11 ms·
Greenland’s ice sheets are disappearing faster than anyone predicted
- gokhan 13y agoI love this new way of storytelling, but not sure if this kind of content creation process is scalable (or if the scalability does matter at all).
- mbell 13y agoWhy would I even read a science article from 'The Rolling Stone' and presume there is any validity to it? That isn't to say it isn't true, it may well be, but seriously, find a better source.
- rdl 13y agoThey're a surprisingly good source for major articles. If you had important information for a mass audience and wanted to reach that audience, it would be a good choice of publication. I mean, they got rid of GEN McChrystal, among other things.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tsotha 13y agoAccidentally.
- rdl 13y agoMichael Hastings and Matt Taibbi between them cover a lot. The 2009 "The Great Vampire Squid" was a good article, although it probably went too far. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american... The Operators was a great book; it grew out of the article in RS, and was excerpted there. http://www.amazon.com/Operators-Terrifying-Americas-Afghanistan-ebook/dp/B006CU9WU6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375059624&sr=8-1&keywords=the+operators http://www.amazon.com/Operators-Terrifying-Americas-Afghanis... I liked their Billy Corgan article, although that's music.
- Amadou 13y agoHastings died in a fiery one-car crash one recent morning in Los Angeles. FWIW, My personal worldview is very much aligned with Taibbi's but I can never get more than a handful of paragraphs into anything he writes because the invective is so overwhelming.
- hoggle 13y ago"National security officials worried by rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice overlook threat of permanent global food shortages" http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/02/white-house-arctic-ice-death-spiral http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may...
- tterrace 13y agoThis is nonsense. You should judge the article on its own merit.
- mbell 13y agoYour statement is ridiculous. I could say anything and argue it should be judged on it's own merit, where are the sources? There were zero citations in this article.
- TillE 13y agoIt directly quotes a number of scientists. What more do you want? It's not an academic paper, of course there are no "citations".
- jasonlotito 13y ago> What more do you want? He wants things handed to him. Rather than follow up via the multiple sources they provided, along with a link to the project itself, he'd prefer we do that work for him. Which is sad, really. That people don't want to take the time to research things on their own, and simply expect things handed to them.
- tterrace 13y agoWhat source are you looking for exactly? The piece was about the Dark Snow Project, and the journalist trekked around Greenland with the guy that founded it.
- mbell 13y agoI want data, and analysis of data, and the initial conditions required to produce said data. If you don't provide that, you are not providing scientific value. Rather, you're writing an opinion piece that can only ever be as accurate as the author's knowledge, and well, The Rolling Stone doesn't produce scientifically educated authors.
- meritt 13y agoThis is the same Rolling Stone that placed the younger Tsarnaev on their front cover like some sort of rock icon. Fuck Rolling Stone and everything associated with it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bpatrianakos 13y agoIf you're upset about Tsarnev then you either didn't read that article or get the point. The photo they used was a real one, it wasn't doctored, the point of which was to ask the question of how this seemingly intelligent, non-extreme, all-American looking boy could become radicalized and become involved in a terror plot. That article was an example of the kind of real journalism that's lacking in this country. Rolling Stone has for years now been a great source for good journalism. It's not just a music magazine and hasn't been for a long time. They've been doing a lot of good investigative reporting for at least the past ten years that I know of and maybe more. You may not like what you read but the fact that it came from Rolling Stone is totally irrelevant. You want sources? Read the article. They're in there. You want citations? Read an academic journal. What magazine or newspaper that you know of puts citations for every little thing in their articles? None. Because they're not publishing academic papers. If no source is valid without the citations you require then no magazine is a valid source by your logic - logic that's flawed.
- ams6110 13y agoJust wait until Tsarnaev is Time's "person of the year"
- foobarbazqux 13y agoYou wouldn't, but that's because it's not a science article. It's a pop culture magazine article portraying a climate change researcher as a rock star. There's very little discussion of the falsifiable hypotheses he wants to test - some bits about models, reflectivity, and black microbes is all you get. But biographies are okay, they can help to put a face on things. That said, I didn't find it the most compelling read but the picture of the waterslide was worth it.
