Climate Central reports
[...] A massive iceberg roughly 225 square miles in size--or in more familiar terms, 10 times the size of Manhattan--broke off [from the Pine Island Glacier] in July 2015. Scientists subsequently spotted cracks in the glacier on a November 2016 flyover. And in January, another iceberg cleaved off the glacier.
Satellite imagery captured the most recent calving event, which Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat said " is the equivalent of an 'aftershock'" following the July 2015 event. The iceberg was roughly "only" the size of Manhattan, underscoring just how dramatic the other breakups have been.
[...] The ocean under Pine Island Glacier's ice shelf has warmed about 1°F since the 1990s. That's causing the ice shelf to melt and pushing the grounding line--the point where the ice begins to float--back toward land, creating further instability.
[...] The glaciers [such as the Pine Island Glacier] and ice shelves [such as the Larsen C ice shelf, which is on a death watch] help hold back a massive ice sheet on land. Their failure would send that ice to the ocean, pushing sea levels up to 13 feet higher than they are today.
[...] Cutting carbon pollution presents the only path forward to stave off the worst impacts of a melting Antarctic.
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Sunday February 19 2017, @02:21AM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:29AM
Meh. I wouldn't worry.
It will melt soon and no longer pose a threat...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gringer on Sunday February 19 2017, @02:23AM
As far as I'm aware, this shelf hasn't yet calved. Even if it does, scientists aren't sure whether or not it will refreeze (and then just go back to "normal"), or separate entirely from the shelf.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Snotnose on Sunday February 19 2017, @02:28AM
If you or I had shed this much weight this fast we'd be heralded in the appropriate newsletters/email lists. Antarctica does it and people throw shit fits?
Either I'm missing something here, or I'm dumber than I thought.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @02:32AM
I'm gonna go with the last part.
What do you think "I'm sorry I'm not sorry" means?
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday February 20 2017, @02:25AM
Offtopic? Really? I comment on a continent losing a big chunk of it's weight with a stupid diet (paleo diet practitioners died around age 30), and offtopic is the best you can do?
/ I wanna know who moderates comments, and how they moderated it
// there are some really stupid people here
/// or people with huge sticks up their ass
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by dry on Monday February 20 2017, @03:32AM
I'm not the moderator and perhaps you were going for funny but a continent losing what, 0.01% of its mass is compared to you losing a large amount of mass doesn't seem to be particularly on topic, not does the subject.
BTW, where do you get the idea that Paleo diet practitioners die at 30? Even in Paleo times, if they survived childhood disease and accidents including war, they'd survive into their 60's easily and sometimes into their '80's and '90's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:24AM
What is your purpose in stripping out #FragmentIdentifiers in URLs after I have made an effort to include those?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:30AM
It seems a lot of sites are using #randomcrap to implement tracking. So maybe they got autoremoved. But if this time they weren't a tracker, but proper tag-with-id/a-with-name for a given point in the document, the autoremover was too "smart".
(Score: 3, Informative) by cmn32480 on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:30AM
I try to strip all the cruft off links. You are NOT special.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:39AM
That's not cruft, you nitwit.
Talk to the other editors to find out how ignorant you are.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by charon on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:53AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:31AM
Clearly, quantity and quality can lack overlap.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:57PM
I guess you need to hire someone that can do this at a salary appropriate for the position?
I've done stuff that got altered after I put careful time into it as well, and ended up disappointed with what happened to my work, but come on, the editors here are free and do this as a service. Your proposed article was posted. We'd be discussing it now were it not for the complaints regarding the short cut in the short cut.
Perhaps we can request that users with a certain level of karma are allowed to post reference points as you had done? It'd be a matter of someone being able to alter the site's code to know that User #X shouldn't get as heavy of an editorial hand on the URLs, as flashing lights and manual reminders will not scale. But it would be prone to abuse.
personally I have learned to live with safeguards such as what the editor had done, but on my own, I make use of similar organization methods... too much is open to abuse to really expect to use a lot of that methodology publically without risking encountering someone that wants to advertise to me with the same methods.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cmn32480 on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:54PM
In my opinion, some fragment identifiers are worthwhile. Others are, as I said, cruft.
