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Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts
mdsolar (1045926) writes "The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday. The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis."
Fuck all this Prius hippie shit. I'm buying a Hummer.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Chicken Little because it isn't going to happen in your lifetime?
I don't get it. This is happening.
Just kidding... the Antarctic ice has been melting for decades. More precisely, the mass of the old, thick land ice is decreasing due to rising temperatures, but the surface area of the short-lived, thin sea ice has been increasing, partly due to decreased salinity in the Southern Ocean because the land ice is melting. Overall, the Antarctic has been losing ice at an accelerating rate as temperatures have continued to increase.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I'm a bit puzzled. If it will truly become a crisis, does it not suggest that the ice was frozen for all time and has never in history been running water?
Wouldn't that mean that eons ago, we had a crisis to solve and managed to create the worlds biggest ice-box in the process... who cares if it made some dino-ice cubes?
The world is constantly changing, for better or worse, and people always seem genuinely surprised when it changes.
Just remember, short term comfort ALWAYS trumps long term viability. We live in a world dominated by the next few fiscal quarters. It's a breeding ground for sociopaths and the mentally deficient dupes who follow them.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall day is literally the motto for so many people.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nothing a good meteor impact can't fix. Apparently, we get buzzed all the time by large rocks (reference to some other article recently here.)
When it hits, we'll have of few months of darkness to fix the problem.
Well, let's find out if that's actually true. Here's a math problem: The salinity of the ocean is 3.5%, and the ocean has an average depth of 3700 meters. If enough fresh water is added to the ocean to increase its depth by 3 meters, what is the new salinity of the ocean?
(Answer: 3.5%, i.e. not significantly different from before.)
NYC, the new Venice!
California should build MASSIVE quantities of desalanization plants along the coast. So that we can keep the oceans properly salined. While extract massive amounts of water to turn the entire southwest into a lush green sub-tropic region, and keep sea levels in check. Start now!!!
99.9%+ of the people alive today will not live to see the crisis, or even live long enough to know whether or not the crisis will actually occur.
So what do you want to do about it? We live in the real world, most of us in elective democracies where any politician that purposes a reduction in the standard of living will quickly find himself out of a job. Green energy doesn't scale and nuclear is a bad word, so where do you propose we get the gigajoules needed to both run Western civilization and bring the third world out of poverty?
The climate change crowd never has a good answer for this question. Thankfully we're an adaptable species, arguably the most adaptable ever to live on the blue marble. I think we'll manage just fine.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, you're very confused here. It's correct that the rock beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet is below sea level, but the ice sheet is not floating and sea level will certainly rise if the thing melts.
Think of it this way. If you have an ice cube floating in your drink, it is 90% under water and 10% above water. If such an ice cube melts, the level of your drink doesn't change.
Now imagine that instead of a free-floating, 90%-submerged ice cube, you have an ice cube that is suspended by a string so that it is 50% above water and 50% below water. This ice cube "wants" to settle lower in your drink so that it is 90% below water, and if it is allowed to do so, the level of your drink will rise. So if the ice cube is allowed to melt, the level of the drink will also rise, to exactly the same level it would reach if you cut the string.
The WAIS is like a 50% submerged ice cube that wants to be 90% submerged.
You're probably trolling, but here goes:
Any continent will rise if the mass on top is reduced, because the mantle acts as a liquid on geological time scales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound)
However, it's not the loss of mass or height of the antartcic that is causing sea levels to rise, but the movement of water from "long term storage" on top of the antarctic continent into the ocean. What the container does after the contents have been released is immaterial.
(for the arctic ice it is different because it is all floating, so melting it won't do anything to sea levels (it will to salinity and hence ocean currents) - and greenland has a lot of land ice, of course)
While buoyancy works exactly as you state (and I am pretty sure climate scientists understand this too). I do recall from past reading is that scientists are concerned that breakup of the marine sheets leads to accelerated melting of the land sheets.
With intact marine sheets, the land sheets do not flow easily into the ocean (not enough force to displace the marine ice). But if the marine ice is gone, the land ice can flow more freely into the water. In the large, Ice is quite plastic and will flow downhill due to gravity at significant rate.
It's not "waterfront property" that anybody is worried about. It's the fact that a very large number of the world's current cities happen to be located near the water for historical reasons (major trading hubs built around ports for oceangoing ships.) The utter annihilation of those cities is a huge economic problem.
