390 Billion Tons of Snow and Ice Melt Each Year As Globe Warms, Study Suggests (usatoday.com) 172
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today, highlighting the key findings from a new study published in the journal Nature: Thanks to global warming, our planet's glaciers continue to melt away, losing up to 390 billion tons of ice and snow per year, a new study suggests. The largest losses were glaciers in Alaska, followed by the melting ice fields in southern South America and glaciers in the Arctic. Glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges by the end of the century, including those in the U.S. The world's seas have risen about an inch in the past 50 years just due to glacier melt alone, according to the study. Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water.
Oh No! What Should I do? (Score:1)
Oh my. This is horrible. More water. Less ice! I'm afraid!
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Depends upon where you own property.
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
No, it isn't because, as you know, the US isn't under 4 feet of water.
Your comment is hard to follow. The "lower 48" U.S. states comprise about 3 million square kilometers. The surface area of the Earth is a little over 500 million square kilometers. The meltwater from melting glaciers doesn't only go to the lower 48 US states; it equilibrates all around the world.
This is a visualization analogy intended to give the public a quantitative feel for what 10.6 trillion tons of water is. Sort of like expressing data in terms of libraries of congress. It is not anywhere a statement that the melted water did cover the lower 48 U.S. states, and no other part of the world.
Or maybe they mean "lost" like they can't find it, but given the rest of the summary they seem to mean it's melted.
Most native English speakers can understand the different uses of the word "lost". Especially when the very next sentence uses the word "melted". In this case "lost" means lost by melting, the way your ice water loses its ice when it sits on the table. Gone, in the form of ice, but the water comprising the ice is still here.
Can I get it converted to giant Twinkies? (Score:3)
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Re:five seconds (Score:5, Informative)
Your study is about Antarctica, the study in the article is about the entire world.
The ongoing rise in sea level confirms that there's a net loss of ice in the world.
Out of? (Score:2, Interesting)
Some representative estimates of just the two ice sheets:
- 26,500,000 gigatons [wikipedia.org] in Antarctica
- 2,900,000 gigatons [polarportal.dk] in Greenland
So, conservatively ignoring that TFS includes "snow loss" (wut?) and says most of the ice loss was from glaciers in Alaska: 390 / 29,400,000 = (whips out slide rule) 0.0013%.
But that wouldn't make for nearly as scary of a headline.
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I guess nothing sounds impressive if you compare it to something else that's much bigger.
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I guess nothing sounds impressive if you compare it to something else that's much bigger.
As you know, I'm not comparing it to "something else" -- I'm comparing it to the entirety of exactly the same substance that TFA implies is being lost at a catastrophic rate by throwing around big-sounding numbers in a vacuum.
That would be like me saying, "around 200 billion cells in your body are dying EACH DAY [healthline.com] -- you'd best get your affairs in order."
Context matters.
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I'm comparing it to the entirety of exactly the same substance that TFA implies is being lost at a catastrophic rate
Right, so the article makes the same error.
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Is that a comp-sci gigaton (1024 megatons) or an SI gigaton (1000 megatons)? I really wish you had used standard abbreviations, e.g. GiT or GT. =p
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It should also be noted that if 390Gigatons of ice/snow are melting every year, that translates to an approximate sealevel rise of...
0.755 mm/year. So, rather less than one meter of sealevel rise by 3000AD....
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There's also the thermal expansion of the sea itself.
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Clearly, you would not be hurt if a chunk that massed 0.0013% of the ice sheets fell on your foot.
390 Billion Tons of Snow and Ice Melt Each Year (Score:1)
Of course it does. If no polar ice and snow melted we would be in the middle of a god damn ice age not to mention a global drought.
What is important is the balance between melting and precipitation. What is the net melt?
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390 Billion Tons a year? (Score:1)
We better put the earth on a diet!
I wonder how the weight redistribution will effect the earth's spin... We'll end up on our side like Neptune, all the water will go the bottom. Then the weather will get real exciting!
Why does this take a study? (Score:5, Interesting)
Depending on who you believe, the average sea level is rising somewhere around 2mm per year. Around 1mm per year is attributable to thermal expansion of the oceans. The rest must be melt water from glaciers and snow on land.
So, check my math: The surface area of the oceans is 3.4 * 10^8 square kilometers, or 3.4 * 10^14 square meters. Each millimeter of sea level rise then corresponds to 3.4 * 10^11 cubic meters, which happens to be 340 billion tons of water. Pretty close to their 390 billion tons.
