A study in Nature reveals glaciers lost 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000, impacting freshwater resources and sea-level rise.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.commondreams.org/news/glaciers-melting
Study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08545-z
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
I’ve never seen an Olympic swimming pool. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have a sense for its volume unless it was empty. Preferred units for water volumes are million acre feet or cubic kilometers annually. Or cubic feet per second or cubic meters per second. Or if you really want to relate to the layperson, I also accept cubic kegs per fortnight.
How many washer machines is it?
Aye! Standard front loading washer loads per week would be another good one.
Can we get a banana for scale?
How much is that in vodka shots?
From Jan 1 2000 to the beginning of today there have been 793,411,200 seconds
That’s 2,380,233,600 swimming pools
at 2,500,000 L per pool
so a total volume loss of 5.950584×10¹⁵ L
a shot glass should be 30ml
so that should be around 1.983528×10¹⁴ shots of vodka
Vodka is $76 a L in Australia because fuck me amirite
at a rough cost of $4.52244384×10¹⁷
tl;dr: it’s in the title idiot.
How about in cubic parsecs?
2.025381451×10−37 pc³
That’s a number alright
May I please get that in football fields?
Ask LLM, I heard it likes to math.
For you and @[email protected], from llama3.2:
So, approximately 8,144,000 football fields would weigh around 273 billion metric tons.
Holy shit. That’s too big to wrap my head around. What if we tried those yellow Blue Bird school busses?
A standard Blue Bird bus weighs around 10-15 tons (10,000 - 15,000 kg), depending on the model and configuration. Let’s assume an average weight of 12.5 tons (12,500 kg) for this calculation.
Now, let’s divide the total weight by the weight of a single bus:
273 billion metric tons ÷ 12,500 kg/bus ≈ 21,800,000 buses
So, approximately 21.8 million Blue Bird school buses would weigh around 273 billion metric tons.
Keep in mind that this is another purely theoretical calculation for entertainment purposes only.
You’re the best! 😎
And the rate is accelerating…
