Yeah, the unexpected degree of warming at the poles is an indicator that sea level rise will be worse than even the pessimistic projections, and happen faster, too. I’m also trying not to think of the really bad scenarios, but I do kind of feel rather fatalistic about it all.
The lowering of sea levels around Greenland isn’t (just) about the crust bouncing back after the ice is gone. The immediate effect would be due to gravity - the sheer mass of ice on Greenland causes water to “mound up” around it, raising coastal water levels there. As soon as the ice melts, which would globally cause an average 7 meter increase in sea levels, the mass is gone and levels actually drop in the North Atlantic (apparently around about Scotland, the effect equalizes out with the general sea level increase). But that 7 meter increase is a global average, which means it would increase even more everywhere outside the North Atlantic. And this is just Greenland. The same dynamic is true for Antarctica and its ice. If both melt…
The Chesapeake Bay region still sinking from an earlier meteor impact and as a result water levels are exasperated by both rising water and sinking Earth. Water rise will be faster of course.
Part of the isolationist and protectionist impulses being displayed in recent years by some conservatives are driven by an effort to avoid having to do that (in addition to the usual opportunistic racism). Similarly, some of those pushing for the stupid border wall support it as much because of a fear of climate-change refugees from a possibly uninhabitable equatorial region as because of fear of “whitegenocide” (sometimes both).
I definitely anticipate jarring economic and consumer lifestyle impacts on Westerners due to climate change. However, as others have said here, interconnectedness can provide as many opportunities for resilience as it can for fragility. Further dividing humanity pre-emptively based on fear of the Other isn’t going to make things better.
Unfortunately, one of the first signs of the climate apocalypse will be food shortages (these have already started showing up in some places) which will very strongly encourage isolationism and ladder-pulling. “If we feed you, my family might not have all it wants, so I guess you gotta die. Sorry!” The interconnectedness of the food supply system will make it evident early on that things are going badly, but will also tend to shunt food from poor areas to wealthier ones due to profit motives. Hence, big garden.
The first red flag I’m keeping an eye out for is when out-of-season and non-native produce becomes a lot more expensive (and eventually available) than it currently is.
Meat protein is another thing to watch. Even now, though, we’re suddenly seeing tasty meatless burgers like Beyond and Impossible going from zero to sixty in a short time in terms of marketing effort (not a bad thing, but it went unusually fast).
U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
They weren’t wrong, were they?
Some people say the loss of Gore to GWB was the missed opportunity, and it certainly was a loss, but even GWB planned to address climate change until guess who – CHENEY – intervened. Michael Mann talks about this in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
Addressing climate change in 1989 or even 2000 would have been so much easier than what we have to do now. Decades wasted, and now all solutions involve pain. It’s like the Gom Jabbar for the whole human race.
As I posted elsewhere, I am currently growing figs and citrus in the Shenandoah Valley. In Virginia. As a gardener, that is kinda exciting. As a scientist, it is fucking terrifying. If I can grow those here, (this year I am experimenting with bananas!) then it makes sense that areas where they have always grown are rapidly becoming a wholly different kind of thing agriculturally. That is just not a good thing.
and our enormous resources, and huge amounts of empty space, much of it still owned by the federal government just in case it’s needed for some unforeseen future purpose
Where is all the energy going to come from to heat the ice to its melt temp, transition the latent heat of fusion of the ice, then heat the resulting water and the oceans to +2 deg? By my calculations it would take 745 years of 100% of the excess energy created by the greenhouse temperature forcing effect rather than 81 years! Or 2.67mm per year rather than 25mm/yr. I searched the paper and “energy” and “latent heat” is not even mentioned. Please do the calc and let us know what you come up with!
okay, the decrease in arctic sea ice since 1978 has been on the order of 11000 cu.km, this ice has absorbed roughly 4 x 10^18 joules. the oceans over the same period of time have absorbed roughly
2 x 10^23 joules of excess heat. i realize there’s more than just the arctic ice but i don’t think the latent heat of the ice is providing much of a buffer.
note that the loss of the sea ice also increases the amount of solar energy absorbed by the climate system because ice reflects more of energy than open sea does. so that screws us too.
You are using sciency sounding words, but lack any understanding of how climate science actually works, while seeming to deny the insolation of our pretty little planet nor the effect of CO2 heat trapping, along with decreasing albedo as the ice melts (which it is. Can we at least agree on that?)
To heat the ice grounded on Greenland, transition it thought the latent heat of fusion, then heat to 2 degrees above current ocean temps and heat the oceans 2 degrees = 3 X 10^24 joules. That’s a million times more than the amount you quoted to be absorbed by sea ice since 1978, or 41 years. It is also ten times more than your quoted amount absorbed by the world’s oceans. Which makes perfect sense since 41 x 10 = 410 years. Add in the latent heat of the ice and other factors and my 745 years estimate seem about right.
No I’m not deny any of those things. Read it again please. All I’m saying is that those effects will take a long time and that the maximum SLR seems to be about 3mm/yr.
i don’t mean to be a downer but it’s actually not clear that’s true. we have little data about how fragile life itself is.
the closest similar event was probably the earth getting smashed by asteroids. nothing else has caused such climatic change on such a short time scale.
previously there was a fully biodiverse planet with enough species to fill the necessary niches to keep the whole thing going.
now, we’re systematically kicking the rungs of the ladder out. creating a significantly less biodiverse world. and then there’s climate change and the catastrophic consequences of sea level rise and a warmed, polluted planet.
we aren’t just risking humans with our collective behavior
It’s accelerating, and I have never heard any scientist talk about a cap. There are all sorts of positive feedbacks to come into play. That said, melting ALL the ice from the poles and Greenland will take a long time, but that would raise sea level by more than 200 feet.
We have already seen, a few years ago, a storm surge flood the NYC subway system. Imagine what will happen when every basement in Manhattan has 10 feet of water in it. We are nowhere close to raising the HVAC and information systems out of lower levels.
Remember what happened when 6 buildings fell on 9/11? The US economy stalled for two weeks. Imagine what would happen if Houston happened to Manhattan, the economic and information center of the world. Our economic system might never recover.
