
2010 spike in Greenland ice loss lifted bedrock, GPS reveals - llambda
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111209123214.htm
======
tokenadult
This is an interesting finding that demonstrates how sensitive instruments to
measure the movement of the Earth's crust have become. Because those
instruments are fairly new, it's still not certain how often movements of
similar magnitude ("as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations") have
occurred in the past, and what implications they have for people living in
Greenland

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...</a><p>or for
people living anywhere else.

------
DavePorter
Given that the Antarctic ice is also melting, the bedrock under that continent
can be presumed to be rising as well.

Will these changes lead to more earthquakes?

Have they already done so?

~~~
bergie
That probably depends on how the plates are aligned around Antarctic.

Post-glacial rebound (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound>) is
lifting Finland every year, but we don't really see many earthquakes here
because the edges of tectonic plates are quite far.

------
HilbertSpace
PG, there're a LOT of REALLY severe PC mods here on HN.

Looks like HN is a safe zone for all media BS, no matter how bad.

~~~
HilbertSpace
Go on mod, vote it down, down, down.

Don't post a response or rebuttal. Instead just vote it down.

How much are the GW and CC people paying you?

------
HilbertSpace
If we look a little at the first sentences of that article, then we see that
the writer was going for drama but actually, strictly didn't say anything at
all significant:

So, he starts with:

"An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern
Greenland by 100 billion tons -- and large portions of the island's bedrock
rose an additional quarter of an inch in response."

It would have been nice to have had some data in terms of temperature to be
clear on the "An unusually hot melting season in 2010", but let's set that
aside for now.

He continues with:

"That's the finding from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the
Greenland coast to measure the bedrock's natural response to the ever-
diminishing weight of ice above it."

Of course he just says "ever-diminishing weight of ice" but gives no evidence.

Here's where the drama goal really gets in the way of anything significant:

"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59
inches) or more, year after year. But a temperature spike in 2010 lifted the
bedrock a detectably higher amount over a short five-month period -- as high
as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."

Sure, the claim is of the form _this year was worse then the usual_. So, for
_the usual_ he has:

"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59
inches) or more, year after year."

But that says nothing about _the usual_ for Greenland! With this statement,
_the usual_ for Greenland might be zero uplift or even negative uplift. It
might be that at the same time we could replace "uplift" with "a fall" and
have a correct statement.

And the statement also says that it is routine for the uplift to be more than
15 mm.

So, net, we don't know what _the usual_ , 'routine', or average uplift for
Greenland, or even the measuring locations, has been in recent years.

So, for the part about _this year_ , we have:

"as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."

So, here we have no evidence that year 2010 was different! That is, we have
already been told that

"Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59
inches) or more, year after year."

where the "or more" that is routine might well include the

"as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations."

of year 2010.

Moreover, the "as high as" really means that there could have been just one
location with 20 mm with all the other locations less. Also the "some
locations" says nothing about the overall situation for Greenland or even all
the measuring locations. Indeed, there could be "some locations" where the
bedrock went down by 200 mm -- we don't know.

Newsies go for drama; for that they like to emphasize the extreme cases, and
that is what this author is doing. But to draw a conclusion about the bedrock
of all of Greenland, we need at least average figures -- extreme cases say
next to nothing.

There is another point: No one really cares much about 15 mm of Greenland
bedrock. Instead, people might care about temperature. So in this article
something about bedrock is used to suggest something about temperature.
Looking at bedrock levels to measure temperature is one heck of a crude,
indirect thermometer, especially when we have some very accurate thermometers.

If the point is about temperature, then report temperature. They didn't report
temperature and, instead, tried, crudely, to say some things about bedrock and
have us draw conclusions about temperature.

Why? Since they didn't report temperature and reported the bedrock data only
very crudely, we have to suspect that the bedrock data didn't say much and
that the temperature data would show nothing of any concern.

So, they didn't have anything of concern but tried to create concern anyway.

So the article was one more attempt at flim-flam, fraud, scam to use bad data
to scare people about 'global warming'!

I call BS.

~~~
scarmig
I love how you go from "I'm too lazy to look further than a pop sci
summarization" to "the entirety of the work the scientist did was the pop sci
summarization" to "flim-flam, fraud, scam."

Climate change "skepticism" in this case amounts to someone who is too lazy to
look at scientific reports and just prefers ad hominems.

