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Could Collapsing Antarctic Glaciers Raise Sea Levels Sooner Than Expected? (salon.com)

"We may be headed for an ice apocalypse which could result in the flooding of coastal cities before the end of this century," writes long-time Slashdot reader whoever57. Grist reports on two of the largest and fastest-melting glaciers in Antarctica which "hold human civilization hostage." There's no doubt this ice will melt as the world warms. The vital question is when... Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world's oceans -- an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet... Each new iceberg that breaks away exposes taller and taller cliffs... In the past few years, scientists have identified marine ice-cliff instability as a feedback loop that could kickstart the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet this century -- much more quickly than previously thought. Minute-by-minute, huge skyscraper-sized shards of ice cliffs would crumble into the sea, as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as deep underwater as the height of the Empire State Building. The result: a global catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen... When [land-based ice] falls into the ocean, it adds to the overall volume of liquid in the seas. Thus, sea-level rise.... All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt...

A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica... Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard's findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.

If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."

418 comments

  1. How Were All of the Last Predictions? by DatbeDank · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.

    1. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ls671 · · Score: 0

      Exactly, I just modded down that article submission as "not the best" but it still made it to the front page. Oh well, what can you do?

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    2. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Kohath · · Score: 2, Funny

      The world ended. Didn't you notice?
      - All the bees died and there's no food in the stores.
      - We all have 5 tropical diseases. My Ebola is really a bummer. Keeps me up at night.
      - New York City is underwater and the cast of Cats is anxiously clinging to the top of the Chrysler building, hissing at the rising water.
      - Polar bears retreated northward and are now all huddled around Superman's fortress of solitude drinking their last bottles of Coca-Cola.
      - Phoenix is so hot they moved their airport underground.
      - Everyone in Bangladesh drowned from the rising water. Some of us thought they'd step back from the surf rather than drown, because that's what we would do. But alas, the environmentalists were right.
      - Pineapples and bananas are a huge new cash crop in Siberia, but the Ebola everyone has is ruining people's appetite for smoothies.

      So, in short, every prediction came true. Even the ones that contradicted the other ones.

    3. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Evangelical_Molester · · Score: 0

      The parable of the neo-liberal pseudo-conservative who didn't read about a subject because he didn't politically agree with it and then tried to pretend it didn't exist applies.

    4. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Hylandr · · Score: 1

      If you mean accurate by calling out another boy calling wolf yes. Crying wolf is an accurate statement of this headline asking a question. Which by Rule the answer is NO. If they had the evidence they would make the claim, not ask it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    5. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Evangelical_Molester · · Score: 1

      "Read the science and ignore you americans" As an American, I understand why you paint all of us with a broad brush but it's only about 1/3-1/2 that are willfully retarded on this.

    6. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by saloomy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This article seems sensationalist. 100 years from now is a long time to predict much of anything, never mind the fact that the article just doubles the worst case scenario the scientists postulate. Carbon emissions won't continue at their current clip indefinitely, since the green revolution will displace our industrial-revolution based fuel sources. Also, any amount of terrain we lose will be dwarfed by the terrain gained from Antarctica, no longer covered in 3 miles of ice.

      Then, theres the need to take water off earth. Are we going to colonize the moon, Mars? Thats going to take terraforming on a planetary scale, and 11 meters of ocean-depth seems like a good start.

      But yes, lets all click their bait, and cry, and get mad. Then lets go shop at the lowest cost retailer for the lowest cost goods coming out of the most carbon-emitting factories, shipped from half a world away. We just don't care as a society to really do anything about it.

      Also, what these articles always fail to mention is that the planet is in an unnatural state, with so much carbon sequestered. There was an evolutionary gap when plants learned to make bark in their ever-escalating war with each other to be the tallest. Fungi took an additional 300 million years to learn to break it down, so a bunch of it got buried as trees fell on top of more dead trees for a very long time. For most of the earth's history, that carbon was a part of the natural carbon cycle. It will be released. By tectonic forces, by us, by upheaval, by deep-living bacteria, it wont stay down there forever.

      I'm not suggesting we all rush down there to speed it up any faster than we will, just that we have to think about that, and plan for it, rather than think we can freeze the earth in its current state, which our science has taught us: always changes. Always.

    7. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Kohath · · Score: 0

      Instead what we got was record temperature and an astronomical increase in ignorant assholes.

      Versus know-it-all assholes who can’t even begin to explain (or understand) how climate models work. But somehow it’s the other guy who's “ignorant”.

    8. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn those stupid idiots for not believing that all the polar bears are extinct, half our nation is flooding from rising seas, and billions of people are already dead from global warming.

    9. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The parable of the ignorant denialist republican groupthink applies. Read better books kid.

    10. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another doom-and-gloom article foretelling of flooding of coastal communities and properties, hey? Al Gore must be looking for another ocean-front property again.

    11. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a prediction that is coming true over time. Billions dying is high, but tens of millions will be displaced very soon. That has an economic and structural cost. Stop being stupid so we can calculate it.

    12. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Empirical Data Exposes the Truth

      Thirty years of Fail

      "Prince Charles famously warned in July 2009 that humanity had only 96 months to save the world from “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” That deadline has passed, and the prince has not issued an update to when the world needs to be saved."

      "World leaders meeting at the Vatican issued a statement saying that 2015 was the “last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].”

      "When Laurent Fabius met with Secretary of State John Kerry on May 13, 2014 to talk about world issues he said “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

      "National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Hansen warned in 2009 that Obama only “has four years to save Earth.”

      "World leaders met in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009 to potentially hash out another climate treaty. That same year, the head of Canada’s Green Party wrote that there was only “hours” left to stop global warming."

      "The year 2009 was a bad time for global warming predictions. That year Brown warned there was only “50 days to save the world from global warming,” the BBC reported. According to Brown there was “no plan B.”

      "Environmentalist write George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within “as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.”

      About 930 million people around the world were undernourished in 2002, according to U.N. data. By 2014, that number shrank to 805 million. Sorry, Monbiot."

      "The U.N. was already claiming in the late 1980s that the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences.

      The San Jose Mercury News reported June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

      That prediction didn’t come true 17 years ago, and the U.N. is sounding the same alarm today."

    13. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.

      That would be the story where the wolf came and ate the boy alive, yeah?

    14. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Nexion · · Score: 1

      Stop making sense you'll make their tiny little heads pop, lol.

    15. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More money to Al Gore! That's the solution! He needs a fourth gigantic lakefront mansion, of which he will later claim to be considering adding solar panels after a reporter covers how his personal carbon footprint is hundreds of times greater than the average person.

    16. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Nexion · · Score: 1

      Yes... YES... FREE THE CARBON!!!! Fight liberal carbon oppression!!! :P

    17. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by saloomy · · Score: 1

      Said the AC. And no, Iâ(TM)m not denying anything. Iâ(TM)m simply questioning the 100 year predictions when so many havenâ(TM)t resulted in complete collapse as was predicted. Oh, and learn to have a civil discussion, ass hat.

    18. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Carbon emissions won't continue at their current clip indefinitely, since the green revolution will displace our industrial-revolution based fuel sources.

      That won't be enough. Reducing carbon emissions is important, but we also have to reduce the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere.

      Also, any amount of terrain we lose will be dwarfed by the terrain gained from Antarctica, no longer covered in 3 miles of ice.

      So, rising sea levels will cause devastation to major coastal cities all over the world, but we don't need to worry because we can move to Antarctica??

      Then, theres the need to take water off earth. Are we going to colonize the moon, Mars? Thats going to take terraforming on a planetary scale, and 11 meters of ocean-depth seems like a good start.

      Okay, I didn't think you could top your Antarctica scheme for silliness. Boy, was I wrong. Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to move eleven metres of our ocean from Earth to Mars? The Earth's ocean surface is about 360 million square kilometres. Multiply that by 11 metres, and you have about 4 trillion cubic metres of water, or 4 trillion metric tonnes = 4 quadrillion kilograms. It takes about 64 megajoules to get 1 kg of mass up to the Earth's escape velocity. So, you'd need 256 sextillion joules of energy, just to get that much water off the planet. That's more than twice the amount of energy the USA consumes in a year. And that doesn't consider the efficiencies involved in the technology you use to move the water, or the effects on climate that would result from doing it. Possible? Perhaps. Practical? No way. Better to find a way to stay where we are, or find water that is on Mars already.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    19. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Earth's ocean surface is about 360 million square kilometres. Multiply that by 11 metres, and you have about 4 trillion cubic metres of water, or 4 trillion metric tonnes = 4 quadrillion kilograms. It takes about 64 megajoules to get 1 kg of mass up to the Earth's escape velocity. So, you'd need 256 sextillion joules of energy, just to get that much water off the planet. That's more than twice the amount of energy the USA consumes in a year. And that doesn't consider the efficiencies involved in the technology you use to move the water, or the effects on climate that would result from doing it. Possible? Perhaps. Practical? No way. Better to find a way to stay where we are, or find water that is on Mars already.

      I made a mistake. 360 million square kilometres is 360 trillion square metres. Multiply that by 11 metres, and you have about 4 quadrillion cubic metres, not 4 trillion. So you would need 256 septillion joules of energy, not 256 sextillion. That's more that two thousand times the energy used by the USA in a year. And again, that doesn't take (in)efficiencies into account, or the effect on the Earth's climate that kind of terra-un-forming would have. So, either we make our stand on Earth, or wait for Superman to show up and help us move to Mars.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    20. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Relax, Global Cooling will become all the rage again pretty soon.

    21. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...which he will later claim to be considering adding solar panels after a reporter covers how his personal carbon footprint is hundreds of times greater than the average person.

      To be fair it was _only_ 21.35 times greater than the average person.

    22. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The world ended. Didn't you notice?
      - All the bees died and there's no food in the stores.
      - We all have 5 tropical diseases. My Ebola is really a bummer. Keeps me up at night.
      - New York City is underwater and the cast of Cats is anxiously clinging to the top of the Chrysler building, hissing at the rising water.
      - Polar bears retreated northward and are now all huddled around Superman's fortress of solitude drinking their last bottles of Coca-Cola.
      - Phoenix is so hot they moved their airport underground.
      - Everyone in Bangladesh drowned from the rising water. Some of us thought they'd step back from the surf rather than drown, because that's what we would do. But alas, the environmentalists were right.
      - Pineapples and bananas are a huge new cash crop in Siberia, but the Ebola everyone has is ruining people's appetite for smoothies.

      So, in short, every prediction came true. Even the ones that contradicted the other ones.

      "Together, they [glaciers] act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world's oceans -- an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet... Each new iceberg that breaks away exposes taller and taller cliffs... In the past few years, scientists have identified marine ice-cliff instability as a feedback loop that could kickstart the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet this century -- much more quickly than previously thought."

      This has got nothing to do with glacier dynamics. Glaciers flow because of gravity. And gravity makes glaciers flow because of the accumulating weight of ice that has fallen on the icecap instead of falling into the ocean.

      This physics implied by this article is just absurd.

    23. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      This story about Al Gore buying oceanfront property is getting tiresome. I looked up the address on Google Maps once and the property he bought is right around the 400 foot contour line, well above any possible sea level rise. (If all the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melted sea level would rise around 215 feet.)

    24. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *Russian

    25. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      About the same, if you had paid any attention, only on a longer timescale.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    26. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
      I've just spent 3 days arguing with a guy who apparently thought the climate models were being used to prove climate change (and thus, if he could throw dirt on them, somehow climate change would be disproved). What a moron.

      So maybe go easy on the claim that "the other side" somehow understands climate models.

    27. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by KeensMustard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.

      Yes indeed.

      Firstly, the boy cried "It's not warming" - it was.

      Then the boy cried "It's the sun!" - it wasn't.

      Then the boy cried "It's volcanoes!" - it wasn't.

      Then the boy cried "It's a conspiracy!" it wasn't.

      By this point, few villagers, if any, were listening to what the boy had to say at all.

      The the boy cried "It's stopped warming!" and a lot of people wondered if the boy understood anything at all.

      So yes, we are pretty skeptical of what that particular boy (or group of boys) has to say.

    28. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times! Oh no! The Jurassic DGW, Dinosaurogenic Global Warming, shows that those Dinosaurs - with their Airplanes, SUVs, Coal Fire Plants and Cars and stuff, you know, those Dinosaurs and their DGW destroyed THE WHOLE PLANET!! With their DGW! Look, who wants 26% atmospheric oxygen? More air to breathe? Who wants that? And who wants more CO2 @1950 ppm, you know, to make all those plants and trees convert that CO2 into a higher O2! Who wants that! And we DON'T want the massive biodiversity of the Jurassic, no, we don't want more plants and animals and trees, no.

      Any time period the warmunists want to "prove" there is AGW the warmunists just cherry pick ranges. And now I give the warmunists what the need on a silver platter - now they have the perfect example - the Dinosaurs and their horrible DGW (Dinosauric Global Warming) that destroyed the Jurassic... Wait, no, it didn't, it was the best time for life on earth with 1950 ppm atmospheric CO2!

      Debt is Wealth. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Cold is Warm.

    29. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 1

      Saloomy also made a mistake. The article talks about 11 feet of water, not 11 meters.

      --
      -- Make America hate again!
    30. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Funny how The Science Is Settled when someone points out an effect that would imply climate change is not as bad as conventional wisdom says. However when someone points out an effect that would imply climate change is worse than conventional wisdom says, it's trumpeted as a sign that Things Are Worse Than Thought.

      I.e. a bunch of armchair environmental activists doing the reporting are selective in what they report in order to push their agenda. Any story that makes things look better than they are is denounced and the scientists involved are called Deniers. Any story that makes things seem worse than they are is posted all over the media.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    31. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and how high where the sea levels compared to today? (and the distance sun-earth and the energy output of the sun?)

    32. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And the point of the story was. THERE WAS A WOLF!

    33. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by blindseer · · Score: 1

      I was wondering what that noise was.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    34. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      You might want to read the end of the story. He called the wolf, he was ignored, all the sheep were killed.

      In other words, if you don't give a fuck about your sheep, why employ a shepherd in the first place?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    35. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Doctor, don't do time travel if you're drunk, this is 2017, not 2050, you're not supposed to write about current events in the past, you know how this ends. Now step into the fucking Tardis and sleep it off!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    36. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.

      That TFA of this submission we're discussing goes straight to AGW as the only possible cause to explain the evidence cited is disturbing. Perhaps they should have gotten together with the scientists from the Slashhdot story I linked below and compared notes first before publishing.

      "NASA Discovers Mantle Plume That's Melting Antarctica From Below"

      https://science.slashdot.org/s...

      And link to the original study from the above article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

      Oops!

      And as far as the people in low-lying coastal cities, they'll have to move. It's not like they're dry one day and suddenly swept away by a wall of water without warning the next.

      "Gosh, the water's at my feet, and it'll be up to my ankles in only a few short decades! How will I ever escape!? I shall surely drown!! glurglurglurg"

      I don't think so. Not even government bureaucrats are that dumb, at least in that one instance. Other instances, however...

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    37. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The other thing they don't mention is that even halting *all* human-caused CO2 immediately would only alter the temperature rise and change gradient by such small amounts it would make little practical difference in terms of either amount or rate of change in global temperature averages.

    38. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Salgak1 · · Score: 1

      In other words, you need SMOD. . Of course, SMOD would bring substantial Global Warming all by itself. . .

    39. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That might be the case, but the way your political system is set up, that's all that's required to stop the environment ever getting serious discussion.

      The world needs the other 2/3 to 1/2 of Americans to try harder

    40. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      That TFA of this submission we're discussing goes straight to AGW as the only possible cause to explain the evidence cited is disturbing. Perhaps they should have gotten together with the scientists from the Slashhdot story I linked below and compared notes first before publishing.

      "NASA Discovers Mantle Plume That's Melting Antarctica From Below"

      https://science.slashdot.org/s...

