AmidFuror

No.

Trump nominates candidates, and the Senate confirms them. This letter urges not to confirm and is addressed to the members of the Senate.

Replying to myself with some facts I had to look up.

Antarctica seems to have about 14.2M sq km of land, almost all of which is permanently covered with ice. The total land area on earth is about 148.9M sq km. That makes Antarctica 9.5% of the land mass. So 40% (a bit round) drylands excluding Antarctica would mean 36% drylands including Antarctica. I’m suspicious of the 40% number, but the Guardian thinks I’ve read too many articles with an ad blocker recently.

Finding how much land outside of Antarctica is covered with ice is harder. One thing that tips the balance to Antarctica is that there isn’t nearly as much land at the North Pole, although there is a lot of sea ice.

I found multiple estimates of Greenland ice area here. Seems like about 1.7M sq km may be a reasonable and recent estimate. That alone is 12% of the land mass of Antarctica. There are about 200,000 glaciers of various sizes elsewhere, but the largest seem to be under 10,000 sq km, so it’s a bit daunting to total them up. They’re also often measured by length rather than area, and in sub-polar regions they will change in size throughout the year. Ice caps on islands, meanwhile, may be larger than the land they sit on. So that’s going to make it hard to determine land covered by ice.

If I try to find out the total amount of land not permanently covered by ice, if there is any inaccuracy or inconsistency at all the subtraction of one large number from another could give a wildly incorrect result.

Those calculation difficulties may be reason enough to treat Antarctica as special because of convenience, as I mention elsewhere. Is that a valid reason to write 40% instead of 36%? Sure, for lay writing.

But they could count the land area of Antarctica in the calculation. There’s no need to count the varying ice area.

I realize it’s a convenient landmass with one name, but there are other parts of the earth with very low population densities because they are so inhospitable, and it’s not because they are dry.

This equivocates between two meanings of “dream.”

Seems arbitrary to exclude Antarctica.

Joke’s on you. I’m Uncle Sam.

Waiting for the far left folks to blame this on the US.

Your friends freebase.

It’s fitting. Maybe they will hold some diplomats hostage for 444 days.

But he had support from such upstanding groups as Hezbollah, the Iranians, and the Russians!

No one pointing out that although this is Reuters, their source in the NY Post.

Thanks for putting that plain text from the top of the post into a jpeg down in the comments.

Can’t see one of these things without now picturing it carrying an explosive up to some soldier and detonating.

Cafeteria ladies liked my skinny butt back then. Fed he heck out of me.

Doesn’t that mean they didn’t like your skinny butt?

That’s just your opinion.

I hate when I get on an elevator and have to wait 10 minutes for someone to get on the other car on the 10th floor before it will go anywhere.

Then the bastard gets off on the 8th floor, and I’m stuck again!

Women can play in the “men’s” league currently, right? So are you proposing that they do away with the women-only league? Despite that being a blow to capitalism, it will be devastating to professional female golfers.

Secretary of the Treasury.