'Devastating' Melt of Greenland, Antarctic Ice Sheets Found 108
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study. Phys.Org reports: Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland's melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland's average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s. From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets -- which hold 99% of the world's freshwater ice -- were shrinking by 116 billion tons (105 billion metric tons) a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica. But from 2017 to 2020, the newest data available, the combined melt soared to 410 billion tons (372 billion metric tons) a year, more than two-thirds of it from Greenland, said the study in Thursday's journal Earth System Science Data.
Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found. That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters). But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.
Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found. That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters). But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.
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Only places such as Florida are affected by rising sea levels. No great loss.
O RLY? [climate.gov]
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Only places such as Florida are affected by rising sea levels. No great loss.
O RLY? [climate.gov]
Reading his tagline, I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
Re: No biggie (Score:3)
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We are exiting a period of interglaciation. So, this hshould come as a surprise to no one. We know what the sea levels were before, and we know what the climate was like before trees grew causing coal sequestration and before seas caused oil. The carbon levels were higher in the geologic record and we know they are returning that way. The only question now is how fast? Luckily for us, we have the ability to adapt and shift much faster than even the most break neck paces of geological forces. Thank goodness.
You do have a point here. Many people seem to believe that the ordained proper level of radiative forcing was 1750, around when the industrial revolution took off.
When in fact, Carbon and methane levels have changed wildly over time. Hell, so has oxygen levels. During the Carboniferous period, O2 levels reached 35%, which allowed for the huge insects seen then. And yes, the trees ended up sequestering the Carbon that we later de-sequestered.
And when the trees used up enough CO2, and Global average temps
Re: No biggie (Score:2)
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See I actually disagree with you on the what do we do now question. I think it is about time we focus our energy consumption on mastering the climate globally. Perhaps with a ring or solar collection, or a variable solar collector at a Lagrange point between the earth and the sun which can help is moderate the mount of sunlight making it to the earths surface, while collecting civilization levels of energy for geoengineering sized projects or interstellar travel. We are reaching the point in terms of mass to orbit and engineering and computational know how to address these problems ambitiously and with precision. Let us put our focus to good use. Our climate is still pretty much the proverbial man-cave and we can turn it into a climate controlled mansion. We absolutely should.
There is a huge problem, and that is what is the correct weather? Don't forget we would have to do something about volcanism.
Then there is the solipsism of humans.
Let's assume we can place the huge devices in orbit.
One of the big factors I have come to realize about AGW deniers is that they often like the warmer weather. stick with me here a bit.
And it is an attractive thing. Here in PA, we hardly have winter any more. I use a tongue in cheek metric of tanks of gasoline per winter in my snowblow
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Ah yes Slashdot, where you better put a /s after you obviously silly sarcastic statement, because nerds have no sense of humour.
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Except he wasn't being sarcastic. His posting history is quite clear. If he was joking he can come here and say it.
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Except they won't be wiped out, the sea level will rise gradually over several years and they will be displaced, moving inland or north. They will have lost their homes & businesses and many will end up on the streets or working minimum wage, but they will be alive.
I find it hard not to see a parallel with the displacement of people that was the basis of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath eighty-some years ago.
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I intentionally didn't say drowned or dead.
Wiped out and ruined, the words I use, apply directly to losing everything As you describe.
And still, be it drowning or losing everything, to come on here and make light of that for 22 million strangers is the product of a deeply disturbed mind. He thought he was being funny and virtue signaling.
Re: No biggie (Score:2)
What, because all the sea level rise in the next 100 years comes suddenly like a delivery?
There isn't time left to prevent it, so we better start mitigation. And that means building infrastructure and such. And paying taxes for it, in the form of property insurance premiums.
If you want to live in a place routinely flattened by storm surges, then maybe it's time to bear a little more of the costs of that.
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So you think people living in areas where there are any of: hurricanes, floods, tornados, brutal snow storms, earthquakes, and other acts of god should pay their own way through when disaster strikes?
That's most of the country.
Ok, let's just cancel FEMA, right?
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You know what? We do pay our own way when the odd disaster strikes - it's called taxes.
But if your shit gets flooded on the regular because you decided to build somewhere that gets increasingly pounded with storms, and results in total loss over and over, maybe we shouldn't be building your shit there?
This isn't really a hard concept - there's parables in the bible about building on rock instead of sand. Even 6th century religious scholars understood this.
