The NYTimes has been doing quite a bit of reporting on climate and weather related developments in the last few years, and steadily increasing the reporting and giving it more prominence, despite being a business and mindful of what is most clickbaity. I am grateful for their efforts, and assume more will be forthcoming about this as it develops, along with other events.
I've been following this crack and related developments at Neven's Sea Ice Forum and this kind of thing is also mentioned at Wunderground's excellent Category 6.
As for one beach growing or other silly local weather disprove climate trends arguments, it's such a stupid argument, given the bigger picture, it's almost impossible to answer. It's like Trump's lies: they grow and grow and nobody can stop him.
Jeff Masters and Bob Henson do a great job of covering world weather events and putting them in context, and the comment section is full of meteorological expertise and irreverence (a good combo in these dark days, I'd say). They frequently provide lists of extremes and their costs in the main article, and collect the best visual materials for those of us so inclined.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6
Neven's forum requires signing up; ignore the warning (it's more, not less secure) and go to topic Antarctica.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,13.0.html
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To borrow a line from Tool, “Learn to swim.”
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Glorious! The apocalypse is nigh!
what will happen to kansas?
Until water is surrounding 85% of American's ankles--nothing will be done.
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Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro, biomass, alternative clean energy, human ingenuity....and free modern contraception for all is the solution.
We can do something positive if we vote for progressive, thoughtful politicians.
The gaslighters don't care about humanity or the planet.
Let's outregister, outvote, outsmart and outshout the climate deniers.
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Dateline 2059: I remember the early teens, back when we might have still been able to halt our catastrophic global climate change. The New York Times could never quite convey the urgency needed to take action, but they sure did have plenty of impressive graphics.
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Why isn't this an all caps headline story? We whine about the Mueller Report and our climate is ripping itself apart in front of us? Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
The question isn't whether climate change is real; the question is what do we do about it. The answer can't be nothing.
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Did I miss something: where in this graphic-fancy news item was there any theory or discussion about what this giant new iceberg would mean for the environment, sea life, or people? How much might it drift? What would it do to ocean temperatures? How much bigger is it than previous "calvings"? I was expecting to learn not just what and when and how--but why.
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paulangi,
The significance is that it is part of a pattern, and a massive example of it.
Ice *shelves* (the stuff that is on the water) hold back the glaciers that are on the land; as the text describes, they often are "grounded" on some island-like rocks above or below the surface, and those points of contact help hold the shelves in place.
When the ice shelves lose their integrity (probably because of warmed ocean water below), the glaciers can flow faster to the sea. It is the glaciers calving that contributes to sea level rise.
The "scarier" thing about the process is that with improved mapping of the land below the ice, we've learned that large areas are actually below sea level-- there's a "valley" behind the "ridge" that makes the current shoreline. This means that as the ice *shelves* deteriorate, it becomes possible for the warmer ocean water to infiltrate underneath the ice *sheets* that we think of as being on the land.
I don't know the configuration for this particular area, but in general, the concern is that such infiltration would begin to accelerate glacial flow in a "positive feedback" loop.
It will not happen tomorrow, but when it does, it could have a significant effect.
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I find it fascinating that, with all the time devoted to weather "slots" on televised weather forecasts, no time is reserved for actually explaining to viewers what might account for weather phenomena such as the unusual winter pattern just ended. There seems to be ample chatter devoid of content. It might be useful for news organizations to begin to take the weather report more seriously. It seems highly unlikely, for example, to have so much "calving" of glaciers up North (enough to attract tourists no less) without all that ice going into the surrounding waters without an effect on our climate.
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If the press replaced every story about Trump with one about the effects of climate change, life would be better. Think about it, we'd be faced with less pure insanity and offered more opportunity to learn and make changes.
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And yet...in spite of catastrophic warnings that Miami would be under 10' of water by 2015, the actual sea level on Miami Beach has increased by just 1/8" over the past 25 years. And that even accounts for the fact that Miami Beach is sinking.
If you look at Florida just 10000 years ago, it's land size was 1/3 larger than it is now.
This is nature at work, mon ami.
So..;.the same people that said Miami would be under 10' of water are the same one's telling us that if all human activity on earth stopped tomorrow...the impact on global temps at the end of the century would be .1 degree.
So..you want to take trillions of dollars from the economy that's providing more sustenance to the poor of the world than any other time in human history...and assuage your fears that you can't go outside when it's 65.2 degrees instead of 65.1?
That's why people put climate change as #20 or lower on their list of things to worry about.
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Erica, that is a textbook version of the Gish Gallop.
In the real world, where people are acting on the real measurements and the real projections rather than the 10-feet-by-2015 you made up, let's see what Miami Beach is doing.
"Since 2013, the city has taken drastic steps to protect its investments from the impending effects of climate change. Miami Beach is approximately 15 percent into a ten-year, $600 million multiyear stormwater management program that addresses both land use and development code and infrastructure updates. This resilience plan, dubbed “Miami Beach Rising Above” by city officials, includes improving drainage systems; elevating roads; installing pumps to replace aging stormwater pipes; replacing much of the city’s water, wastewater, and utilities systems; and updating regulations to reflect increased elevation requirements, seawall barriers, and more."
https://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/living-rising-sea-levels-miami-beachs-plans-resilience/
That's $600 million for one city just to begin dealing with impacts of rising sea levels, just part of the different impacts that warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise and precipitation changes will be costing us - and the price increases the longer we avoid ending fossil fuel use. In the real world, that is, not the land of the Gish Galloping denial industry.
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