Greenland's Ice Sheet has Melted to a Point of No Return (forbes.com) 200
"Ice melting in Greenland contributes more than a millimeter rise to sea level every year," reports CNN, adding that now "that's likely to get worse."
And Forbes shares some context: Last week, the world was given two more harsh reminders of what the future holds as residents of Italy's Aosta valley were told to evacuate fearing that a huge portion of the Mont Blanc glacier, the equivalent size of Milan's cathedral, might collapse. Then the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic, the Milne Ice Shelf, collapsed losing a chunk of ice bigger than Manhattan to the Arctic ocean.
In April, a study published in The Cryosphere suggested that atmospheric circulation patterns contributed in a significant way to Greenland's rapid loss of ice and as such the future melting predictions could be underestimated by half. Now, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, Greenland's glaciers have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop right now, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.
Satellite data from the last 40 years shows that Greenland's glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.... Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss.
The article notes that the paper was released "on the same day that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that July 2020 was the second-warmest July on record and that Arctic ice is currently at a record low for summer — the lowest in 42 years of record-keeping."
And Forbes shares some context: Last week, the world was given two more harsh reminders of what the future holds as residents of Italy's Aosta valley were told to evacuate fearing that a huge portion of the Mont Blanc glacier, the equivalent size of Milan's cathedral, might collapse. Then the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic, the Milne Ice Shelf, collapsed losing a chunk of ice bigger than Manhattan to the Arctic ocean.
In April, a study published in The Cryosphere suggested that atmospheric circulation patterns contributed in a significant way to Greenland's rapid loss of ice and as such the future melting predictions could be underestimated by half. Now, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, Greenland's glaciers have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop right now, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.
Satellite data from the last 40 years shows that Greenland's glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.... Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss.
The article notes that the paper was released "on the same day that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that July 2020 was the second-warmest July on record and that Arctic ice is currently at a record low for summer — the lowest in 42 years of record-keeping."
Oh good, a climate change article on slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh good, a climate change article on slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
You might want to grab your galoshes too while you're at it if the ice keeps melting.
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Let me grab my popcorn...
...and my Waterworld DVD!
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The climate change deniers are getting wilder and wilder in their claims. It's like live-action speculative fiction. Pretty soon they'll be writing full-on historical fiction, describing a world that world that would've existed if the Earth had been 2m further away from the sun, or if humans could drink crude oil and crap out rainbows. It's interesting to see what depths of denial that can attain next.
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or if humans could drink crude oil
Funny sidenote one should look up why high sulfur crude oil is called "sour" crude, while low sulfur crude is called "sweet" ;-)
Re:Oh good, a climate change article on slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
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The climate change deniers are a problem. But what really pisses me off are the Snowball Earth deniers. This summary and article is really about the inevitable Snowball Earth. Because what else do you think is going to happen when Greenland completely melts? The AMOC will shut down, the global thermohaline circulation will break, and Earth will freeze. Global Warming solved!
if humans could drink crude oil and crap out rainbows
I swear I just read they had a breakthrough with that, but of course it'll be 10 years to market.
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Because some people seem to think that change which takes longer than a week to become evident isn't change.
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Re: Oh good, a climate change article on slashdot (Score:3)
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no model of that complexity has predictive power.
The guys at CERN might disagree.
Re:Climate change religion (Score:5, Informative)
We have models that predict that surface warming should be accompanied by cooling of the stratosphere; models that predict warming of the lower, mid, and upper troposphere; models that predict warming of ocean surface waters; models that predict an energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation; models that predict sharp and short-lived cooling of a few tenths of a degree in the event of large volcanic eruptions; models that predict an amplification of warming trends in the Arctic region; the models that predict continuing and accelerating warming of the surface.
All of these predictive models have and continue to be proven by subsequent observations. What more can a person reasonably expect than that?
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You'll have to explain that statement. It's not factually true. Plenty of climate change models are relatively accurate. Plenty of other models of complex systems predict things.
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Because all science is eventually settled - that's how science works.
BZZZZZZT. Wrong, COMPLETELY wrong. That's how religion works where you can never question anything ... because it's settled.
I just read this week about new discoveries in metals.
"Everyone knows how this works", so it doesn't need to be further examined. For nearly 100 years, scientists thought they understood everything there was to know about how metals bend. They were wrong. [scitechdaily.com] Also, this. [livescience.com]
Now coming up with an experiment and a theory that PREDICTS things -- that's a different story. After all, "e
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> Humans can never ride trains because they can't stand the acceleration, [mentalfloss.com]
speed, actually
Re:Climate change religion (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't come up with a logical objection, just say "the science is settled".