      And link to the original study from the above article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

      Strat

      Just because they recently discovered the mantle plume under Antarctica doesn't mean it's something new. Given what we know about mantle plumes chances are it's been there for millions of years and it's unlikely that the amount of melting it is doing has changed significantly in the recent pass. But I'm open to evidence for that if you can find it.

    41. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So why not push the so-called "climate experts" to completely opensource their models and explain what they are doing? It has been stated many times that understanding encryption and security is not easy and yet non-experts have a way of identifying problems when that code is available. So wouldn't it be a good idea to have as many eyes overlooking these models? It doesn't take a degree in climatology to find errors in code or mathematics.

    42. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Gosh, the water's at my feet, and it'll be up to my ankles in only a few short decades! How will I ever escape!? I shall surely drown!! glurglurglurg"

      You do realize that when the water's at your ankles, that means that your carpet is soaked and your dry wall is sucking up water and your house is destroyed or at least in need of serious repair, and if you have to do that every couple of years, you basically have nowhere to live.

    43. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Multiply that by 11 metres

      Itâ(TM)s 11 feet people. You just crashed another probe...

    44. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Betteridge says no.

    45. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Global warming will boil it off the earth.

    46. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Carbon emissions won't continue at their current clip indefinitely, since the green revolution will displace our industrial-revolution based fuel sources.

      What? The Green Revolution was a series of changes to world agriculture from the 1930s-1960s which involved shifting from compost to the use of synthetic (primarily petroleum-derived) fertilizers and pesticides which enable the production of massive monocultures at the expense of the planet's future ability to produce food. The thing we actually call the "Green Revolution" resulted in far more consumption of fossil fuels, with attendant increases in harmful emissions.

      Also, what these articles always fail to mention is that the planet is in an unnatural state, with so much carbon sequestered.

      We like it that way. It's irrelevant what's "natural" in this case, and many others. The only reason anyone brings it up in the first place is that when you are creating something worse than the natural option, you really ought to throw it in the bin.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    47. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by coofercat · · Score: 1

      +1 for being able to use "sextillion" in a sentence. -1 for using it in error ;-)

      Either way, I very much enjoyed your comments :-)

    48. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by cyberchondriac · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Notice it's always the ACs that come busting out of the gate, name-calling and throwing around ad-hominem attacks like children.
      Even for climate change supporters, this article is sensationalist. It just hurts their credibility, really.
      Arnold Schwarzenegger has a good approach to the whole issue of fossil fuels vs renewable: even if you don't really believe in anthropomorphic climate change, what happened to the once great concern over air pollution? That's a term I haven't heard much since the '70s, but it used to be a big thing, and rightfully so. Not to mention the fact that fossil fuel is a limited resource that will one day run out. The more calm, rational appeal is more likely to find approval and not fall on deaf ears.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    49. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by tbannist · · Score: 1

      Funny how The Science Is Settled when someone points out an effect that would imply climate change is not as bad as conventional wisdom says. However when someone points out an effect that would imply climate change is worse than conventional wisdom says, it's trumpeted as a sign that Things Are Worse Than Thought.

      Not really, usually the people who are trying to claim that it's not as bad as the conventional wisdom says aren't usually scientists, or aren't doing climate research, and they usually don't know what they're talking about. Often they want to question basic physical phenomenon like the greenhouse effect, or solar irradiation levels, that have been analysed and studied for decades already. In those cases, the science that is being questioned is actually settled, which is why people may say the science is settled especially when responding to generic, and obviously wrong, claims.

      In this case, these are scientists, they are performing climate science research, and their new research is showing that the Antarctic ice shelves could collapse more quickly then previously estimated. It is particularly important to understand that the area they are studying is not area where the science has been settled, yet. Thus there is no reason to say the science is settled, in this case.

      And no, it's not coincidence, it's because they're professional scientists, so they know how to pick research topics that aren't already settled.

      Imagine that, people actually respond differently to different situations.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    50. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I saw that thread. You're lying. The other poster said that the models don't match reality and thus we need to focus on getting the models right first, before trying to act on any conclusions one makes from the models. If you know your model is wrong - provably so - then why would you trust the conclusions from the model? Talk about a moron, you dumbshit...

    51. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      it was the best time for life on earth with 1950 ppm atmospheric CO2

      Right. For Jurassic life, which (based on your not-so-astounding powers of reasoning) you might very well well be; the rest of us, not so much.

    52. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      And this is how it would look: https://www.nationalgeographic...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    53. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels

      https://www.skepticalscience.c...

    54. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I give you - the Hawai'i Islands. Right over a plume in the mantle - yet it's a periodic event, building islands for a while then going quiet for a long time. In fact a majority of the time the plume is inactive.

    55. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's because climate change isn't a race car where you slam on the breaks and you stop, it's more like a cargo ship, where you throw the engines in reverse, toss down an anchor... and you break the anchor and keep moving a few miles anyway.

      Or how saving for retirement you don't do everything right away, but if you think about it a little bit, from time to time, then you'll be alright, but if you totally ignore it until it's time to quit your job, you'll be screwed.

    56. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      Saloomy also made a mistake. The article talks about 11 feet of water, not 11 meters.

      Thanks for catching that. So, divide my energy estimate by 3.9. It's still over 500 times annual USA consumption.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    57. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      Saloomy also made a mistake. The article talks about 11 feet of water, not 11 meters.

      Thanks for catching that. So, divide my energy estimate by 3.9. It's still over 500 times annual USA consumption.

      Gaah, not enough coffee. Divide by about 3.3 (feet per metre.) I had 3.9 in my head because a metre is about 39 inches.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    58. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      The basic science is settled. Nobody in the field seriously disagrees with it, and scientists take it for granted when doing their research. That's pretty much the definition. Like anything else in science, it could become unsettled again, but that happens only very rarely, and almost never rejects the evidence.

      How bad is it going to be? Nobody really knows. If you go to the IPCC report, you'll find lots of predictions carefully assigned levels of confidence. Anything that's labeled "very high confidence" is almost certainly going to happen, and anything labeled "more likely than not" could easily not happen. We do know it's going to be bad, just not how bad.

      Deniers are people who don't look at the evidence, and who are willing to construct any structure of thought that saves them from thinking something inconvenient. Nobody practicing the scientific method is a Denier. There are skeptics, and they generally get convinced of the serious problems caused by AGW when they look at the evidence. There are people who interpret the evidence with different outcomes, worse or not as bad as the usual ideas.

      I haven't read the paper, but this is at least science being done. Never assume general principles because of one paper. If the paper is good, other people will look into it and publish.

      And don't take what the media says too seriously. Scientific journalism is not reliable, and I'm not aware of a time where it has been reliable. Journalists publish what will give them clicks or eyeballs or whatever, and sensation sells.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    59. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      How bad is it going to be? Nobody really knows. If you go to the IPCC report, you'll find lots of predictions carefully assigned levels of confidence. Anything that's labeled "very high confidence" is almost certainly going to happen, and anything labeled "more likely than not" could easily not happen. We do know it's going to be bad, just not how bad.

      Matt Ridley points out that the IPCC itself say that most models have over estimated warming here

      https://www.thegwpf.org/matt-r...

      The climate models have failed to get global warming right. As the IPCC has confirmed, for the period since 1998,

      "111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than the observations". [IPCC Synthesis report 2014, p 43]

      That is to say there is a consensus that the models are exaggerating the rate of global warming.

      The warming has so far resulted in no significant or consistent change in the frequency or intensity of storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts or winter snow cover.

      As two climate scientists, Richard McNider and John Christy, have put it,

      "We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate."

      In 1990, the first IPCC assessment included this statement, forecasting a temperature increase of 0.3 degree C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 degree C to 0.5 degree C)

      In fact in the two and half decades since, even though emissions have risen faster than in the business-as-usual scenario, the temperature has risen at an average rate of about 0.15 degree C per decade based on surface measurements, or 0.12 degree C per decade based on satellite data; that is, less than half as fast as expected and below the bottom of the uncertainty range!

      What about 2015 and 2016 both being record hot years? Well, because of the massive El Nino, the HADCRUT4 surface temperature line just about inched up briefly in early 2016 into respectable territory in among the lower half of the model runs for a few months before dropping back out again [Clive Best chart]. That's all.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    60. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Okay, what predictions of complete collapse are you talking about? How many were made up by reporters to capture eyeballs, as opposed to predictions made by actual scientists looking at the evidence? How many predictions of complete collapse were made that would come true by, say, 2020?

      You're right to be skeptical of this individual result. So far, it's a couple of scientists with a new model that may or may not be more accurate in this case. It's definitely worth further research.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    61. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by david_thornley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's one thing in common with almost all the predictions you list: they haven't failed. What we have already done will have effects that last and build up for a long, long time. It may well be that it's too late to avert disaster, even if the disaster is still decades or even centuries away, and that therefore those predictions (not usually by scientists, I note) are correct.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    62. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? Why is there still ice on the North Pole? Al Gore told me it would be gone four years ago!

      Slashdot LOVED "An Inconvenient Truth" when it came out, but as its predictions failed, they mostly just stopped talking about it, or made excuses for it, same as they and other liberal groups have for EVERY FAILED PREDICTION for the last 30 years.

      Time to face facts, we aren't going to give you free money, nor are we going to disassemble global industry and institute global communism.

    63. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and when the liberals of the world spot it, if they are able to see it past their own navels, no-one will believe any of you because you have annihilated your credibility with this nonsense.

    64. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by david_thornley · · Score: 2

      Bear in mind that the Sun was a bit dimmer fifty million years ago, so with the same carbon dioxide level we'd expect to be hotter.

      Bear in mind that some of our food crops have evolved over the last fifty million years, and won't thrive in Jurassic conditions. If it takes another fifty million years to get there, no problem. If it takes a thousand, problem.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    65. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They always say we're not paying attention.

      I was paying attention when they said all the topsoil would blow away in 1960.

      I was paying attention when they said they'd pump out all the oil in 1970.

      I was paying attention when they said aerosols and air conditioners would fuck us all in 1980.

      I was paying attention when they said all hell would break loose on Y2K.

      Now they say there's a glacier out of water that is so massive that its melt will raise all oceans covering 3 quarters of the planet by 11 feet, and that this melt will be carried out by a perpetually increasing energy source, which terrorizes the entire world while somehow eluding being harnessed for our own purposes, defies multiple laws of physics, and can only be detected in parts of the world where no one goes, using equipment that taps resources subject to local climate, in an environment completely uncontrolled for experimentation, which they admit is not conducive to harboring weather stations.

      You're the one who's not paying attention.

    66. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly this. Of two thanksgivings in seattle, everyone on their high horse about how stupid trump and deniers are, and I'm the only vegetarian. I'm the only one telling everyone to STOP travelling (but, culture! Finding yourself ! Etc!)

      But they're all busy patting themselves on the back of their morale high horse all the way to hell. "Well I'm not changing my lifestyle" - heard many times.

    67. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Be careful about misusing this parable. Don't forget that in the end, the boy was telling the truth. The moral of the story for children is "don't lie", while the moral for adults is "don't get complacent about false alarms". If a fire alarm keeps accidentally going off, always leave the building.

    68. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Instead what we got was record temperature and an astronomical increase in ignorant assholes.

      Versus know-it-all assholes who can’t even begin to explain (or understand) how climate models work. But somehow it’s the other guy who's “ignorant”.

      I have my doubts about how well you can explain how climate models work.

    69. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by bongey · · Score: 1

      Your momma was a snow blower.

    70. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by s122604 · · Score: 1

      Global warming LOL, it was very cold in Georgia last week

    71. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Kohath · · Score: 1

      I'm not the one talking down to people and calling them "ignorant". In truth, "ignorance" is one thing both sides of the climate debate have in common — almost no one on either team understands how climate models work.

      You'd think that lack of understanding would lead to some humility when making proclamations about future events. But no. Instead we get people talking out of their ass, repeating phrases they heard, and self-righteously proclaiming future doomsdays.

    72. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Garbage in, garbage out. Simple enough for you?

    73. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Arnold Schwarzenegger has a good approach to the whole issue of fossil fuels vs renewable: even if you don't really believe in anthropomorphic climate change, what happened to the once great concern over air pollution?

      It is not a good approach, and the reason is that you still have people arguing over whether CO2 is a pollutant. You can't get people excited about CO2 because scientists tell us that it will doom us to an eventual death, not that it will cause us cancer tomorrow. You can barely even get most people to give a damn about the radioactives in coal that get released into the air.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    74. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Mr0bvious · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we all got our knickers in a knot over Y2K and nothing happened.. We should have just ignored all those alarmists!

      --
      Never happened. True story.
    75. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      http://dailycaller.com/2017/11...

      1. A group of 1,700 scientists and experts signed a letter 25 years ago warning of massive ecological and societal collapse if nothing was done to curb overpopulation, pollution and, ultimately, the capitalist society in which we live today. - hasn't happened.
      2. Prince Charles famously warned in July 2009 that humanity had only 96 months to save the world from âoeirretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.â
      3. Liberal writer and climate scientist Eric Holthaus claimed manmade global warming would set off the âoeice apocalypseâ at a pace âoetoo quickly for humanity to adapt.â - Still waiting.
      4. World leaders meeting at the Vatican issued a statement saying that 2015 was the âoelast effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].â
      5. Laurent Fabius met with Secretary of State John Kerry on May 13, 2014 to talk about world issues he said âoewe have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.â - 1300 days later, still looking for result.
      6. United Nations Foundation President Tim Wirth told Climatewire in 2012 that Obamaâ(TM)s second term was âoethe last window of opportunityâ to impose policies to restrict fossil fuel use. Wirth said itâ(TM)s âoethe last chance we have to get anything approaching 2 degrees Centigrade,â adding that if âoewe donâ(TM)t do it now, we are committing the world to a drastically different place.â
      7. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Hansen warned in 2009 that Obama only âoehas four years to save Earth.â
      8. 2009 the head of Canadaâ(TM)s Green Party wrote that there was only âoehoursâ left to stop global warming.
      9. 2009 Gordon Brown warned there was only âoe50 days to save the world from global warming,â the BBC reported. According to Brown there was âoeno plan B.â
      10. Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that if âoethereâ(TM)s no action before 2012, thatâ(TM)s too late.â
      11. Environmentalist writer George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within âoeas little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the worldâ(TM)s animals or it continues to feed the worldâ(TM)s people. It cannot do both.â About 930 million people around the world were undernourished in 2002, according to U.N. data. By 2014, that number shrank to 805 million. Sorry, Monbiot.
      12. The U.N. was already claiming in the late 1980s that the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences. The San Jose Mercury News reported June 30, 1989 that a âoesenior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.â

      Still waiting for Armageddon. How's it coming?

      --
      -Styopa
    76. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey jackhole, the NW Passage is open for shipping again. That ice IS gone but you just keep pretending nothing is changing so you can keep shitting on Al Gore and whatever "global communism" conspiracy you've imagined.

    77. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      I saw that thread. You're lying.

      That's a big call for an AC.

      The other poster said that the models don't match reality [drroyspencer.com] and thus we need to focus on getting the models right first, before trying to act on any conclusions one makes from the models. If you know your model is wrong - provably so - then why would you trust the conclusions from the model? Talk about a moron, you dumbshit...

      Aaaaaand at the conclusion of that particular conversation (which is not the one I mentioned above) we discovered that Dr Roy's model was provably wrong - scientifically proven.

      And here you are spruiking it.

    78. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      1. A group of 1,700 scientists and experts signed a letter 25 years ago warning of massive ecological and societal collapse if nothing was done to curb overpopulation, pollution and, ultimately, the capitalist society in which we live today. - hasn't happened.

      Soo, now you are telling us with absolute confidence that this won't happen? Why? Show working.

      2. Prince Charles famously warned in July 2009 that humanity had only 96 months to save the world from âoeirretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.â

      Is the climate change we are experiencing retrievable? How long will this retrieval take, and what will we have to do to achieve it? Show working.

      3. Liberal writer and climate scientist Eric Holthaus claimed manmade global warming would set off the âoeice apocalypseâ at a pace âoetoo quickly for humanity to adapt.â - Still waiting.

      And you are confident that this will not happen? Based on what observation? Show working.

      4. World leaders meeting at the Vatican issued a statement saying that 2015 was the âoelast effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].â

      And if they were wrong, what year will be (or was) our last opportunity to achieve that target (given we are at what? 1.1 degrees now). Show working.

      Aaand on it goes. My suggestion: if you want to convince us that these statements will not come true, perhaps you need to show how you know that.

    79. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you be any more ignorant?

    80. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Altrag · · Score: 1

      Nothing happened because a right fuckload of programmers spent months upon months fixing everything.

      If there was a magical set of environment programmers who could fix climate change before it caused serious problems, we'd be all over that shit.

      But there isn't. There's a bunch of big companies with a vested interest in not changing the status quo for any reason at all, and a bunch of politicians in their pocket. And a bunch of scientists who are continually ringing the bell until it falls out of the fucking tower and have been for at least 5 decades now, but are mostly powerless to influence the first two groups and are thus mostly ignored since logic and reason are far subservient to money in our world, especially for a problem that's far beyond the next quarterly report or election cycle.

    81. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      stop referencing that shit pile of excuses for failed science.

    82. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're going to take POWDERED water.

    83. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      Why do you need the water off the planet ? It is coming from the planet, in the form of ice, it can remain on the planet in a dam, or a giant water bowl above ground.

      Actually no one cares about ocean water drowning cities where poor people live, so something specific to the few cities with the most money would be cheaper still until they migrate to higher ground on reclaimed higher land.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    84. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just posted twenty quotes you misunderstood.

      These are all saying that if we don't act before day N, CO2 levels will be high enough that a 2 degree C increase will be inevitable.

      By the way, a 2 degree increase is now inevitable. Probably should have listened to those guys.

    85. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
      The burden's on the doomsayers, not on the people dismissing them.

      --
      -Styopa
    86. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      That's how scientific models work. You have a quote from the IPCC saying that almost all predicted more warming than was observed by 2014, and a lot of speculation, If I take a look a NASA graph, I see an increase from a baseline temperature, which looks about 1975, to 1 degree about now. 1975 to 2015 is forty years, so that would be one degree over four decades, or 0.25 degrees per decade, pretty close to the 0.3 you claim didn't happen. Where are you getting your claim that the warming was about half that?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    87. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what happened to the once great concern over air pollution? That's a term I haven't heard much since the '70s, but it used to be a big thing, and rightfully so.

      Great point! Here is what happened for those who don't know:

      Part A) The US government regulated non-CO2 pollution, the private sector adapted and now we have MORE jobs than ever, MORE profits than ever, and air cleaner than it was in the 1920s!
      Part B) In other countries where non-CO2 air pollution is not strictly regulated, it causes extreme health crisis that can shut down major cities for weeks at a time.

    88. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by LinuxLuver · · Score: 1

      Continuation bias will see millions eaten by this metaphorical wolf.

      --
      Only boring people are ever bored.
    89. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're the one who doesn't understand! All of this is driven by the climatologist lobby out to rake in their billions from these "models".

    90. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by werepants · · Score: 1

      The burden's on the doomsayers, not on the people dismissing them.

      What evidence would you accept as sufficient? Waiting until it's happened is too late.

    91. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      https://www.skepticalscience.c...

      stop referencing that shit pile of excuses for failed science.

      Your post was made possible by a "shit-pile" of innovations that were discovered by the science you dismiss. You're welcome.

      Failed science is replaced by successful science. That's how science works.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    92. Re: How Were All of the Last Predictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're going to take POWDERED water.

      ZOMFG, +eleven! insightful. Think of the savings in mass! All we need to do when we get to Mars is add ... water ...

      Never mind.

    93. Re:How Were All of the Last Predictions? by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

      Absolutely - claims which contradict 150 years of climate science, and the laws of thermodynamics, require extraordinary proof.

      Where is this proof?

  2. Who the hell knows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Could Collapsing Antarctic Glaciers Raise Sea Levels Sooner Than Expected?

    I dunno. Why don't we try it and find out?

    1. Re:Who the hell knows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and can we find some way to speed this up.
      I probably won't be here in 20 years, but I sure don't want to miss this.
      If I thought we could see Redmond under water in less than 20 years, I'd even stop drinking. Don't want to miss that.

    2. Re:Who the hell knows? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Because it's hard to do a restore when we fuck up this run. And ya know, the world's old, back when it formed we didn't have the concept of rollbacks yet.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Who the hell knows? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      As a software guy, I say we put all that ice back into the cliffs and see if it happens again. Then we file a bug report.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    4. Re:Who the hell knows? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      As a hardware guy I say that after you burned the rom and fucked up, you can only throw it away and take a new one.

      Yes, kids, Earth is THAT old that we didn't have EEPROMs yet.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the...] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 4, Informative

    (responding to: how were all of the last predictions?)

    Pretty accurate.

    Yep. So far the predictions have been matching the measurements pretty well.

    This particular article, however, verges on the sensationalist. Do note it's talking about sea level rise by the end of the century, not the next decade or two, and I also notice that, although what the actual scientists quoted talked about was two meters by the end of the century-- and note that this is on the high edge of what other scientists think, the authors of this article immediately jump to "but maybe it will be worse!" and talk about four meters of sea level rise. So, they took the highest estimate from any scientists, and doubled it.

    Instead, pay a little more attention to this quote from the article, buried somewhat far from the sensationalist headline:

    "Some scientists aren’t fully convinced the alarm is warranted. Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, says the new research by Wise and his colleagues, which identified ice-cliff instabilities in Pine Island Bay 11,000 years ago, is “tantalizing evidence.” But he says that research doesn’t establish how quickly it happened."

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  4. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The ice isn't floating "in the glass", it's sitting on a land mass above the glass, genius.

    Where do you Dunning-Kruger imbeciles keep coming from?

  5. Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The article attempts to spread FUD around "megacities" vanishing, but in reality why do you not think any sea level rise would be engineered around just as the Dutch have done for over a hundred years?

    One issue I have though is that it seems like the current estimate of three feet rise over the next 100 years has already taken into account additional ice melt. I am pretty suspicious there is some double-booking going on here, which would be the norm for the climate "science" community.

    Another form of double accounting is pretending like we are anywhere near on track for the models that actually predict full ice melt; they are models based on the assumption we'd see runaway exponential warming which is not happening. That's how you know it's truly FUD, when they try to make a case not even viable at this point seem likely.

    1. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, THEY are not worried.
      The Dutch are the tallest people in the world.
      They have evolved to survive high water.

    2. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by mvdwege · · Score: 4, Insightful

      why do you not think any sea level rise would be engineered around just as the Dutch have done for over a hundred years?

      1. Make that multiple centuries, for starters.
      2. What do you think the cost is for engineering works on that scale? The completion cost of the Delta Works in 1997 was $7 billion.
      3. Given the 2 above, how reasonable is it to expect these kinds of works to be ready in time?
      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    3. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are lots of idle hands needing work in the countries where the mega-cities are. It could be an enormous, multi-generational social program bringing social stability, materialistic happiness and lots of new engineering know-how. The Chinese should love the idea.

    4. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      do you not think any sea level rise would be engineered around just as the Dutch have done for over a hundred years?

      Building higher seawalls is not a long term strategy. You don't really want megacities sitting in a deep bathtub where a single breach in the barrier would completely inundate it. Also, as the pressure of the seawater increases, it will start to penetrate under the wall. Florida already has that problem.

    5. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      What do think is going to happen when the permafrosts finish melting and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere? If not runaway global warming?

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    6. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > it will start to penetrate under the wall. Florida already has that problem.
      Only if your build quality is shit.

    7. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      No, when the underlying bedrock is full of holes already like the limestone much of Florida sits on you might have to make the foundation your seawall sits on a thousand feet deep in order for it to be effective.

    8. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by coofercat · · Score: 1

      New York (as an example) is going to be a lovely place with a 3.5 metre (11 foot) wall all the way around it. I can't wait to visit the Maldives with their wall around them - I'm sure it'll look just as lovely as it does today.

    9. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why do you not think any sea level rise would be engineered around just as the Dutch have done for over a hundred years?

      Why not ask the city of New Orleans?

    10. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      The current estimate of maybe a meter over the next century includes quite a few things. They may have missed some important stuff, and a couple of scientists have proposed they did. There is no double-booking. There is ice melt, and then there is the possibility of ice sliding from the land to the sea without melting first.

      One characteristic of most large coastal cities is that they are ports. Last I looked, ships didn't casually sail through four-meter walls. The ports themselves would have to be moved to higher ground, and that isn't going to work well with the cities themselves being in a bathtub.

      Why do you think runaway warming isn't happening? Because it would be painful to your little world-view if it were? It looks like it's happening to me.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    11. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it is to save a trillion dollars worth of property I suspect seven billion will seem like a bargain. The change will happen slowly and people will be motivated. How long do you think it would take the chinese to build an 11 foot wall around Shanghai? They have as much time to get it done as it took them to build practically all of Shanghai.

    12. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good solution, einstein.

    13. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by bluegutang · · Score: 1

      $7 billion is one dollar per world resident.

      How much would it cost to protect Bangladesh, Miami, Shanghai, Mumbai, and other affect areas to the same extent? Maybe a few hundred or thousand times as much, thus a few hundred or thousand dollars per world resident? (this would be a one-time, not recurring, cost)

      Maybe that's cheaper than retrofitting our entire economy to avoid carbon emissions?

    14. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Why would flood protection be a one time cost?

    15. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Sigh. That's 7 billion not adjusted for inflation, for the final project of centuries of hydrological engineering. Just because you keep your eyes closed does not mean the rest of us is stupid.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    16. Re:Ask the Dutch how worried we should be by nephilimsd · · Score: 1

      Infrastructure such as levies and dams tend to have ongoing maintenance requirements, meaning we are not looking at a one time cost. A typical infrastructure investment is expected to incur roughly 10% of its initial cost in maintenance expenses per year. And global income (you are measuring expense per person using global population) is around $3,000. If you ask people to pay a third of a year of wages up front, and another 1/30 of their wages every year to support just having cities continue to exist, you don't think that might be a burdensome request?

  6. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Hylandr · · Score: 1, Troll

    Yep. So far the predictions have been matching the measurements pretty well.

    According to the data Gore projected the first time the boy cried wolf the Glaciers are supposed to be gone already.

    Quit projecting so hard.

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  7. Re:At the end of the century, who cares by Evangelical_Molester · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And thus, conservatism was reborn as shitting on yourself because you can.

  8. Re:Put ice in a glass. by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fill the glass to the top with water so the ice sticks out the top. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Science. Thanks for playing, morons.

    You do know that Antarctica is a continent, and the miles-thick ice sheet under discussion is on land, not floating, right?

    Fill a glass to the top with water. Then, melt ice somewhere else, and pour the melted water into the glass. The glass will overflow.

  9. Re:Put ice in a glass. by bugs2squash · · Score: 1

    I think you're confusing glaciers with icebergs. invert an empty glass and put the ice on top, when it melts there will be a puddle.

    --
    Nullius in verba
  10. Is CNN behind this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The fake news is strong with this one.

  11. Re:At the end of the century, who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No no, they're shitting on their children, who they will tell you are the most important thing in the world to them.

    Just like employees are the most important asset of a company.

  12. Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the sea ice melted, wouldn't ocean levels go DOWN?

    1. Re:Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by ls671 · · Score: 1

      You just forgot one point; a lot of ice is above sea level.

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    2. Re:Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just forgot that ice full of air bubbles, too. When it's free-floating ice 33% of it is above water level. If it were just pure water then only 2% would be above water level (salt water's specific gravity is ~1.020-1.025).

    3. Re:Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by ls671 · · Score: 1

      Come on dude! That's not what I was talking about. Have you ever seen pictures of glaciers hundreds of feet above sea level? My guess is that these things aren't really floating in sea water but are instead resting against the ground way down below somehow.

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    4. Re:Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When glaciers melt all that weight is moved off of the land mass... so it rises! What's your point again?

    5. Re: Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A bit, yes. Antarctic ground may become a few tens of cm higher with all this load gone. But what does that have to do with the article?

    6. Re:Doesn't ice take more volume than water? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Sea ice floats. It displaces as much water as it masses. Therefore, when it melts and turns into water, sea level doesn't change. You can observe this for yourself with a glass of water with a couple of ice cubes. This isn't quite accurate, because we're melting fresh ice water into saline sea water, but that would reduce the density of the sea water a touch and make sea levels go up.

      Land ice has no influence on sea level as long as it sits on land. Put some of it into the sea and sea level goes up.

      If we're talking about something denser than water, we can get water level to go down. Imagine a load of steel bars on a barge. They raise the water level by the amount of water they displace, which is proportional to their mass. Dump them overboard, and the steel raises the water level by their volume, which is roughly a fifth of the volume of the water displaced. That's not what we're talking about, though.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  13. Re:Put ice in a glass. by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    There's certainly a lot of them about, lately.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  14. Waterworld 2.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here we come!
    Seriously, pushing back the amount of land, thereby making your neighbours move closer, is fundamentally bad for our current mess of a society built on greed, lies and deception.
    If the inevitable to stop the land from regressing becomes real, then people will need to become synchronised to help each other and move forward as a society of intelligent beings than the murders bunch of inbreds we all continue to evolve from.

  15. I call bullshit on the claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Statements such as "If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map." are massive exaggerations. If this was even on the same side of the planet as reality those some places would be screwed every high tide.

    1. Re: I call bullshit on the claims by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      It's pretty likely that this already includes the tide effects.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Informative

      Florida has an average elevation of 6' above sea level. Google it.
      A lot of the rest of the Coastal U.S. is also quite close to sea level.
      You can't live in a place that high tide washes across twice a day and that is going to be 20' under water during major storms.

      Mumbai doesn't make sense tho. It's much higher above sea level.

      But Shanghai would be toast.

      It's quite close to sea level now and has 10' tidal variance as it is.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    3. Re: I call bullshit on the claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mumbai is on the coast, and much if the city is built up on tidal marshlands.

    4. Re: I call bullshit on the claims by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Sorry, google says the city is 46' above sea level.

      I pulled up an elevation map of the city based on your comment tho.

      http://www.floodmap.net/Elevat...

      It looks like Mumbai would be three islands during any major storm.

      And 11' + tides will eat a lot of the city.

      To be frank, I think it's a question of when- not if.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    5. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by quantaman · · Score: 1

      Statements such as "If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map." are massive exaggerations. If this was even on the same side of the planet as reality those some places would be screwed every high tide.

      Some years back I heard about a study where they asked very young children to describe the shape of the earth. Some thought sphere, some thought flat, others thought dome, and others just couldn't come up with a coherent answer.

      I spent a while reading your comment and trying to figure out how you thought tides and construction worked. My conclusion was that I don't think you have a coherent answer.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    6. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 2

      But Shanghai would be toast.

      I hate wet toast.

      --
      -- Make America hate again!
    7. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by gtall · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Miami already has a water problem. They have been battling it for some time now. All it will take is a direct hit from Hurricane Donald at a high tide and we'll be treated to legions of Conservatives saying how the climate has been changing for millenia and that nothing could have been done to save Miami...while they will claim a share of federal disaster aid for their time shares and condos.

    8. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by burtosis · · Score: 1

      You can't live in a place that high tide washes across twice a day and that is going to be 20' under water during major storms.

      You can if you rebuild your house on 26' high reinforced cement columns and trade your car for a boat. Homes are already on stilts in coastal areas like Florida because you can't really live 6' above high tide either. Ultimately, the southern half of Florida will go fully underwater in 2127, and become New Venice, the 52nd state.

    9. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."

      That seems to be a blessing.

