6 ms·
If we look a little at the first sentences of that article, then we see that the writer was going for drama but actually, strictly didn't say anything at all si
by HilbertSpace 15y ago
If we look a little at the first sentences of that article, then we see that the writer was going for drama but actually, strictly didn't say anything at all significant:
So, he starts with:
"An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons -- and large portions of the island's bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response."
It would have been nice to have had some data in terms of temperature to be clear on the "An unusually hot melting season in 2010", but let's set that aside for now.
He continues with:
"That's the finding from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the Greenland coast to measure the bedrock's natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it."
Of course he just says "ever-diminishing weight of ice" but gives no evidence.
Here's where the drama goal really gets in the way of anything significant:
"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59 inches) or more, year after year. But a temperature spike in 2010 lifted the bedrock a detectably higher amount over a short five-month period -- as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."
Sure, the claim is of the form this year was worse then the usual. So, for the usual he has:
"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59 inches) or more, year after year."
But that says nothing about the usual for Greenland! With this statement, the usual for Greenland might be zero uplift or even negative uplift. It might be that at the same time we could replace "uplift" with "a fall" and have a correct statement.
And the statement also says that it is routine for the uplift to be more than 15 mm.
So, net, we don't know what the usual, 'routine', or average uplift for Greenland, or even the measuring locations, has been in recent years.
So, for the part about this year, we have:
"as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."
So, here we have no evidence that year 2010 was different! That is, we have already been told that
"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59 inches) or more, year after year."
where the "or more" that is routine might well include the
"as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."
of year 2010.
Moreover, the "as high as" really means that there could have been just one location with 20 mm with all the other locations less. Also the "some locations" says nothing about the overall situation for Greenland or even all the measuring locations. Indeed, there could be "some locations" where the bedrock went down by 200 mm -- we don't know.
Newsies go for drama; for that they like to emphasize the extreme cases, and that is what this author is doing. But to draw a conclusion about the bedrock of all of Greenland, we need at least average figures -- extreme cases say next to nothing.
There is another point: No one really cares much about 15 mm of Greenland bedrock. Instead, people might care about temperature. So in this article something about bedrock is used to suggest something about temperature. Looking at bedrock levels to measure temperature is one heck of a crude, indirect thermometer, especially when we have some very accurate thermometers.
If the point is about temperature, then report temperature. They didn't report temperature and, instead, tried, crudely, to say some things about bedrock and have us draw conclusions about temperature.
Why? Since they didn't report temperature and reported the bedrock data only very crudely, we have to suspect that the bedrock data didn't say much and that the temperature data would show nothing of any concern.
So, they didn't have anything of concern but tried to create concern anyway.
So the article was one more attempt at flim-flam, fraud, scam to use bad data to scare people about 'global warming'!
I call BS.
- scarmig 15y agoI love how you go from "I'm too lazy to look further than a pop sci summarization" to "the entirety of the work the scientist did was the pop sci summarization" to "flim-flam, fraud, scam." Climate change "skepticism" in this case amounts to someone who is too lazy to look at scientific reports and just prefers ad hominems.
- HilbertSpace 15y agoReading the whole article gives nothing better. What was written in the whole article has nothing significant. If the study had something significant, then the author of the article didn't report it.
- scarmig 15y agoI'm curious as to where you found the actual article referencing this particular data, as it was just presented a few days ago at the AGU conference, and I'm having trouble finding the (yet unpublished?) conference notes. Alternatively, is this all an oblique way of saying both that the media sucks at reporting science and that scientists (and earth scientists in particular) need to be more approachable and accessible to the public? In which case, I agree with you 100%. Lastly, what is your point, here? Nothing controversial has been reported. Temperatures in Greenland are rising. Marginal ice will melt when temperatures rise. Ice has mass and weight. When that ice goes away, the force its weight has exerted goes away. The Earth decompresses to reach a new energetic equilibrium. And now, their study has confirmed via GPS data that, indeed, things decompress when you stop compressing them. Unless you're arguing that they made up the GPS data out of whole cloth, why the total freak out? The hyper defensive "anything that mentions temperatures changing at all is an AL GORE CONSPIRACY!!1!" really doesn't speak well of the scientific mindset of AGW denialism. The pop sci piece here doesn't even mention AGW, but we've already had 2 (current count) people come in and go into shit-flinging mode to discredit it.
- HilbertSpace 15y agoYou can use GPS and bedrock levels on the southern coast of Greenland to measure temperature if you want to, but I prefer to use a thermometer.