SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
(CNN)This week, a trillion-ton hunk of ice broke off Antarctica.
You probably know that. It was all over the Internet.
Among the details that have been repeated ad nauseam: The iceberg is nearly the size of Delaware, which prompted some fun musing on Twitter about where exactly Delaware is and how anyone is supposed to approximate the square footage of that US state. The ice, which has been named A68, represents more than 12% of the Larsen C ice shelf, a sliver on the Antarctic Peninsula. And most important: None of this has anything to do with man-made climate change.
The problem: That last detail -- the climate one -- is misleading at best.
At worst, it's wrong.
Some scientists think this has a lot to do with global warming.
I spent most of Thursday on the phone with scientists, talking to them about the huge iceberg off Antarctica and what it means. Here are my five takeaways.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/world/sutter-iceberg-antarctica-climate-change/index.html
[Warning: CNN autoplay video - Ed]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday July 17 2017, @06:04AM (34 children)
So we are supposed to believe #FakeNews #CNN when they say to ignore the actual scientists who might know something in favor of some more global warming scaremongering from a columnist who focuses on "climate change and social justice." Satire is dead because reality is now too insane to poke fun at. It really is a religion for some people. And at least as dangerous as any of the old ones.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:16AM (9 children)
When I am agreeing with jmorris that this particular event is dramatized misinformation.
CNN's caliber of news hasn't been good for 10-15 years though, just like plenty of other news sources biased to either the right or left.
If people weren't pandering for this, maybe more journalists could work on improving their journalistic integrity to 'mostly impartial' with documented biases left, right, or pro/con (pick an issue), and help the populace get back to figuring out what issues are actually important to them.
Based on that though, it is Keeping up with the Kardashians, bashing on backwards pro-white conservatives, or calling out those sjw libtards.
American is so fucked.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Some call me Tim on Monday July 17 2017, @06:54AM (7 children)
CNN employees have admitted that all of their Russia garbage is about profit and nothing else. Next thing you know, they'll be the ones looking for Bat Boy! Come to think of it, that would be a better use of their talents.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday July 17 2017, @08:57AM (6 children)
Climate change news sells too.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 17 2017, @12:08PM (5 children)
Really? I googled up some graphs showing the Weather Channel has lost 1/3 of its audience since the "old days" when it showed the weather instead of documentaries and reality TV. Admittedly their non-weather content wasn't exclusively global warming focused so you can't blame all the decline on global warming coverage. Also in a smartphone and computer era with bookmarks to weather.gov there's no point in sitting thru five minutes of commercials to see tomorrows weather, anymore, so I'm surprised the number isn't zero.
Aside from relative decline, we're at the stage where less than 200K people watch the weather channel per the graphs I've seen, and by watch they mean its on in the background to generate noise while the kids get ready for school or senior citizens unconscious at nursing homes "watching" 18 hours per day (watching with their eyes closed, etc). "Sells" means something like 120 million combined printings of the six or so Twilight novels, not 200K TVs are tuned in but no one is watching. Twilight is a thousand times better seller than global warming. Its so close to zero its barely a rounding error.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday July 17 2017, @01:05PM (4 children)
Time for a new scare then. In my lifetime we've already had the Russians, a new ice age, acid rain, peak oil, global warming, climate change, isis, Trump, the Russians again and I probably forgot a few. I wonder what's next but I'm sure it will sell well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)
I would just assume they do sequels like is usual for movies these days. If your order was accurate, get ready for ice age scare 2 to come up next.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Monday July 17 2017, @11:57PM
It's more popular to do reboots now. You might have noticed they just rebooted Russia. Maybe next will be acid rain?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by redbear762 on Monday July 17 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)
For me, I had to add Sagan screaming about how we'd all be cannibals hunting each other through the giant snowdrifts by the time I'd graduate high school. Geez, will these folks just stop already? We're heading towards a major solar minimum and these fucks will be back to blaming people for the cold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:25PM
That's not what a solar minimum does.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @07:37AM
When, and if, god forbid, this happens to you, there are several commonsense steps to take.
1. Are you in fact jmorris? If this is true, it is very sad, but at least you know there really is nothing you can do about it.
2. Are you agreeing with jmorris because you have lost your mind, hate Hillary, or have become a right-wing nutjob? Again, not much to be done.
3. Is jmorris right? Unlikely, yes. Impossible? Almost. But still logically possible, on the "broken clock" principle. If so, you have nothing to worry about since you are not agreeing with jmorris, you are just confirming what is actually factually correct and logically consistent.
4. Are you agreeing with jmorris because of Pres. Trump, Twitter, or Donald, Jr.? Agreeing with jmorris is the least of your problems.
5. You are agreeing with jmorris because CNN sucks. This seems a bit of an over-reaction, somewhat premature, maybe you should stop short of actually agreeing with jmorris, because of the Brain Slime Eels.
