Antarctica: Ice shelves shrinking 'with no sign of recovery

https://www.dw.com/en/antarctica-ice-shelves-shrinking-with-no-sign-of-recovery/a-67084109

by gardenfelder • 3 years ago

127 133 3 years ago

A new study has found that almost half of Antarctica's ice shelves are shrinking. This could increase ice loss from glaciers and affect the ocean's ability to absorb carbon

m3kw9• 3 years ago

How long till my deep in land home to have a coastline?

vkou• 3 years ago

A while, it'll almost certainly happen long after you'll be dealing with food insecurity, and millions of refugees whose coastline land is now underwater.

immmmmm5• 3 years ago

IPCC projections are typically 1-2m (scenario dependent) for end of the century, with up to 50+m worst case scenario in 1-2 millennia

spandextwins4• 3 years ago

Plant a tree. Today. Before it's too late.

galuggus• 3 years ago

Do it for free at mptr.ee

codetrotter2• 3 years ago

https://www.thissongplantstrees.com/

You can plant trees for free using Spotify.
We made a second audio clip where all the revenue goes to planting trees
Sounds too good to be true. How does this work?
Everytime you listen to a song on a streaming service it earns a tiny bit of cash for its creator.
We use that money to plant trees.

Neat!

olddustytrail• 3 years ago

We're talking billions of tons of ice. A single tree won't hold that back. Plus, it's Antarctica! The tree will die in that cold!

1123581321345513• 3 years ago

the 1st part of your comment makes me think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

onetimeuse923046• 3 years ago

Trees do not affect CO2 levels, over long time. The basic reason is explained by why it is also called "carbon cycle". Plants grow, temporarily storing carbon, then die, releasing the carbon back to atmosphere either by burning or by decaying or by being consumed and literally breathed out as CO2 back.

Rather than planting a tree, you can actually help the atmosphere more by cutting a tree and building a house out of it and not letting it rot for a really long time. By cutting the tree and building the house, you are sequestering the carbon for probably longer than the tree would live (depending on what would be its future) and also making space for new trees to grow.

If you are looking to actually affect the long term outcome, you need to do one of two things:

1) stop emitting CO2

2) sequester the atmospheric CO2 somewher, for a really long time.

GravityLab8• 3 years ago

Trees are great carbon sinks. Especially the ones that live for hundreds of years. If more trees get planted, then soon they’d be giant carbon sinks for hundreds of years. That’s more than enough time for artificial co2 sequestration tech to catch up with more effective permanent solutions.

dangles• 3 years ago

Where did oil come from?

bloopernova• 3 years ago

Planting a tree makes a carbon sink that lasts at least a century. During that time we can try to fix the rest of the mess.

1123581321345513• 3 years ago

wrong, they do, but on a long timescale (million years), through hydrocarbures

of course obviously, people shouldn't extract and buy fossil fuel and all those derived products (plastics)

spandextwins4• 3 years ago

Most trees are cut with gas powered chain saws. Leave them up.

edhelas• 3 years ago

Again... planting trees is pointless.

We need to recover lands and grow forests.

Trees are not carbon pumping units, they are part of ecosystem.

The moment we will start to understand this, we will make a giant step in the right direction.

1123581321345513• 3 years ago

A tree is a local air conditioning, air purifier, air humidifier, so always better than nothing, it hosts so much life like insects that are vital to other lifeforms and trees indirecly

spandextwins4• 3 years ago

Stanford shows otherwise

https://earth.stanford.edu/news/growing-carbon-offsets-trees

jraby3• 3 years ago

I think it’s probably much more effective to stop eating meat. Land is cleared for cattle at an alarming rate and is the main reason for the shrinking size of the Amazon.

MandieD• 3 years ago

Avoiding beef from Brazil would be an easy first step.

immmmmm5• 3 years ago

You certainly want to stop cutting trees. I think it’s 10 million cut each days. Then invest time and money in ecosystem preservation and adaptation. Many scientific reports available, let you google that.

bantunes2• 3 years ago

Nobody cares.

Most have decided they prefer SUVs, cheap burgers and flying to Greece twice a year for 50 quid over the Amazon being a thing or co-existing with wildlife.

