Ice Shelf Collapse in East Antarctica

[multiweb]

Pretty confronting rollover picture: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149640/ice-shelf-collapse-in-east-antarctica

[Peter Ward]

Very concerning indeed.

Byron now underwater and Lismore has flooded yet again. So much for it being a "one in hundred/thousand year flood"

Clearly pollies can't count. :rolleyes:

Makes you wonder what it will take to motivate the hoi polloi finally demand major policy change.

[Rainmaker]

That is a worrying trend, unfortunately I think we're well past the point of no return. Extreme weather events are going to be the new normal and we as a people are directly responsible for them......

[multiweb]

There is no doubt that some coastal towns in low lying areas will have to be relocated to higher grounds. As an example in Sydney why there are so many new developments going up in Emu plain is just beyond belief. :shrug: The old argument that population is growing and they need the room doesn't hold any water. No pun intended.

[mura_gadi]

The annual summer to winter variation is around 2000gigatons(gt), the annual year on end lose is now getting up around 130+gt, on 94+gt lose over the decade.

2000gt of water can both add and remove a lot from the sea levels very easily. The near methodical reduction in annual ice and increasing decade averages are not good signs.

Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–2017
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1812883116

Short version:

[sil]

While I agree I can also see the twisting of numbers to lay blame elsewhere unfortunately. Already our politicians have been laying the groundwork for blaming the current developing nations (ie former third world who are now starting to industrialise themselves because all us rich nations refused to help them build to the level they could have Levi's jeans, McDonalds and Iphones which we continue to advertise to the world that everyone needs to have a better life. Like our Humanitarian efforts are really about isolation and detention.Soon our detention centers (islands) will be underwater anyway.

At least China working with Solomons is a good thing, base or not China has the technology and willpower to create new artificial land which will certainly allow Solomon Islanders to continue to live on for longer on their own land. While our politicians do nothing to actually help except form committees and antagonise on behalf of America.

It also wont take too much for Australia to become a string of islands, everyone seems to behave like we have a continue wall of mountain ranges and a high continent to provide a physical barrier from rising ocean waters. We’ll be flooded out from the inside and it’ll happen sooner than people think and people are dumb to believe politicians need to do something. Its their job to do nothing, we see every time theres time of crisis that australians help each other, while politicians umm and ahh and spend tax dollars on fact finding trip yet not a single one every fills a sandbag to help build a levy and certainly never get in a rubber dingy to find trapped survivors or help remove bodies. The just do nothing but thats the system of government we have and are stuck with until its too late for australians to do something about it.

In the next few years we’ll have major record bushfires happening at once in many locations, likewise we’ll see more flooding happening in multiple locations at once. Its not like these things never happened in the past but what also never happened was automatic processes to start the physical aid without politicians having to take advice or weigh options etc. Eg When x amount of rainfall happens in a geographic (not political) region historically see flooding to this degree her and her and here, so when the weather stations record the rate has hit that threshold an analyst surveyor from the army engineers is sent out to monitor and access in real time the downstream effects and start to call in people and equipment to shore up areas, create high ground tent living, hospital etc, and boats to reach distant communities and to co-ordinate a real time logistic team on their own, no politicians needed and resources already assigned and pre approved in whatever eventuality. Easy to set up and should have been done decades ago, but no instead we want our politician to take days yo decide what to do each time and its always the same, too little and way too late.

[OzEclipse]

We passed the point of no return about 20-25 years ago. No turning back.

However while some of what Sil (Steve) is correct about low lying areas along the entire east and south coast including Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne turning into a string of islands, it won't happen quickly, not even with recent developments in the Arctic and Antarctic. The historically fastest deglaciations occurred at rates of around 4-5 m per century. But this was low latitude deglaciation of ice age glacial advance caused by those glaciers being subject to higher insolation. Current polar caps are in darkness half the year.