~~~
HilbertSpace
You can use GPS and bedrock levels on the southern coast of Greenland to
measure temperature if you want to, but I prefer to use a thermometer.

~~~
scarmig
I believe you're not understanding what the author did. He did not attempt a
recent history temperature reconstruction of the Greenland ice sheet via GPS
measurements of bedrock rise. Going by the news article, the result was simply
that the bedrock rose in response to a compressing force being removed, with
zones experiencing heavy ice loss experiencing a commensurate rise in bedrock.

~~~
HilbertSpace
It's clear enough what the scientists tried to do with GPS, the southern
boundary of Greenland, and the level of the bedrock of the boundary of
Greenland.

There are amazing images of all of Greenland showing that nearly all of the
Greenland bedrock is a big, deep bowl with most of the bowl actually
significantly below sea level. The usual claim is that the ice on Greenland
has been so heavy that it has pushed down the bedrock. 'Ats a 'lotsa icea'.

However, of course, given that ice is much less dense than rock, there are
some issues, but let's set those aside.

Yes there are claims that the last ice age pushed down the bedrock over most
of Canada and that the bedrock is still slowly rebounding.

The problem is the article (the one of this thread, not the article, I have
not seen, given at the conference). The problem with the article of this
thread is that it, the article, maybe JUST the ARTICLE, maybe not the
scientific work, is just as I wrote succinctly, "BS". The problems with the
article are just at the level of middle school data analysis.

The simplest criticism of the article is its use of "as high as" to try to
characterize something about all of the bedrock of the boundary of southern
Greenland.

The main cause of the problems with the article and the main source of the use
of "as high as" is the author's approach via the usual of the newsies, drama.
He's looking for drama. He's following the usual way, concentrate on extremes.
I said this:

"Newsies go for drama; for that they like to emphasize the extreme cases, and
that is what this author is doing."

For "as high as", I wrote:

"Moreover, the 'as high as' really means that there could have been just one
location with 20 mm with all the other locations less."

In most objective terms, the article is BS because it never really said
anything at all meaningful about the level of the bedrock on Greenland; it
said nothing, nichts, nil, nada. Just read the article and read what I wrote;
the article said NOTHING.

Look, let me put it to you this way: In the eighth grade there are two
classes, A and B. Class A is on one side of the building and class B on the
other side. Someone does an analysis of the heights of the students and finds
that some of the students in class A are as much as 2 inches taller than they
were last year and, since last year, grew by more than 1 inch more than some
of the students in class B. What can we conclude from this, that students in
class A grew more than those in class B? Heck no. Actually, its quite possible
that the same statement would also be true with A and B interchanged.

What the article reported about the bedrock level is no better than this total
BS about classes A and B.

In particular, the author never said anything to let us draw his conclusion
that the bedrock in southern Greenland rose unusually quickly in year 2010.

Again, again, yet again, once again, the article reported the data on the
bedrock levels so badly that it said nothing, nothing at all, nichts, nil,
nada, about bedrock level changes. NOTHING. To see this, just read the F'g
article or my post.

Again, over again, to explain clearly, once again, the problem was that the
author went for drama instead of meaningful data analysis. DRAMA. He wanted
drama. He wanted to grab people by the heart and the gut. It was emotion, all
emotion, in this case totally meaningless emotion, and not reason, not even
one gram of reason.

Again, the problem is at the level of middle school.

What might the article have done? How about:

"In year 2005, some high quality GPS receivers were placed at 30 locations
scattered around the boundary of Greenland.

At each location, the altitude of the receiver at that location was noted in
September of year 2005.

The following table shows the change in altitude (in mm) for each of the
locations in September from the previous September for each of years 2006,
2007, ..., 2010.

In the next table we show for each year 2006, 2007, ..., 2010 the change
averaged across the 20 locations in the southern 2/3rds of Greenland.

What we observe from this data is that, for the stations in the southern
2/3rds of Greenland, on average the increase in bedrock altitude was unusually
high from September 2009 to September 2010.

A conjecture is that the cause of the unusually high increase is greater ice
loss from higher temperatures from September, 2009 to September 2010."

But what is in the article is NOTHING like that, not similar, not the same,
not nearly the same, etc.

