Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumPotsdam Institute Researcher: "We Have Entered A New Era Of Irreversible Climate Change"
World leaders need to ensure that global warming is kept low enough to avoid pulling the plug on vast ice shelves in Antarctica, thereby causing a catastrophic sea level rise across the globe, a leading scientist warned yesterday.
Dr Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noted last months major scientific report warning that a collapse of large sections of the west Antarctica ice shelf had already begun and was now unstoppable.
We have entered a new era of irreversible climate change, a tipping point of part of the climate system, he told a side event at the UN climate talks in Bonn. West Antarctica has tipped and there isnt anything we can do about it.
As delegates from 185 countries continued their informal consultations on a new climate treaty, Dr Levermann said parts of the East Antarctic Ice Shelf were also showing signs of instability and could be lost if the ice plug still holding it was eroded. We need to keep global warming low enough to avoid pulling that plug, he warned. Otherwise, the Wilkes Ice Basin and other large glaciers could be sucked into the Southern Ocean over time, feeding a rise in sea levels of three or four metres.
EDIT
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2014/06/west-antarctica-has-tipped-and-there.html
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)According to what I've read, the collpase of teh West Antarctic shelf could raise sea levels by up to ten feet.
The deniers have killed us all. Just thankful I don't have kids to pass this nightmare on to.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)hedda_foil
(16,376 posts)Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 19-28)