- FromSoftware vastly underestimated how long Elden Ring would be for most players, so it’s not saying how long Shadow of the Erdtree is VG247
- Elden Ring will only get one DLC in Shadow of the Erdtree, but FromSoftware isn’t ruling out a full sequel for the RPG Gamesradar
- Elden Ring lead Hidetaka Miyazaki won’t say how long the DLC is since everyone thinks he lowballed the main game: ‘Everyone told me I was lying and that’s not remotely enough time!’ PC Gamer
- Shadow of the Erdtree ‘The First and Last’ Elden Ring DLC, FromSoftware Boss Hidetaka Miyazaki Confirms IGN
- One and done: Elden Ring’s first DLC expansion will also be its last Ars Technica
Tag Archives: Vastly
Competition Appeal Tribunal’s role in keeping UK open for business is vastly underestimated: Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard may now be cleared on modified basis – FOSS Patents
- Competition Appeal Tribunal’s role in keeping UK open for business is vastly underestimated: Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard may now be cleared on modified basis FOSS Patents
- What Microsoft’s Big Cloud Gaming Deal With Ubisoft Is All About, According To Phil Spencer GameSpot
- Xbox bluffing about pulling games from UK, report claims GAMINGbible
- Microsoft and Activision Blizzard restructure acquisition to address CMA concerns Destructoid
- UK’s handling of Microsoft deal sows doubts over post-Brexit direction Reuters
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Lyme Disease is Vastly Misunderstood. This Expert Advice Will Keep You and Your Family Safe This Summer – Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper
- Lyme Disease is Vastly Misunderstood. This Expert Advice Will Keep You and Your Family Safe This Summer Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper
- This could be the peak of tick season – and tick-borne diseases are on the rise East Idaho News
- Ontario’s top doctor expects to see rise in tick-borne illnesses CTV News Toronto
- Growing number of cases of three types of tick-borne illnesses in Ontario Newstalk 610 CKTB (iHeartRadio)
- Ontario tracks spread of tick-borne illnesses; top doctor links it to climate change – Winnipeg Free Press Winnipeg Free Press
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Future Sea-Level Rise May Be Much Higher Than Thought – Ice Loss in Greenland “Vastly Underestimated”
River of meltwater on the Zachariae Glacier, northeast Greenland. Credit: Shfaqat Abbas Khan, DTU Space
A new study combined GPS, satellite data, and numerical modeling. It found ice loss from northeast Greenland could be six times greater by the end of the century than previously thought.
Ice is continuously streaming off Greenland’s melting glaciers at an accelerating rate, dramatically increasing global sea levels. New results published in the journal Nature on November 9 indicate that existing models have underestimated how much ice will be lost during the 21st century. Hence, its contribution to sea-level rise will be significantly higher.
By 2100, the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream will contribute six times as much to the rising sea level as previous models suggested, adding between 13,5 to 15,5 mm (0.53 to 0.61 inches), according to the new study. This is equivalent to the entire Greenland ice sheet’s contribution in the past 50 years. Scientists from Denmark, the United States, France, and Germany carried out the research.
“Our previous projections of ice loss in Greenland until 2100 are vastly underestimated,” said first author Shfaqat Abbas Khan, Professor at DTU Space.
“Models are mainly tuned to observations at the front of the ice sheet, which is easily accessible, and where, visibly, a lot is happening.”
Animation of modeled frontal positions from 2007 to 2100. A Landsat-8 image from 2017 is used as the background. The color denotes the surface speed. Credit: Animation by Shfaqat Abbas Khan, DTU Space, Denmark
Ice loss occurs more than 200 km inland
The study is partly based on data collected from a network of precise GPS stations reaching as far as 200 km inland on the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream—located behind the Nioghalvfjerdsfjord Gletscher and Zachariae Isstrøm glaciers, one of Earth’s most hostile and remote terrains. The GPS data were combined with surface-elevation data from the CryoSat-2 satellite mission and high-resolution numerical modeling.
“Our data show us that what we see happening at the front reaches far back into the heart of the ice sheet,” said Khan.
“We can see that the entire basin is thinning, and the surface speed is accelerating. Every year the glaciers we’ve studied have retreated further inland, and we predict that this will continue over the coming decades and centuries. Under present-day climate forcing, it is difficult to conceive how this retreat could stop.”
Animation of modeled surface elevation change from 2007 to 2100. A Landsat-8 image from 2017 is used as the background. The colors denote surface elevation change. Negative values denote thinning/surface lowering. Credit: Animation by Shfaqat Abbas Khan, DTU Space, Denmark
Significant contribution to rising sea levels
In 2012, after a decade of melting, the floating extensions of Zachariae Isstrøm collapsed, and the glacier has since retreated inland at an accelerating pace. And though winter 2021 and summer 2022 have been particularly cold, the glaciers keep retreating. Since northeastern Greenland is a so-called Arctic desert – precipitation is as low as 25 mm per year in places – the ice sheet is not regenerating enough to mitigate the melt. However, estimating how much ice is lost and how far into the ice sheet the process occurs is not easy. The ice sheet’s interior, which moves at less than one meter per year, is difficult to monitor, which limits the ability to make accurate projections.
“It is truly amazing that we are able to detect a subtle speed change from high-precision GPS data, which ultimately, when combined with a model of ice flow, inform us on how the glacier slides on its bed,” said coauthor Mathieu Morlighem, a professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College.
“It is possible that what we find in northeast Greenland may be happening in other sectors of the ice sheet. Many glaciers have been accelerating and thinning near the margin in recent decades. GPS data helps us detect how far this acceleration propagates inland, potentially 200-300 km from the coast. If this is correct, the contribution from ice dynamics to the overall mass loss of Greenland will be larger than what current models suggest.”