So their figure makes sense. I suppose it's useful as confirmation, but it's hardly anything new or unexpected. But the big numbers impress clueless journalists...
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I work on a satellite system which scans the ocean wave heights globally. Our data shows that the mean sea level from 1993 to mid-2017 rose at 3.3 mm/year.
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The rest must be melt water from glaciers and snow on land.
It's not quite that straightforward since the polar ice is made up of fresh water, and the ocean is salt water. That means the melting ice with change the density of the oceans making the math more complicated.
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The stupid will always look for those propaganda-lies that fits their misconception. That way they never have to face facts until the catastrophe is in full swing.
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It would be nice if you included how little people there were around back then who had to share the resources available, and how "well" they lived. I doubt you'd volunteer to live like the vikings and their contemporaries did.
% please! (Score:3)
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A better number to relate to is the annual sea level rise, partially caused by melting land ice, which is now about 3.3 millimeters/year (about 1/8")
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OP was asking for context (which I've provided here [slashdot.org], btw). Simply providing a completely different out-of-context measure doesn't move the ball forward.
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I know, but converting the number to a percentage of some other hard-to-imagine quantity (like total sea/ice volume) isn't very useful, even though OP was asking for it. For instance, if the oceans were twice as deep, the relative number would halve, despite the depth of the oceans being totally irrelevant for every day understanding.
Relating it to a sea level rise gets you a quantity that's relevant, and easy to visualize.
Study Suggests..... (Score:2, Insightful)
AKA BS Headline by a lazy reporter.
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"Global warming deniers automatically try to change the subject every time someone cites evidence of global warming, recent survey of Slashdot commenters suggests."
Context & cherry picking (Score:2, Insightful)
First, data useless without comparison data.
Second, even the original study itself is almost ridiculously vague - https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] : "...glaciers contributed 27 ± 22 millimetres to global mean sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016..." 27 plus/minus 22? LOL the errorbar is nearly the size of the datum. What does that say about the data?
Third, I'd say it's at least somewhat relevant to check historical data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Sea_L
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Essentially, humanity evolved at low tide, now we're bitching that the tide's coming in and is giong to knock over our sandcastles.
Just because there used to be a shallow sea where my house was, means that I shouldn't complain if it floods ?
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more flooding where I grew up because more and more suburbs added to an overcapacity sewage / floodwater system.... means nothing
So, alaska is worse than Canada. (Score:1, Troll)
You're an idiot WindBourne, more came from USA (Score:2)
firstly [skepticalscience.com]
Individual carbon dioxide molecules have a short life time of around 5 years in the atmosphere. However, when they leave the atmosphere, they're simply swapping places with carbon dioxide in the ocean. The final amount of extra CO2 that remains in the atmosphere stays there on a time scale of centuries.
You're a bit thick so again, CO2 remains in the atmosphere a long time [theguardian.com]
This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.
So it isn't just last years CO2 emissions that are warming Canada.
This is a much more appropriate timescale [ourworldindata.org]
If we extend our timeline back to 1750 and total up how much CO2 each country has emitted to date, we calculate each nation’s ‘cumulative emissions’.
If we fast-forward to the accumulated totals we see today, the US and Europe dominate in terms of cumulative emissions. China’s rapid growth in emissions over the last few decades now makes it the world’s second largest cumulative emitter, although it still comes in at less than 50% of the US total.
So in fact America is responsible for over twice as much CO2 as China.
But wait it gets better.
The key drawback of measuring the total national emissions is that it takes no account of the nation's population size. China is currently the world’s largest emitter, but since it also has the largest population, all being equal we would expect this to be the case. To make a fair comparison of contributions, we have to therefore compare emissions in terms of CO2 emitted per person.
Let's just say, per person American's have been, and still are extremely bad.
Let's look here starting in 1950 to match the timescale in the summary and report. [ourworldindata.org] You can slide it yourself to see that the US is bright red on the
Oi, ./ where does the number come from (Score:2)
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Regional specific-mass-change rates for 2006–2016 range from 0.1 metres to 1.2 metres of water equivalent per year, resulting in a global sea-level contribution of 335 ± 144 gigatonnes, or 0.92 ± 0.39 millimetres, per year.
usatoday.com converted that to 390 short tons? Wow, americans, go figure. It's also wrong, 335Gt is ~369 short tons.
