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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The rate at which ice is disappearing across the planet is speeding up, according to new research.
[...] The figures have been published today (Monday, 25 January) by a research team which is the first to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.
The team, led by the University of Leeds, found that the rate of ice loss from the Earth has increased markedly within the past three decades, from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017.
Ice melt across the globe raises sea levels, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities, and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which wildlife depend on.
[...] Lead author Dr. Thomas Slater, a Research Fellow at Leeds' Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling , said: "Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.
[...] The increase in ice loss has been triggered by warming of the atmosphere and oceans, which have warmed by 0.26°C and 0.12°C per decade since the 1980, respectively. The majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting (68 %), with the remaining losses (32%) being driven by oceanic melting.
[...] Just over half (58 %) of the ice loss was from the northern hemisphere, and the remainder (42 %) was from the southern hemisphere.
Journal Reference:
Slater, Thomas, Lawrence, Isobel R., Otosaka, Inès N., et al. Review article: Earth's ice imbalance [open], The Cryosphere (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-233-2021)
(Score: 3, Funny) by Barenflimski on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:03PM (5 children)
I wonder what all of the people living 10,000 years ago in an ice covered northern hemisphere would have thought about a warm world?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:07PM (2 children)
There would have been no incentive to invent fire or underpants.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @12:13AM (1 child)
Underpants were a mistake.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:38PM
No, the real mistake is adding a zipper to no underpants.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:38PM (1 child)
They went down to the southern hemisphere
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:14AM
Well that's what she said.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:04PM (29 children)
If the market wants global warming fixed, it'll fix it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:54PM (25 children)
Precisely.
And given most of said market, measured in purchasing power, is located in parts of the world afflicted with long, miserable, cold winters, it is absolutely no wonder that rich denizens of California and Florida have difficulties in pushing their agenda.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @12:16AM (24 children)
The University of Leeds is not in Florida or California, and the link is to a scientific paper, it's not some internet A/C pushing "an agenda".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:10AM (16 children)
Didn't the New England Journal of Medicine just deny that there were 2 genders or something? "Science" is a word the Jews tried to grab but it slipped right out of their hands like a greasy banana and now they're slipping on the peel.
"Science" as we now know it is simply the paid opinions of expert witnesses with agendas. Thanks to the COVID hoax, the word "science" means fucking nothing now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:54AM (15 children)
No.
No it's not.
If you have a look at the paper linked you might see the bit where the data comes from observations. Glaciers are getting smaller for example, and those things can be measured.
Observations are different from opinions, for example:
"Ethanol-fueled is an arsehole who people emigrate to avoid" is an opinion, but "Ethanol-fuelled allows his racism to cloud his opinions" is an observation.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:00AM (14 children)
And human things get thawed out from below them. Surprising, isn't it?
"Melting ice reveals an ancient, once-thriving trade route"
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-ice-reveals-ancient-once-thriving-route.html [phys.org]
"New glacier evidence for ice-free summits during the life of the Tyrolean Iceman"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77518-9 [nature.com]
This is science for you.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:31AM (10 children)
You're wasting your time, AC. Something like 65% of people believe that the glaciers have been right where they were in 1800, since before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Ice and sea levels have been immutable fixtures from long before the first ancestor of man stood on it's hind legs. A lot of them seem to believe that the earth will break up and fly apart without the ice to hold it together. You just can't win by offering facts to them.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:41AM (8 children)
Care to provide a link?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:36AM (7 children)
Please, don't ask for links to numbers that I've just pulled out of my ass. Don't you know that 99% of statistics are made up, usually on the spot?
But, seriously, damned near everyone ignores the evidence that much of the earth was covered in ice 20,000 years ago. Without global warming, the mastodons and saber tooth tigers probably wouldn't have died off. Man's collective memory doesn't even go back 10,000 years - ~5000 for China and a few other select Asian cultures. But, we presume that several hundred years of recorded history in the west is representative of all of prehistory.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:29AM (2 children)
Christ in a cracker you're dumb. Just educated enough to be TRULY stupid.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:36PM (1 child)
You opened a package of crackers, and found Christ's likeness on each cracker? Awesome - not.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:41PM
I just found Christ's image on a cracker!
