Ten Feet Sea Level Increases Can Be Expected

I've posted many times before that what will really get everyone's attention about global warming will be rising seas.  It's happening now but the impact is very slow to show itself allowing people to fail to notice.  The problem is that when it finally comes to everyone's attention it will be too late to prevent some serious consequences. 

Elizabeth Rush:  Thwaites Glacier

A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of human civilization

Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is enormous and is often referred to as the most dangerous glacier on Earth. It has also been dubbed the doomsday glacier. The glacier holds two feet of sea level but more importantly, it is the “backstop” for four other glaciers which holds an additional 10-13 feet of sea level rise. When Thwaites collapses it will take most of West Antarctica with it. This is not new information for those of us that follow the science, for example, Eric Rignot in 2014, stated that the loss of West Antarctica is unstoppable.

According to researchers at the University of Washington in 2014, Thwaites is already collapsing. “The simulations indicate that early-stage collapse has begun,” notes their paper. What’s more, the Thwaites Glacier is a “linchpin” for the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; its rapid collapse would “probably spill over to adjacent catchments, undermining much of West Antarctica.”

Global warming deniers have for some time claimed that Antarctica glaciers are actually increasing.  However that view is myopic.  The atmosphere during global warming contains more moisture and it  remains very cold in Antarctica so of course there'll be even more snow covering the glaciers looking bigger.  However, what is happening is that the glaciers are melting from below from a warming ocean.  And that action is greater than the increase in snow.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory made news this past January by revealing that there is a massive cavity carved in the underbelly of the glacier due to warm ocean water raising alarms that the chunk of ice could collapse and disintegrate the ice shelf.

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The huge cavity is under the main trunk of the glacier on its western side – the side farther from the West Antarctic Peninsula. In this region, as the tide rises and falls, the grounding line retreats and advances across a zone of about 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 kilometers). The glacier has been coming unstuck from a ridge in the bedrock at a steady rate of about 0.4 to 0.5 miles (0.6 to 0.8 kilometers) a year since 1992. Despite this stable rate of grounding-line retreat, the melt rate on this side of the glacier is extremely high.

“On the eastern side of the glacier, the grounding-line retreat proceeds through small channels, maybe a kilometer wide, like fingers reaching beneath the glacier to melt it from below,” Milillo said. In that region, the rate of grounding-line retreat doubled from about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometers) a year from 1992 to 2011to 0.8 miles (1.2 kilometers) a year from 2011 to 2017. Even with this accelerating retreat, however, melt rates on this side of the glacier are lower than on the western side.

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It’s not just that Thwaites is big, although it is (imagine a glacier the size of Florida). But because of how the glacier terminates in deep water, as well as the reverse slope of the ground beneath it, Thwaites is vulnerable to particularly rapid collapse. Even more troubling, Thwaites is like the cork in the wine bottle for the rest of the West Antarctica ice sheet. If Thwaites were to fall apart, scientists fear the entire ice sheet could begin to collapse, eventually raising sea levels more than 10 feet.

The Green New Deal is saying that we have 12 years to get greenhouse gases under control or there will be serious consequences down the road over the rest of the Century.  However, there may be a sea level rise of 10 feet before the 12 years are up.  Ten feet will mean very serious damage to coastal property all over the world, and it will have a serious impact on the wealthy who own a lot of this coastal property.  It's amazing to me that the wealthy aren't right in front about solving global warming immediately. 

In the Pacific Northwest it will mean a lot of large houses built on bluffs falling into the ocean.  It means main rail lines under water because they run along the coast.  I've pointed out before this will mean the end of international internet communication.  It is now appearing that this will happen soon, long before we're able to seriously deal with greenhouse gases.

The world will really be very different very soon now.