Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
We should emit as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible and oppose efforts to regulate CO2 emissions, because more CO2 is good for the Earth. That's the take-home message of an audacious TV ad that was run this fall by the advocacy group, CO2isgreen.com. "Higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the Earth's ecosystems, and support more plant and animal life", the ad proclaims.
It's the brainchild of H. Leighton Steward, a retired oil industry executive, and Corbin J. Robertson, Jr., chief executive and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine, in return for royalties. According to an article in the Washington Post, the ad ran this fall in New Mexico and Montana, which have key Congressmen that CO2isgreen.com hopes to sway. The ads form part of a major PR campaign being waged by the fossil fuel industry and its allies in advance of the crucial U.N. Climate Change Conference, which will be held December 7 - 18 in Copenhagen, Denmark. At that meeting, the leaders of the world will gather to negotiate an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The new agreement will be the world's road map for dealing with climate change, and the stakes are huge.
Figure 1. Screen shot of the new ad by the advocacy group CO2isgreen.com.
Let's consider the scientific accuracy of the ad's three main points:
1) "Congress is considering a law that would classify CO2 as pollution. This will cost us jobs".
Well, this is a reasonable concern. Fossil fuels represent the foundation upon which modern civilization is built. The marvelous inventions of civilized life that have brought increased health, lifespan, and prosperity to billions of people are largely due to the use of fossil fuels. Regulating CO2 and moving to non-fossil fuel based energy sources won't be cheap or easy, and there is a potential for significant economic harm if our politicians bungle the job. The fossil fuel industry employs millions of people, and some of these jobs will no doubt be lost as new "green" energy sources are developed. However, the longer-term economic benefits of moving to a less fossil fuel-intensive economy, plus the jobs created as a result, must be weighed against the shorter term economic disruption that may occur.
2) "There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant".
Webster's dictionary defines a pollutant as "man-made waste that contaminates an environment". Webster's defines "contaminate" as "to make inferior or impure". CO2 is man-made waste, and there is scientific evidence that added CO2 can make our atmosphere "inferior" to its present state, or else the EPA would not be considering regulations. As just one example, when CO2 is dissolved in the oceans, the water grows more acidic. Corals and other creatures that build shells out of calcium carbonate cannot form their shells if the acidity passes a critical level--their shells will dissolve. Thus, for these organisms, CO2 is definitely a pollutant. Several shell-building planktonic organisms, such as coccolithophorids, pteropods, and foraminifera, form an important basis of the food chain in cold ocean waters, and the continued increase in CO2 emissions have many scientists very concerned about a collapse of the oceanic food chain in these regions in coming decades. Presumably, CO2isgreen.com is taking the very narrow view that a pollutant is something that harms human health when breathed. The more important question is, how does CO2 emitted by fossil fuel generation, plus all the effects that come with it, impact human health and the health of Earth's ecosystems?
3) "Higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the Earth's ecosystems, and support more plant and animal life".
It is true that many plants grow faster under enhanced CO2--the so-called "CO2 fertilization effect". Just ask your neighborhood commercial indoor marijuana grower, who probably grows his or her plants in an enhanced CO2 environment. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report found that crop yields under unstressed conditions increased by 0 - 25% for a doubling of CO2, and that growth of young tree stands also increased. However, the IPCC noted that ground level ozone pollution will limit the CO2 fertilization effect. Ozone pollution is caused by emissions from fossil fuel burning, and will increase in a warmer world since the chemical reactions that create ozone act more efficiently at higher temperatures. Furthermore, the higher temperatures, increased drought, and increased insect pests that added CO2 is likely to bring to the atmosphere via greenhouse effect warming will induce major stresses to plants that will counteract the CO2 fertilization effect. A 2009 paper by Battisti and Naylor in Science titled, "Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat", reported that the 2003 heat wave in Europe--featuring temperatures predicted to be the norm by the end of the century--reduced harvests of fruits and grains by 21 - 36%. The 2007 IPCC report noted, "even slight warming decreases yields in seasonally and low latitude regions". Most of the world's population at risk of starvation live in such regions (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa).
To get more CO2 in the air, we have to mine, transport, and burn fossil fuels, and potentially fight wars to protect them. This creates a host of effects highly detrimental to people and ecosystems:
1) Particle pollution, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides emitted as a result of burning coal and operating motor vehicles cause over $118 billion in health and other damages per year in the U.S., according to a Congressionally-ordered National Academy of Sciences study released last month. The study said this was a "substantial underestimate", as it did not consider climate change-related costs, or pollution emissions from a wide variety of other sources.
