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390 Billion Tons of Snow and Ice Melt Each Year As Globe Warms, Study Suggests (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today, highlighting the key findings from a new study published in the journal Nature: Thanks to global warming, our planet's glaciers continue to melt away, losing up to 390 billion tons of ice and snow per year, a new study suggests. The largest losses were glaciers in Alaska, followed by the melting ice fields in southern South America and glaciers in the Arctic. Glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges by the end of the century, including those in the U.S. The world's seas have risen about an inch in the past 50 years just due to glacier melt alone, according to the study. Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water.
You better hope it's warming. If we returned to an ice age so many far leftists would die. So would real people.
Corporatism != Free Market
The expensive orioles slugger is now just the worst. Oh and global warming mass hysteria dogs and cats eating each other blah blah blah.
From the summary: Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water.
Well, if we "lost" 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, since 1961, and it did not melt.... and the lower 48 states is not under 4 ft of water.... where did it all go?
Orbit hugging weight is a good thing. Keeps the planet on track. More coal. Clean burning, safe, and got lots of it. Burn baby burn!
Oh my. This is horrible. More water. Less ice! I'm afraid!
More AGW doom pr0n!
Where's Kevin Costner when you need him?
Life is not for the lazy.
We enlightened self hating white liberals need to fight this climate change. The fact that it is cold outside is the only thing keeping our race viable. If Madison Wisconsin is 73 degrees in the middle of January all the long dicked black folks will move to our liberal paradise of anti-Trump non-Racism. Our tiny white peckers will not be able to compete with the naturally well endowed black folks.
Keep the world cold so whites can compete. Global climate change is the #1 problem in the entire universe.
"Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported. Melted, that's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of water."
No, it isn't because, as you know, the US isn't under 4 feet of water. Or maybe they mean "lost" like they can't find it, but given the rest of the summary they seem to mean it's melted.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
it's good to get an idea of the ratio
390 billion tons sounds like a lot, until you realize the Antarctic ice sheet weighs 26500000 billion tons, so 0.001% more has melted.
Hmm.
It takes about five seconds to find contradictory studies, such as "NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses," which says "According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008." https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
You can draw your own conclusions.
Some representative estimates of just the two ice sheets:
- 26,500,000 gigatons in Antarctica
- 2,900,000 gigatons in Greenland
So, conservatively ignoring that TFS includes "snow loss" (wut?) and says most of the ice loss was from glaciers in Alaska: 390 / 29,400,000 = (whips out slide rule) 0.0013%.
But that wouldn't make for nearly as scary of a headline.
Of course it does. If no polar ice and snow melted we would be in the middle of a god damn ice age not to mention a global drought.
What is important is the balance between melting and precipitation. What is the net melt?
We better put the earth on a diet!
I wonder how the weight redistribution will effect the earth's spin... We'll end up on our side like Neptune, all the water will go the bottom. Then the weather will get real exciting!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I did some quick math and came up with... .1 inch
or 0.25 mm
sea level rise from this, since 1961
Aren't we told it was 2mm raise per year or decade or something else?
Sounds like AGW alarmists can't come up with consistent numbers, which is odd being settled science and all.
the environmentalists all living on the coastal areas and investing in real estate there and also all the politicians and hollywood ilk who have been buying up real estate in these 'doomed' places start selling it off. Until then, just ignore them and their claim you need to buy their carbon credits. See, in case you haven't figured it out yet, the left isn't compassionate and they don't care about you...they do care about your money and their power. 'There's a sucker born every minute' - P.T. Barnum.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
This study is rubbish for $Reasons along with all the other global warming studies which are also rubbish for $Reasons.
The only people who have the courage to say what is really going on are $Industry_Shill who says don't worry because it's all clouds and stuff and climate is always changing and it'll be much nicer when it's warmer anyway which is lucky because it's a totally natural process.
The only reason the sea levels are rising is Libtard tears.
Depending on who you believe, the average sea level is rising somewhere around 2mm per year. Around 1mm per year is attributable to thermal expansion of the oceans. The rest must be melt water from glaciers and snow on land.
So, check my math: The surface area of the oceans is 3.4 * 10^8 square kilometers, or 3.4 * 10^14 square meters. Each millimeter of sea level rise then corresponds to 3.4 * 10^11 cubic meters, which happens to be 340 billion tons of water. Pretty close to their 390 billion tons.
So their figure makes sense. I suppose it's useful as confirmation, but it's hardly anything new or unexpected. But the big numbers impress clueless journalists...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/04/corruption-of-the-us-temperature-record/
1000 years ago Vikings were happily raising wheat, barley and cattle on Greenland. Then it got too cold. It is still too cold.
800 years ago Northern Europe was happily growing GRAPES for wine. Then it got too cold. It is still too cold.
To melt that much ice takes 333 kJ/kg * 390,000,000,000,000 kg = 129,870,000,000,000,000 kJ / (3,600,000,000,000 kJ/TWh) = 36075 TWh. For comparison, the world energy consumption was 109136 TWh in 2015.
