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Re:Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say by Daishiman on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:19AM (#13177127)
> Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.

No, it shows that you haven't been reading the minimum baseline material.

Antartic ice surface is spreading but the volume is decreasing dramatically. The surface spread is due to lower atmospheric temperatures given the transfer of energy from the atmosphere to the ice, leading to the melt in ice shelves that used to be stable.

There is no point of contention there and if you had actually done the research this should have come up easily.

Re:Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say by misja111 on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:30AM (#13177221)
Well, it seems you haven't read the Nasa report that I was referring to. The increase that was measured was not in surface but in mass. Unless the density of the Antrarctic ice is increasing dramatically as well, that means volume is increasing, not decreasing.
Re:Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say by mturmon on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @12:13PM (#13177599)
The press release you reference, and the paper it grew from, has been echo-ing around HN (and the cryosphere research community) for a while. Last time was two months ago; see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12796646

Short summary: the study partly conflicts other results, and the mass loss seen in that study may be more due to the limitations of their measurement technique (radar altimetry) versus other techniques (gravity).

There's more at the link referenced above. (See also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...)

Claimer: while not involved in ice mass quantification, I talk regularly with people who do it full time, publish regularly, are leads on space instruments to measure it, etc.

And, like other commenters nearby, I want to caution you on your approach to "skepticism" and "keeping an open mind".

You seem to be selecting one press release from the hundreds released every year, and using its partial conflict with other information to call the whole hypothesis (significant ice melting caused by global warming) into question. That's not a valid mode of inquiry - especially when you don't have the training and time to keep up with current work.

It's like walking into an IC fab and asking why they are not using EUV lithography (it was in this article in Wired!) when you didn't even take a semiconductor physics class in college.

The right place to start, if you really want to get informed, is the IPCC AR5 report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/). Reading press releases only makes sense if you can put it into context.