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NASA Study Shows Net Gains For Antarctic Ice (google.com)
A widely circulated NASA study published in the Journal of Glaciology, and reported by UPI, says that Antarctic ice has measurably thickened in recent decades, a conclusion at odds with earlier findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "which in 2013 suggested gains were not keeping up with losses." The new study ... doesn't totally undermine the handful of studies showing significant glacier, ice sheet and sea ice shrinkage. Instead, if offers evidence of previously unaccounted gains. ... The new tallies reveal an annual net gain of 112 billion tons between 1992 and 2001. Annual gains of 82 billion tons were observed between 2003 and 2008.
Perhaps I exaggerate your position slightly, but is it really 'just news?' It changes nothing? I guess it wouldn't, if saving the planet from the deadly effects of AGW was never the goal in the first place.
In fact, it changes nothing with regards to sea level rise; it's still rising. It changes things for Antarctica, but I don't live there. Also, thickening of the ice doesn't slow global warming. Only growing ice extent can do that, by reducing albedo.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As even a cursory Wikipedia reading will note, ARCTIC ice is DECREASING in extent at a faster rate than ANTARCTIC is INCREASING.
In other words, Antarctic ice is growing X units per year, but Arctic ice is SHRINKING more than X units per year.
The net result is that the Earth's ice cover is shrinking.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_sea_ice#/media/File:Antarctic_Grows.jpg
Those who believe anthropogenic climate change is a myth thrive on the confusion caused by nuance like this. But the Earth's climate is not a simple system. It has nuance. Ice may be shrinking overall, and yet still growing in some places.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/...
You can connect at the bottom of the page as of right now the link in the article above is not working for me.
I am not a glaciologist but i read the article and am a bit puzzled by the findings related to snowfall and "thickness". It looks as if only satelite data was used, so why can't Antarctica actually be losing massive amounts of ice and the resulting removal of mass cause uplifting of the underlying rock? Removal of large amounts of mass over wide areas tend to have that effect and I was not able to find reference in the references. ICESat only uses laser range finding.
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/icesat/glas.php
NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses
NASA seems to think it came from NASA. Maybe I should take their word over yours?
Gravity is not SETTLED.
Initially it was thought to be a wave, which works on a small scale.
Einstein suggests that it is the curvature of space time. Which works on a larger scale but falls apart at a galactic scale, thus we invented dark matter to explain that.
Some scientists believe it is produced by a sub-atomic particle called a graviton. Which is more akin to the wave theory.
Another set of scientists has suggested that is it not a graviton but is a side effect of several gluons being bound together.
Another group of scientist have suggested that Einstein was right and that the "dark matter" is really anti matter with a negative gravitational field that only exists in the space between galaxies and is what bounds them.
So like all Science there are competing theories to explain what is observed. There really is no "Settled" science, because taking a vote to decide what scientists think is right is not science, it is politics.
At about 3mm / year, we're looking at a foot per century, or a meter per millennium. That's easy to adapt to. Even several times that rate of sea level rise is something we'd barely notice.
Furthermore, taking current topographical maps and combining them with sea level rise data is bullshit anyway; most coasts are sedimentary, not rocky.