- jasonlotito 13y ago> But biographies are okay, they can help to put a face on things. Damn right. They do far more for science than people realize. You make science fun and exciting, and it draws people in. Not everyone wants to start with all the technical data. Hell, the best scientists understand this.
- tsotha 13y agoThe problem with rock star scientists is the entire field takes a hit when someone turns out to be a fraud.
- drewblaisdell 13y ago> Why would I even read a science article from 'The Rolling Stone' and presume there is any validity to it? You can read the article (which you clearly haven't done) and answer this question yourself.
- mbell 13y agoYes, I read it. How exactly do you expect me to determine the validity of the words in the article? Please tell me you don't simply believe them to be factual based on their articulate organization. If you do, there is no hope for this conversation.
- dasil003 13y agoI see, so appeal to authority is your primary means of a qualifying truthiness?
- mbell 13y agoI expect an appeal to data to qualify my determination of truthiness, which the article lacks. That is, after all, the way of science.
- woah 13y agoThen how does the authority even come into it? Why didn't you make this your first comment?
- snowwrestler 13y agoAppeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority is fallacious. Let's ask Linus Torvalds and me a question about the architecture of git. Whose answer would you trust more?
- moocowduckquack 13y agoTo start with, you could look up the scientist mentioned, read their work and then cross reference it against other published research.
- mbell 13y agoThe response to this is a great example of how far Hacker News has fallen. The readership here appears to be in a state of believing what The Rolling Stone says in place of actual scientific research. If you want an example of how intellectual forums die, this thread is it.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoWhat scientific claims does the article make that you think we believe?
- DanBC 13y agoIt seems odd to criticise this article for not being intellectually rigorous enough, when there is so much dross posted every hour. The article gives plenty of caveats. Is there anything factually wrong in the article? Or is it that you disagree with his hypothesis? Or is it simply the lack of cites?
- gruseom 13y agoHN has always featured sciencey articles from the popular press (as well as complaints about the decline of HN, for that matter), so your claim is at first glance untrue. It does seem testable, though. Do you have any data to support it?
- arrrg 13y agoIt’s a magazine article about a science topic, a.k.a. the most normal thing in the world. Only in bizarro-HN-world would that even begin to raise any eyebrows. Yes, journalists are in fact allowed to write about science topics and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. No, not everything that’s written about science has to have been published in a peer-reviewed science journal. Good science journalism is awesome and there should be much more of it. It’s this honestly bizarre cynical and twisted worldview that’s wrong with HN, most certainly not that someone posted this article.
- mbell 13y agoI don't honestly know how I could disagree with you more. Your definition of a 'bizarre' world equates to my version of an ideal world. How dare people question media? How dare people think for themselves instead of accepting what media tells them? How dare they? You have vilified everything that goes wrong with a democratic society. Your mentality is the problem.
- rayiner 13y agoUh, Rolling Stone has some serious journalists. I find him a bit shrill, but Matt Taibbi had some pretty good coverage of the financial coverage in Rolling Stone over the last few years.
- snowwrestler 13y agoMatt Taibi is an excellent writer who rarely lets nuance, detail, or chronological sequence get in the way of a great rant. He's very entertaining to read, but not someone I would hold up as a good example of serious journalism.
- tlb 13y agoYes please: submit a proper scientific article about this research.
- mcgwiz 13y agoSetting aside the defense of RS by sibling comments, part of the reason this article is of interest is its presentation format. Find a peer-reviewed science journal that also provides a rich multimedia experience and you can argue that there is a source that is "better" for the purposes recognized here (content and presentation format).
- guscost 13y agoSo Arctic albedo causes the new scary feedback in the climate system? What happens when the old scary feedback mechanism (water vapor) condenses into opaque white clouds? Neat design though.
- vacri 13y agoWarmer air holds more vapour than colder air, so there's less condensation to be had. I can't say what the extent of that is, but there is a form of feedback there.