It's a MIRACLE !!!
Look, it's on this other cracker!
And this one, and that one, ...
it's on every single cracker in the box!
A real miracle of miracles!
So I bought a 2nd box, and every single cracker in that box also had it!
It was even on the cracker pictured on the box package!
It must be a sign from heaven!
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:14PM
The Little Ice Age in the 1300's also demonstrates the climate can change quit a bit within a multi-generational human scale. Further, we know that during the time of the dinosaurs the Earth was much hotter than now, but life flourished then.
Humans might prefer a cooler climate. A hotter world will look much different from this one. But humans and their civilization will be fine, because they are the most adaptable creatures on Earth.
Personally I think we should switch to renewables from fossil fuels because of a host of reasons, but going Chicken Little because of climate change is not one of them. Whether human civilization is causing this warming period or not has become rather irrelevant because the data seem to indicate the ship has sailed in terms of atmospheric carbon content.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:01PM
So, NEVER ask Runaway for links, got it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @09:50AM (1 child)
But seriously, it wasn't. You may want to read about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum [wikipedia.org]
unless my "much" you mean "a small fraction of the land was covered by ice".
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 29 2021, @03:29PM
All of Canada, and the northern tier of states in the US would be "much" all by itself. A corresponding part of Europe and Asia would also be "much". Together, they most certainly qualify as "much of the land". Please note, I did NOT say "most of the land".
I've just clicked a couple dozen links. Maybe you would like to define "much" for all of us, then do some research of your own. I was mildly surprised to learn that ice probably covered parts of New Zealand, not surprised at all to learn that large parts of South America were covered.
You go ahead, and do a thesis explaining why my statement was wrong. Enjoy yourself! And, don't forget to include the fact that a helluva lot of land that is now covered in oceans and seas was exposed during the ice age. Few maps show that the English Channel was not not much of a channel when the seas were at their lowest.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday January 29 2021, @08:05PM
No, they realize that mankind now has "permanent" fixtures (and the economic, social, cultural and environmental systems dependent on them) dependent on sea levels remaining approximately where they are and climate remaining predictable and relatively constant. They have no desire to once again become primitive nomads migrating over ancient routes, etc.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:39AM (2 children)
What point are you making?
Show me the bit where scientists claim the climate was in steady state until humans came along.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:18AM (1 child)
To be fair to the AC, it is implicit in any statement that says we have to stop climate change.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:42PM
"Stop climate change" is the simplistic headline that is not even possible.
"Reduce the amounts of carbon we pump into the atmosphere in an attempt to limit the damage we've already done" is way too complicated for Fox News viewers to understand though.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:48AM (6 children)
https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/233/2021/#section12 [copernicus.org]
I understand. If you take money for it, it automatically becomes god-given truth.
We even know which god gives it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_calf [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:58AM (5 children)
No you don't.
Scientists tend not to be religious.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:04AM (4 children)
And propaganda zombies tend to be. Even if they consider themselves "PartTime" and call their faith "science".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:34AM (2 children)
Not going to comment on the observations in the paper?
Weirdly calling science religion does not make it so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
And calling religion consensus does not make it science.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:46PM
Show me the scientific studies that disagree with the consensus.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MIRV888 on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:12AM
You do understand you are using the internet right?
It's a series of tubes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:19AM (2 children)
Pretty sure you were being sarcastic, but in case not then you should realize that by the time "the market" wants it fixed it is going to be basically unfixable. At the very least it will 100x harder and more expensive than if we had addressed the problems earlier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:44AM
More expensive? Sold, the market will fix.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:55AM
How so? Pray tell.
Given that nature fixed the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, entirely without any human intervention.
"was a time period with a more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum [wikipedia.org]
There is even a fix ready, which may yet be applied long before your problem has any chance to manifest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:38PM (2 children)
I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:46AM (1 child)
It's in the freakin' 60's here in Los Angles -- freezing my cnut off. Light the bonfires, comrades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:32AM
San Francisco was the place to be in the 60's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @11:55PM (3 children)
We will want to know when the first people start melting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:52AM (1 child)
Didn't you see Trump's meltdown earlier this month?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:16AM
No I missed it. Anything interesting happen?
