Greenland's Melting Ice Raised Global Sea Level By 2.2mm In Two Months (theguardian.com) 185
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Last year's summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600 billion tons of ice from Greenland -- enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found. Unlike the retreat of sea ice, the loss of land-based glaciers directly causes the seas to rise, imperiling coastal cities and towns around the world. Scientists have calculated that Greenland's enormous ice sheet lost an average of 268 billion tons of ice between 2002 and 2019 -- less than half of what was shed last summer. By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1 billion tons of water a year.
"We knew this past summer had been particularly warm in Greenland, melting every corner of the ice sheet, but the numbers are enormous," said Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science at University of California Irvine and lead author of the new study, which drew upon measurements taken by Nasa's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellite mission and its upgraded successor, Grace Follow-On. "In Antarctica, the mass loss in the west proceeds unabated, which is very bad news for sea level rise," Velicogna said. "But we also observe a mass gain in the Atlantic sector of east Antarctica caused by an increase in snowfall, which helps mitigate the enormous increase in mass loss that we've seen in the last two decades in other parts of the continent."
"We knew this past summer had been particularly warm in Greenland, melting every corner of the ice sheet, but the numbers are enormous," said Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science at University of California Irvine and lead author of the new study, which drew upon measurements taken by Nasa's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellite mission and its upgraded successor, Grace Follow-On. "In Antarctica, the mass loss in the west proceeds unabated, which is very bad news for sea level rise," Velicogna said. "But we also observe a mass gain in the Atlantic sector of east Antarctica caused by an increase in snowfall, which helps mitigate the enormous increase in mass loss that we've seen in the last two decades in other parts of the continent."
measurements (Score:5, Funny)
By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1 billion tons of water a year.
What a useful metric.
But I've been wondering, how much does coronavirus weigh in ounces relative to a mole of smallpox?
Re:measurements (Score:5, Insightful)
What a useful metric.
Well, it does give a perspective - Greenland's ice loss for two months is enough to provide a city the size of LA with water for 600 years.
how much does coronavirus weigh in ounces relative to a mole of smallpox?
Geez, even the jokes aren't nerdy or funny anymore... If it is relative it is dimensionless.
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The solution is obvious. If Greenland melts at a rate of 600 years of Los Angeles water consumption per 2 months, then global sea level rise can be prevented by building 3600 cities the size of Los Angeles along the coast of Greenland.
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Comparing an incomprehensible measurement (how much Greenland ice melted) to an incomprehensible standard (annual water consumption for LA) results in an incomprehensible comparison.
Re:measurements (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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We can't afford to deal with this non-sense.
I hope you get a nice dose of reality at some point. There are more pressing issues at the moment then wealth distribution via carbon tax.
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It is back to late GW Bush levels, actually, and the reason is the stock market valuations are not real, but paper gains and paper losses dangled to the idiots to aid them transfer their money to the richest. A scam, but a very good one.
December 16th, 2016 was the most recent time that the DJIX was at the same levels as March 20, 2020.
This was during President Obama's term...
I don't disagree in how short term volatility in the market is a scam.
Re:measurements (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, ...
but during the R presidents the super rich and cliques around the president enrich themselves
Or does anyone believe Trump does not know how to transform the crash into gold for himself.
Re:measurements (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, the DJIA showed zero gains under GWB as well. He inherited a ~8000 DJIA and 8 years later he left a ~8000 DJIA economy to Obama. There seems to be a pattern of D's rescuing the failed economies of R presidents.
I'm no fan of either Dubya or Trump, but both of them had rather large unplanned crises dumped in their laps. 9/11 for Dubya and COVID-19 for Trump. Clinton and Obama had smooth sailing, relatively speaking.
I certainly hope COVID-19 doesn't rescue Trump's chances for re-election like 9/11 did for Dubya. I don't think that will happen, though.
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Re:measurements (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it costs so much because you did not fight it on time. Korea, Japan, Singapore took timely and decisive measures early and beat the epidemic down quickly, without disruption and at a fraction of the cost that Europe is paying, and the US will pay shortly. Being capable of forethought and planning really works, although I can see why you don't get it.
The analogy with the response to global warming is obvious. Had measures been introduced since it became obvious in the 70s that the problem is huge and will only be increasing, we may have been off the worst track today. Alas, people uncapable of forethought and planning made sure we're heading into the worst possible scenarios.
