> Surprisingly, the keen students of ice shelf tectonics on this list have failed to keep up with the story. The Guardian newspaper, from which the original story was clipped published a retraction in today's edition.
>
> They say that they exaggerated the size of the ice shelf by six times,
> and its weight by one million times! (Corrections, Guardian 21 March,
> 2002)
>
> If any of the new recruits to ice shelf preservation were genuinely
> interested in the issue, wouldn't they have noticed this report? What
> would one make of an economist, politician or engineer who made errors
> of a factor of one million? To say the least that they were
> untrustworthy?
Oh come on James. A newspaper screwed up. Since most of us are not in the U.K. we did not notice as quickly as you did (except for Shane Mage who beat you by several hours).
And when you start prescribing special standerds for environmental sincerety, you sound like our right wing lunatics do when they say someone cannot be a real socialist because they are not living on the streets.
>
> But green insincerity is not about scientific knowledge, and so is
> indifferent to the weight of factual evidence. Instead factoids must be
> mobilised in support of a preconceived idea: that the consumption goods
> of the masses must be held down at all costs.
Nathan gave you a perfectly good definition of environmentalism, as I have done in the past.
>
> I fully expect a score of postings to the effect that it does not matter what size the collapsing ice shelf was. And indeed it does not.
So if a small ice shelf that has existed for thousands of years collapes it says nothing about climate change?