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:::Feyd: please focus on content, not on the contributor. We're all trying to improve the article and mistakes happen. You're correct about polar glaciers: the current lead is incorrect. Most of the loss on the poles comes from the ice sheets themselves. [[User:Femke|—Femke 🐦]] ([[User talk:Femke|talk]]) 09:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
::::The edit in question seems to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_level_rise&diff=prev&oldid=1227805729 this one]. I'm not sure about the "Sea level rise is happening around the world" wording, but the general principle of dialing down on the stats/numbers in the opening paragraph seems a good one. [[User:Chipmunkdavis|CMD]] ([[User talk:Chipmunkdavis|talk]]) 10:20, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
::::Yes, can we please spend less time on drawing inferences from editing patterns and more time on double-checking what we think we know?
::::So, first and foremost, I would like to note how we got to that wording in the lead in the first place. I did not have anything to do with it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_level_rise&diff=1165662915&oldid=1165661455 my edits to the lead on 16 July 2023] had that sentence at {{tq|Human-caused climate change is predominantly the cause: between 1993 and 2018, thermal expansion of water contributed 42% to sea level rise (SLR); melting of temperate glaciers contributed 21%; Greenland contributed 15%; and Antarctica contributed 8%.}}
::::Then, though, @[[User:Jonathanlynn|Jonathanlynn]] embarked on several rounds of well-intentioned simplification of this article. So, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_level_rise&diff=1170500322&oldid=1170473662 in August 2023], he changed it to say {{tq|Melting temperate glaciers accounted for 21%, with Greenland accounting for 15% and Antarctica 8%}}. Then, this February, he [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_level_rise&diff=1204153273&oldid=1203838001 changed it again] to {{tq|Melting temperate glaciers accounted for 21%. Within this, Greenland accounted for 15% and Antarctica 8%.}} - incorrectly stating that all the glacier loss occurs on the poles and that ice sheets consist of temperate glaciers! Unfortunately, neither me nor anybody else watching the page recognized the issue at the time. Thus, it was actually a '''significant''' improvement [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_level_rise&diff=1208936013&oldid=1208893112 when an IP editor] got us to this "polar glaciers" wording two weeks later, on February 19.
::::So, if you want to restore the wording which was in my July 2023 edit, or something similar, I would not object. '''Having said that''', I would like to explain why I was not opposed to the previous wording either.
::::{{tq|As per your Britanica link: A polar glacier is defined as one that is below the freezing temperature throughout its mass for the entire year How can melt from perma-frozen Glaciers account for 23% of SLR? The nature headline is Geoengineer polar glaciers to slow sea-level rise.}} - So...are you suggesting that Thwaites Glacier isn't melting? And yes, the Nature article most definitely refers to Thwaites, Pine Island and Greenland's Jakobshavn - see [https://web.archive.org/web/20180316091802/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4 the version archived before the paywall went up]. Possibly the most relevant quote:
::::{{tq|The Jakobshavn glacier in western Greenland is one of the fastest-moving ice masses on Earth. It contributes more to sea-level rise than any other glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. Ice loss from Jakobshavn explains around 4% of twentieth-century sea-level rise, or about 0.06 millimetres per year. Jakobshavn is retreating at its front. Relatively warm water from the Atlantic is flowing over a shallow sill (300 metres deep) and eating away at the glacier’s base.}}
::::Now...
::::{{tq|Most of the loss on the poles comes from the ice sheets themselves.}} - What do you mean by "ice sheets themselves?" Because, it's undeniable that [https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2021/04/14/nasa-study-excess-of-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-over-mass-losses-during-1992-to-2008-eliminated-by-increasing-dynamic-losses-to-2016/ literally all the ice loss from Antarctica] is from the coastal glaciers.
::::Here is an article which explains it the best:
::::[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/greenland-antarctica-are-gaining-ice-inland-losing-melting-overall Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall]
::::{{tq|Ice all around the coast of Greenland thinned drastically, due to warmer summer temperatures (SN: 9/18/19). But the most severe thinning happened on Greenland’s outlet glaciers, which are like “a whole bunch of little fingers that spread out into the ocean,” Gardner says. Where the tips of these glacial fingers poke out from between cold fjords and meet warmer ocean water, that water erodes the ice, causing the glaciers to flow out faster and thin inland. Greenland’s southern Kangerdlugssuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers have thinned most rapidly — by 4 to 6 meters of ice thickness per year. In Antarctica, warmer seawater not only melts glaciers, but it also melts the extensions of the ice sheet that float on the ocean, called ice shelves, which surround the continent.}}
::::Even in Greenland, where the ice sheet itself does melt seasonally, the glaciers are still responsible for [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1855-2 between half of the losses]
::::{{tq|The remaining 1,938 ± 541 billion tonnes (49.7 per cent) of ice loss was due to increased glacier dynamical imbalance, which rose from 46 ± 37 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 87 ± 25 billion tonnes per year since then.}}
::::[https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1904242116 Or even two-thirds].
::::{{tq|The mass loss is controlled at 66.8% by glacier dynamics (9.1 mm) and 34.8% by SMB (4.6 mm).}}
::::So, all the ice loss from Antarctica and at least half the loss from Greenland is from the coastal glaciers. Considering this, I didn't think Feyd's wording - {{tq|Close to half of sea level rise results from thermal expansion of sea water, with melting glaciers and ice sheets the other main cause.}} - was good, and I really didn't like the decision to strip references from the first paragraph and '''only''' from the first paragraph, so I reverted it. [[User:InformationToKnowledge|InformationToKnowledge]] ([[User talk:InformationToKnowledge|talk]]) 11:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
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