But at least they believe they have a sense of humor...
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Japan was already in recession, but it appears to be deepening. CPI shows deflation and the bank of Japan has stepped up asset purchasing.
Of course, we only have the first hints of how bad it will hit every country economically. It will be months before good numbers come in.
Re:measurements (Score:5, Insightful)
Hits to the economy can be external or internal. The major hit that Korea and Japan will have to cope with due to the SARS-2 pandemic will be external, created by the fallout from the lack of response to the epidemic in Europe and US.
Had the "developed Western world" taken timely measures instead of placating "the business", which opposed and lobbied against restrictions, the economic fallout would have been smaller.
The same argument applies for the response to global climate change.
Lovely attempt to rationalize the point with irrelevancies, though.
Re: measurements (Score:2, Insightful)
Had the "developed Western world" taken timely measures instead of placating "the business", which opposed and lobbied against restrictions, the economic fallout would have been smaller.
Similarly, if the "developed western world" had done absolutely nothing and carried on as normal, the economic fallout would have been smaller.
Re: measurements (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, if the "developed western world" had done absolutely nothing and carried on as normal, the economic fallout would have been smaller.
What color is the sky where you live?
Italy did nothing for two months. Had they carried on "as normal" for another, they'd be stuck with tens of thousands dead today.
Spain "carried as normal" and did nothing for six weeks. They are about to get worse than Italy.
The UK was going to "carry on as normal" and risk the lives about 1m people. Even the blonde idiot on Dawning Street 10 reversed the course and instituted a panic blockade since yesterday.
The US tried to "carry on as normal". You can see the results today.
I am amazed by your ability to ignore the obvious even when it is biting your ass.
Re: measurements (Score:5, Informative)
Can you show me the math you used to calculate the difference this would have caused in their total annual mortality figures?
Here, the math, visualised. Italy does not ordinarily use military trucks to transport "tens of thousands dead" every year. They need them only for the extras. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The rest of your trolling is just as stupid as the one I quoted.
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Re: measurements (Score:2)
So that's a "no" from you as well?
Why comment at all if the only thing you're going to say is "I have no good reason for believing what I believe"?
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Of course, Italy isn't transporting "tens of thousands dead" this year. Their total covid-19 deaths are about 4K. As compared to their "normal" flu deaths - 19K or so....
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Yes, which is exactly what I said in the sentence following your selective quote. Thanks for underlying my point.
They need them only for the extras. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Again, without the late clampdown on the virus, the dead would have been many more, and doing nothing or doing things late will only cause more deaths and the need for more disruptive measures. A timely response and a well-prepared accessible healthcare system would have helped even better, as it did in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore.
I really don't understand the denial.
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Not to forget that "normal" for Italy includes the largest country wide festival of the year "carnival" and Spain is also festival season so normal would have been hosting "Las Falas" among 100s of other local festivals.
Part of the spread started due to these festivals already being under way. They did well to cancel them midway through like they did.
The sky [Re: measurements] (Score:2)
What color is the sky where you live?
The sky doesn't have a colour; the sunlight passing through the sky will exhibit different colours at different times, depending on a number of factors.
Nonsense. The sky is the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
But: burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me.
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Are you not good at math either? Tell me, what time period did the 4K deaths happen in, compared to the time period the 19K flu deaths are reported over? Could it be that one is over the course of a few weeks, and the other is annually? And one is growing exponentially while the other does not?
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Suuuuure. Go ahead and find an explanation for why Italy has surpassed China in corona virus deaths despite having a fraction of the population, or you're an idiot like the parent poster. Because the Chinese government took drastic actions to curb the disease, instead of ignoring it.
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Why don't you explain why China now has less deaths than Italy despite having many many many MANY times the population, if their drastic actions did nothing to slow down the disease. One that humans haven't developed any resistance to, as it's so new.
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The major hit that Korea and Japan will have to cope with due to the SARS-2 pandemic will be external, created by the fallout from the lack of response to the epidemic in Europe and US.
Oh come on, now you're just making stuff up. Seriously, if you don't know, just keep your mouth shut. You haven't looked at the latest economic numbers from Japan, and worse you didn't even try. STFU if you are too lazy to research.
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According to the Stern Review [wikipedia.org] in 2007, the cost of climate inaction will rise to at least 5% and possibly as high as 20% of global GDP going forward, which in today's terms is over $4.25 trillion annually, perhaps as high as $17 trillion. The cost of effective action was estimated at the time at 1% of global GDP, though this has now risen to 2%.
