Steve Bloom wrote:
> James, I meant the second sentence from the Eurekalert press release I
> pasted:
>
> "The findings from an international study published today in the journal
> Science suggest that the southern Greenland ice sheet may be much more
> stable against rising temperatures than previously thought."
>
> Given what the paper says, the above phrase seems to me to be more or less
> saying "much more stable" = not guaranteed to melt before the WAIS. IMHO
> "less predictable" or "potentially more persistent" would have better
> captured the sense of the paper.
I guess it depends a bit on what one would claim was "previously
thought". AIUI the majority expectation has long been for a significant
melt on the multi-century time scale in the event of significant future
warming, although many would also admit the _possibility_ of something
more rapid. Hansen may be justified in drawing attention to this
possibility but I'm not aware of anyone having presented any real
evidence in favour of it. If one scores predictability in the natural
way as -\Sigma p \ln p then surely these results increase the
predictability (albeit perhaps not by much), since a relatively stable
ice sheet was already the standard view.
It is an interesting phenomenon to note how things can seem to become
more real merely through being talked about a lot, irrespective of
whether new evidences is presented.
James
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