2) Oil and natural gas drilling and oil spills have had catastrophic effects on many ecosystems over the past century, and will continue to do so. Coal mining via mountaintop removal has laid waste to vast regions of the Appalachians, obliterating over 700 miles of rivers and streams. Failures of slurry ponds dams such as the one that failed in December 2008 in Tennessee have contaminated numerous ecosystems, and killed hundreds (the Buffalo Creek, WV dam failure of 1972 killed 125, and a 1966 slurry pond dam failure in Aberfan, Wales killed 144, including 126 schoolchildren). The Physicians for Social Responsibility put out a report this week called Coal's Assault on Human Health that details many more examples of how coal is bad for ecosystems and human health.
3) Coal mining accidents killed 65 miners in the U.S. in 2006, and kill tens of thousands of miners worldwide each year (China has averaged 6,000 deaths per year this decade). Tens of thousands of miners contract black lung disease each year, as well.
The Greening of Planet Earth
Fossil fuel industry-funded Public Relations campaigns focusing on the benefits of CO2 for life on Earth are nothing new. In 2006, I blogged about a TV ad run by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that proclaimed, "as for carbon dioxide, it isn't smog or smoke, it's what we breathe out and plants breathe in. Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life.". In 1991, coal giant Western Fuels founded an organization called "The Greening Earth Society" which spent $250,000 to produce the video, "The Greening of Planet Earth" (available on Youtube). The 30-minute movie features scientists who describe in glowing terms the tremendous increases in plant growth that will occur due to increased CO2. Set to appropriately stirring music, the movie concludes: "The future also holds great promise. And contributing to this promise is the positive effect that carbon dioxide has upon our world. Crop plants will continue to grow more productively, contributing to ever-greater supplies of food. Forests will extend their ranges. Grasses will grow where none grow now. And great tracts of barren land we be reclaimed. In fact, it is not inconceivable that the vitality of our biosphere could rise by a full order of magnitude over the next few centuries, to a new, greening Planet Earth". According to Boston Globe investigative reporter Ross Gelbspan in his book The Heat is On, the movie was shown extensively in Washington D.C. and in the capitals of OPEC nations, and was the favorite movie of President George H.W. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu. It's interesting to note that The Greening Earth Society shares the same mailing address and fax number as the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a fossil fuel industry front group that was given $35 million to fight climate change regulation in 2008. According to the creators of desmogblog.com, a website dedicated to "Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science", that money, plus an extra $5 million, was shuffled to a new industry front group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), and used to help fund the "Clean Coal" TV ads that dominated the airwaves during the November 2008 election. The details are in the excellent new book, Climate Cover-up, written by desmogblog.com co-founder James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.
Commentary
The CO2isgreen.com ad is beautifully produced, with multiple windows depicting flowing pictures of flowers blooming, animals grazing, crops growing, and the sun shining over these grand scenes of nature's bounty, all set to the soothing sound track of some slick New Age music. Who wouldn't want to live in such a world? Unfortunately, this is a fantasy world created by fossil fuel industry Public Relations people, and we live in the real world where physics and science rule. Oil is not clean, coal is worse, and the extraction, transportation, and burning of fossil fuels that accompany the enhanced-CO2 world we live in are already causing massive environmental destruction. Add in the immense environmental damage likely to occur as a result of the coming climate change storm, and the fantasy that more CO2 will be good for the world dissolves into a nightmare for a huge proportion of Earth's ecosystems--and the people who depend upon them for life.
Hacked emails purport to show climate scientists' cover-up
A hacker broke into an email server at the Climate Research Unit of the UK's University of East Anglia this week and posted ten years worth of private email exchanges between leading scientists who've published research linking humans to climate change. Realclimate.org has an interesting response to the debacle, saying the emails are a "presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12)". They show one example of a "cherry-picked" distortion of one of the emails that global warming contrarians are using to try to discredit the science of climate change, and successfully refute the distortion, in my mind. The realclimate groups adds:
"More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period", no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no "marching orders" from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn't much to it".
There's not a person alive who would not look bad if their private emails made public, taken out of context, and subjected to attack. The reputations of all the scientists involved will suffer, as will understanding of the science of climate change. Global warming contrarians have not been able to effectively dispute the reality of human-caused climate change by publishing peer-reviewed scientific articles, so they've done what any effective (and unethical) politician would do--resort to personal attacks of dubious merit on their opponents, in an attempt to muddy the waters and distract people from the facts. That's politics, and it's not too surprising to see this sort of ugly episode in a game where the stakes are so high.
