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Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a good response to this story: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/11/03/antarctic_ice_still_losing_mass.html http://w

by rquantz 11y ago

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a good response to this story: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/11/03/antarctic_ice_still_losing_mass.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/11/03/antarcti...

caseysoftware 11y ago
What would it mean if this increase in ice was the beginning of a reversing trend? Similar to how a company loses money for years and then loses less and less and eventually turns a profit.
- ejstronge 11y ago
  Check out the article linked by GP - it gives a bit more historical context to the original link.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Profit analogy aside, its clear we are pushing the planet into different operating realms. What is unclear is how it will respond. Contextually its called "Global warming" because the planet gets warmer, but the response could be a global glaciation. One of the early papers talked about increasing atmospheric and ocean temperatures leading to massive amounts of snowfall. (more moisture is held by the air and can be carried farther inland before dumping) leading to layers of inland snow that freeze into ice (glaciers).
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    Do you have any links for this? That would be interesting reading.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  It's not -- as Plait points out, Antarctica is still losing ice, on the whole. The usual rush-to-write-a-click-worthy-headline effect happened, and the report that everyone's talking about doesn't actually say that there's an increase of ice over all of Antarctica.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    The article says exactly what you say it doesn't: "Using satellite data, researchers estimate the Antarctic ice sheet had a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001. This net gain eventually slowed between 2003 and 2008 to 82 billion tons of ice per year." which is lifted almost verbatim from the NASA discussion of the report: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of... and further goes on to say: “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” The net gain is slowing but there is still a gain.
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      You're right, I didn't read the article carefully enough. In my defense, it has things like "rate of change: -134 billion metric tons per year" and "Antarctica is still losing hundreds of billions of tons of ice per year" and "if Antarctica was actually gaining ice" and so on ... when what it means is, Antarctica is still (net) gaining ice, but it's also losing ice more rapidly, and in the near future the loss will outpace the gain.

by rquantz 11y ago

caseysoftware 11y ago

What would it mean if this increase in ice was the beginning of a reversing trend? Similar to how a company loses money for years and then loses less and less and eventually turns a profit.

ejstronge 11y ago
Check out the article linked by GP - it gives a bit more historical context to the original link.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Profit analogy aside, its clear we are pushing the planet into different operating realms. What is unclear is how it will respond. Contextually its called "Global warming" because the planet gets warmer, but the response could be a global glaciation. One of the early papers talked about increasing atmospheric and ocean temperatures leading to massive amounts of snowfall. (more moisture is held by the air and can be carried farther inland before dumping) leading to layers of inland snow that freeze into ice (glaciers).
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  Do you have any links for this? That would be interesting reading.
thaumaturgy 11y ago
It's not -- as Plait points out, Antarctica is still losing ice, on the whole. The usual rush-to-write-a-click-worthy-headline effect happened, and the report that everyone's talking about doesn't actually say that there's an increase of ice over all of Antarctica.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  The article says exactly what you say it doesn't: "Using satellite data, researchers estimate the Antarctic ice sheet had a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001. This net gain eventually slowed between 2003 and 2008 to 82 billion tons of ice per year." which is lifted almost verbatim from the NASA discussion of the report: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of... and further goes on to say: “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” The net gain is slowing but there is still a gain.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    You're right, I didn't read the article carefully enough. In my defense, it has things like "rate of change: -134 billion metric tons per year" and "Antarctica is still losing hundreds of billions of tons of ice per year" and "if Antarctica was actually gaining ice" and so on ... when what it means is, Antarctica is still (net) gaining ice, but it's also losing ice more rapidly, and in the near future the loss will outpace the gain.