The Zachariae Isstrøm was stable until 2004, followed by steadily retreat of the ice front until 2012, when a large portion of the floating sections became disconnected. As more precise observations of change in ice velocity are included in models, it is likely that IPCC’s estimates of 22-98 cm global sea level rise will need to be corrected upwards.
“We foresee profound changes in global sea levels, more than currently projected by existing models,” said coauthor Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.
“Data collected in the vast interior of ice sheets, such as those described herein, help us better represent the physical processes included in numerical models and in turn provide more realistic projections of global sea-level rise.”
Reference: “Extensive inland thinning and speed-up of Northeast Greenland Ice Stream” by Shfaqat A. Khan, Youngmin Choi, Mathieu Morlighem, Eric Rignot, Veit Helm, Angelika Humbert, Jérémie Mouginot, Romain Millan, Kurt H. Kjær and Anders A. Bjørk, 9 November 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05301-z
Dr. Scott Gottlieb says U.S. is ‘vastly underestimating’ level of Covid delta spread
Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday he believes the U.S. is significantly undercounting the number of Covid delta infections, making it difficult to know whether the highly transmissible strain is causing higher-than-expected hospitalization and death rates.
“We don’t know what the denominator is right now,” Gottlieb said in an interview on “Squawk Box.” “I think we’re vastly underestimating the level of delta spread right now because I think people who are vaccinated, who might develop some mild symptoms or might develop a breakthrough case, by and large are not going out and getting tested. If you’ve been vaccinated and you develop a mild cold right now, you don’t think you have Covid.”
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. have been rising due to the delta variant, with the seven-day average of new daily infections standing at 26,448, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s up 67% from a week ago. The weekly average of new daily deaths is up 26% from a week ago, to 273, according to CNBC’s analysis.
“There’s no clear evidence that this is more pathogenic, that it’s causing more serious infections. It’s clearly more virulent, it’s clearly far more contagious” than earlier virus strains, said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer.
If younger Americans are becoming sick with the delta variant at higher levels compared with previous points in the pandemic, it’s because “younger people remain unvaccinated,” Gottlieb contended. “When people who are vaccinated do get infected, and there are breakthrough infections, they don’t get as sick. They have protection against severe disease.”
Delta is now the most-common coronavirus strain in the U.S., making up more than 57% of cases in the two weeks from June 20 to July 3. That’s the latest available window on the CDC’s website.
U.S. health officials have sounded the alarm for weeks about the variant’s potential to cut into hard-earned progress in reducing infection rates, which plummeted in the spring as America’s vaccination campaign hit its stride. As of Friday, 48.3% of the country’s population was fully vaccinated and nearly 56% had received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Covid vaccination coverage is higher among the most-vulnerable group of Americans: the elderly. More than 79% of people age 65 and up are fully vaccinated and nearly 89% have had at least one dose, according to the CDC.
The vast majority of U.S. counties with high infection rates right now — defined as at least 100 new cases over the last seven days per 100,000 residents — have vaccinated under 40% of their residents, according to a CNBC analysis completed earlier this week.
In Los Angeles County, officials on Thursday responded to an uptick in cases by reinstating an indoor mask mandate, even for fully vaccinated people. LA County, the nation’s most populous, had lifted its previous mask requirement about a month ago, in conjunction with the state of California ending most of its remaining pandemic restrictions.
Gottlieb said he does not expect many other state or local governments to follow LA County and begin putting in place already-lifted mitigation measures “because there’s not going to be a lot of support for mandates at this point.”
“People who are worried about Covid have largely been vaccinated. I realize not everyone has been able to get vaccinated, but most people have been vaccinated who are worried about this infection,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.
“People who remain unvaccinated aren’t worried about the infection and don’t want to be wearing masks either. Now, the bottom line, that means this is just going to spread through the population,” he added.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”
U.S. Cities Are Vastly Undercounting Emissions, Researchers Find
Dr. Gurney said that the errors seemed to be simple miscalculations. “I don’t think there’s any attempt to systematically or intentionally underestimate emissions,” he said. Although some cities correctly estimated their emissions, he noted, though “whether that’s right for the right reasons or right for the wrong reasons, it’s difficult to know.”
Dr. Gurney’s work receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and one of the authors, Kimberly Mueller, is a scientist there. James R. Whetstone, an official in the institute’s greenhouse gas measurement program, called the new paper “an important step forward” in properly measuring greenhouse gases from cities. “What will serve the nation best is if we have a consistent way to state emissions that goes from the city level to the national level,” he said.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, he noted, focuses much of its efforts on atmospheric monitoring, and so Dr. Gurney’s method can help “to measure the same thing in different ways,” and thus gain confidence in the results.
Earlier studies by researchers at the University of Michigan, Harvard and the federal government found that emissions of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, were also undercounted by many cities. Dr. Gurney said that “both gasses should really be part of this systematic approach.”
The cities’ efforts so far, Dr. Gurney said, have been a laudable endeavor, but “they haven’t had a lot of tools to do it.” What’s more, he said, “Cities are struggling to pick up the garbage and fill potholes, much less keep detailed reports about their emissions.”
Reducing emissions in a city, he said, requires a deep understanding of where the biggest problems are, including specific traffic-choked highways and industries, so that the authorities can take focused actions that provide the greatest benefit at the lowest cost. Putting in high-occupancy vehicle lanes or rapid bus lanes on every highway could be wasteful; it would be better, he said, to know which road projects could do the most good.