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Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#81

Post by jjeaff »

rayiner wrote: post #74
harryh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question to me is why is this the case? What makes American government particularly disfunctional and how can that be fixed? I don't really have any answers.

Totally escapes me too. I suspect deep-seated cultural differences. America is a more contentious, less cooperative society so we add layers of complexity to mediate between all these groups of people who can't agree on even basic things. In most European countries, for example, it's very difficult to block development projects through things like environmental review lawsuits. But there is also this basic level of t…

The real question is not why the US seems to lag behind it's peers in how effective our government is. It is, how is the US able to be so much better than it's peers?

You can't compare little state sized homogenous countries in Europe to the enormous, diverse landscape of the US. Compare the US to any other country of similar population and you will see a performance standout in almost all categories.

Cherry picking European countries and comparing them to the US is like asking why Vermont, Massachusets, Connecticut, or New York are so much better off than Europe.

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#82

Post by nonbel »

ocschwar wrote: post #78
nonbel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying it is linked to climate change anyway (but this is impossible to get evidence for) or what? There is a very curious social phenomenon going on regarding this event.

I'm saying at this point it's wiser to say that it is than to say that it isn't.

Yes, so you think you know better than the experts. This is what I said originally, there is a strange phenomenon in this case that many people think they know more than the people studying this rift, including me.

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#83

Post by chronic7ul »

pdkl95 wrote: post #65
Jare wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it is possible to convince someone who has all the facts and still doesn't give a fuck. Only new facts will do the trick, facts which, even if not adding to the body of knowledge, have a high fuck giving factor. Like, a tornado destroys their house or such.

TL;DR - skip straight to [1] > I'm not sure it is possible to convince someone It is possible, but first you have to open a real dialog. That isn't going to happen without first learning to speak their language , because this is "More than just Resistance to Science"[1]. > Only new facts will do the trick Arguments based on facts are useful when trying to persuade people fluent in the language of science and logic. U…

Please do give me a fact as to why I should pay for green initiatives when someone else, like those in Europe, are more willing to pay. I reap their benefits, for free.

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#84

Post by mturmon »

tmpdude01 wrote: post #25
sambull wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sea ice comes and goes. Land ice is much more important. There is an acceleration on land ice loss. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/land-ice/

There's a NASA study from 2015 that concludes that mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet are greater than the losses: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-o...

This misleading comment cherry picks one particular study to suggest a conclusion that is probably not true. The commenter started out talking about sea ice, and when (rightly) that was noted to be irrelevant, switched to a different press release.

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: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#85

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #72
CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributing the revenue from said taxes back as a public dividend should solve that problem nicely. Since we're all impacted by those externalities a public dividend is only fair. And since the distributed money compensate for increased costs the tax can be pretty high, and thus effective in directing money towards alternate solutions.

... which makes the case that proponents of such taxes are at least partially motivated by anti-capitalism and socialism.

I'm against capitalism, so that would be a fair assessment of me. But if you really want a label, try geo-libertarian, I'm definitely not a socialist.

In any case, even hard core capitalists would recognize the value in controlling extenalities to help the market economy do its things.

If it helps I'm not a proponent of taxes per se. The tax I'm advocating could just as easily be described as rent. It is my hope that a fair, and effective, rent extraction from our shared capital (land, pollution rights, spectrum bands and so forth) could actually help abolish unfair and damaging taxes like income taxes.

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#86

Post by rayiner »

jjeaff wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally escapes me too. I suspect deep-seated cultural differences. America is a more contentious, less cooperative society so we add layers of complexity to mediate between all these groups of people who can't agree on even basic things. In most European countries, for example, it's very difficult to block development projects through things like environmental review lawsuits. But there is also this basic level of t…

The real question is not why the US seems to lag behind it's peers in how effective our government is. It is, how is the US able to be so much better than it's peers? You can't compare little state sized homogenous countries in Europe to the enormous, diverse landscape of the US. Compare the US to any other country of similar population and you will see a performance standout in almost all categories. Cherry picking…

I'm talking about countries like the France and Germany, etc. The U.S. continues to outperform those countries but I'm not sure you can chalk it up to the effectiveness of our government. I'd chalk it up to the U.S. having a head start from WWII and the major European powers being late to adopt market economies. Since then, they've caught up. For example, the U.S. had 50% higher labor productivity per hour of work than France and Germany in the 1970s. Today, it's identical: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/01/09/of-productivity-in....

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#88

Post by Tomminn »

Some perspective from someone who is definitely concerned about climate change: antarctica as a whole is losing 100 cubic kilometers of ice per year [1] of its 30,000,000 cubic kilometers[2]. So at current burn rates it will be another 300,000 years before antarctica has melted. Short of radical acceleration, we aren't losing antarctica any time soon.

[1]https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antar...

[2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#89

Post by Tomminn »

Some perspective from someone who is definitely concerned about climate change: antarctica as a whole is losing 100 cubic kilometer of ice per year [1], of its 30,000,000 cubic kilometers[2]. So at current burn rates it will be another 300,000 years before antarctica has melted. Short of radical acceleration, we aren't losing antartica any time soon.

[1]https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antar...

[2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm

Re: Antarctica Is Melting, and Giant Ice Cracks Are Just the Start

#90

Post by bzbarsky »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #79
bzbarsky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That perception is _much_ older than Reagan. Back in 1866 we have: > No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. (Gideon Tucker), and it was hardly a brand-new notion then. The fact is that government, even democratic government, puts its needs and desires first. To the extent that this matches up with the needs and desires of the people it's governing, things are good. To the ex…

No doubt cynicism is as old as politics. But there is a difference when a wag says "don't trust the government" and when the newly elected President of the US says it. There are legitimate debates to be had about the size and function of the government. But I've never understood the populist appeal of the declaration: The government only causes problems -- elect me and let me prove it to you!

I agree that there is a difference.

But I suspect that a number of elected presidents of the US in the 1800s, and a number of the people involved in setting up the US government in the 1700s, would have said to not trust the US federal government in its current form. In fact, they would have been appalled by it.

Now times have changed since the 1800s, and we can indeed have debates about whether the government we have now is doing the things it should be doing, to the extent that it should be doing them. I wish such debates were more common, instead of everyone presupposing the answers. :(

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