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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.
Yesterday Antarctica was contributing 0.27mm p/y to sea level rise
Today Antarctica is removing 0.23mm p/y to sea level rise
A 0.5mm p/y change in a day.
We are told sea level is rising 2.6 to 2.9mm p/y so that 0.5mm p/y change is 16 - 20% of the total figure, that is a massive discrepancy.
Keep being told that the science is settled, this hardly looks like settled science to me.
But queue the alarmists, I am sure they will explain this is 'worse news than eva' and matches what they predicted.
Or wait a year or two and NASA will adjust the data based on models 'cause the real data doesn't match the models, and everyone knows models trump real data in climate science.
No matter where you stand on the debate, at this point people should be taking ALL climate change studies with a healthy degree of scepticism; there are too many people with an agenda on all sides to assume that any of it is completely free of bias. Even so, I think NASA handled the discrepency rather clearly in the article; they disagree with the IPCC's figures on ice loss/gain, but not with the overall sealevel rises - ergo, they conclude that the difference is either coming from additional water entering the oceans from somewhere else or there is something else going on in Antarctica. Well, duh! What they don't do is speculate what that might be, so in otherwords it's also serving as a "give us more money to do further research" piece. What was that about having everyone having an agenda again...?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
My question is what temperature is the Earth supposed to be?
There is no temperature that it is supposed to be.
It is probably in our best interests that the climates we live in are compatible with us.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Could you expand on why "biodiversity" ought to be the goal? If I had to pick something, I'd have picked "comfort of humans" or, perhaps, the humans' longevity or something like that.
Why do you pick "biodiversity"?
Maximizing biodiversity is a decent goal to have high on your list. The more organisms there are, the more resistant a given system is likely to be. If you've got one species of tree in a forest and beetles come and wipe out that species, you're in trouble. If you've got high biodiversity, you're more likely to have less trees that will be affected, plus a better chance that there's somebody that calls the beetle dinner.
Why should humans care about resilience? We derive a lot of services from natural systems. Protection from extreme events (flood, fire, insects, etc); diverse food stocks; tourism; unique chemicals for pharmaceuticals; groundwater purification; local weather stabilization; and so on. Even if you don't "like" nature, you derive a tremendous number of services from it. The best way to maintain longterm comfort/longevity of humans is to make sure those systems continue to be able to perform those services.
Weren't you among those, "threatening" to emigrate to Canada, when Bush got elected? Or was it North Korea — the platonic ideal of government "taking care" of the citizenry's every need? WTF are you still doing here?
Nice of you to have included Somalia — this whole meme about how Libertarians are supposed to move there is as stupid as it is infamous — the country's current troubles are due to its previous government being Socialist. Venezuela is unravelling into the same direction in front of our eyes — just ask Bernie Sanders, when you next meet him, what he would differently from Hugo Chavez...
Oh, but what about Sudan? Well, they have an ambitious social protection program called the Social Initiative Program. Nigeria does too. Time to update your talking-points card.
Tell me, where in the Christian (or Jewish) dogma is there anything about it being the government's (Cæsar's) responsibility to help the "less fortunate"? It is not — good people are supposed to do it themselves, government spending tax-monies on it is not benevolence.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wish other (arguably more pressing) environmental concerns could get half as much attention as climate change.
Be careful what you wish for, friend. Next thing you know, there would be plastic pollution deniers asserting that floating six pack rings are actually an undiscovered form of kelp and, even if there were such a thing as plastic pollution, it would a good thing, because it gives wildlife something to eat in lean years. These would shortly be followed by an almost equally obnoxious cohort of armchair plastic experts, eager to demonstrate the reality of plastic in our oceans. And then we'll all be too busy demonstrating our dogmatic loyalty to our chosen side rather than integrating new information to form a more accurate picture of reality.