Panic whores
/
The NY Post joins pseudo-scientists and spews the same fake terror news as its competitors.
First, consider this:
80% of readers never make it past the headline; two out of 10 will read the rest.
And for the 20% who do read an entire news article, This: The New Yorker: Headlines change the way we think
Just as people can manage the impression that they make through their choice of attire, so, too, can the crafting of the headline subtly shift the perception of the text that follows. By drawing attention to certain details or facts, a headline can affect what existing knowledge is activated in your head. By its choice of phrasing, a headline can influence your mindset as you read so that you later recall details that coincide with what you were expecting.
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is reportedly melting “rapidly” in unexpected ways, according to new research published Wednesday by Cornell University and the British Antarctic Survey.
Now, here are the opening paragraphs of the Post’s article:
Dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” by scientists because its collapse could lead to a catastrophic rise in sea levels, the Thwaites is about the size of Florida and partly held in place by an ice shelf that protrudes onto the surface of the ocean. The shelf acts as a cork, holding the dense body of ice back on the land.
Two studies published in the journal Nature found that deep cracks and “staircase” formations in the ice are melting at a faster rate due to rising temperatures, though the pace of melting underneath is slower than previously believed.
“Warm water is getting into the weakest parts of the glacier and making it worse,” Cornell University scientist Britney Schmidt, a lead author on one of the papers, told Reuters. “If we observe less melting … that doesn’t change the fact that it’s retreating.”
… Thwaites contributes to about 4% of annual sea level rise due to shedding billions of tons of ice into the ocean, according to researchers. Since the glacier acts as a dam to the surrounding ice in west Antarctica, if it melts and collapses, it could raise sea levels by up to 10 feet, oceanic researchers from Cornell and the British Antarctic Survey reported.
But then there’s this, buried 10 paragraphs down: Don’t sell your beachfront property just yet — certainly, Obama and our Hollywood celebrities aren’t.
The collapse of the glacier itself could take hundreds or thousands of years. However, if the ice shelf melts sooner, it could cause a retreat of the glacier which would be both unstable and possibly irreversible.
Researchers found the speed of melting is being slowed down by a layer of colder and fresher water at the glacier’s base.
Meanwhile, “the glacier is still in trouble,” Peter Davis, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey and a lead author on the other paper, told CNN. “What we have found is that despite small amounts of melting there is still rapid glacier retreat, so it seems that it doesn’t take a lot to push the glacier out of balance.”
Fair and balanced reporting, or agenda driven fear mongering? The article purporting to be following the science” (yet published in the paper’s “Style” section) makes no mention of alternative studies, doubtless because it never occurred to the ignorant, idiot reporter* that there are alternate theories. That doesn’t excuse her editors, of course, but the days of newspaper editors are long gone.
Rapid melting of Antarctica’s Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers is the result of subglacial bedrock heat flow from a well-known and precisely mapped regional geological “Hotspot” called the Marie Byrd Mantle Plume, not Global Warming/Climate Change (Figure 1).
This massive 620,000 square mile Hotspot and its associated 100 active or erupting subglacial volcanoes, are acting to bottom melt a significant portion of West Antarctica's ice sheet. Even more telling, 46 of these active subglacial volcanoes are positioned directly beneath the Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glaciers. Recent research proves that one volcano is currently erupting beneath the Pine Island Glacier.
Mantle Plumes are gigantic deep-earth, mushroom-shaped pods of hot molten lava. The mushroom stem portion of a mantle plume extends downward 1,800 miles to the boundary between Earth’s lower mantle and outer core layers.
Here, the mantle plume stem taps into massive stores of molten lava which it circulates upward and onto the base of shallow rock layers near earth’s surface. Upon intersection with these shallow rock layers, the molten lava spreads outward forming the mushroom top of the plume.
The shallow mushroom top (magma chamber) of mantle plumes is continuously recharged with new molten lava by the mushroom stem (convective conduit). This recharging process acts to put immense pressure and stress on the top of the magma chamber and as a result, it often ruptures.
These ruptures are manifested as surface geological features such as volcanoes (Underwood 2018), faults (Kamis 2018), and local uplifted areas (Barletta 2018). All these geological features constantly emit significant amounts of heat and chemically charged heated fluid into oceans, atmosphere, and as is relevant to this article onto the base of polar ice sheets.
Researchers have discovered numerous active Marie Byrd Mantle Plume related geological features beneath the areas average 4,000 thousand feet of glacial ice.
In the Thwaites Glacier area researchers have identified:
40-27 semi-active subglacial volcanoes dependent on the catchment basin area definition (De Vries 2017 and Figure 2).
Three times normal bedrock heat flow (Schroeder 2014).
Evidence of a very significant eruption which occurred 2,000 years ago which acted to alter the entire southern hemisphere’s climate. The researchers also concluded that this specific volcano could erupt at any time (Kamis 2017)
Abnormally high bedrock heat flow in a large area that encompasses the Thwaites Glacial Basin (Schroeder 2015).
Evidence directly linking Thwaites Glacier melting to high geothermal heat flow (DeSanto 2019)
*NY Post: About the Author
Brooke Steinberg is a features reporter, covering lifestyle and entertainment news. She first joined The Post in 2019 as a digital content producer. Brooke graduated from the University of Florida in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She loves reading, iced coffee in every season, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles.
Related: In today’s edition of HotAir, David Strom makes the same point about headlines and how their writers deliberately shape readers’ perceptions. In the example Strom discusses, it’s about the AP’s propagandizing about the Dear Leader in Washington’s empathy for the peasants. Same story, different chapter.
