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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: 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.