Anyone who trots out that phrase is almost certain to be using it to construct a strawman argument.
Because all science is eventually settled - that's how science works.
Um, no, not really. Science is a process in which refinement of theory is ongoing. You must be thinking of religion.
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Nahh, all predictive models are predictive, otherwise they would not be predictive models, how accurate is the question. You are clearly confusing weather with the regional averages of climate. You can predict the average change over time no problem at all. We can not predict the short term weather patterns to be generated by climate change, although again, given sufficient knowledge and computing capacity they good also be predicted, we are probably around 80 years out from that, for a start requires a bet
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Right now it is pretty clear we are fucked
Statements like this are where you lose the argument. Even the IPCC states that a runaway greenhouse event is not probable. Yes, a few people might want to find a new place to live, but the collective "we" are definitely not fucked.
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Exactly. It's the boy who cried wolf. Those of us that grew up in or before the 80s and have seen the never ending predictions of doom failing to come true time after time after time simply stopped caring.
Then you are an idiot.
It was always clear that the "doom" will be roughly in 30, 50 or even 100 (more and more unlikely) years from now.
Even if 90% of us starve to death from lack of resources that still leaves 700 odd million people.
No it does not. I take it in your favour, you simply made a typo, or are
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The IPCC always reported the lowest level of the "spread spectrum" of the forecasts.
And we are most of the time exceeding the upper band of the predictions.
Do you actually have a clue what is going on ATM in Siberia?
Yes, with idiots like you in governments we are probably so fucked that indeed in 30 years the collapse is coming over us.
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I've got a degree in math and another in physics, so presumably I have a brain.
Hmmm...
Because all science is eventually settled - that's how science works
You're degrees are trash. That's not how science works. Providing you with evidence clearly won't work because there's several decades worth of evidence that will do a vastly better job than anyone here. And you are clearly ignoring it or have a massively defective understanding of science or both.
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I've got a degree in math and another in physics...
Based on the nonsense you typed after this, I call bullshit.
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"No model of that complexity has predictive power" isn't an objection; it's a bald assertion. There's nothing to refute because nothing has been presented that could be considered true in the first place.
Provide some justification for the claim that the models have no predictive power and maybe we can discuss the matter. Until then you seem to have less than nothing.
=Smidge=
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Not just that, but the majority of models have been very close to what's actually happened so far. We already know they have predictive power. Whether they have enough to describe what will happen in every village and hamlet is really not the point at all.
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He can't.
He does not know a single modle.
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Sure.
But how much of this science is really politics (which TBH is worse than religion). How much science has thrown away data that didn't fit expected outcomes, or thrown away data that didn't fit desired outcomes? I'd say too much, and its that "science" that gave us sugar not fat, and hockey stick graphs.
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I trust the process of science
Yep, the priests you follow blindly are much sharper than the priests other follow blindly Your religion is the one true religion, the others are false.
You want science? Act like a scientist! Commit to predictions. Modify your beliefs when your predictions fail! Hold no belief sacred, no belief beyond question. Entertain shocking ideas to see if they are, in fact, rational. Respect the evidence over the experts, This is praiseworthy. Blindly following what you hope is the right people is not.
What you want to do is deny facts that are, to coin a phrase, inconvenient, it seems to me, rather than do anything related to science. Your language betrays you.
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Science has to be documented, otherwise it doesn't count. So somebody who takes science on "faith" is... illiterate?
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Religion is also documented. Thousands of years of documentations. Thousands of works by some of the smartest minds who ever lived asking hard questions like "how is the world around us consistent with an all-powerful, loving God". Does that make it right?
None of that matters if you never read any of the documentation, which of course few do. Learn for yourself. Others can't learn for you. Believe in general relativity because you took a class in it, not because you blindly follow someone who seemed s
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None of that matters if you never read any of the documentation, which of course few do
With respect to climate science, I actually have read some of the original papers. Have you? You are trolling.
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Religion is also documented. Thousands of years of documentations. Thousands of works by some of the smartest minds who ever lived
Recounting a trip on hallucinogens doesn't make one smart. The conclusions that religious people came to about those experiences makes it almost certain they weren't.
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No, that is not documentation. That's stories and fables and myths passed down generationally.
It would do you well to take a few actual science classes so you can learn what science is.
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It is documentation non the less.
He did not say science, he said religion.
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Taking science on faith is no different than taking religion on faith: unquestioning acceptance either way. Pretending that's different doesn't make it so.
You are confusing faith and trust. Rookie error. Try reading up about science and then try posting agan.
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We can't project COVID deaths with two orders of magnitude, but we can definitely predict that we've reached a "point of no return" in an inherently chaotic system because we wrote a few lines of Python code. Trust us.
