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Ice Loss In West Antarctica Is Speeding Up
An anonymous reader writes: A new study just published on Antarctic ice loss by Christopher Harig and Frederik Simons of Princeton confirm West Antarctica is losing mass fast. The study used satellite measurements to determine the rate of mass loss. The lead author of the study told The Guardian: "It is very important that we continue long term monitoring of how mass changes in ice sheets. For West Antarctica in particular this is important because of how it is thought to be more unstable, where the feedbacks can cause more and more ice loss from the land over time. These strong regional accelerations that we see are very robustly measured and imply that Antarctica may become a major contributor to sea level rise in the near future. This increase in the mass loss rate, in ten years, accelerations like that show that things are beginning to change on human time scales."
So I'm on twitter and it seems I still follow slashdot. The tweet I see is this post. Now I remember why no one comes here anymore. It stopped being about interesting Open Source news, cool sci-fi info and other assorted "News for Nerds". It turn into a giant far left political hack site. It's a shame really.
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
I am sure that this was done by the same bunch of climatologists who got stuck in the ice last year. The same ice that they said would not be there 25 years ago. The same ice that they said was shrinking which was actuallT record-breaking larger than it has ever been before in recorded history. The same bunch that had to be rescued by nice breaking ship which also got stuck in the ice. Some people never learn and they'll be saying the same thing 35 years from now. something like this time is different this time it's going to really really happen. it doesn't and they get quiet for a season and then come back and claim it's really really going to happen this time around.
Your problem is calling everyone skeptical, even if only skeptical of details, a denier.
Very few deniers are honestly skeptical.
Citation needed...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3077821/Record-Antarctic-sea-ice-logistic-problem-scientists.html
Yes, risk assessment, that's reasonable and that's what I'm saying. Waiting for better models may be more harmful, and/or acting on existing models may be more harmful. So let's remove all the garbage about "deniers" and "marxists", all the feigned certainty one way or the other.
Fossil fuels "will" run out eventually, but is that in 10 years, 50 years, or 200 years? Climate is changing, but is it going to wipe out all grain harvests, change some rain patterns, or increase plant growth? Nuclear power is dirty, but is it manageable, is it expensive because of over-regulation, is it cleaner to build nuclear yet risking accidents, but providing for electric cars? Do wind arms actually produce enough energy to merit their use, or will do after enough subsidy to kickstart the system, or should we be thinking other things? Risk risk risk.
See one can't just acknowledge, oh yeah obviously there is risk... so therefore... this here model and solution is what we should do and anyone who disagrees is a denier. Nope. As I was praising the earlier poster, he was being honest.
Whatever we do there are risks, and start yeah, but start what? What if climate change is actually a fairly low risk in the grand scheme of things and meanwhile lack of cheap (coal fired) electricity is holding back Africa, and the underdevelopment of infrastructure, is making one of those global epidemics more likely? Something which could decimate humanity in a few years? Why is climate change touted as THE MOST IMPORTANT issue? When that's just a wild speculation about risk?
Which do you start?
Considering that the current conditions are well outside the prediction envelopes of all of the models, despite the same team cooking both sets of books, I think the logical conclusion is that the current state of climate research is somewhere between phlogiston and N-rays on the wrongness scale.
I think a lot of us skeptics would be thrilled if they managed to catch up to Aristotle. That, at least, would put them on the right track towards Newton and Einstein.
See that "Preview" button?
Don't suffer from single study syndrome.
Yeah! Learn to throw out studies you don't like and include the ones you do like to suit your agenda! And then champion the fact that the best study you can come up with is the one that says "Uh, I dunno."!