XPost: alt.home.repair, alt.politics.scorched-earth, uk.politics.misc   
   XPost: uk.legal, alt.politics.uk   
   From: burfordTjustice@tues.uk   
      
   The New York Times has taken warnings about global warming to a whole new   
   level, publishing a three-part series suggesting a “potential apocalypse”   
   from melting ice sheets if humans keep pumping carbon dioxide into the   
   atmosphere.   
      
   “If that ice sheet were to disintegrate, it could raise the level of the sea   
   by more than 160 feet — a potential apocalypse, depending on exactly how   
   fast it happened,” NYT reporter Justin Gillis wrote of what some scientists   
   predict could happen    
   to Antarctica.   
      
   Gillis points to recent research suggesting “the collapse of the ice sheet   
   will become inevitable,” likening the projected 160-foot sea-level rise to   
   flood stories from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible’s Old Testament.   
      
   “In the Epic of Gilgamesh, waters so overwhelm the mortals that the gods   
   grow frightened, too,” Gillis wrote, “In India’s version, Lord Vishnu   
   warns a man to take refuge in a boat, carrying seeds. In the Bible, God orders   
   Noah to carry two of    
   every living creature on his ark.”   
      
   “I don’t think the biblical deluge is just a fairy tale,” Terence   
   Hughes, a retired glaciologist told Gillis. “I think some kind of major   
   flood happened all over the world, and it left an indelible imprint on the   
   collective memory of mankind that    
   got preserved in these stories.”   
      
   “That flooding would have occurred at the end of the last ice age,” Gillis   
   reported. Of course he left out the part about Antarctic ice sheet melting   
   taking place over a couple thousands years.   
      
   Now, the research Gillis points to is a worst-scenario based on a Parallel Ice   
   Sheet Model, as reported by scientists in a 2015 study. Models can be useful   
   tools to test complex climate interactions, but they are still projections,   
   not facts.   
      
   That 2015 study found “half the Antarctic ice sheet would melt or fall into   
   the sea in the first thousand years” based on model projections, according   
   to a previous NYT report.   
      
   The first installment of Gillis’s three-part series claimed Antarctica   
   “may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration,” but   
   later in the series admitted the glacier NYT reporters toured with scientists   
   “seems stable now.”   
      
   Even so, the effects of any current global warming on Antarctica are unclear.   
   The South Pole’s western ice sheet has been shedding mass for decades, but   
   part of that has to do with underground volcanic activity and the fact the ice   
   sheet rests on water.   
      
   Recent evidence suggests the Antarctic peninsula has been cooling since the   
   late 1990s. A recent study found the region “has shifted from a warming   
   trend of 0.32 °C/decade during 1979–1997 to a cooling trend of − 0.47   
   °C/decade during 1999–2014.   
   ”   
      
   Antarctica’s eastern ice sheet seems more stable, and may have even been   
   gaining mass in recent decades.   
      
   A 2015 study by NASA found Antarctica’s ice sheet increased in mass from   
   1992 to 2008. The study found ice gains in Eastern Antarctica offset ice loss   
   from the west.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)