Re:No biggie (Score:5, Informative)
All of the rich people with estates one foot above sea level
(1) These people you refer to mostly don't exist. Coal apologists keep telling us about how X celebrity and Y politician have houses "right on the ocean!" but when you look them up on a topo map, they are almost always located on hills overlooking the ocean.
don't seem to be in a hurry to sell them and move to the mountains.
You have the time scale wrong. Climate change is fast... by geological standards, but still slow by human standards. Most people simply don't choose their place to live based on whether it will be on a floodplain in a hundred years. It's more "this is a nice place, I don't care what it will be like after I'm dead.
When they no longer own these types of places, I'll listen to what they have to say.
Well... if you've been listening to celebrities and politicians, changing to not listening to them is for the best.
Re: No biggie (Score:2)
Personally, I'm listening to the people who bought the top floor of this [wp.com].
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Re: No biggie (Score:2)
... and that's a picture of housing that's a hundred feet above the water. Well done.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think how bad it might be if AGW wasn't just an anti-industrialist myth.
Oh, look! A feral idiot!
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Think how bad it might be if AGW wasn't just an anti-industrialist myth.
Oh, look! A feral idiot!
I'd assumed that the parent post was intended to be sarcastic rather than clueless.
Of course, on the internet it's impossible to tell.
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Yes, I was attempting sarcasm. Guess I need to give it up, or at least flag it for the reader.
Speaking from a country that is half below sea-lvl (Score:3, Insightful)
And time for the world to help China and India to build huge solar fields, in stead of those endless numbers of new coal plants.
Re:Speaking from a country that is half below sea- (Score:4, Informative)
Without China the rest of the world would have a rough time building solar, EV batteries and a bunch of other stuff.
China may have a slight edge in battery technology (they're hardly the only ones making quality batteries, they do make the largest number of them though) but their solar panels are inferior to basically everyone else's. Canadian and Singaporean panels both have higher efficiencies for example. What China has is lots of manufacturing capacity on line now, and an unlimited willingness to pollute.
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Just because better panels exist, doesn't mean the Chinese panels are inadequate
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The top end solar panels are 23% efficient under the exact right temperature conditions.
The second best, which I bought for my house, are 22.5% efficient under a much wider range of temperatures.
The worst you can realistically get today are about 16% which operate under a variety of conditions depending on which manufacturer but I'll just say it varies because there are so many, but most panels, including standard Chinese made are about 18% efficient.
So, you think China will do what? Take a bunch of 22+% p
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Sure there are lots of things in labs that never are mass produced because they're either too expensive to make or too hard to make or not appropriate for general use for various reasons such as limited life span or fragility, etc.
What does any of that have to do with the "help" we are supposed to provide China?
What "help" is it they need from anyone else?
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Lab made panels have already crossing the 40% efficiency mark, by using almost all the light falling on them.
I'm a big fan of more efficient solar panels, but 40% != "almost all".
Going from the lab to manufacturing at scale is another issue of course. But I wish them luck.
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and an unlimited willingness to pollute.
It is disingenuous to single out China for their 'willingness to pollute' when they have some of the highest growth rates for renewable capacity, emit about 1/2 of the CO2 per capita of the US and less than most self-proclaimed 'developed' countries.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
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It is disingenuous to single out China for their 'willingness to pollute' when they have some of the highest growth rates for renewable capacity, emit about 1/2 of the CO2 per capita of the US and less than most self-proclaimed 'developed' countries.
WTF CO2. You're obsessed. We're not talking about CO2. China doesn't give a rat's ass about CO2. China doesn't care about polluting.
Real numbers are difficult to come by (as always, with China), but as much as 40% of their waterways are so contaminated that they have no fish and the cost to treat the water enough to make it potable is prohibitive, to the point nobody tries. We're talking chromium contamination here. We're talking arsenic and fluorine compounds and sulfates. We're talking about 3.78 b
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I get where you are coming from. But I think you fail to understand how capitalism (and red tape) works.
It does things the cheapest way... until they are not. And then it rapidly reallocates capital and does it the new cheapest way.
At the same time, many activities in the west are artificially slowed by red tape. It's good- it saves lives at rates of 1 to 2 per million and it prevents environmental damage. But as we saw in the EU, it can also be set aside and the west can do in 8 months what was expected to
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The means and the technology to make solar panels and storage exist in the west. China is used because it's the best now- this second.
But it isn't. It's only the cheapest. It is explicitly not the best in literally any other way. It's not the best in sourcing materials, it's not the best in build quality, it's not the best in technology, it's not the best in efficiency. And now the labor rates are rising so they're rapidly losing their cost advantage. And if they rewind them there will be mass unrest. We've already seen that China is constantly just below a boil with their response to lockdowns.