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:23AM
First, people will starve.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday January 28 2021, @12:36AM
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/warming-seas-are-accelerating-greenland-s-glacier-retreat [nasa.gov]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:13AM (16 children)
It is mostly the floating ice that's melting. That doesn't affect sea levels.
Also, the period covered includes Iceberg_B-15 [wikipedia.org]. You can make any curve look steep if you narrow it down and quote the bit with a large step in it.
I don't deny global warming. I am just not sure that it is a bad thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:47AM (7 children)
The only downside I can see is losing about 50% of the habitable land, mass migration and border conflicts in multiple regions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:54AM (6 children)
But previously uninhabitable land like Canada will become habitable so you can move all the Muslim jihadis there. Earth has a way of balancing things out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:10AM (3 children)
If you think Canada will become habitable before 10,000y have passed, you're delusional. Above the arctic circle there's not enough soil, for starters, to farm.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:25AM (1 child)
@MarieAntoinette says "Let them eat bugs"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:13AM
"Before the bugs eat you alive!"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:02PM
No, not long at all. Look at a satellite map of Lake of the Woods, Canada. Same landforms north of the border as south, but south of the border there's lots of agriculture. With warmer weather and hardy settlers Canada could well accommodate many more people. After all, let's recall that about 10,000 years ago ice sheets covered everything down to about Nebraska. It did not take that long for humans to set up shop after the ice sheet retreated.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:19AM (1 child)
Mmm, living on melting permafrost sounds so much fun.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 29 2021, @09:15PM
Yes, that's the problem with the new Canadian "land" that's going to thaw. It's solid because it's frozen. When melted it becomes a bog.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:47AM (6 children)
>floating ice that's melting. That doesn't affect sea levels
this is false. you know why? because the ice is floating... I'll let you think about that. Still no idea? Let me explain.
salt molar mass: 60g
water molar mass: 20g
salt water molar mass: between those two numbers. think about that.. Still no idea?
salt water is heavier than regular water. That means the frozen iceberg floats higher than it would. melting it adds more space in the water than it displaced in the water while frozen. Think of it this way: the melting is making the water less dense. Take some silly string and unload the whole can into someone's face. How did all that volume fit into the tiny can? Because it was more dense. by making it less dense for the same weight in the can, you've expanded its volume.
Now by how much will it expand the oceans? I dunno, go google it if you care - I don't.
>It is mostly the floating ice that's melting
Oh look, some random retard on the internet says NASA is wrong. I actually don't know if "most" of the ice melting is on land or sea. What I do know, is a shitload of land ice is melting. Because NASA told me so. But you have your theories too, which clearly don't come from science. Tell me, did you drink any hand sanitizer last year? Maybe a Clorox enema or two?
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/ [nasa.gov]
Tell me iceboy, what happens to the seawater fish when that water's not as salty anymore? They die and we find a new source of food to feed 8 billion people? And the hundreds of millions of people who live by the coast - they just lose everything they have worked for, and buy some more land in the newly habitable areas and build new houses? Entire islands full of people - we just relocate those to newly warm Alaska?
It's not a bad thing for humanity as a surviving species. It's one of the worst things that can happen to a person and a family - skyrocketing food prices after losing everything they have.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @08:06AM (5 children)
Not bad, for a 14-year old boy, pretending to be all growed-up on the internet. But completely wrong, in all details.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday January 28 2021, @10:29AM (2 children)
really? I thought 14yo boys were the ones who argue by saying "nuh-huh, you're wrong" and providing no details or any information at all. Have you taken reading class yet? Seems all the scientists got all the details wrong too, since you say so.
https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20050801_floatingice.html [nsidc.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:53PM (1 child)
For the supposed grown up in the room, every time I see you post you're being an insulting, instigative twat.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:31PM
Correct. I'm here to get my kicks by laughing at people like you. *gasp* the guy on the receiving end of the insult thinks I'm being insulting. Yeah skippy. That's the point - to be insulting to dumb social rejects. You're my personal clown.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 29 2021, @09:17PM (1 child)
Indeed. Ice is less dense than water. That's why it floats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 31 2021, @06:40PM
He has a very slight point. If you melt freshwater ice and spread it evenly over the saltwater, the level will be very slightly higher than when the ice was floating. The volume of the freshwater is more than the volume of saltwater that the weight of ice would displace.
