Antarctica could melt 'irreversibly' due to climate change, study warns

Dec 4, 2019
27
7
4,555
Visit site
And, if temperatures rise by 18 F (10 C), the continent is doomed to be "virtually ice-free." Should the continent lose all of its ice, global sea levels will rise by nearly 200 feet (58 m)

Ohhhh Scary. "Doomed" note the word doomed above. What's your fascination with ice? You would rather have a useless continent covered with ice than covered with green plants? I think your priorities are nuts.

Lake Ontario's altitude is 257 ft above present sea level therefore in the worst case Toronto is OK and everything around lake Ontario. We're OK, don't worry about us!
 
And, if temperatures rise by 18 F (10 C), the continent is doomed to be "virtually ice-free." Should the continent lose all of its ice, global sea levels will rise by nearly 200 feet (58 m)

Ohhhh Scary. "Doomed" note the word doomed above. What's your fascination with ice? You would rather have a useless continent covered with ice than covered with green plants? I think your priorities are nuts.

Lake Ontario's altitude is 257 ft above present sea level therefore in the worst case Toronto is OK and everything around lake Ontario. We're OK, don't worry about us!
And new york city, a city of 8.4 million, would be under over 150 feet of water in most areas.
 
Sep 29, 2020
1
2
10
Visit site
Science data matters. I teach a course in climate science in the OLLI program at Furman U.
The article title uses the word "could". Here's the current data for the Antarctic Ice Extent, well above the 30 year 1981 to 2010 average-https://i2.wp.com/nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png?ssl=1
 
Sep 30, 2020
2
0
10
Visit site
Apparently, the genius of that community organizer is as valuable as the Nobel prize for Drone mass murder!
"if average temperatures rise 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) above pre-industrial levels for any sustained period of time, much of the ice in West Antarctica will crumble, resulting in 21 feet (6.5 meters) of global sea-level rise; that amount of rise would devastate coastal cities like New York, Tokyo and London AND MARTHA'S VINEYARD ISLAND PRIVATE COMPOUNDS
(What tha gon do? SCUBA from the bedroom Trump pissed on, to the kitchen?)

jUST call it global warming again
 
Sep 30, 2020
2
0
10
Visit site
Apparently, the genius of that community organizer is as valuable as the Nobel prize for Drone mass murder!
"if average temperatures rise 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) above pre-industrial levels for any sustained period of time, much of the ice in West Antarctica will crumble, resulting in 21 feet (6.5 meters) of global sea-level rise; that amount of rise would devastate coastal cities like New York, Tokyo and London AND MARTHA'S VINEYARD ISLAND PRIVATE COMPOUNDS
(What tha gon do? SCUBA from the bedroom Trump pissed on, to the kitchen?)

jUST call it global warming again
 
Jul 4, 2020
6
0
4,530
Visit site
Antarctica could be completely ice-free one day if we allow climate change to continue unabated.

Antarctica could melt 'irreversibly' due to climate change, study warns : Read more
Folks, I got some really bad news for all of you. You're screwed! Read facebook.com/ron.mccune.3 and see why in about 15 years the North pole will be completely melted and about 5-10 years after that the South Pole will be completely melted as will all the Earth's glaciers and snow covered mountains. The Earth will have no more winters as insects enjoy a longer lifespan and make your lives 1000% more miserable. Global warming caused the weakest chain in the Earth's ice systems, permafrost, to for some odd reason start to melt rapidly in the early 1960's. China industrial growth, Putin's KGB minded tricks to increase warmer climates over Russia through his inaction on controlling fires in the permafrost areas and polluting the waters of Russia so that weather patterns in Russia were worsened and Putin and Russia's yearly flyover of Russia's five time zones massive amounts of military planes and equipment which yearly adds a blanket of hot air over Russia and that part of the world. Since the 1960's melted permafrost water, which now is warmer than ice, has been draining into the Arctic Ocean where it has been melting the ice in the North Pole. As that now warmer waters from the North pole circulated around the world it warmed the oceans and worse of all the waters around the South pole where it has been melting water ever since. That's how global warming started! Read facebook.com/ron.mccune.3 to see how global warming started and how to end it! But continuing as the Earth progresses from today's climate pattern of more water in the oceans creating more severe storms now and for a while in the oceans and in certain areas of the Earth most of the Earth will see drier, hotter weather with few clouds. What clouds are to be seen won't produce rain as the Earth swelters in heat from that gigantic ball of fire miles away called the Sun which is shooting hot deadly rays and pouring heat onto our planet! Fortunately since the beginning of life on Earth nature had created the one and only thing that could shield the planet from these deadly hot Sun rays and that was clouds. Clouds are Earth's umbrella from the Sun. Without clouds the Sun will bake all live from the surface of the planet. Without clouds there would be no water. Clouds are the only thing on Earth that creates water. No clouds, no life! In about 25-35 years all of you on Earth will be witnessing the end of civilization as we know it as the Sun will begin it's unchallenged task of baking the life off the face of Earth, a planet that no longer produces clouds or rain. I will say your only chance for survival is to now and especially in about 10 years to numerous times shoot somehow massive amounts of volcano ash into the sky from numerous spots on the Earth to help Earth to provide the only other thing besides clouds that can can shield the Earth from the hot rays of the Sun! Or you can all go live underground and hide from the Sun. But your water will evaporate so cover it all up! Find underground rivers! but your biggest problem will be food! There will be no way to feed everyone because you won't be able to farm anymore! That is the future all of you face in about 20 years!
 