The 2005 study by the German Institute of Economic Research [www.diw.de] found similar numbers, with inaction costing around 5% of global GDP by 2100, whereas timely action could
Re:measurements (Score:4, Insightful)
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Try to get a utility to successfully complete one. There have been more than half a dozen starts in the last decade, only two are being completed and more than twice the original cost. But Westinghouse, the last remaining nuclear plant contractor, went bankrupt two years ago.
The only way to get nuclear plants built is the way it works in South Korea, China, India and Russia, and the way France became all nuclear for electricity - have the government run it as a national utility.
Unless you can come out and m
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Re:measurements (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate change has already been costing the United States hundreds of billions each year in forest fires, floods, droughts, more power storms, etc. A mass transition to renewables would be the biggest jobs boom since WWII and the only losers would be the shareholders of fossil fuel companies. So where's the question on what we should do?
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the only losers would be the shareholders of fossil fuel companies.
No one prevents fossile fuel companies and fossile power plant companies to transform themselves into renewable power companies or solar panel producers etc. p.p.
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Greed and lack of foresight does. Sure, Exxon has more than enough cash to build their own solar panel business and outstrip other companies like Tesla, but why distract from their core business which brings them $20-$40 billion in quarterly profits? Similar to how Kodak could have owned the digital camera market but choose to focus on their film b
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If you want to actually be scientific, here is how:
1) Adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warming on the earth. That is 'settled' science.
2) The amount of warming for each doubling of CO2, the damage caused, the changes in local environments, the increase or decrease of cloud coverage......all these things are not settled sc
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Actually more careful with autocorrect (or typing derp) as I meant to say more powerful storms, not more power storms as in lighting.
But of cours
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But of course it's settled
You haven't been reading basic research.
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More than you, apparently.
Historic fires in California: quantifiable damages.
Historic flooding in Houston: quantifiable damages.
Historic blizzards slamming New England: quantifiable damages.
Historic hurricanes slamming Puerto Rico and Florida: quantifiable damages.
Quantifiable, quantifiable, quantifiable.
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You DO know that the Baseload Power FUD applies far more to nuclear than any other power source, yes? Nuke plants routinely go down for weeks or months for maintenance - sometimes even years. Meaning you have to build out extra generating capacity - same as you would space out wind and solar across a grid - or build a giant battery [wikipedia.org] to back it up. Add the tens of billions in construction and decommissioning costs, plus saddling thousands of future generations with a toxic waste problem - anyone who wants n
Red Giant [Re:measurements] (Score:2)
Unless we stop anthropocentric acceleration we face the extinction of the human race,
No, we don't. There are real negative consequences to global warming that should be taken seriously, but overdramatizing it as "extinction of the human race" isn't helping
although that will be after the extinction of every species we depend on for food. So, total environmental collapse for the purpose of our intelligent life. Given a few billions years the sun will expand as the dolphins start their space program, but we'll still be earth dust long before they become star dust.
Yes, in a few billion years the sun will expand. That is, of course, not really relevant to any discussion here. Was your whole post was intended to be satirical, and you simply misfired?
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Unless we stop anthropocentric acceleration we face the extinction of the human race, although that will be after the extinction of every species we depend on for food. So, total environmental collapse for the purpose of our intelligent life. Given a few billions years the sun will expand as the dolphins start their space program, but we'll still be earth dust long before they become star dust.
So, in your dystopian fantasy, we consume every animal into extinction except the Dolphin?
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If you find yourself hating a group of people, you are the problem.
What if you were a Jew during WW2 and you hated the Nazi party?
I suppose the Nazi leadership would indeed think you were the problem.
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What if you were a Jew during WW2 and you hated the Nazi party?
You can fight against people without hating them, and your fighting technique will be more effective.
Diversity (Score:3)
Nice that we have two TEOTWAWKI subjects to choose from now. Was getting boring.
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The great thing about climate change and sea level rise from the loss of glaciers is that we have final proof that "it's just the flu bro".
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Nice that we have two TEOTWAWKI subjects to choose from now. Was getting boring.
Not really. COVID-19 is bad, but not a TEOTWAWKI issue. If we did nothing it would get really ugly for a year or two, and we'd probably have on the order of 400M deaths worldwide from it, but then it would be done. Our response to it will temporarily disrupt supply chains and create some hardships, but that will be manageable.
