'Devastating' melt of Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets found

[NickB79]

Source: NBC

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study.

Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland’s melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland’s average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s.

The new figures “are pretty disastrous really,” said study co-author Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. “We’re losing more and more ice from Greenland.”

Study lead author Ines Otosaka, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, said speeded-up ice sheet loss is clearly caused by human-caused climate change.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna80616

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And here we go, the rapid escalation of climate change that the scientific community warned us would happen.

[TeamProg]

1. This disaster will separate the poor from the wealthy even more. The poor will suffer exponentially

more so than the wealthy.

It's going to REALLY SUCK!

[hunter]

10. The wealthy are far more dependent on a smoothly running world economy than the poor.

It's gonna really suck, yes, but most of us are never going to be stuck in a private jet 20,000 feet up in the air, running out of fuel, and looking for a safe place to land.

[TeamProg]

13. That's not how things are going to play out. You think that the wealthy

have the same travel managers as Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Deeper thought is required.

[Warpy]

16. You'd think so, most of them seem pretty inert

but I've never seen any of them have too much trouble finding people to do everything for them.

Meanwhile, it's the poor who are the most vulnerable to starvation, especially the very young and very old.

The problem as climate change picks up is going to be one of mass human migration as some parts of the planet will no longer be able to support agriculture.

Whether it's slow and incremental or a rapid event with maximum starvation and displacement, that's what we don't know.

[Abigail_Adams]

25. If you recall the extreme flooding in Pakistan

a year or two ago, one of the problems that was pointed out then, was that the monsoons had flooded huge swaths of agricultural land. Low-lying areas like that are prime areas for rice paddies, and rice is the staple of about 2 billion people in Asia. So yes, the poor will be affected if rice prices rise significantly.

[VGNonly]

2. In likely less than 100 years,

there will be total collapse of all world ecosystems if we haven't nuked ourselves into oblivion before that.

[airplaneman]

11. I give us 40 years maximum before we see major worldwide societal collapse

In just 7 years the UN is saying 40% of the earths population will not have access to drinkable water.

-Airplane

[newdayneeded]

32. World populations are already in decline.

I think covid will rear its head in the future with people dying 1, 2, 5 years earlier because of having covid. I think over the next 30 years covid will affect mortality rates. 660 million had covid world wide.

[mn9driver]

4. Climate scientists have tended to be conservative in their predictions

because of the pushback the field gets. What is actually happening now was at the high end of their predictions years ago. It seems very likely that what the planet will be experiencing in 30 or 40 years will be at the high end of what is predicted today.

I won’t be around to see that, but it is going to suck.

[LT Barclay]

12. I was reading a good explanation of this sometime ago and the article profiled on of the scientists

that was predicting severe consequences 100 years from now. The article said that the predictions ran a bell shape curve and the media and governing agencies tended to stick to the middle of the curve. The scientist interviewed was saying that we had already exceeded his predictions for 100 years from now in CO2 concentration, ice loss, and temperature rise. And he was at the upper end of the curve (most severe consequences, shorter time frame).
Does this ring any bells to you? I'm trying to track down the person and see if he has a blog. It may have been the guy from the 360 project.
Anyway, his bottom line was frightening. He said the world would be unrecognizable 20 years from then (5 years ago).

[Javaman]

20. Most climate scientists agree that if you aren't

Hair on fire terrified, you haven’t been paying attention.

2.5 is baked in. And most scientists think that will happen before 2050.

That means thwaites & Pine glaciers melt. 3 to 5 meter ocean rise globally. Die off of the worlds coral reefs. Wet bulb temps sky rocket.

Most world leaders know this but choose to act as if we all have a fighting chance so they can get re-elected.

Willful ignorance will certainly not save us. Frankly as things become more desperate, wars will increase this causing more pollution.

Like I said, baked in 😬😩

[LT Barclay]

22. Privately the Pentagon can be surprisingly realistic

Back in the 90’s they issued a report saying climate change was a bigger threat to US security than global terrorism but you know which issue got the attention and money.
They also issued a report that said for the US to maintain a leadership role in the world we needed to invest in education, infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US. The authors were afraid of republican backlash and issued it under pseudonyms.

[Kaleva]

30. I look at it as a challenge

[CrispyQ]

5. Apparently we lack the imagination to visualize

just how drastically we're changing our environment. I thought I'd be exiting planet Earth just in time, but the way things are accelerating...

