Doomsday Glacier

Dec 28, 2019
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Ben Turner in his article https://www.livescience.com/doomsday-glacier-close-to-tipping-point.html notes that the collapse of West Antartcic ice sheet would produce a 3m rise in sea levels (my own estimate was an upper bound of ~6.7m). Although the claim is perhaps not incorrect, this seems a bit misleading, as is the headline, when the research he is reporting is about the Thwaite glacier and the effect primarily on its floating ice sheet of melting by warm currents underneath. I guess it is a bit more dramatic than the ~0.03m rise that might be expected if the floating ice shelf (note it is floating and therefore 90% of it is already underwater in any case) detaches and melts or the additional 1.3m rise one might expect if the whole Thwaite glacier on land were to fall into the sea and melt. I feel this overstatement of the case in linking worst case scenarios provides ammunition which can be used to undermine the public confidence in the validity of the scientific arguments for climate change.
 
Ben Turner in his article https://www.livescience.com/doomsday-glacier-close-to-tipping-point.html notes that the collapse of West Antartcic ice sheet would produce a 3m rise in sea levels (my own estimate was an upper bound of ~6.7m). Although the claim is perhaps not incorrect, this seems a bit misleading, as is the headline, when the research he is reporting is about the Thwaite glacier and the effect primarily on its floating ice sheet of melting by warm currents underneath. I guess it is a bit more dramatic than the ~0.03m rise that might be expected if the floating ice shelf (note it is floating and therefore 90% of it is already underwater in any case) detaches and melts or the additional 1.3m rise one might expect if the whole Thwaite glacier on land were to fall into the sea and melt. I feel this overstatement of the case in linking worst case scenarios provides ammunition which can be used to undermine the public confidence in the validity of the scientific arguments for climate change.
Many such estimates also don't reconize thermal expansion due to an increase in average temperature.