16 ms·
Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return, study finds
- sadmann1 6y agoSo, what is there left to do?
- supercanuck 6y agoReduce carbon emissions
- WaxProlix 6y agoBuy land on hillside terraces, I suppose.
- markvdb 6y agoBought 2ha of fertile land in a remote area forecast to be positively affected by climate change. Rebuilding the holiday home there. Nice to have now. Dirt cheap insurance against so many things going south elsewhere later. Quite a few things need to line up for this to make sense, but for us, they do.
- WaxProlix 6y agoSame, but there's so many bugs out there.
- drran 6y agoColonize a cool planet and warm up it instead. :-/
- baron816 6y agoNo matter how awful Earth gets from global warming, it’s still going to be many orders of magnitude better than Mars over the next 2 centuries.
- dylan604 6y agoLet's leave the only planet to have an atmosphere that we can survive in for a planet that is no longer holding onto any atmosphere at all. Sounds like a winner to me
- omosubi 6y agoThere have been calls to put sulfur dioxide into the air above the artic to reduce sunlight about 2% and limit the amount of energy that reaches it. Sounds like we'll need to do something like that if we don't want to turn places like Florida and southern Vietnam into ocean
- jsmith12673 6y agoFor this to be effective you'll need: - Global agreement and partnership, since you need to decrease temperature globally to make a dent - Convince everyone that injecting aersols into the atmosphere is the only alternative to catastrophic warming (view in contrast to convincing people of the efficacy of vaccines etc.) Both of these are incredibly challenging undertakings, even without trying to address the issue of continually acidifying oceans. And yet, sadly I feel like this is the only most realistic option out of them all.
- dylan604 6y agoYes, there's exactly 0% chance that this ends badly. I don't know why the lady swallowed the dog to chase the cat to catch the bird to eat the spider...
- omosubi 6y agoI'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's a proposed solution. We'll need to do something rather drastic if we want to have any chance of saving the world as it is today
- imtringued 6y agoGoodbye blue sky!
- option 6y agocarbon taxes
- dlivingston 6y agoI am a huge proponent of carbon sequestration. Colleagues of mine at Los Alamos National Laboratory are doing interesting R&D on this front.
- devmunchies 6y agoIf we’re all gonna die, might as well let COVID-19 do it’s job and stop social distancing and mask wearing.
- dylan604 6y agoSciFi theories say diseases like COVID-19 are only supposed to thin out the herd, not eradicate it. It's like an evolutionary test or something. I'm still waiting for the Monolith to show up to start zapping the members of the species that can't evolve to the next step.
- mhh__ 6y ago1) Get the White House (and the rest of the state) under non-climate denying control. The USA has to do better - per capita emissions are something like 4 or 5 times worse than the UK (for example). Any form of moral leadership would be nice from the Republican Party would be nice (The Statistics are depressingly split over party lines https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi...) 2) Carbon Taxes everywhere 3) Eliminate coal power from the developing world, even if it means switching to gas in the short term. 4) CCS - current efforts already seem surprisingly doable (single digit trillions IIRC)
- alacombe 6y ago> 2) Carbon Taxes everywhere Which was locally recently show to be ineffective - https://biv.com/article/2020/08/bc-carbon-tax-ineffective-ceri https://biv.com/article/2020/08/bc-carbon-tax-ineffective-ce...
- mhh__ 6y ago> It would be more effective in curbing emissions if it were higher, she said https://phys.org/news/2020-01-british-carbon-tax-coal-fired-electricity.html https://phys.org/news/2020-01-british-carbon-tax-coal-fired-... There is at least some evidence of success in the UK (combined with other policy + economic reality). Our climate policy is probably the only thing the government have done well recently - dwarfed by the impending iceberg of Brexit.
- danbolt 6y agoI'm reading the article, and one of the researchers (Dinara Millington) suggests increasing the Carbon Taxes to make them more effective.
- ultrablack 6y agoExactly: researchers promoting policy. This why people are sceptic.
- 6y ago
- Proven 6y agoAfter 30 years of catastrophic climatist propaganda practically no one has been affected in any meaningful way. I couldn't care less.
- sprainedankles 6y ago> The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification. I didn't realize this (or at least, am surprised it's _twice_ as fast). Apparently the key factor is loss of sea ice. Can anyone ELI5?
- BlueScreenDeath 6y agoYou destroyed the planet by being stupid and lazy.
