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A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

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Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#51

Post by BurningFrog »

jfoutz wrote: post #17
tominous wrote: post #2

> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?

Let's see how terraforming this one works out before we go off terraforming another.

You don't experiment on your production planet.

Mars could be a decent staging planet!

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#52

Post by Aelinsaar »

beefsack wrote: post #44
Aelinsaar wrote: post #37

It's kind of amazing that humanity's overall response can be summed up in a gif. https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif

I don't think serious conversation like this is a place for reaction GIFs.

I'd be more interested in criticism of the content, rather than the format. There's aiming for serious, and then there's just posturing.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#53

Post by sldivzklhc »

pasquinelli wrote: post #32
phkahler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't see any confusion there. "And as it grew, also became wider — by 2015, yawning some 200 meters in length." They use "wider" and "length" to describe the same 200 meter span.

no, they use length to describe the measurement of the crack's width. totally valid afaic.

The statement is ambiguous, so it can still be valid. However the use of "length" twice in the same sentence to describe both the dimensions parallel and perpendicular to the crack is likely to confuse some readers. Some people's brains are not going to free the "length" pointer halfway through the sentence.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#54

Post by WalterBright »

sulam wrote: post #46

It's worth noting that the title of the article is somewhat misleading. The ice shelf entirely is slightly smaller than Scotland, but the part breaking off is (upper estimate) 12% of that, so, according to the article, slightly larger than Prince Edward Island. Not that this is reason to celebrate or think that this is any more than a continuation of the ongoing and forthcoming climate excursion.

Thank God it's only a motion picture! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#55

Post by dang »

Aelinsaar wrote: post #37

It's kind of amazing that humanity's overall response can be summed up in a gif. https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340434 and marked it off-topic.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#56

Post by sytelus »

omosubi wrote: post #45
darawk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the longer we have to sit on our asses, the more likely we are to succeed in our effort to make a difference when we finally get around to it (due to technological progression).

I wouldn't count on this - markets don't seem to care about sea level rise at the moment

Good point. Intuitively I think markets would attempt to approximate probability * cost i.e. expected cost. However there is something intensely wrong how market is functioning with environmental issue. It appears that markets is trying to view the expected cost as debt that needs to be paid in future. The value of debt would be much larger in future but markets seems to be ok with current return. This could be a great theoretical hole in efficient markets theory.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#57

Post by Aelinsaar »

dang wrote: post #55
Aelinsaar wrote: post #37

It's kind of amazing that humanity's overall response can be summed up in a gif. https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340434 and marked it off-topic.

Saving the day, yet again. /s

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#58

Post by dang »

Aelinsaar wrote: post #52
beefsack wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think serious conversation like this is a place for reaction GIFs.

I'd be more interested in criticism of the content, rather than the format. There's aiming for serious, and then there's just posturing.

I'm not sure what that means, but there was little content in what you posted, merely the repetition of a cliché.

We've asked you before to stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and I need to repeat that. It's clear that you're capable of better.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#59

Post by Cshelton »

pohl wrote: post #48
omosubi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't count on this - markets don't seem to care about sea level rise at the moment

The wealthy do love their ocean-view properties, though.

The wealthy can afford to move their properties back/up a few feet.

Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

#60

Post by wildmusings »

tominous wrote: post #2

> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?

The Mars environmentalists will be one of the stupidest interest groups in human history. And they will certainly exist.
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