And flooding Death Valley with seawater doesn't create a single acre of arable land. You can't farm jack $hit out of soil contaminated with salt. The shores of the Persian gulf (nor, for that matter the shores of southern CA) don't support much in the way of farms, despite the large body of water next door.
That's the surface area of ice, not the amount of ice, which is measured by volume or mass. If you look at the mass of ice in the Antarctic, you can see it's been melting for decades at an accelerating rate. Funny how the real facts get in the way of a good misinformation campaign.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Do some reading about base load power, then contemplate the fact that the United States consumed 3,866,000,000,000 kilowatt hours (that's 13,917,600,000,000,000,000 joules, if you were wondering) of electricity in 2012. Since nuclear fission is politically explosive, explain how you propose to generate a sizable fraction of that energy (never mind all of it) without relying on carbon based sources. Limit yourself to technologies that are actually here, not distant fantasies like nuclear fusion.
After you do that, you can further depress yourself with the realization that I'm only talking about electricity. The actual energy budget of the United States is far higher when you account for the transportation sector and other non-electrical needs. And we're only talking about the United States here, one country out of ~190, with 4.5% of the global population. The rest of the World aspires to our standard of living, and they're not going to abandon that goal because of a distant and hard to quantify threat.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, the models have been too conservative. Things are significantly worse than predicted.
But you're clearly not a "facts oriented" kind of person.
comments like these.
Well yes, that's how it works. Flamebait gets modded as flamebait. If you find that all the posts like this one are being modded similarly, it just means that the modding isn't some statistical outlier and that the masses have a consensus for what they consider "flamebait".
Which article? The OSS article says the data confirms three factors, the first of which is "Antarctica is warming". That makes sense, if the globe is warming then that will cause Antarctica to warm.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Ah, nothing like quoting an anti-AGW blog as if it were the equivalent of a published article.
Tell me, do you get your biology information from Answers in Genesis as well?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You mean like maybe north of Canada or in the Bering Sea where there is so much ice the last few years that boats can't follow their normal schedules and are shut down for months at a time because of the ice? But I never see an alarming article about MORE ice. Always less.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
From TFA: "The basic problem is that much of the West Antarctic ice sheet sits below sea level in a kind of bowl-shaped depression the earth. As Dr. Mercer outlined in 1978, once the part of the ice sheet sitting on the rim of the bowl melts and the ice retreats into deeper water, it becomes unstable and highly vulnerable to further melting."
So, if the ice is currently sitting in a bowl BELOW sea level, and water uses more volume as ice than as a liquid, when the ice melts, it will fill less of the bowl than it did before. Making a not too farfetched assumption, at some point the ice melt will open a channel from the open sea into the bowl below sea level, which will then fill with sea water. Since water uses more volume as ice than as a liquid, the amount of liquid held in the bowl, should be more than the amount of ice it previously had, before melting.
Seems to me that the net result of this should be lower global sea level...
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Yeah! Just like we adapted when the dinosaurs died out and we could no longer ride them.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
What do you suppose is heating the ocean?
*cough* *cough*
Somehow, I imagine you sitting at home chain-smoking cigarettes and complaining about all those "chicken little" idiots who believe smoking causes cancer.
How hard can it be when the summary has but a single link:
"Scientists said the ice sheet was not melting because of warmer air temperatures, but rather because of the relatively warm water"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
we have no idea what might happen. Its possible that the ice may reform there or somewhere else
Actually, thanks to science we do have an idea!
"at this point, a decrease in the melt rate back to earlier levels would be “too little, too late to stabilize the ice sheet,” said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington and lead author of the new paper in Science. “There’s no stabilization mechanism.” The basic problem is that much of the West Antarctic ice sheet sits below sea level in a kind of bowl-shaped depression the earth. As Dr. Mercer outlined in 1978, once the part of the ice sheet sitting on the rim of the bowl melts and the ice retreats into deeper water, it becomes unstable and highly vulnerable to further melting."
I have lived in Florida for 55 years. Even a one foot rise in sea levels would be a serious disaster. South Florida in particular is almost at sea level and any spring tide or storm already brings losses. Salt water intrusion threatens our water supply for many millions of people and places like the Everglades would be exterminated by salt water rising just a few inches.
We do expect and demand that the public change their lifestyles quite a bit.