These articles ... (Score:2)
What is the intended purpose of an article like this?
390 BILLION!!!! TONS!!!!! of snow is mellllllllllllting!
Who the fuck cares? Tell me how much MORE or LESS snow is melting in any given year. Of course the total number is going to be staggeringly huge, this is a fucking PLANET, not your back yard.
But the staggeringly huge number is being used for a purpose. It would appear to be designed to get us hysterical... but what is the end game?
Many people react negatively to hysteria inducing claims but many igno
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Re:where did the ice and snow go? (Score:4, Informative)
Contrary to what many American believe, the total surface area of world is much larger than the USA. So the 4 ft of water are just distributed a lot more across the many oceans.
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That doesn't seem very hard. They didn't pour that water on the 48 states. There is more to the world than the US.
For starters, there are 50 states in the US alone.
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For starters, the 'lower 48 states' are still 48 states.
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Well, if we "lost" 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, since 1961, and it did not melt.... and the lower 48 states is not under 4 ft of water.... where did it all go?
My bad. I forgot it on the bus on my way into work a while ago. If anyone finds it please let me know so, I can put it back. TIA.
Re:where did the ice and snow go? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've been reading Slashdot since the early aughts and it's been pretty disheartening to witness the quality of the comments section degrade as it has. Any time there's an article about climate change or a handful of other topics it becomes an absolute cesspool.
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Check out the brains on this one!
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From the summary: Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water.
Well, if we "lost" 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, since 1961, and it did not melt.... and the lower 48 states is not under 4 ft of water.... where did it all go?
Area of the USA lower48 is 3.1 million square miles while the area of the oceans is 140 million square miles so 4ft of water over the USA would be only an extra inch added to sea level
Off by 100X [Re:Math] (Score:2)
I did some quick math and came up with... .1 inch
or 0.25 mm
Which? 1 inch is 25 mm, not 0.25. I think you converted centimeters to inches by dividing by 10, instead of multiplying
...Sounds like AGW alarmists can't come up with consistent numbers...
ROFL!! You post numbers that are inconsistant by a factor of a hundred and then tell me it's the "alarmists" that can't come up with consistent numbers?
If this weren't so funny, I'd point out that this is only one of several factors.
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You better hope it's warming. If we returned to an ice age so many far leftists would die. So would real people.
You tell'em Bill Joe! Why when sea levels rise and swamp the coasts, all them coastal elites are gonna get flooded - just like in the Bible!! And when their multi-million dollar beach house gets flooded, it'll be declared a disaster area, they'll get some big gubberment checks all paid for by the lower classed - especially all them hard working people in the fly-over states!
And that's the way it should be. Because rich people deserve it!
And as the temperatures rise and destroy fisheries, why the coastal e
Re: We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:2, Interesting)
global warming is no more leftist than Team Trump building gas chambers for Muslims.
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You better hope it's warming. If we returned to an ice age so many far leftists would die. So would real people.
The greatest part of climate science, of course, has been the study of the causes of the ice ages. Even the understanding of the greenhouse effect was started, initially, from atmospheric scientists trying to understand the role that atmospheric gasses play in the cycle of glaciation (a significant role, as it happens).
The understanding of the causes of ice ages, and the glacial advances and retreats within an ice a, is getting pretty good now. We've understood that Milankovich variations are the trigger
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Re:We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooo, is this your leftist fantasy of what people on the right believe?
And by demonizing and alienating the "other half" you expect to win some sort of moral victory... prove yourself intellectually superior? Prove you're more capable of critical thinking. Some of my conservative friends who are scientists and technologies would disagree with you.
The irony in your assumption-laden post is you're postulating that "righties" hate rich people, but isn't that the stance of the left? (Of course, unless said rich people agree with your politics.)
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Those "far leftists" want the Sahara to keep desertifying to protect their coastal cities in Europe and the US. The bankers are heavily tied up in that mistaken investment. Not my problem if you stupidly built a skyscraper in a geologic lowland.
Oceans rise and fall, old cities are abandoned and new ones are built. Humanity survived Meltwater Pulses 1a and b, and it will survive this one too.
But the elites will tax your ass back to the stone age if they believe it will protect their investments for just
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It's hard to tell whether you're serious, or just a moron.
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Perhaps, but that's better than being an ignoramus
Re:We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:5, Insightful)
Oceans rise and fall, old cities are abandoned and new ones are built. Humanity survived Meltwater Pulses 1a and b, and it will survive this one too.
