Of interest to all you deniers:


G****l w*****g policies we set today will determine the next 10,000 years

The decisions made in the next couple of decades about reducing greenhouse gas emissions will determine the severity of g****l w*****g — including potentially catastrophic sea level rise — for the next 10,000 years, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature C*****e C****e, examines the "deep time" implications of emissions of g****l w*****g pollutants such as carbon dioxide.

The study vividly demonstrates how the lag effects that are inherent in the climate system affect policy decisions that today's leaders must make through the middle of this century.

These lag effects — namely the ability of carbon dioxide to remain in the air for thousands of years, and the high sensitivity and long memory of global ice sheets to this temperature increase — will ensure that today's policy choices will play out on a stage longer than the history of human civilization.

SEE ALSO: Historic climate agreement adopted in Paris
"If carbon dioxide emissions continue unchecked, the carbon dioxide released during this century will commit Earth and its residents to an entirely new climate regime," the study states.

The study reviews evidence from ice cores, tree rings and other sources showing the past 20,000 years of the Earth's climate history, including how sea levels fell during the last ice age and rose as the climate entered a new, more stable and mild period known as the Holocene.

The study also notably details projections for the next 10,000 years based on different scenarios of rising greenhouse gas emissions from burning f****l f**ls such as coal and oil.

It does not base its results on the highest emissions scenario, also known as a worst-case scenario, but the results are sobering nonetheless.

For example, the study shows that future rates of sea level rise due to melting ice caps and warming, expanding seas, could be on the order of up to 4 meters, or 13.1 feet, per century, which would be unprecedented in more than 8,000 years.

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Screenshot of a sea level rise projection showing the complete inundation of Shanghai, China if sea level rises by 30 meters, or 98 feet.
Image: Climate Central
To compare this with more commonly cited projections through 2100, most assessments project up to around 1 meter, or 3.3 feet, of sea level rise during that period.

In total, the study projects a global mean sea level rise of between 25 to 52 meters, or 82 to 171 feet within the next 10,000 years, noting that at least 1.2 to 2.2 meters of that is already virtually guaranteed, due to emissions-to-date.

"Even if emissions were capped or reduced to some lower rate, we would still be committed to global mean sea level rise that is substantially larger than that experienced over much of recorded human civilization," the study states.

The only way to avoid such a scenario would be to drive emissions down to zero, or even into negative territory, in which the environment is taking out more carbon than is being added to it.

"This research is a deeply urgent wake-up call to become much more ambitious," wrote study co-author Benjamin Strauss of the research and journalism organization Climate Central.

Sea level rise commitment

Based on the sea level rise projections, the study calculated the parts of the world that would be most directly impacted. The world population on land below the level of projected sea level rise is 1.3 billion, or 19% of the 2010 global population, the study found.

A 30-meter, or 98-foot, rise in sea level along the U.S. East Coast would inundate nearly all of New York City, Boston, Miami (along with the rest of South Florida), and coastal Louisiana, among other areas.

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Sea level rise projection for New York City based on 30 meters, or 98 feet, of sea level rise. Dark blue areas are submerged.
Image: Climate central
A total of 122 countries would see at least 10% of their current population in areas that would be directly submerged, the study found, with 25 coastal megacities seeing half their population submerged, based on current population levels.

Anders Levermann, a study co-author and researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, told Mashable in an email that the study shows how current emissions are creating a new era in geological time, which many scholars have now termed the "Anthropocene" for the human influence on the Earth.

"I think a very interesting perspective (but not the only one) is to say that this paper really says that humans are creating a new geological epoch. What we are doing now in a very brief moment in history is changing the Earth for millennia to come," Levermann wrote.

"The Anthropocene will be at least as long as the Holocene," he added, referring to the geological epoch during which time human civilization became established and flourished.

Discounting the future

Policy makers and economists often discount the future cost of choices made today, which can result in a lack of consideration for future generations when setting climate policies. The authors of the study designed this research to show how problematic this is.