Often the #content fragment will hide things like a title bar, which, in many cases seems to be an attempt to hide the source of the of the content. This is particularly useful to a submitter who has sources that can be considered questionable. It is certainly used when sources are very far left (as yours tend to be) or very far to the right (as The Mighty Buzzards tend to be) of center on any particular issue. If a member of the community is reading the article and clicks the link without considering what it is (and thankfully they do trust us not to post crap links), they ought to be able to evaluate if the source is credible or not without having to take your word or mine for it. When linking to a related article in a summary, having the entire bit, including the page that it is coming from displayed is a good thing, in my opinion.
Ever since you tossed in a link (which I cannot find, and will not be wasting a ton of time looking for) to a Google archive version of a page that was 4 lines long and had all kinds of highlights, emphasis, etc, that was not in the original source for the article, I have qualified every link you submit as suspect.
And for the tracking question that came up earlier [soylentnews.org], we see a lot of links in submissions that are pulled direct from the address bar and have the trackers still embedded in them. This article from bufferapp.com [bufferapp.com] gives a decent guide to understanding them and what each piece means. This kind of cruft we try to be extremely conscious about removing.
Gewg_, I'm truly sorry that you don't like the job I do. Some of the articles you submit, while leaning a lot further left and toward the "OMG the world is ending tomorrow" than makes me comfortable, are really very good. Where I personally think you fall short is often trying to cherry pick small bits of sentences or paragraphs that hold with your personal beliefs instead of letting the article stand on its own and letting the community debate it on merit instead of only the points that you want them to see.
I shall now go cry in the corner, for I have been called a nitwit by some guy on the internet.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:36PM
Thank you for the explanation. I'd never heard the # part of a link called a fragment marker before.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:46PM
Often the #content fragment will hide things like a title bar
I block a great deal of junk in my browser.
If I have ever linked to a page that does what you described, I regret that.
I make an effort to avoid such situations.
When I come across a page that does ridiculous nonsense with their presentation, I try to find another page with similar content and link to that instead.
That said, it doesn't sound like you are actually talking about the browser's title bar but rather the headline within the page.
On some occasions, I've chosen a #FragmentIdentifier that is a bit farther down the page, where the actual content starts.
In that case, the #FragmentIdentifier helps to -avoid- such page-construction nonsense.
Again, this is in consideration of our users who depend on a screenreader; a lowest-common-denominator thing.
evaluate if the source is credible
I'd like to hear from anyone here whose browser does not allow him/her to hover over the hyperlink and see the URL.
You are hand-waving.
crap links
You are hand-waving.
If you are not willing to click the link and see what results, and evaluate that, what good is it having you on staff?
since [the time] you tossed in a link [...] to a Google [cache] version of a page
I had done it prior to that and that passed without a ripple.
You are hand-waving again.
I ALWAYS include a link to the (orig) page.
Again, if you're not willing to click the link and evaluate that, what use are you to the site?
we see a lot of links in submissions that [...] have the trackers still embedded in them
I challenge you to point to even 1 of those from me.
I make an effort to remove that junk.
[URLs] pulled direct from the address bar
I rail against that myself.
(The cold weather viking bikers link the other day got a rebuke from me for its form.)
I'm similarly rebuking you right now regarding your ability to evaluate what is useful in a URL and what is not.
sources [...] very far left (as yours tend to be) or very far to the right (as The Mighty Buzzards tend to be)
I've said before that I wouldn't give you a plugged nickel for a person or a story without a point of view.
I consider the types associated with that to be intellectually lazy.
If you can't defend your belief system when it is challenged, what you have hasn't been arrived at through an actual thought process; it's just prejudice.
I've also mentioned that those types of stories tend to get the most activity here, so clearly there is a hankering for them.
article from bufferapp.com
...which is about tracking junk that I have already said I make a point of removing.
