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For this study, [lead author Eric] Rignot and his collaborators conducted what he called the longest-ever assessment of remaining Antarctic ice mass. Spanning four decades, the project was also geographically comprehensive; the research team examined 18 regions encompassing 176 basins, as well as surrounding islands.
[...] The team was able to discern that between 1979 and 1990, Antarctica shed an average of 40 gigatons of ice mass annually. (A gigaton is 1 billion tons.) From 2009 to 2017, about 252 gigatons per year were lost.
The pace of melting rose dramatically over the four-decade period. From 1979 to 2001, it was an average of 48 gigatons annually per decade. The rate jumped 280 percent to 134 gigatons for 2001 to 2017.
Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–2017 (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1812883116)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @11:25AM (2 children)
I know what was literally stated. What they meant was that sea level rise makes being near the sea risky, along with something like "denying" it would mean I was at risk of "learning my lesson".
First, I never denied the sea level rise may be a risk in the future. In fact I am open to much larger rates/amounts of sea level rise since I don't buy into their tenth of a mm precision in sea level measurements. Second, the people who supposedly believe this stuff don't seem to be applying the "knowledge" towards any practical purpose (or are they and I just havent heard about it?).
Hopefully that clarifies it.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 17 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)
> I would believe they know what happens after death before that they measured the "global sea level" to within 4 mm
Because the ocean surface is chaotic, with waves, tides, temperature changes, storm surges, boat wakes, and even the movements of fish making ripples on the surface, you really think it's not possible to measure global sea level to within 4mm?
It's actually not that hard. One way is to put a big floating object in the water. A gigantic cruise ship or oil tanker works. That smooths out all the little waves. Then, observe its height over a period of days, to smooth out the variations in weather, and also tides. Another way is just use radar from space. Still another way is measure the water level near the shore, record the elevation at high and low tides. Continents are quite nicely steady enough to make that a very good way to measure sea level.
Anyway, those sorts of objections, that scientists can't measure because they are too stupid to notice, understand, and account for various factors that would affect a measurement, or that water is too chaotic and no one and nothing can measure it, or that measuring instruments are grossly inaccurate and can't be believed, well, they are standard, and wrong, contentions that some scientific illiterates like to push, for reasons that have nothing to do with facts. It won't fool anyone but fellow fools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @05:38PM
I already shared a link above that describes the issues with everything you just wrote. It is in fact not simple at all to do any of those things and (unsurprisingly to anyone who is familiar with data collection) require all sorts of adjustments and approximations and data cleaning.