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A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
- novaleaf 10y agoDoes anyone know where I can find estimations of sea level rise over the next 10 to 200 years? I always hear horror stories of 20 meter rises but don't know what the ranges of "consensus" are...
- snowwrestler 10y agoThe Wikipedia page is not a bad place to start. It links to a quite a few external resources in the Projections section. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
- igf 10y agoI'd also like to see estimates from the 1990s of how much sea level rise we can expect by 2016. I seem to remember reading a book back in the day that said New York City would be completely underwater by 2010.
- phaemon 10y agoThe IPCC 2nd report came out in 1995. They mention "...a rise in sea level of 30 cm to 1 m by the year 2100." Seems a bit conservative given current sea level rise, but I suppose they have to go with something that everyone will agree to. Back in the day I read a book that told the story of how a boy discovered that the old vagabond who skulked about his farm was actually the mighty Belgarath the Sorcerer.
- mikro2nd 10y agoSeems likely that the "Bathtub Model" we have in our heads is all wrong, and sea-level change is going to be highly variable in different parts of the planet. Go and watch one of Jerry Mitrovica's videos[1] to get a good idea... According to his models, some places will likely see sea-levels fall by as much as (iirc) 25m, to others where sea-levels will rise by 5 to 8m by the end of this century. Goodbye ports, goodbye containerised shipping, goodbye global trade. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w
- acqq 10y agoThanks. He isn't actually saying these numbers (-25 m, 8m) are expected in 2100, he's stating that the peak higher sea level in the older but comparable times (that is during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian around 115 kyears ago) was up to 7 meter higher on the extreme points. Which is a good illustration that the "bathtub mental model" is false. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is much more constrained to cite that, they present the following (the 2013 results): https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Cha... The worst projected total average increase at 2100 is around 40 cm if we do some corrections in our fossil fuels use and around 80 cm (on average) if we don't (so called "business as usual", they technically call it "RCP8.5" (1)). The local increases (which we now know can be significantly different) are drawn with the scale up to around 1 m for the "some corrections scenarios" if I understood. But it will go up afterwards for hundreds of years, and it can't be stopped. Mitrovica believes these are too conservative as even the current measurements already hit the upper bounds. It seems anyway the world is more or less behaving in the "business as usual" sense regarding the fossil fuels. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P... It's worth always looking at the RCP8.5, as that's what's going to happen if no significant changes happen. It's not "the most improbable" but "the most probable if nothing changes" and I admit I personally tend to see the graph with more paths as "OK this one is the highest, it's extreme" when it's the default one!
- tominous 10y ago> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?
- r00fus 10y agoI doubt it's a passing fascination with featureless ice, but more of a dread of the things to come...
- tominous 10y agoThe article specifically distinguishes it from the concern about sea level. I think it's about the attachment to something you've studied and the desire to preserve it.
- aboodman 10y agoI really loved that plotline and the thought experiment around the ethics of changing a place, even a place without life.
- arethuza 10y agoArguably the entire Mars trilogy is a romance between the original Green, Sax Russel, and the original Red, Ann Clayborne.
- milcron 10y agoBringing ourselves to terraform another planet will be very easy -- the one who pushes the button will be one who hasn't looked at the planet long enough to be attached to it.
- treve 10y agoSounds a bit like the death penalty.
- jkubicek 10y agoIf we took a fleet of tug-boats and towed this ice to the Middle East, I wonder how long the fresh water would last?
- walrus01 10y agoAn interesting theoretical thought exercise. The money and fuel bill for tugboats sufficient to move that would probably be better spent on massive fields of photovoltaics and electricity-intensive seawater desalination equipment...
- jonknee 10y agoWhat about nuclear powered boats? Russia has a fleet of nuclear powered ice breakers.
- ricardobeat 10y ago6000 square kilometers of ice.
- tn13 10y agoWhat if this frozen ice contains disease vectors still dormant and if we don't have immunity to them they might wipe out all life on earth.
- lxmorj 10y agoBuild giant sails!
- Infernal 10y agoThe crack in Larsen C grew around 30 kilometres in length between 2011 and 2015. And as it grew, also became wider — by 2015, yawning some 200 meters in length. It feels pedantic, but honestly something so fundamental as confusing length and width makes this much more difficult to read at first glance than it should be.
- duskwuff 10y agoI don't see any confusion there. The "length" of the crack is its long dimension, from end to end, and the "width" is how far the two sides have spread away from each another.
- phkahler 10y ago>> I don't see any confusion there. "And as it grew, also became wider — by 2015, yawning some 200 meters in length." They use "wider" and "length" to describe the same 200 meter span.
- pasquinelli 10y agono, they use length to describe the measurement of the crack's width. totally valid afaic.
- abritinthebay 10y agoValid? Yes. Ugly to read? Also yes.
- arcticfox 10y agoYou can't just use "length" to describe a width. It's grammatically valid but semantically incorrect. An object can't be "100m long by 100m long".
- pasquinelli 10y agobut that's not how it's being used. what length of rope does it take to go around a quarter mile track? there's no ambiguity even though the track has length and width. the dimension in question was specified already, the width of the crack, so referring to the measure of that as its length is fine, no ambiguity.
- zaken 10y agoFrom the article, regarding sea level rise: When ice shelves lose large chunks, it does not raise sea level because these bodies are already afloat. However, the loss of an ice shelf can speed up the seaward flow of the nonfloating glacial ice behind it, and this ice can in turn contribute to sea-level rise. Researchers have estimated that the loss of all the ice that the Larsen C ice shelf currently holds back would raise global sea levels by 10 centimetres.