""Antarctica is basically our ultimate heritage from an earlier time in Earth's history. It's been around for roughly 34 million years,"

Yes, 33 million years ago the Antarctic ice sheet began to form. What's missing is the fact that at that time atmospheric CO2 was more than double what it is today and began to drop. The late Eocene climate was mild. There was no catastrophic change in the climate. Life on land was lush and the marine carbonate plankton flourished even though the pH was lower than today. The future here will not be what climate models forecast. The geological and geochemical evidence from the past is a preview.
 
Actually, Ed.. You don't have to be a billionaire to own coastal properties that the climate forecasts of a rapidly rising ocean would destroy. The great news is it won't happen anytime soon.

"This cataclysmic melting will not occur in our lifetimes; the full effects would likely not be seen for roughly 150,000 years, Andrew Shepherd, a climatologist from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study, told the Daily Mail. "
 
Yes. The climate suddenly reversed after the record 1997-98 ENSO. The last 20 years has been called a "hiatus", a pause or slowdown in the forecasts. The implication being that the interrupted rise that began in 1975 will continue. So far it hasn't, but who knows what Earth's natural variability has in store.
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Ohhhh Scary. "Doomed" note the word doomed above. What's your fascination with ice? You would rather have a useless continent covered with ice than covered with green plants? I think your priorities are nuts.[/QUOTE said:
---------
How about that a world with ice caps during interglacials is a world with a relatively balanced and stable climate that humans can live in?

The ice caps are the air conditioners of the planet.
And you don't have to worry about 10 C warming, because civilization will end with 3 C - 4 C warming.
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Yes. The climate suddenly reversed after the record 1997-98 ENSO. The last 20 years has been called a "hiatus", a pause or slowdown in the forecasts. The implication being that the interrupted rise that began in 1975 will continue. So far it hasn't, but who knows what Earth's natural variability has in store.
----
That is 100% nonsense, a cherry picking jubilee. The 1998 El Nino was the strongest in a century.
Deniers love use it as a starting point for completely misleading claims. The warming has accelerated, not slowed down.
20 of the 22 warmest years since 1880 happened in the last 22 years. The 6 warmest years since 1880 WERE the last 6 years.
 
Last edited:
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Yes. The climate suddenly reversed after the record 1997-98 ENSO. The last 20 years has been called a "hiatus", a pause or slowdown in the forecasts. The implication being that the interrupted rise that began in 1975 will continue. So far it hasn't, but who knows what Earth's natural variability has in store.
---------------------
Idiotic BS
---

Global warming isn’t natural, and here’s how we know

"when you claim that virtually all of the world’s climatologists are wrong and the earth is actually warming naturally, you have just placed the burden of proof on you to provide evidence for that claim. In other words, simply citing previous warming events does not prove that the current warming is natural. You have to actually provide evidence for a natural cause of the current warming, but (as I’ll explain shortly) no such mechanism exists."

 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Actually, Ed.. You don't have to be a billionaire to own coastal properties that the climate forecasts of a rapidly rising ocean would destroy. The great news is it won't happen anytime soon.