It has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Additionally, that page's construction is an example of something for which I might include a #FragmentIdentifier.
1) The content doesn't begin at the very top of the page (HTML-only presentation).
1a) Accessibility guidelines also state that if you don't put your content at the very top of the page, the very first thing on your page should be a Jump To Content link.
Not done there.
2) There's interstitial junk between the headline and the start of the text body (though I've seen much worse).
Compounding the badness of the page construction, is the fact that there is no #FragmentIdentifier just before the headline.
The first useful #FragmentIdentifier is #article_wrapper. [bufferapp.com]
Use of Accessibility features on the page is a ham-fisted, slap-dash effort.
As such, even using the #FragmentIdentifier that is available is a less-than-ideal situation.
I shall now go cry in the corner, for I have been called a nitwit by some guy on the internet.
...and well you should. 8-)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Some guy on the internet)
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:30AM
I'm using a browser window that is probably somewhat smaller than most readers, and fonts that are probably much larger than other readers'. When I opened the edited link,
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/antarctica-iceberg-climate-21167 [climatecentral.org]
it showed me the Climate Central logo and the beginnings of columns labelled "Who We Are," "What We Do" and "About Our Expertise." By scrolling down, I could see the story, none of which was visible until I scrolled.
When I opened the submitter's link,
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/antarctica-iceberg-climate-21167#content [climatecentral.org]
the story's headline appeared conveniently--and less confusingly--at the top of my browser window.
The text after the "#" is not sent to the Web server.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_identifier [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:55AM
I've seen that claimed before.
OTOH, as AC #468854 notes above, some sites are adding an identifier to the URL they return as what, at first glance, appears to be a #FragmentIdentifier.
The ones I've noticed have a dot right after the crunch, then a 8-character or so alphanumeric string.
...so I'm skeptical about the claim.
.
As you note, folks with a non-typical browser config can benefit from an added #FragmentIdentifier.
I know that we have 1 blind Soylentil who relies on a screenreader and I think I've spotted another with greatly-reduced vision.
Those guys (and any potential newbies with similar limitations) are specifically who I'm thinking of when I add #FragmentIdentifiers.
That others also benefit is gravy.
When I find a site/page which doesn't use accessibility features, I append #NoFragmentIdentifiers to their URL to note that I have checked the link and that it is alive (but that their web guy is clueless).
Some sites are so horribly constructed and so thoroughly piss me off that I also append ?ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures .
Apparently, encountering that completely freaks out cmn32480 causing him to start deleting anything that he doesn't understand.
...instead if asking questions of knowledgeable cohorts or doing some basic research.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:47PM
OTOH, as AC #468854 notes above, some sites are adding an identifier to the URL they return as what, at first glance, appears to be a #FragmentIdentifier.
The ones I've noticed have a dot right after the crunch, then a 8-character or so alphanumeric string.
...so I'm skeptical about the claim.
They aren't sent to the server. UNLESS you have javascript enabled and the server includes a spy script to extract the identifier and send it back to the server (or a 3rd party tracking server) as part of its javascripty spying job. But that's independent of the initial http page load.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:04PM
Now, see there.
Some might have thought that this (sub)thread wandered away from the original topic and is a distraction, but it's getting some useful information posted.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:45AM
I mean seriously, if it didn't want to be turned into salt water it shouldn't have been so close to melting temperature. Victimless crime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @03:50AM
Better yet it shouldn't be sitting IN salt water, talk about an accident waiting to happen!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:46AM
A Manhattan sized chunk, 10 times the size of Manhattan?!?
Did it stuff a sock down it's pants?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:01AM
I had to read TFS about 3 times as well.
The Manhattan sized chunk is only the most recent piece to break off.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:18AM
Somehow, I see Antarctica as the freezer box of this planet, and like the freezer box in your house, unless defrosted, will cover itself in ice by stripping the air around it of moisture.
If this water was not returned to the ocean by the mechanism of calving, eventually all the water on the planet would end up there, frozen.