Which won't change a damned thing, because the third world is not going to meekly sit back and accept their current level of development. The United States could literally cease to exist tomorrow and the freed energy wouldn't be enough to bring the billions in the third world out of poverty. You can't even convince Westerners to waste less, but you think you're going to convince those in the third world to meekly accept their current lot in life?
First we need less babies.
Capping family sizes is antithetical to western notions of freedom. That's literally the most personal decision you can make, it's not something that can be imposed from the top down in our societies. A civilization without our reverence for individual liberty tried it and arguably failed, or at the very least created all manner of unintended consequences with deleterious outcomes that still haven't been fully quantified.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So many are blaming the far right and rich ppl. Yet, I would have to say that it is the far right AND THE FAR LEFT. The left deserves a lot of blame for things. For example, they fight using symbolic gestures, rather than items that will make a difference. Take the case of keystone pipeline. Will it stop CO2 emissions or pollution? Nope. Canada currently transports via train all over north America. Will building the pipeline increase the emissions? Nope (might actually lower it slightly since pipelines are far more efficient than the train). What drives the tar oil is money. The fact is, that Canada will continuing mining it as long as it is economically feasible. And that will continue while oil is about 70/bl.
Instead, the far left should be pushing for a COMPROMISE in which keystone is built, BUT,trade for changes that will lower the demand for oil. Best way is to temporarily subsidize NEW NAT. GAS COMMERCIAL VEHICLES, along with stations for CNG and LNG. In addition, modify the subsidies on electric vehicles. Basically, hybrids should not be included, or should have minimal subsidies.
Then we have the far left screaming about America's emissions, while ignoring the fact that China, India, South Africa, Germany, Japan, other nations are building new coal plants. America accounts for less than 15% of emissions, and ours is dropping (both in % as well as in totals). In addition, America will be shutting down a number of coal plants over the next 3 years, and our emissions will likely be 13% or less.
OTOH, China is building loads of new coal plants and accounts for more than 33% of CO2 emissions. In fact, they open up a new one EACH WEEK. And NONE OF THESE WILL BE CLOSED OVER THE NEXT 50 years. And yet, the far left screams that the west, esp. America, is to blame for all of this.
Yet, if America were to stop ALL CO2 emissions, within 10 years, CHina's new additions would equal what America stopped. Yes, they are INCREASING BY an America's worth of CO2 EACH DECADE. That is just insane.
Then add to this the fact that Europe is increasing their emissions as well. They are no longer dropping esp. since Poland and Germany are growing their coal plants.
There are problems, but the real issue is NOT JUST THE WELL KNOWN FAR RIGHT.
It is national leaders that want to cheat and the far left that will allow them to do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Get a house TODAY you don't need to save up your money! Mortgages let you have immediate comfort now.
The cost of a house forces a long term payment plan but you can STILL have short term thinking. Short term thinking is central to the mortgage crisis we are still recovering from. bad planning / rates .... adjustable rates. That'll solve itself somehow you'll probably make more money long term...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Once again, everyone uses their own biased sources. You're both wrong. The only ice that matters is the ice that was ON LAND before and is now IN THE OCEAN and bellow the water line. Does melting ice in a glass of water raise the level of water in the glass? No. Put a new ice cube in, does the water level raise equivalent to the volume of ice? No. It raises equivalent to the volume of ice bellow the water line.
What volume of ice was their on the land 100 years ago? No one knows. There's no way to find out. Probably more than there is now. The truth is probably more on the side of people concerned about climate change and less on the side of the people who deny it. That said, things aren't nearly as bad as the alarmists would have you think. This is something we should address, but stupid knee jerk reactions based on made up science are what alienates people and gives the deniers an excuse to stall and do nothing. Lets have real facts, and common sense so we can address a growing problem that will hurt our great grandchildren.
I have never even seen Antarctica, and I don't recall anyone talking about it twenty years ago. If 97% of geographers say Antarctica exists, I'd just like to point out that I've driven 50 miles in every direction but up and haven't seen no sign at all. And I'm pretty sure that my brother's boss once heard that geographers are telling us about this mythical Antarctica to take money from people like me and give it to themselves.
No continent I've ever seen is going to make me worry about sea-level rise, so keep yer commeenistic plots off of Slashdot.
Right. Because the national debt is equivalent to climate change.