[Abigail_Adams]

28. A propos of that,

just look at how many scifi movies/shows in the past 15 years or so have the theme of humans having to find another planet to live on because they've made Earth uninhabitable.

[tinrobot]

6. Translation : "We're screwed"

If you have property in Florida or on the coasts, now might be a good time to sell.

[Xipe Totec]

9. Who do you mean we, Ke-mo sah-bee? (say the cockroaches) nt

[TomDaisy]

7. I just went back and watched an Inconvenient Truth recently

Al Gore says he has given that presentation to more that 1000 audiences around the world.

We were warned.

[SouthernDem4ever]

8. Very sobering movie

It helped stimulate some change but people are still pretending that nothing is happening.

[Withywindle]

14. I often wonder where we'd be if Bush v Gore had gone differently

Imagine if a President who took climate change very seriously had taken office in 2001 and served two terms. Where would we be?


It's really not fair to the world that just a few hundred voters in one US state almost a quarter-century ago should have had so much impact.

[CrispyQ]

19. IMO, we decided in favor of Big Oil over Planet Earth in 1980 when Reagan won by a landslide.

I lost friends in that election. I'm sure they're all doing way better than me, having embraced Republican trickle down bullshit & Gordon Gekko's greed is good philosophy. They probably all drive electric cars while living in 5,000 square foot homes with solar panels. I know I'm judgmental, but WTF happened to a lot of good dems that year? Duped by a two-bit actor because they didn't want to face up to the fact that our lifestyle is not/was not sustainable & the hard work required to change it. Our kids are gonna pay for it. And probably a higher price than their kids, since they have a bigger cushion. Meh. If it hadn't been Reagan, it would have been someone else. Like a character in one of my favorite movies said, "Most people only do the right thing when it's the easy thing to do."

Of the dozen or so kids that live near us, the oldest is about 12. I wonder what kind of world they will see when they are 50 & what they will think when they remember these days? How angry will they be at all of us? How sad, that we didn't give a shit about their future, that we chose to look one quarter ahead instead of seven generations.

[Abigail_Adams]

26. You're right about Reagan.

It was he who removed Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House right away. Jimmy tried to alert us, also, even before Gore.

[Javaman]

21. We were warned well before that movie

But most humans don’t pay attention or just plain don’t care. Aka selfishness.

We as a species are very poor at planning ahead especially if it’s something longer than a couple of years.

We always at at the last minute when and only when our selfish needs are threatened.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “ the world always does the right thing…eventually. (The original quote was referring to Americans prior to us joint the war) , but eventually is now and we aren’t really doing much

[orleans]

15. the last few years i can't stand to read about what is happening

to our environment

i am so distraught over what has not been done to quell this storm... i just can't even go there

i read your post. i did not click on your link.

[Kaleva]

17. You should read about what you can do to prepare

The radicalized say it will be the end of humanity. It will not. The effects of climate change will not be uniform around the world. Done areas will become more suitable for human habitation

[Bayard]

18. It makes sense to me,

That the thinner the sheet gets, the faster its going to melt.

Too bad that the sane among us will be screwed right along with the climate crisis deniers. No one is above the laws of Mother Nature.

[FakeNoose]

23. In the next 20 or 30 years, parts of the US will not be livable

... however parts of Canada will be very nice with moderate temperatures.

[Kaleva]

27. Great Lakes region will be a mecca for climate change refugees

[FakeNoose]

29. Yes indeed

However the configuration of the lakes themselves may change. For example the Great Lakes may eventually become inland seas (or one big sea) with saltwater instead of freshwater. The winters will be moderate though, and that whole area should be very sustainable for humans and wildlife.

[riversedge]

24. "These rates of ice loss are unprecedented during modern civilization."................

From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets — which hold 99% of the world’s freshwater ice — were shrinking by 116 billion tons a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica.

But from 2017 to 2020, the newest data available, the combined melt soared to 410 billion tons a year, more than two-thirds of it from Greenland, said the study in Thursday’s journal Earth System Science Data.

“This is a devastating trajectory,” said U.S. National Snow and Ice Center Deputy Lead Scientist Twila Moon, who wasn’t part of the study. “These rates of ice loss are unprecedented during modern civilization.”

[Mysterian]

31. Nothing will happen until cities start going underwater

and then it will be too late to stop a global catastrophe.

[ck4829]

33. Kick