Gill

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a tiny percentage of the continents, about 2% if I remember correctly. It has been warming because it is a thin strip of land extending far out in the ocean and has been warmed by ocean currents.

The rest of the continent has NOT been warming.

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There is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically.
Gavin Schmidt, NASA GISS

Voidwar

If "newsworthy" meant a damn thing, I'll bet you could find me the news story detailing new glacier formation. If its news when one breaks why isn't it news as one forms ? Bias mebbe ?

Not much reason to think the earth wasn't going to do this itself. The flea likes to think he's driving the dog, but that don't make it so.

Kernel Sanders

Policy decisions about what to do about climate change are a different question. In that regard I'd guess that your criticisms of politician-crafted plans are spot on. But continuing with our current emissions-heavy ways is no less shortsighted than the chronic deficit spending that our nation engages in. New negative effects due to C02 and other emissions are constantly cropping up. Right now ignoring them has few negative side effects and, as you state, benefits our QoL. By the time that it becomes more profitable/necessary to mitigate climate change it will likely be irreversible.

You are correct. Most of Antarctica is not significantly warming, and the center is in fact cooling. The Antarctic Peninsula, where the Wilkins sheet is located as you noted, is the fastest warming part, but most of the coast is warming. As the majority of the Antarctic coast is covered with thousands of different ice sheets, they serve as a very visual early warning system for the changes that have been occurring at the coast.

Kernel Sanders

It doesn't. The only reason I brought newswothyness up is that I was responing to Vicc's post about hearing about ice shelf collapses on the news.

There are a few glaciers that are growing, and you can find some press on that if you look. The growing is a very slow and uninteresting process, however, whereas the collapse of 100 square miles of a glacier-based ice shelf is visual and dramatic. It is unsurprising that the press would only cover one. Scientific journals should have more information about glacier accumulation than the press, but even there the fact that more glaciers are retreating than advancing, combined with more widespread and human impact of melting glaciers as opposed to growing glaciers means that the disparity remains. As for glacier formation, this process takes an extremely long time and is pretty analogous to mountains growing and I doubt that the scientific community has existed long enough to catalog and research glacier formation first-hand.

Just to be clear I'll ask you the same question I asked Vicc earlier. Do you accept that the earth is warming but reject human activity as the cause, or do you reject climate change as a whole?

DarkWizard12

except for liberals most live in those coastal areas....wow

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Quote:

Originally Posted by OKGrannie Even pro-choicers will say the fetus is alive.

Tucker Case

SHHHHHHH! You're giving away the secret on why the right denies global warming!

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- Ænema by Maynard James Keenan

American

The bottom line is this. The global warmers want everyone to believe that US factories (even though manufacturing is moving overseas) are killing the planet, and they want them all shut down. That's it in a nut shell. They don't like the US being the only Super Power. They don't want the US to have any nukes (but Iran can), and they don't want us to have a credible military. They want us to live like flower children in peace and harmony and paint on VW buses.

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"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." -- Thomas Jefferson יהוה

Caine

Whooooahh Dude..

Trippy.....