"This cataclysmic melting will not occur in our lifetimes; the full effects would likely not be seen for roughly 150,000 years, Andrew Shepherd, a climatologist from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study, told the Daily Mail. "
-----------------------

More idiotic nonsense from you. Even a few feet of sea level rise will cause catastrophic problems
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
""Antarctica is basically our ultimate heritage from an earlier time in Earth's history. It's been around for roughly 34 million years,"

Yes, 33 million years ago the Antarctic ice sheet began to form. What's missing is the fact that at that time atmospheric CO2 was more than double what it is today and began to drop. The late Eocene climate was mild. There was no catastrophic change in the climate. Life on land was lush and the marine carbonate plankton flourished even though the pH was lower than today. The future here will not be what climate models forecast. The geological and geochemical evidence from the past is a preview.
------------
What's missing is your common sense.
CO2 is not the only factor and nobody ever said it was. What you said might make sense -ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL-
which they are NOT.
Humans have NEVER experienced a world as hot as during the Eocene.
-------------

"The evolution of Earth’s climate on geological timescales is largely driven by variations in the magnitude of total solar irradiance (TSI) and changes in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere.

Here we show that the slow ~50 Wm-2 increase in TSI over the last ~420 million years (an increase of ~9 Wm-2 of radiative forcing) was almost completely negated by a long-term decline in atmospheric CO2. This was likely due to the silicate weathering-negative feedback and the expansion of land plants that together ensured Earth’s long-term habitability.

Humanity’s fossil-fuel use, if unabated, risks taking us, by the middle of the twenty-first century, to values of CO2 not seen since the early Eocene (50 million years ago).

If CO2 continues to rise further into the twenty-third century, then the associated large increase in radiative forcing, and how the Earth system would respond, would likely be without geological precedent in the last half a billion years."
Foster et al 2017 - Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years

 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Science data matters. I teach a course in climate science in the OLLI program at Furman U.
The article title uses the word "could". Here's the current data for the Antarctic Ice Extent, well above the 30 year 1981 to 2010 average-https://i2.wp.com/nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png?ssl=1
-------------------
Claptrap nonsense from you
The article is about LAND ICE not sea ice.
Antarctic sea ice, unlike Arctic sea ice, mostly goes away every Austral summer. It is a completely different situation than in the Arctic, where most of the sea ice has historically persisted through the Boreal summer. Not anymore.
Sea ice extent around Antarctica is largely due to the winds of the wild southern ocean either packing it in against the land or spreading it out.
This is NOT the case in the Arctic Ocean.
And Antarctica is MUCH colder than the Arctic.
That is partly because of the circumpolar ocean currents and winds, that tend to lock the cold in and isolate it from the climate of the rest of the world.

And you teach climate science? God help us.
And God help your misinformed students. You should be ashamed of yourself.
 
Last edited:
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Has anyone ever thought that the present trend of posibive temperature feedback could suddely reverse? thoughts?
------
No it will not reverse suddenly. The radiative climate forcing from human caused greenhouse gas emissions are about 3 times as strong as that of the Milankovitch cycles that trigger the coming and going of ice ages.

The world is warming at least 10 times faster than when it came out of the last ice age.
It took 10,000 years to warm by 5 C. That averages 2,000 years for each 1 C warming.
Global average temperature has increased by 1 C in the last 140 years. Do the simple arithmetic. I got 14 times faster now.

That is because CO2 has likely NEVER increased this fast naturally.

Humans increased CO2 by over 80ppm in 60 years
Humans increased CO2 by 130ppm in 140 years
------

Nature caused CO2 increases over the last 450,000 years, from ice core data

80ppm increase -- took 50,000 years
110ppm increase -- 25,000 years
120ppm increase --- 20,000 years
60ppm increase --- 20,000 years
90ppm increase --- 15,000 years
100ppm increase --- 24,800 years

The numbers for 800,000 years would be similar, based on a graph, from ice core data going back that far.
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Guess what was a major player in ending glacial periods?
CARBON DIOXIDE

peer reviewed sources:
Martin et al. 2005;
Toggweiler et al. 2006;
Schmittner and Galbraith 2008;
Skinner et al. 2010;
Shakun et al 2012

According to the peer reviewed research by Shakun et al., 93% of the global warming happened AFTER the CO2 increase, when the last glacial period ended.

