Slashdot Mirror
Could Collapsing Antarctic Glaciers Raise Sea Levels Sooner Than Expected? (salon.com)
"We may be headed for an ice apocalypse which could result in the flooding of coastal cities before the end of this century," writes long-time Slashdot reader whoever57. Grist reports on two of the largest and fastest-melting glaciers in Antarctica which "hold human civilization hostage."
There's no doubt this ice will melt as the world warms. The vital question is when... Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world's oceans -- an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet... Each new iceberg that breaks away exposes taller and taller cliffs... In the past few years, scientists have identified marine ice-cliff instability as a feedback loop that could kickstart the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet this century -- much more quickly than previously thought. Minute-by-minute, huge skyscraper-sized shards of ice cliffs would crumble into the sea, as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as deep underwater as the height of the Empire State Building. The result: a global catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen... When [land-based ice] falls into the ocean, it adds to the overall volume of liquid in the seas. Thus, sea-level rise.... All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt...
A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica... Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard's findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.
If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."
A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica... Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard's findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.
If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."
Fill the glass to the top with water so the ice sticks out the top. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Science. Thanks for playing, morons.
You do know that Antarctica is a continent, and the miles-thick ice sheet under discussion is on land, not floating, right?
Fill a glass to the top with water. Then, melt ice somewhere else, and pour the melted water into the glass. The glass will overflow.
I suppose all you Slashdot sheeple actually believe there is a place called "Antarctica" and that there are "glaciers" there. It's because you've been brainwashed by Marxist-run universities and their so-called "science" which is just SJW virtue signaling.
You should view my series of 7-hour YouTube videos called, "Why Science is for Losers" and subscribe to my channel. Use the promotion code: "88_14WORDS_Hexen_WhiteWolfMRA".
And don't forget to hit up my Patreon page, because bringing the truth to the masses is thirsty work, and have you seen the price of Mike's Hard Lemonade lately?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Empirical Data Exposes the Truth
Thirty years of Fail
"Prince Charles famously warned in July 2009 that humanity had only 96 months to save the world from “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” That deadline has passed, and the prince has not issued an update to when the world needs to be saved."
"World leaders meeting at the Vatican issued a statement saying that 2015 was the “last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].”
"When Laurent Fabius met with Secretary of State John Kerry on May 13, 2014 to talk about world issues he said “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”
"National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Hansen warned in 2009 that Obama only “has four years to save Earth.”
"World leaders met in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009 to potentially hash out another climate treaty. That same year, the head of Canada’s Green Party wrote that there was only “hours” left to stop global warming."
"The year 2009 was a bad time for global warming predictions. That year Brown warned there was only “50 days to save the world from global warming,” the BBC reported. According to Brown there was “no plan B.”
"Environmentalist write George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within “as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.”
About 930 million people around the world were undernourished in 2002, according to U.N. data. By 2014, that number shrank to 805 million. Sorry, Monbiot."
"The U.N. was already claiming in the late 1980s that the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences.
The San Jose Mercury News reported June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
That prediction didn’t come true 17 years ago, and the U.N. is sounding the same alarm today."
Florida has an average elevation of 6' above sea level. Google it.
A lot of the rest of the Coastal U.S. is also quite close to sea level.
You can't live in a place that high tide washes across twice a day and that is going to be 20' under water during major storms.
Mumbai doesn't make sense tho. It's much higher above sea level.
But Shanghai would be toast.
It's quite close to sea level now and has 10' tidal variance as it is.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.
Yes indeed.
Firstly, the boy cried "It's not warming" - it was.
Then the boy cried "It's the sun!" - it wasn't.
Then the boy cried "It's volcanoes!" - it wasn't.
Then the boy cried "It's a conspiracy!" it wasn't.
By this point, few villagers, if any, were listening to what the boy had to say at all.
The the boy cried "It's stopped warming!" and a lot of people wondered if the boy understood anything at all.
So yes, we are pretty skeptical of what that particular boy (or group of boys) has to say.
Miami already has a water problem. They have been battling it for some time now. All it will take is a direct hit from Hurricane Donald at a high tide and we'll be treated to legions of Conservatives saying how the climate has been changing for millenia and that nothing could have been done to save Miami...while they will claim a share of federal disaster aid for their time shares and condos.