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> Globally, natural lake volume declined at a net rate of −26.38 ± 1.59 Gt year

the phrase you read said "Over half (53 ± 2%) of the large lakes experienced significant water losses" (emphasis mine)



Is 26.38 Gt a lot?

There's 91k cubic kilometers of fresh water in lakes according to: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...

And a cubic kilometer is basically a Gt, right? .98 Gt?

So 26 / 91,000 = ~0.02% ?

Is that a lot? If it's really 0.02% - wouldn't you expect something to be random noise? How do we know it's not random noise?


But they measure close to 30 years (1992-2020), which means its close to 0.6% which is a significant number


Is it? Maybe it's an error, or maybe there's more water in ice pack, glaciers, snow, underground, or even in the ocean.

Like, it's unclear if there's a problem here or not.


[flagged]


I didn't read the parent's comment as you did. To me it looked like someone just trying to get a handle on the relative amounts and variability. They provided some relevant data and appeared open-minded.

Your response to that added little to the discussion. You might have selected the parts of the article that answered those questions, but instead opted to shut down further discussion on a valid question. Which, may or may not be addressed in the sources.


So we should have 100% faith in what we're being told in the article? If the author was trying to deceive then they wouldn't cite data that provided contradiction. Seems more like a religious approach than a logical one. There are papers, that were well cited, claiming there would be no sea ice by 2010, which never occurred.


> So we should have 100% faith in what we're being told in the article?

If you're asking questions that are answered in the article then that means you're discussing things without any context or insight or understanding, and have no intention to gather that context or insight or understanding. You aren't asking questions in good faith if you purposely avoid the answers.




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