
Greenland’s ice sheets are disappearing faster than anyone predicted - Sandman
http://www.rollingstone.com/greenland-melting
======
scotty79
First time since I'm on the web (and that's since around IE4) I almost missed
the content below the fold.

I thought it was a myth that people might not know that they should scroll a
bit.

But this page? Flashy animation, logo, social icons. First thought "Maybe
that's all? Seems sufficient for 2013", but the title on HN suggested that
this page contains some content. Second though "I guess it's broken. I'm on
linux. Sometimes server don't respond fully. Possible."

"Maybe I hover over some things? But the animation has no distinct features.
Maybe I click around. Maybe touch mouse wheel. Wow! Whoever approved this
design was an idiot."

~~~
adregan
It doesn't feel right to take a story about perhaps the most important crisis
we are currently facing as a planet and make it difficult to read.

~~~
ekianjo
Why not? If you want to see a message delivered you can criticize the way it's
poorly done. That does not undermine the message itself.

~~~
adregan
Well. Global warming is an important issue, but the janky scrolling on that
site caused me to shoot past important info, get a little frustrated, and
close the article.

On second thought: But I think you and I agree on the same issue, we're just
misunderstanding each other.

------
markdown
Page size: 22MB

Requests: 148

It choked my Mac mini. Tens of thousands of CPU's around the world are roaring
to this web page, causing enough global warming to melt buckets of ice.
BUCKETS, I TELL YOU!!

~~~
kzrdude
Props to them for capturing the feeling of a beautiful magazine on a web page.
I wish my favourite newspaper websites would pull that off in their larger
pieces.

~~~
tripzilch
It's terrible. Scrolling is super slow and jerky, and I'm afraid to
zoom/resize to a comfortable reading view because of it.

I don't see why this is necessary for a "beautiful magazine feeling"? Couldn't
they just used big pictures, a nice font and great layout, but in _plain
HTML+CSS_ it would give me the exact same experience, except of course 1000x
better.

A while ago I came across a similar article (maybe it was Rollingstone as
well) about Daft Punk's new album. I really wanted to read about Daft Punk so
I suffered through that experience. The photos were very pretty but still I
really wonder what sort of computer such pages are optimized for? My laptop is
not super powerful but also just 1.5 years old. I used the latest Chrome on
Win7, that should put me in their target audience for optimizing website
experience right?

(of course that's assuming my experience is not the intended one and it's more
pleasant for people on more powerful computers?)

But for this article, from the title I pretty much just wanted to know what's
up with the ice in Greenland and what this means. So I didn't persevere and
instead came looking to the comments here to see if the article is even any
good.

~~~
chunkyslink
Really, It was super slick on my Retina Mac Pro with 8 gig of RAM. :)

------
mehwoot
Whenever I see an article with a headline like this, I always wonder... was it
actually faster than _anyone ever_ predicted? Was there really not at least
one crazy guy in the 70's who said "Man, Greenland's ice sheets are going to
be completely gone by the year 2000".

Or at least a more aggressive model from somebody. Seems a bit unbelievable
not a single scientist got the current melting within the range of one of
their models.

~~~
ams6110
In the 1970s we were worried about "global cooling" and a possible coming ice
age.

~~~
mehwoot
I hadn't heard about that before, but I googled it and this interesting link
came up.

[http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-
in-1970s...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm)

TL;DR

 _The small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more
interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice
Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember._

------
EGreg
What about this: [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/oh-what-a-
difference-a...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/oh-what-a-difference-a-
year-makes-in-greenland-melting/)

~~~
acqq
Look at the last chart there

[http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_imag...](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image019_thumb.png?w=600&h=400)

Through the last years the trend is to less and less ice in the Summer. 2005
and 2006 -- more ice, all other years less and less, 2012 lowest points in the
chart.

------
mbell
Why would I even read a science article from 'The Rolling Stone' and presume
there is any validity to it?

That isn't to say it isn't true, it may well be, but seriously, find a better
source.

~~~
mbell
The response to this is a great example of how far Hacker News has fallen. The
readership here appears to be in a state of believing what The Rolling Stone
says in place of actual scientific research.

If you want an example of how intellectual forums die, this thread is it.

~~~
arrrg
It’s a magazine article about a science topic, a.k.a. the most normal thing in
the world. Only in bizarro-HN-world would that even begin to raise any
eyebrows.

Yes, journalists are in fact _allowed_ to write about science topics and there
is nothing wrong with that in itself. No, not everything that’s written about
science has to have been published in a peer-reviewed science journal. Good
science journalism is awesome and there should be much more of it.

It’s this honestly bizarre cynical and twisted worldview that’s wrong with HN,
most certainly not that someone posted this article.

