The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse.

[n2doc]

By Chris Mooney
March 16

A hundred years from now, humans may remember 2014 as the year that we first learned that we may have irreversibly destabilized the great ice sheet of West Antarctica, and thus set in motion more than 10 feet of sea level rise.

Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy — when we learned the same about one gigantic glacier of East Antarctica, which could set in motion roughly the same amount all over again. Northern Hemisphere residents and Americans in particular should take note — when the bottom of the world loses vast amounts of ice, those of us living closer to its top get more sea level rise than the rest of the planet, thanks to the law of gravity.

The findings about East Antarctica emerge from a new paper just out in Nature Geoscience by an international team of scientists representing the United States, Britain, France and Australia. They flew a number of research flights over the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica — the fastest-thinning sector of the world’s largest ice sheet — and took a variety of measurements to try to figure out the reasons behind its retreat. And the news wasn’t good: It appears that Totten, too, is losing ice because warm ocean water is getting underneath it.

“The idea of warm ocean water eroding the ice in West Antarctica, what we’re finding is that may well be applicable in East Antarctica as well,” says Martin Siegert, a co-author of the study and who is based at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/16/the-melting-of-antarctica-was-already-really-bad-it-just-got-worse/?hpid=z1

[BillZBubb]

1. No problem.

By then the republicans and corporate media will have convinced everyone it was the liberals fault.

[KansDem]

16. There might still be a handful of snow left somewhere in the world...

...for some dumbass US senator to make a snowball for tossing in the senate as proof there's no climate change.

[blackspade]

30. If there is a DC left that is.....

[WillyT]

2. K & R !!!

[niyad]

3. k and r.

[longship]

4. R&K for Chris Mooney.

His first book was The Republican War on Science

[pscot]

5. k&r

[Android3.14]

6. Law of gravity?

He wrote, "when the bottom of the world loses vast amounts of ice, those of us living closer to its top get more sea level rise than the rest of the planet, thanks to the law of gravity."

Is this true? How does it work?

[Treant]

7. Sort of.

The planet rotates, so the rotational energy of the water tends to partially negate gravity. Hence, pressure by depth rises more slowly at the Equator than the Poles, all else being equal.

It's not equal. Warmer water is also less dense, so as the ice melts and the water joins the oceans, it distributes itself through them. In warmer locales, that equates to more ocean rise than at the poles as the same amount of water takes up more space when warm.

Currents further cloud the issue. The eastern US is likely to see far more ocean rise due to the Gulf stream running along it. Bad news for Florida all around, no matter how you slice it, however.

[cstanleytech]

9. So as of this moment whats the most realistic level for the ocean level to rise to say in the next

10 years?

[Treant]

11. Adding in the gravitational effect

of the ice attracting water to itself? I'm not sure, but I would think a foor or two maximum.

Ice requires an enormous amount of energy to melt to water at the same temperature. That takes time.

[tclambert]

33. An inch or two.

Current sea level rise is 3 millimeters per year. 30 millimeters is a little over 1 inch. The rate may increase, though, so be ready for an extra inch or two.

Eventually (like by the year 2300) sea levels may rise 20 feet. We're talking about glaciers here. When a glacier speeds way, way up, it is still really, really slow.

[gregcrawford]

8. Check out the link. WIthin the story is another link that explains it all. Scary shit!

[Android3.14]

15. Thanks.

Makes sense now.

[padfun]

21. The article has total BS in it.

"Antarctica is so massive that it pulls the ocean toward it, but if it loses ice, that gravitational pull will relax, and the ocean will slosh back toward the Northern Hemisphere — which will experience additional sea level rise."

Bull. Most continents have much more mass than Antarctica but still, the amounts would be miniscule. The only thing that could happen is the sloshing effect (like a tsunami) but that would only last days and wouldn't be permanent.

[tclambert]

32. He might be (badly) describing the rebound effect.

As the weight of the ice sheets on Antarctica (and Greenland) decreases, the land underneath rebounds. The land rises up. That may push a little bit of seawater further out.

And none of this is taking place in days. More like two or three hundred years.

[padfun]

18. Apparently this guy isnt a scientist

Those living at the top have no difference in gravity that those at the bottom. It is only at the equatorial zones where there is a bulge.

Guys like this don't do us any favor as global warming deniers will be quick to jump on this one.

[Android3.14]

23. Not so fast

The connection isn't about the attraction between the earth and the ice sheet, but between the mass of the ice sheet and the ocean water.