Re:Speaking from a country that is half below sea- (Score:4, Insightful)
You think they're stupid?
No, I think they're handicapped by a legal system which does not acknowledge the rule of law, a political system in whcih cronyism and graft are rife and which is run by a party which equates "stability" with keeping the same leaders in charge no matter how badly they screw up, and served by sock puppet media which slavishly quashes any bad news.
These things are not just unpleasant; they're catastrophic in the long term. They've led to an economy in which government funding is dependent upon a terrifying real estate bubble where *70%* of the nation's savings is invested in mostly fundamentally worthless real estate projects. The decades of rapid growth was fueled by a cheap high quality labor supply that is going to dry up because of a demographic time bomb which will be nearly impossible to reverse because of the pervasive pessimism and cynicism among its youth about their own economic prospects.
Sure, China does not need technical help in building renewable energy plants. But in the coming decades they're going to be focused on their own internal problems to contribute much to any efforts to tackle global problems. We'll be lucky if they don't make things worse.
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Everything you say about China is absolutely 1000000% true.
However, none of that has anything to do with their "needing our help to go solar".
How exactly would we "help" China? Help them rebuild their entire system of government, economy, and culture? I think 1.4 billion Chinese and Xi might object to that "help".
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How exactly would we "help" China? Help them rebuild their entire system of government, economy, and culture? I think 1.4 billion Chinese and Xi might object to that "help".
Moreover, our system is failing anyway, so we're not exactly the most credible source.
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Agreed. The corruption is getting out of control in the U.S. We need to clean house or we'll suffer the same problems Russia has.
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This is weirdly analogous to the US.
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No, I think they're handicapped by a legal system which does not acknowledge the rule of law, a political system in whcih cronyism and graft are rife and which is run by a party which equates "stability" with keeping the same leaders in charge no matter how badly they screw up, and served by sock puppet media which slavishly quashes any bad news.
Scary. I thought I would never be the one to say this... but are you talking about America or China here? The comment you are replying to is hidden and I sincerely can not tell without checking. At the end, it looks like you are probably talking about China.
Re: Speaking from a country that is half below sea (Score:2)
Yes, because China has a prompt shortage of shits to give about pollution. When you pay no mind to environmental concerns whatsoever, it's very unsurprising that coal wins.
Were you trying to be insightful?
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You realize the same people in charge there that you say don't care about pollution have to breathe that same air?
I was there a few years before they started cleaning up. My mask had to be changed every other day. It changed colors as shut in the air clung to the outside.
As much as I hate the cccp, they have figured out that not being able to see 2 blocks and people including themselves choking to death on 400ppm air is a bad idea.
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So which is it? You have now claimed in various posts that they are building coal (they are), but care about air pollution.
You say they don't need anyone's help (probably correct) but continue to build the worst possible generation technique available to humanity.
You say they care about pollution, but still have lakes of refining tailings in inner Mongolia [bbc.com] that rank on the list of most polluted hellscapes on the planet.
Here's my thought: the people in charge (CCP) only care about local pollution in regards
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There is this thing called nuance you don't seem to understand so I will explain it to you. I know you think you have some sort of rhetorical gotcha going on and feel really smart but that is not what happened.
This is not a black and white issue. It is not all coal or all green.
They can build coal plants while still reducing overall pollution.
How? By building plants that better filter the crap out of the air than the ones they built when I was there.
They build solar and other things when appropriate.
Was
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And you seem to be under the impression that you can "filter all the crap out of the air" with coal power, and you just can't. There is no operational model where you can feasibly use coal for thermal generation, and not emit shit into the air that will eventually kill millions of people.
"Clean Coal" was an industry play for government handouts, and never produced a watt of clean power.
Was that hard to understand?
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Help China build solar fields? Are you serious?
So we should buy solar panels from China, then pay Chinese workers to install them because.... They lack the technology? They lack workers? They can't afford them?
China has 1.4 Billion people within it's borders
China is the second largest economy by GDP (about 3/4 the size of the world's largest economy, the US, and 3x the size of the #3 economy, Japan)
China manufactures 3/4 of the world's solar panel/modules
You really think they need our help to deploy solar f
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China is building a lot of nuclear power plants too.
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
If people keep pointing to China as an example to follow then it might be a good idea to look at what kind of an example they set more closely.
