The horror of Antarctica meltdown

By
Martyn Bradbury
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14
1

While our political leaders are numbed into inaction by business interests who gain the most from climate change pollution, the one place climate deniers always pointed at to claim global warming wasn’t really happening, is in meltdown…

THE RACE TO UNDERSTAND ANTARCTICA’S MOST TERRIFYING GLACIER

At the conference, it was hard to shake the notion that the situation was urgent. “The question is, what’s going to happen next?” Ted Scambos, the American project coordinator of the Thwaites Collaboration, told me. “Is it going to be 50 years or 200 years before we see a truly large increase in the rate of ice being unloaded into the ocean from that glacier?”

…Antartica has always been perceived as frozen solid, the truth is that the meltdown there is far more extreme than had been comprehended and that once triggered, we are seeing ocean rise in the many meters. The fill article is terrifying in its consequences.

I believe the spinelessness of the current political spectrum can not adapt fast enough for climate change and that a radical new political movement will be required to do what the current one can not.

Perhaps a new socialist green party can begin once the current middle class identity politics one falls beneath the 5% threshold at the 2020 election.

 

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14 COMMENTS

  1. “Perhaps a new socialist green party can begin once the current middle class identity politics one falls beneath the 5% threshold at the 2020 election.” Yeah, right… on the back of a Transnational Capital Party whose so-called opposition is importing hordes of foreign and neo-colonial Transnational Capital Party voters? How the fuck does that happen, Bomber? Xiriously…

  2. Well said, Martyn.

    Of course there has been concern about the stability of Antarctic ice for many years but it is only recently that clear evidence of meltdown has emerged.

    As with other meltdown-related phenomena, sea level rise of many metres will occur decades from now, so current political leaders can keep kicking the fossil-fuel-dependence can down the road (until other factors impact), keep pretending that planetary overheating is not much of a problem, keep pretending that ‘climate talks’ will be at some stage be successful (despite decades of failure), keep pretending that someone somewhere will come up with a ‘solution’ that will allow business-as-usual to continue.

    it sure looks like we can ay goodbye to Miami, New York, London, Venice, Shanghai….numerous Pacific Islands and much of Bangladesh etc. …not forgetting all the low-lying land of NZ, especially around Auckland.

    Sadly, until sea level rise gathers pace considerably (or the global economic system collapses) so-called planners and developers will be able get away with squandering yet more energy and resources on infrastructure that will become inundated in the not-too-distant future.

    The Guardian article on the meltdown of Antarctica has some ‘nice; maps, and at the end this statement: “The finding has very serious repercussions for climate change and particularly sea-level rise. It has the potential to mean that our sea-level projections could be [in] an order of magnitude higher than we’re anticipating.”

    (For the benefit of non-scientists, an order of magnitude means ten times greater, so the 60 cm. rise by the end if the century the IPCC were talking about become 6 metres.)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/east-antarctica-glacial-stronghold-melting-amid-climate-change

    The Associated Press article begins with:

    ‘New studies and reports issued this week at a major Earth sciences conference paint one of the bleakest pictures yet of dramatic warming in the Arctic and Antarctica. Alaskan scientists described to The Associated Press Tuesday never-before-seen melting and odd winter problems, including permafrost that never refroze this past winter and wildlife die-offs.’