    10. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its not 2 meters. I googled it.

      http://geology.com/sea-level-r...

    11. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      You can if you rebuild your house on 26' high reinforced cement columns and trade your car for a boat.

      This. No need for land, we can all just live in the ocean. Do you like Kevin Costner ?

    12. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Absolutely. If you spend $150,000 per person, you can afford to live there.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    13. Re:I call bullshit on the claims by Optic7 · · Score: 1

      Miami is nuts. At least Miami Beach. I visited there a couple of years ago and they had flooding going on all over the place, and sewer construction also going on all over the place, trying to whack the mole, so to speak. At the same time, I saw many new high-rise apartment/condo buildings being built in the same area. Cranes all over the place.

      Then I learned that Miami can't benefit from a solution consisting of seawalls and levees like the Netherlands and New Orleans, because the whole ground is porous there, so the seawater would just seep in through the ground.

      Yet the towers keep going up and the state government forbids any mention of climate change. Absolutely insane.

  16. Adapt not Evolve by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.

    Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.

    1. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You COULD adapt NOW and lessen the impact, you're avoiding that specifically - Making excuses for why we shouldn't do anything about it now! Absurd polluted conservatism with the magical excuses.

    2. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.

      Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.

      Absolutely right. Anyone who tries to claim that global warming is an existential threat is being ridiculous. We will adapt.

      The short term adaptations required when sea levels rise in earnest and precipitation shifts between regions will almost certainly include large-scale government intervention to relocate populations, build massive systems of dikes and stormwalls, and engage in large-scale irrigation and fertilization projects to eke agricultural productivity out of newly-poor farmland while trying to turn newly-wet deserts into functional farms, etc. The political unrest that will be created by millions of starving people in less-affluent countries may well require a return to military conscription and militarization of a significant part of the (remaining) economy, to keep the upheaval out. Military force may be needed to disarm the population and suppress rebellions. We'll likely have to nationalize a lot of industries and use eminent domain to take a lot of land from people in the process of relocating and restructuring the population and the agricultural and industrial bases. Expect serious rationing and a major decline in average quality of life -- though you can also expect a massive reduction in inequality as wealth is confiscated for use in attacking the effects of warming.

      Yep, if we just let events proceed, we'll find ourselves in a large-scale crisis of the sort that requires organization on a massive scale, which will mandate huge government growth. It will probably even motivate suppressing national sovereignty in favor of a world government. Of course, government being what it is, the power it takes in order to address the problems will be greater than what is actually required. That's what happens in emergencies.

      Honestly, although the process will be very painful, the effects on social structure will be a progressive's wet dream. Conservatives and libertarians should be focused now on heading off this disaster, by implementing carbon markets to harness free market entrepreneurialism and innovation to halt and reverse warming before the effects arrive.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Anyone who tries to claim that global warming is an existential threat is being ridiculous. We will adapt.

      Yes, but it could get ugly with mass starvation, riots, wars, etc.

      Why play football without a helmet?

    4. Re:Adapt not Evolve by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You COULD adapt NOW and lessen the impact,

      Let's assume the worst predictions of global warming will be true (just to give us a baseline hypothesis). Wouldn't it be reasonable to do a cost-benefit analysis of "adapting now" vs "mitigating in the future?" I mean, just to avoid running around like a chicken with our heads cut off.....

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's been done, you're ignorant of it.

    6. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Absolutely right. Anyone who tries to claim that global warming is an existential threat is being ridiculous. We will adapt.

      I think you're mixing two very different things. Sea-level rising, independently of everything else, just means you have a smaller area to fit the same people. New York disappears, but you can still move people to Boulder, CO. However, rising temperatures coming from global warming (which is a given fact, if the sea level rises), have very important effects to both animals and plants. There are three known Carbon fixation mechanisms in plants (C3, C4 and CAM). These function in very different conditions. The C3 mechanism, which is responsible for 95% of Earth's vegetable biomass, doesn't work well at high temperatures. This means that we potentially lose a big amount of plants as the cool areas move farther towards the poles. Imagine a world where rice, a staple food for humanity, can only be grown North from Germany, or in Canada. Even C4 has problems, at higher temperatures. Now, this doesn't mean we can't deal with them. But we may be suffering for quite a while, if the only stuff we can eat are succulents...

    7. Re:Adapt not Evolve by quantaman · · Score: 2

      All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.

      Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.

      What's the value of a modern metropolis, hundreds of billions? trillions? What percentage of those 12 million people go bankrupt when it turns out their city will be uninhabitable in 30 years?

      And you're not just talking about population relocation. At the same time this is going on storms have higher intensities, changing rainfall patterns cause harvests to drop, and countries start squabbling about how to use geo-engineering to improve their situation.

      North American and Europe can probably manage, though the debate over who pays for that vanished wealth is going to be ugly. But China, India, and Pakistan? These are three really big Nuclear armed nations who will experience a lot of climate change and have a lot of very poor people with limited resources to handle a big relocation or food shortage.

      The world is barely stable now, just 3 years ago people were worried that a major war was going to erupt because Putin decided to take a chunk of Ukraine. There's a reason climate change is freaking out the world's militaries, all these different stressors will not be handled by noble philosopher kings, there could be some very ugly conflicts in our future.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    8. Re:Adapt not Evolve by shilly · · Score: 1

      How is this modded insightful?

      "We just move to higher ground and rebuild" Tens of millions of people, many of them with no resource whatsoever, moving to higher ground and rebuilding -- this is migration on a vast scale and will cause war. And building infrastructure to look after tens of millions of people is a gigantic undertaking.

      We might be able to "adapt to the change" -- what matters is how shitty the process is, and it's shaping up to be pretty fucking awful.

    9. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see your point! Everyone just moves in land, the people currently there are more than happy to share out the resources they used to have to themselves, and we all get along. I mean history is littered with examples of humanity doing that. What could possibly go wrong?

      Also, with all the increased trapped energy in the atmosphere, there definitely won't be any more extreme weather battering those happy lovely people living in harmony and sharing everything. It'll all be fine.

      I SAID IT'LL ALL BE FINE.

    10. Re:Adapt not Evolve by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

      When the ocean is so acidic that ocean life dies, it rots, that releases toxic gases which would kill most land life, this isn't just Idle speculation, mass extinction(s) have happened this way before. CO2 + water = carbonic acid, the ocean is already a lot more acidic because of humans.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    11. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Adapt? There are people who own very expensive waterfront houses who will expect the government to save their properties. Its already happening down in Miami with seawalls and pumps.

    12. Re:Adapt not Evolve by blindseer · · Score: 2

      this is migration on a vast scale and will cause war.

      First, how is this different than today? We already have mas migrations and wars. Been that way for centuries, go read a history book.

      Second, things will be just fine in the USA. We got nuclear power, oil, and natural gas, more than enough energy for powering the machines to building up the infrastructure we need. This is a change that will take decades to happen. We can build a lot of dams, bridges, and whatever else we need in that time. The rest of the world might be fucked, with their wars and migration, but we got vast oceans that separate us from most of the suck.

      If the problem is global warming from CO2 production then we have a lot of nations going about the problem the wrong way. It looks like Germany still hasn't figured out that shutting down nuclear power will increase their CO2 output. Sure, they saw some reductions recently, that's what happens when energy prices go up and people can't afford to by as much. Japan learned their lesson, they finally shut down a bunch of old nuclear power plants and are starting to build bigger and safer ones to replace them. Seeing energy prices go up 30% and a cloud of smog slowly build over the cities will do that, I guess.

      Tens of millions of people, many of them with no resource whatsoever, moving to higher ground and rebuilding

      You are correct, that is not going to happen. How do we get these people the resources the need? They need energy. With energy water can be made clean enough to drink, trees can be turned to lumber (and new tress planted), food can be grown, buildings erected, rail lines laid, and so on. They need energy. They can get cheap coal, get nuclear (like Japan), or keep living in the suck they have. We've been trying to give everyone solar panels and windmills but that doesn't seem to be working, at least not fast enough.

      I remember seeing a physician out in an African village trying to run his little clinic from solar collectors. He wanted a diesel generator so he could run his refrigerator and the lights in his examination room at all hours. He said denying these people access to the coal and oil in the ground is asking them to commit suicide.

      The world is committing a slow suicide by denying themselves access to energy that is inexpensive, reliable, and plentiful. Or, rather, the rest of the world is committing suicide. The USA will be doing just fine.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    13. Re:Adapt not Evolve by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      North American and Europe can probably manage, though the debate over who pays for that vanished wealth is going to be ugly. But China, India, and Pakistan?

      Europe can't manage, because the people from Pakistan can walk over to Europe. It's already happening today.

    14. Re:Adapt not Evolve by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      What percentage of those 12 million people go bankrupt when it turns out their city will be uninhabitable in 30 years?

      Don't know. What percentage of them are dumb enough to continue to live in a city that they KNOW will be uninhabitable in 30 years?

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    15. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

      We might be able to "adapt to the change" -- what matters is how shitty the process is, and it's shaping up to be pretty fucking awful.

      This was exactly the point I was making. The reason we want to stop global warming is that adapting to it is going to cause a huge amount of social and economic upheaval. Instead of making dishonest claims that it is impossible for us to adapt to global warming we should be looking at the economic costs of adapting to vs. avoiding global warming. I believe this will show that avoiding is the far better option but, for once, could we please have a debate based on facts rather than the hyperbole that both sides spout?

    16. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      You didn't read my post, did you?

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    17. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 0

      No serious climate science predicts that degree of ocean acidification.

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    18. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      You didn't read my post.

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    19. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You didn't read my post.

      Fuck your post.

    20. Re:Adapt not Evolve by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      You COULD adapt NOW and lessen the impact, you're avoiding that specifically - Making excuses for why we shouldn't do anything about it now! Absurd polluted conservatism with the magical excuses.

      We cannot adapt now because we cannot afford to. There is a great lack of political will on it to make it happen as soon as we could technologically could, but truly we cannot adapt NOW (unless you have some new definition of "NOW" that I'm unfamiliar with.)

    21. Re:Adapt not Evolve by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      It has happened in the past though and the ocean acidity has already increased a lot, so why wouldnt more co2 along with the damage humans are causing to the world's ecosystems cause large scale ocean acidity and die off? I think humans are incapable of the level of self control, integrity and intelligence needed not to vastly over-populate and destroy the world's ecosystems which is happening right now at a shocking rate.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    22. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are delusional.

      Just as an example, where do you think that the people of Bangladesh will go when huge portions of their country go under water? How likely do you think it is that there will not be extreme social unrest in the neighboring countries as they try do emigrate (i.e. Muslims moving to predominately Hindu/Buddhist countries)? Who do you think the armies of those countries will protect and who do you think that they will either massacre or force to drown), given the barely-suppressed inter-religious tensions? Do you think that the armies of those countries will be able or willing to support people of other religions/ethnicities?

      Your whole argument is just nuts.

    23. Re:Adapt not Evolve by tbannist · · Score: 1
      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    24. Re:Adapt not Evolve by tbannist · · Score: 1

      46.1% give or take a few percentage points.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    25. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you can also expect a massive reduction in inequality as wealth is confiscated for use in attacking the effects of warming.

      BWAAAHAHAHAHA!!!

      That was a good one. Thanks.

    26. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      Human population is already beginning the process of declining. There are fewer babies born every year, in absolute numbers. This will lead us to a peak population of about 10B (as we fill out the age brackets; the population skews young at the moment) and then it will decline.

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    27. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No one should worry about sea level rising because of Antarctic ice melting. The solution is simple, construct four space elevators and send the
      seawater off planet. Some of the water could be used to create Ice crystal clouds over each polar icecap during the summer season, rejecting solar radiation
      and preserving polar ice.

    28. Re:Adapt not Evolve by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Human population is already beginning the process of declining

      Life... ehmm.. finds a way.

    29. Re:Adapt not Evolve by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Honestly, although the process will be very painful, the effects on social structure will be a progressive's wet dream.

      And up to here you were making sense. Progressives don't want huge government and military growth. Leave the political stupidity out and you'll do better.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    30. Re:Adapt not Evolve by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Hey Idiot!
      It looks like Germany still hasn't figured out that shutting down nuclear power will increase their CO2 output.
      Looks like Germany is the counry in the world that has reduced its CO2 output the most ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    31. Re:Adapt not Evolve by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      First, how is this different than today? We already have mas migrations and wars. Been that way for centuries, go read a history book.

      We have had carbon dioxide in the air for centuries. What's different now? We've had planetary warmth for centuries. What's different now?

      If we have more crop failures and loss of land to the sea, and hence more and bigger mass migrations, and hence more and bigger wars, does that count as a difference?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    32. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      Honestly, although the process will be very painful, the effects on social structure will be a progressive's wet dream.

      And up to here you were making sense. Progressives don't want huge government and military growth. Leave the political stupidity out and you'll do better.

      You miss the point. Try reading the post from a conservative viewpoint.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    33. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      What we need to do is tax the hell out of any country that has an advanced economic and technological structure and send that money to countries that, at best, know how to start fires with sticks. Also we need to create some trillionaire familial dynasties by handing control of a new carbon-based economy to an elite few private individuals.

      This will work. I'm sure of it.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    34. Re:Adapt not Evolve by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Looks like Germany is the counry in the world that has reduced its CO2 output the most ...

      No, pretty sure that the USA is #1 on this.
      https://www.washingtontimes.co...

      It took me about two minutes to find that image. If you want to make a claim on something you might want to take the time to check that it's true. Perhaps more recent data will show Germany leading, if that data exists then I'd like to see it.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    35. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      Human population is already beginning the process of declining

      Life... ehmm.. finds a way.

      Sure, Jeff.

      But... seriously, finds a way to do what? Genes find a way to maximize their replicative success relative to competing genes. In the case of humans, we not only have genetic evolution, but also memetic evolution, and our meme sets (which we can collectively label "culture") have exactly the same sorts of imperatives, and probably do even more to regulate our behavior and choices than our genes. Memetic/cultural evolution is much faster and more flexible than genetic evolution.

      So, given that, what choices -- driven by both genes and culture -- do humans make to maximize the replicative success of their offspring? When infant and child mortality is high, and when lots of additional, unskilled hands are useful to keep the whole family fed, they choose to have large families. When nearly all babies survive to parenthood, though, and when survival is maximized by having considerable resources (i.e. money), parents instead generally choose to have few children and invest heavily in their upbringing and education, to give them the maximum chance of acquiring substantial resources and being attractive to the highest-quality mate (since prospective mates are also looking for the same things).

      In fact, this is exactly the dynamic that is driving reproductive strategies in the wealthy world today. Birth rate is strongly negatively correlated with child survival rates, female education, and wealth. In pretty much all of the developed world, this has already driven birth rates to below replacement levels. In some northern European countries this is already becoming a demographic problem, to the degree that some governments have public service advertising campaigns encouraging couples to have more children.

      In the developing world we still see large families, but we also see rapid increases in child survival rates, female education and wealth. And the developed world is always looking to help the developing world improve in all of those areas.

      Even with the bulk of the world's population still living in what the western world considers poverty, we've already reached and passed "peak child". Every indication is that current trends will continue, and even accelerate.

      Basically, Malthus assumed that people behave like rabbits. We don't. That's not to say we're supremely rational and clear-thinking, but we do not respond the same way rabbits do. We have different incentives, motivations and capabilities, and the fact is that we respond to abundance by having fewer kids, not more.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    36. Re:Adapt not Evolve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you think will happen, when hundreds of millions of people currently living in coastal areas of Asia and Africa try to up sticks and move inland?

      (Hint: the areas inland are already populated. Second hint: every war in history has, at its heart, been about the same very basic question: "who, specifically, gets to live on this patch of land?")

    37. Re:Adapt not Evolve by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Perhaps as a total amount, but not as a percentage of its previous output or per capita output.
      Facepalm.

      Newspapers are not trustworthy anyway, I rather would google for an official report ;D

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    38. Re:Adapt not Evolve by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Perhaps as a total amount, but not as a percentage of its previous output or per capita output.