Why aren't we using it indoors?
300 trillions of water molecules are thrown in the air when I sneeze. "390 billion tons of ice and snow", what's that compared to the oceans weight? What's that compared to 50 years ago? Big numbers are impressive, but need to be relative, to be credible.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Notice how they always use vague terminology?
The ocean doesn't care what your political affiliation is. Right wing homeowners will be affected too.
Your empathy for your fellow citizens is overwhelming.
US has the hottest winter days in its history.
Global warming propaganda from the left is out of control.
AKA BS Headline by a lazy reporter.
Or maybe one in terms of foot ball fields.
I did some quick math and came up with... .1 inch
or 0.25 mm
Which? 1 inch is 25 mm, not 0.25. I think you converted centimeters to inches by dividing by 10, instead of multiplying
...Sounds like AGW alarmists can't come up with consistent numbers...
ROFL!! You post numbers that are inconsistant by a factor of a hundred and then tell me it's the "alarmists" that can't come up with consistent numbers?
If this weren't so funny, I'd point out that this is only one of several factors.
First, data useless without comparison data.
Second, even the original study itself is almost ridiculously vague - https://www.nature.com/article... : "...glaciers contributed 27 ± 22 millimetres to global mean sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016..." 27 plus/minus 22? LOL the errorbar is nearly the size of the datum. What does that say about the data?
Third, I'd say it's at least somewhat relevant to check historical data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Sea_Level.png ) which shows that we are currently at a sea-level low that is HISTORIC - our sea levels haven't been this low for 200+ MILLION YEARS. The 'average' sea level for earth is easily 100m higher than today. If the curve is at all predictive, it shows that sea levels were low 230ish MYa and again 550ish MYa, both low points were followed by relatively sudden increase in sea level. So what's happening now ... is predictable.
Essentially, humanity evolved at low tide, now we're bitching that the tide's coming in and is giong to knock over our sandcastles.
But then I guess that makes me a 'denier'?
-Styopa
Some native English speakers are fucking stupid.
That was the reason last time. Be pious and stop f*cking you pets!
Real danger, as always, is global cooling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...it will warm up and turn deserts into farmland and open up arctic shipping lanes making cargo shipping much more efficient. Who are you to decide the world's climate? People in desert regions would like to grow crops too.
This is the equivalent of exploding 1 million Hiroshima flesh melting atom bombs on the earth's ice sheets!!!!!!
It appears that up in the arctic, that Alaska is losing the most, followed by western Canada, and then it just keep flowing around, with eastern Russia losing the least. So, where is Alaska getting all that warming from? It can not be the lower 48 since in the upper northern hemisphere, it will move north east. When will the far left acknowledge where the large CO2 amounts are coming from and change them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You have no idea about global warming do you.
Let's guess, you want to blame China, right?
If you've got it relative to psychokinetic energy I can do the conversion myself.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
However, you would not be able to lie to yourself about what AGW is or what people are trying to tell you when your head is shoved up your arse, which you clearly do not want to happen. So how about testing the flat earthers' claims about the nonexistence of gravity? Have a mate hold a magnet and you jump off a tall building. The magnet should hold you up against the magical forces of gravity.
Random asshole on slashdot's post indicates
If it's being reported there it is highly suspect, as it WILL be highly slanted towards democrats.
Here's how you can prove it: Find ANY article that has a conservative point of view that isn't labelled "opinion."
I'll wait.
- Alex
Look at all the several feet in sea level rise (nope), look at all the new flooding (nope), look at all the people drowning (nope). What? There's no change. How can that be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTjZmmRX0Ug
How about we shoot this ice to the orbit? The temperature there is well below zero. And should the wind blow from another direction we could bring that ice back.
I meaningless number for people who don't have a purpose to live.
Get a life loser. Can you do anything other than crying a river of piss?
Everyone knows the hockey stick is bogus manipulation of data
Nope, the hockey stick graph has been confirmed by several studies. You can find plenty of references in the wikipedia page above. And if you dismiss all of the data, then what are you going to use to show that "we are still coming out of an ice age" as GP tried to claim?
Try looking at the actual findings in the actual studies though. The distinctive Hockey Stick shape in Michael Mann's original graph came about by showing 2 disparate datasets on the same graph, the reconstructed temperatures for the last couple thousand years, and then the instrumental record appended on the end. The immediate deviation from the trend for the past millenia doesn't just correspond to the start of the industrial era, it corresponds to a change in datasets. You don't get a more obvious red flag than that.
Now, absolutely, followup studies have been done since, and they have largely confirmed the flat/static trend from Mann's original work. They've also recreated the hockey stick at the end the same way by introducing the instrumental record.
