.: Methyl cathlates are solid while they exist, to "extracting" them is more like underwater coal mining than drilling for oil. With the exciting additional feature that if you heat them too much, or give them too abrupt a shock, they're likely to explode. For some reason the companies that have previously looked into mining the
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Actually the methane feedback is only one of the many positive feedback loops that are being discovered, there are also negative feedback loops however.
One I have heard of is cloud formation that depends on increased availability of water vapour and the depletion of whatever carbon stock that has been
accumulated. The cloud formation thing has been said to not be terribly effective and the depletion only happens after the methane/peat/other organic matter has been consumed.
Collecting methane from arctic shel
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Mandatory XKCD: Extrapolation [xkcd.com]
Re:It would be great (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with extrapolating the same rate... is you assume that nothing is reliant on each other, nothing affects anything else, and everything is a closed system.
Icebergs calve off a glacier on the Larsen B Ice Shelf at a rate of x amount per year, meaning that the Larsen B Ice Shelf will exist for about 300 thousand years. But yet... it didn't. One lake drained away at a given rate on this ice shelf... one could extrapolate that to be that it would take decades for all the other lakes to drain away, and further say that one lake draining has no effect on other lakes, and that it will be replaced by the formation of many other meltwater lakes just like it was formed. One could also say one small lake draining would NEVER affect a large ice shelf.
But yet... it did have an effect that was not explained by a purely flat rate per time extrapolation. It wasn't quite exponential, but it definitely came in somewhere between. It was an example of how one thing happening in one place... can effect and increase speed of other nearby items.
Or, from another source... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_(US_EPA).png [wikipedia.org]. Sea levels rose 0 inches between 1910-1930. A lot different than the 2.4 millimeters per year rise that you claim. But yet... it did happen. I think you're trying to scare us by using measurable facts.
No, the 4 foot rise number is an upper limit... and not 4 foot per year. The actual is anywhere from 7 inches to 4 feet, depending on how things cascade. The biggest concern is the ice melt from the Greenland Ice Sheets, and the continued ice melt of large Antarctic ice sheets.
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Re:It would be great (Score:4, Interesting)
Having said that scientists will tell you (with some excitement) that the mechanics of melting ice sheets/shelves is "poorly understood", modelling the behaviour of various slabs of ice is an active research topic but they are a long way from claiming that all ginormous ice blocks melt in a predictable manner, I'd dare say we know even less about modelling small chip pans of melting fat.
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I'd dare say we know even less about modelling small chip pans of melting fat.
There's an overwhelming lot of science out there that could be done, but isn't because of there being no funding for it. You could even get an igNobel prize for such research :)
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Actually, 4 feet is NOT the upper limit. It the upper amount that they consider reasonable to project. There could occur events that would be considerably larger...they're just a bit unlikely. One example is the dissolution of the methyl cathlates releasing an unmeasured, but large, amount of methane into the atmosphere. That could easily yield an increase larger than 4 feet. Or perhaps not, if there isn't enough methane there, or if it decomposed into the sea water on its way up. There've been a time
Re:It would be great (Score:4, Informative)
Kind of like how carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history yet the effect was much less than predicted.
The effect has not been "much" less than predicted. It's still within the 95% confidence range of the predictions, albeit on the low side. If you factor in things like the lowest solar cycle in a century and the predominance of La Nina years since 2007 it's not surprising temperatures are running on the low side of predictions..
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No, I'm saying that natural variability which is unpredictable means it's not a surprise to climate scientists that real world observations are running a bit below projections. But there are upper and lower bounds to how far natural variability can move conditions from the average and that can be quantified and included in determining the confidence levels of the projections. That's why the real world observations are still within the 95% confidence range.
You apparently believe that since we can't predict
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Re:The 400 reading is from atop Mauna Lua (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out this site [skepticalscience.com]. It has some really good material and references about the science behind this stuff.
You might also find this interview [theguardian.com] with one of the key scientists interesting.
I don't profess to be a climate change guru, but this stuff looks reasonably legit to me.
