Another report signifying lack of an actual, deep-understanding of the swift-boat capabilities of climate change, in this instance, the Pine Island Glacier, largest single contributor to sea-level rise in Antarctica, is not-so-slowly melting away — today from Planet Earth:
The work, published in Nature Climate Change, shows the glacier’s retreat may have begun an irreversible process that could see the amount of water it is adding to the ocean increase five-fold.
The study indicates, too, Pine Island Glacier has become unstable, and the meltdown/retreat could continue for many miles — Pine Island provides 25 per cent of the total ice loss from West Antarctica and if it liquefies.sea levels could rise more than 15 feet, if my meters-to-feet conversion is correct.
Nothing is standing still on this planet.
(Illustration found here).
When ice melts there’s water — and when the land shrinks as the ice melts, there’s some shit afloat.
Via Salon this afternoon:
Scientists say the East Coast will be hit harder for many reasons, but among the most important is that even as the seawater rises, the land in this part of the world is sinking.
And that goes back to the last ice age, which peaked some 20,000 years ago.
As a massive ice sheet, more than a mile thick, grew over what are now Canada and the northern reaches of the United States, the weight of it depressed the crust of the earth.
Areas away from the ice sheet bulged upward in response, as though somebody had stepped on one edge of a balloon, causing the other side to pop up.
Now that the ice sheet has melted, the ground that was directly beneath it is rising, and the peripheral bulge is falling.
Some degree of sinking is going on all the way from southern Maine to northern Florida, and it manifests itself as an apparent rising of the sea.
Despite the obvious point where studies/research/reports on the page has leaped full-blown into the environment, the time frame for doing something has most-likely slipped away. Of course, sea-level rise is a major concern due to climate change, so is drought, and bigger tornadoes, and so forth, and the chaos will only get worse.
Yet unabated mankind continues, as if life continues, as if…
From Climate Central, also today:
The U.S. Energy Information Administration released a report on Monday showing that 2013 energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. are expected to have increased 2 percent over 2012 emissions once all the data for the year are tallied.
Total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels totaled 5.26 billion metric tons in 2012, increasing to 5.37 billion in 2013, EIA data show.
The report also projects that emissions will increase slightly — 0.7 percent — in 2014, followed by no change in emissions in 2015.
Burning, melting, weeping.
Over the past weekend, I saw the old, iconic science-fiction movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the 1951 original directed by Robert Wise, not the Keanu Reeves disaster remake.
Warnings of a serious nature — get your shit together, or else you’re dead meat: “I won’t resort to threats, Mr. Harley. I merely tell you the future of your planet is at stake.”
Nothing heavy.