Link

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

27. Not quite...

A quick search brought this up...

http://www.universetoday.com/116801/the-potsdam-gravity-potato-shows-earths-gravity-variations/

Search parameters were...... "Gravity variations on earth", I used google. Different search engine will produce different results... Sometimes, lol.

[BubbaFett]

37. Gravity test:

1. Find window

2. Defenestrate thyself

3. Ergo, gravity.

[semanticwikiian]

10. Mass starvation anyone?

salty seawater rise + 100 degF = no photosynthesis.

[daleanime]

14. ........

but at least they're making the world safe from E-mail.

[StarzGuy]

25. Sadly...

...global warning (hum, I mean warming) deniers will have long since left this Earth and future generations will pay for their lack of insight. I too, will long be gone and I feel fortunate that I have no offspring to suffer this consequence. Those of you who do have them, have my sympathy.

[cstanleytech]

26. The problem I have with that theory is that the earth was far warmer in

the distant past and still supported life thus I really doubt that theory of doom your linking is likely at all.
Now starvation due to weather patterns shifting causing crops to fail thus being unable to feed the worlds current population I find far more likely and believable.

[semanticwikiian]

28. plz cite your source

that the earth was warmer and supported life. How much warmer?

[blackspade]

31. A quick look at Wikipedia or google.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous#Climate

The Berriasian epoch showed a cooling trend that had been seen in the last epoch of the Jurassic. There is evidence that snowfalls were common in the higher latitudes and the tropics became wetter than during the Triassic and Jurassic.[13] Glaciation was however restricted to alpine glaciers on high-latitude mountains, though seasonal snow may have existed farther from the poles. Rafting by ice of stones into marine environments occurred during much of the Cretaceous but evidence of deposition directly from glaciers is limited to the Early Cretaceous of the Eromanga Basin in southern Australia.[14][15]

After the end of the Berriasian, however, temperatures increased again, and these conditions were almost constant until the end of the period.[13] This trend was due to intense volcanic activity which produced large quantities of carbon dioxide. The production of large quantities of magma, variously attributed to mantle plumes or to extensional tectonics,[16] further pushed sea levels up, so that large areas of the continental crust were covered with shallow seas. The Tethys Sea connecting the tropical oceans east to west also helped in warming the global climate. Warm-adapted plant fossils are known from localities as far north as Alaska and Greenland, while dinosaur fossils have been found within 15 degrees of the Cretaceous south pole.[17]

A very gentle temperature gradient from the equator to the poles meant weaker global winds, contributing to less upwelling and more stagnant oceans than today. This is evidenced by widespread black shale deposition and frequent anoxic events.[18] Sediment cores show that tropical sea surface temperatures may have briefly been as warm as 42 °C (107 °F), 17 °C ( 31 °F) warmer than at present, and that they averaged around 37 °C (99 °F). Meanwhile deep ocean temperatures were as much as 15 to 20 °C (27 to 36 °F) higher than today's.[19][20]

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=cretaceous+period+climate

[semanticwikiian]

35. photosynthesis peaks at 85 degf

which is in line with your observation that life 'flourished' during the hotter period.
You see photosynthesis stops at around 100 degf, hence Death Valley exists
So it's difficult for me to reconcile 99 degf seas with "flourishing life"
(maybe this warm sea is for a different era than the Cretaceous)

bear in mind that we surely don't know exact conditions existing 65M years ago.
For instance, I would guess there was lots of inland freshwater seas - we don't have these today
To the contrary we have been sucking aquifers dry at an increasing rate

so if you think temps will stay under 100, fine for you, but I do not.
Rather I am in the +10-12 degC camp ... within the next 15 years
meaning large areas of the planet will ON AVERAGE experience temperatures +18 degF
high temps, little water, depleted soils = mass starvation.

[blackspade]

36. I made no such observation.

You asked for a citation about paleo temperatures and I provided one.
If you read the text I posted, you will note that there were multiple anoxic events that were created by acidic ocean environments.
There were also no large inland fresh water seas, rather the Tethys sea was a broad shallow salt water ocean which is why the central US is covered with bedded limestone formations.

As for your last paragraph, I agree, mass starvation is a likely outcome from rampant climate change whether the temp climbs as high as +18F or the oceans rise 10 ft. Both are a disaster.

