from the what-goes-around-comes-around dept.
The new research in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres finds chemicals used in pesticides that have been accumulating in glaciers and ice sheets around the world since the 1940s are being released as Himalayan glaciers melt as a result of climate change.
These pollutants are winding up in Himalayan lakes, potentially impacting aquatic life and bioaccumulating in fish at levels that may be toxic for human consumption.
The new study shows that even the most remote areas of the planet can be repositories for pollutants and sheds light on how pollutants travel around the globe, according to the study's authors.
The Himalayan glaciers contain even higher levels of atmospheric pollutants than glaciers in other parts of the world "because of their proximity to south Asian countries that are some of the most polluted regions of the world," said Xiaoping Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and an author on the new study.
[...] The study adds important data to the bigger picture of how pollutants cycle around the globe, Miner said. Similar studies have been conducted at the poles and in Europe, but not as much is known about pollutants in the Himalaya. Each mountain range has its own characteristics that influence how chemicals move through the environment, she added.
"The Earth is a closed system. Everything released on the Earth, stays somewhere on the Earth," Miner said.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:39PM (22 children)
I don't have any comment of real utility, but who the fuck is reading the same damn papers as me? I remember reading this study about a month ago when it was first published. It was interesting and bad but not terribly concerning in the grand scale of climate change disasters, heck it's not even the most concerning thing about the Himalayan glaciers melting. The indo-pakistani water shortages of the next decade or two are gonna be mass death and migration on a heretofor never seen scale.
To see it suddenly have a news story is weird. Considering the average readership of a published science article is supposedly 0.7, I'm pretty surprised to see obscure ecological impact papers get news traction a month later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:51PM (2 children)
'nuf said.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
I guess those stats about paper readerships don't apply to the big name journals.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday August 02 2019, @10:33AM
Or fear-mongering eco-stuff. Science needs to come to terms with a fundamental conflict of interest that is not disclosed: Public fear drives funding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:57PM (10 children)
Quoted, get your excuses ready..." But no one knew the sun played such a large role in Earth's climate"
Yea, we did.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:22PM (9 children)
How are you dumbfucks still this stupid?
I first heard this argument, let me check the graphs, half a degree C ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @01:54AM (8 children)
And? The grand minimum hasn't happened yet. Looking at the data I see lower lows and lower highs: http://www.sidc.be/silso/monthlyssnplot [www.sidc.be]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @02:25AM (7 children)
And you're presenting cyclical data with a fraction of a fraction of a percent variation to explain away a long term trend that it doesn't align to at all because you're fucking retarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @03:39AM (6 children)
Not sure what you are looking at but during these grand minimums the number sunspots drop to near zero for decades which is associated with the sun's magnetic field retracting to within the photosphere. This results in 200 fold differences in sunspots, 500 fold differences in solar magnetic flux at the earth, and tenfold difference in cosmic ray intensity.
https://phys.org/news/2016-05-sun-magnetic-field-grand-minimum.html [phys.org]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2002JA009343 [wiley.com]
So what fractions of a percent are you referring to?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @03:06PM (5 children)
Do you know what a sunspot actually is? I wish to remind you that you're fucking retarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @05:25PM (4 children)
It is amazing how idiotic the people worried about "climate change" are... just look at yourself.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @05:34PM (3 children)
Yes, yes, I know, expecting you to know the first goddamn thing about sunspots while bullshitting on them is indeed idiotic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @05:49PM (2 children)
I could answer your question about sunspots, just like I responded to "fraction of a fraction of a percent" and then you'll just go on to some other thing and call me a retard instead of recognizing that you have been wrong in every single post in this thread. I mean, you are mentally ill.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @05:54PM (1 child)
The effect on insolation, is indeed, less than a tenth of percent.
You're retarded. Like utterly brainless. Devoid of conscious goddamn thought.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @06:14PM
Let's get a little more specific for
Here's the pseudo-academic who first proposed your dumbass theory [john-daly.com], with a 1998 update containing a whole section on "my bad, my original prediction is we'd get rapid cooling by 1990 towards an ice age in 2030 and I was just wrong about which sunspot cycle would do it"
Proceeding from there into a lengthy bullshit about the butterfly effect and lambasting the IPCC for being unreasonably certain that CO2 would massively outpower solar variation in climate forcing, because who can possibly know how things work*. He then makes the prediction that cooling should begin in 2007(NOPE) towards a global minimum in 2111. Strange that on being shown to be totally and completely wrong, he completely revises the core pattern of his theory from being 30 year cycles to 200 year cycles.