None of the so-called "smoking gun" emails the contrarians are excited about change what I pointed out in in my previous post: Arctic sea ice was at a new record low this month, human-emitted greenhouse gases are largely to blame, and the polar ice cap is expected to melt by 2030, throwing the climate into a dangerous new unstable mode.
I'll have a new post on Monday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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:)
I'm gonna go hang in Flood's Recovery Room since I have nothing to contribute to the weather discussion today.
LOL.. That's all I'm gonna say. I said I stated that for fun. My Noreaster forecast with Ida did come true, so wishcast? No, try looking at the patterns.
OMG an eye!!!!! :P
Tropical Cyclone Advisory #7
TROPICAL DEPRESSION 28
9:00 AM JST November 23 2009
===========================================
SUBJECT: Tropical Depression Near Caroline Islands
At 0:00 AM UTC, Tropical Depression (1004 hPa) located at 7.5N 148.0E has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knot with gusts of 45 knots. The depression is reported as almost stationary
RSMC Dvorak Intensity: T1.5
Forecast and Intensity
=====================
24 HRS: 8.6N 146.1E - 35 kts (CAT 1/Tropical Storm)
Long term...Tuesday through Thanksgiving day...deep layer ridge
over western Atlantic and Caribbean will begin to build and advect
moisture northwestward. This will keep the local area under a
chance of precipitation. Believe GFS still struggling with convective
feedback problems as it still shows unbelievable Omega values with
equally ridiculous precipitation amounts (near 8 inches) over
South Florida Tuesday night associated with rather insignificant
upper level dynamics.
On the other hand, an inch, or three, would be nice.
Well, shortly after that we had 2 mag. 5,0 quakes.
Believe me, when terra firma starts moving about under your feet, it is very weird. I dont feel comfortable for hours after that.
i haven't been in lately, getting ready for the hoildays. i saw this and thought of you all. I wish all of you a great Thanksgiving!
It was autumn, and the Red Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Red Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.
But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "It's definitely going to be a very cold winter."
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"
"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."
"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, "The Red Indians are collecting wood like crazy."
And yes, Caracas is near here, and on the sams fault, so we get quite a lot each year. Most of them are too small to feel, but last year we had a 6 and a couple of 5+. Not nice.
SUNDAY 9 PM
Snow in New Orleans again this winter?
I cant remember the last time there was measurable snow in New Orleans two winters in row, but that is on the table this year First of all it snowed to stick last year, the earliest measurable ever. The pattern next week and beyond is one that could mean early season snow again is seen into the deep south. The overall pattern this winter, with the el nino, is in line with the kind of pattern that leads to snow in the deep south. But its particularly interesting to see if New Orleans can put this question away early, since the pattern with the negative AO and the pronounced southern jet developing is something that could lead to alot of people in areas where snow is not that common seeing it early this year
thanks for reading, ciao for now
Will be interesting to see for sure.On occasion, Here in N. Fla.during winter i see 4 or 5 flakes,usually at about 3 a.m. it seems like lol.The deep south could see an interesting winter, i think there is a good possibility of a significant icing event or two....
Also, correct me if I'm wrong. During the Superstorm(March 93'), wasn't the AO(Arctic Oscillation) and NAO(North Atlantic Oscillation) negative and the PAO(Pacific American Oscillation) positive under a strong El Nino. If so, December would be the ideal month for one to occur.
Not sayin' it's gonna happen though. Just wondering.
Tropical Disturbance Summary
TROPICAL DEPRESSION ##
09:00 AM JST November 23 2009
===========================================
SUBJECT: Tropical Depression In Sea East Of Mindanao
At 0:00 AM UTC, Tropical Depression (1006 hPa) located at 9.1N 127.8E has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knot with gusts of 45 knots. The depression is reported as almost stationary
18z. cant wait for 00z, this storm keeps getting bigger. Clipper, rockies storm, and coastal low all merge over new york.
amazing... no shear, outflow, all we need now is a surface low! With the water temperatures, doubt it but with how this looks... anyway, its at 50w 37n now.
Thats Ex-Ida??? Dang!
No-nonsense general eyes warmer Cuba ties
The butt-kicking, cigar-chomping, no-nonsense general who lifted New Orleans from the depths of Hurricane Katrina in late 2005 thinks Cuba has some important lessons to teach this country in storm-fighting, and wants warmer relations with our neighbor to the south for that reason.
“They’re closer to the hurricane highway,” says retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, talking from the home he’s still settling in at in Baton Rouge. “Even though it’s a poor country, challenged economically in all directions, they do a good job of hurricane (damage) prevention and preparedness. I say that tongue-in-cheek because it is a socialist, Communist-controlled country. At the same time people spend an extraordinary amount of time preparing to prevent damage to property and to human beings.”