And the ones that didn't make that choice are unwilling to change things because deep down they know violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff.

nine_zeros• 3 years ago

Nobody cares.

Yep, too busy boosting my lines of code for an unskilled BS manager. I don't even have time for my family, let alone the environment.

GravityLab8• 3 years ago

violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff.

nah that’s just what ideologues say because they care more about their top-down control agenda. If climate change was fixed tomorrow, they’d be disappointed because they wouldn’t be able to exact control over others in the name of climate concern.

Plant more trees. Invest in renewables.

Podgajski2• 3 years ago

Plant more trees. Invest in renewables.

I do not know how people can be convinced those things will do anything to mitigate the changes we are seeing and will see for years even if we stop all carbon output now.

What his needed is shame, for people to be shamed, but we have no religion anymore so no one cares about shame.

beepbooptheory• 3 years ago

Aren't we already at the whim of "ideologues" who care about their top-down control agenda? Isn't that necessarily what, like, a given nation's government is in our world?

Even by this logic, I'm gonna go with the guys who've put themselves behind the mitigate-climate-disaster agenda.

tippytippytango3• 3 years ago

This. I don’t believe the environmentalists actually care about the environment. They love the power it gives them. It’s why they are against technological solutions that will make the problem go away. My litmus test is nuclear. If an environmentalist doesn’t like nuclear they aren’t a serious person.

tromp• 3 years ago

I care enough that I limit my own carbon footprint (easier in Holland where you can bike to most places) and always vote for the party that is most eager to tackle climate change. Sadly it looks like it will take many years before a voting majority goes that way...

secondcoming• 3 years ago

I'd love to vote Green for environmental stuff, but up until the war in Ukraine, the UK Green party wanted to pull out of NATO and effectively disband the military.

Podgajski2• 3 years ago

I think many people care, but these same people have to work and feed their families. They have to care about climate change more than they care about those things for them to change.

Fixing Climate Change needs to be like the World War II Mobilization Effort. Nothing short of that will fix anything.

For example, I am currently homeless living in a minivan. I know my carbon footprint is way lower than most people. (Solar for my power, no heat, no ac, etc). But I would love to live in a tiny house close to town with solar. But no one will build them, and they can't even build them because of all the regulations.

And then you have people who would be against all this because they think their "freedom" is worth more than children's future.

So I am left being a positive nihilist. I know it will all fail but I act the way I do because it is the right thing to do.

mistrial9• 3 years ago

Nobody cares.

this is so untrue! Channeling a sense of futility is some kind of coping? Large numbers of people, specialists, researchers, university people, clergy.. Elementary school walkouts around the world on the same day?

This kind of public defeatism is exactly why under-25 leaders is required -- how about that idea?

c7DJTLrn• 3 years ago

Under 25 seems a bit young, and I say this as a 22-year-old. There isn't enough life experience there to understand the complexities of the real world.

But we do need younger people in politics. UK parliament is overwhelmingly old, rich, eurosceptic people. Funny how there's no diversity where it really matters.

jodrellblank5• 3 years ago

The UK government has just stopped off-shore wind turbine growth for the next decade, delayed their ban on internal combustion engine cars another five years, cancelled the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway extension and said they’ll put that money into roads instead.

Great.

hef19898• 3 years ago

Populism at work, no surprise since Brexit was tze same thing.

ksec2• 3 years ago

The UK government has just stopped off-shore wind turbine growth for the next decade

Any links? Last time I check they have huge amount of work going on in that area.

thedrbrian• 3 years ago

The UK government has just stopped off-shore wind turbine growth for the next decade

surely the power companies can just build them if wind is so cheap

therein• 3 years ago

Is this really what we want? Is this really going to work? What will be the consequences? Have they been discussed?

