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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Storm-driven ocean swells have triggered the catastrophic disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves in recent decades, according to new research published in Nature today.
Lead author Dr Rob Massom, of the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, said that reduced sea ice coverage since the late 1980s led to increased exposure of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to ocean swells, causing them to flex and break. "Sea ice acts as a protective buffer to ice shelves, by dampening destructive ocean swells before they reach the ice shelf edge," Dr Massom said. "But where there is loss of sea ice, storm-generated ocean swells can easily reach the exposed ice shelf, causing the first few kilometres of its outer margin to flex."
"Over time, this flexing enlarges pre-existing fractures until long thin 'sliver' icebergs break away or 'calve' from the shelf front. This is like the 'straw that broke the camel's back', triggering the runaway collapse of large areas of ice shelves weakened by pre-existing fracturing and decades of surface flooding."
Study co-author Dr Luke Bennetts, from the University of Adelaide's School of Mathematical Sciences, said the finding highlights the need for sea ice and ocean waves to be included in ice sheet modelling. This will allow scientists to more accurately forecast the fate of the remaining ice shelves and better predict the contribution of Antarctica's ice sheet to sea level rise, as climate changes. "The contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently the greatest source of uncertainty in projections of global mean sea level rise," Dr Bennetts said.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:14PM (2 children)
Based on your posting history, your consistent position is: "Climate change is happening, but it's not a big deal, so don't worry about it or do anything about it."
The evidence is that that position is not accurate. As for Al Gore, I'll just say that I wish he hadn't gotten involved, since he's a perfect straw man for those who would like to pretend that the problem of climate change isn't a serious problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by requerdanos on Saturday June 16 2018, @10:05PM
That position is in fact not accurate. It's not a big deal because people insist on connecting it with the imminent end of the world with cataclysmic disaster language not based on reality. It is, rather, a big deal because what we are doing to our own climate through pollution and environmental mismanagement have consequences that are bad enough on their own without also using inflationary language as a god to be worshiped.
And that's been my consistent position: The consequences of our harm to our climate are bad enough on their own without also using inflationary language as a god to be worshiped. The reality is bad enough. The Earth does not need people to lie on its behalf when the truth will do a better job.
In addition to being a blowhard ass, I must admit that he's also done work in the areas of carbon sequestration via carbon credits and trying to reduce and limit human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. His influence hasn't been all bad. If he wasn't such a slimy catastrophe-promoting liar, I would think his heart's in the right place. (But he is, and it probably isn't.)
And in focusing on deliberately exaggerated, catastrophe-centered inflationary language, Gore is certainly not alone--TFA here does the same, to a lesser extent, and it's a frequent emotional argument that the pro-catastrophe nuts (who are just as wrong as the denier-nuts) stick to as a tenet of dogma. They're wrong.
You are declaring that I am a "climate change denier" based on my being concerned over the data, the reality, the problems we face, and not because of erroneous and frankly counterproductive emotional declarations of the imminent destruction of the planet.
Frankly, that's the same thing your buddy Gore [dailycaller.com] does*, as recently as several months ago, and you're both equally wrong to the extent that you do.
I am not explaining this because I believe that I can convince you that reality is better than really attractive lies; rather, because I want you to know what I think of your line of argument, and by proxy, what a group of people thinks about the group of people who think as you do, in order to hopefully contain it a bit. Because as long as we are arguing over "which lie" we should follow, as the most vocal voices on climate change insist we do, then we are not doing anything about it, and that's bad.
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* "Reporter Confronts Al Gore On Sea Level Rise Claims, Gets Called A ‘Denier’" [dailycaller.com], The Daily Caller, August 17, 2017.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday June 17 2018, @01:22AM
Don't bogart that stash of evidence! Let us know why that position is not accurate.