China is building nuclear power plants at an incredible rate. It may be wise to follow their example since if they no longer need imports of coal to keep the lights on then they no longer need to play nice on trade.
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China manufactures 3/4 of the world's solar panel/modules
China leads the world in new construction of nuclear fission power plants.
https://pris.iaea.org/pris/wor... [iaea.org]
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Time for Germany to fire up those nuclear plants
No thanks. Germany's nuclear plants were in a horrible state thanks to it being known that they were about to be end of life'd. There's no going back on what was done. If you want nuclear, build new ones. It's an idea I wholeheartedly support and can get behind, but Germany's current nuclear infrastructure needs to stay dead. Having your country above sea level doesn't help if it's covered in fallout.
*Note: This is not a reflection of the way Germany has safely operated nuclear for decades, but a reflection
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For comparison: The US (4x population of Germany) produced 2555 TWh from fossil fuels (828 TWh coal) in 2022 vs. Germany 265 TWh (181 TWh coal).
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
The tipping point (Score:4, Interesting)
Until we witness huge sheets of ice sliding off Greenland and Antarctica with undeniable images of massive icebergs floating off. Then the finger pointing begins, the blame game, the denial of responsibility, and STILL the bickering of "how much is enough" to throw at the problem.
Real solutions are still 20 years off, IMO.
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Once the extent of the catastrophe becomes impossible to ignore, I wonder if some countries will make it legal to hunt climate change deniers, or maybe instruct law enforcement to turn a blind eye if there's consequences for people who got rich by blocking measures to fight it.
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Once the extent of the catastrophe becomes impossible to ignore, I wonder if some countries will make it legal to hunt climate change deniers, or maybe instruct law enforcement to turn a blind eye if there's consequences for people who got rich by blocking measures to fight it.
The naturalized viewpoint on the blame game taken at maximum altitude, would be Third World countries having a valid beef with every First World country that has developed a poisoned planet.
Doesn't mean Third World countries stand a damn chance against the Greed that sustains Third Worlds in the 21st Century. Control, is everything. You don't even have to be right if you're in control.
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Well said.
Tipping in THEIR favor. (Score:2)
This is how it begins. Politicians ignore or dismiss climate change effects...
"That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters). But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters)"
Yeah. And when you manage to reduce a nightmare scenario statement of entire continents flooding down to this go figure no one is paying attention.
Hell, that one statement alone makes every layman wonder what the hell all the fuss is about. Maybe stop selling the problem as a nothingburger and perhaps we'll garner better attention? These kinds of descriptions are tipping it in their favor to ignore the problem, or easily find a bigger one.
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The 33.6 inch number is ludicrous:
That's enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water
What they are describing is imagine we were to build a wall 36" tall around the "entire United States" (ConUS only? Include Alaska/Hawaii? What about territories and protectorates?), and you funneled EVERY DROP of water from the melted ice shelfs from the 30 year span discussed directly inside that walled-in area, none in the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian oceans or the Mediterranean sea. That "nightmare" scenario is meaningless and unrelatable.
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In 20 years i'll be checked out, most likely (Score:2)
But I promise they'll still be arguing. No politician in a non-authortiarian or totalitarian system could afford to kneecap the economy as much as would be required to alter this trajectory. One could make an argument that even dictators have to fear this kind of backlash. if climate is even alterable - that is the main objection I have to all this climate change talk. No one ever considers (in the media, discussions like this, etc) that maybe we don't actually have much of a say in this. It might be we
Re:It's The End Of The World (Score:4)
It is the "end of the world", historians just haven't documented it yet. The Black Plague was the end of the world, too.
Climate change is going to hit hard along coasts... where a hell of a lot of people in major economic centers live. It's going to change where and how much food we can grow, which is going to trigger mass migrations and wars.
Humanity won't end, but the lovely pleasant life a lot of us live right now won't last another generation except for the 0.1% who can go wherever they want.
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I'm not afraid, I recognize cause and effect.
You, however, live in fear and hide from that in your deliberate ignorance.
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People have been predicting the end of the world ever since there's been a world and people in it. One of these days they'll be right, but something tells me today won't be that day. I suspect, as usual, we'll manage to muddle through.
Oill Fields (Score:2)
Well the US is helping Climate change. They are about to bring 2 new oil fields on-line and doing everything it can to keep Gas prices low. /s
Time for people to get out of their SUVs and Pickups that are used for only carrying 2 bags of groceries. Electric is not going anywhere for a while, that is the reality. It is facing a chicken and egg problem, nevermind the purchase expense.