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Your analogy is silly. The better analogy would be: put the thermostat for your A/C on the other side of the kitchen. Every once in a while, if you open the window, the movement of air throughout the house will blow the warm humid air from the stove right over the thermostat. The condensing water vapor will get the thermostat real hot real quick. That's what happens there: when the rare circumstance (just look at the fucking raw data will you now) of the CO2-laden wind blowing over the sampling station happ
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Both "climate change" and "global warming" was used in the very first modern scientific paper that discussed the possibility. So your theory that this is some PR gimmick is interesting speculation, but alas, wrong.
(although as I recall, there was a memo from a Bush-era advisor who recommended using "climate change" over "global warming" as the latter sounded too dramatic- in other words, the exact opposite PR reason that you thought it were. But it would be too generous to think this changed the terminology
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Well, then the "earth becoming hot" thing turned out to not be a real thing; but the climate does change, so we started talking about "Climate Change". We just replaced the wording.
(although as I recall, there was a memo from a Bush-era advisor who recommended using "climate change" over "global warming" as the latter sounded too dramatic- in other words, the exact opposite PR reason that you thought it were. But it would be too generous to think this changed the terminology, though.)
Sounds like the exact same reason to me: "We don't see global warming, it sounds like you're overstating what's happening... you know, the actual warming thing. That's not really happening, at the very least not in any appreciable way. There's some change going on."
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Do you really believe that scientists are so stupid they're not aware of those UHI effects and haven't accounted for them in their research? In fact they compensate for that so well that a study a few years ago found that the warming trend was slightly smaller in urban weather stations than it is in well placed rural stations.
Re:on a volcano spewing CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
They probably did notice it was a volcano
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-CO2-levels-from-the-volcano-at-Mauna-Loa.html [skepticalscience.com]
>But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out (Ryan, 1995).
Re:on a volcano spewing CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
or this one
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/ [nasa.gov]
>Most of the time, the observatory experiences “baseline” conditions and measures clean air which has been over the Pacific Ocean for days or weeks. We know this because the CO2 analyzer usually gives a very steady reading which varies by less than 3/10 of a part per million (ppm) from hour to hour. These are the conditions we use to calculate the monthly averages that go into the famous 50-year graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
We only detect volcanic CO2 from the Mauna Loa summit late at night at times when the regional winds are light and southerly. Under these conditions, a temperature inversion forms above the ground, and the volcanic emissions are trapped near the surface and travel down our side of the mountain slope. When the volcanic emissions arrive at the observatory, the CO2 analyzer readings increase by several parts per million, and the measured amounts become highly variable for periods of several minutes to a few hours. In the last decade, this has occurred on about 15% of nights between midnight and 6 a.m.
Re:oh, so they edited the data for 15% of the days (Score:5, Informative)
If you follow either link there is a graph showing data from other sites and Mauna Loa's readings perfectly align with them.
Think about this another way... if the results were skewed by the volcano it could be fairly easily proven and that scientist would get a lot of publicity. It is not for want of trying. But the fact is that the effects are known and accounted for and in the second link you can see someone actually studying the CO2 outgassing of the volcano.
There are many thousands of scientist around the world studying this topic. If there were big holes in the theory then the denier community would make sure that people knew about it. But there is not, their responses are mostly wrapped in ignorance of the science.
And the science is not all built on one single data point (eg atmospheric temperatures) but instead a wealth of data, all of which supports that CO2 is rising, that human activity is the major contributor and that there are effects on the climate.
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Oh okay, I'm it's perfectly objective, then. As long as the guys trying to get evidence of increased CO2 are admittedly excluding 15% of daily data, it's a perfectly objective source. Or you could report readings that AREN'T on top of a giant CO2 vent. Seriously, you have to REALLY want to believe them if you need to pretend that's credible. Don't you have any interest at all in knowing what's actually going on? I can sort of understand fandom, though I prefer intellectual honesty. Even hardcore sports fans WATCH THE GAME to find out what happened, though. They don't just pretend their team won.
