Antarctica is 'Greening' at Dramatic Rate as Climate Heats 81
Plant cover across the Antarctic peninsula has soared more than tenfold over the last few decades, as the climate crisis heats up the icy continent. From a report: Analysis of satellite data found there was less than one sq kilometre of vegetation in 1986 but there was almost 12km2 of green cover by 2021. The spread of the plants, mostly mosses, has accelerated since 2016, the researchers found. The growth of vegetation on a continent dominated by ice and bare rock is a sign of the reach of global heating into the Antarctic, which is warming faster than the global average. The scientists warned that this spread could provide a foothold for alien invasive species into the pristine Antarctic ecosystem. Greening has also been reported in the Arctic, and in 2021 rain, not snow, fell on the summit of Greenland's huge ice cap for the first time on record.
"The Antarctic landscape is still almost entirely dominated by snow, ice and rock, with only a tiny fraction colonised by plant life," said Dr Thomas Roland, at the University of Exeter, UK, and who co-led the study. "But that tiny fraction has grown dramatically -- showing that even this vast and isolated wilderness is being affected by human-caused climate change." The peninsula is about 500,000km2 in total. Roland warned that future heating, which will continue until carbon emissions are halted, could bring "fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region." The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience and based on analysis of Landsat images.
"The Antarctic landscape is still almost entirely dominated by snow, ice and rock, with only a tiny fraction colonised by plant life," said Dr Thomas Roland, at the University of Exeter, UK, and who co-led the study. "But that tiny fraction has grown dramatically -- showing that even this vast and isolated wilderness is being affected by human-caused climate change." The peninsula is about 500,000km2 in total. Roland warned that future heating, which will continue until carbon emissions are halted, could bring "fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region." The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience and based on analysis of Landsat images.
Re:getting tired of this (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea what the solar cycle has to do with the integrity of climate scientists, so the rest of the post is just bizarre.
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If you truly read that I was implying correlation between solar activity and scientific integrity, your reading comprehension needs improvement.
I would be interested in seeing the measurements used to reach this conclusion. I'll be searching. If you have any links, post 'em.
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It doesn't matter to the argument, because we measure the sun's output and we would know if its assorted unexplained variances were the cause of AGW.
Also, nothing precludes a situation where there wouldn't be this kind of warming without unusual solar activity and anthropogenic CO2 and other GHGs.
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But, as we all know from the word of climate scientists who are upfront, honest and NOT totally influenced by research grant money
I know climate scientists. Nature is the ultimate arbiter. If they were engaged in some sort of giant conspiracy nature would come along and destroy their careers, so they are generally honest.
the sun is NOT the primary contributor to and affector of climate change of the planets in the solar system.
Climate scientists say that it is the primary contributor.
Therefore, there is not a causal relationship between these two phenomena, leading to the conclusion that they are simple coincidences. Because, that's how science works.
The output of the sun has been measured in detail. It hasn't changed enough to account for thr change in climate. That's how science works.
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Oh, come on, MAGAt. Show me the "huge grants", and then show me how much the fossil fuel companies spend on propaganda.
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is there another tech news site that's not sponsored by the WEF?
Unfortunately, no. Scare tactics and fear mongering generates clicks, and clicks apparently are money. So every news site, of all stripes, slowly becomes subsumed by the "We're all gonna die" mantra. Because we're morbid fucks, and we keep clicking to confirm the darkness.
Down with donations! (Score:1)
I think you're feeding the trolls and propagating their vacuous discussion-stifling Subjects. But I'm too stifled to explain my alternative Subject. It has to do with limited resources and bad actors...
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Is there anyone anywhere you've ever lifted a finger for?
Re: getting tired of this (Score:1)
People all over this site lift a finger to you every day.
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Re: getting tired of this (Score:5, Funny)
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Thanks for a perfect LOL moment. Well played, sir!
Reality is such a bore (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent "head in sand cures all my problems".
Fermi Paradox. Negative resolution. Truth dies. Production of truth information is expensive, but lies are cheap. Pick any system that depends on true data and watch it fail.
Re: Reality is such a bore (Score:2)
They are able to do it because we let them, which is in part because so many are ignorant and so many others are in denial.
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s/truth information/true information/
Re:getting tired of this (Score:4, Funny)
"Wahhh, thermodynamics hates me!!!!!"