2030-2049 all remaining airports close all shipping declines to zero, no flying for 2050, and after electric planes may fly.

https://i.imgur.com/hLJAqGQ.png

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

It is unfortunate, but there are paths to success without UK policy encouraging it. Viking Link [1], a 1.4GW electrical interconnector between Great Britain and Denmark, comes online by end of year (it has already been added as an asset in the ENTSO-E electrical market transparency platform). At the same time, their last coal fired generator [Drax North Yorkshire] will be retired within the next year [2] (I emailed Drax to get a rough closure date, reply pending). Less than a million vehicles a year are built in the UK and about 2 million vehicles a year are sold in their market, compared to a global market of ~80M units/year. Importantly, those coal generators need to be demolished as soon as possible after decommissioning to prevent turning them back on (advocacy call to action: if you live near a decommissioned coal generator, push to have it demo'd unless there are very firm plans to convert them to high efficiency fossil gas generation).

Therefore, you would only need to find economic linchpins or similar points of leverage in the UKs fossil gas supply, automative supply chain and marketplace, and petroleum supplies to force a more rapid transition despite neglected policy. The rest of the global market will drag the UK, as California does in the US with regards to automative fuel efficiency standards.

A successful EV future depends on the continuing rapid expansion globally by Tesla and BYD [3] (as well as smaller players of course, if they can ramp expeditiously), not politicians or older constituents who could not care less about a future they won't exist in.

(also important is deploying as much inexpensive low carbon energy generation as possible as fast as possible, but is a topic for another thread [4])

[1] https://www.viking-link.com/

[2] https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-ends-half-a-century-...

[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/30758/most-popular-plug-in-el...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924

1123581321345513• 3 years ago

I've a bicycle (found in trash) as my vehicle, no fridge, no heating, no AC, no hot water, almost nothing in my tiny apartment (14m2) with a rice cooker, I even cut my beard with scissors, and have can't understand why people even use electric toothbrush, ridiculous low electricity usage, I carry my own food trash (vegetable) and bury it somewhere quiet, my footprint may be less than 0.05% of the average person in France. I eat very rarely fish or poultry/eggs, my food is very local (foraging figs June-October, persimmons then, oranges, medlars in spring), local markets (collecting what's thrown away/very ripe), and some rice for winter

100% agree with you, why is it still allowed to build personal swimming pools? those insanely large cars, oversized houses, widespread ignorance and disrespect for the environment

pharmakom2• 3 years ago

Do you have a blog or anything? Sounds like an interesting life!

avalys• 3 years ago

I think I'd kill myself if I had to live like that.

anigbrowl2• 3 years ago

Because they have resources and you don't, so you have no leverage. We don't live in a moral age where people in general are impressed by the example of others.

DanHulton• 3 years ago

I read "no fridge, no heating, no AC" and immediately realized something.

Like, I applaud the dedication, and I hope you find this life fulfilling, but you can't expect _everyone_ to be able to live like that. And not even from a "but some people _neeeed_ sports cars" or other indefensible position, but I mean just from a purely practical position.

You very clearly live in a climate that allows for that. There are _billions_ of people who don't, or won't, shortly, no matter what we do. Heck, you might not live in a climate that will allow for that in the near future.

Again, not to shit on what you're doing, it's honestly interesting and like another commenter said, if you have a blog (maybe solar powered on some upcycled laptop-turned-server?), I'd be interested to read it. But all your choices are personal choices, and they are _really_ low-impact in the grand scheme of things. Even personal swimming pools aren't really moving any appreciable needle, we need broad, sweeping, systemic changes to really make an impact.

Somehow passing regulation to get a large industry to clean up its energy usage or reduce its waste by even 1% is likely going to do more than somehow convincing everyone in the world to give up electric toothbrushes. Please don't feel like I'm telling you to give up on what you're doing! But if you feel like you have any extra energy to try to change public opinion on things, well, I'd prefer if we could get around to the high-impact stuff first, is all.

davzie• 3 years ago

This is a wonderful satire / trolling. Well done :')

chmod600• 3 years ago

You are expressing your low-cost lifestyle, and that's great. But I'd also like to hear about the benefits of life you are experiencing within that lifestyle.

p1mrx• 3 years ago

deep down they know violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff

Passing a carbon fee and dividend[1] would help a lot, though I guess it's uncertain whether something on that scale could be enforced without violence.

[1] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/energy...