Best current estimates are that it will take around 5000 years for 50 m of sea level rise due to polar melt. What will happen on a much shorter timescale, and we are already seeing it is that the number of normal years between extremes of heatwaves/firestorms and high rainfalls and floods will reduce and these extremes of weather will dominate.

If you download the 1990 IPCC report, it gives the following prediction for the average change across the entire Australian continent. But note the last statement, in bold.

"The warming ranges from 1 to 2°C in summer and is about 2°C in winter. Summer precipitation increases by around 10%, but the models do not produce consistent estimates of the changes in soil moisture. The area averages hide large variations at the sub-continental level." In addition to dark skies, I chose my retirement property location to be both fire and flood risk averse. We do get tornados in the region :-(

[SB]

Hi Marc,
I’ve been watching the Arctic and Antarctica ice analysis for many years. See:
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ In terms of the Antarctic the ice extent in Antarctica is highly variable depending on sea currents and wind circulation. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre the 2021 winter in Antarctica was the second coldest on record. Since then the sea ice dropped off quite rapidly to a record low in March this year.
“The February 25 timing of the minimum was*only a day later than the 1981 to 2010 median date of February 24 for the minimum. Over the satellite record, the Antarctic minimum has occurred as early as February 15 and as late as March 6.
Average austral summer air temperatures at the 925 mb level (about 2,500 feet above sea level) over Antarctic sea ice regions have been near average. However, winds*have been much stronger and generally in a more northward direction, helping to break up the ice and melt it in warmer ocean waters. One exception was the Weddell Sea, where winds came more from the north, but that served to push the ice edge southward, reducing extent near the Antarctic Peninsula.
Since the minimum on February 25, ice growth has progressed at a near-average rate with growth around most of the continent, except off the coast of Dronning Maud Land and Enderby Land, which lie to the south of Africa”

SB

[Peter Ward]

The elephant in the room is Greenland, as according to Wiki:

" In July 2021, a new surge of widespread melting began, covering 340,000 square miles of the ice sheet, and melting more 8 billion tons of ice per day for several days.[72]

In August 2021, as high temperatures continued over Greenland, with the melt extent at 337,000 square miles, rain fell for 13 hours at Greenland's Summit Station (at 10,551 feet elevation.)[73]

Researchers had no rain gauges to measure the rainfall, because temperatures at the summit have risen above freezing only three times since 1989 and it had never rained there before"

Australians are the Pablo Escobar's of coal...happy to ship it to whoever wants it, no questions asked. Neither major party will be turning off the supply anytime soon.

[multiweb]

Stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have nothing else but Gas maybe. Coal exports runs the whole joint unfortunately. We could do it but then all the lights would go off.

[raymo]

Coal export does not run the whole joint; More iron ore is exported than coal.
raymo

[raymo]

I've no idea what the plans are, but I note that our coal exports have dropped significantly over the last three years, whether that is due in some way to covid, or maybe to some countries starting to make an effort to wean
themselves off of coal, or for some other reason entirely, I have no idea.
Hopefully, end of hijack.
raymo

[iborg]

Some information - I've put some text in bold. Bear in mind that some information could be on the old side. I suggest taking numbers as a general indication only.



For most of the past decade, coal has been Australia's second largest resource export, after iron ore, and since 2015 has averaged around one-quarter of annual resource export values and 14 per cent of total export values (Graph 2). In 2018, the value of coal exports was $67 billion, equivalent to 3½ per cent of nominal GDP.
Source https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2019/sep/the-changing-global-market-for-australian-coal.html






Australia’s mining industry has delivered a 10.4 per cent share of the Australian economy in 2019-20, making it the largest economic contributor with a $202 billion GDP, according to The Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Source https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/mining-industry-holds-largest-slice-of-australian-economy/






Mining employs ~280 000, about 2.1% of the workforce

https://labourmarketinsights.gov.au/industries/industry-details?industryCode=B






Who owns Australian mining Australia’s mining industry is 86% foreign owned

Source https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/undermining-our-democracy-foreign-corporate-influence-through-the-australian-mining-lobby/
The Australia Institute appears to be a genuine, independent, think tank. Hopefully it is.





