The melting of Antarctica

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/16/the-melting-of-antarctica-was-already-really-bad-it-just-got-worse/

by Libertatea • 11 years ago

69 37 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

forrestthewoods• 11 years ago

Why is Antarctica melting more now than when the ozone hole was a major issue in 90s? That was centered on Antarctica and has been largely fixed I think. Why is this happening now and not then? Or is now because of then? Can anyone provide a clear answer?

(edit: wtf? why would anyone downvote this? it's a legit and perfectly fair question.)

SerpentJoe• 11 years ago

The ozone layer is AFAIK not correlated with heating. It blocks UV radiation which is harmful to humans and other living things but plays no significant role in temperature changes.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...

rodgerd• 11 years ago

it's a legit and perfectly fair question.

Because conflating the ozone hole with global warming (two different and unrelated phenomenon) can be a legitimate product of confusion, but it's more commonly a denialist tactic on a par with "if evolution is real, why are there still monkeys?" See enough of it, you get uncharitable.

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

Actually I've heard this confusion more (i.e. on two separate occasions, IRL) from well-meaning environmental aficionados attempting to "prove" that global warming is real. I love "why are there still monkeys?", though. I think I'll be using that line sometime. b^)

ekanes• 11 years ago

Or, this kind of question is an opportunity to set the record straight for hundreds of people.

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

There is no link between ozone and global warming. No scientist has ever claimed there is. The problem with reduced ozone was increased ultraviolet radiation and health problems associated with that.

rosser2• 11 years ago

why would anyone downvote this?

Because the mechanism behind the melting is already explained in The Fine Article.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

wtf? why would anyone downvote this? it's a legit and perfectly fair question

Because all science operates on the principle that theories are subject to reinterpretation upon new evidence, all science except climate change, whose dogma is not to be questioned.

jstalin5• 11 years ago

Questioning the official line, in any manner, is verboten.

GlobalChange2• 11 years ago

The ozone anomaly is still there. CFC gases has never really harmed it because those gases are heavier than the air, so it is a bit hard (not impossible, though) for them to get up there. The "hole" has always been over the poles because, obviously, there's no much sun rays there, which are required for the formation and un-formation of the ozone in the first place.

As to the relation of the subjects, I have seem many of the AGW defenders to claim that CFC, HFC and all the other gazes they claim is harmful to the "ozone" also are "greenhouse gases", which as I said before is a complete stupidity.

orik• 11 years ago

This is a very click-bait-ey title. Maybe it could be changed to something more appropriate for HN?

edit: This post used to read as "The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse." It has since been changed.

hackuser• 11 years ago

This is a very click-bait-ey title. Maybe it could be changed to something more appropriate for HN?

It's the actual story title. Since Bezos bought them, my impression is that the Washington Post has published much more click-bait and strident writing. It's sad to see that from what used to be one of the best news sources in the world.

Ten years ago there were three top-notch serious news sources in the U.S. IMHO, the Post, the NY Times, and the Wall St Journal. The Journal was purchased by News Corporation (who also own Fox News, the former News of the World, and other beacons of credibility), the Post seems to be slipping; if the NY Times doesn't survive we could have a very serious problem. Without quality, credible, independent information, how can the public have any power?

dang• 11 years ago

The HN guidelines ask submitters to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. Since this one was the latter, we shortened it.

iterationx• 11 years ago

NYT isn't credible.

tjradcliffe• 11 years ago

The headline accurately reflects the content of the article, which is a hysterical mishmash of speculation that does a massive disservice to the science. We "may" have learned about something that "could" happen "if" something else turns out to be true.

Antarctic melting is a particularly nasty consequence of anthopogenic climate change. It's a fairly robust first-order prediction of almost any analysis that gets anthropogenic heat balances correct--so unlike almost all other detailed predictions, there is a good chance of it happening--and the consequences, apart from maybe submerging Florida, are unequivocally bad for humans.

But in a debate as emotionally charged as the one over climate change and what to do about it, the last thing we need is the Washington Post ranting on in purely speculative terms.