Honoré will take part in the Conference on U.S.-Cuban Cooperation in Defending Against Hurricanes Monday at the River City Complex in New Orleans’ East Bank. The event is sponsored by Washington-based Center for International Policy.
With Honoré will be Jose Rubiera of the Cuban Meteorological Center; Lixion Avila of the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami; Dr. Mesa Ridel, the director of the Latin American Center for Disaster Medicine in Havana; retired Lt. Col Jerry Sneed, director of Emergency Preparedness of Orleans Parish; Ivor van Heerden, founder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center; Robert Turner, director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority; and Dr. Alex Isakov, founding director of the Emory University Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response.
Honoré, who will be in Shreveport in December to help send off the deploying National Guard unit in which his son Michael is a member, recently spent four days in Cuba and came away impressed.
Read more about this issue, and Honoré's views, in Monday's print and online editions of The Times.
Pretty interesting about Cuba.
heres tomorrows schedule of speakers..
> The Center for International Policy Takes Pleasure in Inviting You to
>
> A Conference on U.S.-Cuban Cooperation in Defending Against Hurricanes
>
> To be held November 23, 2009, in New Orleans at River City Plaza, next to
Mardi Gras World
>
> 1380 Port of New Orleans Place
>
>
>
> 2 p.m. – Introduction by Wayne S. Smith of the Center for International Policy
>
>
>
> 2:15 – 2:45 p.m. – Vital U.S.-Cuban Cooperation in Tracking Hurricanes and
Warning of their Approach. Jose Rubiera, of the Cuban Meteorological Center
(invited) and Lixion Avila of the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami. Chaired by
Jay Higginbotham, Archivist Emeritus of Mobile
>
>
>
> 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. - U.S.-Cuban Cooperation in the Face of Hurricanes.
Dagoberto Rodriguez Barrera, Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Relations
(invited); Lt.General (Ret) Russel Honore, Former Commander of Joint Task Force
Katrina; Lt. Col (Ret) Jerry Sneed, Director of Emergency Preparedness of
Orleans Parish; Ivor van Heerden, Founder of the Louisiana State University
Hurricane Center; Robert Turner, Director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood
Protection Authority. Chaired by Wayne Smith, Center for International Policy.
>
>
>
> 4:00 – 4:30 p.m. – The Growing Focus on Disaster Medicine and Disaster
Management in Both the U.S. and Cuba. Dr. Guillermo Mesa Ridel, Director, Latin
American Center for Disaster Medicine (invited); Dr. Alex Isakov, Founding
Director of the Emory University Office of Critical Event Preparedness and
Response; Lt. Gen Russel Honore, Board Member of LSU’s Stephenson Disaster
Management Institute; Chaired by Randy Poindexter, Executive Director of
International Cuba Society
>
>
>
> 4:30 – 4:45 p.m. – President Obama’s Prerogative, Despite the Embargo, to
Authorize U.S. Companies to Sell Cuba Reconstruction Materials and Equipment.
Robert L. Muse, Attorney, Muse and Associates
>
>
>
> 4:45 – 5:00 p.m. – Shared Ecosystems: Opportunities for Increasing
Environmental Cooperation and Collaboration between Cuba and the United States.
Dan Whittle, Senior Attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund.
>
>
>
> 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. – Open Discussion. Participants from the various delegations
to Cuba, and other interested parties, are invited to comment and express
opinions as to new initiatives and directions and how we could better organize
to advance our objectives. Mr. Ky Luu, the Director of the Tulane University
Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy, will have the first comment.
>
>
>
> 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. - Reception with cash bar in the Grand Oaks Mansion
Tropical Cyclone Advisory Number THREE
TEMPETE TROPICALE MODEREE BONGANI (05-20092010)
10:00 AM Réunion November 23 2009
=========================================
At 6:00 AM UTC, Moderate Tropical Storm Bongani (997 hPa) located at 8.5S 53.7E has 10 minute sustained winds of 40 knots with gusts of 60 knots. The cyclone is reported as moving west at 6 knots
RSMC Dvorak Intensity: T3.0
Gale-Force Winds
==================
Near the center extending up to 40 NM from the center in the southwestern quadrant
Near Gale-Force Winds
=====================
20 NM from the center extending up to 40 NM from the center in the northern semi-circle and up to 100 NM from the center within the southwestern quadrant
Forecast and Intensity
======================
12 HRS: 08.9S 53.2E - 50 kts (Forte Tempéte Tropicale)
24 HRS: 09.6S 52.7E - 60 kts (Forte Tempéte Tropicale)
48 HRS: 10.4S 51.2E - 80 kts (Cyclone Tropical)
72 HRS: 11.5S 49.5E - 90 kts (Cyclone Tropical Intense)
Additional Information
========================
Classical and microwave imagery including Scatterometric data shows that the system has rapidly intensified over the last 18 hours. Specially last night microwave imagery shows that the low level organization has significantly improved.