Taxes paid by mining companies seems to be difficult to work out. One bit of information I did come across, is that the mining companies often combine royalties and taxes together. It appears that this should not be done, because royalties are more like a cost of purchasing the the raw material (just like a baker buys flour).

See https://www.michaelwest.com.au/mining-lobby-exaggerates-taxes-and-royalties-paid-45-billion/




My thoughts - we need to stop exporting the ground under our feet, and actually make things here. Especially as most of the benefit is going overseas. Also, even if we were stupid enough to shut down coal mining tomorrow, it ain't really that big! Near term (within 20 years), it's an industry that needs to die.





Philip

[gary]

Antarctic temperatures

Vostok Base March average: -53C
Vostok Base March 2022: -17.7C

Concordia Station March average: -48.7C
Concordia Station March 2022: -12.2C

Dome C March average: -47.4C
Dome C March 2022: -10.2C

Article, ABC, 22 March 2022
"Antarctic and Arctic heat records have been smashed. What's going on?" (https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-03-22/antarctic-arctic-heat-records/100926908)



Article here :-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-03-22/antarctic-arctic-heat-records/100926908

[glenc]

The Earth's ice is melting rapidly.
* The PIOMAS Arctic Sea Ice Volume, the September trend line, shows an alarming 75% decline since 1979.
* Research based on observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites (2002-2017) and GRACE Follow-On (since 2018 - ) shows that between 2002 and 2021, Greenland shed approximately 280 gigatons of ice per year.
* Satellite observations show that more than 6,100 billion tonnes of ice has melted from mountain glaciers since 1994.
* The GRACE and GRACE-FO data also shows Antarctica has shed approximately 150 gigatons of ice per year since 2002. (1 gigaton = 1 cubic km)
* Melting 1 cubic km of ice is very difficult, it is like heating 1 cubic km of water from 0C to 80C.
* Hydrogen and ammonia exports can, over time, replace thermal coal.

[raymo]

Most Andean glaciers are retreating rapidly too..
raymo

[Peter Ward]

Both Mauna Loa and Cape Grim data show that gigatonnes of CO2 is still being dumped into the atmosphere with no sign of abatement.

The reason for a lack of meaningful policy and any emissions abatement is indeed money...which, due the trillions of dollars involved....buys policy.

I expect people eventually won't give a $..t about money when just having breathable air, food and drinkable water becomes your primary goal in life as you battle through 60 degree summers. (Not fanciful ...we saw 51.5C at Badgerys Creek in 2020). OK, then it rained. And rained, and rained some more.

Given the predictions of extremes in fire, floods and extreme weather events were made decades ago, and are now coming to fruition, you have to ask at what point do you take on climate reality.

Thinking of troublesome ice... I like this line from The Titanic.

Ismay: But this ship can't sink!
Thomas Andrews: She is made of iron, sir. I assure you, she can. And she *will*. It is a mathematical certainty!

[mura_gadi]

The north west shelf project signed under the Howard government (2006) which exports 12 million tons on LPG a year to China for 3 cents a litre till 2031 is a prime example of global climate policies being token public pleasers'.

That's was the price set of the fuel and carbon offset(?) nearly 10 years after the Kyoto agreement was signed...

[Peter Ward]

I have been dong a bit of research on how bad could the planet get if nothing is done to mitigate human induced CO2, methane, etc. emissions (which is the current reality) so it's business as usual until 2100....in terms of election cycles, who cares, but as I have two grandchildren, they will very likely see what our sad legacy has been.

2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world, will have to endure of 45 days per year of 60°C. The human body cannot be outside for longer than about six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down at these temperatures. The same applies to flora an fauna.

Moving toward the poles will be required for the survival of any species. Equatorial regions of the planet will likely be uninhabitable except for hardy succulent plants and insects.

