Thurs; Fox Noise Isn't the Only One Going to Have to Pay.

Shrinkage on the Rampage

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study.

Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland’s melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland’s average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s.

The new figures “are pretty disastrous really,” said study co-author Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. “We’re losing more and more ice from Greenland.”

Since 1992, Earth has lost 8.3 trillion tons (7.6 trillion metric tons) of ice from the two ice sheets, the study found. That’s enough to flood the entire United States with 33.6 inches (almost 0.9 meters) of water or submerge France in 49 feet (nearly 15 meters).

But because the world’s oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.

What's Up Steenstrup?

Steenstrup Glacier is located in SE Greenland and has been considered stable, therefore did not receive scrutiny from researchers for that reason. However, a new scientific paper found that between 2018 and 2021, the glacier was found to have retreated 4.34 miles, thinned by 20%, doubled its ice discharge into the ocean, and accelerated velocity by 300%. The culprit is warming deep welling waters intruding into the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean.

The change is unprecedented among all Greenland glaciers that end at the ocean. The findings put Steenstrups in the top 10% of Greenland glaciers, contributing the most to sea level rise. Sea level rise threatens the coastlines of the world.

At This Rate, Detainees Will Be Dying of Old Age Before They Are Released

The U.S. military transferred an Algerian detainee from Guantanamo Bay to Algeria on Thursday, according to the Defense Department, bringing the population of the detention facility at the base in Cuba down to 30.

The Biden administration is discussing options, including a possible executive order, to further reduce the number of detainees in the coming months and ultimately close the detention facility by the end of President Joe Biden’s current term, according to one current and one former administration official.

Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush, also known as Abdul Razak Ali, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 while living in a guest house affiliated with Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah and several other men affiliated with the terrorist group. He claims he was the victim of mistaken identity and that he was not part of Zubaydah’s group.

The U.S. government deemed him clear for transfer from the facility last April through the Periodic Review Board process, which determines whether continued detention is necessary for security reasons.

Before the United States can transfer anyone out of Guantanamo, it must have an agreement with another country to accept the detainee, since a law passed by Congress in 2015 bans the transfer of any detainees to the U.S. The biggest challenge for reducing the population is finding places for the detainees to go. The Biden administration has recently transferred detainees to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Belize, with a significant number of additional ones expected in the coming months.

Soon after taking office, Biden began a quiet effort to close the facility with hopes of transferring detainees to other nations and shrink the population as small as possible and then convince Congress to allow the transfer of the last few to detention in the U.S. Since that effort began nearly two years ago, 10 detainees have been transferred to other nations.

Do I Detect Another Lawsuit Agasint Fox Noise on the Horizon?

84-year-old Andrew Lester has pleaded “not guilty” for the shooting of Ralph Yarl; Lester had been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. As the case will be in court until at least the beginning of June, 28-year-old Klint Ludwig, Andrew Lester’s grandson, has spoken about his grandfather’s paranoia as he gives his sympathies to Ralph Yarl.

“But in the last five or six years or so, I feel like we’ve lost touch,” he said. “I’ve gotten older and gained my own political views, and he’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line. I feel like it’s really further radicalized him in a lot of ways.”

Ludwig said his grandfather had been immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia.”

“And then the NRA pushing the ‘stand your ground’ stuff and that you have to defend your home,” he said. “When I heard what happened, I was appalled and shocked that it transpired, but I didn’t disbelieve that it was true. The second I heard it, I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see him doing that.’”

Does he consider his grandfather a racist?

“I believe that there have been some positions that he’s held that have been bigoted or sort of disparaging,” Ludwig said. “But it’s stock Fox News, conservative American stuff. It’s ‘anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer.’ And ‘fatherless Black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ It’s stuff everybody’s heard at the Thanksgiving table every year.”

Ludwig said his grandfather’s paranoia had accelerated in the past couple of years.

He spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume, a relative said.

But at a family gathering during the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Ludwig said, Mr. Lester began sharing a conspiracy theory involving Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious disease expert.

“I was like, ‘Man, this sounds crazy,’” recalled Mr. Ludwig, 28. “I told him it was ridiculous.”

The two have not had a relationship since, Mr. Ludwig said.

Mr. Ludwig, who lives in a suburb of Kansas City, described his grandfather as prone to making remarks that he considered disparaging about Black people, gay people and immigrants.

BREXIT Broke It.

Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days. For the past several months, the flow of bad news has been constant, the country’s coffers are empty, public administration is ineffective and the nation’s corporations are struggling. As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months.

Boarded up windows and signs reading "To Let" and "To Rent" have become a common sight on the country’s high streets, while numerous products have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future.

Last year, 560 pubs closed their doors forever, with thousands more soon to follow, according to the industry association. Without Oxfam, the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that operate second-hand stores, numerous city centers would have almost no shops left at all.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that in no other industrialized nation would the economy develop as poorly as in Britain this year. Even Russia is expected to end up ahead of the UK.

Just Like New Twitter, This Barely Got Off the Ground

SpaceX’s giant new rocket exploded minutes after blasting off Thursday on it first test flight and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites.

Images showed multiple engines weren’t working on the 33-engine rocket as it climbed from the launch pad, reaching as high as 24 miles (39 kilometers.)

The flight plan had called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn’t happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf.

After separating, the spacecraft was supposed to continue east and attempt to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii.