It is not that 97% of the ice sheet (i.e. 97% of the mass or volume) has melted, it is that there has been some surface melt over 97% of the area of the ice sheet. And that this is more than usual.

> Mister Spock wrote:

> How is this related to politics?

The climate on earth has been changing for billions of years. In some places it's getting hotter today. Nobody disputes this simple fact. In some places it's getting colder today. Nobody disputes this simple fact.

What I'm asking is, so what?

Climate change is a political issue.  And so what? Well, due to climate change, we'll be facing some ruinous effects.

It's a good fiction novel.

When the climate is warming, the poles will feel the heat first, which means sea level rise.
We can measure the ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland, and they are both losing mass.

http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/increasing_rates_of_ice_mass_loss_from_the_greenland__and_antarctic_ice_sheets_revealed_by_grace.pdf

There is evidence to suggest this warming is from carbon dioxide emissions. Whether or not you agree with this evidence up to you, but it is clear that it is a possibility. C02 is a greenhouse gas, and we have emitted it into the atmosphere. The question of whether or not to reduce Carbon Dioxide is a world wide issue, and hence, it is a political issue.

The point is it may be natural, and nothing we can do can help stop it. But it may be we caused it, and it may be by reducing emissions we can help reduce the effects. And a secondary point is coal, oil, natural gas are all finite resources and it really wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to phase it out for renewable energy, as we are going to have to do that regardless over the next 100 years.

Einstein and Mister Spock, have a read of this.

http://www.clim-past.net/8/1213/2012/cp-8-1213-2012.pdf

It will be interesting to see any glaciers surge with the melt.

the ice we skate is getting pretty thin, the water's getting warm so we might as well swim

Zidi,

It's a scientific issue first. Since you don't have science to back up claims that CO2 is causing any significant impact to climate, it's not a political issue.

Climate change is not a political issue. "Climate Change" as the name of a socialist/communist campaign against industrialization and free markets is. The fact is that no hard science backs up your claims. Until it does, it's "climate change" the political issue, not climate change the scientific issue with political ramifications.

There are many far more powerful "greenhouse gasses" than CO2. If you eat beef, shut up about industrial emissions. You're an ignorant hypocrite and you need to get your house in order before you try to ignorantly impact others while you cause more harm than they do.

If you reference crappy non-scientific "studies" using selective data from an already very limited pool and massive numbers of "corrections" on top of this to skew results, shut up about industrial emissions. Every idiot who gives bad "science" weight just encourages more wasted tax money on political garbage with no scientific usefulness.

I'm as concerned as anybody about man's actions impacting climate on earth. But to jump ahead and claim the science is in is to make the issue 100% political, which is disrespectful to people who actually care about science and man's impact on the earth.

I take issue with the politicization of an issue which should be scientific at this time. The politicization of the issue decimates the science on the issue because 90%+ of the "science" being done on it is political garbage to further careers and procure funding.

Did any of you brilliant scientists who self-righteously proclaim that man is OBVIOUSLY impacting climate with CO2 emissions see Al Gore's awesome "dockumentary"? Did you catch the fact that he cites evidence of correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels?

Are you educated enough on the matter to have caught that it's misleading and insulting to everyone's intelligence, because CO2 levels have historically followed temperature changes, not the other way around?

If you didn't, maybe you're not scientifically equipped to judge the issue. And maybe you should be more an advocate of real science, not politicians who have absolutely no care in the world what impact man is having: They just want to regulate man, regardless.

East,

It's a cool place and they say it gets colder!

...? I literally don't know what you're talking about.

We have so much food in America our corrupt government intentionally inflates the prices in the interest of bigger corporate farm profits. We pay farmers not to grow food. We pay farmers to grow crops to make ethanol--a fuel which requires more energy to create than it produces when burned. (The practice is completely pointless and creates MORE net emissions of CO2) We have TONS of extra food and food production capacity. Any nation with free markets does; food becomes cheap. People start doing other work and society advances to a higher standard of living for all.

Real science would get a lot of people on-board with whatever ideas might combat man-caused climate change. All of this political posturing just harms real scientific efforts going forward because we're inundated with so much garbage research.

I don't brush off the idea of man-caused climate change. If it's happening, that's important. But I'm not interested in giving politicians a lot more power (to produce 0 change anyway--Every proposal I've ever seen just moves production of CO2 offshore) in the interests of something which has never been shown scientifically to be happening. (The man caused part. Slow climate changes are always present.) The science matters.

Insofar as most people crusading on the issue are championing socialist/communist causes against industrialization, for redistribution, that does not interest me. That's not science. That has nothing to do with climate  change beyond using the idea of it as an excuse for policies which have nothing to do with it. UN conferences on "climate change" are filled with third world dictators demanding redistribution from freer, developed nations. It's a god damned circus.

The problem is, there's barely any real science (which doesn't show anything remotely conclusive, let alone significant) on the matter. And every person claiming there's conclusive science on the matter just harms the cause of investigating the possibility of man-caused climate change.

Then there's the fact that other activities of man (omg cow farts we're doomed!) produce gasses with far more "greenhouse" effect. Yet there's virtually no attention given to them, because CO2 is mass produced and easy to rant about without any facts. The real focus is control and corporate-government desire for it, not the environment.

I'm not brushing off concerns, but I'm realistic about them. Yes, CO2 has "greenhouse" properties. But they're relatively weak compared to many other gasses. And there are a multitude of systems which often counterbalance changes in CO2 effecting temperature. We don't understand half of them, let alone well enough to model them and make half-accurate simulations.

That's not to say it's not possible, and scientifically showing it would certainly require a lot of work and data. But it's scientists doing honest work which could progress that matter, not the corrupt politicians doing it today, who embrace it as an excuse for more power. Their motivations have nothing to do with science or the environment, and this is plainly obvious in their proposals which would do nothing to curb global CO2 emissions anyway.

I can't answer your question, because Libertarians have little in common with the positions of tyrant "Conservatives."

I can answer that!  It would look like this:

---

They wouldn't make one, because they would keep denying the evidence of climate change until the planet were entirely ruined, at which point their elite few would escape to some other planet, leaving the vast majority of humans and all other life on this planet to wither and die.

Upon their new planet, they'd repeat the process again, and again, each time sending their most devolved, basely motivated beings to each new planet, until, finally, due to their devolving intelligence and other cognitive abilities, they'd lose the ability to run / repair their now ancient machines.  Inevitably, they'd be the ones to wither and die along with all other life on the planet they'd have infested.

No, xeno, you can't answer it, apparently.

we dont controle the earth, it controles us, the only thing we need to worry about is that at some point we need to realize that population controle is the thing what must be done to keep a balanced mother earth for long term (thousends of years) we cant keep growing and plundering earth at some point its all used up, and when that starts wars wil break out all over the globe, that wil be ww3. by then population might aswell be double from what we have now, but its getting there and fast.

so will we 'kill' people to ensure ww3 wont happen (greedy people want it all for themselves so genocide or forced castration/euthanasia), or will we be at war killing people afterall.
fact is we cannot keep going as humanity has been going. and us normal folk have not much power/options to controle that outcome ourselves.