Global Warming Threatens To Melt Ice Caps, Drown Us All
Update: Wait, No, It Threatens To Thicken Ice Sheets And Freeze Us All

Look, we don't know what the hell "global warming" is going to do -- we don't even know if it will "warm" us, necessarily -- but whatever the science, Jesus wants you to drive a Prius.

The authors "analyzed 1.2 x 108 European remote sensing satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003." This survey, in their words, "covers 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet," which together comprise "72% of the grounded ice sheet.""

Wingham et al. report that "overall, the data, corrected for isostatic rebound, show the ice sheet growing at 5 ± 1 mm year-1." To calculate the ice sheet's change in mass, however, "requires knowledge of the density at which the volume changes have occurred," and when the researchers' best estimates of regional differences in this parameter are used, they find that "72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27 ± 29 Gt year-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm year-1." This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."

Al Gore issued a press release stating that the "catastrophic fall" in sea levels would "effectively destroy all beachfront homes," because the new waterline would be extended "perhaps thirty meters or more" -- thus allowing new construction which would block the views of current beachfront home owners and deny them free access to the ocean.

In related news, Barbara Streisand just had a stroke.

Thanks to cutaway.

posted by Ace at 03:37 PM

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