And yet here you are, spouting the same bullshit. No brain.
*Just as an aside most likely scenario predictions from the IPCC 2001 report are about a tenth of a degree off from actual values in 2018, since we're doing the whole testing our predictions thing.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:57PM (2 children)
What's this?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
Peep the percentages in South Asia [springer.com] for population under water stress conditions. The positive offsets of increased monsoons in coastal india are way smaller than the negative effects in the Indus Valley.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @02:28AM
Not to mention that the water sources they do have in India are polluted as hell. Some are so bad that they have a 80% risk of causing disease from exposures as small as 15 ml.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:06PM
Well, we can add famine to that drought once the fish are too toxic to eat!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:09PM (3 children)
So more border walls will be proposed?
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:43PM (1 child)
Er... yes? The destruction of the earth caused predominantly by simplistic short-sighted nationalist approaches to problems will create new problems that provoke new simplistic short-sighted nationalist approaches.
That pattern in history has repeated enough to be kinda obvious.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 01 2019, @10:11PM
The silver-lining about that is: the smaller the territory under control, the faster they'll choke in their own shit. Easier to learn what's that fuss with that responsibility they (don't?) talk about (even if it may be too late to apply the lessons).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @11:22AM
the problem is indians and pakistanis have nukes.
I think those can take down a wall.
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 01 2019, @08:56PM (4 children)
"The Earth is a closed system. Everything released on the Earth, stays somewhere on the Earth," Miner said.
I love this guy already.
In the parlance of our times, externalities are a b*(&(.
Someone please send capitalists the memo, you can find them easily because their heads are in a hole yet they are driving a ferrrari, thanks.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:06PM
Then our course is clear -- for guidance, we must look to the land that has operated for decades under this assumption. I refer, of course, to Las Vegas.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 02 2019, @12:20AM (2 children)
The earth/moon/sun system could probably be modeled as closed, the earth by itself, lol, nope.Or is the def of closed system redefined and I missed the memo?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @02:38AM
Thermodynamics originally had two categories of "open" and "closed." However, that was turned on its head by the discovery of mass/energy equivalence. The preferred (but not common usage) is that what used to be "open" is still "open" and "closed" became "isolated." A "closed" system, under the new meaning, does not allow matter to be transferred through its barrier, but does allow energy to pass through. In that new usage, the Earth is a "closed" system, because the matter that makes it in and out of the Earth system is basically a rounding error, in a thermodynamic sense, compared to the energy that radiates in and out.
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday August 02 2019, @07:12AM
Is there a measurable amount of matter somehow emitting into space from the earth, leaving some trail as the planet moves through space?
I supposed every light too beams out for about infinity.
There is a time for quibbling and I don't think this is one of them though.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hartree on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:34PM
"The Earth is a closed system. Everything released on the Earth, stays somewhere on the Earth,"
Helium escapes the atmosphere over the long term.
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:34PM
If only secrets and shit had the same physical and metaphysical properties.
If Las Vegas exports no trash and didn't have to export water, then I would be like wow.
But it does in both cases.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @02:01AM
Get rid of this guy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Friday August 02 2019, @02:03AM (1 child)
So much obsession with if humans caused global warming or not. It doesn't matter. Almost none of the problems or solutions change. Breathing diesel smoke is no fun, doesn't matter if it makes earth hotter. Pesticides in melt water is bad, doesn't matter why it melted. Simply focusing on the things that are the same no matter what with all of the energy currently spent fighting would have a massive impact.
In the same way that the insistence on making environmental protection anti business as many insist is stupid. Focusing the pro environmental protection marketing on the pro business side would make more fans. All those jobs installing windmills and solar panels or insulating houses. All the new HVAC systems and cars to be sold. There are trillions to be made. Those of us who want a nice planet need to stop beating or heads against the same arguments that we know don't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @10:51AM
If humans didn't cause it, why would people do things differently?