"No generation has ever had such an opportunity to help or harm so many hundreds of generations coming after it," Strauss said. "We have the chance to build a legacy as the most h**ed or the greatest generation for 10,000 years."

Studies including this new research have shown that unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced significantly through the middle of this century, we will be locked into a rate and magnitude of g****l w*****g that human civilization has never experienced before, with profound consequences particularly for low-lying and poor nations around the world.

This was acknowledged by diplomats at the Paris Climate Summit in December, but the deal struck there only covers emissions through the year 2030, with a fuzzy long-term emissions target of peaking global emissions by an unspecified date.

While the agreement struck in Paris was historic, it would still allow for global emissions to increase through the year 2030. Based on the emissions pledges submitted to the U.N., which are also known as Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions, or INDCs, the world is in for around 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming through 2100.

That's is enough warming to set in motion a cascade of impacts for centuries to come, according to the new study,

"The eventual magnitude as well as the rate of change is still in our hands," Levermann said. "The more we emit, the more and the faster we change."

PRM, this is exactly the kind of nuanced response I expect from most (not all) of you deniers. You want it simple, don't you? National Geographic prints an article and you misread it to make it simple in your mind. And now this simple response when there is in fact a conspiracy going on all around you by the Koch Brothers that is complex, fascinating, and to you evidently, invisible. You don't think that islands in the South Pacific are slowly being submerged ? Tell me I haven't seen what I have seen with my own two eyes on more than 50 trips out there to extremely remote places. You'll have about as much success convincing me as you would trying to catch a fresh fart and painting it pink.

Deniers, try this on for size, too.

Threat of Sea Level Rise Intensifies as Antarctica’s Melting Ice Sheet at ‘Point of No Return’

British researchers have reinforced recent evidence that melting in the Antarctic caused by the warming of the Southern Ocean could ultimately lead to global sea levels rising by around 3 meters or nearly 10 feet.

Their findings are in line with the results of a study that said six more decades of ocean warming could destabilize the ice beside the Amundsen Sea, starting a cascade of ice loss that would continue for centuries.

Mount Tyree, in the Ellsworth mountains, is Antarctica’s second highest peak. Photo credit: Christian Stangl / Wikimedia Commons
Mount Tyree, in the Ellsworth mountains, is Antarctica’s second highest peak. Photo credit: Christian Stangl / Wikimedia Commons
That 2015 study, which used computer simulations, was the work of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

But the UK scientists used a much more direct method of assessing the landscape to establish how the West Antarctic ice sheet might respond to increasing global temperatures. They just examined the mountain tops that stick up above the ice.

Levels of Ice

In what they say is the first study of its kind, the researchers were able to work out how the levels of ice covering the land have changed over hundreds of thousands of years by examining the peaks protruding through the ice in the Ellsworth Mountains, on Antarctica’s Atlantic flank.

The team from the University of Edinburgh, Northumbria University and Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre assessed the changes on slopes at various heights on the mountainside, which showed the levels previously reached by the ice sheet.

They also plotted the distribution of boulders on the mountains deposited by melting glaciers and used chemical technology—also known as exposure dating—to show how long rocks had been exposed to the atmosphere and how old they were.

The scientists report in Nature Communications that their results show how, during previous warm periods, a substantial amount of ice would have been lost from the West Antarctic ice sheet by ocean melting.

But it would not have melted entirely, which they say suggests that ice would have been lost from areas below sea level, but not on upland areas. The study shows that parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet have existed continuously for at least 1.4 million years.

John Woodward, professor of physical geography at Northumbria University, is one of the leaders of the study, which was supported by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and the British Antarctic Survey.

He said: “It is possible that the ice sheet has passed the point of no return. If so, the big question is how much will go and how much will sea levels rise.”

His fellow leader, Dr. Andrew Hein, research fellow and manager of the University of Edinburgh’s Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory, said: “Our findings narrow the margin of uncertainty around the likely impact of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet on sea level rise. This remains a troubling forecast since all signs suggest the ice from West Antarctica could disappear relatively quickly.”