- cma 6y agoI'm not sure this is the reason for this specific observation, but one mechanism I've read of was that arctic air is very dry relative to equatorial, and any heating up increases its humidity, and in turn water vapor is a much more intense greenhouse gas than many other things, so it can cause more localized warming, which feeds a cycle. Why it isn't a complete runaway process i don't know, and I may be misremembering the details.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoAnd of course, Siberia and Canada will start emitting vast amounts of methane as permafrost thaws.
- 082349872349872 6y agoAt least if the northeast passage opens up, we'll have a sea route between china and europe that doesn't go past the resource-cursed middle east. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage
- cma 6y agoYeah but I think that diffuses everywhere after it happens, the humidity thing is a more localized effect.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- axaxs 6y agoI feel like people saying 'who cares' haven't been looking. And also like affected places aren't crying loud enough. I was driving through Daytona earlier this year, and stopped just to see their coast. It was gone. The wooden steps leading down to the non-existent beach were half covered. That is, you couldn't even get to the bottom of the stairs. This is a beach people used to park on.
- kortilla 6y agoCoastal erosion is not the same thing as sea level rise. Sea level rise can’t account for that drastic of a change.
- axaxs 6y agoI feel like too many people report 'facts' without experience. I'm reporting experience without 'facts'. Maybe you're right, I just wanted to give a real life account from a low lying area.
- beaner 6y agoWell that doesn't really help. If the reason is coastal erosion and not sea level rise, then you're not saying something that's relevant to the point.
- axaxs 6y agoI don't mean to be anti-science, I'm just reporting what I saw with my own eyes. And it wasn't just Daytona. I saw a fisherman in Indian River County standing on what had to be 2 foot of beach. Erosion happens, but why is the water so high to even erode it?
- dx87 6y agoWater doesn't have to be high to erode the shore. It'll slowly sink into the water as the lower ground is washed away, regardless of whether the water level is rising.
- chmod775 6y agoWhat does "point of no return" mean in this title?
- crenwick 6y ago“widespread retreat between 2000 and 2005 resulted in a step-increase in discharge and a switch to a new dynamic state of sustained mass loss that would persist even under a decline in surface melt.“
- patosai 6y agoThere's a Reuters article about this topic which states: > Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.
- ooobit2 6y agoThe fact that we were just saying, as recently as 2016, that things hadn't become "catastrophic" yet, only to four years later make yet another correction that vastly accelerates past existing predictive models is why climate change continues to be seen as debatable. We need to either admit that we don't know or start acting consistently like we do know. Pushing out an article with a headline like, "Major-global-feature is past the point of return," is not exactly selling the idea of a carbon tax. And the only argument against the critics has been, "Well, it could get even worse!" You mean in 60 days, when we announce something like "China will be underwater by February 2022?" Investments to curb climate change start to look like snake oil when we're saying something can be fixed by it but then announcing 30 days later that it no longer can.
- mhh__ 6y agoWhich models are these? (i.e. [Citation needed]) The fact that people actually deny warming let alone the consequences of said warming does not bode well either - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTk8Dhr15Kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTk8Dhr15Kw
- 6y ago
- dlivingston 6y agoThere is already a pile of canary bodies on the mine floor. Just toss this one on top of it. Oil and gas is a multi-trillion dollar industry. It’s not just an industry that a few companies rely on, or a few cities, or a few states: the economies of more than a few wealthy countries rely fully or partly on oil and gas revenue. Consequently, there has been a massively-funded multi-decade disinformation campaign w.r.t. climate change, calling itself “climate skepticism.” But: the brilliant part of this disinformation campaign was to politicize it. If it were just: “we have questions about the science”, well, once those questions are resolved, then climate skeptics have nothing left to stand on. But once you politicize it: now it’s more than the science. It’s about your tribe and your team.
- kortilla 6y agoThe part that makes it difficult is that so much of modern life depends on that industry. It’s not as if the countries that depend on the revenue are the only interested parties. Lots of people enjoy global shipping, travel, local shipping, plastics, etc. It’s only in the last few years that Tesla and other autos have provided an actual feasible alternative, and that’s only one tiny slice of the market.
- jtsiskin 6y agoWe could start by pricing in the negative externalities more accurately.
- luckylion 6y agoThat's difficult, I believe. I'm not against doing so, but unless you're massively redistributing wealth in societies, that would primarily hit the poor. And I'm not a fan of massive wealth-redistribution.