- guscost 13y agoIt sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse. Why would the atmosphere be significantly warmer if condensed clouds are reflecting solar energy into space? Furthermore, if there is a robust model suggesting that extra water vapor in warm air negates the effect of cloud albedo, wouldn't that hypothesis be supported by the tropospheric temperature record?
- vacri 13y agoNo cart before the horse. It's just a potential feedback mechanism - if something else is causing warming, this may help accelerate it. It's not an isolated factor. My weather science is weak - which is why I can't say what the extent of this is - it's just that shiny snow moved into the atmosphere does not necessarily cause an equal amount of shiny clouds. It may even create more clouds - the same amount of water makes more cloud than ice - but it's a complex picture, and warm air can hold a hell of a lot of water in invisible vapour form.
- guscost 13y ago> it's a complex picture We can certainly agree on that point.
- phaemon 13y agoWhite clouds aren't opaque, they're translucent. Opaque clouds are the dark grey/black clouds you sometimes see.
- jotm 13y agoWell, the good news is that we'll get a whole lot of land to colonize soon...
- NoPiece 13y agoThat's what the Vikings thought too..
- mrbuzer 13y agoAtta boy capitalist!
- markdown 13y ago"Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to grow bananas in our own back yard" - Sarah Palin, Alaska.
- Casseres 13y agoWhat's your source? A quick Google search indicates that someone made up that supposed quote. Pop Quiz! Who said, "I can see Russia from my house"? Answer: Not Sarah Palin, it was Tina Fey.
- markdown 13y agoI made it up of course... I was trying to be funny. I suppose she's nutty enough to actually say something like that, and so isn't really a good joke eh? People might actually pass on the quote. This was her a few weeks ago: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/sarah-palin-global-warming_n_3306867.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/sarah-palin-global-...
- markdown 13y agoPage size: 22MB Requests: 148 It choked my Mac mini. Tens of thousands of CPU's around the world are roaring to this web page, causing enough global warming to melt buckets of ice. BUCKETS, I TELL YOU!!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- eksith 13y agoI'm on a dinky little Sony Vaio 11" and no-script on FF has been my friend. Best thing is that it charges pretty well on a car or solar panel or bicycle + dyno or what have you. It's ultimately disadvantageous to magazine publishers in particular (since they seem to serve the most bloat) when people will eventually block scripts en masse. Edit: Forgot to mention, I also use this http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm Although I changed 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 and it seemed to have no ill effects.
- kzrdude 13y agoProps to them for capturing the feeling of a beautiful magazine on a web page. I wish my favourite newspaper websites would pull that off in their larger pieces.
- kaiwen1 13y agoAgreed. This is one of the best ports of magazine feel while leveraging the web that I've seen.
- tripzilch 13y agoIt's terrible. Scrolling is super slow and jerky, and I'm afraid to zoom/resize to a comfortable reading view because of it. I don't see why this is necessary for a "beautiful magazine feeling"? Couldn't they just used big pictures, a nice font and great layout, but in plain HTML+CSS it would give me the exact same experience, except of course 1000x better. A while ago I came across a similar article (maybe it was Rollingstone as well) about Daft Punk's new album. I really wanted to read about Daft Punk so I suffered through that experience. The photos were very pretty but still I really wonder what sort of computer such pages are optimized for? My laptop is not super powerful but also just 1.5 years old. I used the latest Chrome on Win7, that should put me in their target audience for optimizing website experience right? (of course that's assuming my experience is not the intended one and it's more pleasant for people on more powerful computers?) But for this article, from the title I pretty much just wanted to know what's up with the ice in Greenland and what this means. So I didn't persevere and instead came looking to the comments here to see if the article is even any good.
- scotty79 13y agoFirst time since I'm on the web (and that's since around IE4) I almost missed the content below the fold. I thought it was a myth that people might not know that they should scroll a bit. But this page? Flashy animation, logo, social icons. First thought "Maybe that's all? Seems sufficient for 2013", but the title on HN suggested that this page contains some content. Second though "I guess it's broken. I'm on linux. Sometimes server don't respond fully. Possible." "Maybe I hover over some things? But the animation has no distinct features. Maybe I click around. Maybe touch mouse wheel. Wow! Whoever approved this design was an idiot."