OrvalWintermute• 3 years ago

I prefer the electric SUV powered by offshore windmills and refrigerated, 1000 miles from consumption site vegan salads so I can pretend at least to care about the environment whether or not the decisions are actually environmentally sound. Because I am invested with Blackrock and my ESG scores are off the charts I also get to brag to my friends while flying my personal jet to Davos ;)

amelius• 3 years ago

The explanation for the Fermi paradox becomes clearer and clearer ...

immmmmm5• 3 years ago

The window for collective intelligence is getting narrower indeed.

pokstad• 3 years ago

People care, but there needs to be balance between environmentalism and social mobility. The “haves” are the ones telling everyone else to continue being “have nots”. Current environmentalist attitudes are becoming religious and self righteous.

ses1984• 3 years ago

There are haves and then there are haves. The super rich have a much higher per person impact and they can afford to do things efficiently rather than cheap and polluting. Then global middle class also have a higher per person impact than the global lower class. So what if some people are unfairly targeting the “have nots”? We don’t have to let them drive the conversation and distract from real issues.

jimbob45• 3 years ago

And the ones that didn't make that choice are unwilling to change things because deep down they know violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff.

You’re fearmongering in an attempt to incite violence. I half suspect this to be a closet Greenpeace account.

bantunes2• 3 years ago

You’re fearmongering in an attempt to incite violence. I half suspect this to be a closet Greenpeace account.

You're already under a form of violence - your kids will wonder why you never did anything about it.

immmmmm5• 3 years ago

There’s also active manipulation by fossil fuel companies, following the exact scheme as tobacco companies. They invest billions per year into this with great success: easily 40% of westerners are in some kind of denial compared to less than 10% in southern countries.

And lobbyism too: 7T$ of FF subsidies per year, while a global energy transition has been estimated at 7T$. So in one year of subsidies we could solve a big part of the problem.

tippytippytango3• 3 years ago

What convinces you violence is the only possible solution? You’ve ruled out technological solutions?

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

"Annual mass budget of Antarctic ice shelves from 1997 to 2021"

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi0186

1123581321345513• 3 years ago

Those headlines or observations are so obvious, why do we even do them? We can even feel the temperature rise year after year, October temperature are like August

moomoo11• 3 years ago

Could we do controlled volcanic eruptions to bring the temperatures down?

Honestly these kinds of problems need insane out of the box thinking, because trying to change human behavior is one of the hardest things in the world. It doesn't work unless you're okay living under fascists/communists (no thanks).

I'd much rather we explore unorthodox "organic" "all-natural" attempts like dropping some JDAMs into a volcano. Who knows, it might work. People certainly will not stop burning fossil fuels or being selfish.

leosanchez• 3 years ago

Could we do controlled volcanic eruptions to bring the temperatures down?

Is it even possible? If so which volcano?

peteradio2• 3 years ago

NIMBY!

sshb• 3 years ago

Stratospheric aerosol injection is one of the proposed approaches https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/05/sun-blockers-us-sc...

immmmmm5• 3 years ago

It’s called geo engineering and problems would include:

1) ocean acidification

2) a sky white rather than blue

3) severely alerted rain patterns

4) a very sharp positive climate transient if for some reason you stop doing it

5) etc etc

Also most climate scientists we simply cannot control a system that chaotic

Also, injecting sulphuric acid at large scale in the atmosphere might not be such a great idea.

But yeah, chemtrails would work.

unblough• 3 years ago

This comment from "50 days ago" absolutely rocked me then and continues to provide a sobering and depressing real life metric to the climate crisis. I've showed anyone who will listen this chart.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37257643

jules-jules• 3 years ago

Declining Antarctic sea ice further drives global warming, a little discussed topic.

The discussions of the remarkable September global warming have noted that much of the warming is associated with an extreme warming anomaly over Antarctica, with the suggestion that this warming is a weather effect that will disappear. While it is true that Antarctic temperature fluctuates greatly from month to month, we note that there is a latent southern Hemisphere polar amplification of warming that has long been dormant, as Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover has been relatively constant for several decades. The recent decline of sea ice area may be an indication that, averaged over weather, Antarctica will become a more important contributor to global temperature change.