- imtringued 6y agoWhy would it primarily hit the poor? With smart policies like revenue neutral CO2 taxes they will be the ones that profit because they are the ones who pollute less than an average citizen. Unfortunately people just won't understand even if the policy is meant to help them.
- xwdv 6y agoSo it’s over, the planet will likely be rendered uninhabitable probably within the next century. Is there any point in even having a new child now?
- chki 6y ago>So it’s over, the planet will likely be rendered uninhabitable probably within the next century. I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion but the planet won't be uninhabitable. Certain areas will be uninhabitable and there will probably be massive displacement of people paired with food shortages. But complete resignation is not only unhelpful but also unwarranted.
- klyrs 6y ago"Massive displacement" is a tepid euphemism in sight of current politics around human migration, which will only get worse as resources become scarce. Should Canadians be as cruel as Americans have been to their southern neighbors. Hope ya like toilet water, eh.
- refurb 6y agoWe have the technology to address sea level rise. Yes, it will be expensive, but it's possible. Look at what the Netherlands did almost 100 years ago. "...It became part of the larger Zuiderzee Works in which four polders totaling 2,500 square kilometres (965 sq mi) were reclaimed from the sea."
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt's a tepid phrase because the effect just won't be as big as you're thinking. Nobody in the United States is going to need to escape to Canada - the primary displacement problem is that the specific places which support effective agriculture will change.
- klyrs 6y agoThere's also the matter of heat waves; summers are increasingly lethal and we've barely started.
- brainless 6y agoWhat I find most interesting is that we, the Human species, do not know what this means. We estimate heavy losses, maybe near extinction, but we do not have a reference. We are imaginative but we collectively can not imagine the worst and act accordingly. This is perhaps why the worst will actually happen. I am typing this on a keyboard, when I should be getting out there, convincing others to stop our immediate actions and brace for impact. But I will not do that because some unclear calamity is 30 years away. And I know most people around me will not change anything either.
- neckardt 6y ago> We estimate heavy losses, maybe near extinction Do you mean human extinction or extinction of certain animal species? I can definitely see certain animal species dying out, I couldn't see a scenario where humans die out though. If you mean human extinction could you provide some further reading?
- seer 6y agoMight not be the most likely scenario, but a runaway green house effect is certainly possible. If a positive temperature feedback loop happened to the earth’s atmosphere we could definitely end up like Venus, where no living thing can survive. And as engineers we understand that positive feedback loops cause changes in exponential progression. It can be “almost fine” for a while and then suddenly “there’s nothing we can do” even in human timescales. And it could happen fast enough that humans don’t develop tech robust enough to survive other planets unsupported, so game over for humanity, better luck next time. I personally don’t think thats going to happen, but to be honest I wouldn’t want to risk it.
- ivalm 6y agoEarth survived way higher co2 levels and we don’t emit nearly enough sulfides. There is essentially zero chance of Venus event happening. I’m more inclined that climate change can cause catastrophic war than runaway to ultra high temperatures.
- apsec112 6y agoEven if the world is warm enough to melt the sheet completely, that would take centuries, if not millennia; Greenland's ice is thousands of meters thick. In a bad scenario, the IPCC forecasts 21st century sea level rise to be a bit under a meter (https://www.climatecentral.org/news/zeroing-in-on-ipccs-sea-level-rise-warming-hiatus-16532 https://www.climatecentral.org/news/zeroing-in-on-ipccs-sea-...). This will certainly cause problems, but is nothing like the complete and rapid destruction some pundits describe. Major action on carbon emissions is long overdue, and it's great that people are taking it more seriously now. But an overly-pessimistic scenario has the same problems as an overly-rosy scenario; if we're all doomed anyway, why do anything? Michael Mann, the climate scientist who famously brought global warming to public attention, now also spends time fighting doom scenarios which also discourage action: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/summer-2020/michael-mann-on-climate-denial-and-doom https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/summer-2020/...
- vlunkr 6y agoNormally I like to say that HN has some of the best discussion on the internet, but the pessimism here is rivaling the political Facebook groups that everyone's racist uncle's share posts from.