      You didn't even bother to click on the link, did you? That image showed percentages.

      Facepalm.

      Indeed.

      Newspapers are not trustworthy anyway, I rather would google for an official report ;D

      Then google for an official report and link to it, prove me wrong.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    39. Re:Adapt not Evolve by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      I dislike reading things from viewpoints that involve malicious lies. You want to maintain that lying is a conservative value, you go right ahead.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    40. Re:Adapt not Evolve by swillden · · Score: 1

      I dislike reading things from viewpoints that involve malicious lies. You want to maintain that lying is a conservative value, you go right ahead.

      You're missing the point.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    41. Re:Adapt not Evolve by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 1

      and our meme sets (which we can collectively label "culture") have exactly the same sorts of imperatives, and probably do even more to regulate our behavior and choices than our genes.

      Not to mention, they're pretty dank.

      --
      I tend to rant.
    42. Re:Adapt not Evolve by quantaman · · Score: 1

      What percentage of those 12 million people go bankrupt when it turns out their city will be uninhabitable in 30 years?

      Don't know. What percentage of them are dumb enough to continue to live in a city that they KNOW will be uninhabitable in 30 years?

      It doesn't matter.

      Right now, the value of each of those properties is $X, in 30 years the value of those properties will be $0. At some point someone or a series of someones is going to lose $X.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    43. Re:Adapt not Evolve by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1
      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    44. Re:Adapt not Evolve by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Those don't show Germany leading. France reduced their CO2 output more, likely because of their nuclear reactors. Looks like half of the nations listed did better than Germany on CO2 reductions.

      Also, I'm not sure what you gave is more recent data.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    45. Re:Adapt not Evolve by volmtech · · Score: 1

      Over one hundred million people in the Middle East depend on oil money for their food and water. Where will they go when we quit buying their oil? Without oil farmers will not have the fertilizers, pesticides, and tractor fuel to grow the amount of food they do today and no way to transport what they do grow. Billions of people who depend on that food to be delivered will starve. The world's economies will crash.

      All this disaster happens the minute we stop pumping oil and the world's governments know it. All the loss of land and liberties you foresee with climate change will be necessary to relocate entire populations and provide the land and housing they will need to grow their own food to prevent it. It is much easier to ignore the climate change disaster that is seventy five years away. Basically we are screwed either way.

  17. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't care about your children, I only care about me. Your problem, not mine!

  18. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Paid by russia, which benefits from global warming

  19. End of the century? by boudie2 · · Score: 1

    So there's not enough to worry about now? We don't have problems that need work this year? We have to worry about what "might happen"? I should be worrying that Mumbai might flood in 80 years? There's no chance they might find a solution between now and then? We all have to argue over who's the bigger bastards, the deniers or the over-reactors? Me, I got more important things to worry about

  20. No. <EOM> by Nexion · · Score: 0

    This space intentionally left blank.

  21. Six foot increase of sea level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Means my house is 150 ft closer to the beach. Good it will trim a little bit off my 1/4 mile walk to the beach.

    1. Re:Six foot increase of sea level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't you ever get tired of reading fiction on Slashdot? I remember when this was a place for news for nerds on stuff that actually mattered. It is amazing the garbage that gets served here now.

  22. Re: Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aren't you ignoring the effect of all the ice that IS floating in the sea melting? Obviously that would also happen if all the ice on land in Antarctica melted. That would counter-act the effect of the land ice to some extent, right? The question is how much, but you (and others) are ignoring there is a lot of ocean with ice floating in it.

  23. Red Pill Minute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I suppose all you Slashdot sheeple actually believe there is a place called "Antarctica" and that there are "glaciers" there. It's because you've been brainwashed by Marxist-run universities and their so-called "science" which is just SJW virtue signaling.

    You should view my series of 7-hour YouTube videos called, "Why Science is for Losers" and subscribe to my channel. Use the promotion code: "88_14WORDS_Hexen_WhiteWolfMRA".

    And don't forget to hit up my Patreon page, because bringing the truth to the masses is thirsty work, and have you seen the price of Mike's Hard Lemonade lately?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Red Pill Minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You triggered bra?

    2. Re:Red Pill Minute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      You triggered bra?

      I'm trying to trigger your sleeping mind by laying some #TRUTH on you.

      Go to my YouTube channel before it's banned by the Soros Pedophile Mafia. I heard they're gonna ban my channel for having too much #TRUTH.

      See my latest viral video, "Why Transgender Feminists Keep Putting Their Dicks In My Mouth".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Red Pill Minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't you do something useful with your life? Like volunteering as a target for people practicing their projectile vomiting?

    4. Re:Red Pill Minute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Can't you do something useful with your life?

      My YouTube channel is redpilling virtue signaling dumbocrats like you every day. What could be more useful?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:Red Pill Minute by Nexion · · Score: 1

      Um, scratching my balls or pretty much anything other than what you are doing.

    6. Re:Red Pill Minute by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      Them ass whole scientysts wunt work for oil compknees acause they wunt mayke enuff monee!

      I got my Gun for wenn they comme ta putt soler powr onto my roof. Goddam gubmynt.

      Yay Trump. My Precedent! And Mr. Pootins two!

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    7. Re:Red Pill Minute by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      You know, 10 years ago this would have been modded funny and nobody would have bothered to reply because it is SO far out there that it MUST be a joke.

      Poe's Law. It's not just for Creationists anymore.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    8. Re:Red Pill Minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your wrong. It is a tool by evil imperialist white people used to perpetuate the white microagressions and perpetuate hatred of black gay, lesbian, transgender, transhuman latinos.. you notice that it is white science that says there is an Antarctica. You know the entire continent is supposedly white. You notice it was supposedly discovered in the 1700 when everybody was old and white and owned black slaves.

      If there's one thing the left and the right can agreed on is that the c9ntinent of Antarctica does not exist.

  24. Coastal cities on cliffs by davidwr · · Score: 2

    Many coastal cities are largely well above sea level. They may lose a few hundred feet to the ocean but they would not be submerged.

    In addition some coastal cities were raised or had seawalls and other protection put in place after earlier flooding or storms.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't know what you're talking about. The Mississippi delta would be entirely gone. San Jose would be fully bay water out to Gilroy. Extrapolated to the world, this is massive disruption.

    2. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But real estate in Colorado is gonna sky rocket!!!!
      I'll be rich.

    3. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 4, Informative

      New York City - 33â above sea level.
      Sandy Storm Surge was just under 14'. If it had been 14', it would have destroyed the subway system- basically killing mass transit in New York.

      Miami... no- let's talk Florida- averages 6' above sea level.

      All of our major ports are built at sea level. Many of our refineries are built at sea level (not cheap to rebuild).

      And keep in mind that about 90% of climate models assume we'll find some way to reduce the carbon level by 2100. We don't currently have any way to reduce the carbon level.

      I'm not saying it's real. I'm just saying you are being a bit flippant with something that is actually pretty serious.

      Sort of like the engineer who warned that the O rings were too cold on the shuttle. He was ignored and overridden too.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    4. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Nexion · · Score: 1

      Bah, see you all in Arizona Bay.

    5. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So... let me get your final argument here... because someone at some other point in history was correct in a warning completely unrelated to this... we should totally believe this completely without question?

    6. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Well, even considering the number of scientists warning about this particular O'ring would fill a stadium-- no.

      But disputing facts about how many would be displaced if the water rises is daft.

      There is a difference between taking reasonable steps to prepare in case it is real and saying it's not real at all.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    7. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      These two sentences in rapid succession. You don't see it?
      Many of our refineries are built at sea level.
      We don't currently have any way to reduce the carbon level.

      Does it not occur to you that destruction of refineries by flooding would reduce the carbon level?

    8. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by shilly · · Score: 1

      Not it would not reduce the carbon level. It would reduce the amount of new CO2e being pumped into the atmosphere. But what the OP is referring to is that the models all assume we find an effective method for CCS, ie removing atmospheric CO2e and sequestrating it.

    9. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by blindseer · · Score: 2

      We don't currently have any way to reduce the carbon level.

      We do in fact. Dr. Darryl Seimer, a nuclear engineer and chemistry professor, has a proposal to do just that.

      The first step is to stop digging. We need to stop producing CO2 and to do that we need lots of nuclear power.

      The next thing is to enhance a natural process of turning basalt (a kind of bedrock) into limestone (also a kind of bedrock). We do this by mining the basalt and spreading it on croplands. Why would farmers agree to this? Because this is a variation on an ancient and continuing practice of putting agricultural lime in fields to restore nutrients to the soil. The current means to get this lime produces a lot of CO2, which involves mining limestone and heating it up "cook" out the CO2 and turning it into lime. Using basalt for the source of this lime is CO2 negative.

      Dr. Seimer believes this using of basalt for agricultural lime would be economically feasible. It appears that others that have examined this proposal have agreed. Leave the oil, coal, and limestone in the ground. Mine for uranium, thorium, and basalt.

      Maybe this proposal will not work, but can we at least take a closer look at this? Maybe try some pilot programs?

      We'll dump money into solar panels, windmills, and buying new cars for rich people but all this does is slow down the growth of CO2 output. We need to not only stop but to go into reverse. Let's put some money into this, development money. There's two parts to R&D, we've gone about as far as we can with research, time to do some development. Yes, that means actually digging in the dirt with large machines.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    10. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      No, we should believe it because the consequences are insane.

      I worked in risk management for a while. There are 2 main factors you take into account when preparing for a risk, likelyhood of the event and damage per case. Now, I think we can agree that while it would probably not be threatening the existence of humanity, it would severely damage our ability to do business (to stay in corporate terms), which is not-quite-killing us but severely crippling us.

      Anything at this level of damage, no matter the impact likelihood (unless it is zero), HAS TO be considered a danger and needs relevant controls in place. Anything else would certainly be considered criminal neglect in the ensuing legal battles.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      If you can transform basalt into line stone, you as well can transform lead into gold ... or what ever.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    12. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      "...it would severely damage our ability to do business (to stay in corporate terms)..."

      It is the use of the "business" model that got us in this mess in the first place! Centuries of externalizing the cost of environmental damage has allowed us to build a thriving business structure that spans the globe. This business structure, in turn, converts livable planet into profit for the select few, with ever increasing rapidity.

      If massive global flooding destroys our ability to "do business," which is the cause of the massive global flooding...well the Earth obviously knows how to handle this kind of imbalance. Let's not stand in the way.

      Also, why would not trying to remediate the damage caused by other industries be considered criminal neglect when the initial cause is not considered criminal neglect?

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    13. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      No we can't take a closer look. Some humans are scared of the word nuclear. Therefore we need to destroy the entire Earth to keep them from being scared. No, they don't even know how nuclear power works. That is why it is so important to cater to them. The uninformed run our entire world from a position of fear.

      This is the best that humanity has to offer. Really. It is better this way. We don't deserve to go on.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    14. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of our major ports are built at sea level.

      Well it's hard to dock an ocean vessel above sea level isn't it?

    15. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by blindseer · · Score: 1

      If you can transform basalt into line stone, you as well can transform lead into gold ... or what ever.

      It's not "line stone", it's limestone. Limestone is made primarily of CaCO3, calcium carbonate. Basalt is about 10% CaO, or calcium oxide, or lime. Also in basalt which is of interest is MgO, magnesium oxide, which makes up about 10% of basalt. When CaO comes into contact with CO2 there is a chemical reaction that happens resulting in CaCO3, limestone. Magnesium oxide also reacts with CO2 in the air to make a carbonate.

      In reality you can turn basalt into limestone. This is chemistry, not alchemy.

      There's a measure for determining the quality of agricultural lime called "CCE", or calcium carbonate equivalent. It measures the ability of a ton of a given material to treat land compared to a ton of pure calcium carbonate. A CCE of 100 means it acts like pure calcium carbonate in the soil, pound for pound. No stone, even limestone, is pure calcium carbonate but common limestone has such a high concentration of calcium carbonate that a ton of milled limestone will often test with a CCE near enough to 100 that it's considered "pure".

      A mineral, like magnesium oxide, can exceed a CCE of 100. Pure MgO will have a CCE of about 250, and pure CaO will have a CCE of about 180. Basalt, even though it's only made up of 1/4 of what would be considered "lime" (the rest of basalt is basically just sand) will actually have a CCE close to that of milled limestone. People use these CCE numbers because it turns the problem of liming into simple arithmetic. If the fields need 100 tons CCE and the material being offered has a CCE of 50 then there needs to be 200 tons applied to the fields. If the material offered has a CCE of 200 then there needs to be only 50 tons applied.

      So, why aren't farmers using basalt for liming their fields already if it's so good for the environment? That's a good question, and I suspect Dr. Siemer would like to get that answered.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    16. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New York City - 33â above sea level.

      Metric or imperial?

      Captcha: useless

    17. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      On my keyboard "n" and "m" are directly side by side.
      But thank you for the correction.

      Yes, some Basalts might contain some Ca ...

      However it is completely impossible to convert the Ca or CaO that is deeper than a few atoms/molecules from the surface into CaCO3.

      In reality you can turn basalt into limestone. This is chemistry, not alchemy.
      No, you can't.

      If you would grind it into dust, then you could convert 10% (if that is the fraction of CaO) into CaCO3.
      The remaining 90% would stay what they are. Silicon ...

      Exactly: (the rest of basalt is basically just sand) and that is 90% of it, according to your own numbers.

      If you want to grind it down to dust and use it as a kind of "fertilizer" you could have mentioned that in your post before instead of claiming "you can convert basalt into lime stone", which you cant.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    18. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Way to miss the point.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    19. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The mean elevation of Florida is 100 feet. Orlando is 95 feet above the ocean.

      Problem: This means that Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and the Key's are toa

    20. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by blindseer · · Score: 1

      If you want to grind it down to dust and use it as a kind of "fertilizer" you could have mentioned that in your post before instead of claiming "you can convert basalt into lime stone", which you cant.

      I did say it would be mined and spread over croplands. What did you think that meant? That the basalt would be cut into slabs and and farmland paved over?

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    21. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      No, I assumed you in deed wanted to convert basalt into limestone.
      As we found out now: you can only convert 10% of it (at best).

      So your whole thread about converting basalt into limestone was rather pointless.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    22. Re:Coastal cities on cliffs by blindseer · · Score: 1

      According to Dr. Siemer basalt is a pound for pound replacement for limestone when used to treat soil pH. Thus turning basalt into limestone. You are taking this too literally.

      Also, the basalt might be only 10% CaO but it's also 15% MgO. Both MgO and CaO are considered lime for most uses. Basalt may be 75% sand but it's 25% lime. It might be considered "dolomitic lime" or "magnesian limestone" for being rich in magnesium but it's lime.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      There's something on CCE here:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  25. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible. The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith. We can still accept the science they do, but there is no reason to trust their judgment (and again, the emails provided reason to believe their judgment is poor).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  26. Are you for real... by crimson+tsunami · · Score: 1

    Of course everyone knows it's cheaper to just launch 11 meters of ocean depth into space than reduce CO2 emissions...
    But what about the pollution from the trillions of rocket launches, or were you planning on using a big straw?

    1. Re: Are you for real... by saloomy · · Score: 1

      Iâ(TM)m not planning on anything. I just know what our future ambitions mean, and I donâ(TM)t believe we will find all the requisite water we will need when we get there. How we get water? Who knows. Maybe when we become a Type II civilization, we can use a technology not yet developed. 100 years is a lot of time to give society to progress enough to move mountains. Remember, it took less time to go from Kittt Hawk to Apollo 11.

    2. Re: Are you for real... by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      There is plenty of water and other volatiles in the asteroid belt that is much easier to get at than trying to export it from Earth.

    3. Re: Are you for real... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's obvious you're not planning anything, stick your head in the sand and wait for any problems to be fixed for you.
      I'm pretty sure a Type II civilization will be able to figure out how to add hydrogen and oxygen together without draining the Earth.