If, after running through this short checklist, you still feel inclined to agree with jmorris but are bothered by this feeling, please contact the Special Social Justice Warrior Response Squad, jmorris Division, at ssjwrs-jmorris@socialjusticewarriors.org. Your tendencies will be noted.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lagg on Monday July 17 2017, @06:57AM (17 children)
I guess satire is dead indeed because I legitimately can't tell if you use fakenews with any self-awareness or not. Given your retarded statements in the past it's 50/50.
One thing is for sure, it's not exactly easy to make me lose patience with any kind of article so long as the fundamental reasoning is legit. But this shit is just... I can't justify reading anything fully that uses this kind of reasoning because it always sets the tone:
That's so fucking annoying on so many levels I don't even know where to start. Actually addressing climate change is a lost cause with these people politicizing it so it can poison weak cattle-like minds. Like Trump's.
Regardless of dumb authors or not though, pretty sure actual scientists say it's an issue that should be addressed. And 3 terms going, I still don't understand why this is a controversial matter.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 17 2017, @09:20AM (16 children)
As to the story, one merely needed to read the title to see where this was going. Freaking out doesn't accomplish much beyond increasing popcorn consumption.
Depends what "addressed" means. After all, global warming has been addressed for decades. We studied it and we found it wasn't bad enough at the time to justify diverting resources from all our other bad problems. I understand why that is controversial, but I wouldn't have it any different. We did a lot of good then by not freaking out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Monday July 17 2017, @11:18AM (12 children)
No see that's my advantage over people like jmorris. I'm not frightened by people and phantoms, and though I don't consider him nearly so disagreeable as it being a broken clock situation. The point still stands that saying enough retarded shit is eventually going to produce something partially agreeable to someone. Nor do I have to agree with someone's personality or views to agree with a point.
Addressed: Stop driving, tell housing developers and auto industry to knock it the fuck off with the suburban advertising and not having sidewalks, use public transportation, bikes, carpooling. Don't defund watchdogs like EPA, let them continue being annoying cunts until technology routes around their guidelines and interesting fun new agencies must be founded as tech marches on. There is not much else to do but improve processes or eliminate them as redundancies. All better than what the current trend is. Industry doesn't help and especially transport but reality must continue.
Speaking of reality, the concept of small savings over iterative improvements extending the planet's lifetime isn't optimistic and shiny as a headline. And even though my limping ass manages to get around walking I acknowledge people are still too attached to their gas suckers to get out and like... Not have a heart attack earlier from cheese burgers. So of course we'll not optimize our pipelines (sometimes literally, sometimes not) and instead continue bickering about how minute it is because who gives a fuck it'll only matter in a few hundred years right?
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday July 17 2017, @12:15PM (4 children)
Nor is it being discussed here. Afraid there's not much point to bringing it up without massive space infrastructure to make actual extension of the planet's lifetime possible.
I think a huge part of the problem is that so many people don't understand what we're doing now. Continuing "bickering about how minute it is" means that we'll continue to elevate the entirety of humanity out of poverty with the synergistic side effect of reducing population growth rate to a long term negative rate. Sorry, but that is worth quite a bit of climate change and quite a bit of obstruction of the do-gooders who'd rather shave very little off global warming than make seven billion peoples' lives better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:31PM (3 children)
If it were just debating how big a deal the issue is, I would be OK with it. However, the people denying climate change are neither "bickering about how minute it is" nor are their motivations to pull people out of poverty. It seems to me that they are outright denying that there is a problem, and doing so to pull regulations that will fatten corporate coffers
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 18 2017, @01:57AM (2 children)
Even if that were true, and I don't believe it is, you should have a better argument against such "denying" than "Their motives seem impure." Maybe we should similarly ignore researchers because they're getting paid to come up with this research (or rather they wouldn't be paid so much and be so employable, if they weren't coming up with alarming predictions of climate change)? At some point, you have to realize all messengers have ulterior motives and other biases which influence their messages, but don't necessarily negate the message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:39PM (1 child)
You attribute pure motives, "pulling people out of poverty", while I attribute the motives to something less positive like greed.
I guess that is partly how this turns into bickering. We get off the track of the real issue and debate something else . . .
