[CC] We Were Grossly Wrong

[Admiral Valdemar]

Ice Caps Melting Fast: Say Goodbye to the Big Apple?

By Paul Brown, AlterNet. Posted October 10, 2007.

The talk of sea level rise should not be in centuries, it should be decades or perhaps even single years. And coastal regions like New York and Florida are in the front line for devastation.

It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said:"It is too late already."

What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds, possibly thousands. "Moulin" is a word I had only just become familiar with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did previously.

Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of Niagra Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts on ice and Greenland in particular. We were visiting Ilulissat, Greenland, once a stronghold of Innuit hunters but now with so little ice that the dog sleds are in danger of falling through even in the depth of winter. But it is not the lack of sea ice that worries scientists and should be of serious concern to the inhabitants of coastal zones across the world. Cities like New York and states like Florida are in the front line.

Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem, the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up.

Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the iceberg which sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Correll, chairman of the Artic Climate Impact Assessment, from Washington told me:"We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front five kilometres long and 1,500 metres deep. "That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one day to provide drinking water for a city the size New York or London for a year."

Professor Correll, who is also director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report in February had been "conservative" and based on data two years old. The range of rise this century had been predicted to be 20 to 60 centimetres, but would be the upper end of this range at a minimum and some now believed it could be two metres. This would have catastrophic effects for European and US coastlines.

He said newly invented ice penetrating radar showed that the melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a melt water lake 500 metres deep causing the glacier "to float on land. "These melt water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic."

The glacier is now moving at 15 kilometres a year into the sea although in periodic surges it moves even faster. He has seen a surge, which he had measured as moving five kilometres in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.

If all of Greenland melts, something we were previously assured would take thousands of years, but now could be hundreds, then sea level round the world would rise seven metres. That is without any contribution from the Antarctic, the glaciers of Alaska, the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the ocean water expanding as it warms.

So the talk of sea level rise should not be in centuries, it should be decades or perhaps even single years. For 10,000 years, during all of human civilisation sea level remained stable leading us to believe that coastlines remained roughly in the same place. A century ago the sea began to rise one millimetre a year, 20 years ago it had reached two millimetres and this century it has risen to 3 millimetres. This annual rise may not seem much but add hurricane storm surges and high tides and we are soon saying good bye to a lot of coastal settlements -- like the Big Apple.

Switch forward a week from the helicopter ride to George W. Bush's meeting of 16 of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in Washington last month and what do we hear. We hear lots of rhetoric about how, along with terrorism, climate change is the biggest threat to the earth -- although the catastrophic sea level rise facing our major coastal cities does not rate a mention.

But instead of decisive political action (as with terrorism) we get suggestions from the President of voluntary cuts in emissions, down to the government of each country, and then next summer another conference to discuss where we have got to -- which on past form will be nowhere at all. It did not sound like the much needed change of heart from the President, but just another delaying tactic to tide him over until his term of office ends.

Although it may sound like it, the commentators in Europe are not singling out America for criticism, although it has to be said as often as possible that the US is the world's most profligate nation when it comes to fossil fuel consumption, AND has rejected the only legally binding international agreement that could do something about it. But Europeans are not doing enough either. We need convincing that our own leaders have enough political will to reach the tiny Kyoto targets that are the minimum first step to tackling this problem. The public hears the latest scientists' warnings that an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we are to stave off catastrophic climate change, yet wait in vain for the policies needed to achieve them.

In my book, protestors wearing George Bush masks are pictured "fiddling while the earth burns." Maybe he is just the lead violinist of the orchestra.

copyright Paul Brown 2007

[Adrian Laguna]

I need to arrange a trip to the the North or South Pole to see the glaciers before they melt. I never thought I'd say this, but I suddenly wish I was older and with more resources.

[Kanastrous]

It's weird, but I actually feel a sense of perverse satisfaction at seeing my own species about to get bitch-smacked for its own collective stupidity.

[Admiral Valdemar]

And because I was right about the IPCC being overly conservative with their figures, something else to brighten your day:

Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic.

The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59cm this century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to between two and three degrees above today's level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59cm but by 25 metres. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature.

We now have a pretty good idea of why ice sheets collapse. The buttresses that prevent them from sliding into the sea break up; meltwater trickles down to their base causing them suddenly to slip; and pools of water form on the surface, making the ice darker so that it absorbs more heat. These processes are already taking place in Greenland and west Antarctica.