    4. Re: Are you for real... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We already know how to add hydrogen and oxygen together.

    5. Re: Are you for real... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      How do you intend to remove incredible amounts of water from Earth? The oceans cover something like 360 million square kilometers of the Earth's surface. Eleven feet (not meters) is a little over three meters. One meter of water over a square kilometer is a million tons. One meter of water across the oceans is about 360 trillion tons. We're talking about something over a quadrillion tons here that we'd have to get off-planet somehow Doing a quick Google search, it appears that NASA is hoping to get cost to low earth orbit down to tens of dollars per pound by 2060. Assuming we can do that, a quadrillion tons is two quintillion pounds, so we're looking at something like a hundred quintillion dollars. Top world national GNPs are in the dozen trillion dollar range, so we're talking about roughly eight million years of current US production.

      We're not going to be a Kardashev Type II civilization in any time frame that's relevant for climate change. There's also going to be cheaper ways of getting water where we need it.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    6. Re: Are you for real... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bloody Americans and their silly measurement systems. Maybe ocean means lake in American measurements, or it could mean purple...

  27. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to the data Gore projected the first time the boy cried wolf the Glaciers are supposed to be gone already.

    Inasmuch as that were accurate ...

    The logical connection of the some previous prediction to the current one is nicely illustrated by the parable of the boy who cried wolf. And I wonder if you are able to remember how that parable ended?

  28. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by Nexion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Agreed, if only they could stop having children in this already over-populated world... THAT would be progress!

  29. Delta is not by the sea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You do realize the Delta is entirely inland, right?

    I mean if Death Valley has not yet flooded, being below sea level in parts, why would the Delta?

    1. Re:Delta is not by the sea... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Because there's no mountain range in between?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  30. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0
    The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith.

    That's a weird interpretation of the absolving outcomes of multiple commitees' investigatons.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  31. Flood Insurance or Bitcoin - What to buy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When the flood comes, maybe we can use Paul Allen's yacht.
    Welcome to another Slashdot Circle Jerk.
    Hope you brought a lot of tissues cause it could go on for another 20-50 years.
    Ho-Hum

  32. The Cult of Global Warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is my religion, the Cult of Global Warming. We are as you imagine us. We are Apocalyptic. George Noory, Ancient Aliens, and Erich von Daniken are some of our High Priests. We thrive on late night talk radio where we discuss our "theories" for the amusement of lonely rent-a-cops, long distance truck drivers, and insomniacs.

    Had we been born earlier, you would have found us in circus side shows, huckstering bearded ladies, limbless human "tootsie rolls", and two headed cows. We thrive on freakdom of every stripe of which we proudly include ourselves. We are the "other". We are the Cult of Global Warming.

    1. Re:The Cult of Global Warming by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, I've been deconverted no later than when I heard that the effects would only become crippling long after I'm dead.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  33. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith.

    That's a weird interpretation of the absolving outcomes of multiple commitees' investigatons.

    You're wrong. The investigations showed that the science they were doing wasn't outright malfeasance (although the statistics could use some help). The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith. You should have known that.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  34. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Miles thick? The average thickness of the Antarctic sheet is 2.16 km. The landmass also features the greatest depression of bedrock at 2.5k below sea level.

    Where are you getting a plural?

    Don't act like it is just miles and miles feet thick ice above sea level. It is ridiculous and completely dishonest.

  35. Feet foot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop using this useless measurements feet, foot, you American idiots... which feet and which foot....yours or your mother's

    1. Re:Feet foot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The one lodged in your mouth.

    2. Re:Feet foot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not a foot that's lodged in his mouth . . .

  36. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All you have to do to stop this is fuck the Wumpus. Quit hunting it.

  37. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pretty much all the climate conjecture efforts have proven, thus far, is that "scientists" learned to make much more long term predictions to enable them to milk research grants for a lifetime. Now THAT is settled science!

  38. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The glaciers at Glacier national Park are nearly gone. Athabasca glacier is vastly smaller than when I visited in 1987.

    Stop being so ignorant.

  39. In case of emergencies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  40. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This however is surpassed by the very real possibility IF aliens steal our ocean.

    Yes, that is pretty much how your scaremongering babble reads.

    You seem to have failed to cite anything, and your language is incredibly dodgy.

  41. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Please cite where Gore said the glaciers would be gone by 2017. It could be that they're already as good as gone but it takes time for large blocks of ice to melt so they won't fully disappear for decades or even centuries. Of the estimated 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park that existed in the mid 1800s only 25 remain today and at the current rate they could be essentially gone by the 2030s.

  42. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chances are that creimer might have accentuated the tendency,

  43. LAST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't you have anything better to do?

  44. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Glaciers come and go. Some our current ones were much smaller a hundred plus years ago.

  45. Let's ask the booming population of Polar Bears. by JackAxe · · Score: 0

    So the same ones that Al Gore told me would be extinct by now.

  46. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    A few glaciers have been growing, most have been shrinking. As an example the glacier in the crater of Mount St. Helens has been growing but it didn't even exist after the 1980 eruption.

  47. The sky is falling.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Itâ(TM)s been 30 years of this nonsense. How about give it a rest, like forever?

  48. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith.

    Meaning that your bad faith assertion is not a result of evaluating the investigations' results but your own original research? I'm not sure that makes me any more confident about your far-reaching and potentially libelous conclusions.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  49. I call bullshit to your intelligence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if high tide were 6 feet taller that would be a big fucking deal wouldn't it.

  50. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Meaning that your bad faith assertion is not a result of evaluating the investigations' results but your own original research?

    Have you read the emails? It's pretty clear that they are people with an agenda, and heavily influenced by emotions.

    I'm not sure that makes me any more confident about your far-reaching and potentially libelous conclusions.

    Um, in no way did I say you should trust my conclusions. I don't wan't you to trust my conclusions, trust is the anti-thesis of science. Feel free to go read the emails and verify them yourself: that is being scientific.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  51. I did some simple calcs by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

    Each new iceberg that breaks away exposes taller and taller cliffs

    Antarctica's average precipitation is 166 mm per year. Its surface area is 14 million square km. Therefore it receives an average of:

    (0.166 meters)*(14 million km^2)*(1000 m/km)^2 = 2.324 trillion cubic meters of precipitation each year

    Since water weighs one ton per cubic meter, that.s 2.324 trillion tons of water falling onto Antarctica every year. Unlike most of the other continents, this precipitation does not flow to the sea as water. it mostly ends up locked up as snow or ice (there are a handful of "rivers" - mostly small streams of glacial meltwater running to the sea). If you assume the ice on the continent has reached equilibrium (amount it gains equals amount it loses each year), that means it has to lose 2.324 trillion tons of ice each year, mostly as icebergs. If it loses more than that, sea levels go up. If it loses less than that, sea levels go down.

    That massive iceberg (4x the size of Manhattan) that broke off earlier this year was estimated at 1 trillion tons. While that's a huge amount to lose all at once, it's less than half the amount Antarctica needs to lose every year to maintain equilibrium. The press likes to hype up outlier events like that because it appears to confirm the belief that Antarctica's ice is melting. But outliers are just that - outliers, and not necessarily representative of what's actually happening. The last scientific net gain/loss study I saw actually concluded that Antarctica is gaining ice. Not losing it. Enough to lower sea levels by 0.23 mm per year.

    1. Re:I did some simple calcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does that account for the fact that water ice is much less dense than liquid water? Also, you made two key errors. First, this is an article back in 2015 and there have been plenty of things we know now that we didn't two years ago. Second, you didn't read your own article. In it, they explicitly say that the melting trend is catching up quickly to the freezing trend.

    2. Re:I did some simple calcs by tinkerton · · Score: 0

      I fully agree that media are intrinsically hysterical and that they are very unreliable on the subject of climate change.
      I also think the dynamics of melting icecaps is very hard to predict and predictions could change dramatically as the understanding of the melting improves.

    3. Re:I did some simple calcs by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      ...
      That massive iceberg (4x the size of Manhattan) that broke off earlier this year was estimated at 1 trillion tons. While that's a huge amount to lose all at once, it's less than half the amount Antarctica needs to lose every year to maintain equilibrium. The press likes to hype up outlier events like that because it appears to confirm the belief that Antarctica's ice is melting. But outliers are just that - outliers, and not necessarily representative of what's actually happening. The last scientific net gain/loss study I saw actually concluded that Antarctica is gaining ice. Not losing it. Enough to lower sea levels by 0.23 mm per year.

      The GRACE satellites disagree with that study that shows a net gain of ice on Antarctica. By measuring changes in gravity the GRACE satellites find that Antarctica is actually losing ice overall, about 118 gigatonnes/year mostly in West Antarctica. GRACE Ice Sheets and Glaciers

    4. Re:I did some simple calcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've completely ignoring the point of the article, which is that collapse of certain 'ice-plugs' could lead to runaway flow of glaciers into the ocean. This would end the current state of more-less-equilibrium, leading to large rises in the sea-level.

    5. Re:I did some simple calcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just out of curiosity, when was that article published? I think that this is a rapidly changing field of study. Both the article that you cite and the one cited by the prior commenter seem to be several years old.

    6. Re:I did some simple calcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The current melting trend is not as important as knowing when a tripping point will be reached in which the flows of ice are drastically increased due to various events and effects. Arguing about current melting trends is a red-herring intended to distract from the real issues.

    7. Re:I did some simple calcs by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Not sure when it was published but the Antarctic graph animation shows ice loss up to June of 2014 so it's not that old. The one in the OP was dated October 2015. The problem with the study showing net gain in ice is that it was trying to measure it by changes in surface elevation of the ice sheet by measuring it with radar altimeters from satellites which has issues with things like the density of the snow it is measuring which needs to be confirmed by ground studies which are difficult in most of East Antarctica. Here is a story from Scientific American published July 6, 2017 about it: What to believe in Antarctica's great ice debate

    8. Re:I did some simple calcs by houghi · · Score: 1

      it's less than half the amount Antarctica needs to lose every year to maintain equilibrium

      Yes, but that will be on top of what already gets away, not instead of.
      The study you quote was up till 2008, almost 10 years ago and another quote:
      âoeIf the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate theyâ(TM)ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I donâ(TM)t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.â

      and

      âoeThe good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,â Zwally said. âoeBut this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.â

      So yeah. Read the links before you post them.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  52. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes Anartica is a continent. When the ice melts there people can start moving from new york to Antarctica. it all evens out in the end

    Or better yet we will awaken some unfathonable creature from the abyss of lake vostok that will wipe out all human life on the planet. this will end global warmig. thats a good thing right.

    the real reason liberals want to stop global warming is because it would allow dark skinned people to move up north and corrupt your gated liberal white communities.

    darkies do not do as well as pale skins in cold climates. hence you want to keep the planet cold.

    fuck your racism

  53. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Antarctic ice sheet reaches a thickness of over 3 miles, I think that would classify as miles thick.

  54. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    2.16km is an average depth of over one mile, ergo some must have a depth of miles even if there is no variation in depth. Still, bad phrasing by the GP.

  55. Re:Put ice in a glass. by AC-x · · Score: 1
  56. Every cloud has its silver lining. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Riverside, maybe even Palm Springs will have oceanfront hotels. The Basin will be an underwater museum. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to go farther than Big Bear to go skiing.

    For democrats, global warming is a disaster. For republicans, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. Since it's too late to stop it, it's best to roll with the republicans on this. Let's make some money, and enjoy a nice swim in tropical Wisconsin.

  57. More 'global warming' bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's endless. Every single day on this fucking website. 'Climatedot'. What a joke it has become.

    Try the truth instead:
    www.wattsupwiththat.com
    www.climatedepot.com

    1. Re:More 'global warming' bullshit by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      It's endless. Every single day on this fucking website. 'Climatedot'. What a joke it has become.

      Try the truth instead:
      www.wattsupwiththat.com
      www.climatedepot.com

      Don't worry, it will never stop. You can't hide from reality forever.

    2. Re:More 'global warming' bullshit by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Also one of the big reasons we've been getting so many of these stories lately is that the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting, the biggest Earth and space science meeting in the world is coming up on Dec. 11-15 in New Orleans. There will be about 24,000 attendees. Scientists typically release a lot of studies in the period prior to the AGU's meeting so they can present their findings there. So things should settle down a bit after that is over but you can expect stories about 2017 being the 2nd warmest year in the record despite it being a La Nina year long about February so prepare yourself for that.

  58. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0

    Have you read the emails? It's pretty clear that they are people with an agenda, and heavily influenced by emotions.

    Are you seriously suggesting that I should read thousands of e-mails and other documents and analyze them? Great, I'll reserve several months of my free time...oh, I don't have any. Oops. Also, of course they have an agenda. They are researchers, so they have a research agenda. Had they been were janitors, they would have had an agenda of keeping the offices clean.

    Feel free to go read the emails and verify them yourself: that is being scientific.

    Someone more qualified already did that for me.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  59. You know that sinking feeling... by kig8472 · · Score: 0

    ...when you realize tthat the sea level is rising?

  60. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Hylandr · · Score: 1

    it didn't even exist after the 1980 eruption

    Lol, I wonder why? :)

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  61. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

    As you note yourself in your post, there is no “the predictions”. There are different predictions made by different groups of scientists. Is there a single model or prediction that fits the data pretty well? Or is there a matching prediction to be found for every data point?

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  62. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Hylandr · · Score: 1

    I will have to install Firefox and use a search engine other than Google. But I will get it tomorrow. Google and Chrome is being ... Interesting.

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  63. This calls for HUGE changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To what is already be done to combat climate change
    1) Go All-in on nuclear
    2) encourage a global two-child policy
    Cue Monty Python life of Brian committee meeting
    HTTPS://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55fqjw2J1vl

  64. Re: How Were All of the Last +6 GNAA NIGGER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes we do. Indeed we definitely do need that one.

  65. Daily caller making shit up for the credulous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, the predictions have been pretty damn accurate, its' the deniers' predictions that have been fucked over by reality:

    http://skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html

    1. Re: Daily caller making shit up for the credulous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My prediction is that these stories are clickbait for people that just can't help themselves but state an ignorant claim one way or the other. If henny penny says the sky is falling, and it doesnt, people are going to point that out. That's to be expected. Dire predictions had better be right or no one will liste and chalk it up to hyperbole. Feel like actually doing something about climate change? Stop having clueless celebrities babble outlandish claims and demand reviewers at these journals start demanding more of these disaster of the week articles.

    2. Re:Daily caller making shit up for the credulous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Here are your failed predictions in Black and White, yet you call other's deniers.

      Are you saying these people didn't make these predictions or say these things?

      Who is the real Denier?

    3. Re:Daily caller making shit up for the credulous by jbengt · · Score: 1

      Those aren't failed predictions. They are about the timeline for action required to prevent the warming from being inevitable. They are not about the timeline for the warming to develop fully.

    4. Re:Daily caller making shit up for the credulous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The quotes you gave were not predictions, failed or otherwise.

      They were a lot of quotes saying, basically, we have to act quickly.

      OK, fine. Many people are quoted saying we have to act quickly, for example, we have only 50 days to pass this treaty or 500 days for this administration to act before the next election.

      Those aren't predictions.

  66. You won't find it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All you will find are reports he said it. Not him actually saying it.Not even in transcripts or any copy available of the video will have the claim in it. It's a myth.

  67. Since the polar bear population is tanking... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In what world do you consider it booming? Just because the sea ice they live on doesn't appear any more and they're abandoned on the land where humans can see them (not many local news reports for the arctic, plenty for Alaska and Canada), doesnt mean there's more polar bears. Ask ecologists who study that. Oh, that's right: you can't, because they're eco hippies on the same "conspiracy gravy train", so you have to search for a fringe nut who goes against the grain, which would mean the minority position. Which would be "polar bears are fine" if the truth is that their population is tanking. There's much more consensus on reality than there is on imagination.