The oceans will have acidified by 125%. All coral reefs will be dead. Fish stocks will have collapsed. Thermal expansion of the oceans alone will account for a 1 metre sea-level rise. Major coastal cities such as Jakarta, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Miami will be abandoned.

All mountain glaciers will have melted. Flows of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Yamuna rivers which over 600 million people rely on for water, will have all but dried up.

Then there are the storms, bushfires, massive rain events & flooding, species extinctions (which are already going great-guns), loss of arable land, loss of fresh water......

Frankly I found it too depressing to delve into the details any further.

Its all bad.

The undeniable recent events in Australia so far...

-Massive repeated bleaching on the Great Barrier reef
-186,000 square kilometres destroyed by the megafire of 2020, along thousands of homes and 3 Billion animals.
-" Hundred year" floods in Lismore for the last two years in a row
-Hottest recorded temperatures ever
-Highest recorded rainfall ever

As I write The NSW Government has just given Whitehaven the tick of approval to construct a new coal mine at Narrabri...which will result in another half billion tonnes of CO2.

I've found when you are in a deep hole, the best course of action is to stop digging.

High time we took the shovels off these lunatics.

[drylander]

And the euro countries that shut down coal fired electricity now depend on russia to supply them with gas for heat and electricity and won't sanction russia to hard over the Ukraine invasion lest they freeze to death. Suddenly found out the wind and solar aren't reliable for baseload. We are just as bad with a lot our industries gone to china and relying on other countries to bail us out with petrol due to no refineries here and having to ship our oil to Singapore for processing and increasing our fuel prices. Our critical oil reserves are held in the US so a naval blockade and we're toast.
Pete

[Peter Ward]

Distributed wind can and does provide baseload. As for renewables just look at Iceland on best practice. 99.8% renewable.

Coal power stations break down from time to time and, as a result, can be out of action for weeks...as has often been the case in Australia.

I have no problem with Gen 4 or Thorium based nuclear. The French have
been safely operating Nuclear for decades....and export their surplus energy to much of Europe.

BTW I note 9 coal miners lost their lives yesterday due gas suffocation. Hardly a whimper in the news cycle on this, but had 9 French nuclear power workers suffered the same fate....it would have been a global headline.

[sil]

All true unfortunately, but how to get rid of our system of government that adds to the troubles and just wait until things are too late, as long as there’s no mud and sewerage running through their homes they won’t care and can always blame the opposition which is the point of our system of democracy: to be able to say we tried but the opposition are to blame. Unless australians are willing to see the problems and try to hold the politicians legally to their promises but of course most methods of achieving that have been put into law. Notice the recent trend towards making protests illegal and even criminal and the lack of appropriate Legislative Change cycle during covid to get anything put into legislation without public consultation or review processes. To find out for yourself try reading the definitions of words in the legislation and compare that to the public understanding of the words or phrases, its how the system works and why we’re seeing increasing numbers of “support” systems driving taxpayers into poverty and homelessness. I bet what everyone one of you thinks of as “renewables” is different from the definition in legislation. I bet theres room for the government to classify Coal and natural gas as renewable because there is no timeframe in the definitions and so in 50M years the coal will renew. I’ve seen that sort of crap used. Even if we go fully american with the one bullet one vote policy the legislation remains in place for the next people to abuse.

I’m not sure about the timeframe for destruction but it might be within our lifetimes not our grandchildrens. As the balance tipping keeps swinging it’ll accelerate and we’ll see more harm and death as a result but the extremes will be shortlived, but long enough for death of anyone unprepared but in our grandchildrens time the extreme predictions will be the average. Bring it on I’m ready to go now, No matter if you put your super mansion on a mountain top of underground, you wont have livestock to live off for long or crops either and it’ll happen faster than evolution can adapt but thats fine, if humans get wiped out the world and life will go on and ,yes, find a way.

