Melting in W. Antarctica 'unavoidable,' potentially disastrous sea level rise | Hacker News Reader

Melting in W. Antarctica 'unavoidable,' potentially disastrous sea level rise

cnn.com

29 pointssmn123423 comments

Some scientists sounded a note of caution about the study. Tiago Segabinazzi Dotto, senior research scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in the UK, said it should be “treated carefully” as it is based on a single model.

I think that quote by itself is easy to misinterpret. Here's the next 2 paragraphs:

"However, its conclusions do agree with previous research in the region, he told the Science Media Center, giving “confidence that this study needs to be taken in consideration for policymakers.”"

"Naughten and her colleagues acknowledged their study has limits — predicting future rates of melting in West Antarctica is very complex and it’s impossible to account for every possible future outcome. But, looking at the range of scenarios, the report authors said they were confident the melting of ice shelves is now unavoidable."

My friend played Russian roulette and died. But that's only a single data point, so maybe I'll give it a go? Or maybe we should just play Pandemic instead. Hmmm... So many options, and literally no way to choose between them!

That's pretty terrible for all the people living in coastal areas, which is a large part of the human population.

It's also pretty terrible for all the people not living in coastal areas, because people living in coastal areas will not want to live under water.

It's pretty much lose-lose.

It's very wealthy people in the first world and very poor people in the third world.

Poor people will stand up and walk inland.

The rich will do anything they can to convince everyone else to pay for their property losses

Sounds like a reasonable assumption.

How much sea level rise?

Northern Europe: (Likely) neutral to negative, due to land rise (from the latest ice age).

where do you get that from? i dont see that in the cnn report nor in the study.

This is a good place to start learning about the phenomenon:

https://www.lantmateriet.se/en/geodata/gps-geodesi-och-swepo...

Postglacial land uplift

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantm%C3%A4teriet

Lantmäteriet (The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority) is a government agency in Sweden that provides information on Swedish geography and property.

...

Lantmäteriet was founded in 1628, when Swedish general mathematician Anders Bureus was tasked with systematically mapping out the Swedish Empire and educating new land surveyors under directions from the Swedish King Gustaf II Adolf)

But the uplift is a lot slower than sea rise, yes ?

In most of Sweden (except the very south) the uplift is faster than the current projected sea rise.

But it can't be so for the long term, can it?, if projected sea rise is like over ten meters.

As an example: 10k years ago during the last major ice age, Stockholm was 150 meters below the current sea level. The land is springy...

(https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landh%C3%B6jningen_i_Stockholm - use Google Translate.)

In 2009 a dock needed to lowered by 0.5 meters to keep up with the land rise.

AFAIK there's not the same phenomena in Helsinki. Is it so much less springy across the gulf ?

Seems odd...

"Up to 5.3 metres / 17 feet."

From the article:

"West Antarctica is already the continent’s largest contributor to global sea level rise and has enough ice to raise sea levels by an average of 5.3 meters, or more than 17 feet. It’s home to the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday glacier,” because its collapse could raise sea levels by several feet, forcing coastal communities and low-lying island nations to either build around sea level rise or abandon these places"

I saw that, but it doesn't say how much of that is at risk for now or how fast it would happen. The paper has some rates of melting but doesn't translate that into rate of sea level rise.

And it's worth noting, something like 450,000,000 people live within 5m of sea level. This would be absolutely catastrophic for the entire world. A significant contributing factor to European political strife over the past decade has been the arrival of refugees from other regions; and Europe is currently home to about 22 million refugees[0]. It's hard to imagine how wealthier regions will cope with the influx of 450,000,000 refugees (admittedly, many will be staying within their home regions -- but many will likely not).

[0] https://reporting.unhcr.org/operational/regions/europe

melting icebergs don't rise sea level. Water is denser than ice, even if the iceberg melts, water just fills previously occupied space

Unless the ice rest on land, like in Antarctica, which the article points out.

Nah, I didn’t read the article so you can’t possibly be right. The ice will just fill previously occupied space.

Unfortunately said space will be peoples communities.

Definition of an iceberg: noun - a large floating mass of ice detached from a glacier or ice sheet and carried out to sea.

If it rests on land, it's not an iceberg, is it?

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