Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 141 posts

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#91

Post by simplemath »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #80
Grazester wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think big countries should be made to pay the smaller ones affected by climate change. We weren't the ones that caused it but will be made to suffer the most because of it(rising tides, effects on the ocean which we depend on for our food source, lack of rainfall). We are very much seeing the effects already!

Yeah, I'm going to believe it when I see it. USA still haven't even paid what it owes to Nicaragua for fucking it up. The US also owes about 1.3 billion to the UN due to non-payments.

Lol, the Marshall Plan.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#92

Post by mturmon »

throwaway729 wrote: post #22
cardiac wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh snap, he-she said. Can you say 'gimme money for a grant pleeeeeeaaaasssseeeee.' http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reache...

If you're going to accuse others of politically motivated interpretation of data, the least you could do is abstain from the same activity. http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/nasa-antarctica-mass-gain/#bN... TL;DR: 1. This is one measurement among many. The honest scientist considers the whole of the data, rather than cherry picking the 1 among N measurements that support his hypothesis. 2. Existence of conflicting evide…

Thanks for this. The comment you're replying to gave a link to one study of a complex phenomenon, that partially conflicts other studies. As you point out, there's not total consensus on what's happening. But the comment's suggestion that this one study settles the question of Antarctic mass loss is wrong.

The linked study (Zwally et al.) uses satellite radar altimetry (ICESat) to measure height of Antarctic ice, and thereby quantify mass losses. Other studies use satellite-derived gravity (GRACE) to get more directly at mass changes. They conflict.

One possible reason (among several) for the discrepancy is that the overall height of Antarctica is also changing as it rebounds from ice loss in the distant past, i.e., some of the height increase seen by Zwally et al. is due not to ice increases, but to inter-ice-age rebound of the continent beneath the ice.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#93

Post by simplemath »

tremon wrote: post #64
irrational wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you afraid of the hod outs going from denial to resignation? At least if they are experiencing resignation they will be willing to admit there is a problem and do something about it (admittedly, it will be too late, but...)

The GP probably means resignation in the meaning of apathy, like "shit's going to hell anyway, so why bother trying to fix things".

That switch can already be seen in the discourse

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#94

Post by mzw_mzw »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #80
Grazester wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think big countries should be made to pay the smaller ones affected by climate change. We weren't the ones that caused it but will be made to suffer the most because of it(rising tides, effects on the ocean which we depend on for our food source, lack of rainfall). We are very much seeing the effects already!

Yeah, I'm going to believe it when I see it. USA still haven't even paid what it owes to Nicaragua for fucking it up. The US also owes about 1.3 billion to the UN due to non-payments.

Is that the UN whose human rights councils are always headed by the worst human rights abusers on Earth? Just checking.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#95

Post by maxerickson »

throwaway729 wrote: post #11
ajmurmann wrote: post #2

What's the best way to profit from rising sea levels? Investing in land that's higher up in our nearby coastal cities?

Renewable energy. Once things get bad enough the world will wake up and renewables will become huge.

Renewables are already huge. Once batteries get a bit better and solar gets a bit cheaper, things will really get going. The deployment won't wait for the world to wake up about global warming.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#97

Post by mzw_mzw »

politician wrote: post #85
hash-set wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be stupid to crash our economy and then find out that the "solutions" didn't work. Or that we come up with technological fix to the problem. Or that that whole thing was just a ploy by leftists to seize power. Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.

> ... just a ploy ... Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/

I get all my scientific knowledge from comics on the Internet too.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#98

Post by Florin_Andrei »

Camillo wrote: post #82
staticelf wrote: post #23

This is why big countries suck. They are slow to change and a wrong move is horribly damaging. Look at the US or China, no matter how I or all my countrymen live in Sweden it won't really matter if climate change deniers get in charge in the US for example. I just think it's so sad to see everything go to shit due to some greedy assholes that won't invest in solutions that are effective AND sustainable. I plan to bec…

That doesn't make any sense. If the US were split into the 50 states, you would have to get 50 governments separately to agree to carbon regulations, instead of one. Same with China or with any other large country. Also, a large country is likely to have regions that will lose big in case of global warming, while other regions are indifferent or even stand to gain. The large country's single government has reason to…

> If the US were split into the 50 states, you would have to get 50 governments separately to agree to carbon regulations, instead of one.

Sure, but then about half of those would actually do something about it.

Of course, the other half would keep thumping the Bible or Atlas Shrugged (or both), but even so that's a fraction of the current level of inaction.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#99

Post by snarfy »

jofer wrote: post #42
ocschwar wrote: post #33

Grow bamboo. Harvest it. Bury it. That's the sort of thing we have to start thinking about.

Burying bamboo or other biomass is not a particularly reliable or effective form of carbon sequestration. (Anywhere you bury it, it will decompose and most of the C02 removed from the atmosphere will wind up as CH4 + CO2.) Carbon sequestration is a very active area of research, but for the most part, you're looking at injecting liquid C02 or water with a very large amount of dissolved C02 into deep reservoirs. Ideall…

Instead of trying to bury it, grow more. Increasing the total living biomass would reduce CO2.

Re: West Antarctica Begins to Destabilize with ‘Intense Unbalanced Melting’

#100

Post by ommunist »

Bloomberg rarely does proper math. Melt both polar caps and the ice of Greenland, and you barely get global sea level rise by very few inches. Antarctics as a whole is 90% of the world land-based ice. 29 mln cubic km. All of the floating ice is around 3 mln cubic km. It may look that it can cause 60m high sea level rise, but most of this will be evaporated into milder global climate and stronger rivers. We shall have larger Caspian Sea, larger Aral Sea, perhaps green Sakhara, and perhaps come catastrophic rains in the temperate zone. Picture is very distant and very different from global warming speculations anyway. The Earth seen past with no polar caps, it also seen ice ages, these will inevitably happen again.
Post reply on HN