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Antarctic Ice Sheet Falling Apart

It's all over people! We don't have a prayer!
If 80s hair metal got it right, and that, when it comes to climate change, it really is

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw[/yt]

and we still haven't done anything substantive, then I agree, we're all just

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk[/yt]
 
It's all over people! We don't have a prayer!

Thank you, baby, for getting the reference. I knew I could count on you. :adore:

It's times like this I wish I was a religious man.
Yeah, cause rising water levels worked out so well for humanity in the Bible.

Now excuse me, I'll be out back doing a little building. Anyone got a cubit tape-measure, all I have is 25footers.

What a shame that you didn't get the Simpsons reference. :(
 
This is why my fandom towards Trek is different now vs. when I was a kid. I see it as an optimistic fantasy--not an accurate projection of where humanity is heading.
 
This is why my fandom towards Trek is different now vs. when I was a kid. I see it as an optimistic fantasy--not an accurate projection of where humanity is heading.

It was never meant to be an accurate projection. It was meant to be an inspiration -- to show us what a better future could look like so that we'd be motivated to work to create a real one. And it did make it clear that a better future wouldn't just automatically happen, but that we'd go through hardships and setbacks to get there and that it could only be created through hard work and dedication to an ideal.
 
Actually, it was meant to be an hour of entertainment once a week on NBC - ideally for five years or more so the studio could turn a profit.
 
Link

For decades, the inevitability of many feet, even yards, of sea-level rise in a warming climate has been crystal clear. But society’s response, both in stemming heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to eroding coastlines, will always be more a function of the rate of change than the ultimate outcome.

That’s why it’s important to get beyond headlines — including the titles of papers — in considering new research pointing to the inevitable “collapse” of ice sheets in West Antarctica. To the public, collapse is a term applied to a heart attack victim on a street corner or a building stricken by an earthquake or bomb. To a glaciologist, it describes the transition to unavoidable loss of an ice sheet — a process that can take centuries to get into gear, and millenniums[sic] to complete.

Some headlines are completely overwrought — as with this NBC offering: “West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s Collapse Triggers Sea Level Warning.” This kind of coverage could be interpreted to mean there’s an imminent crisis. It’s hard to justify that conclusion given the core findings in the studies.

Take the Science paper: “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica.” Using ice-flow models and observations, the researchers, led by Ian Joughin of the University of Washington, concluded:
Except possibly for the lowest-melt scenario, the simulations indicate that early-stage collapse has begun. Less certain is the time scale, with the onset of rapid (>1 mm per year of sea-level rise) collapse in the different simulations within the range of 200 to 900 years.

To translate a bit, that means sometime between 200 and 900 years from now the rate of ice loss from this glacier could reach a volume sufficient to raise sea levels about 4 inches (100 millimeters) a century. At that point, according to the paper, ice loss could pick up steam, with big losses over a period of decades.* But in a phone conversation, Joughin said the modeling was not reliable enough to say how much, how soon.

“Collapse is a good scientific word,” he told me, “but maybe it’s kind of a bad word” in the context of news.
 
The predicted rise from the collapse of the ice sheet is between three and four meters. Surprisingly enough it looks like even parts of Venice will remain unsubmerged.
At +4 metres, half of my region would be under water, including historical cities like Ravenna, Ferrara and Venice (only a few spots would be spared, not much for a living city). Ouch.
 
Cities and rich countries will be ok, they will build seawalls. It's the poor who will have to flee or drown :(
 
Looking forward to the day when I can step out of my house and right onto the beach. In Colorado.
 
The predicted rise from the collapse of the ice sheet is between three and four meters. Surprisingly enough it looks like even parts of Venice will remain unsubmerged.
At +4 metres, half of my region would be under water, including historical cities like Ravenna, Ferrara and Venice (only a few spots would be spared, not much for a living city). Ouch.
Well, historic cities, they will be historical after they're under water, though.
 
And yet, one of my life goals is to own a meat-eating dog, not to save lives or anything, but just to be a pal. I suppose this makes me part of the problem...


If global warming wasn't man made, the effects would still be the same. So it's about time we get away from the self pity "Oh my god what have we done" crap to "what can we do about it?"
Having fewer kids, and empowering women in developing countries to have full control over their own bodies and reproductive systems, strikes me as an excellent place to start. The fewer billion people future generations have to house, feed, and police, the fewer problems are likely to occur.


... And damming the Golden Gate, while theoretically possible, I suppose, would be a crime against the planet, and, given how hilly the Bay Area is, in no way worth the trouble and expense.
 
... And damming the Golden Gate, while theoretically possible, I suppose, would be a crime against the planet, and, given how hilly the Bay Area is, in no way worth the trouble and expense.
I don't how how the math about relocating all of the bay area vs securing it with a dam checks out.
 
^ "All of the Bay Area"? This is what a six-foot increase would flood: not nothing, but nowhere near "all" of the Bay. And that's to say nothing of the environmental costs of turning the Bay into a huge-arse lake, even apart from the aforementioned immense expense and spiritual desecration of such an endeavor.
 
^ "All of the Bay Area"? This is what a six-foot increase would flood: not nothing, but nowhere near "all" of the Bay. And that's to say nothing of the environmental costs of turning the Bay into a huge-arse lake, even apart from the aforementioned immense expense and spiritual desecration of such an endeavor.
And again, I still don't know what would be cheaper.
 
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