In the early 1900s, the electric autos then could pull into a gas station and swap out batteries. But each company is rollin
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Well the US is helping Climate change. They are about to bring 2 new oil fields on-line
If we're going to burn that much oil anyhow, don't you think it's better to pump it up here rather than burn MORE to ship it in from all over the world - and ship money away to pay for it?
and doing everything it can to keep Gas prices low.
Better to burn gas than oil, and either than coal. For a given amount of energy out, gas puts out about 1/2 the CO2 as coal, oil puts out about 2/3s ditto.
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When Americans speak of 'Gas', they typically refer to gasoline, or petrol, which is made from oil and not from gas.
Not in cases like this, when we're talking natural gas vs. liquid (at room temperature) petroleum - either unrefined (crude) or refined products such as lubricating oils, fuel oil, kerosene ("parifin" in brit - we use that word for white wax suitable for candles and sealing jars of preserves).
When I said "gas" above I was referring to natural gas - mostly methane, a bit of ethane, traces of pr
Reflective surfaces (Score:2)
And don't forget that white ice reflects the sun's rays.
Do I hear 4 degrees in 100 years, 5? The climate estimates are probably off and the proposed goals are probably nonsense. Too many variables to account for.
And I can't believe, given that there were tornado warnings in an unbroken N-S line from Wisconsin to Texas in early April, that there are people who still believe it's a hoax. Primarily anthropogenic? Yeah you can debate that, if you like. Doesn't matter. We definitely contribute. We need to stop t
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Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found.
Define "lost".
No longer exists.
When ice melts, it becomes water. The ice doesn't move somewhere else, it ceases to exist.
I'm pretty sure the freshwater locked up in the ice shelfs simply liquified and went into the ocean - we don't lose things when they change state.
Correct. And that is what this entire article is talking about. This is not some amazing insight on your part ("guess, what when the ice disappears, water appears!"): it is the very point of the article.
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Since 1992, Earth has reclaimed 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of freshwater from the two ice sheets, the study found.
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And some idiot marked you a troll. You're right on.
The fact is the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 1900s. Even with every decade after that having ever increasing amounts of CO2. This clearly disproves the man made global warming theory. All it takes is one counter-example and we have one. Now they're trying to change the historical data to lie about it.
It's a scheme to separate people from their money.
"Devastating"? No. "Expected" is the word (Score:1)
The actual reality is that we can expect to find a large number of things are worse than predicted and a large number of negative effects were not predicted at all. At the same time we may have a small number of things were the predictions were worse that what is happening, but they will not be enough to offset things at all.
So, entirely expected. And yes, we are already in the middle of this thing and cannot stop it anymore. That ship has sailed 20 years ago, when the Science had been solid for about 20 y
So it will deserve its name again (Score:2)
The cost of renaming it Whiteland would be to great.
The beat goes on (Score:1)
and the beat goes on ...
Fresh water melt effect? (Score:2)
Has anyone given thought as to what effects all that fresh water being dumped into a salty ocean might have? Any significant effect on salinity levels in the ocean?
Also, if salinity levels in ocean drop, wouldn't that increase evaporation rates of ocean water? If that happens, does that have a possibility of increasing precipitation levels over land? How about cloud formation in the atmosphere (might that reflect more solar radiation?)
Besides the semi-obvious seal-levels rising effect, what other effects
We are all going to die in 2051 (Score:1)
And declare ourselves all so clever because the scientists were wrong about us dying in 2050.
Soylent Green (Score:2)
Soylent Green will be People, it seems.
Re:What changed (Score:5, Informative)
The article you linked was published in 2015 so it is not exactly a new study.
Here are a couple of key paragraphs from the article you linked:
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The above paragraph supports your basic statement but then a few paragraphs later it says:
But it might only take a few decades for Antarcticaâ(TM)s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. âoeIf the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate theyâ(TM)ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I donâ(TM)t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.â
The article linked in today's summary says the newest data from 2017 to 2020 show the trend in the losses is increasing rapidly so the situation described in the second paragraph quoted from the article you linked appears to be coming true.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
*Maybe* that's true, but wishful thinking isn't a sound basis for reaching scientific conclusions or making policy. Evidence-based policy making may procede from wrong interpretations of data; people are fallible after all, but it's better than pulling happy conclusions out of your ass.
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but we just didn't observe all the loss 30 years ago
Science comes with known error bars in the recorded statistics. We know what we were observing 30 years ago and how accurate we were doing so.