  68. Ah, right. So physics is anulled. Got it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because if the answer is "No", then this means that adding water to another body of water doesn't increase the water level of the second body of water. Which would require that physics be damned merely because headlines can be answered "No" if they ask a question.

  69. More Fish ? by John+Da'+Baddest · · Score: 1

    Would all that extra water give fish massive new homelands in which to replenish their dwindling stocks? Or maybe the melting freshwater glaciers would dilute the salt too much.

    1. Re:More Fish ? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Would all that extra water give fish massive new homelands in which to replenish their dwindling stocks?

      Not a lot. Bearing in mind that they're running into problems when they're already got the area of the continental shelves to inhabit, then adding a few more tens of miles of shallow water along current coasts wouldn't help a lot.

      Also, effectively, there would be some loss of usable habitat. Most of the open ocean is the watery equivalent of a desert because it is so far from inputs of minerals from rivers. In theory and first-year biology, phytoplankton only need water, sunlight and carbon dioxide (from the air) to grow. In practice and second year and later biology, they also need phosphates (because DNA includes phosphorus to bond the deoxyribose element of the molecular "backbone" to the next one), iron (various enzymes) ... These minerals get into the oceans primarily from rivers, secondarily from sub-sea volcanos, and thirdly from wind transported dust. If an area of ocean doesn't have one of those inputs it becomes a very low productivity zone. you'll probably have heard of attempts to "fertiize" the oceans as a way of absorbing atmospheric CO2 ; that's the mineral shortages they're trying to alleviate.

      By moving the coastline inland, then some areas of the ocean will become further from coastal inputs of minerals and lose productivity.

      Short version then is that changes in ocean productivity from a rise in sea level will be complex, and you really need to look at the details to work out what is likely to happen. A broad brush won't really work.

      Or maybe the melting freshwater glaciers would dilute the salt too much.

      However, that is a question amenable to a broad brush. The oceans are, on average, 4km deep, at 28 to 35 parts per thousand of salts. Adding 3.3m (about the 11ft mentioned) to that would change the average salinity by 0.024 to 0.029 parts per thousand. OK, that'll take something like 50,000 years to get mixed through, and while the glacier melt isn't well mixed, the effects will be larger. So you need to specify your model for the rate and location of ocean mixing to model the actual salinity effects. But from the other end of the telescope, marine life can generally deal with the natural variation of salinity mentioned above (28 to 35 parts per thousand, range ~7ppt), so if your 3.3m of fresh water is diluted with more than about 15m or sea water, then the resulting change in salinity is going to be within the normal variation of sea water.

      You have a perfectly reasonable question, but I don't think it'll be a big effect.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  70. Never mind the carbon dioxide by Ashtead · · Score: 1, Interesting

    These aren't heated significantly by whatever heat might be trapped by slightly more CO2 -- despite what politicians say, seeing as this whole Environment business has become more of just that, with excuses for taxation and making life more difficult for everyone. Unless you pay extra of course.

    Instead, just the other week, there was news about some large hot magma plumes being present underneath the Twaites Glacier and other nearby areas, and that is what is heating up this ice. So it may still break out and put a lot of water into the ocean but for different reasons.

    --
    SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
    1. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Instead, just the other week, there was news about some large hot magma plumes

      The magma plumes have been there for a long time, while the ice was stable. It didn't start moving until we added CO2 to the mix.

    2. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead, just the other week, there was news about some large hot magma plumes

      The magma plumes have been there for a long time, while the ice was stable. It didn't start moving until we added CO2 to the mix.

      Could you provide a source that causally links those two events?

    3. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by Xyrus · · Score: 1

      The magma plumes have been there for thousands of years, and contribute milliwatts of heat to the base of the ice. That has nothing to do with the increased average surface temperatures that have been melting it from above. If you had the reading comprehensions of a sixth grader you could have picked that up from reading the actual research papers on the topics.

      --
      ~X~
    4. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      If you're going to pretend to know something about science, at least get the units correct. 150 milliwatts per square meter of ice...which is a lot.

      JPL antarctic plume modeling study author HélÃne Seroussi of the heat under Marie Byrd Land:
      "I didn't see how we could have that amount of heat and still have ice on top of it,â

    5. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      150 milliwatts per square meter of ice...which is a lot.

      Aproximately the same amount as lands per square meter of walls, floor and ceiling of a 254 square meter room illuminated by a single 100W lightbulb.

    6. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      150 milliwatts per square meter of ice...which is a lot.

      The rise in CO2 causes an extra warming of 1500 milliwatt per square meter. And the sun is hitting a lot more square meters.

    7. Re:Never mind the carbon dioxide by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      sun adding much less than that at the pole though

      I'm more worried about ocean acidification than all this alarmism about warming/climate change

  71. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by dave420 · · Score: 2

    They were found entirely innocent. Like, entirely. You want to try this again, sparky?

  72. Re:At the end of the century, who cares by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    This.

    I tried to make people realize that we're heading for our extinction until I noticed that, hey, it's gonna strike when I'm no longer around. Why the fuck should I care?

    I used to give a shit about people. I actually wanted to prevent disaster until I noticed that this species is too stupid to survive. We're not the first species that can and will eliminate its own livelihood. But we'll be the first that can actively regret it once we're done.

    But I won't. Either I'm gone, or I'll simply accept it as the inevitable result of hubris.

    Allow me to end on a lighter note: Two planets meet.

    P1: You look terrible, what's wrong?
    P2: I got homo sapiens.
    P1: Ah don't worry, so did I. It will pass.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  73. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Conservatives make no sense. Contraception is bad, abortion is bad, but at the same time anything and everything to actually help the people they force to exist is bad too.

    A conservative is a person that will fight tooth and nail for you to be born, but as soon as you're pumped out you're on your own.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  74. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    That's why you don't see any measurable effect YET. So far, the ice that's been cracking off and dropping into the sea was the ice already IN the sea.

    Now we're reaching the ice that's lying on top of land. Oh, Antarctica, unlike that thing on the top of your globe, is actually a continent. There is land under that miles of ice. That's why we care about melting Antarctica more than we care about the arctic ice going away. That's why this is being talked about instead of the same shit happening on the other end of the marble.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  75. Re:LAST POST by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Nah. The water levels rise without my aid, so my work is done.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  76. When you start off with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A hundred years you lose most people since they can only think as far down as the next holiday.

  77. Re:Put ice in a glass. by asylumx · · Score: 1

    2.16 kilometers = 1.34 miles

  78. Melting floating ice has zero effect. by robbak · · Score: 1

    The floating ice can't counter-act anything, because floating ice melts to become exactly the same volume of water as it displaced - no more, no less.

    --
    Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
    1. Re:Melting floating ice has zero effect. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's true in a glass of whisky, but it's more complex in the oceans, which are stratified, and where water has different densities, depending on depth and mineral content.

    2. Re:Melting floating ice has zero effect. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not true: warm water is less dense.

  79. Re: Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Right! Because once the ice cube floating in the glass has melt, the liquid level in the glass has decreased -- as I've been able to observe numerous times myself with a glass of whisky.

  80. Time To Build... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ocean front property in the desert.

  81. Death By Nay Sayers by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    The jerks who denied global warming exists held back projects that might have saved millions of lives as well as the stabilization of economies and nations. Yet they will pay no penalty for their idiotic remarks and beliefs. Maybe we should be in deep prayer that the world enters an ice age while the warming pushes in the opposite direction. Wars and calamities are already taking place due to global warming and here we have a US president failing to take meaningful actions to alleviate or moderate the effects of global warming. it is almost like treason when an official acts against the best interests or survival of a nation.

    1. Re:Death By Nay Sayers by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      >here we have a US president failing to take meaningful actions

      Actually, you have a US president who is taking meaningful actions to prevent even token support for meaningful actions to alleviate or moderate the effects of global warming.

    2. Re:Death By Nay Sayers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what an idiotic post, no fucking wars have taken place due to global warming.

      and as far as calamities, what less hurricanes?

      Truly a stupid post. Nearly as stupid as trump (so no I'm not a fucking republican).

    3. Re:Death By Nay Sayers by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Actually, you have a US president who is taking meaningful actions to prevent even token support for meaningful actions to alleviate or moderate the effects of global warming.

      His Mar-a-Lago estate will be one of the first to be flooded.

      Meanwhile, he was recently trying to build coastal barriers to protect his estates in Ireland from the effects of rising seawater.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    4. Re:Death By Nay Sayers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what an idiotic post, no fucking wars have taken place due to global warming.

      All those wars in Syria, Libya, Egypt, etc. where people were starving after prolonged drought... nothing to do with the climate, right?

    5. Re:Death By Nay Sayers by JimSadler · · Score: 1

      This week the first call for impeachment will be heard on the floor of the senate. I don't expect a win on that first call. But the calls will pile on and add up and if he is not removed for being unfit the impeachments will put him out of office. He may well spend his last years in prison. Today's date is 12/1/17.

  82. Bad assumptions by burtosis · · Score: 1

    Why does everyone think rising sea levels will force all the people out of cities? People are stubborn and will probably just make floating structures or raised structures on stilts and trade the car for a boat. Then, not only do you not have to leave, suddenly the earth just quadrupled its real estate market.

    1. Re:Bad assumptions by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      >Why does everyone think rising sea levels will force all the people out of cities?

      Global warming is about more than just sea level rise... there will also be more heat in the system, driving more powerful storms.

      You're thinking about the effects of sea level being perhaps a dozen feet higher within a single human lifetime (and that's from now... but it sounds an awful lot like that's waiting for the dam to burst and the actual level increase will happen much faster than that once it begins). Now imagine it comes with more hurricanes and tropical storms on top of that.

      The time scale matters, too. If sea level creeps up slowly, then yes... people will build protective infrastructure where the land permits it (if you're on fairly porous land, a dike isn't going to cut it). But if you only have a few decades... well, for that kind of mega-engineering project, you might be looking at 50 years for a rush job. And that's if your economy can support the effort.

      Rising sea levels won't force all the people out of cities... it will force MOST people out of MOST low-lying coastal cities.

    2. Re:Bad assumptions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Storms are caused by differentials, not absolute heat levels, if everything goes up togeather it makes no difference.

      rest of your idiocy, just can't be arsed to argue with an idiot.

    3. Re:Bad assumptions by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      >Storms are caused by differentials, not absolute heat levels

      Which is why it's called 'global warming', not 'even warming around the globe'. Even then, there are other effects in play.

      https://earthobservatory.nasa....

      >rest of your idiocy, just can't be arsed to argue with an idiot.

      Uh huh. So I assume you avoid talking to mirrors.

    4. Re:Bad assumptions by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Sounds a little like Holland.

      Should be good for the construction industry. Who says a rising tide floats all boats?

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  83. well on the bright side by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of those climate change denyiers get whats comming to them , when they beliveed they would be dead and gone before the effects showed up.

  84. Time to build a wall in Antarctica by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We can make the worlds largest swimming pool!

  85. Re:Put ice in a glass. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Fill the glass to the top with water so the ice sticks out the top. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Science. Thanks for playing, morons.

    Fill the glass to the top with water then make a platform with toothpicks that will hold the ice above the water. Watch what happens when the ice melts. That's the equivalent of glaciers sitting above sea level on the land melting.

  86. simple answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NO.

    Fucking no

    and fuck off idiots

  87. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    imagine the gall of experts making a choice that differs with your preconceived notions...oh the horror

  88. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    I would be very surprised if you actually find any direct quote from Gore that says that. What you will find is stories claiming he said something like that without any cites to actual quotes from him.

  89. Coukd someone explain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A serious question. This doesn't make sense to me. The glaciers are already in the sea, therefore their mass is already accounted for in the current sea level. Changing the form of ice to water shouldn't have any impact on the sea level - mass is mass is mass. If you don't believe me, try an experiment where you fill a glass beyond the top with ice, so that it's sticking out. Then fill the glass with water to the top so that it's full. Walk away and let it melt fully. When you return, the glass will still be full, but not a drop will have spilled, because the original water level Included the the ice cubes' mass. The glaciers are already in the ocean. Obviously there are other reasons we need them intact, but it shouldn't drastically affect sea level, not as far as physics are concerned. This works independent of scale. What am I missing?

    1. Re:Coukd someone explain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A serious question. This doesn't make sense to me. The glaciers are already in the sea, therefore their mass is already accounted for in the current sea level.

      The glaciers are not already in the sea.

  90. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's why you don't see any measurable effect YET. So far, the ice that's been cracking off and dropping into the sea was the ice already IN the sea.

    Now we're reaching the ice that's lying on top of land. Oh, Antarctica, unlike that thing on the top of your globe, is actually a continent. There is land under that miles of ice. That's why we care about melting Antarctica more than we care about the arctic ice going away. That's why this is being talked about instead of the same shit happening on the other end of the marble.

    Antarctica is an archipelago. The total amount of land down under would be roughly equivalent to Greenland. But still a lot of on-land ice.

  91. Calling Antarctica Traffic Control, Ripley here! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.

    Antarctica is the outer limit of the known Earth, and the sea levels are not going to rise from some ice melting off the wall.

    Why do you suppose Antarctia is so much colder than the North Pole, if it is simply the 'Earths tilt' that causes them to be cold? Why does nothing live there except penguins that eat fish?

  92. Sink, Florida, Sink! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Make America Great Again - Flood Florida!

  93. Re:It's the Earth! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, and the global is made up too. Not only is the sun 'it', the Earth is also flat. It is one system.

  94. Re:Put ice in a glass. by PmanAce · · Score: 2

    If you remove the weight from the ice over the land mass, it will rise up and still displace the water level.

    --
    Tired of my customary (Score:1)
  95. Re:Put ice in a glass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and you do know that the melting is due to heat from underneath, not global warming so nothing any fucker does will make a difference.

    come on keep up with the fucking science

  96. Predictions have mostly been accurate by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 4, Informative

    A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible.

    Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.

    Two of your links still worked.

    The first was to a NPR story in 2009 quoting a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences saying that if we stop emitting carbon dioxide immediately, the effects due to the carbon dioxide we have emitted will last for "more than a thousand years," basically due to the lag time it takes for carbon dioxide to be desorbed by the ocean. There's no real prediction here- basically, it's an article about the system hysteresis. So, no, this is not a failed prediction.

    The second was a link to an article about an editorial by James Lovelock. In a 2006 article in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Professor James Lovelock said billions would die by the end of the century, and civilisation as it is known would be unlikely to survive." I have little respect for Lovelock, but nevertheless, the end of the century is still 83 years away, so this is not an example of a prediction that has failed.

    Of the links that were 404 not found, I could dig up one on archive.org, an article on "commondreams.org" about a report from "Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank," headlined that "Damage from Warming Becoming 'Irreversible'." That's not actually a prediction. All the way at the end of the article are two things that might be predictions:

    The first: "Even if climate change is more gradual, recent studies have argued that as many as one million plant and animal species could be rendered extinct due to the effects of global warming by 2050."

    That's a prediction for over thirty years from now, so, no, that is not a prediction that has failed.

    The second: "A recent report by the world's largest reinsurance company, Swiss Re, predicted that in 10 years the economic cost of disasters like floods, frosts, and famines caused by global warming could reach $150 billion annually."

    An actual prediction! It's hard to say whether any given damage is "caused by" global warming. However, if you consider hurricanes "caused by" global warming, or droughts, or wildfires, that easily adds up to well over 150 billion. So at best I'd call this a prediction that needs some data analysis to say whether it's accurate or not. For what it's worth, here's Forbes-- not exactly a left-wing cheerleader-- saying the same thing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

    So, final summary: NO, this is not a list of predictions that have been turned out to be false.

    The actual predictions-- by which I mean, the ones from actual climate scientists-- have mostly been pretty accurate. If you're looking at the sensationalist predictions-- sea level rises of many meters, cities innudated by floods, etc.-- they are for the most part predictions for after the year 2100, not for now.