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Most people prefer to live in reality; if you want to live in a weird bubble where you can pretend industrial activity doesn't lead to climate problems, you can probably sit right next to the people who claim the moon landing didn't happen and that our species didn't come from other primates.
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If somebody made a bubble for them, they would still run out on every single article desperately spamming with first posts no one wants to hear. This is the second month of fall, and temps are still over 100 in phoenix, and were also incredibly high in San Fran last week. Here in the Rockies, the AC is still on. Everyone can see it, all the insurance companies can see it and are paying for it, everyone leans forward to hear the scientists studying it to know what to get ready for, and these people are still
Re: getting tired of this (Score:2)
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Interesting [Re:getting tired of this] (Score:2)
This one is not a "News flash, the world is still warming" story; it's actually pretty interesting that Antarctica, a continent nearly devoid of surface life, is acquiring vegetation.
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Good luck finding a tech site that sanitizes articles for science denial.
Maybe you could spent your time at The Christian Science Monitor, they take a more skpetical view [csmonitor.com] of climate change without completely dismissing it.
P.S. I sure hope /. spends the big piles of cash that WEF gives them. I hope the editors come to the next annual party we evil Climatists have on George Soros' yacht.
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Like everything else, people are not very good at recycling solar panels. This does not invalidate in any way using solar panels. It just puts into question the handling of solar panels after use. But anything else which could be used instead of solar panels would also be 90% in the landfill. Solar panels are in no way special in this regard.
Ye
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is there another tech news site that's not sponsored by the WEF?
Unlikely since tech and science go hand in hand, and the science seems to be aligned with your proposed idea that it is all funded by WEF. Maybe you'd be more interested in joining a flat earth society? I hear they like ignoring all reality which seems to be what you're after.
Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
Plants sequester CO2.
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Mod parent funny
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depends on wether the decreased warming due to more sequestered carbon offsets the increased warming due to less reflected light by vegetation than by ice. also, the possibility of a runaway effect. i'd cautiously go for +5 funny. then again humor is mostly a form of insight. what a conundrum ...
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Plants absorb (some of) sunlight. Ice reflects (almost all of) it. Plants growing where there is normally ice means the area heats up more. The sequestration will be negligible while the change in albedo will be significant. It's not a good thing.
science is trolling on slashdot (Score:2)
Fuck your ignorance
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Did you read the previous article on here about Rivian being unable to increase production because they can't get certain parts? It could be because their competition paid their suppliers to choke. Who knows?
Farmland (Score:2)
This could be valuable farmland. Put a bunch of greenhouses there. There probably aren't many pests, you could save on insecticide.
Re: Farmland (Score:2)
Why do people want to go to Mars?
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Antartica won't be safe if there's global thermonuclear war.
Re: Farmland (Score:2)
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The idea is that we should be multi-planetary across space, not just one location on Mars, but also asteroids, floating in deep space, etc. It's much easier to stay protected in deep space where you can see a missile coming for you months or years in advance.
And I thought Genesis was all about the past (Score:2)
So basically we're looking at the ejection from the Garden of Eden all over again, but this time by our own hands instead of some petulant god.
Re: And I thought Genesis was all about the past (Score:2)
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Just like last time (Score:4, Informative)
From Wikipedia on West Antarctic Ice Sheet
"In the long term, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely to disappear due to the warming which has already occurred.[11] Paleoclimate evidence suggests that this has already happened during the Eemian period, when the global temperatures were similar to the early 21st century.[12][13] It is believed that the loss of the ice sheet would take place between 2,000 and 13,000 years in the future,[14][15] although several centuries of high emissions may shorten this to 500 years.[16]"
If you are wondering when the Eemian was,
"The Last Interglacial, also known as the Eemian, was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 years ago at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and ended about 115,000 years ago at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period. It corresponds to Marine Isotope Stage 5e."
MIS 11 about 400,000 years ago melted down both the West Antarctic and most of Greenland. You can look that one up yourselves. It was an unusual long interglacial running about 40,000 years.
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The upside, among more farmland, is that the freshwater from all the melted glaciers will reduce the salt content as a percentage, not much, but some, so that desalination plants have a little less salt to remove!
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That sucks. That means the sale I add to my pool will be harder to get and cost more.