System is analysed as T2.5 at (0000z) by SAB analysis.
Latest satellite imagery shows that the intensification trend is still on the way and the system is upgraded to a 40 knot moderate tropical storm and named "BONGANI" by Madagascar Meteorological Services.
Bongani is currently located on the northwestern edge of a mid level ridge and a weakness within this ridge can be seen along 50E. Present forecast is based on consensus of all available dynamical guidance that show a slow down and a more southwestward track at short range. The mid level ridge is forecast to rebuild Wednesday and the track could by that time take a more west southwest component. There is a lot of dispersion among all available forecast track, some guidance (UKMO, LAM Aladin-Reunion) have a more westward track than the offical forecast.
All factors look favorable for continued intensification. The only limiting element could be the intrusion within the circulation of dry subtropical air currently located to the southwest of the system. Intensification philosophy is a climatological one that bring Bongani to the tropical cyclone stage by 36 hours. It is not excluded that this could intensify at a faster rate
Considering all the above, interest in the Fahquar Archipelago, northern tip of Madagascar, Comoros Archipelago, and Mayotte Island should monitor the progress of Moderate Tropical Cyclone Bongani
Tropical Cyclone Advisory #9
TROPICAL DEPRESSION 28
15:00 PM JST November 23 2009
===========================================
SUBJECT: Tropical Depression Near Caroline Islands
At 6:00 AM UTC, Tropical Depression (1004 hPa) located at 8.3N 147.8E has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knot with gusts of 45 knots. The depression is reported as moving north at 8 knots
RSMC Dvorak Intensity: T1.5
Forecast and Intensity
=====================
24 HRS: 9.0N 145.7E - 35 kts (CAT 1/Tropical Storm)
Bongani aiming for northern part of Madagascar...
Isn't it 28N 48W?
Tropical Disturbance Summary (0600z 23NOV)
=========================================
An area of convection (96W) located at 3.7N 107.4E or 295 NM east-northeast of Singapore. Animated multispectral imagery shows broad cyclonic turning of deep convection near an improving low level circulation center. A 0156z ASCAT Pass shows an increasingly symmetric low level circulation center with winds of 10-15 knots, Additionally, The ASCAT Pass shows 30 knot peripheral winds to the northwest (Associated with the northeasterly cold surge through the south china sea) and 20-25 knots winds to the southwest and southeast of the system's center. Upper level analysis indicates the system is located equatorward of the subtropical ridge axis with moderate vertical wind shear and radial outflow.
Maximum sustained winds near the center is 15-20 knots with a minimum sea level pressure of 1006 MB. Due to the improving nature of the low level circulation center, the potential for this disturbance to form into a significant tropical cyclone within the next 24 hours IS FAIR
The Low Pressure Area East of Mindanao has developed into a Tropical Depression and was named "URDUJA"
Tropical Cyclone Bulletin #1
===============================
At 5:00 PM PhST, Tropical Depression Urduja located at 9.7ºN 127.1ºE or 170 kms east of Surigao City has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knots.
Signal Warnings
================
Warning Signal #1 (30-60 kph winds)
Visayas Region
-------------
1.Leyte
2.Southern Leyte
3.Eastern Samar
4.Western Samar
Mindanao Region
-------------
1.Surigao del Sur
2.Surigao del Norte
3.Siargao
4.Dinagat Islands
Additional Information
========================
Residents in low-lying areas and near mountain slopes are advised to take all the necessary precautionary measures against possible flashfloods and landslides.
The public and the disaster coordinating councils concerned are advised to take appropriate actions and watch for the next bulletin to be issued at 11 PM today.
16 minutes...and it's officially finished...
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
700 AM EST MON NOV 23 2009
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
$$
FORECASTER ROBERTS/BROWN
The scientists involved say they are "surprised" by the finding, because the giant East Antarctic sheet, unlike the west, has been thought to be stable.
Other scientists say ice loss could not yet be pinned on climate change, and uncertainties in the data are large.
The US-based team reports its findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Link
(Something for both sides of the argument there, if the data checks out: East Antarctic may finally be showing signs of impact, but on the other hand, that impact is still very small it seems.)
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