This is part of one of Nature's cycles that has been going on long before we came on the scene. The relentless cycle of air dehumidification and calving.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:54AM
...which has been exacerbated by humans burning stuff.
has been going on long before we came on the scene
...but never at the current rate.
Earth Temperature Timeline [xkcd.com]
...and you haven't mentioned that there are giant cities built near sea level on coasts.
Accepting sea level rise as inevitable is writing off a HUGE amount of infrastructure globally.
...not to mention droughts, increasingly violent weather, and population migrations because of crop failures that accompany the warming.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:46PM
Interesting chart.
I question the amount of height the sea level is claimed to change, as the oceans are already a very big place and changing their level is going to require an awful lot of water.
Same concern I had regarding the Biblical flood of Noah's time. I have a helluva hard time accounting for the sudden appearance of so much water, and it takes more faith than I have to think God monkeyed around with his own laws of physics in order to confound the hell out of anyone taking his own instructions to verify everything and hold to that which is true.
I don't doubt there *was* a flood. There are many accounts of one. I question whether or not it was global. Plate Tectonic shifts do a neat job explaining why we find sea shells in the most unusual places, as well as explain why the layers in the earth lay out as they do ( I used to work with a bunch of geologists at Chevron ).
My main concern is with additional energy ( thermal ) in the air, we are going to see more and more of it converted to shaft work ( storms ) through the thermodynamics of the phase change of water in the liquid-vapor region. We have one example of what appears to be one helluva storm already in our solar system... the great red spot of Jupiter. It would not surprise me to see a perpetual superstorm emerge on this planet if we keep trapping all that heat in our atmosphere, just as it would not surprise me to hear a very loud squeal emit from some entertainment venue which is relentlessly cranking up the gain on their microphones.
A lot of this smacks of Chaos theory, and what happens as certain parameters are changed.
Another thing that concerns me with increasing CO2 levels is increased acidification of the ocean which will dissolve the carbonate structures that a lot of marine life depends on. They simply weren't designed to operate out of their pH range. Will they adapt? I do not know.
I have a homebrew carbonator I use to prepare my own sodapop and experimented once on carbonating magnesium hydroxide ( Milk of Magnesia ) in the hopes of making a sodapop flavored bowel cleanser. I noted how the magnesium hydroxide went right into solution as the CO2 went in. My calculations indicated my CO2 was forming Magnesium Bicarbonate, which is far more soluble in water than the hydroxide form. My intent was also to make a replacement for the sodium bicarbonate I commonly use for tummy upsets. So on the next tummy upset, I drank my special sodapop.
Learned a lesson. The CO2 came back out as the magnesium bicarbonate went to magnesium chloride. And the magnesium ion reversed osmotic pressure in the gut, sending contents out with considerable vigor under pneumatic forces. Took me several days before the bathroom smells were gone.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:04PM
I question the amount of height the sea level is claimed to change, as the oceans are already a very big place and changing their level is going to require an awful lot of water.
Antarctica is estimated to have 26.5 million cubic kilometres of ice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21692423 [bbc.co.uk]
The area of the world ocean is estimated at 361.9 million square kilometres.
https://ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/etopo1_ocean_volumes.html [noaa.gov]
By simply dividing the volume of ice by the area of the ocean I crudely estimate there could be 73.2 m of sea level rise if all that ice were melted. In actuality it would rise less than that, because some of that ice is already resting on the sea floor and low-lying land would be flooded. When ice that's below sea level melts, it actually causes the sea level to fall a little. The BBC article I linked gives an estimate of 58 m.
The estimate you may be questioning, however, is for the West Antarctic ice sheet only. In Wikipedia someone has written that the West Antarctic ice sheet comprises about 10% of the ice in Antarctica. I wasn't able to confirm the source that's cited because dx.doi.org wasn't working for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_ice_sheet [wikipedia.org]
https://dx.doi.org/10.1029%2F2000JB900449 [doi.org]
However 13 feet is 4.0 m; that's a fair bit less than 10% of 58 m.