I don't really think you're justified in attacking the character and reputation of the scientists, as despite your claims to the contrary you have completely closed your mind to any facts that violate your "beliefs". You don't prefer intellectual honesty, you prefer to spout half-truths. To wit:
As others have pointed out, they get extremely consistent readings all day and most of the night, except when a temperature inversion when the readings go up. Then they DELETE THOSE RECORDS. If they wanted to get
then cite the consistent non- volcano ones (Score:3)
They chose to delete 15% of the readings.
They could have used to same explanation to delete 12% or 18% and ended up with any result they wanted. That is, from what they said, they chose to delete only the ones that were WAY over the top, but leave in the ones that were "only" 30% higher than average. That doesn't inspire confidence.
> Their readings are consistent wit
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They could have used to same explanation to delete 12% or 18% and ended up with any result they wanted.
Then prove it. If they've been manipulating the data then there will be signs.
A clue: there won't be signs.
they said they did (Score:2)
prove it? they said that's what they did (Score:2)
prove it? that's what they said they did (Score:2)
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Electric grid modeler here.
Any modeler can get any result he/she wants, or they are incompetent.
In the electric utility world, presenting models to utility boards is an adversarial process. You have experienced modelers on both sides. They select a model or models acceptable to both sides. Then they spend weeks/months arguing about datasets and forecasts. These are simple models relative to atmosphere models.
Where is the open discussion including 'fossil fuel shills' for climate models? Never happens
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They discarded 15% of the days because they clearly didn't fit. Why would they include some clearly anomalous readings, or exclude some clearly normal readings? And what would happen even if they included them? The graph would get noisier, but the trend would be the same. (*)
Look at the graphs:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/ [nasa.gov]
It's pretty easy to see which days are affected by volcanic CO2 increases.
These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.”
But you think there is an amazing conspiracy. This tells us more abou
missing the point. 4:30 AM might be volcanic, migh (Score:2)
Subjective massaging of data like that represents the person's OPINION, not an objective measurement.
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NOAA lists 6 sites [noaa.gov] where it is continuously monitoring atmospheric CO2, Barrow, AK, the Greenland Summit station, Trinidad Head, CA, Mauna Loa, HI, American Samoa and South Pole Station. Other nations have their own monitoring stations. The reason that Mauna Loa gets mentioned so much is that it was the first place they did that so it has the longest continuous records. If there were serious discrepancies between the measurements of different stations you would have heard about it by now.
Oh, and the meas
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They don't arbitrarily pick 15% of the days. What they are saying is that approximately 15% of the days show the effects of local contamination of the measurement so they throw those out. If the Mauna Loa measurements were substantially different than other measurement taken around the world you might have a point but they aren't.
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Skeptical Science gives links to the sources. You can critique them and post alternative links to real science (pun intended). Do you have links to science that says that ice is not being lost at an increasing rate or that it is NOT due to CO2?
Ice shelves do calve all the time, but are they calving faster than in the past? Antarctic ice is increasing in some places but overall more is lost than gained. The increase in ice is due to increased moisture caused by the same thing that causes the increased cal
Re:on a volcano spewing CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
No confusion. Antarctic sea ice is growing, due to increased calving. There is some increase in land ice due to increased moisture. Normally the centre of Antarctica is a very dry place. The increased moisture is from the warming of the oceans, the same process which is increasing the calving. Of course, denier sites focus on the increase sea ice, saying that is a good thing, and the increase in snowing, also saying that is a good thing. They conveniently ignore the fact that these are bad things, not good and that overall the antarctic is losing ice. A triumph of spin over science.
Re: on a volcano spewing CO2 (Score:2)
Clearly you really do have no idea.
It is fairly simple, more is lost than gained. What is gained is due to the same warming. If you have science to add, add it.
Re:on a volcano spewing CO2 (Score:2, Troll)
Using the term denier in a scientific debate demonstrates you have no understanding whatsoever how science works.