- jmole 6y agoEven so - I'm reminded of the post the other day about the NYC street view photos from the 1940s [0] So little has changed in 80 years. Even given centuries of ice melt - how much cultural heritage do we lose with a 10m rise in sea levels that would devastate NYC? Then again, a century from now, maybe we're all living in personal generative VR paradises, ensconced in an anonymous room somewhere in a city unknown where power is cheap and proximity to a datacenter determines real estate pricing. [0] - https://1940s.nyc/map#13.69/40.7093/-73.99397 https://1940s.nyc/map#13.69/40.7093/-73.99397
- emmelaich 6y agoPossibly very little. The Dutch have many habitats below sea level. The main airport is 15m below.
- jarym 6y agoCovid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with big challenges - any action taken will be far too late; too little and often times plain wrong. So as I read about Greenland’s ice sheets I can only conclude that we are all doomed. Raising awareness won’t really help; the leaders who could do something about it simply won’t. It’s sad and it’s depressing and I’ve no idea what any of us can do to actually prevent this next global catastrophe.
- gxon 6y agoNothing we can do. Brace for impact and setup a flexible lifestyle so you can rapidly move and adapt depending on what hits first/hardest. Obviously still support any possible measures to mitigate the damage. Maybe we can still work together to avoid complete catastrophe.
- pipermerriam 6y agoDo you have any reading recommendations on what additional things someone can do to be better prepared for the next 5/10/20/30 years?
- MattGaiser 6y agoHeavily depends on where you live.
- gxon 6y agoGet rich. Don't vote for morons.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- korantu 6y agoFrance got its industry decarbonised in 10 years with nuclear. There are some providers in Russia, China and South Korea who do deliver on time and on buget. With energy less dependent on climate, we can further proceed to atmospheric CO2 capture and reuse [1] Putting it here for another direction of hope... [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-change-solution-nuclear-energy-our-best-hope-column/2821183001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-ch...
- averros 6y agoGreenland is called greenland for a reason. And ice isn't that reason. (Do your own historical research, ok?)
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoThe way I see it climate change could be awful but it's never going to be catastrophic as long as we're alive. All we have to do is send up hella reflectors to block the sun and we can be cool again. The real risk IMO is making the oceans acidic with all this co2. That has the potential to be really really catastrophic.
- lazyjones 6y ago> The real risk IMO is making the oceans acidic with all this co2. That has the potential to be really really catastrophic. This is pretty much impossible. Catastrophic scenarios for 2100 expect pH = 7.8 (now: 8.0). pH is logarithmic and acidity would start below 7.
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoOcean acidification involves a shift towards pH-neutral conditions rather than a transition to acidic conditions.
- lazyjones 6y agoI was referring to "making the ocean acidic". If you meant to write "making the ocean more acidic", you should have done so! But then it won't sound like we're turning it into acid soup.
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoAs far as many marine organisms are concerned we are doing just that though. I said it for effect and I stand by its use. The way I see it when talking about our oceans they are systems rather than a liquid. The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7.
- lazyjones 6y ago> I said it for effect and I stand by its use. That's alarmism. > The system has a preferred pH range and therefore can become acidic regardless of whether it's <7. It's alkaline and will stay that way whether it sounds dramatic enough to you or not. What the preferred pH range is and how the complex system of the oceans works, we don't fully understand yet.
- chrisco255 6y agoGreenland just had several days of record gains in ice in the middle of the melt season. 3 of the last 4 years were net gains in ice mass for Greenland. This is sensationalism. Climate shifts can absolutely occur in both directions. To see latest Greenland ice charts: http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
- jb775 6y ago...Until it freezes again
- sradman 6y agoOriginal paper Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by sustained glacier retreat [1] > We show that widespread retreat between 2000 and 2005 resulted in a step-increase in discharge and a switch to a new dynamic state of sustained mass loss that would persist even under a decline in surface melt. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2
- Normille 6y agoHEADLINE: "Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return..." FIRST LINE OF ARTICLE: "Greenland’s ice sheet MAY have shrunk past the point of return..." [my emphasis] So f--king sick of clickbait headlines!
- Yetanfou 6y agoGiven the record early and massive snowfall this year [1] the alarm can be reset - 5,5 gigaton fell on the 12th of august, 2,5 gigaton on the 11th and 4 gigaton on the 10th. Greenland is accumulating ice mass about a month earlier than normal. Of course this is just as sensationalist as the Reuters article so take it with as much salt as you did when you read Reuters. [1] http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
- dkobia 6y agoThe irony that maybe our ancestors escaped Mars eons ago after similarly destroying the planet to seed earth and start afresh. Untrue but plausible based on how we've handled things this far. Self-interest and the tragedy of the commons.