If a friend told you, "Ten years from now, you may remember 2014 as the year that you first learned that I may have gotten a new job. Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy — when you learned the same about our buddy Joe, which could set in motion a road trip," you would probably look at them funny and say, "Hey, why are you telling me all this stuff that may or may nor or could or could not or might or might not happen as if it's the most important thing in the world? It sounds kind of pretentious and stupid."

fixermark• 11 years ago

To bring this iceberg around a bit closer to tech culture...

California is already being hit by drought, and NASA's climate change models suggest the drought can be expected to get worse as the temperature shift due to AGW increases [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/todays...]. Silicon Valley is, of course, located in California. Does / should this news make people bearish on further deep investment in the Valley if a possible consequence of resource loss is a destabilization of that region (I don't mean "Mad Max", but one would assume that water rationing will have some negative impact on the startup scene in CA)?

thaumaturgy• 11 years ago

I've been thinking about this recently, wondering whether or not it's another reason to move out of California.

There are still a lot of different ways this could play out. We could have another moderately difficult Summer followed by one of the wettest and coldest Winters in recent history, and everything will keep limping along. Or, we could have a season of dry thunderstorms that cause one of the worst wildfire seasons in recent history, complete with thick smoke and the health effects that causes. Or, conflicts over water rights could add fuel to the State of Jefferson movement and turn that into years of political wrangling that drains the energy from a state government no longer being led by Brown. Or, California agriculture could suddenly take huge steps towards better water management, either due to rising water costs or public outcry as municipal water rates skyrocket and rationing is imposed. Or, agriculture might fail to adapt and there will be economic ripple effects felt in food costs and a hit to the state GDP.

Usually, things like this sort of muddle along for years and nobody really notices an acute impact. Sometimes the conditions are right for a disaster and you get something like 2008. The conditions are right now for things to get pretty awful over the next couple of years, but there are still a lot of people involved that can have some impact over how it all turns out. I hope those people get started soon.

If things do take a turn towards the worst, there really is less and less reason for most people to stay in this state. It's a nice state, but there are lots of other really nice places too, and there's been a tech diaspora over the last decade that's bearing fruit in a lot of different places around the country.

keithwarren• 11 years ago

"Global sea level rise of 11 feet"

I would really like to see a more clear explanation as to how they extrapolated that estimation from the data.

astrodust• 11 years ago

The Antarctic ice sheet is not only gigantic, larger than the continental United States, but it is kilometers thick.

Take the fraction of the volume that's anticipated to melt and spread that over the ocean, and you get that 11 foot number.

The Wikipedia page, for what it's worth, estimates that the sea level would rise 70 meters if the whole thing melted. Plus, if Antarctica melted, then all ice would've melted, including Greenland, so we'd be even more screwed.

You're right that there's not enough data here, though. I'm sure the calculation is far from simple since the ice-sheet varies dramatically in terms of topology both on the surface and underwater.

PhearTheCeal• 11 years ago

Right from the abstract:

"We estimate that at least 3.5 m of eustatic sea level potential drains through Totten Glacier, so coastal processes in this area could have global consequences."

With calculations done here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo...

jstalin5• 11 years ago

For some context (which media rarely provide), Antarctica has about 12.3 million cubic km of ice sheet. The latest measurements I've seen show that between 2011 and 2014, the Antarctic ice sheet lost 125 cubic km per year.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21692423

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/08/Antarctic_ic...

Additionally, people have been noticing a loss of ice since at least 1932: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23150667

guelo• 11 years ago

That didn't provide me any context at all. What are those numbers supposed to imply?

jstalin5• 11 years ago

First, Antarctica is not "melting," and second it seems to have been happening for a long time.

Additionally, there has been no acceleration in sea level increases:

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.s...