Rather than taking thousands of years to melt, as the IPCC predicts, Hansen and his team find it "implausible" that the expected warming before 2100 "would permit a west Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century"

As well as drowning most of the world's centres of population, a sudden disintegration could lead to much higher rises in global temperature, because less ice means less heat reflected back into space. The new paper suggests that the temperature could therefore be twice as sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than the IPCC assumes. "Civilisation developed," Hansen writes, "during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end."

Humans = screwed.

[NoXion]

Isn't the northern ice cap mostly floating on water? So why would it make such a big deal with regard to flooding (ignoring other aspects for the sake of argument) if it melted? Unless there is enough ice on Antarctica to make up for the difference. I only ask this because, as far as I know, ice in water still displaces it's equivalent unmelted volume. It's why your drink doesn't overflow when the ice cubes in it melt, right? Also, rather shamelessly I might add, I want to confirm my prejudices that this whole climate change fiasco won't be as bad as doom-sayers are making it out to be, because quite frankly I find the apocalyptic mindset a recipe for doing nothing - "we're fucked, so why bother doing anything?".

For all it's myriad faults, I like the human race. I do not relish the thought of large amounts people suffering. Yes, it may be self-inflicted, but histrionics about how retarded we are and/or gloating about it will not improve matters.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It'd be nice if you took the professional step of linking studies or papers or even graphical summaries rather than just some guy's opinion of them followed by "the sky is falling." Not that I disagree that things are bad, but your style and approach really is not helpful. We cannot know that each of us are doomed, so it behooves us to try to help and make things as much better as we can. I don't think this way - something I perhaps was guilt of - of addressing things does anything but alienate people who might care to help or advocate. And unless you are retreating to the mountains to hole it up or happily advocating voluntary human extinction or die-down, I don't think it serves your purposes either.

We need leadership, badly. You're well educated and young. You're in a position to be part of a new wave of leadership in these issues. But this is not the way to put us in that direction.

[Kanastrous]

Humans = screwed.

Not *this* human, baby.

I own a canoe.

[Gil Hamilton]

Isn't the northern ice cap mostly floating on water? So why would it make such a big deal with regard to flooding (ignoring other aspects for the sake of argument) if it melted? Unless there is enough ice on Antarctica to make up for the difference. I only ask this because, as far as I know, ice in water still displaces it's equivalent unmelted volume. It's why your drink doesn't overflow when the ice cubes in it melt, right? Also, rather shamelessly I might add, I want to confirm my prejudices that this whole climate change fiasco won't be as bad as doom-sayers are making it out to be, because quite frankly I find the apocalyptic mindset a recipe for doing nothing - "we're fucked, so why bother doing anything?".

Well, no, the particular ice they are talking about is on Greenland, which is infact on solid land. If it melts, the ocean levels will rise.

Besides, I would say that claiming it won't be as bad as all that is a recipe for doing nothing. If you acknowledge there is a real serious problem, you can mitigate it. However, reasoning that it won't be bad because you don't like it? That just leaves people unprepared.

For all it's myriad faults, I like the human race. I do not relish the thought of large amounts people suffering. Yes, it may be self-inflicted, but histrionics about how retarded we are and/or gloating about it will not improve matters.

I can agree with this. It sure won't improve anything.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Isn't the northern ice cap mostly floating on water? So why would it make such a big deal with regard to flooding (ignoring other aspects for the sake of argument) if it melted? Unless there is enough ice on Antarctica to make up for the difference. I only ask this because, as far as I know, ice in water still displaces it's equivalent unmelted volume. It's why your drink doesn't overflow when the ice cubes in it melt, right? Also, rather shamelessly I might add, I want to confirm my prejudices that this whole climate change fiasco won't be as bad as doom-sayers are making it out to be, because quite frankly I find the apocalyptic mindset a recipe for doing nothing - "we're fucked, so why bother doing anything?".

For all it's myriad faults, I like the human race. I do not relish the thought of large amounts people suffering. Yes, it may be self-inflicted, but histrionics about how retarded we are and/or gloating about it will not improve matters.

It does make a difference, because that water then expands as it warms, which adds another dimension that wasn't really calculated in previous models.

And I see it another way. This is a "We're fucked unless we do something incredibly drastic", because people are stupid and unless you genuinely shock them into thinking they will be worse off very soon and maybe even dying from this, then they'll do what the governments are doing and convene once every few years to discuss more bullshit and achieve nothing.