  3. Things will change when things become too late to change. Thus, irony.
    When the ocean level is half way up Queen street.
    When Mar-a-Lago’s under 20 meters of sea water.
    I’ve always wanted a beach front property but I never thought the beach would come to me.
    Are we going to be like that woman on the Titanic? When she was being helped over the railings to the life boat? She said “I asked for ice but this is ridiculous”.
    I read in The Guardian that people in Yemen are suiciding rather than dying of starvation. That, is how far we’ve come as a thinking, self aware species. We allow fellows ( no gender bias intended ) to take their own lives when they’re too afraid of dying of starvation. While down my way, the moronic council still deploys other morons to spray wild flowers and grasses. That’ll learn them bees. Where there are vast, empty green paddocks but for a few sheep. And we can’t find markets and we know people are starving to death. In this day, and age. I’ve seen tractor drawn machinery go past my lounge window that can plant 30 hectares of potatoes in about 15 minutes. I exaggerate. Maybe in a long day. When those spuds are ready to harvest? Another massive machine comes along etc. That’s one person driving one tractor pulling two different machines, at two different times, obviously plus one truck driver to take the spuds to the packing shed. Then trucks or rail to a boat. One crane operator to swing they spuds onboard, a few seamen, a captain… And those scant few people from NZ could feed Yemen.
    We have super rich bankers and super rich banker clients and super efficient farming practises and we have people in Yemen killing themselves before they must starve to death. So? Again. What, or rather who, is between the producers of foods and the starving? Which means that I must see, then consequently live with the image of a little baby girl dying of hunger in her mothers arms? What Satanic monster is in there, making billions off hard work and starvation?
    I think it’s the banking ‘industry’ that’s tanking the planet and any new movement must directly challenge and crush the bankster domination of our pale blue dot.
    I also read somewhere that the head stone on the grave of Humanity might read ” They seemed like a good idea at the time.”
    And once we’re dead and bloated and floating about underwater in our over bankster debt leveraged houses, now submarines, the super riche will be floating above like turds, in their super-yot gin palaces. ( I’ve always had trouble spelling ‘yacht’.)
    Ya know? I think we’re fucked. And I think we’ve fucked ourselves by our lack of direct action against the Satanic Monsters that are the banksters and their political minions.
    So, perhaps we should nurture our beautiful energy in readiness for the ‘next time around’ instead and not fuck it up this time?

    • Well we could at least scrap the give aways to the top tax brackets who’ve been proven to not comply with their tax obligations and move all that into primary healthcare, water, food, health resources, infrastructure, defence, civil defence and so on.

      • Exactly. Most of the data used by climate “scientists” is available to the public. I urge anyone interested in actual facts to draw their own conclusions based on climate data rather than genuflecting in front of false messiahs who have been consistently wrong about the climate (and temperature changes wrt to CO2) ever since Al Gore’s 2006 propaganda piece “An Inconvenient Truth” that ironically had little truth in it (since it was based on Michael Mann’s now widely discredited “hockey stick” theory).
        http://undeceivingourselves.org/I-ipcc.htm

  5. A. Antarctica

    Antarctica has an important regulatory function in the global climatic system.

    Antarctica also contains a large part of the freshwater resource on Earth.

    Antarctica is a continent, meaning, under the ice, there is land.

    Below the surface there are mineral resources.

    Water, land, minerals, etc. Which forces might be attracted by these?

    Which dynamics will those trigger?

    B. Green Movement

    Diversification of the green movement appears to be a rationale response for a number of reasons, taking one of them, a single party alone will not be able to drive the required transformational change.

    A new green stakeholder with analytical capacity and understanding of class formation, political economy, and its impact on use and exploitation of humanity – and continents and natural resources – could be a most valuable contribution toward strengthening overall resilience.

    Which dynamics would that trigger?

    References:

    https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/oceans-seas/what-we-do/working-regional-seas/regional-seas-programmes/antarctic

    http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/

    https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/antarct/anttrty.jsp

    https://theweek.com/articles/463490/what-antarctica-looks-like-without-ice

    • According to some academic papers we’ve got about 80 years of growth before climate change forces a 20% permanent reduction of the GDP. So let’s just call it 40 years to account for energy insecurity and y’all can I told you so later: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018EF000922

      And the Antarctic Treaty has to be renewed in 2048 or it expires.

      Antartica was never touched by war because it was frozen and really far away from a heavy enough industrial capacity. Unlike The Arctic Russia has ice bridges they can just drive over. Once there is a new Great Depression it probably wouldn’t mater if Antartica is frozen or not, there’ll be enough humans ready to roll up there sleeves and get there chaos sorted. Install a new government on the Antarctic continent, stand up their sectors and economy despite a global Great Depression with in a few short years.