- pawn 13y agoWould have missed it if not for your comment. Saw the loading symbol, said "eh, nevermind" and then came back and saw this.
- adregan 13y agoIt doesn't feel right to take a story about perhaps the most important crisis we are currently facing as a planet and make it difficult to read.
- ekianjo 13y agoWhy not? If you want to see a message delivered you can criticize the way it's poorly done. That does not undermine the message itself.
- adregan 13y agoWell. Global warming is an important issue, but the janky scrolling on that site caused me to shoot past important info, get a little frustrated, and close the article. On second thought: But I think you and I agree on the same issue, we're just misunderstanding each other.
- sengstrom 13y agoI found it an engaging read with little clutter after I started scrolling...
- mehwoot 13y agoWhenever I see an article with a headline like this, I always wonder... was it actually faster than anyone ever predicted? Was there really not at least one crazy guy in the 70's who said "Man, Greenland's ice sheets are going to be completely gone by the year 2000". Or at least a more aggressive model from somebody. Seems a bit unbelievable not a single scientist got the current melting within the range of one of their models.
- ams6110 13y agoIn the 1970s we were worried about "global cooling" and a possible coming ice age.
- mehwoot 13y agoI hadn't heard about that before, but I googled it and this interesting link came up. http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s... TL;DR The small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.
- eliasmacpherson 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#Scientists_increasingly_predict_warming.2C_1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie... From that I'm pretty sure that wiki page that 'global cooling' was not the only concern. also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6815470/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Al-Gore-condemned-over-Arctic-ice-melting-prediction.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-c...
- general_failure 13y agoThis might be true. But let's face it nobody cares until it impacts everyday life.
- spikels 13y agoI know everyone turns to Rolling Stone for the latest research on climate science but don't miss all the articles on JavaScript: http://www.rollingstone.com/search?q=Javascript http://www.rollingstone.com/search?q=Javascript
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zobzu 13y agoI'd like a TL;DR. The global warming is sufficiently alarming that we shouldn't care about how its too much javascript, or fonts are not easy to read. I read through most of the article and it doesn't seem to actually give the explanations for the phenomenon, how it exactly works, and how to make accurate predictions.
- acqq 13y agoTL DR is that it's about the scientist Jason Box who even moved to Denmark as he believes the future warming won't bring much good for most of the people who are going to inherit the Earth. He worries about the future his kids are going to have. He knows that the warming is real. And he does research for darksnowproject.org, which is financed thru crowdsourcing: “It’s a sad commentary on the state of science funding in America when legitimate projects from respected scientists like Jason Box can’t get funded through the normal channels,” says Penn State’s Mann. Box also makes a pledge: He talked about his dream of forming a Climate Delta Force, funded by philanthropists, which could be dispatched to study climate catastrophes in real time. “Give me two and a half million dollars,” he told me, “and I could change the world.”
- e3pi 13y agoOn Arctic albedo affected by Box's wildfire hypothesis, I'm wondering if those earlier deep core samples correlate with historic big blasts like Santorini, Krakatoa's red sky for a year, and...is that Yellowstone super blow up recent enough?
- EGreg 13y agoWhat about this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/oh-what-a-difference-a-year-makes-in-greenland-melting/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/oh-what-a-difference-a...
- acqq 13y agoLook at the last chart there http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image019_thumb.png?w=600&h=400 http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_imag... Through the last years the trend is to less and less ice in the Summer. 2005 and 2006 -- more ice, all other years less and less, 2012 lowest points in the chart.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoErr, so buy land in Greenland and expect frontier towns to spring up? Climate change is de facto happening. We need to mitigate not hope we can stop the ball rolling.
- rootbear 13y ago"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5
- CmonDev 13y agoSo... There will be more inhabitable land? There is always an upside.
- d23 13y agoCan we have a discussion about the content rather than the appearance or how quickly the page loaded?