All this article is only on Greenland anyway, which certainly isn't ice in the sea. Antarctica and the Arctic are undergoing massive increases in melt now and both can add substantially to the sea levels, though the rising waters are only an issue for the coastal regions. The bigger effects will not be remedied by moving inland by a kilometre.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Does anyone have a map that shows the Earths Coastline if ALL ice melted? I rmemeber seeing one quite a while ago.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There isn't one. The best is Firetree's. It only goes up to 14 metres.

[Kanastrous]

Only a small chuck of the Earth's surface, but one with some valuable real estate...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Does anyone have a map that shows the Earths Coastline if ALL ice melted? I rmemeber seeing one quite a while ago.

It's a critic's website, but the graphics are, at least, accurate. Note that in some areas it would be easy to prevent the sea from coming in--a dam or barrage across the strait that would be formed at the back of San Francisco Bay would be feasable to keep the central valleys of California from flooding. They would then fill with fresh water over a long period of time, but a large fresh water lake is much more useful than a saltwater embayment.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That site linked by The Duchess seems to be pooh-poohing something I can physically see via satellite imagery. Certainly read with a grain of salt in your hand.

Greenland melting in a few thousand years? Yeah, okay, bub.

And good find, Kanastrous. I've been trying to get decent images of a proper sea level rise, but only had the aforementioned website on hand.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That site linked by The Duchess seems to be pooh-poohing something I can physically see via satellite imagery. Certainly read with a grain of salt in your hand.

Greenland melting in a few thousand years? Yeah, okay, bub.

And good find, Kanastrous. I've been trying to get decent images of a proper sea level rise, but only had the aforementioned website on hand.

I wasn't encouraging anyone to read it, just look at the pretty pictures, for the record, Valdemar.

[NoXion]

Well, no, the particular ice they are talking about is on Greenland, which is infact on solid land. If it melts, the ocean levels will rise.

It does make a difference, because that water then expands as it warms, which adds another dimension that wasn't really calculated in previous models.

...

All this article is only on Greenland anyway, which certainly isn't ice in the sea. Antarctica and the Arctic are undergoing massive increases in melt now and both can add substantially to the sea levels, though the rising waters are only an issue for the coastal regions. The bigger effects will not be remedied by moving inland by a kilometre.

Now I understand. Thank you.

And I see it another way. This is a "We're fucked unless we do something incredibly drastic", because people are stupid and unless you genuinely shock them into thinking they will be worse off very soon and maybe even dying from this, then they'll do what the governments are doing and convene once every few years to discuss more bullshit and achieve nothing.

Is there any historical precedent for making such changes on a massive scale? Or will we as individuals have to make do with reducing our carbon emissions and living a decent amount above sea level? Or is it more likely that things will only start changing once the shit hits the fan?

Besides, I would say that claiming it won't be as bad as all that is a recipe for doing nothing. If you acknowledge there is a real serious problem, you can mitigate it. However, reasoning that it won't be bad because you don't like it? That just leaves people unprepared.

Of course it be foolish to say that things won't be so bad if there is no evidence to base such a statement on. But if things turn out for the worse, and we're doomed to die horribly, what exactly will have been achieved?

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm aware, Ms. Marina. Just highlighting how much of a difference two years can make to predictions now we've essentially crossed the threshold and gone into a major positive feedback mechanism. This has never happened on Earth before, far as I can tell, so we're quite literally living in a new world.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Is there any historical precedent for making such changes on a massive scale? Or will we as individuals have to make do with reducing our carbon emissions and living a decent amount above sea level? Or is it more likely that things will only start changing once the shit hits the fan?

The precedent is there: moving from a pre-fossil fuel life to a fossil fuelled life. That was a huge change for civilisation. Now we can see it again, in reverse this time. You lucky devils.

Of course it be foolish to say that things won't be so bad if there is no evidence to base such a statement on. But if things turn out for the worse, and we're doomed to die horribly, what exactly will have been achieved?

From what I've been reading for the past year, everything is playing out far worse than even the most dire predictions from previous models. Something that was going to really make us miserable in a century and maybe over a millennia is now going to piss on our parade before we collect our pensions if this keeps up.

See how people change tune when they figure it won't be our children's children dealing with this, but us in the here and now. Course, the denialists are good enough with their ignorance barrier to ignore everything we've seen so far based solely on the snippets they heard from a talking head on FOX or in The Daily Mail, so I don't expect them to change their minds until their houses in London and NYC become prime beach front realty

[Kanastrous]

The precedent is there: moving from a pre-fossil fuel life to a fossil fuelled life. That was a huge change for civilisation.