Browse stations here: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/mslUSTrendsTable.h...

ender72• 11 years ago

The HN community was (and apparently still is) incredibly hostile to the idea that global warming is a grave threat to humanity. I would think that such a technology-oriented group would be swayed by the now-massive collection of solid data pointing towards this conclusion, but the opposite seems to have happened. Comments attempt to refute even the existence of global warming with irrelevant data of their own or strange nitpicks at the perimeter of an article that seem bent on derailing discussion of the main point (i.e. DH4 at best [1]). If solid evidence is presented, it's usually dismissed with arguments like "this popular news article doesn't even say how exactly they computed <extremely complicated result>, therefor it must be bunk. There could be an error in there somewhere, so I shall assume there is one."

Where does this animus spring from?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

jstalin5• 11 years ago

Since you aren't making personal attacks, like others on this message board, I'll explain my personal point of view.

I don't deny that humans can influence earth's climate. But the tone of climate change media is beyond hysterics.

For instance, the headline from this article is, in full, "The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse."

I posted below links to scientific studies showing that Antarctica has 12.5 million cubic km of ice. 125 cubic km of ice is "melting" each year. On top of that, surveyors noticed reductions in Antarctic ice at least as far back as 1932, far far before "climate change."

My naturally skeptical alarms go off when I realize that headlines like the OP are pure hysterics. At the current rate, Antarctica will melt in 1 million years. Of course, climate changes dramatically on that geologic time scale, so the headline completely destroys the credibility, in my mind, of the central argument -- that Antarctica is "melting."

One look a tide gauges shows that the sea level rise we've been seeing has been going on for about 150 years with no change in the rate of rise.

So, naturally, I'm going to be skeptical of hysterical claims.

As to your point about HN being hostile to climate change, I see it the complete opposite way. Any skeptical arguments, even links to objective scientific facts, are immediately flagkilled and downvoted into hell.

lotsofmangos2• 11 years ago

On top of that, surveyors noticed reductions in Antarctic ice at least as far back as 1932, far far before "climate change."

We have been increasing atmospheric CO2 since long before 1932 and Svante Arrhenius predicted that the burning of fossil fuels was increasing the earth's temperature back in 1896.

rosser2• 11 years ago

Could you use the words "hysterics" or "hysterical" a few more times? You didn't quite hit the once/paragraph ratio I was really hoping to see...

EDIT: In seriousness, so much of the "climate skepticism" I see around here is so overloaded with this kind of hyperbolic dismissal of positions that assume or support it, that it's hard to engage with them, rather than just downvote for destructive (or at least non-contributory) tone. You might try being easier to engage with, and see if that changes how your points are received...

IIJamesII4• 11 years ago

Are you asking in good faith? You seem to assume right off the bat that anybody who is skeptical is irrational since there is a "massive collection of solid data pointing towards this conclusion". And yet I disagree. I think that the warming estimates were grossly overstated, and I don't think it's difficult to justify my position. I must be crazy, right?

For example, relating specifically to the article, I could simply point out that the REGIONAL Western Antarctic melting is most certainly due to volcanic activity and that Antarctic ice levels were at all time record highs for much of last year. The article doesn't even mention the recent record-breaking ice levels?! Doesn't that seem strange? It seems any information that doesn't confirm the prevailing view is neatly filtered out. It's bizarre to watch, but strangely fascinating.

I could show you that the lynch-pin of the CAGW argument is simply assumed in the climate models. It is highly uncertain, unproven, and is not born out by observation. It's easy to do and relies entirely on mainstream climate science.

And for all this I get called a "climate denier", a term that is meant to associate me with "holocaust deniers". From your article: "DH0. Name-calling. - This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common."

Yes, it is the most common response I get from CAGW advocates. Ironic, isn't it?

ender72• 11 years ago

Please provide sources for your claims, I would be interested in reading them.

graeme• 11 years ago

Did you make a new account just for this comment?

That's not against the rules per se, but there have been lots of sock puppets used on global warming topics.

tomp• 11 years ago

ice levels were at all time record highs

That's what I though as well, but after I went investigating, I found out that actually, Antarctic sea ice levels were at record highs, which basically means that glaciers were melting more than usual (and shedding huge pieces of ice into the sea) - apparently because of winds bringing more hot air from northern (hotter) regions.

The melting of Antarctica

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