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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.
Tell me, please, what is so concerning about it? Is there an imminent threat to life? Is a break going to kill a bunch of people? I mean, ice sheets form, and then they break. Snow falls, and then it melts. Rain falls, and then it runs down the watershed into a body of water. The sun rises, and then it sets.
We don't hear a lot of concern from scientists about these other things that are similarly natural events.
It was 18 degrees in Georgia this month, 18 degrees! global warming LOL
Interesting how Tornado Alley is comprised mostly of Red States.
Let's turn this bitch up to 11!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
People choose their academic majors in college and then get into an academic career. They go into less popular fields often because they couldn't make it in the highly competitive and lucrative fields. If they studied something that generally has few commercial applications (feminist studies, climate science, etc.), they are then stuck with trying to make the best of what they've got.
So, how can they upgrade their boring, irrelevant degrees to something that brings them fame and (relative) fortune? They can try to convince others that they are warriors for truth and justice, and/or that they are saving the world. It's a long shot and they don't get a lot of money out of it relative to having chosen a better career, but it's the best they can do given their limited options. To an academic in a boring, irrelevant field, going from a $50k/year job to a $250k/year job plus lots of paid talks and media appearances is a huge incentive and a huge ego boost.
That's not to say that every academic that achieves fame and fortune in a boring discipline is automatically a fraud. But the incentives for those people are enormously strong, far stronger than for a billionaire to add another few billions to their net worth.
What opposite side? The reason AGW research is financed to the tune of $2 billion/year, as opposed to its traditional $100-200m/year is because Congress still believes AGW to be a serious threat. If AGW researchers turn around and say "oh, not a problem after all", most of that funding simply evaporates. The consequences would be personally devastating for anybody working in the area: tenured professors would lose their funding, their research groups and their students; most other climatologists would simply lose their jobs and enter the job market with a useless degree.
Whether you believe that AGW is a serious threat or not, it is crystal clear that many the people working on AGW have enormous personal incentives and motivations.