Antarctic ice really is collapsing, oceans' rise unstoppable

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but the great lakes are ok?

As usual, news of this sort puts this song straight into my head…

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But my uncle sent me a chain email saying that the ice was actually expanding.

Who am I going to believe, my uncle or some “scientists.” My uncle let me ride his minibike when I was 8…

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Which may very well have been the fossil fuel release that tripped the butterfly effect that led to global climate change. Thanks a lot, Jared’s uncle.

@incarnedine_v: Apparently, not so great. From NWF: “Potential global warming impacts include reduced water levels”

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But he told me that running leaded gas in a 2-stroke engine actually made the air cleaner

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Mmm…lead poisoning.

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I’m a cold weather person and I live in the American south. (You see the problem.) I’m hoping we’re forced to release atmospheric particulates as a geoengineering solution to global warming, and that we overdo it and end up colder than we were when we started. (And that Russian and Canadian national leadership don’t declare intervention an act of war for messing with Arctic resource extraction.)

Why couldn’t it be global cooling?

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Am I the only one confused by the term “West Antarctica”?

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I’d assume that means the part in the Western hemisphere, though “North Antarctica” would probably throw me.

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Exactly. The expanding ice is the cause of droughts because it uses up the available water.
Teach the Controversy

(flat earth was the closest that I could find)

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Oh, that’s easy. “North Antarctica” is the coast; “South Antarctica” is the center.

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Great news, more baby turtles will make it to the sea.

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For clarity’s sake, Antarctica has been separated into two bits, East and West.

Antarctic sea ice at record levels

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-levels/story-e6frg8y6-1226913708208#mm-premium

reduced water levels? Well that’s alright. More room for those condos.

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Sea ice and land (glacial) ice form for mostly different reasons, (yeah, because cold, duh, besides that).
The linked story is almost completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

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In what way? Be specific.

Sea ice has a relatively small impact on water levels, because the volume of water displaced by an iceberg is equivalent to the volume of liquid water produced when it melts. (It’s actually more complicated than that, but you get the idea.) Land ice is the real killer for sea-level change, because it’s not displacing any water at all until it melts.

Edit: More specifically: If you fill a glass with tap water and ice cubes, and then wait for the ice cubes to melt, the water level will not change at all. If you use seawater instead of tap it will change a bit, because ice is fresh water, which has a different volume than seawater. If you fill a glass with tap water, and then put a funnel on top of the glass and fill it with ice cubes, the glass will overflow all over the place as the ice melts.

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I wouldn’t get too worked up over it. Sometimes this ice gets “magically” added back. It just takes a stroke of the pen apparently: