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: 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.