One of the great uses of science is prediction. From predicting solar eclipses to tornadoes to asteroid impacts, the ability warn of future calamities can be vitally useful. In the last generation, global warming/climate change/whatever has been top of the charts in getting people to yell at each other; many computer models have been created to simulate the *past,* but their abilities to predict the *future* have often been found to be rather lacking. I was promises. increased frequency/power hurricanes, for example, and that hasn’t really happened.

Using your science to make a prediction is always nerve wracking. If you are *wrong,* you can get in all kinds of trouble. But if you want your science to be taken seriously, you *have* to make predictions. And you have to be more-or-less correct. So, now we have this:

NASA Study Shows Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act

A new NASA study finds the last remaining section of Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf, which partially collapsed in 2002, is quickly weakening and likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.

That’s a good sort of prediction. A fairly clear end point, within a verifiable timeframe, and conveniently near-term as such things go (compare to “Betelgeuse will go supernova sometime in the next 50,000 years.”).