Slashdot Mirror
A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 Miles in the Last Two Months
Jugal K Patel, writing for the NYTimes: A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica's fourth-largest ice shelf has scientists concerned that it is getting close to a full break. The rift has accelerated this year in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures. Since December, the crack has grown by the length of about five football fields each day (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). The crack in Larsen C now reaches over 100 miles in length, and some parts of it are as wide as two miles. The tip of the rift is currently only about 20 miles from reaching the other end of the ice shelf. Once the crack reaches all the way across the ice shelf, the break will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, according to Project Midas, a research team that has been monitoring the rift since 2014. Because of the amount of stress the crack is placing on the remaining 20 miles of the shelf, the team expects the break soon.
only 1442 days left before Trump leaves office
Scientists actually don't believe this particular instance to be caused by climate change. So, if people could read up a bit and post something thoughtful instead of having a knee jerk anti-Trump comment, that would be awesome.
The linked article says that these collapses happen naturally. However, ice shelves act as buttresses holding back glaciers flowing down to the coast. The collapse will make the area more vulnerable to climate change.
Larsen A and B ice shelves, which were situated further north on the Antarctic Peninsula, collapsed in 1995 and 2002, respectively. This resulted in the dramatic acceleration of glaciers behind them, with larger volumes of ice entering the ocean and contributing to sea-level rise.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-...
And, as expected, almost entirely bullshit: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamI...
So why did the Chinese just sink a shit-ton of money into Solar energy?
Maybe the Chinese aren't concerned about global warming, but something else. I'm thinking solar is probably a good alternative to burning coal if most of your cities look like this
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
National Review is not a good source for science information, sorry-- it's an opinion magazine-- and National Review quoting a story from the Daily Mail is really not a reliable source-- Daily Mail is the kind of tabloid that gives the word "tabloid jounalism" its name.
So you mean pollution from burning fossil fuels....
Yes, but the pragmatic goal is air quality, not stopping AGW. That is probably more of a side-effect as opposed to the primary motivator.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Do you have any evidence at all that this is in fact a career path of any researcher? This looks more like one of those "Researchers are lazy, evil and greedy" lines of thought.
For the record, want to make lots of money, in general, don't go into the sciences. Yes, there are a few science careers that can make oodles, but for the most part, science is not a path to fame and fortune.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Actually it's just the National Review passing along an "expose" by The Daily Mail. This is the same "newspaper" that claimed a 63 year-old woman became pregnant with baby squid after eating calimari.
If you look into the objections, they're rubbish. The paper in question (Karl et al) is part of an ongoing back-and-forth by scientists over the degree of warming post-1998, so if it is part of a conspiracy by the scientific establishment to cover up contrary data it's a pretty lame conspiracy because it let both sides of the data out.
As for Karl et al, it's a highly technical paper, but to cut to the chase the reason it has the denialists in an uproar is that it proposes a method that erases their precious, cherry-picked post '98 "hiatus". That hiatus didn't exist if you smoothed the data or chose any other starting point but the record setting '98, and it was was blown away by 2014-2016 anyhow. So this is beating a dead horse that was barely alive to begin with. The method in the Karl paper also suggests that the rate of warming since the early 20th C is actually lower than previously believed. Alarmist!
The thing about this kind of bullshit response is that the attraction of a conspiracy theory is that it's quick and easy to understand, as long as you don't try to square it with actual events. People find CTs credible because it says the people bearing bad news are out to get them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.