And by the same 'logic', if we hadn't sent astronauts there we wouldn't know if the Moon was made of cheese or not.
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"Lowering of the suns output" ...
Seriously?
If any of the other things happen, you have not to worry about global warming anymore.
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
I'll get a seaside property by doing nothing at all.
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...or buy mountain property in California.
I always wanted to live on an island.
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Sea is rising 1 mm/year - it will take 1,000 years to rise 39.4 inches. You may not see your mountain turned into an island in your lifetime.
Let me help you there:
Sea is currently rising 3 mm/year
That's the average from 1993-2014. The rate has increased over time. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/... [noaa.gov]
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Informative)
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I've never quite understood the historical emissions angle as popularly invoked, like here.
The industrial revolution took place in the the Western world (Europe, US), therefore leading to a disproportionate amount of cumulative emissions as well as high standards in schooling, healthcare, mobility etc. from an earlier point of time.
But the direct and indirect benefits ie. communication, transport, electricity, useful medicine, manufacturing, social mobility, modern agriculture and burgeoning services sector
It's time to move to Otisburgh (Score:2)
1978 was a prescient year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Homo Sapiens caused this (Score:4, Funny)
Remember when the cavemen caused the extinction of the Pliocene mammals because they harnessed fire? It's 25,000 BC all over again.
Re:Homo Sapiens caused this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Homo Sapiens caused this (Score:5, Informative)
Changes caused by Milankovich Cycles occur over the period of millenia. We're making that size change in a century and a half.
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I welcome the return of our Pliocene Overlords. So who were they anyway?
It was from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. From Wikipedia, it sounds quite pleasant.
"The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3–3 mya) was 2–3 C higher than today, carbon dioxide levels were the same as today, and global sea level was 25 m higher. The northern hemisphere ice sheet was ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma."
I con
More Context (Score:3)
Abstract.
Nearshore slope, defined as the cross-shore gradient of the subaqueous profile, is an important inputparameter which affects hydrodynamic and morphological coastal processes. It is used in both local and large-scale coastal investigations. However, due to unavailability of data, most studies, especially those that focus oncontinental or global scales, have historically adopted a uniform nearshore slope. This simplifying assumptioncould however have far-reaching implications for predictions/projections thus obtained. Here, we present thefirst global dataset of nearshore slopes with a resolution of 1 km at almost 620 000 points along the globalcoastline. To this end, coastal profiles were constructed using global topo-bathymetric datasets. The results showthat the nearshore slopes vary substantially around the world. An assessment of coastline recession driven bysea level rise (SLR) (for an arbitrary 0.5 m SLR) with a globally uniform coastal slope of 1 : 100, as carried outin previous studies, and with the spatially variable coastal slopes computed herein shows that, on average, the former approach would underestimate coastline recession by about 40% [copernicus.org], albeit with significant spatial variation.
Kids & grandkids (Score:2)
Re:Kids & grandkids (Score:5, Insightful)
With our current technology, there is no other solution.
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With our current technology, there is no other solution.
You greatly underestimate the power of Wishful Thinking. I can simply HOPE something much better comes along while stopping all of those annoying "problems calling themselves solutions" that other people keep trying to implement.
If it's not absolutely perfect, it's useless.
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And if that were true, it would be a good idea to do it. It is not true. Not even remotely.
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So what is your plan to stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, use solar which doesn't work at night? Use windmills, which only work when it's windy? Or store the energy at night with battery technology that doesn't exist yet? Would you try pumped storage, which is only practical in places where hydro-electric would be practical?
There's no other answer with current technology, outside your imagination. Search your feeli
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I love how emotionally you try to discount my post, without mentioning a single fact.
You have proven time and again that you are not accessible to facts. Hence I just point out you are full of it. A run-of-the-mill demented disciple of the nuclear god.
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It is not true. Not even remotely.
Care to elaborate or back up that statement at all? Sounds like something you pulled out your ass.
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Nope. There isn't a single solution to such a massive, complex problem. We need to act fast on multiple fronts, e.g. reducing CO2 emissions from multiple sources (e.g. better mass-transit, better, cheaper more comprehensive public transport, better building energy efficiency, better emissions regulations on vehicles), building up renewable power infrastructure, reducing material consumption (i.e. we need to stop measuring our success by how quickly we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into po
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If the "developed world" had taken measures in the 70s, when it became obvious shit is going to hit the fan,
The developed world took measures in the 70s, you ignorant. We had rivers that caught fire [wikipedia.org], now we no longer do.
there would be no need of drastic measures in the 90s, not all would have been lost in the 2000s and 2010s.
All is not lost, why would you even think that? If "all" were lost, then we should forget about pollution controls and party until the end.
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Indeed. The stupidity of the human race as a group is absolutely remarkable.
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Nope. The only cooling ever seriously discussed was a nuclear winter after a global nuclear war.
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All this has happend before... (Score:2)
Al this will happen again....
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It happened while humans had a population of 7.8 billion and major cities on the coasts? When was that, exactly?
You have only proved you don't know your science fiction as well as DogDude.
On the bright side: (Score:2)
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The history of the end of the last ice age suggests that decent arable soils can develop in as little as a couple of millenia if the conditions are favourable. It's going to take a while.
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Unimpressive (Score:2, Redundant)
"Ice melting in Greenland contributes more than a millimeter rise to sea level every year," reports CNN, adding that now "that's likely to get worse."
That just doesn't sound scary - It will take 1,000 years for the oceans to rise 39.4 inches.
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Prime real estate (Score:2)
Good, that's some prime real estate .. might be good to purchase and hold for later especially when all the coastal land all over the world is toast.
A Little Dramatic? (Score:2)
"...the point of no return"
What, there will never be another Ice Age?
Re:Will be modded down but... (Score:5, Informative)
From https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
“Our findings don’t mean that Antarctica is growing; it’s still losing mass, even with the extra snowfall,” So there are no ice gains. It's a loss that is a smaller loss due to increased snowfall, but still an absolute loss.
Re:Will be modded down but... (Score:5, Informative)
No need to hide, AC
https://www.climate.gov/news-f... [climate.gov]
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>Wonder how much the Antartic ice gain is offsetting this latest emission of doom and gloom.
Not at all since arctic ice mass is decreasing [google.com]. An increase in sea ice which melts each summer isn't anything to get excited about.
>Posting AC for obvious reasons.
Good idea
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Hmmm...except for albedo. Without ice, the Arctic will warm even more. That will cause the permafrost to cough up its sequestered CO2 and methane, thus heating the atmosphere more. A warmer atmosphere means changed sea currents. It also means some areas currently well-watered might not be in the future. And mosquitoes will their pathogens really like warmer weather.
So ya, don't get excited, nothing you should worry about. The rest of are not so lucky.
Re:Will be modded down but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Warmer water in the arctic is melting methane clathrate deposits underwater as well. Russian subs are finding huge areas where the bottom is pockmarked with holes excavated by escaping methane.
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Yup, we were all going to be dea for sure by 2020, I remember that. I also remember it was all going to be starvation and riots and world wars by 2000 because of the worldwide food shortages. At least I can stop worrying about the ice age.
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I think you dropped your red hat, Cletus.
Re:Will be modded down but... (Score:4, Funny)
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
Because you're afraid of putting your name to silly easily disproven conspiracy theories that could be answered with 2 seconds of Google? Yeah I'd post AC too if I wanted to say something that stupid.
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Posting AC for obvious reasons.
Why ? So you can keep your mod point to downmod everyone who disagrees with you, while simultaneously whining like a little baby that the big bad liberals are taking away your freedom of speech ?
Typical cowardly, ant-science, anti-intellectual, Trump-loving, hypocritical republitard.
Re:Only possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Thermodynamics doesn't give a fuck about your rights
Re:Only possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Thermodynamics are what make warming happen. Physical laws means there are consequences to vomiting GHGs into the atmosphere, and physical laws don't give a fuck about your imagined right to puke CO2 into the atmosphere, nor can they be ameleloriated by denial of said physical laws. The universe doesn't hate you, you're just utterly irrelevant, your liberties are utterly meaningless.
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That's how humanity generally solves its big problems, yes.
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Snowflake alert (Score:2)
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From NOAA, the ocean is rising (per 2019) at 3.175 millimeters a year. Science is our friend, you should try some.
Re:387 feet (Score:5, Interesting)
The last glacial maximum was over 20,000 year ago. That represents a baseline of something like a 6 mm/year. That said, most of the sea level rise you're talking ended over 6000 years ago, and since then sea level hasn't changed very much.
From 1900-2000, sea level rose an average of 1.2mm year. In that context 1mm /year is a lot, and in fact the current rate of sea level rise is something like 3.4 mm/year. Greenland represents nearly a third of that.
However, Greenland is *not* the largest contributor yet. The largest contributor by far is simple ocean thermal expansion. That will increase at a uniform rate as long a air temperatures increase. Land ice, on the other hand, poses a considerable potential for abrupt changes in rate. In fact Greenland's contribution to sea level rise has doubled in the past twenty years.
The current conditions with the collapse of peripheral ice could further accelerate Greenland's future contribution.
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