Yeah, but that shift was propelled by opening markets and new technologies and vast revenues.

This shift would have to be propelled by mere survival-necessity. Without a profit-model, who in a position of power or influence is gonna be interested in *that*?

[Shinova]

And most of the people in power are the elderly anyway, who are slated to die relatively soon anyhow.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yeah, but that shift was propelled by opening markets and new technologies and vast revenues.

This shift would have to be propelled by mere survival-necessity. Without a profit-model, who in a position of power or influence is gonna be interested in *that*?

With respect to Peak Oil, my other sunshine and rainbow filled topic of interest nowadays, the incentive is to make more money from ever more profitable green energy systems. There is an economy still to be had from a post-carbon world, it's just that Big Oil and Big Auto are notoriously fond of the black gooey stuff and its relatives and so not too keen on parting ways when demand outstripping supply means sky high profits (generally, we're seeing issues with that profiteering thing now).

for climate change, the story is much the same as the "Carbon Twins" of PO and CC are intrinsically linked. However, what we need (or from another perspective "needed") to do is cut back A LOT with respect to consumption of unclean energy, and then go cold turkey until greener alternatives are able to meet demand.

Since telling people to stop with the cable TV and buying of shiny big V8 fitted cars and designer clothes and cheap flights abroad is political suicide, nothing has been done. Again, the people will only figure out whether carrying on regardless was a good move or not when we run into an energy crisis and an environmental meltdown in the same go.

[Chardok]

I had a discussion with a guy who said that human activity is doing NOTHING to affect global climate because our greenhouse gas output is negligible next to the amount of greenhouse gasses spewed into the atmosphere by volcanoes....

So I asked him if he thought we should declare a war on volcanoes.

I proposed that it was absurd to think that you can increase the population of any carbon based lifeform to six BILLION, cut out the lungs of a planet (the Rainforests) and boldly thump your chest as the proud conqueror proclaiming, "I CAN ILLUMINATE SPACE WITH MY SPRAWL, BUT I AM NOTHING NEXT TO VOLCANOES!"

Doesn't make much sense, does it?

[Illuminatus Primus]

And I see it another way. This is a "We're fucked unless we do something incredibly drastic", because people are stupid and unless you genuinely shock them into thinking they will be worse off very soon and maybe even dying from this, then they'll do what the governments are doing and convene once every few years to discuss more bullshit and achieve nothing.

You're not on a street corner and I'm not an average citizen. So are you insulting our intelligence as well?

[Admiral Valdemar]

You're not on a street corner and I'm not an average citizen. So are you insulting our intelligence as well?

Merely pointing out the status quo with respect to the situation at hand in the eyes of the general public. You and I both know that drastic action is needed and this is no money grab by researchers or some other bullshit excuse to make grandiose claims of climate catastrophe.

NoXion obviously hasn't read previous threads on these topics, else he'd have known that the only way to get people doing anything is to make them understand it will be a losing game for them if they don't play by the rules.

[NoXion]

The precedent is there: moving from a pre-fossil fuel life to a fossil fuelled life. That was a huge change for civilisation. Now we can see it again, in reverse this time. You lucky devils.

I realise you're being facetious, but being thrown back to a pre-Industrial Revolution civilisation is not exactly something I'm looking forward to. I suppose I have the benefit of being only 20, but spending the rest of my life in backbreaking labour just to survive doesn't exactly appeal.

From what I've been reading for the past year, everything is playing out far worse than even the most dire predictions from previous models. Something that was going to really make us miserable in a century and maybe over a millennia is now going to piss on our parade before we collect our pensions if this keeps up.

If things are as bad as you say, what possible motivation have I to do anything? If nothing I can possibly do can mitigate the situation, and I'm doomed to either dying of some pre-industrial disease or working 12 hour days for the rest of my life, then what prevents me from simply having the time of my life while I can and hopefully expiring of excessive consumption before everything goes to hell?

This was my point when I said that doomsaying is a recipe for doing nothing. If the end is inevitable, why bother doing anything about it? Personally, I like to at least think that human ingenuity and self-interest will come to prominence and ease the transition. It may be an illusion, but that illusion keeps me a productive member of society who is at least willing to change his life if circumstances dictate.