Also, as has been pointed out, your contention is completely unsupported by reality. But nice try. Maybe you should take your own advice about not being a "partisan pawn"?
"Ah, nothing like quoting an anti-AGW blog as if it were the equivalent of a published article"
Ah nothing like quoting Skeptical Science or Real Climate or DeSmogBlog or HughPickensDOTcom, because those are outlets of pure unvarnished truth that no sane man may object to.
In fact the WUWT article points to an article in "The Australian" and quotes the NSIDC.
I assume you get your answers from Genesis because you like things handed down as Holy Writ, probably because its easier than thinking. Climate alarmism is deeply religious and very much creationism without all of the messy stuff about Cain and Abel.
Like "The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is 50 below zero, so how is it melting?"
But that's for people who understand science and critical thinking, something you're not capable of.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Except the ice sheet is not at float eqilibrium.
If the ice was at float equilibrium its melting would then take up less space. But because the ice sheet is stacked so high above sea level the floor of the glacier is grounded there is much more ice there than the float equilibrium point. There is a lot more ice there than the water it displaces. Your argument does not cover that point.
It's not really in question any more if it is caused by man or not, since most scientists agree that it is, and the whole global cooling thing was never taken seriously. The basic science behind global warming has been understood for nearly a century (i.e carbon dioxide) and it's pretty clear that the vast majority of it comes from burning fossile fuels.
The problem is that we're like a bunch of frogs dumped in a pot with the heat turned on high.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You know this whole 'back in the seventies the scientists we're all about global cooling' has been debunked so many times that it makes you really look moronic to post it yet again.
There was no "global cooling" phenomenon being widely touted in the 1970's. That's a myth. The climate change report recently issued http://nca2014.globalchange.go... addresses that among other things. Global warming and this particular problem of glacier melting in Antarctica were both called out in the 1970's though. According to the NY Time reporting the second case - Antarctica is related to a variety of factors in addition to global warming. There are no big bucks to be made being an environmentalist. Provide some names of a few folks who became billionaires from pushing environmental protection. There are trillions being made producing fossil fuels.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
So, we're supposed to believe that in a warming world, ice sheets melt, but then sea ice will extend to cover the entire planet? :)
Funny how warming produces more ice and less ice at the same time :)
FTFA: "The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday."
I'd really rather we weren't responsible for another disaster resulting in the extinction of those lifeforms that had survived until now.
Too late.
If it makes you feel any better we're just fulfilling our biological imperative. The most adaptable species have thrown their lot in with us and are tagging along for the ride. Species that aren't as adaptable? Well, nature is a bitch like that.
On a macro scale civilization is always going to displace other species that get in the way. On an individual level people are always going to choose survival. My favorite example of the latter? The Wake Island Rail, hunted to extinction by a starving Japanese garrison during WW2.
Would you voluntarily starve yourself to death to save another species? If the answer is "Yes" you've either never experienced true hunger in your life, or you're the most altruistic person I've ever met.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
For your information, "Clinton's surplus" was because of Republican Congress that didn't let him spend much money. It also was only possible because of the DotCom Bubble of the 1990s. Once that burst during Clinton's final year in office, the surplus vanished.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You have a serious issue with time frames. In one case you are referring to plate tectonics which move over periods of millions of years. On the other you are referring to our causing changes in the next 100 years that are equivalent. Then you say since they change would have happened anyway in the next million years or so, why is everyone upset at it happening in the next hundred years or so...
You don't even need to click on the TFA to see the glaring text: "The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so"
That's really lame scaremongering. And especially bad timing:
"The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSID), with the support of the NASA Earth Sciences, just announced that Antarctic sea ice has expanded to all-time record levels for April. " http://www.breitbart.com/Big-P...
" but we'll survive it. "
based on..what? what happens at 500 ppm? 600 ppm? 1000 ppm?
What happen when the sea temperature is too warm to support the lowest part of the food chain?
250 - 350 ppm – background (normal) outdoor air level - OOPS past that
350- 1,000 ppm - typical level found in occupied spaces with good air exchange.
1,000 – 2,000 ppm - level associated with complaints of drowsiness and poor air.
2,000 – 5,000 ppm – level associated with headaches, sleepiness, and stagnant, stale, stuffy air. Poor concentration, loss of attention, increased heart rate and slight nausea may also be present.
Yeah, we kind of need an 'aggressive' plan to deal with this now.