With mixing the difference is small enough to be irrelevant.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 28 2021, @09:29PM
Global Warming was good when it ended Snowball Earth periods, the last of which may have happened approximately 550 million years ago, and may have helped bring about the Cambrian Explosion. And an end to the last Ice Age, some 10000 years ago, likely accelerated the flowering of civilization.
But the current warming? It's somewhere between bad and very, very, very bad. First, it's much too fast. It's as if between Goldilock's first and second spoonful of Baby Bear's porridge, the temperature went from just right to burning hot. We're perhaps the most adaptable and resourceful animal on the planet, able to use clothes to survive in all kinds of harsh environments our naked bodies cannot tolerate, and able to make and use all sorts of ingenious machines to make our lives easier, yet this change is so fast that even we are going to have trouble keeping up.
We are far more dependent upon other life than is generally appreciated. For instance, it's no good our being able to make and use A/C for ourselves, when we cannot extend that to the crops and farm animals that need the current mild temps. If things keep on as they are, we will have no choice but to move everything to cooler locations-- higher ground, and closer to the poles. It may already be too late to change course. We're talking mass migration. You must realize that as our political organization stands now, no worldwide supreme authority and a fragile community that, though they have avoided nuclear war thus far, may find themselves unbearably tempted, such a wrenching change cannot possibly be accomplished without conflict. Are the Russians just going to welcome to Siberia, with open arms, a billion Chinese and Indian migrants? But let's suppose they did, and Canada too helped out. There still may not be enough for all.
But even these scenarios are much too rosy. More likely is that nations will all find themselves helplessly caught up in the storm. A billion desperate, hungry people on the move are not going to be stopped by anything as pitiful as respect for a national border. There's plenty of blame to go around, too. This is not just the fault of Big Oil. Capitalism itself can be faulted, for inspiring such foolish, short term greed and thinking. The Western lifestyle is another highly likely target of blame. Just being a citizen of the US may mark you for death. Government inaction and timidity is another problem. Extremely cowardly to deny, in the face of all evidence, that a bad problem is a problem or is bad, and sell the public on the comforting, Panglossian vision that everything is great. Or worse, to cynically blame it all on some other group of people. It's going to be chaos. I read that a few of the super-rich are building themselves bunkers in which they hope to be able to ride out "the Event". Folly!
Now, you are probably thinking that it won't be anything near that bad. I hope you're right. There are still things we can do, now, to head off that grim future.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:08AM (1 child)
Best plot I've found showing the +2C abnormality in the Arctic in 2020: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2021/01/Figure2b.png [nsidc.org]
That's +2C for the whole year... there were times when Siberia literally lit aflame this summer as methane offgassed and some regions hit 30C which typically remained frozen year-round.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 29 2021, @09:20PM
At least when the methane burns it replaces a fierce greenhouse gas with a milder one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:04AM (3 children)
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
food for thought. Not that it will stop the people trying to deny the climate is changing more rapidly per decade since the start of the industrial revolution. than any other point in the last 20 thousand years.
It is too late to stop it but the sooner we start adapting to the projected effects of a warmer climate the less disruption our society and economy will suffer.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:15AM (2 children)
Adapting? As in building sea walls? We should have kept Trump, the greatest wall builder of all time, and his all-building champion Steve Bannon.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:28PM (1 child)
Trump would build a fence and Republicans would be praising it's effectiveness as they drowned.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 29 2021, @09:20PM
You need the Dutch to build seawalls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @04:06AM
Or Tenet will be true, people from the burning future will come back to live in this time