[semanticwikiian]

39. sure seemed you did, i.e.,

"the earth was far warmer in the distant past and still supported life"
it was your prime observation.
I'm still trying to reconcile the temperatures you cite with the facts of photosynthesis.
(I note that I said 'flourised' you did not, but it's the term one hears often w.r.t. the era of Dinosaurs)

[blackspade]

40. Your confusing me with cstanleytech

[cstanleytech]

47. WTF? There is barely any life there not because of the temp but because it barely gets any water.

If you really think its purely a temp thing then I would like to see you move to the Gobi and see if you can survive without water.

[AverageJoe90]

53. And most of the Gobi rarely gets super-hot during the summer.

Here's the climate averages for Hohhot in China:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohhot#Climate

Not exactly all that hot, is it? Average high temp is only 83*F in July.

[cstanleytech]

56. Its a cold desert

http://gobidesert.org/ but even if it was warmer without water there will be little in the way of plants, that's a basic fact and that's why death valley has few if any plants because its one of the driest places in the U.S.

[semanticwikiian]

55. Hey Brainiac - they're all interrelated

But the FACT is that photosynthesis does not occur at high temperatures REGARDLESS of whether water and soil present.
So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

[AverageJoe90]

57. His(her?) point still stands.

And you're not making yourself look too good right now. Maybe you should quit while you're not lagging behind so much.

[semanticwikiian]

58. great advice, thanks for the discussion, everyone

[cstanleytech]

42. blackspade provided you one and there are a number of others

you can locate both online and in your local library that show that our planet has been both far colder (think ball of ice) and far warmer and still supported life in varies forms.
Now the question is can our species survive such a shift? Answer, we dont know because there are to many variables but given our current tech I would say that there is a 99.9% that the population worldwide would at the very least decline and not just a little decline but probably a pretty major one, maybe even as bad or worse than the one that hit about 70,000 years ago.

[NickB79]

41. Most hothouse environments in epochs past came about FAR more gradually

Species had time to evolve, migrated and adapt to a warming world. Today, however, the planet is warming at a pace that is rarely seen in the fossil record: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.html

Climate change on pace to occur 10 times faster than any change recorded in past 65 million years, Stanford scientists say

The fossil record DOES show that, in the few times the planet's climate has shifted rapidly, such as at the end of the Permian Era, mass extinctions were the norm. And the Permian mass extinction is known as the Great Dying for a reason: 90% of all life on Earth disappeared in a geologic heartbeat.

[cstanleytech]

43. Ya most species on earth probably will die out, even ours will die eventually

because everything dies.
But could we as a species survive a massive and sudden climate shift? Maybe, we are the first and only species on the planet afterall to have evolved far enough to do things like send a man to the moon or atleast that we know of so its possible we could survive such a shift.

[AverageJoe90]

44. True, and that theory itself had a number of *gaping* holes in it.

For example, they claimed that Earth supposedly has something on the order of 100x the methane deposits that existed during the Permian period.....which is literally impossible.....and that's just one thing: they also claimed that Earth would be hitting *+20* degrees Celsius by the end of the century, due to "runaway" warming(another impossibility).

Meanwhile, all the doomers' B.S. is continually giving ammo to the deniers, and they are still blissfully unaware that it's even an issue in the least.....but given how dogmatic many doomers are(some even rival their denier polar opposites), I guess this isn't terribly surprising.

[cstanleytech]

45. Ya I know the feeling. There is one thing I do wonder about a massive methane release

and that is what is the potential for it to kill by suffocating most of us to death? I mean I do realize that there would be alot of places where it would probably catch fire and burn away or not reach due the local geography blocking it since methane is denser than air but is it possible for us (and most of the life on the surface) to die to suffocation or is there just not enough methane likely to be released to do that?

[AverageJoe90]

46. Not at all possible.

As I pointed out earlier, there just isn't nearly as much methane in the world as there was during the Permian era(and there is, btw, reason to believe that another release of methane may have also occurred at the end of the last ice age, but mainly land-based that time), and even during the Permian extinction, suffocation did not occur, at least not on the surface; what did happen was, was that the methane that *was* released did help warm the planet to about 10*C, but more than that, it drastically altered the chemistry of the oceans; about 80% of all life(though not 95% as is erroneously claimed by some) died-about 90% in the oceans, and about two thirds of all life on land.

With that said, though, I don't doubt that methane would still present a serious complication; I'm just not a doom-and-gloom type, that's all.

[cstanleytech]

52. Damn, there goes my movie pitch to the syfy channel :p lol

[truebrit71]

48. "Runaway" warming is an impossibility...

...please explain how you came to that conclusion...

