The Scientific Equivalent of "Never Mind"

Rick makes a superior observation in the above title... and a hilarious observation at that!

Brutally Honest... Never Mind

"the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted"

Less than a year ago, we were inundated with reports like this one:

"If the current trend continues or gets worse, Antarctica could become the largest contributor to sea level rises in the world. It could start to lose more ice than Greenland within a few years," said Jianli Chen, of the University of Texas at Austin.

Chen's team used data from the Nasa mission to see how Earth's gravitational pull varied month to month between April 2002 and January 2009. Measurements taken over the south pole reflect changes in the mass of the Antarctic ice sheets.

The survey confirmed the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting rapidly with the loss of around 132bn tonnes of ice a year, but revealed unexpected melting in the larger East Antarctic ice sheet.

10 months later, we're hearing the scientific equivalent of never mind:

Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.....

You really need to go to Brutally Honest to read the whole thing... but get a Kleenex to wipe the tears from laughter that will be streaming down your cheeks.

xtnyoda, shalomed