Ian Steadman at the
New Statesman writes
Study: further melting of Antarctic glacier half the size of Germany is 'irreversible':
In this week’s New Statesman I wrote about the misadventures of the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, the research vessel trapped in ice off the shore of Antarctica, and why “one localised incident does not disprove the vast body of evidence demonstrating that the world is heating up, decade by decade”.
There’s been an increase in the amount of ice in the sea around Antarctica, which—compared to the continually-shrinking ice in the Arctic—reassures sceptics that they were right about this climate change brouhaha all along. But, of course, that’s not the case at all. The ice on the land (the ice that, when it melts, raises sea levels) is decreasing, and while sea ice is increasing, that’s probably because the run-off from the land is diluting the sea, raising its freezing point.
Categorising that melt is difficult, as, compared to the Arctic, Antarctica is much more massive and much less well-documented landmass with a wider range of climates. As an example,a new study in Nature Climate Sciencehas found that the Pine Island Glacier, in West Antarctica, has found that it may have entered an “irreversible” melting period where the amount of water it unloads into the ocean increases five-fold.
The 175,000km2 glacier—that’s about half as big as Germany—is responsible for draining a quarter of the West Antarctica ice sheet by itself, and regularly calves off huge icebergs into the Southern Ocean. The Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) British Antarctic Survey has found that it’s “retreating inland”, a sign that its melt is increasing. It’s bad news. Very bad.
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Pakalolo has a discussion going on the subject here.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Palin's defense: I'm a moron:
One of the many claims in Halperin and Heileman's new book Game Change is that during a briefing session, Sarah Palin said several times that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were behind the 9/11 attacks. Although this particularly story is new, we've already known for quite some time that Palin believed Iraq was behind 9/11.
As you'll see in this video, even though Palin now denies ever having made the connection, she made at on at least two occasions during the 2008 campaign, first on September 11 when she said Iraq was home to "the enemies who planned and carried out" 9/11 and again on September 25 when, standing at Ground Zero, she said we were fighting in Iraq "to not let them attempt again what they accomplished here, and that was some destruction, terrible destruction on that day".
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Tweet of the Day:
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, another theory of the GW bridge scandal, this time from MSNBC's Steve Kornacki: a billion-dollar development deal may have hinged on ease of traffic access.
Greg Dworkin joined us to discuss headlines like, "Is there a way out for Christie?" and "Feds investigate Christie's use of Sandy relief funds." Next, West Virginia chemical spill. What do we know about the chemical spilled? One source says: not much! And are Koch-owned companies supplying this stuff? (But be warned, there's already significant push-back on those fronts.) Finally, local reporters supply our first look at Freedom Industries and all the people behind it.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.