The above is from James Hansen's latest newsletter. Another one of those pesky self-reinforcing feedback loops.

bigfryo• 3 years ago

You cannot trust any establishment site when it comes to talking about any item or topic that is supported as a important narrative by the establishment. Anything goes as far as that's concerned because the establishment rewards anyone who supports a narrative that is under siege, as is the climate change narrative obviously

sghiassy2• 3 years ago

Honest question. How do we morally differentiate human-caused climate change from natural climate change (I.e: Ice ages naturally come and go)

I get that that human-led climate change means that humans are mucking things up (which sucks). But if humans cause large swings in climate that would happen naturally, then it’s not like what we’re causing is unique right? It’s just natural phenomenon from unnatural causes.

It seems to me, that humans are rightfully worried about existence. But even large-mass-scale extinction is a natural repeating phenomenon. So I say long live the next species (which I can only assume is sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads https://youtu.be/INFavIUmhcE)

ALittleLight• 3 years ago

What does morality have to do with it? If the climate is changing in a way that's bad, we need to do something about it. We'd need to do something about it even if it were natural. The problem with climate change is not moral, it's that it will make it harder for people to live and kill people and so on.

bobthepanda2• 3 years ago

Speed. This climate change is happening faster than any other climate change event short of a volcanic eruption or a meteor, both of which also generally result in mass death. (Krakatoa is associated with years of famine.)

It is easier to adjust over hundreds of years than decades or less.

neom• 3 years ago

Sure... earth's climate has naturally fluctuated throughout its history. However, the current rate of change is unprecedented in human history... The key difference between natural climate change and human-induced climate change is the speed at which it's happening. Natural climate changes, like ice ages, occur over thousands of years, giving ecosystems time to adapt. Climate change we're experiencing now is happening over years leaving little time for adaptation. The question of morality isn't about whether climate change is unique to human activity, but about our responsibility as stewards of the planet. Our actions are causing harm to ecosystems, wildlife, and our own communities at a rate that is far from normal. The planet might have experienced similar changes in the distant past, the rapidity of current changes and the harm they're causing is what makes this a moral (and our) issue...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37882129

Scarblac4• 3 years ago

It's like pushing someone down a staircase he was walking down anyway. Same thing right?

It's the insane speed of human caused climate change that's causing the mass extinctions.

thehappypm2• 3 years ago

Climate change isn’t really the root cause of the extinctions. It’s far more caused by habitat destruction.

Lutger• 3 years ago

But if humans cause large swings in climate that would happen naturally, then it’s not like what we’re causing is unique right?

It is unique in several ways. In a moral sense it is unique in that we knowingly caused it and failed to take action. In a historical sense, extinctions on this scale are so rare they are almost unique. What is unprecedented however is the rate of change. This is important because species aren't able to adapt anymore when the climate changes so rapidly.

rurp• 3 years ago

large-mass-scale extinction is a natural repeating phenomenon

Most people consider the death of their descendants and loved ones a poor outcome that they would like to prevent...

Yes things are self correcting in the sense that if we muck things up badly enough our society will collapse and something else will come after. But that kind of mass destruction will be horrifically bad for an awful lot of people.

tippytippytango3• 3 years ago

The moralizing is from people using shame as a strategy to affect public policy and/or gain power, I don’t think it’s much deeper than that. Shame can be very effective as most people are hard wired to respond to shame. The issue is that shame can be shunted into minor things to resolve it, buying a carbon neutral Apple Watch, Tesla or recycling can dissipate the shame for an individual leaving us with a problem and no real solution.

I personally think we will survive the climate catastrophe. It might be a Black Death type event, horrific and painful for everyone. But a wiser breed of humans will emerge on the other side.

bigchillin• 3 years ago

Welp, if you know about our planets history & cycles then this is not necessarily of concern. The planet goes through cycles, read about the great year or about the ice core samples form Greenland which tell a fascinating story

caseysoftware• 3 years ago

FTA:

Scientists found 68 of Antarctica's 162 ice shelves experienced a "statistically significant" reduction in mass between 1997 and 2021.
Another nine ice sheets saw smaller losses over the same period, while 29 gained mass and 62 did not change significantly.

Missing a key piece in this summary: What was the net change? Was it an increase or decrease?

kakaz• 3 years ago

Deutsche Welle. Not very trusted source

Antarctica: Ice shelves shrinking 'with no sign of recovery

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