Global warming, OTOH, poses us with the problem of relocating much of the human race, disrupting weather in ways that seriously damage our ability to produce enough food to feed o
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I'll agree insofar as eventually SARS-COV-2 will be endemic and life will return to normal, baring any new strains.
I'll disagree insofar as this virus moves far too fast for us to be able to adjust, but we have been adjusting to a changing climate for all of our existence and I'm not convinced it is suddenly going to move so fast we cannot. Populations will move around. Crops will move around. The geopolitical structure will change. This is not new though, this is normal.
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I'll disagree insofar as this virus moves far too fast for us to be able to adjust, but we have been adjusting to a changing climate for all of our existence and I'm not convinced it is suddenly going to move so fast we cannot. Populations will move around. Crops will move around. The geopolitical structure will change. This is not new though, this is normal.
We disagree. Relocating 80-90% of the world's population and most of our agricultural capacity is not something we do in the course of a normal century. And the agriculture is a problem because many of the new areas with good temperature ranges for given crops won't have the soil to support those crops. The climatological shifts will also create enormous problems as weather patterns and ecosystems adapt, too... the increase in hurricanes and the massive wildfires in Australia are just a foretaste.
I thi
Could be fixed with enough will (Score:3)
It seems like the most obvious way to solve this problem is to take water out of lake Tahoe, freeze it into large cubes, and them drop them on top of Greenland using army helicopters.
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And that will solve global warming, once and for all. [youtube.com]
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No, no!!
They should form them into house sized grenades, build huge cannons somewhere where the coal miners are jobless, fire them from there to Greenland! Bonus points if the canons can reach China!!
Solution (Score:2)
Build a wall around Greenland, and get Denmark to pay for it.
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Let's see if that "growth" is really significant, with a relevant quote from your own link:
A recent study team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, determined that water transported to the area around the glacier by a key ocean current has been colder than it was prior to 2016, when the growth began. The colder water is not melting the ice from the front and underneath the glacier as quickly as the warmer water did [before 2016].
The temperature change of the current's water is part of a known climate pattern, one that is expected to flip again, and cause more of the melting and ice thinning for which Jakobshavn is known. Although the melting rate has slowed, the glacier continues to contribute to sea level rise, ultimately losing more ice to the ocean than it gains from snow accumulation overall.
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You really should go back to elementary school, buddy, as you fail badly at reading comprehension.
The "well-known climate pattern" refers to the temperature change of the current's water. That is, when that climate pattern reverses warm from cold, the glacier will again begin to melt faster. But it melts not because of the "pattern", but because it has gotten warmer.
This does not change the fact that despite its short-term growth due to the well-known climate pattern created by the current the glacier los
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You're incoherent. Take a break, have a good rest, and go re-read the article tomorrow. If you need help, ask someone smarter than you to explain it - your mom, her pet, that flower in the pot on the window still.
Even better, give /. trolling some rest, get a real life.
Good luck.
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Thanks very much for posting that link on the Internet, where we can RTFA and observe for ourselves that it says (emphasis added),
The temperature change of the current's water is part of a known climate pattern, one that is expected to flip again, and cause more of the melting and ice thinning for which Jakobshavn is known. Although the melting rate has slowed, the glacier continues to contribute to sea level rise, ultimately losing more ice to the ocean than it gains from snow accumulation overall.
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2.2mm? Seriously? (Score:3)
Last year's summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600 billion tons of ice from Greenland -- enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months
I'm curious, what's the accuracy for measuring sea levels? Are we really down to sub-millimeter scales?
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You don’t need to measure it, the amount lost in ice is simply added to the total amount of seawater, and the rise calculated.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
From a secular perspective, the botched response to the pandemic is bad because it already caused an unnecessarily large number of deaths and is about to cause a huge economic depression, a lot of political instability all over the world, and possibly even wars.
The only relevance that climate change has here is that the response to it was also botched, and for the same reasons - placate the big business and do not interfere with its short-term profits.
The difference is that the time scale of the virus pandemic is short enough to show how stupid this course is.