Later in the article is a prediction that melting in "West Antarctica could contribute an additional 8 inches of water" (20 cm) to the ocean "by the end of this century." If that fails to happen, it won't be for lack of enough ice.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:45PM
Yes, but it's doubtful that all of Antarctica will melt (not that that was claimed in this article, but I've seen some...).
What I noticed missing in the summary is any estimate of how long it would take the glacier to move out to being an ice-shelf. There probably isn't a decent prediction, but it's worth noting that a few centuries wouldn't really be surprising. (Of course, other things are happening at the same time, and every fractional inch of rise in sea level places more ice on the float, where it can more easily move. So a shorter time-frame also wouldn't surprise me.)
Still, I suspect that "300 foot rise in sea level" as being interpolated by a reporter, unless the original phrase had a whole bunch of qualifiers around it.
This is significant, but it's quite unlikely to be all that significant in and of itself, but only as a part of a much more widespread process.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:00PM
I didn't see a mention of a "300 foot rise in sea level."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday February 20 2017, @02:52AM
You're right. It was a 13 foot rise that I didn't believe (unless the summary has been edited). I feel innumerate.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @10:19PM
Those among us who are hundreds of feet up [google.com] on a chunk of rock might easily poo-poo what may or may not happen.
For some of our neighbors living in a sandy coastal area, [google.com] however, this could be life-altering stuff.
the Biblical flood of Noah's time
Clearly not a global event.
The record doesn't support a massive die-off of plants as would happen as the event was described.
N.B. Bill Cosby's 1960s retelling of the story is priceless. [youtube.com]
(Just image how much poop 2 elephants would generate in 40-plus days--not to mention trying to keep the rabbit population at just 2.)
I have a helluva hard time accounting for the sudden appearance of so much water
The devastation of the Minoan civilization on Crete is a better model for what was obviously a local event.
Assuming that it even happened with the big boat and one clan surviving, a much better explanation than 40 days of rain is a seismically-generated wall of water from a supervolcano. [google.com]
increasing CO2 levels
There needs to be a much greater focus in the schools on the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus.
If everybody knew that the surface temperature of that place is enough to melt lead, attitudes would be different.
pressure in the gut, sending contents out with considerable vigor
Frijoles (Pinto paste) has gotten me there. Hydrogen sulfide and methane instead of CO2.
Peruanos are even less gassy. Milder taste too. Typically priced a bit higher, however.
Smaller portions consumed at shorter intervals keeps me regular without the drama.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday February 20 2017, @06:16AM
Thanks... I learned yet more today on this thanks to you guys.
Sure helps me out when I invariably enter into theological arguments.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:27AM
What is a manhattan and how many football fields would that be? Or i don't know use some sort of meaningful measure like cubic km.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:53AM
Well, first you take Gabriël Fahrenheit's wife, and ask her if you could please stick a thermometer in her armpit ...
Then you use the resulting temperature scale to discuss a humongous chunk of melting ice.
It's all quite logical(*), really!
(*) in the USA, Micronesia, Palau, Belize, Bahamas and Cayman Islands
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Sunday February 19 2017, @02:42PM
A Manhattan is a cocktail made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters.(according to wikipedia)
I guess it would depend on how small you fold them, as to 'how many football fields' you could put in a cocktail glass?
Anymore silly questions?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 19 2017, @11:02AM
It's because of Trump making Manhattan great again. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @01:06PM
The highly advanced civilization living inside the planet at the south pole is doing all this. They are going to come back and take over the planet. They went underground because the atmospheric conditions did not suit them and they were dying.
There were a lot of expeditions to the south pole a few decades ago consisting of navy warships. Most of the navy ships were destroyed or badly damaged during the encounter with the civilization living down there.
Now they are breaking free and will take the planet back. It is no use fighting them. Cooperating is far more productive.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday February 19 2017, @01:12PM
Cthulhu has developed eczema. The chunk is actually one of his skin flakes. I know, ewww, right?
Washington DC delenda est.