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:43PM
No, that's consequences which are very different [wikipedia.org] from motives.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 17 2017, @12:19PM (1 child)
If I'm ascetic enough of a monk, the world won't go to Hell. If I just flail myself harder the world will be saved. Well actually what I do is so much of a rounding error that it won't affect anyone or anything else, and I'm not going to do it anyway, just talk about it, but I do get to be holier than thou in public by talking about it. The left likes to make fun of right wing religion and pretend they're atheists, but the left has a very medieval religious world outlook. Twitter is basically left wing televangelism, faith healing, and prayer networks. Global warming is basically the lefts version of the Catholics getting all worked up about transubstantiation or the trinity, that's very interesting in an intellectual sense but people not in faithful to the religion couldn't care less about the argument or expressions of faith. "I believe more and better in the trinity than you so I'm better" means nothing to a Hindu, for example, and its like that when the left impacts reality with global warming.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday July 17 2017, @03:13PM
You probably don't vote, either, because your vote doesn't make enough of a difference.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Monday July 17 2017, @02:48PM (4 children)
Or we could just convert the largest 15 tanker ships to nuclear - http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/8182. [industrytap.com]
Maybe if your first answer wasn't "change your lifestyle you pig" the other side would be more willing to work with you. As it is almost everything that needs to be done to save the planet mostly effects the lifestyle of the side who doesn't want to do it that way. The correct way to do this is to provide them with economic reasons to change. Design a vehicle that has comparable performance to what they expect and make it economically competitive, show that the economic costs of beef production are higher than that of pork and chicken, etc. Find a way to provide profit to them instead of just telling them to suck it.
Until then the left can go fuck itself. I have made changes to my daily life where I can to be more accommodating, but the answer is always an insult about not doing enough.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:13PM (1 child)
But maybe the other side is wrong, and changing your lifestyle really is what is needed? Have you heard the (asinine) expression "have your cake and eat it too"? The other side knows their gains are ill-gotten, they know how they do business is wrong and all they want to do is to continue raping and pillaging everything and everyone. And they find useful idiots who actually buy into the idea they present that you should let them do what they do because one day, you too could get some of those ill-gotten riches.
If anything good comes from Global Climate Change, it will be that a large percentage of these useful idiots will be getting culled by the effects of it...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:06AM
Then there would be evidence for the assertion rather than just sanctimonious judgments and status signaling.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday July 17 2017, @03:33PM
Heh, you mistake the nature of my remark. I don't do this because of a lifestyle choice. It's a simple reality from medical problems. I'm apart entirely from greenpeace types and therefore could not possibly care less what someone does on an individual level for transport. But the fact has been made clear that next to not being such whores for beef (and therefore farting cows) reducing our reliance on gas and emissions resulting from it is a pretty solid next step that doesn't require any technology changes beyond continuously improving emissions standards. Which is something being worked against as hard as possible currently, so that's unfortunate. By all means drive a big ol' gas trucker around if you want to stick it to "the left". Biology doesn't care what your affiliation is. These are facts. And are as plain to me as saying the ocean is salty.
Also in my personal experience not driving and therefore not having to deal with what goes along with it (insurance, maintenance, payments) has been an overall simplification. I have lived in the desert and a state capitol. This remains true. The rest of the world manages fine in a lot of cases and america itself managed fine before the industry wanted to capitalize on suburb migration. We could have been a leader in public transport had it not been for this.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:06PM
I understand the "don't change my lifestyle" up to a point, but there are things that should change. We need to move away from the disposable culture, we are generating too much trash. We don't need to stop personal transportation, we just need to transition to more sustainable methods such as mass transit and electric vehicles powered by renewable sources.
Such lifestyle changes are not about pleasing some other political group, they are about saving the planet for the species! Your attitude sucks and reeks of entitlement.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday July 17 2017, @04:55PM (2 children)
The first step in dealing with it is to consult the check-list!
Modified mutandis mutandum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:47PM (1 child)
You think it is normal to turn off your brain in the face of anything you find unusual and turn to a "checklist" to tell you what to do?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday July 17 2017, @07:27PM
Wait a sec, . . . OK, checked the list: I agree with both jmorris and khallow on this one. Highly unusual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @07:57AM
Well, if my only two choises are CNN and jmorris (4844) I'm going to have to go with CNN. Fortunately I have more choices because I can think for myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @08:04AM
While I would never trust CNN, I would also never trust someone who uses hashtags when they don't make sense (i.e. most of the time).
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by unauthorized on Monday July 17 2017, @08:06AM
No Jmorris, you are supposed to believe the scientists who write for WePublishAnyoneWhoPaysUs.org and get lots of money from oil companies. #BreakTheConditioning
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @09:13AM (2 children)
Cabal (Fake)News Network - unbelievable, they are towing the line with the current pseudoscience fashion? Surely not.
This part of the Larsen C shelf has been cracking apart since the early 1960s. The crack only got to complete it's long journey now.
Global (BS) Warming... biggest snowstorm in decades hits NZ, snow on Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. Warming?
My 2c on this is that the extra weight of fresh snow on Larsen C has sped up the crack - due to weight, not Bubba in his Hummer roaring across the USA (that only creates drag on the nation's IQ).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
You are lacking in science education, it appears you have an 8th grade level of understanding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:08AM
Show me your PhD thesis in climatology.