Fine, you'll then say if that is all as sketchy and iffy as it sounds, you'd expect the proxy reconstructions to have troubles recreating recent warming, right? Here's an updated study by the same Michael Mann of fame for the first hockey stick graph. If you just read the overall conclusions, Mann mostly says that with new data and new methods they largely validate their previous work. However, if you look close the article also notes:
However, in the case of the early calibration/late validation CPS reconstruction with the full screened network (Fig. 2
A ), we observed evidence for a systematic bias in the underestimation of recent warming. This bias increases for earlier centuries where the reconstruction is based on increasingly sparse networks of proxy data. In this case, the observed warming rises above the error
bounds of the estimates during the 1980s decade, consistent with the known ‘‘divergence problem’’ (e.g., ref. 37), wherein the tempera-
ture sensitivity of some temperature-sensitive tree-ring data appears to have declined in the most recent decades. Interestingly, although the elimination of all tree-ring data from the proxy dataset yields a substantially smaller divergence bias, it does not eliminate
the problem altogether (Fig. 2B). This latter finding suggests that the divergence problem is not limited purely to tree-ring data, but
instead may extend to other proxy records. Interestingly, the problem is greatly diminished (although not absent—particularly in
the older networks where a decline is observed after 1980) with the EIV method,
If you then look down to Fig. 3, you'll notice that the EIV reconstruction doesn't just do a better job tracking recent warming, it also is by far the warmest reconstruction, with historic peaks exceeding anything but the big red instrumental record tacked on again.
So to summarize, your declaration that "the hockey stick graph has been confirmed by several studies" is true in the sense that they've recreated the historic trend many times. However, even the original author(Mann) as linked above notes that the methodology for recreating a fairly flat/cool historic reconstruction, also fails to reconstruct current warming. So much so as to fall outside the "error bars", and even mentions that this is the "known divergence problem", meaning it is well known that without attaching the instrumental record on the end, you don't get your nice hockey stick graph.
Where does 390Gt number come from? The study being reported on says 335 ± 144 Gt / year.
How are you measuring this? With a ruler and a cup?
I say there is 450 Billion tons being deposited every year.
Prove me wrong.
Happens every year.
firstly
Individual carbon dioxide molecules have a short life time of around 5 years in the atmosphere. However, when they leave the atmosphere, they're simply swapping places with carbon dioxide in the ocean. The final amount of extra CO2 that remains in the atmosphere stays there on a time scale of centuries.
You're a bit thick so again, CO2 remains in the atmosphere a long time
This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.
So it isn't just last years CO2 emissions that are warming Canada.
This is a much more appropriate timescale
If we extend our timeline back to 1750 and total up how much CO2 each country has emitted to date, we calculate each nation’s ‘cumulative emissions’.
If we fast-forward to the accumulated totals we see today, the US and Europe dominate in terms of cumulative emissions. China’s rapid growth in emissions over the last few decades now makes it the world’s second largest cumulative emitter, although it still comes in at less than 50% of the US total.
So in fact America is responsible for over twice as much CO2 as China.
But wait it gets better.
The key drawback of measuring the total national emissions is that it takes no account of the nation's population size. China is currently the world’s largest emitter, but since it also has the largest population, all being equal we would expect this to be the case. To make a fair comparison of contributions, we have to therefore compare emissions in terms of CO2 emitted per person.
Let's just say, per person American's have been, and still are extremely bad.
Let's look here starting in 1950 to match the timescale in the summary and report. You can slide it yourself to see that the US is bright red on the map for every year and China barely breaks into the oranges. America's CO2 per person is over double China's even now. And don't forget you started at 16 tonnes when China was at less than 1.
And all of that says nothing about how laughably inaccurate your 'climate modelling' is. Blaming China because of the wind patterns LOL. This is just you not even using the correct data.
You are a complete joke on this topic WindBourne.
27-22 is still positive and 27+22 is even bigger. so it's causing it but we dont know exactly how much.
Oh well if you cant measure it closely enough I'm just gunna deny it like the denier I am.
The largest losses were glaciers in Alaska, followed by the melting ice fields in southern South America
How does your 'which way the wind blows' 'climate model' explain southern South America coming in second?
What is the intended purpose of an article like this?
390 BILLION!!!! TONS!!!!! of snow is mellllllllllllting!
Who the fuck cares? Tell me how much MORE or LESS snow is melting in any given year. Of course the total number is going to be staggeringly huge, this is a fucking PLANET, not your back yard.
But the staggeringly huge number is being used for a purpose. It would appear to be designed to get us hysterical... but what is the end game?
Many people react negatively to hysteria inducing claims but many ignorant people assume they are motivating people to help them in their cause. Is this a counter-productive article or is it just sowing hysteria to cloud the reality of what is happening to the climate?
Articles like this are just plain shit... even if they do manage to generate page views somehow. This is the extent of my participation in what will be a shitshow in the comments section. Numerous otherwise intelligent people will act utterly stupid and display their blindness for everyone but themselves to see while others will argue for nuclear power and ... fuck it.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen