Comments on: How much does Antarctica contribute to sea level rise? (And how should that be communicated?)

By: Graeme

Graeme — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:22:32 +0000

Andy…do you have any updates on this?

By: omnologos

omnologos — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:04:11 +0000

I just realised, we’re talking about hundreds of microns. Perhaps there is something more worthwhile to talk about, Hengist?

By: Hengist McStone (@hengistmcstone)

Hengist McStone (@hengistmcstone) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 08:59:50 +0000

In the lifetime of a human being that’ll be approx 13.3 mm of Antarctic SLR. I think what the skeptics are driving at is that we dont need to worry about this one . That’s a value judgment from the parochial POV of our lifetimes but over a long enough period of time small amounts will still add up to large sea level rises.

By: John Russell (@JohnRussell40)

John Russell (@JohnRussell40) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 08:53:43 +0000

“Less than X”, ‘more than X’, ‘about X’ is the terminology people are used to hearing in normal speech and writing — as well as the ‘up to X’ (usually followed by an exclamation mark!) preferred by advertisers. They’re all correct, if at times weasly. Using ‘+or-’ or ‘~’ means nothing to most people and certainly the advertising authorities would not permit those in an advert, on the grounds that they might be confusing.

I agree wholeheartedly that all references to scientific research in newspapers should be accompanied by a link to the actual paper — or to a more detailed discussion of a paper’s contents, which includes the link.

By: omnologos

omnologos — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:29:33 +0000

How many mm per year? More or less 3.

How much from Antarctica? Less than 1.

See? Almost a third from Antarctica! ;-P

By: andyrussell

andyrussell — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:01:00 +0000

Ah, but they were all less than 1mm so it doesn’t matter!

By: andyrussell

andyrussell — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:58:32 +0000

My view, as I said above, is that ~0.2mm means just as much as “less than 1mm” without the global context. And I think that that global context was given in the quote.

I’d also like to see links to papers in newspaper articles and Ben’s response to that did seem a bit weak (along the lines of “I didn’t have time”). But that problem is across most online media, isn’t it? The BBC has only recently started doing it (if it does it all).

By: Barry Woods

Barry Woods — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:53:35 +0000

One thing I disagree with, the actual paper shows that the Antartic a contribution, was LESS than previous estimates of Antartica contribution, which I think is also materilally important. This seems lost in the article, in fact a casual reader would not know, that in fact it was ‘less than we thought’ and might get an opposite impression

media putting url’s to papers, abtracts and press releases would be really helpful (where available), with very little effort required

By: andyrussell

andyrussell — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:51:30 +0000

I don’t think you can just throw an arbitrary rule at this sort of error calculation. In the paper the error is calculated for mass loss and then converted into sea level rise. I think that this depends on the precision of the models that calculate the isostatic stuff. So you’d have to look there to decide if the 2 significant figures are justified.

As for the second point, yes, it would seem Antarctic mass loss contributed very little to global sea level change over the period of the study.

By: Barry Woods

Barry Woods — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:48:08 +0000

My thoughts were why put a figure that is ambiguous and subject to error (ie is it, 0.9mm, 0.8mm, 0.2 mm etc, who knows), the original headline got generated, because a sub editor saw a <1mm and rounded it up to 1mm, 'close enough' perhaps he thought.
But 5x the actual figure..

I think the public can understnd 0.19mm +-0.05mm, ie like a tolerance (but I suggested ~0.2mm as being close enough for the purpose of the article), if that was too 'complcated' for the public. But felt the reponses not to do this very odd and even acusatory.

Also a criticism of the media (generally), is their failing to link to papers or press releases, which is so easy to do now. (some say, in light of press releases, because of obvious churnalism, not in this case)

No doubt, Ben Cubby thinks I'm the pedantic person from hell now, but from my perspective, his responses looked odd as well. why would it be so hard to replace the <1mm in the text, with either suggestion, at the very least to prevent, a sub editor someone else running an inaccurate headline.

But my motives were questioned, and many other odd responses made.. I only found out the correct, the actual paper(very interesting) and the actual figures, because another academic tweeted to me the links… any reader would be oblivious and have no easy means (ie a url) to look for themselves.

I thanked them for a headline change, but remain very puzzled, why not make the simple obvious change in the text, not least because the way it had originally been presented, produced an error in the original headline.

which if you google the original phrase, has been propgated through out the media. Pauls response was perhaps more cynical (but accurate?) than mine for the reasoning not to.

I had thought to Storfy all the tweets, but haven't got the energy.