We need to be build large solar furnace, re-engineering the electrical grid, get coastal cities on board with moving inward with time, we need thorium reactors, we need to put tough regulation and taxes on vehicles.
We need to get some sort of solar system on every house. Panels, some sort of shingle what ever. All this take time, so we need to start now. The longer we wait, the more we pay.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Back in the seventies, we were trying to figure out whether there was a likelihood of climate change in the near term, and the possibilities of both global warming and global cooling were considered. However, global warming was, even then, considered more likely. We have much more data and much better models now, which is why you aren't hearing about global cooling anymore.
This past winter, in Vermont, we had a pretty good late winter, but early winter was characterized by unseasonable melts. There was a melt in Alaska this winter that caused catastrophic avalanches and flooding. There were periods this winter when the temperature _at the north pole_ was above freezing.
The unusual freezing to the north was only unusual in recent times, and it was largely due to the same effect that brought warm air over the poles: the unusual lack of cohesiveness of the polar vortex this winter. This is something to be concerned about, not an indication that global warming isn't happening.
Sea Ice: Floats in water, doesn't affect sea level when it melts.
Land Ice: Sits on Land, raises sea level when it melts.
There's a difference between these two. The additional sea ice is also caused by the land ice melting, which is raising the freezing point of the sea in the area (review Freezing Point Depression if you don't understand why).
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
And the short sighted continue to not change becasue they need to be led like sheep. How does it feel to be a sheep? Staring blankly at some screen, shoveling food in your mouth. Here is a translation into you native tongue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You think there might be some complex reason on why the president needs to make person appearance?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not a denier or Rubio fan, but most of the comments on this page miss these two paragraphs in TFA.
"Scientists said the ice sheet was not melting because of warmer air temperatures, but rather because of the relatively warm water, which is naturally occurring, from the ocean depths. That water is being pulled upward and toward the ice sheet by intensification of the winds around Antarctica.
Most scientists in the field see a connection between the stronger winds and human-caused global warming, but they say other factors are likely at work, too. Natural variability of climate may be one of them. Another may be the ozone hole over Antarctica, caused by an entirely different environmental problem, the human release of ozone-destroying gases."
Gently reply
I haven't actually met most people so I can't really say what they consider, although well done on finding the time to post here what with your busy schedule meeting them by the way. From those I've spoken to they generally seem to feel that inflation will eat away at the last decades of their mortgages, which is probably true to an extent. Short term pain, long term gain.
"If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
The story from 1869 only worked because he removed the frogs' brains.
now you know! and a bit of a sad commentary about where we are.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
The Gobal cooling "hysertia" of the 1970's was mainly a couple scientists musings getting blown out of proportion by scientifically illiterate reporters reporting on science. At the time it seemed quaint, kind of like reading the cover of the National Enquirer is quaint while wating in line at the grocery store. It got more milage around the water cooler than in the journals.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Budget surplus and budget deficits have NOTHING to do with the US national debt. The national debt is the total value in USD of the sum of outstanding treasury securities.
Just because there is a budget surplus (excess unspent reserves sitting with the US treasury) doesn't mean it automatically reduces the US Debt figure. The budget deals with reserve assets, and the National debt deals with securities assets. It's apples and oranges.
The national debt is a misnomer unlike climate change. Climate change involves real consequences. The national debt is a financial residual value that has no economic meaning in real terms. It's not the national debt that is important, it's inflation that we should be monitoring. As it stands we actually need more inflation today as well as more government spending.
Virtually all of the people who have visited "Antarctica" are SCIENTISTS. And the rest are GOVERNMENT WORKERS.
Can we really believe people who have a vested interest in grant money to accurately report on this place?
Pretty soon now we'll find the set in Alaska where "South pole research station" news segments are filmed.
For your information, "Clinton's surplus" was because of Republican Congress that didn't let him spend much money. It also was only possible because of the DotCom Bubble of the 1990s. Once that burst during Clinton's final year in office, the surplus vanished.
Now if your post had contained actual information, instead of made-up stuff.
CBO analysis shows that despite all the economic events that transpired after Bush's election, the U.S. Federal Budget would have remained in surplus (more than a trillion dollars) right up until the time of the Bush economic meltdown that began in 2007.