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The obvious point of comparison being that coronavirus is going to likely cause far more economic damage than global warming will for next century. The all but certain withdrawal from global economic efficiency as globalism will have to be largely rolled back to local production chains as a result of fear of more China Flus. We already had SARS, Bird Flu and now SARS2, and that's just within first two decades. Global warming isn't supposed to be even seriously economically damaging for about a century, and
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The obvious point of comparison being that coronavirus is going to likely cause far more economic damage than global warming will for next century.
There is nothing obvious about it. Someone upthread ( https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] ) has provided estimates of the damage from climate change in this century, and they are much larger than the estimates for the pandemic effects, e.g. these:
Estimates of the global impact vary: early last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicted that COVID-19 will lower global GDP growth by one-half a percentage point for 2020 (from 2.9 to 2.4 percent); Bloomberg Economics warns that full-year GDP growth could fall to zero in a worst-case pandemic scenario.
Now, we can quibble about prognoses of growth or lack thereof all we want, but even if you speculate that the amount by which either will impact economic growth is comparable, which no economist is even suggesting, one will last at most a few years, and the other - a
Re: So... (Score:2)
...except of course (let's be brutally honest) mass human deaths is precisely the most effective cure for what ails the planet.
Nobody wants to talk about it, but aside from making everyone live in straw huts like early Soviet Kulaks, that's the only way we reconcile consumption with resources in a durable way.
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They're all fucking. Expect a baby boom 9 months from now.
That is funny because last night I thought the same.
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In thirteen years they will be called the Quaranteens.
Not my joke, some guy on Reddit deserves the upvote.
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It's just just climate change. The coronavirus is estimated to have saved 50,000 to 75,000 lives already in China alone from the decreased air pollution.
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Let's see the headline on some blog: Greenland Ice Sheet apparently gains mass for the 2nd year in a row., from 2018.
Let's now see a headline from the NSIDC, a proper US scientific organization, which studies the problem: Large ice loss on the Greenland ice sheet in 2019 ( http://nsidc.org/greenland-tod... [nsidc.org] ). It is not the only one, there are quite a few more items full of data and observations that confirm the ice loss.
At best, you're feeding us old opinions, which - regardless if they were correct in 2
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You just did what you attacked others for.
No, I did not. I presented unambiguous evidence that your blog is wrong about the subject of the article. I did not call them silly names or allege someone is paying them like the OP did.
You lost your argument badly and fast - but like I said you had no legs to stand on in the first place.
Prepare better next time.
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No, I showed data that your source is wrong.
You did no such thing. Firstly, you did not show data, you linked to an opinion on a blog. Secondly, my source is also the source of the data that your blog claims to base their opinion on. Thirdly, I gave you the most recent (and therefore the best) data, while your blog cherry-picks an interval that suits their opinion. Sad.
Face it, you tried, but you failed miserably, because you are not smart enough to build an argument.
Give up on trolling, you suck at it.
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LOLWUWT [rationalwiki.org]?
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That depends on your star sign.
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Given the phrasing of your question, it's either Doom Eternal or Thanos.
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You do know the way it worked was your ship got frozen in the ice and drifted for a year or 2 until you came out the other end. If you wanted a better example, perhaps the St Roch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which only took 2 years to make the passage in the early '40's or earlier, Amundsen, who managed it in 3 years, of which 2 were spent completely iced in.
In principal, in 1845 when the Frankliin expedition set out, they had no idea if it was possible but they were very hopeful. Earlier there were
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I'm confused why you talk about Vikings in Greenland in a discussion about the failed Franklin expedition to find the Northwest passage, except possibly to change the subject,
The Franklin expedition did not show that it was "possible in principle" to sail around Canada to the north. The Franklin expedition showed that if you try it you will be frozen into the ice before you get a third of the way.
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So, you're willing to forgo federal flood insurance.
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Liar.
Federal Taxes don't pay Federal Flood Insurance [fema.gov] - those in the program pay premiums that fully-fund the payouts.
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You are wrong. From FEMA [fema.gov]:
Persons within the flood hazard areas will need to purchase flood insurance which is subsidized through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) if their property has a mortgage that is backed by the federal government.
Subsidized. That means it does not pay for itself but relies upon general budgetary taxes to pay for it. Politico - hardly a right wing site - even has an article [politico.com] calling this a stealth subsidy for the rich. NFIP does not cover its costs with premiums; the excess is covered by general tax receipts.
I will wait for my apology over a charge of "liar" now...
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Tide gauge and satellite data are both able to detect a 2mm a year increase over one year. Not the tenths part, but the increase would be detected.