Again, maybe there was some good data collection, but what the article wrote
about the data is BS.

Why the drama? First, the media just wants to keep following their old
business model of emphasizing drama. Second, in particular, because a big
theme in the media is to ride a wave, mostly generated by and heavily
reinforced by, the media, to have a 'story', a continuing 'story', a 'story'
really easy to write about, a very dramatic story, about 'global warming' and,
now, 'climate change'. They just sling the BS out there, whether there is good
science or bad science, they just sling the BS the same. Because they want a
dramatic 'story'. And it's all emotionalism with "as high as" and never
rationalism. It's BS, and in total it's DANGEROUS.

I never mentioned AGW.

As I said, I call BS.

At C|NET there are claims that the global warming articles and readers posts
supporting them are both paid for by organizations that want to convince the
public that 'climate change' is a big problem and must be stopped.

'Get it' now?

~~~
goblin89
(I didn't downvote you.)

Don't you think that journalism can't be objective at all? You can simply list
the facts, and even then the BS is in which facts you select to mention (as
there's normally too much facts), and in which order, and which words you
choose, etc. So there's lots of space for manipulation in mass media, and you
can assume it takes place in many cases, but I think it's unproductive to make
a big issue out of it.

I personally doubt that this article's author or SD's editor intended to
manipulate people.

~~~
HilbertSpace
The old media has their business model. It's old and self-perpetuating. They
just keep following their old model. Yes, in places the Internet is bringing
some changes.

The model is based on that sure-fire method of getting and holding the
attention of an audience discovered by the ancient Greeks and used so heavily
in all of English literature -- formula fiction.

One special case, from early English literature, is a morality play where
there is the trilogy, transgression, retribution, and redemption. The
transgression is from human sin and, thus, immoral. The retribution is from an
angry god. The morality plays were big in early English literture -- scare the
heck out of the yahoos and get donations to the church. The two 'Rings',
Wagner's and Tolkien's, along with that take-off on Wagner's 'Ring' 'Star
Wars' were morality plays with the trilogy.

A big part of formula fiction is a protagonist the audience identifies with,
has a problem, struggles with the problem, solves the problem, and gets the
girl. A large fraction of movies, especially US westerns, are like this.

Altogether it's about 'drama', that is, 'art' as in 'communication,
intrepretation of human experience, emotion'. There the goal is to create a
case of vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment. So,
it's all about emotion and entertainment.

'Writers' are trained in and basically use the tools of such 'drama'. Even
people who try to 'write' about science. The article of this thread is an
example -- its intention and techniques are just drama.

But according to the standards of information safety and efficacy of the 20th
century from applied math, physical science, engineering, and medical science,
drama does not qualify as solid information.

The freedom in technical writing you outlined is fine but is light years away
from the drama of the article. The article was just not about the science;
instead the article was just drama. For the science it made a mess, a total
mess. Someone who wants to have an emotional experience about warming, ice
melting, the land rising, likely the sea levels rising, etc. might enjoy the
article.

If the drama stays as just light entertainment, fine. If sometimes drama is
used to underline the intense emotions of human suffering, fine. But passing
out drama instead of solid information about science is just sick-o; doing
this for important subjects is self-destructive sick-o.

In the case of GW, CC, AGW, CO2, ..., the drama stands to be so irrational the
results will be massive human suffering with 'drama' all its own. So this
drama stuff for serious scientific subjects is a serious threat. So I called
BS.

But some mods HATE what I wrote. What I wrote is fine, every word of it, just
fine, fully justified, very thoroughly explained, and right on target, with
nothing wrong at all. Sill some mods just HATE it. They won't respond and,
instead, just downvote. If PG isn't doing this, then he needs to correct those
who do. These mods are making HN be brain-dead. This isn't the first time: HN
has a secret list of wacko PC criteria.

------
guscost
<http://guscost.com/2011/11/27/celebrity-science/>

~~~
scarmig
tl;dr: "Keynesian economics... I’m slightly limiting my options for, ahem,
'graduate education'... wannabe environmentalist cult... junk theories...
super-scary movie... in the 1970s... not have had a single clue what they were
doing...cling to whatever wealth or power they can force"

~~~
guscost
(please help me bury this heathen)