Glacial periods (ice ages) come and go when Milankovitch cycles trigger those changes in climate. (changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the angle of the Earth's axial tilt with respect to the orbital plane - the obliquity of the ecliptic)

But those Milankovitch cycles are not strong enough to melt ice sheets and warm the world to interglacial conditions on their own. Feedbacks that kick in after the initial warming are what do much of the warming.
And CO2 was a major player as a feedback. The warming from CO2 causes other warming feedbacks to kick in, including emissions of more CO2 from oceans, emissions of methane, loss of albedo (reflectivity) as ice melts, etc.

But now humans are Directly pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at the rate of about 38 Billion tons a year. So CO2 is acting as a climate forcing, not a feedback. That CO2 warms the atmosphere has been known since 1859. There is no question about that.
 
@SailRick...Good grief...cool down. You are much too alarmed and tend to make unnecessary personal attacks along with your misreading of history. The record El-Nino was not in 1998. It was in 1997 and was quickly followed by the record cool La-Nina. The global temperature anomaly last year was plus 0.75°C...lower than in 2016. You use "denier"...a despicable term seemingly restricted to those alarmed by that small rise in global temperature after over 200 years of using carbon for energy.

Yes, of course a rise of few feet could be devastating. But that's not what was said. What was said was that it won't happen anytime soon. Climatologist Reid Bryson said the same thing many years ago. ..1976.

BRYSON: The odds are very small for 100 years and approach a certainty for 9,000 years. There is, to put it another way, just the barest hint of a possibility that we could start a transition into a glacial epoch during the next century. The difference between the climate we have now and the climate we'll have as we enter a new ice age will be so small here in North America that, for the most part, you won't even notice the change."

So far, the rise in sea level has been less than one foot. There is no human inhabited location that has suffered permanent submergence that was not subsidence...e.g. Bangladesh, the US Gulf coast.

And... it is not the rate at which CO2 is added. It is the total amount that counts. We are currently at 415 ppm and that will continue regardless of what is done to try and prevent those 38 billion tons last year from adding to it.

Chill out and try to come up with realistic solutions to all of the scary things you promote instead of dwelling on them. There is more than enough of that already.
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
July 2019 marked the 43rd consecutive July and the 415th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average.

And that trend and record has continued with every month since July 2019
-----
The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880 and over twice that rate (+0.18°C / +0.32°F) since 1981.
-------------
Greenland and Antarctica ice loss accelerating

"The combined rate of ice loss for the pair was running at about 81 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s. By the 2010s, it had climbed to 475 billion tonnes per year."

 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
The global temperature anomaly last year was plus 0.75°C...lower than in 2016.

Typical Denier misdirection. No serious climate scientists think every year will be a new record warm year. This nonsense started in 2008, when deniers were screaming that global warming had stopped. This nonsense claim was based on using 1998, which did have the strongest El Nino in a century at that time, and then picking 2008, a La Nina year as the end point, to make a completely FALSE claim.
You are just continuing the same dishonesty.
When you start with an anomalous year like 1998 it automatically skews any graph that follows from that year. A favorite trick of the dis-informing denier crowd.
Now they use 2016 with its even stronger El Nino to spread the same Lie.
 
Jan 31, 2020
26
10
55
Visit site
Yeah, we know that sea level rise has been less than a foot so far. And we also know that sea level rise is Accelerating. It has increased from about 2mm per year to over 3mm per year in the last two decades.
It will continue to accelerate.
What is hard to know is how much ice loss will come in sudden events, like the collapse of huge ice shelves that hold back glaciers from advancing into the sea.
 
"The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880 and over twice that rate (+0.18°C / +0.32°F) since 1981."

Last year the global temperature was lower than in 2016 and lower than in 1995:

"But the net result globally made 1995 the warmest year since records first were kept in 1856, says a provisional report issued by the British Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia. The average temperature was 58.72 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the British data, seven-hundredths of a degree higher than the previous record, established in 1990. The British figures, based on land and sea measurements around the world, are one of two sets of long-term data by which surface temperature trends are being tracked. The other, maintained by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, shows the average 1995 temperature at 59.7 degrees, slightly ahead of 1990 as the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1866. But the difference is within the margin of sampling error, and the two years essentially finished neck and neck. " New York Times.

Nobody is a denier, Mr. Rick. Nobody is being dishonest. You are way overreacting and your use of "denier" is not helpful. As was said earlier, if you are so deeply concerned try to address the solutions instead of pounding your fist.