The deniers have more than enough ammo as it is....Or are you suggesting that what we are about to experience as a species as really not that much to get worked up about?

[AverageJoe90]

49. Please try to explain.....

why you think that runaway warming, or at least as popularly conceived(i.e. Earth becoming Venus II), is *not* impossible(even though it didn't happen even during the Permian era).

The deniers have more than enough ammo as it is....

Which actually bolsters my argument.

Or are you suggesting that what we are about to experience as a species as really not that much to get worked up about?

Not at all. What I'm saying is, we need to be careful about just buying into every little alternative, non-mainstream AGW related theorem out there, just because it sounds scientific, or purportedly brushes up against the status quo, etc.; some are fairly grounded in actual science, and others, erm.....not so much. The scenario in the video is clearly an example of the latter.

[truebrit71]

51. I didn't see your answer to my question...

..?

Why is it impossible when there are several scenarios where it is not only possible, but may in fact be probable...?

[AverageJoe90]

54. "but may in fact be probable..."

In case you missed it, I mentioned that runaway global warming, or at least the generally accepted definition of such(as mentioned in the video that was posted here earlier, comment #10, I believe), did not even occur during the Permian Extinction, and there was rather more methane then than what exists now, even in clathrate form.

Now, mind, I'm not downplaying the fact that methane releases could introduce serious complications to an already problematic situation, but I'm also trying to stay grounded in actual, proven scientific research.

[packman]

12. Going to start selling sea-shore property in Arizona

Just a joke, but if I started the business I bet I would sell some property.

[Enthusiast]

17. Kicked and recommended a brazillion times.

[progressoid]

19. Baby Jesus will save us.

[AverageJoe90]

50. Humanity will inevitably go extinct. Earth will turn into Venus, the sequel. nt

[semanticwikiian]

20. HRC simply doesnt get it does she

that the planet will be in complete chaos by Jan-20-2017.

Here's the USA on that date:
CA exhausts reservoirs + spreading TX desert + FL abandonment + meaner hurricanes

Sounds pretty fun right?

I almost want to say, Hillary, you can have 'your' office, because we want to watch you, as a prime representative of the political class since 1980s, answer for the complete disregard of this thoroughly known, present danger, you and your ilk have had. I want to watch you squirm since you wanted it all so badly, particularly as you propose your feel-good policies that won't change a darn thing. Then we will gleefully impeach you and the rest of the entire Congress for ongoing systemic corruption, and radically change everything (first of which would be to require a license to use any oil product). We will wipe you and the rest of your oligarchic friends away to the oblivion of traitors.

Or, we can move inland and hide from roving militias.

[ffr]

22. A hundred years from now?

Fresh clean drinking water is already a precious commodity. In 15 years when the human population continues unrestricted beyond 8.3 billion, 2014 and 2015 will look like the good ol' days. Adding 1 billion people every 13 or so years, eighty-five years beyond that won't bear any resemblance to the world as we know it.

Can you imagine? What we need is for someone from 2115 to time travel back to the 1950s and get world leaders to address the human procreation crises that had already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity then.

[Jefferson23]

24. Recommend. n/t

[blackspade]

29. This is really bad.

A hearty thank you should go out to the Republican party, their donors, and their enablers from all of our children and grandchildren.
Thanks!

[Hestia]

34. As the waters rise and there is mass migration, along with starvation, I think we will see the

birth rates dramatically decline. Women have to have so much body fat in order to "produce" life, and it won't be there.

http://strangesounds.org/2013/11/if-all-the-ice-melted-scary-maps-show-effects-of-rising-water-level-around-the-world.html

Plus, with the waters rise, the Mississippi is going to flood all the way up to the Memphis (most likely beyond), even lower Arkansas will be gone. Along with Florida, the Gulf is going to reach into Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. The best part of country - crops, water, etc. is on the east side of the Miss. River but there isn't going to be a lot of land left there either, except up in the mountains of Kentucky, West Va., etc. Canada will be the go to spot but according to the map, it will lose land mass also.

It ain't going to be pretty with all the land and water wars that will be happening. It will be a whole new epoch in North American history if there is anyone who will record it all. It will be the stuff of legends, not unlike Gilgamesh/Noah Flood story.

[Blue_Tires]

38. Good luck getting congress to pay attention, though...

[Myrina]

59. Question:

It seems most folks are concerned with the US shorelines going under water but, um .. what about places like Japan? Fukushima? Underwater already-damaged nuclear plants? What other sites around the world need we worry about?

Oh my.