- dleslie 10y agoThe faster that levels rise the sooner we are to get off our collective asses and make a difference.
- darawk 10y agoTrue, but the longer we have to sit on our asses, the more likely we are to succeed in our effort to make a difference when we finally get around to it (due to technological progression).
- omosubi 10y agoI wouldn't count on this - markets don't seem to care about sea level rise at the moment
- pohl 10y agoThe wealthy do love their ocean-view properties, though.
- Cshelton 10y agoThe wealthy can afford to move their properties back/up a few feet.
- sytelus 10y agoGood point. Intuitively I think markets would attempt to approximate probability * cost i.e. expected cost. However there is something intensely wrong how market is functioning with environmental issue. It appears that markets is trying to view the expected cost as debt that needs to be paid in future. The value of debt would be much larger in future but markets seems to be ok with current return. This could be a great theoretical hole in efficient markets theory.
- sevenless 10y agoAnother scary recent article: "A business-as-usual approach by humanity makes 2035 a plausible moment for the permafrost to melt and methane to escape." https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/21/farewell-to-ice-peter-wadhams-review-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/21/farewell-to-ic...
- saynsedit 10y agoIf you're ready to do something about this, consider volunteering for http://brandnewcongress.org http://brandnewcongress.org
- mikegioia 10y agoThis just does not seem feasible. I think a better use of time and energy would be spent at the Citizen's Climate Lobby: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/ http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/
- idlewords 10y agoI think that is the longest distance between cause and effect I have ever seen seriously suggested on this forum.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tcfunk 10y agoI like how this just isn't even coming to several states.
- ethanbond 10y agoAlternatively: Use public transit, encourage friends and family not to be wasteful, invest in alternative fuel sources, vote for people who will use taxpayer dollars to invest in alternative fuel sources, so on and so forth. What is anybody else going to do that you can't do yourself already?
- the_duke 10y agoWhile personal effort is laudable, and your kind of thinking is neccessary, it will not change things. The decisions that can actually change something are made on government level and depend on believes ingrained into culture / society. A nice example is Israel and it's shortage of water. There, children are educated from very early on (kingergarden) to be careful with and conserve water wherever possible. It's a common and accepted fact that they have little water and must preserve it. But changing this kind of thinking for something way less observable and direct, such as global warming, is harder. And needs a unified effort by government, education and media. And takes decades.
- esaym 10y ago350 meters thick? Global warming or not, how could it possibly get that thick without cracking sooner is surprising to me.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoIt's kind of amazing that humanity's overall response can be summed up in a gif. https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif
- beefsack 10y agoI don't think serious conversation like this is a place for reaction GIFs.
- jefurii 10y agoI think the GIF sums up how lots of people are just willfully unaware of the problem.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoI'd be more interested in criticism of the content, rather than the format. There's aiming for serious, and then there's just posturing.
- dang 10y agoI'm not sure what that means, but there was little content in what you posted, merely the repetition of a cliché. We've asked you before to stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and I need to repeat that. It's clear that you're capable of better.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoI think I'll just make a new account on a fresh IP and profile and see how it goes. This is getting old in a hurry. Thanks for turning a regular user into something a little less straightforward though, top moderating.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340434 and marked it off-topic.
- sulam 10y agoIt's worth noting that the title of the article is somewhat misleading. The ice shelf entirely is slightly smaller than Scotland, but the part breaking off is (upper estimate) 12% of that, so, according to the article, slightly larger than Prince Edward Island. Not that this is reason to celebrate or think that this is any more than a continuation of the ongoing and forthcoming climate excursion.
- WalterBright 10y agoThank God it's only a motion picture! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoWhen it gives way, might there be a surge-wave that causes trouble when it hits land elsewhere?
- pmyjavec 10y agoThere hasn't been very good news from the Antartic lately. After seeing the reception Brian Cox received lately by Australian senator Malcom Roberts on an episode of QanA it's pretty clear we have no hope in world leaders doing anything significant about it. There is way too much self-interest and sociopathic behaviour going on by the majority within these circles of governance and "power". Too many of us are waiting for the UN to just fix this issue; however, we've relied on the UN and it's narratives of change for too long and the truth is, we the masses need to change our own behaviour, it's our responsibility, somewhere we lost our way. I know there are good people working in these organisations and others like it, doing really good things, there just isn't enough of them or they're not having a big enough impact. It seems pretty clear that democratic governance has severely failed us on this issue and many others in recent years, and as a society I think we need to try to understand why and correct it. Democracy is obviously not a bad idea, but in most western countries, the current configuration seems to be problematic and corrupt. It's not sustainable. I have a strong feeling it's now too little to late and the only hope now is to take matters into our own hands by ignoring what democratically elected "leaders" are telling us they're doing and start doing it, get our own hands dirty. Divest, install solar panels (decentralisation of power production is important), consume, travel, eat thoughtfully, don't have so many kids etc. By the look of it, the only way to make it through the madness ahead will be kindness and compassion for the earth, all living things and each other . If not, mother nature will each us a very harsh lesson, I think she is already starting to balance the books. Unfortunately this storm is not just going to blow over, it would be nice if it would, but it's not going to.
- witty_username 10y ago> decentralisation of power production is important Why?
- pmyjavec 10y agoBecause it means there can then be no single monopoly on electricity generation, nor are people forced into consuming power which is being generated in a way that does not align with their core values. This was the situation in Australia until fairly recently, people wanted alternatives but there wasn't any renewable options, then when the Government changed and pulled rebates for new solar installations, it was even more unthinkable for people to get started. Also, I'm not arguing for complete and utter decentralization, but there needs to be options.