[JohnF]

Chinea has heaps of Dirty Poluting Brown Coal and were opening a new Coal Burning Power station every two weeks.

If we want to save the Environment, we would sell them our black coal, which is less polluting than there brown coal.

[Kal]

Yup. Attached is a visualisation of Australia's exports for 2020



Source: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/aus/all/show/2020/

[drylander]

Iceland isn't the best example due to low population an low h-intensity electricity using production system. I guess we will see when they shut down the coal fired stations here.
Pete

[Peter Ward]

Is the fact it actually works for the Icelanders...who BTW have free thermal solar heating....the reason it's not "the best example" :) ?

Oz has sniffed at thermal generation from Hot Dry Rocks and Thermal Solar
(the latter team from UNSW had a proposal that could have powered 90% of the entire eastern seaboard for a 1/10th of the cost of the NBN) was flipped off by Bob Carr and unsurprisingly went offshore to China.

Thermal solar via superheating large quantities of saline solution (think Olympic swimming pool tank size) with sunshine, then running a steam turbine 24/7 courtesy its thermal inertia is an easy solution to baseload.

[Peter Ward]

Today's Sydney Morning Herald:

""......governments and companies had lied to people about their commitments to reducing emissions, and that though the world needed to see a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of the decade the world was on track for a 14 per cent increase"

One wonders what it will take...

[multiweb]

Geopolitical tensions, lack of resources and war. Enjoy it while it lasts. :thumbsup:

[AdamJL]

A complete re-do of our political system. The people in government are beholden to big polluting businesses. That's not a conspiracy, that's just fact. Crony capitalism kills any plan for meaningful change; the system is designed to ensure entities with money keep that money, whatever the cost, and make it harder for disruption to occur.
Make no mistake about it, we need complete and utter disruption of our economic system to achieve our climate goals. But it won't happen.

[multiweb]

True but funny thing is the planet doesn't need us. We've got it backwards. Still.

[Hans Tucker]

I love movies .. at times they make a point. Maybe we need a third party intervention

https://youtu.be/Dh9UsP9UMyQ

https://youtu.be/M58EEaGWBBU

[multiweb]

I read that it will take at least 100000 years for CO2 levels to go back to pre industrial levels and 10000 for a third of it to go. So in the scale of things (geological timeline) we're just a fart on the radar. No real impact. We tend to think so highly of ourselves.

[drylander]

so all our trees, grasses etc will convert what gas to oxygen? still in 100000 years the problem will have been solved as the human race will most likely have blown itself to bits and the planet can resume normal programming.
Pete

[mura_gadi]

No real impact would be to deny the fact that climate change, environment encroachment and pollution are not playing a part in the current mass extinction event taking place.

And whether we have 300pmm or 475pmm will not make a lick of difference to our survival chances. If you look at the past four eco censuses you'll see a a near 30% decline in recorded bio-mass every cycle. We really don't have to worry about sea levels at the end of the century...

We have had a very real impact, but the planet was once nearly entirely covered by a single species of fungus, so its all cogs and wheels...

[multiweb]

Oh we did have an impact short term. Definitely. We ransacked the joint and caused a mass extinction both in fauna and flora. What I'm saying is that in the grand scheme of things it happens really quickly and will fix itself relatively quickly as well. So no real impact. Things always bounce back. We might not be here to see it or maybe a much cut down version of humanity. If anyone's left.

[mura_gadi]

The planets bio-diversity has the ability to adapt to consume an excess resource and the ability to survive in general.

The plastic eating bacteria starting to evolve within the plastic floating island is a great example. Less than 100 years and we have something starting to adapt to a newly available resource. Nature adapts a lot quicker than she is given credit for me thinks.

Birds are a good example of survival from the last extinction event.

But what level of bio-mass and bio-diversity will be around in 2100 is anyone's guess. I think it getting pretty close to not being able to eat food without mirco-plastics present now, both in land and sea based protein.