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Just because plants grow doesn't mean crops grow. Not unless you like moss and lichen. After awhile there may be trees growing there (not soon), but they'll need to be thinks like arctic spruce, so they can survive months without sun.
Food crops all require lots of light. (Well, except things like iceberg lettuce, that I barely consider food.) Eventually you might be able to grow rye or oats, but not soon.
OTOH, IIRC there was a forest of deciduous trees that grew in Antarctica during one period of melt.
Re: Just like last time (Score:5, Informative)
There will not be more farmland. There is already a net loss due to climate change and this will worsen. Just because some plants will grow there, that doesn't mean it's a good place for crops.
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Also, snow is very good at reflecting the heat away from the Earth. Plants, however absorb the heat. End result is it increases the amount of heat the Earth will get from the sun that isn't radiated or reflected into space.
It's why even on a sunny warm day snow doesn't melt all that fast. Once a spot on the pavement dries up and collects the heat from sunlight, the spot very quickly starts melting the snow around it
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It's not the state that is unprecedented, it's the speed at which we get there.
500 years might sound like a long time, but it's a rate of change that if fast enough to ensure we are going to see some fairly dramatic and catastrophic changes in my lifetime. Changes that happen too fast for us to deal with them without conflict, especially since there are 7 billion people now. It's not like the tribes can just migrate.
Im 55 (Score:1)
Re: Im 55 (Score:3)
Re: Im 55 (Score:2)
Re: Im 55 (Score:2)
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I taught my kid to swim. It'll be fine.
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Doing the math, since 1986, the greening has grown from 1 km2 to 2 km2. The land area of Antarctica is 14.2 million km2, so maybe it will be a few more generations before all that ice melts.
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This paper [wiley.com] says there is a significant albedo effect in the ice shelves, but less so on land, which certainly makes sense.
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I didn't say volcanos, I said volcanism -- in this case, it takes the form of hot spots under the ice. The warming is definitely partly caused by these hot spots under the ice, of which there are, as I said previously, at least dozens. https://blogs.agu.org/geospace... [agu.org] has a handy map if you're interested.
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What makes it unreliable as a science source is that it rarely (if ever) provides enough details to understand the technical point being made. Yes, it has a political bias, but it's not one I personally object to, because, as they say, opinions are cheap -- everybody has one. Science cannot be merely a matter of opinion, however, otherwise it is simply not science.
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it's a general news site with a well-known political bias. You might as well link the New York Post
I'm curious as to what you are trying to achieve here with that statement. Most news has a slight bias. The Guardian being slightly left leaning is more likely to carry actual news about climate change, but the New York Post... what do you hope to get out of that one with its significantly right wing bias? A denialism story? Or are you saying link them both with Washington post so you get two slightly left and one very right source and end up at zero?
Yes, as has been well documented for several decades now
Oh man, you really need to tell Thomas P. Roland, Oliver
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Speaking of the abstract, note this line: "Antarctica has experienced significant increases in temperature over the past 60years, with rates of warming ... occurring much faster than global average warming." (emphasis added)
How could it not? Surely you realize that the greenhouse effect means less energy radiating from Earth, which means the coldest places will receive much more convection currents carrying heat. You'd need some specific combination of solar output increase plus greenhouse gas reduction to have the poles warm at the same rate as the global average.
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Please stop linking to science news from the Guardian. That is most decidedly NOT a reliable source for technical information, it's a general news site with a well-known political bias. You might as well link the New York Post or the Washington Post.
True, the Guardian has a bias. But comparing it, and the WP, to a tabloid like the NY Post is a bit telling.
The link to nature.com is much better, as is using the study abstract for the summary. Speaking of the abstract, note this line: "Antarctica has experienced significant increases in temperature over the past 60years, with rates of warming ... occurring much faster than global average warming." (emphasis added)
Yes, as has been well documented for several decades now, there are dozens of volcanic hot spots under that continent, so localized warming "much faster" than the global average certainly is expected. To what degree other reasons for warming are responsible is something I don't believe we know the answer to, yet.
WTF, are you so desperate to deny global warming that you think a few volcanoes are heating up an entire continent?
Yes, I saw your link showing up to something like 150 milliwatts/m2 of heat transfer [agu.org].
Meanwhile, the sun sends about 1370 watt/m2 [bom.gov.au].
So yeah, your big find is only about 10,000x weaker than the sun.