IN A FORTHCOMING ARTICLE purporting to lend "facts" to the rapidly approaching boiling point of the Planet Earth -- Antarctic ice loss speeds up, nearly matches Greenland loss -- the following detail emerges:
The team found that the net loss of ice mass from Antarctica increased from 112 (plus or minus 91) gigatonnes a year in 1996 to 196 (plus or minus 92) gigatonnes a year in 2006. A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds. These new results are about 20 percent higher over a comparable time frame than those of a NASA study of Antarctic mass balance last March that used data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. This is within the margin of error for both techniques, each of which has its strengths and limitations.Seems to me that the main limitation here centers on rate of loss. Given the very wide "margin of error" we could be dealing with a loss of 104 gigatonnes or of 288 gigatonnes. But what's 184 gigagtonnes when we're dealing with the fate of the Earth and, more importantly, the fate of future grants?
Obviously it matters little to some news reports that leave this margin of error out of their report entirely.
Then again there's the active volcano under the ice of Antarctica along with the hot magma under Greenland. Both might be involved in the obscure scientific process so eloquently stated by Christopher Taylor in "Ice Melts in Fire."
UPDATE: NEW BUZZPHRASE ALERT! Eric Rignot, the same fellow leading the gigatonne guessing in the report above, emitted this wonderful phrase just last week in Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica in the Washington Post [emphasis added] : "Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."
With this we have moved, in less than a year, from "global warming" to "global climate change" to "global climate forcing." A brilliant series of linguistic side-stepping. After all if you can get people to swallow "global climate forcing" it removes all the responsibility for the issues from the natural world since natural forces cannot have the property of "forcing." "Forcing" heavily implies "will" and the only thing that has will and acts on the environment is man. Cute concept, isn't it? Let's see if others in the "Terraform Now!" party pick up on this slick bit of propaganda.
Don't be ridiculous, Gerard. In the entire history of the world, fire has never melted ice.
Posted by: Pat Berry at January 25, 2008 6:51 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.