I don't think there is any doubt that humanity will survive global warming but that is an incredibly low bar to set. Humanity also survives earthquakes, air disasters etc. but that does not mean that we don't try to reduce and/or protect ourselves from them. Improving the safety of planes costs money and increases ticket prices but, overall, is far better than having planes fall out of the sky and people die.
Global warming is the same. We will survive but there are likely to be significant famines, droughts, floods and huge migrations caused by it if we do not act to reduce the effects. Even ignoring the humanitarian aspect of this, purely economically we are going to be better off developing new technology to reduce and mitigate the effects than we are just dealing with the full impact of a significant temperature increase.
Re:We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the warming from the last ice age peaked about 8000 years ago, and turned into (very slow) cooling, until last century when global warming accelerated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Did you link the wrong page? That only goes a thousand years back, not eight thousand..
Correct. I wanted to show the sudden recent change (i.e. the "hockey stick"), and the 1000 year graph shows that more clearly.
There's no way that "coming out of an ice age" can cause a sudden increase in warming, like that graph shows.
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No way ... and you know because ... you are a Trotsky-slut warmist hoe, Rawlsian to the pestilent unproductive core and a viperous liar. You blo-job the Bantu, money-mongers and gaffot laxers because they like you are parasites on the productive yeomanry. There now ... that's worth a few degrees.
Re:We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone knows the hockey stick is bogus manipulation of data
Nope, the hockey stick graph has been confirmed by several studies. You can find plenty of references in the wikipedia page above. And if you dismiss all of the data, then what are you going to use to show that "we are still coming out of an ice age" as GP tried to claim?
The actual "Hockey Stick" data (Score:2)
Everyone knows the hockey stick is bogus manipulation of data
Nope, the hockey stick graph has been confirmed by several studies. You can find plenty of references in the wikipedia page above. And if you dismiss all of the data, then what are you going to use to show that "we are still coming out of an ice age" as GP tried to claim?
Try looking at the actual findings in the actual studies though. The distinctive Hockey Stick shape in Michael Mann's original graph came about by showing 2 disparate datasets on the same graph, the reconstructed temperatures for the last couple thousand years, and then the instrumental record appended on the end. The immediate deviation from the trend for the past millenia doesn't just correspond to the start of the industrial era, it corresponds to a change in datasets. You don't get a more obvious red fl
Re:We are still coming out of an ice age (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a few hundred years is going to provide reliable trend information about a hundred thousand year trend
Why not ? When the sun goes down at night, it only takes hours for noticeable cooling to happen. It's a fallacy to think we need to wait hundred thousand years for the Earth to respond to changes in inputs. The reason that ice ages take thousands of years is because they are triggered by equally slow changes in orbital characteristics. CO2 changes happened in the last century, and the atmospheric warming responds right away (although equilibrium will take a bit longer due to longer time constant of ocean heat)
You are like the guy who sells all his shit because the stock market goes down on Monday.
If somebody claims that nothing special happened because "the stock market has been going down since the last ice age", and we can show that it actually has been going up this whole time, but suddenly crashed on Monday, then his claim is invalid, and we know something new must have happened.
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Actual facts? Don't you know most people cannot deal with them dues to inadequate mental facilities or even recognize them?
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My tribe opposes this information, therefore it is wrong.
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Thanks for reminding all of us that a significant part of the population (represented by you in this case) is fundamentally stupid and disconnected from reality.
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Where the hell do you people get that the shit? Did it ever occur to you people that maybe it's people on your side that's feeding you bullshit to keep you in line and supporting them?
'There's a sucker born every minute' - P.T. Barnum.
Indeed.
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the environmentalists all living on the coastal areas and investing in real estate there
Which purported environmentalists are you referring to? If you mean Al Gore, the only environmentalist that right-wing ranters ever seem to care about, yes, he owns a house in a costal Californa community... one that's 180 feet above sea level.
and also all the politicians and hollywood ilk who have been buying up real estate in these 'doomed' places
Have you ever heard the phrase "the Hollywood Hills"? [youtube.com]
Hollywood is not in any trouble from rising sea levels. Its average elevation is 350 feet above sea level... but the pricey homes, of course, are up in the hills overlooking Hollywood. Even if all the ice in
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Gee Einstein, you should to work for the Trump administration. They don't believe in science either.
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This sounds like a parody except I know you're a fuckwit and actually believe this shit.
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