[zdragnar]

The idea is that the ice mass is increasing, because the millenia-old snow cover over the ice is melting and compacting into the ice sheet itself.

Took me a few reads to reconcile that myself.

[rolph]

these are the caveats of data presentation that consume an incredible number of hours compared to actually designing an experimental protocol and generating data sets.

this is one of the major activites during thesis defense, tearing apart semantics to be sure that verbal descriptors are representative of observations, and free of qualifiers or modulations.

Also defense of scientific thesis involves a discourse between supporters and deniers as a matter of course. This is the way science works, two opposing positions meet somewhere in between. usually a third external will weaken or reinforce one side over the other. The ultimate goal is not to proclaim who is right or wrong but to refine interpretations into representations of real physical processes