Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by brittohalloran 4744 days ago
TLDR; Since the historical ice models, driven by fossil based sea level readings in Barbados, failed to account for the way the Earth's crust bends under the weight of a massive ice sheet on top of it, there was actually much more ice than previously thought. The exact implications aren't given, but it is implied that global warming is worse than we thought (has melted more ice).
2 comments

Not sure I get the same conclusion you do from the same article.

Worse than we thought?:

"It allows for the possibility that there is significant melting of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet," Rowley said. "Or it allows for a simple interpretation of no melting."

There is a simple interpretation of no melting.

Also, previously in the article they show that the models used to predict melting are suspect. The historical link of 'melt' being caused by CO2, may in fact be flattening caused by crust flexing.

The crust flexes in response to freasing or melting but it don't not significantly buldge without reason.
With that sentence you are either a rather prodigious 6 year old or a grammatically challenged adult.
Or a non-native English speaker?
The big melt was the end of the last ice age. That's far larger than anything that has yet happened due to climate change, so they're not really talking about ice that has been melted by global warming in the sense of post-industrial climate change.

However I think your basic assumption is right - this evidence would seem to suggest that, for a given amount of warming, we get more ice melt than we previously assumed.