      The circumstances are different but not hugely different to the way Japan overcame the destruction of their economy during World War 2, it’s government or the global economy about to enter a massive depression. Japan is owed a lot of credit for coming back stronger after being nuked, twice. And not sacrificing the sole of a nation.

      Treaties are just agreements that no one attacks each other, they don’t say be friends all of the time. Once the conditions of a treaty changes or is breached for what ever reason, what appears to be motivated by imperialist ambitions under the control of harsh peaceful measures inflected On the signatories is very much a cycle. But part of being a cycle means you don’t stamp your feet when you lose because if you’d have won you’d have done the exact same things to win.

      • The rogue state of USA ignores treaties at will.

        The accumulated historical GHG per capita footprint of the USA is 26 times that of China.

        The USA has over 800 bases in 70 countries at present.

        It will use Antarctica for its own strategic purposes when it want to.

        Mining is already planned.

        • Family members ask me about the IPCC report which is just way over their heads, I just tell em to make better parents than we are out of our moko’s.

          The 200 IPCC report links to numerous studies on every page with equally numerous research and data it’s just way over my abilities to summarise it. But suffice to say the cockpit switch board is lighting up red with screaming sirens.

          Super powers are a concern but a larger concern are rogue nuclear states. When the equator starts doing average day time temps above 40° and thanks to Trump Iran will have nukes to. Mining is one thing, I just believe the most good can be done by spending our limited treasure on the $82 billion government budget and have a really good listen to what the NZDF Chiefs are saying, and wanting.

          • I have had discussion with three members of two IPCC report writing groups.

            All three share the same experience. Much of the critical message from Scientist, is so heavily modified to the point that the urgency of the message is lost in the final edited reports.

            IPCC reports are an interesting example of how important information is hidden or deliberately ignored.

            IPCC reports are reflective of a baseline forced admission, but not a reflection of the dire straits we will find as time passes.

            Some laws of physics are remarkably reliable.

            • And if there IS justice, they’ll at least partially succeed – given how much the UN holds up and stopped the implementation of the executive / corporate orders, and the ones our Government will have to override.

  6. The language used to describe the consequence of humans putting too much CO2 into the atmosphere sends different messages. That is why I refer to the phenomenon as planetary overheating or planetary meltdown.

    It is interesting to see that, as the predicament becomes ever more dire, the official language used to describe the predicament is changing.

    For example, the latest report from Katowice contains:

    “Global heating” is a more accurate term than “global warming” to describe the changes taking place to the world’s climate, according to a key scientist at the UK Met Office….

    “Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet,” the scientist said at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland. “We should be talking about risk rather than uncertainty.”….

    “Global warming doesn’t capture the scale of destruction. Speaking of hothouse Earth is legitimate,” he said….

    The Met Office upgraded its forecasts this week to show the planet is on track to warm by between 2.5C and 4.5C….

    Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said “cracks” were starting to appear in the climate system that were pushing nature from being a friend that absorbs carbon dioxide to an enemy that releases carbon dioxide. These concerns are fuelled by the growing intensity of forest fires, the effect of melting ice-sheets on the jet stream, and the rising risk of permafrost thaw, which would release trapped methane….’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/13/global-heating-more-accurate-to-describe-risks-to-planet-says-key-scientist

    In the distant past atmospheric CO2 was a lot higher than now and the average temperature of the Earth was a lot higher than now. However, the ecology of the Earth we live on is adapted to CO2 in the approximate range 180 ppm to 300 ppm. Atmospheric CO2 is now about 410 ppm and is rising fast. Massive ecological changes are underway, and sea levels are still responding to the severe disturbance to the historically normal atmospheric CO2 level.

    With respect to ‘Hothouse Earth’, it was only a few months ago that the following was published:

    ‘A domino-like cascade of melting ice, warming seas, shifting currents and dying forests could tilt the Earth into a “hothouse” state beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be increasingly futile, a group of leading climate scientists has warned.’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state

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