~~~
mbell
I don't honestly know how I could disagree with you more. Your definition of a
'bizarre' world equates to my version of an ideal world.

How dare people question media?

How dare people think for themselves instead of accepting what media tells
them?

How dare they?

You have vilified everything that goes wrong with a democratic society.

Your mentality is the problem.

~~~
beedogs
Yeah, that's great, but for fuck's sake, you don't "question media" by simply
launching into an _ad-hominem_ attack against the Rolling Stone. Stop trying
to defend your little tantrum up above by having another little tantrum.

~~~
enraged_camel
His tantrum is so childish it is embarrassing. He responds _to himself_
complaining about the response his whiny ad hominem comment received. The
ironic icing on the cake is that he is complaining about how far HN has
fallen!

------
zobzu
I'd like a TL;DR. The global warming is sufficiently alarming that we
shouldn't care about how its too much javascript, or fonts are not easy to
read.

I read through most of the article and it doesn't seem to actually give the
explanations for the phenomenon, how it exactly works, and how to make
accurate predictions.

~~~
acqq
TL DR is that it's about the scientist Jason Box who even moved to Denmark as
he believes the future warming won't bring much good for most of the people
who are going to inherit the Earth. He worries about the future his kids are
going to have. He knows that the warming is real.

And he does research for darksnowproject.org, which is financed thru
crowdsourcing:

 _“It’s a sad commentary on the state of science funding in America when
legitimate projects from respected scientists like Jason Box can’t get funded
through the normal channels,” says Penn State’s Mann._

Box also makes a pledge:

 _He talked about his dream of forming a Climate Delta Force, funded by
philanthropists, which could be dispatched to study climate catastrophes in
real time. “Give me two and a half million dollars,” he told me, “and I could
change the world.”_

------
guscost
So Arctic albedo causes the new scary feedback in the climate system? What
happens when the old scary feedback mechanism (water vapor) condenses into
opaque white clouds?

Neat design though.

~~~
vacri
Warmer air holds more vapour than colder air, so there's less condensation to
be had. I can't say what the extent of that is, but there is a form of
feedback there.

~~~
guscost
It sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse. Why would the
atmosphere be significantly warmer if condensed clouds are reflecting solar
energy into space?

Furthermore, if there is a robust model suggesting that extra water vapor in
warm air negates the effect of cloud albedo, wouldn't that hypothesis be
supported by the tropospheric temperature record?

~~~
vacri
No cart before the horse. It's just a potential feedback mechanism - if
something else is causing warming, this may help accelerate it. It's not an
isolated factor.

My weather science is weak - which is why I can't say what the extent of this
is - it's just that shiny snow moved into the atmosphere does not necessarily
cause an equal amount of shiny clouds. It may even create _more_ clouds - the
same amount of water makes more cloud than ice - but it's a complex picture,
and warm air can hold a hell of a lot of water in invisible vapour form.

~~~
guscost
> it's a complex picture

We can certainly agree on that point.

------
spikels
I know everyone turns to Rolling Stone for the latest research on climate
science but don't miss all the articles on JavaScript:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/search?q=Javascript](http://www.rollingstone.com/search?q=Javascript)

------
jotm
Well, the good news is that we'll get a whole lot of land to colonize soon...

~~~
markdown
"Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to grow bananas in our own back yard" \-
Sarah Palin, Alaska.

~~~
Casseres
What's your source? A quick Google search indicates that someone made up that
supposed quote.

Pop Quiz! Who said, "I can see Russia from my house"?

Answer: Not Sarah Palin, it was Tina Fey.

~~~
markdown
I made it up of course... I was trying to be funny.

I suppose she's nutty enough to actually say something like that, and so isn't
really a good joke eh? People might actually pass on the quote.

This was her a few weeks ago:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/sarah-palin-
global-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/sarah-palin-global-
warming_n_3306867.html)

------
lifeisstillgood
Err, so buy land in Greenland and expect frontier towns to spring up?

Climate change is de facto happening. We need to mitigate not hope we can stop
the ball rolling.

~~~
rootbear
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
\- Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5

------
gokhan
I love this new way of storytelling, but not sure if this kind of content
creation process is scalable (or if the scalability does matter at all).

------
e3pi
On Arctic albedo affected by Box's wildfire hypothesis, I'm wondering if those
earlier deep core samples correlate with historic big blasts like Santorini,
Krakatoa's red sky for a year, and...is that Yellowstone super blow up recent
enough?

------
general_failure
This might be true. But let's face it nobody cares until it impacts everyday
life.

------
d23
Can we have a discussion about the content rather than the appearance or how
quickly the page loaded?

------
CmonDev
So... There will be more inhabitable land? There is always an upside.