Legislative changes - the bills the Republicans passed and Bush signed - spent the entire surplus, and trillions more.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Actually, the effect of the 9/11 grounding was to increase maximum daytime temperatures and decrease minimum nighttime temperatures (see article). Reasons for this are generally accepted as being due to the change in water vapor high in the atmosphere affecting heat absorption (daytime) and radiation (nighttime).
Have gnu, will travel.
There was unusual freezing in the northern plains states. Worst we've had in years. Not just "normal" winter cold. I put normal in quotes because of course when I was a kid back in the seventies, it would have been considered less unusual, although still unusual. But your basic point is correct, of course: the fact that it's cold in winter doesn't contradict the theory global warming, any more than an airplane in the sky contradicts the theory of gravity.
Yes, 3.2 mm/year since 1993 but the rate in the early 20th Century was about 1 mm/year and in the middle of the 20th Century it was around 2 mm/year. That looks like an accelerating trend to me. For comparison from about 6,000 years ago until the start of the 20th Century the rate was less than 0.1 mm/year.
On top of that scientists can't rule out some non-linear reactions of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where it collapses like a slow moving landslide into the ocean rather than simply just melting away. That could cause a substantial sea level rise on a scale of a decade or so.
And AC can't be bothered to learn the difference between sea ice and ice sheets that are based on land. Oops!!
The national debt is a misnomer unlike climate change. Climate change involves real consequences. The national debt is a financial residual value that has no economic meaning in real terms. It's not the national debt that is important, it's inflation that we should be monitoring. ...with you so far.
As it stands we actually need more inflation today as well as more government spending. ...and here you go full retard.
You can not improve an economy by sucking even more resources out of the productive sector for the politicians to lavish on their cronies.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In a place where the temperature is always well below freezing, "global warming" is not going to melt all the ice. That doesn't mean it isn't a problem elsewhere. Even if there were no net ice loss on earth, if we're losing ice in places we need it (such as mountain ranges that supply people with drinking water), and accumulate it in places that have no humans at all (Antarctica), that's an enormous problem.
But hey, let's confuse land ice and sea ice and create doubt about the actual science by cherry picking data, spreading half-truths and general misinformation.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Let's see. You might check on the Koch Industries environmental record. http://www.polluterwatch.com/k... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... Perhaps the Exxon Valdez disaster - still not repaired for Exxon or the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico for BP just a couple of years ago. The numerous leaks on the Alaska oil pipeline? These folks make billions (trillions collectively) and leave a trail of destruction. They actively fight most every attempt at regulation and disaster prevention. They fund global warming denial web sites and groups. Mountain top removal for the coal industry? How about strip mining. Do you think that's good for the environment? How about your drinking water? Duke Power and the pollution in the Cape Fear river some weeks ago? The spill in West Virginia weeks before that? The spill in the Tennessee river valley a few years ago? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... Would you say none of that was preventable? Their very business is the destruction of the environment in order to obtain fossil fuels. The use of these fuels is also the primary contributor to the global warming we've been witnessing. What part of this do you not get? Are you an astroturfer? How much are getting paid to pretend to be this dumb?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
All of the claims the past 15 years have been about the expected state in 2050 or later.
If you know none of it came to pass, I'd like to borrow your time machine.
---- Sig. gone.
Again with the claim of big $$.
Do you have any idea how moronic that looks when the "let it burn" crowd is the oil and coal industry?
---- Sig. gone.
Measure insolation in an enclose environment with CO2 content x, and then measure it with CO2 content 2x. Every single time for over a century and a half the environment with the higher CO2 content retains more heat. High school honors students do the experiment, and that is always the result. Why do you think that for some reason carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to somehow defy the laws of physics and act differently?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
So it's an accurate model of policy making, then? Campaign contributions make for wonderful scalpels.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think the question is if global warming is essentially man made or mainly just the natural cycle of things. IMHO this is an open question not settled science.
And on what do you base your humble opinion. Sure it's not settled to the level of Newton's laws, but it's settled enough for practical purposes.
Remember Al Gore?
You're basing your opinion of the science on the opinions of a politician? Are you utterly nuts?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Great Britain used to be in the wine belt.
Great Britain used to be able to produce wine, and it still does produce wine. We know the current wine is good enough for modern commercial sale, but we know nothing of the quality wine the Romans made.
We do know that while there aren't vast numbers of vineyards now there's no evidence of there ever being more at any time in the past.
So what's your point? Just repeating a stupid denier myth?