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(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: 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.