Slashdot Mirror
Why Groundwater Use May Not Explain Half of Sea-Level Rise
New submitter Sir Realist writes "A recent Slashdot scoop pointed us at a scientific study that claimed 42% of global sea-level rises could be due to groundwater use. It was a good story. But as is often the way with science, there are folks who interpret the data differently. Scott Johnson at Ars Technica has a good writeup which includes two recent studies that came to remarkably different conclusions from mostly the same data, and an explanation of the assumptions the authors were making that led to those differences. Essentially, there is some reason to think that the groundwater estimates used in the first study were too high. However, that's still under debate, so it's worth reading the whole argument. Scientific review in action!"
Or maybe it is simply that all peered reviewed papers get reviewed. And it is simply that climate change is a fact and it is happening ~ like we believe it is so all reviews of those papers turn up no problems.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So, we can review groundwater/sea-level scientific studies, but 'Climate Change' is a done deal.
It's a scientific fact that global warming is real. There is no debate, and no controversy, there. We've got too many satellites confirming it, along with thousands of ground stations and the upward trend is undeniable.
It's still up for discussion why it's happening or what it will eventually mean for us. Ethical scientists generally take the side of "Until we can predict with some confidence what will happen, we should do what we can to limit the impact," similar to the ideal behind the Hippocratic oath. Our present models, understanding, and theories point to rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and heating to the point where much of the ariable land along the equator will no longer be able to sustain industrial farming.
We're already seeing some of the effects of this rapid heating (in geological terms); In Japan, native moss is no longer used at several Zen shrines because it's become too warm for them to survive. Coral reefs are undergoing a mass-extinction event, and we are seeing weather patterns which roughly correspond to modelling predictions for a warmer Earth. If these trends continue, life will become increasingly inhospitable to humans. While long-term predictions aren't reliable, it is almost certain the Earth of 200 years from now will have a radically different climate than the Earth of today; We are directly responsible for this planet entering a new geological age with as much speed and force as the Cretaceousâ"Paleogene extinction event.
The debate really doesn't center on whether or not these things happen; The choice faced by our generation is not whether or not life after climate change is possible, but what kind of life it will be.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Any individual study can be reviewed at any time. This rarely has any significant impact on the consensus formed by the weight of all other existing related studies. If there are two interpretations of a study based on two different sets of assumptions, the question can be resolved by testing the assumptions. The fact that a single study is ambiguous does nothing to cast doubt on the remaining vast preponderance of scientific studies which unambiguously indicate that climate change is both real and man made.
'Climate Change' is a done deal
The scientific community has overwhelmingly agreed that Climate Change is occuring, and that there is a greater than 90% chance it is man-made.
That this is the consensus is a cold, hard, unambiguous fact. If you want to believe that climate change is not real, or not man-made, the only remaining avenue of rationalisation is that the scientific community a wrong or lying for some reason. This puts climate change deniers on the same ground as creationists.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
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