Massive Consequences

If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to melt altogether—something that is not likely to happen this century—the world’s sea levels would rise by 4.8 meters. That would have massive consequences for coastal communities worldwide. The melting of the West Antarctic glaciers accelerated threefold over the 21 years to 2014.

What happens to the ice sheets of the Antarctic continent could cause even more profound changes to the Earth. The East Antarctic sheet had for decades been thought to be more stable than its western neighbor, but that is now less certain.

Two scientists from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reported in 2014 that they had identified how a relatively small loss of ice there could ultimately trigger a discharge of ice into the ocean that would result in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years ahead.

Another study, published in 2015, predicted a doubling of the rate at which the ice shelves across Antarctica will melt by 2050.

Deniers, try this on for size, too.

Threat of Sea Level Rise Intensifies as Antarctica’s Melting Ice Sheet at ‘Point of No Return’

British researchers have reinforced recent evidence that melting in the Antarctic caused by the warming of the Southern Ocean could ultimately lead to global sea levels rising by around 3 meters or nearly 10 feet.

Their findings are in line with the results of a study that said six more decades of ocean warming could destabilize the ice beside the Amundsen Sea, starting a cascade of ice loss that would continue for centuries.

Mount Tyree, in the Ellsworth mountains, is Antarctica’s second highest peak. Photo credit: Christian Stangl / Wikimedia Commons
Mount Tyree, in the Ellsworth mountains, is Antarctica’s second highest peak. Photo credit: Christian Stangl / Wikimedia Commons
That 2015 study, which used computer simulations, was the work of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

But the UK scientists used a much more direct method of assessing the landscape to establish how the West Antarctic ice sheet might respond to increasing global temperatures. They just examined the mountain tops that stick up above the ice.

Levels of Ice

In what they say is the first study of its kind, the researchers were able to work out how the levels of ice covering the land have changed over hundreds of thousands of years by examining the peaks protruding through the ice in the Ellsworth Mountains, on Antarctica’s Atlantic flank.

The team from the University of Edinburgh, Northumbria University and Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre assessed the changes on slopes at various heights on the mountainside, which showed the levels previously reached by the ice sheet.

They also plotted the distribution of boulders on the mountains deposited by melting glaciers and used chemical technology—also known as exposure dating—to show how long rocks had been exposed to the atmosphere and how old they were.

The scientists report in Nature Communications that their results show how, during previous warm periods, a substantial amount of ice would have been lost from the West Antarctic ice sheet by ocean melting.

But it would not have melted entirely, which they say suggests that ice would have been lost from areas below sea level, but not on upland areas. The study shows that parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet have existed continuously for at least 1.4 million years.

John Woodward, professor of physical geography at Northumbria University, is one of the leaders of the study, which was supported by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and the British Antarctic Survey.

He said: “It is possible that the ice sheet has passed the point of no return. If so, the big question is how much will go and how much will sea levels rise.”

His fellow leader, Dr. Andrew Hein, research fellow and manager of the University of Edinburgh’s Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory, said: “Our findings narrow the margin of uncertainty around the likely impact of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet on sea level rise. This remains a troubling forecast since all signs suggest the ice from West Antarctica could disappear relatively quickly.”

Massive Consequences

If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to melt altogether—something that is not likely to happen this century—the world’s sea levels would rise by 4.8 meters. That would have massive consequences for coastal communities worldwide. The melting of the West Antarctic glaciers accelerated threefold over the 21 years to 2014.

What happens to the ice sheets of the Antarctic continent could cause even more profound changes to the Earth. The East Antarctic sheet had for decades been thought to be more stable than its western neighbor, but that is now less certain.

Two scientists from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reported in 2014 that they had identified how a relatively small loss of ice there could ultimately trigger a discharge of ice into the ocean that would result in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years ahead.

Another study, published in 2015, predicted a doubling of the rate at which the ice shelves across Antarctica will melt by 2050.