A report led by scientists in the UK and US found the rate of melting from the Antarctic ice sheet has accelerated threefold in the last five years and is now vanishing faster than at any previously recorded time.
A separate study warns that unless urgent action is taken in the next decade the melting ice could contribute more than 25cm to a total global sea level rise of more than a metre by 2070.This could lead eventually to the collapse of the entire west Antarctic ice sheet, and around 3.5m of sea-level rise.
(Here are the links to the two abstracts of the studies published in Nature – here and here – on the off chance you are able to access to the full articles)
So, now we’re looking at over 1m of sea level rise by 2070 and 3.5m of sea level rise by…well, the Guardian report doesn’t say. But NASA researchers have suggested a 3m – 6m contribution coming from Antarctica within human time frames – ie, within the lifespan of people alive today.
I’ve written of this before – on how the IPCC essentially took no account of ice collapse from Antarctica or ice melt from Greenland into account with their “1m by 2100” projection that was contained in the last IPCC report, and on how government is not basing policy on available scientific knowledge.
But no matter. We can have hospitals built on reclaimed land, and do nothing about anything that already exists on reclaimed land, and she’ll be right.
If government was serious (or maybe even simply exhibiting half pie levels of intelligence), then all the talk of net zero emissions by whatever date would stop. Immediately.
The fact of the matter is that land based emissions must be net negative (ie – there would have to be a sustained drop in land based emissions) and energy based emissions must be zero if there is going to be any level of “combatting” going on on the global warming front.
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