Print This Post
Entire Ice Mass of Greenland Will Melt at Two Degrees Celsius Temperature Increase
Note from Dorothy: The upper limit of two degrees Celsius global warming picked by climate negotiators is a political number, grabbed out of the air because it appeared to them global warming might possibly be kept below this level. In light of increasing evidence that a 2 C increase is too high for much of life on our earth to survive, a reexamination of this approach is necessary.
- I know of no credible climate scientist who actually believes a 2 C level increase is safe. Even at the present warming level of warming, the sea level is rising, and catastrophic weather events are taking place. Witness the unprecedented heat waves, wildfires and flooding described in current news reports.
- There’s probably no way now we can prevent the planet from heating up above 2 C. In spite of a weak world economy, carbon dioxide emissions are continuing to rise and could pass 400 parts per million in as little a three years.
- The only hope is for us to reduce CO2 emissions to zero a quickly as possible and then work to safely remove the excess carbon from the atmosphere. We can’t wait for natural processes to do this for us; it will take far to long. See Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?, by James Hansen et al, 2008
Greenland ice sheet faces ‘tipping point in 10 years’
Scientists warn that temperature rise of between 2C and 7C would cause ice to melt, resulting in 23ft rise in sea level
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US Environment Correspondent
The Guardian, August 10, 2010.
An enormous chunk of ice, roughly 97 square miles in size, has broken off the Petermann Glacier along the northwest coast of Greenland. Photograph: Aqua/Modis/Nasa
The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today.
Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, and faces an even grimmer future, according to Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University
“Sometime in the next decade we may pass that tipping point which would put us warmer than temperatures that Greenland can survive,” Alley told a briefing in Congress, adding that a rise in the range of 2C to 7C would mean the obliteration of Greenland’s ice sheet.
The fall-out would be felt thousands of miles away from the Arctic, unleashing a global sea level rise of 23ft (7 metres), Alley warned. Low-lying cities such as New Orleans would vanish.
“What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done,” he said.
Speaking by phone, Alley was addressing a briefing held by the House of Representatives committee on energy independence and global warming.
Greenland is losing ice mass at an increasing rate, dumping more icebergs into the ocean because of warming temperatures, he said.
The stark warning was underlined by the momentous break-up of one of Greenland’s largest glaciers last week, which set a 100 sq mile chunk of ice (four times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island) drifting into the North Strait between Greenland and Canada.
The briefing also noted that the last six months had set new temperature records.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/10/greenland-ice-sheet-tipping-point
For more information and photos, see the August 11 story at The Weather Network
Ice Island Breaks Off Glacier
By Lyndsay Morrison, staff writer
August 11, 2010 — Scientists say the ice island from a Greenland glacier is part of a broader “disturbing picture” of global warming.
An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off a glacier in Greenland last week. And while some scientists say the event is not clear evidence of global warming, many agree that it is part of a broader “disturbing picture.”
The ice island has an area of about 260 square kilometres and a thickness up to half the height of the empire state building.
The ice separated from the tip of the Petermann glacier. While this is a normal process, it is the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.
Robert Bindshadler is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Maryland. He says this event is part of a greater phenomenon of warming that is causing ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise.
“All the changes that we see taking place and all the changes that the very best climate models say are coming in the future, near future, are going to impact human life on the planet,” Bindshadler said on Tuesday. “We’re all going to have to adapt to higher rates of sea level, changes in patterns of precipitation, and it’s quite a disturbing picture. You can’t, you cannot see that future and not be disturbed.”
Scientists have said the first six months of 2010 have been the hottest globally on record. The El Nino weather pattern is said to have contributed to the higher temperatures.
The ice island will drift and enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada. The ice island could then fuse to land, break up into smaller pieces, or slowly move south where it could block shipping.
The initial discovery of the calving was made by the Canadian Ice Service.
With files from Reuters
i want to have more information about climate change. The cause, the measures to remedy the situation, what has been done, is left to be done. What are the challenges to the remeding the situation and what is every one expected to do
One of the best ways you can learn about climate change or “global climatic disruption” is to use our own site. Click on the “All Articles” tab on our home page for nearly two years worth of articles, categorized by date and subject matter. Or use or search box. For example, type in “Bangladesh” to see how climate change is affecting people in that nation.
These days, so many severe climate-related events are taking place, it’s hard to post them all. Terrible wildfires in Russia, Portugal and Brazil; massive flooding in Pakistan, China and Eastern Europe. This will be the year when people all over the planet realize without a doubt our planet is is very serious trouble.
Thank you for your interest!
awa eric
A good resource to get an idea of the scope of what needs to be done, see the series of articles at Climate Progress called “An Introduction to Core Climate Solutions”.
Joe Romm’s take on a study done by European scientists. He covers viable solutions that can each remove one gigaton of carbon emissions per year, by 2040, if I remember correctly. For example massive deployment worldwide of PV solar would be one “wedge”, Wind another wedge. We need 12 – 14 wedges to give you some idea of the scope of this task. And we need to start them now.
Some resources on the science of climate change
The Scientific Basis for Anthropogenic Climate Change http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2007/12...
The 2008 National Academy of Sciences Summary Brochure on Climate Change http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/clim...
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630
The Royal Society “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change”
http://www.logicalscience.com/climate_change/climate_change_intro.htm An Introduction to Climate Change
awa ereck
As a layman, I was struck by the following. It doesn’t require a PhD to understand the implications. And for me, it is the best answer, to why the current warming is not a natural warming like others in the past, as skeptics usually claim.
You probably have heard of “clean coal” technology, or carbon capture and sequestration. The idea is to capture the CO2 from burning coal, and pump it deep into the earth. This removes it from the short term (or active) carbon cycle. Thats the cycle where carbon moves through living things, the atmosphere, top soil, and water.
It took 65 million years for coal to develop in the earth, by precipitating out of the short term carbon cycle, and being locked away in coal deposits and into the long term carbon cycle. I refer to this as mother nature’s carbon sequestration, similar to what is being proposed for clean coal. Now we are releasing this 65 million year accumulation of carbon back into the atmosphere and thus, back into the short term carbon cycle, in a few hundred years, or a geological nanosecond. This is an unprecedented occurance, probably in the history of the planet.
I would like a skeptic to explain how this is part of a natural cycle, or is anything like any natural cycle that the earth has been through before.
I learned about this from a book called “The Carbon Age” by Eric Roston which I thoroughly enjoyed. For a layman, its a fascinating read about the earth, and about carbon and how unique and critical it is to the world as we know it.
Thank you so much for these comments. I’m finding your references very useful.