{"id":6754,"date":"2006-03-03T09:11:13","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T14:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6754"},"modified":"2006-03-03T09:11:13","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T14:11:13","slug":"we-better-figure-out-whats-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/we-better-figure-out-whats-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We better figure out what’s going on’"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, maybe Al Gore is on to something<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper that provides the first evidence that the sheet’s total mass is shrinking significantly.<\/p>\n

The new findings, which are being published today in the journal Science, suggest that global sea level could rise substantially over the next several centuries.<\/p>\n

It is one of a slew of scientific papers in recent weeks that have sought to gauge the impact of climate change on the world’s oceans and lakes. Just last month two researchers reported that Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, and a separate paper in Science today predicts that by the end of this century lakes and streams on one-fourth of the African continent could be drying up because of higher temperatures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kudos to the Washington Post for running this on its front page.<\/p>\n

The information is more than a little alarming. The amount of water pouring annually from the ice sheet into the ocean — equivalent to the amount of water the United States uses in three months — is causing global sea level to rise by 0.4 millimeters a year. The Post added that the disappearance of one of the Antarctic’s smaller ice sheets could raise worldwide sea levels by an estimated 20 feet.<\/p>\n

The Post also quoted Richard Alley, a Pennsylvania State University glaciologist, who didn’t seem completely convinced of the warming trend — Alley said, “One person’s trend is another person’s fluctuation” — but he nevertheless sounded pretty concerned.<\/p>\n

“It looks like the ice sheets are ahead of schedule” in terms of melting, Alley said. “That’s a wake-up call. We better figure out what’s going on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sounds like a good idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, maybe Al Gore is on to something. The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper that provides the first evidence that the sheet’s total mass is shrinking significantly. The new findings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}