You seem to be confusing "scientific debate" with "engaging cranks who hold to a disproven hypothesis no matter the weight of evidence agains them".
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Whilst I'm at it:
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Using the term denier in a scientific debate demonstrates you have no understanding whatsoever how science works.
This is not a scientific debate. This is slashdot.
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I'm sure you'll explain that away as some kind of warming induced cooling
Or, warming induced precipitation.
Please note that the last paper I read about Antarctic temperatures was by Steig et al. It got pole position in Nature (front cover too) but was shown to be complete and utter bollocks soon afterwards by O'Donnell et al.
So the last one you read was Steig at al, not O'Donnell et al?
it wasn't retracted despite
News at 11! Scientists almost never retract papers!
Guess what: there are bad papers about quant
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Using the term denier in a scientific debate demonstrates you have
...been paying attention. It's a label for people who deny scientific results.
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It's a label to shut down any debate and prevent people disputing a scientific hypothesis, disputing the statistical treatment of real world data (which is woeful in Climate Science), or disputing the output of computer models, especially computer models that appear to be completely wrong when compared to actually real-world data.
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It's a label to shut down any debate and prevent people disputing a scientific hypothesis,
Yes, yes it is. But only people who are attempting to dispute it on bullshit bases which have already been debunked because they are remaining willfully ignorant so that they don't have to change their selfish lifestyles.
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Surprising that this "debunked science" is slowly becoming mainstream, with recent papers published showing a far lower climate sensitivity than the last IPCC report showed. At some point in the future (5 years), you will be the "denier", won't you. Then I'm guessing your attitude will be somewhat different.
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sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean
'nuff said. You can't look at it locally with a straight face. It doesn't matter what either pole is doing individually. You need to look at both of them combined.
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They conveniently ignore the fact that these are bad things, not good...
What are these "good" and "bad" of which you speak? You seem to be under the misapprehension that climate is a one-dimensional phenomena that can be fully chararcterized by it's value along a single good/bad axis. This is not science: it is politics, pure and simple (very simple!)
As soon as you talk about "better" and "worse" or "good" and "bad" you are only talking about politics, not science. No GCM anywhere has any represention of "good" or "bad". No GCM output is a table of "good" or "bad" values.
Cl
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Surprising that this "debunked science" is slowly becoming mainstream, with recent papers published showing a far lower climate sensitivity than the last IPCC report showed.
While I doubt the veracity of your claims, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because your claims are ultimately unimportant:
At some point in the future (5 years), you will be the "denier", won't you.
Probably not, he'd only become a denier if he refused to consider and accept new evidence. It's far more likely that this "debunked science" doesn't say what you claim it says or won't become mainstream, and that 5 years from now you'll be making the same baseless claims.
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Maximum Antarctic sea ice has increased somewhat (but not as much as Arctic sea ice has decreased) but measurements by the GRACE satellites [wikipedia.org] show the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass, particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. An interesting factoid about Antarctic sea ice is that it melts 100% every summer and regrows every winter so there is no carry over from year to year like there is in the Arctic.
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Oh good God! Is that all you've got? It's not like CO2 hasn't been measured at 1000's of other sites around the world including land sites, ships, balloons and aircraft and they all show the same thing as Mauna Loa, that CO2 is increasing. There may be some that still peak out below 400 this year but at the rate of increase in 2 or 3 years they will all be reading above 400 permanently.
Personal Reality (Score:4, Funny)
Here we go again. Tell me then, what's your own personal definition of science that's better than the one the scientists and the dictionary uses?
Re:Personal Reality (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me then, what's your own personal definition of science that's better than the one the scientists and the dictionary uses?
You know: the one that says that climate isn't warming and even if it is then it's due to volcanos or sunspots or something and even if that's not the cause we can't do anything about it anyway. Also, if that definition happens to include that the earth is only 6000 years old and evolution doesn't happen that's a bonus too.
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Alternately, it's the definition of science which states that no matter what happens I never have to change what I'm doing or inconvenience myself with such silly activities as taking the bus (or even *gasp* walking somewhere), wearing a sweater indoors in the winter, or improving the insulation of my home.
A neat maths trick. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also did you know the best estimates for sea level rise come with rather large error bars which IIRC range from about 20cm to 800cm by the year 2100. The reason for the large error bars is that people who have spent their lives studying this have much less certainty about the shape of the curve than you do. That cautious approach by the "experts" is genuine skeptcisim, fought out in the journals as it should be. Picking a figure at either end of the range and representing it as the "most likely scenario" is simply dishonest.
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That's only true if the curve is continuous. There exist curves that are discontinuous at every point.
Re:It would be great (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't realize she'd told you about me! So you're cool with that?
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These are complex systems where small changes in initial conditions have large long term effects. And frankly explaining that to people who think "a wizard did it" is a viable scientific hypothesis is a waste of time.
Actually, the kind representatives from Texas explained to me that they would never use a trite explaination like "a wizard did it" as a scientific hypothesis. The told me that clearly everyone knows that couldn't possibly be correct because wizards are satanic and God wouldn't let them mess with the weather in Texas. So it must be God who's doing it and they trust that he won't let the temperature go too high because then he wouldn't be able to visit his ranch in Texas, where he likes to play skeeball.
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You're right, it's all a big conspiracy among everyone who's ever spent any amount of time actually studied the reality in order to get more research funding. It's a good thing we have a well-funded media campaign from the big oil companies to discredit it, *they* certainly have no reason to lie to us.
Future? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, this will help cool the earth. It's basically like putting a big ice cube in the ocean every now and then.
Haven't you seen Futurama?
Re:Future? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Is useful to predict what will happen maybe soon if there are big ice shelves in similar conditions?"
This sort of thing happens all the time. It's a natural process, and the basic process hasn't changed in recorded history.
This is a bit oversimplified, but snow is deposited on top. It builds up, and gets heavy. Gradually the snow and ice migrate sideways, pushing outward. This is also (besides gravity) what moves glaciers.
So pieces are always breaking off the edges. The 2002 incident might have been one of the larger ones, but in the overall scheme of things is nothing very special.
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I think the special thing about this is the speed in which it happened and of course now, the explanation to why it happened so quickly.
I agree with your assessment of the overall scheme of things.
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The 2002 incident might have been one of the larger ones, but in the overall scheme of things is nothing very special
Let me know when something significant happens, I don't want to miss it.
Time? (Score:2)
I think I'm the first on
Re:Future? (Score:4, Informative)
In fact the break up of an Ice Shelf doesn't change sea level at all because an ice shelf is already floating in water. What it can do though is reduce the back pressure on the face of the ice sheet/glacier that is feeding the ice shelf causing it to speed up and put more ice in the sea which does raise sea level.
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I had a marine geology prof say if the Ross Ice Shelf fell, sea level would rise by 6 inches.
That was back in the 80s when we weren't sure about global warming.
Now that we are, it's not if the shelf falls, it is merely when it falls.
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Yeah, I knew that. But as you mention the effect is very small and I wanted to keep my response simple so it's good enough for a first order estimation.
Incidentally (Score:5, Interesting)
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Closer to 8,000 years ago for the HCO. 13,000 years ago there were still substantial ice sheets on the continents.
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Actually, reading the Wikipedia article you refer to, you are both wrong.
SCIENCE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea science, seems slashdot comments are far too concerned with opinions and politics instead of science, facts, and, well evidence. Which, btw, this is actually big chunk of.
Wait, science... (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, somebody fill me in, here...
3,000 "lakes" on an ice shelf that they state was 2700km^2?
That's a little over a thousand square miles. That's about the land area of Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is.
3,000 "lakes?" Lolwut? You mean "ponds?" Perhaps "puddles?"
Somebody convince me that I should be runnin' to the hills, because I'm just not feelin' it, here...
Bright Side (Score:2)
political science (Score:3, Insightful)
Fix yer headline, timothy (Score:2)
Larsen not Larson. This isn't the first time I've seen these two names widely mixed up, only this time it's not widely, just timothy.
Re:Reporting on events in 2002? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, 11 is better than 10 ... because it's 11.
Re:Reporting on events in 2002? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reporting on events in 2002? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, eleven years ago we knew that it had collapsed, but we didn't know why it had collapsed. This new model might both explain why, and perhaps predict future ice shelf collapse.
Re:Reporting on events in 2002? (Score:5, Informative)
They're not reporting the fact that Larsen B broke up because it was well reported at the time. I saw pictures. This post is reporting the results of a just published study of why it broke up as it did.
Re:Reporting on events in 2002? (Score:5, Funny)
Almost everyone here says that Slashdot was so much better ten years ago. Now, the editors listened.
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Damn you Randall! Must you poke your nose in everywhere?
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It wasn't in the 70's. It was in the 60's.
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Funny)
I agree. Statistics are lies and science is the enemy.
We need to fight this anti-capitalist socialist encroachment by eliminating all traces of science from our nation. We must ban science from the classroom from tomorrow. It's nothing less than child-abuse to expose innocent young minds to science. Next all military and other government funding of any projects in any way science related must be cut off immediately! Finally we should impose an additional tax burden on any company spending share-holders money on science related R&D. Make them see sense!
Only in this way can we stop icebergs from melting and save the world from communism. Listen to common sense, you know it's RIGHT!
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Informative)
No, it wasn't "the same so-called scientists," it was a couple of guys who were out of the mainstream, although it got some sensationalist play in the mainstream media. Even back then, the consensus favored warming due to CO2 release [ametsoc.org], although there was a lot more uncertainty about how much. Anybody who cares about facts rather than propaganda can easily verify this for themselves--the original scientific literature of the time is available in any major university library and much of it, or at least the abstracts, is available online.
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Informative)
there is no such thing as man made "climate change" (they had to change the name since the warming wasn't happening).
No, "climate change" has been around since at least 1970 as shown in an October 1970 paper by George Benton titled "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change" [nih.gov]
Earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
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At best it was a compromise written hoping to get Republican votes so the Democrats could claim it to be bipartisan and not own it entirely when it blew up.
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The Democrats passed the ACA bill without any Republican help or input.
Really, then why was it practically a carbon copy of prior Republican plans, and functionally identical to the infamous Romneycare?
They rammed it through congress with Nancy Pelosi famously stating, " we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
Your misrepresentation here discredits you. Perhaps you should learn what she really said, which was about how so many lies and misrepresentations had been told about the bill that the only way America would find out what was actually in it would be for it to be passed.
Oh wait, that narrative isn't the one you want to put forward, is it?
There was absolutely no compromise for the Republicans to accept. The Democrats passed the exact bill they wanted because they had control of both houses of congress and the White House.
Really? Then where's the public option D
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Democrat or Republican. There is no upside for either party to shed the government of some of its power over the people.
You lies are pretty transparent (Score:2)
Of course they didn't vote for their own requests. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because Republicans are just like Lucy with her football. Don't know why Democrats keep playing that game. They keep expecting a different outcome, just like Charlie Brown.
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Starvation is everyone's problem. Capitalism is just an economic system. Regardless of what Ayn Rand may have told you in her nonsensical and contrived books, there is no moral basis behind it. It's just one way to run an economy that works reasonably well for some things but very poorly for others.
The truth is, without a large nanny state, people will still be fine. Charity will flourish, and the ONLY people losing out are government employees who have evolved a giant, wasteful ecosystem of largely non-
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It's telling that the only way someone can argue against this is by using strawmen.
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Re:Somehow this will all be Obama's fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who needs facts when we can engage in massive hyperbole? Obama's nothing special. He ain't great. He's failed to change things that needed to change since Bush. A lot of the stuff you're complaining about is simply a continuation of existing policies or slight expansion. I'm not happy about it, but let's not pretend that he's some sort of Hitler, seizing power and single-handedly changing the shape and function of our government. Hardly. Get over yourself.