    But the real science predictions aren't sensational enough for the tabloids, and journalists tend to downplay the "in a hundred years" part of predictions in popular articles.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Predictions have mostly been accurate by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.

      Fortunately, like a good scientist, I gave you my methodology, so you could repeat the experiment.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Predictions have mostly been accurate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.

      Fortunately, like a good scientist, I gave you my methodology, so you could repeat the experiment.

      Yeah, exactly! Just make up shit and you'l come to the same results as phantomfive!

  97. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ahh yes, the I can't be arsed argument.

    The fucking investigations were done by people with cash in the game, total fucking white wash...

    If you read the emails, the researchers did not have a research agenda, they had preconceived bias.

  98. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by tbannist · · Score: 1

    If you're really interested and not just trying to hand wave away things you disagree with out bothering to understand them, here you go. The IPCC reports represent the consensus view of the world's climate scientists. You can start with the first one and see how well they've done over time and how they've refined their understanding of the climate.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  99. Models are open source and publicly available by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1, Informative

    So why not push the so-called "climate experts" to completely opensource their models and explain what they are doing?

    The models are open source; they are heavily annotated and explained.

    ...So wouldn't it be a good idea to have as many eyes overlooking these models?

    Yes, that's the way science works. And the models have been downloaded and are being run by hundreds of universities around the world. We do have thousands of eyes looking over the models.

    It doesn't take a degree in climatology to find errors in code or mathematics.

    And so the fact that people aren't finding those purported errors in code or mathematics, despite thousands of people looking for them, should tell you something

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Models are open source and publicly available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And yet the models don't match reality. Sure, the code is impeccable, the statistics are perfect - but the coefficients for feedback may be wrong and we're probably missing dozens, if not hundreds, of other feedback loops to include. When models and reality disagree - who do you trust?

    2. Re:Models are open source and publicly available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet the models don't match reality. Sure, the code is impeccable, the statistics are perfect - but the coefficients for feedback may be wrong and we're probably missing dozens, if not hundreds, of other feedback loops to include. When models and reality disagree - who do you trust?

      Actually, turns out that for the most part, it is Dr. Spencer who doesn't match reality. Spencer is pretty good at cherry picking data, but it isn't just that his data doesn't match the models-- it doesn't match the data measured by people other than him.

      He sure gets a lot of press, though.

      By the way, can you link perhaps to some data that isn't four years old? Most of what he says here is already shown to be wrong. I'm sure he has new cherry-picked data to show now, since the cherry-picked data he has here is now so obsolete.

    3. Re:Models are open source and publicly available by Altrag · · Score: 1

      1970s: Its fine no problem nothing to see here scientists are just being alarmist!
      2000s: Its fine no problem nothing to see here scientists are just being alarmist!
      2020s: Its fine no problem nothing to see here scientists are just being alarmist!
      2050s: OMG God's punishing us because of teh gays!

      Human logic at its finest.

  100. The Plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This has been the plan all along. The USA can easily weather the rise in sea levels, evacuating its citizens further inland. As the rest of the world is in crisis from the huge displacement of people, disease, and famine from weather events, the USA will execute first strikes against China, North Korea, and other nuclear countries. Once these enemies have been dealt with, the USA will lead the effort to reverse AGW forcing with a combination of fuel resource management and technological methods (high atmosphere reflective particles).

  101. Jurassic- higher carbon dioxide & higher sea l by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what the point is here. The Jurassic was a period lasting over fifty million years. Yes, during much of the Jurassic, carbon dioxide was much higher than it is now, and temperatures were correspondingly much hotter, the Earth had no ice caps and no glaciers, and the sea levels were much higher.

    I'd point at this as showing that higher carbon dioxide levels are correlated to higher temperatures and higher sea levels.

    Yes, we could adapt. Over a time span short compared to fifty million years, the ecology would just settle in to a new equilibrium. But we're not talking about millions of years, not even hundreds of thousands of years here.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  102. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by tbannist · · Score: 1

    Oh it's simple, really. Conservatives believe that children are a punishment for having sex.

    I wish I was kidding.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  103. Science fiction [Re:Put ice in a glass.] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Yes Anartica is a continent. When the ice melts there people can start moving from new york to Antarctica. it all evens out in the end

    I like that as a science fiction story, but in the real world, turns out Antarctica is still pretty much unlivable, even after 2 or even 5 degrees of global warming. Too bad, really.

    Parts of Siberia might get nice, though.

    Or better yet we will awaken some unfathonable creature from the abyss of lake vostok that will wipe out all human life on the planet. this will end global warmig.

    Didn't Lovecraft write that one? Tekeli-li!

    thats a good thing right. the real reason liberals want to stop global warming is because it would allow dark skinned people to move up north and corrupt your gated liberal white communities.

    Now you're just trolling. That was also a science fiction premise, I think; just in this case a Neo-Nazi story.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  104. Re:Put ice in a glass. by tbannist · · Score: 1

    Actually, Russia does benefit from exporting natural gas, so some of them might actually be on the Russian payroll.

    I mean Russia needs them to do something in between meddling in the elections of other countries, right?

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  105. Re: Put ice in a glass. by tbannist · · Score: 1

    In fact, when the ice in my glass of whisky has melted, it's usually entirely empty...

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  106. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by jbengt · · Score: 2

    . . . trust is the anti-thesis of science.

    Bullshit. Trust is required for any human endeavor.

  107. Re:Put ice cubes in a glass of water by rickb928 · · Score: 1

    You know, I'm a denier of the highest order, but are you thinking icebergs or glaciers? Glaciers, above sea level, are a problem. Icebergs, largely below sea level, not so much.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  108. What's happened to Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shit article after shit article.

    Do you cover interesting tech news anymore?

    This site is utter garbage nowadays.

  109. Wrong. No guaranty of survival by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Let me redo that. You may be flat wrong, we may not "adapt". The climate disruptions to populations may trigger nuclear war and end up killing every last human (or too few to leave behind enough genetic diversity to re-establish ourselves). The risk of that happening goes up if we ignore man-made climate change.

    True, we may do that even without climate issues, but certainly you would agree the probability of self-annihilation goes up if we change Earth's climate such as to disrupt existing patterns of food and water. Almost every major war has been related to economic slumps of some kind. Putting stress on populations increases both the chances and severity of war.

    1. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by swillden · · Score: 1

      Why did you change your opinion, just so you could continue to disagree?

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by swillden · · Score: 1

      Also, I think you still haven't read my post. You should. To the end.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I simply thought about it more, and realized the poster's original premise is wrong. No conspiracy.

    4. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I did. It seems poorly written and contradictory to me. I don't really want to accuse it outright of bad writing, for maybe we just interpret certain words differently. It happens.

      The gist of the original post seems to be saying that humanity won't outright die, but will be more miserable if we postpone solutions. My redo contradicts the first part. Thus, if you agree with my claim that it may end humanity, then the first part of your statement is outright wrong. If you disagree with it, then bring up evidence for zero or very small risk of human extinction, which is not in the original post that I see. If you see it in there, then please requote it, for I missed it upon 3 passes. If I don't see it after 3 passes, it's unlikely I'll finally see it after 300.

      Now it's possible you are indirectly saying the semi-peaceful centralization of gov't (dictatorship) is the likely outcome over outright war, but this is not clear. Nor do I agree that's the most likely outcome. It's basically unknown territory such that apocalyptic war should be considered a fairly likely outcome. If Hitler had nukes I doubt he'd go quietly.

    5. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by swillden · · Score: 1

      No, no. Focus on the last paragraph.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:Wrong. No guaranty of survival by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Focus on the last paragraph.

      I'm not sure how the last one is relevant to the opening premise: "Anyone who tries to claim that global warming is an existential threat is being ridiculous. We will adapt."

      Anyhow, roughly 2/3 of conservatives & libertarians believe human-caused climate change is a hoax. Your argument appears to assume those groups don't believe it's a hoax.

  110. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Wow, are you literally that dense, or do you just have reading comprehension fail? You didn't actually read any of the investigation reports.

    For your sake, I will again repeat: they were cleared of scientific malfeasance. They in no way were cleared of acting in bad faith, they weren't even investigated for that.

    As for your complete lie that they were found "entirely innocent," what kind of fruit loop are you? No one ever said they were entirely innocent except you. Entirely innocent? Really? No one is entirely innocent and you damn well know it.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  111. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Are you seriously suggesting that I should read thousands of e-mails and other documents and analyze them?

    Either read them, or read the highlights, or remain ignorant, like you are now. Apparently you choose the ignorance option, which is unfortunate.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  112. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by blindseer · · Score: 1

    Are the conservatives forcing these same people to fuck? Pretty sure that if you don't want kids that you shouldn't put tab A into slot B. Far more effective than any contraception, also safer for women than abortion.

    It's SCIENCE!

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  113. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Have you taken control groups of scientists in other fields and analyzed their emails? If not, you don't know if all other scientists are paragons of virtue, or maybe like the ones whose internal private emails were published for political effect. Scientists are human, and have all sorts of failings. Despite this, science as a whole has been extremely productive.

    You have no reason to think that climate science is any worse off than any other scientific field. Get yourself a control group.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  114. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Science is built on reproducibility and evidence. If you are building ideas on trust, then you may still have something valuable, but it's not science.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  115. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    All scientific advances begin with scientists doing research. They don't always get their interpretations and predictions right. That's why there's always follow-up research.

    What this says is that two scientists, making a new model that considers different things, have made a prediction that's different from those made by other scientists with other models. There's no observational evidence right now showing that one is right and the other is wrong.

    It's certainly too soon to panic, but equally it's too soon to dismiss the possibility.

    Personally, I live something like a couple hundred meters above sea level, and I have no intention of moving to a coast.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  116. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Trust in individuals is bad for science. Everybody screws up from time to time, and some individuals are downright dishonest. Trust in the process, and the general community of science, is important. The process has evolved so that science can go forward without trusting specific people.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  117. Answer: Yes and No by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Look, the problem is where the glaciers melt. When it melts on the opposite side, the land rise is too far, but the water level where you are goes up. Hence, for Australia and NZ it's more critical if the ice shelf melts on the OTHER side of Antarctica, and for NYC and the NE US and E Canada it's more important if the NE glacial shelfs melt in Greenland than if they melt on the SW edge of Greenland.

    Look, just quadruple your investments you waste on fossil fuel tax subsidies and tax exemptions and exclusions and spend that on renewable energy like solar and wind. Otherwise, you're toast. Soggy toast.

    We'll be fine here in the Pacific NW, by the way. Most of the impacts don't happen here until the latter half of this century.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  118. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I don't expect scientists to be paragons of virtue. It would be nice if they had good judgment, but I don't expect that either: I expect them to publish reproducible results. As long as they do that, there is no scientific malfeasance.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  119. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    You don't describe conservatives, you describe (religious?) nut cracks.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  120. Re:Put ice in a glass. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    No no no, you get it all wrong!
    Meters, liters, kilometers have no plural!
    2.16kilometer (no s) is 1.34 miles!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  121. Re:Put ice cubes in a glass of water by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    The Titanic begs to differ!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  122. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith.

    That's a weird interpretation of the absolving outcomes of multiple commitees' investigatons.

    You're wrong. The investigations showed that the science they were doing wasn't outright malfeasance (although the statistics could use some help). The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith. You should have known that.

    I'm curious what you mean by saying the scientists weren't acting in good faith. Scientists know that if they don't present the results of their research honestly that other scientists will quickly call them on that. They know that their scientific reputations depend on them doing good science. It's insane to believe that there is some sort of worldwide conspiracy among tens of thousands of climate scientists to misrepresent their findings that has lasted for well over 30 years. The first warnings about the potential of CO2 to cause global warming started out in 1896 with Svante Arrhenius and started getting serious in the 1950s. In all that time if there were some fundamental flaw in the reasoning I find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't have found it by now.

  123. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible. The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith. We can still accept the science they do, but there is no reason to trust their judgment (and again, the emails provided reason to believe their judgment is poor).

    There are things happening that are irreversible at least on any time scale that's relevant to humans alive today. Temperatures will not go down unless we can bring the level of CO2 down significantly, ice will continue to melt for centuries until the glaciers catch up to the warming that's already happened and as a result sea level will continue to rise as it melts and as the oceans continue to warm up. Global warming and the climate change that results from it is like a large ship. It takes time to get it moving and will take a similar amount of time to get it stopped.

  124. Zero by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.

    Fortunately, like a good scientist, I gave you my methodology, so you could repeat the experiment.

    And, as a good scientist, I did a statistical analysis: of the three links that either weren't dead or could be tracked down with the wayback machine, zero actually showed predictions that were wrong.

    Given that zero out of three links you gave showed failures of prediction, I conclude that, mostly, your google search gives you irrelevant garbage.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  125. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    The scientists predictions have pretty much always been long term. You just haven't been paying attention.

  126. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    All scientific advances begin with scientists doing research. They don't always get their interpretations and predictions right. That's why there's always follow-up research.

    What this says is that two scientists, making a new model that considers different things, have made a prediction that's different from those made by other scientists with other models. There's no observational evidence right now showing that one is right and the other is wrong.

    It's certainly too soon to panic, but equally it's too soon to dismiss the possibility.

    Yep. And if the article had phrased it that way, I wouldn't have called it sensationalist.

    Personally, I live something like a couple hundred meters above sea level, and I have no intention of moving to a coast.

    I plan on not living on the coast a hundred years from now, either.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  127. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's not forget that ALL of the ice in the sea that melts won't change the sea level at all:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vers5VT4m8E

    This means, that only the ice that is on land that melts will add any increase. How much ice is on land? I doubt enough to make any difference at all. But that is for _more_ science to explain! The science isn't over yet!

  128. Flawed thought by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The error in your thought is that you are automatically conflating climate science with "libruls". Associating deniers with Republicanism however might be more correct.

  129. woosh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the point :)

  130. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I'm curious what you mean by saying the scientists weren't acting in good faith.

    They lack good judgment. You can't trust their opinion, because their judgment is clouded by emotion.

    Of course, you don't care about that, Mr Riverat1, because all you care about is if they are on your side. For you it's not about science, it's about tribalism.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  131. Don't Worry, Too Late Anyway by Mkkby · · Score: 2

    CO2 levels just from advanced countries is probably enough to cause damaging warming. There is no stopping billions of Asians, Africans and South Americans from becoming wealthier and demanding the same lifestyle. So the world is screwed. There will be flooding and mass extinctions -- when we do not know.

    At some point, perhaps in 100-200 years oil, gas and coal will run out. Then the world will begin a slow healing process. If nuclear energy is still expensive, populations will naturally decline as well.

    Unless you would deny billions the comfy high-energy lifestyle westerners have enjoyed, it is too late. Stop wasting time and money fighting the inevitable.

    For those who would be flooded out -- you have at least 5 decades to move. Don't expect handouts if you neglect to act in that amount of time.

  132. Re: A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    That sounds like projection on your part.

  133. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    No, but conservatives think it's a spiffy idea to teach teenagers (you know, those walking hormones) that abstinence as a way to not get pregnant. That's why the religious nutjob states have the highest rates of teen pregnancies and repeat teen pregnancies.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  134. Re: At the end of the century, who cares by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    True. But it's a bit like with liberals, it seems the number of sane ones is dwindling into insignificance.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  135. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they have done terribly.

    the only way they got close was by adding adjustments to the temperature records with fucking terrible excuse for it.

  136. Antarctica [Re:A bit sensationalist] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    This was already discussed on a previous thread.

    Yes, scientists are aware that some ice is floating. The particular article being discussed here, however, is about the ice sheet on Antarctica. Which is a continent, covered by ice over a mile thick.

    (* footnote: some of the sea level rise is also due to thermal expansion of the water as it warms).

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  137. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Have you any evidence that other scientists have less of what you call "bad faith"?

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  138. Re:A bit sensationalist [Re: How Were All of the.. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I don't know if they have better judgment or worse judgment. I didn't make any statement on the field of climatology relative to other fields.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."