Unavoidable future increase in West Antarctic ice-shelf melting over 21 century
nature.com
nature.com
Its growing abundantly clear that the tipping point is well in the past.
Decarbonization must proceed, of course, but if we can't feasibly remove carbon from the system at scale, we're well and truly fucked.
Apologies for the slightly dark take. But either it’s humor or despair and I refuse to choose the latter out of principle.
They also need to adjust this map viewer thing to go to 20 feet.
Humanity got our act together on CFC's and the ozone layer hole but fossil fuels has so many vested interests it's a hard nut to crack.
With that said, I'm sure that some of the damage can potentially be reversed, and the planet has some capacity to self-heal over long periods of time.
Hopefully reducing emissions and even partial decarbonization will lead to a less bad outcome in the medium to long-term.
If we are unable to determine the point of no return, then perhaps that would be good reason to stop changing the carbon content of the only planet we can occupy, but I have also come to believe that the changes to come are inevitable and likely terrible.
> If we are unable to determine the point of no return, then perhaps that would be good reason to stop changing the carbon content of the only planet we can occupy, but I have also come to believe that the changes to come are inevitable and likely terrible.
Problem is what if are already past point of no return and extinction of human race is inevitable? And all we can do is postpone it? Would releasing such info help anyone or would only hasten fall of our civilization?
We just don't know what big corporations hide in their research, like they hidden similar stuff in the past?
Example: https://terraformindustries.com/
And then what do they do if he does not? SpaceX is a sacred cow.
Perhaps next time we’ll just get a freshwater planet, I hear those are much more forgiving ;)
- too many humans
- too much pollution
- too much energy consumption
Honestly I partially blame advertising in general. We are all constantly reminded that we should want more, that we never have enough, and are offered solutions to problems that we didn't view as problems to begin with putting us in constant competition with one another. I think we will end up happier overall when we stop pursuing consumer growth and start pursuing human connections realizing that the things most of us want are not produced in a factory or presentaed on a screen.
Ice sheets are basically big domes of ice that flow outward under their own weight. Little surface melt occurs in Antarctica, while snow continues to fall. To maintain approximate mass balance, most of the mass is lost to the ocean. Most of the WAIS bed is below sea level, but the ice is thick enough that the ice rests on the bed, and seawater is excluded. Where the ice sheet begins to float is where ice shelves or calving happens. Towards this margin, the outlet ice streams are almost but not quite floating. They have little friction at their beds, but they push up sediment in front, forming sediment wedges that push back on the grounded ice behind them. This slows the outward flux of ice, and creates a stable equilibrium as the ice pushes up against the wedge.
Much of WAIS is on a reverse bed, where the bed drops in elevation as you proceed inland (despite the ice getting thicker, and the top of the ice sheet getting higher and higher). Due (largely) to increased submarine melting leading to thinner ice shelves (which themselves push back due to pressing up against islands and such), the ice grounding line can retreat from the wedge. Worse, this enters a feedback: due to the reverse bed, the ice is now thicker in the new retreated grounding line, because flotation occurs in deeper water. This increases ice flux due to the thicker front. Thus retreat accelerates more, and so on until the ice sheet collapses.
Add land acquisition in London's expensive real estate market, and the relocation of communities, you could easily double or triple that cost. To put it in perspective, this could rival or surpass projects like the Channel Tunnel in terms of financial and logistical complexity.
And yet, there's a startling lack of political and public dialogue on this urgent issue. This isn't just about engineering; it's about national security and public safety. The disconnect is alarming.
If you were to say "they have just decided to go with the most alarming scenario possible and throw the scientific method to the wind" I think it would fit the description in the abstract.