The Antarctic Ice Sheet Has Started to Collapse and Nothing Can Stop It

[Myna]

For decades, scientists have feared the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet—a vast swath of ice that could unleash a slow but unstoppable 10-foot rise in sea levels if it melted. So here is today's terrible news: we now know the ice sheet is melting. And there's pretty much nothing we can do about it.

The accelerating collapse of the ice sheet is reported by two different teams of scientists, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters. Its collapse has been predicted for decades, most prominently by glaciologist John Mercer, but this is the first tangible evidence that it's actually now happening. Warmer waters are most likely responsible for the melting.

The New York Times explains why the position of the ice sheet makes it especially vulnerable to runway melting:

The basic problem is that much of the West Antarctic ice sheet sits below sea level in a kind of bowl-shaped depression [in] the earth. As Dr. Mercer outlined in 1978, once the part of the ice sheet sitting on the rim of the bowl melts and the ice retreats into deeper water, it becomes unstable and highly vulnerable to further melting

This is no longer just speculation or the plot of a blockbuster film. "This is really happening," NASA's Thomas P. Wagner emphasized to the New York Times. "There's nothing to stop it now."

The relative good news is that the melting will take place over a few hundred years—so take a breath—but it means an inevitable 10-foot rise in sea level. That's enough to engulf large tracts of coast all over the world. Plan accordingly, humans. [Science and NASA via New York Times]

To see what sea level rise of 10 feet would mean, check out Climate Central's Surging Seas interactive.

Source - http://gizmodo.com/the-antarctic-ice-sheet-has-started-to-collapse-and-not-1575164209

[OrioNeXus]

Probability of Getting killed by melting glaciers is more than getting killed by Asteroid

[humble3d]

10 Feet of Global Sea Level Rise Is Now Guaranteed
Written by
Brian Merchant
@bcmerchant [email protected]
May 12, 2014
Images, Media and more via the link below:

At least 10 feet of sea level rise is now guaranteed worldwide; it's all but inevitable, a done deal. An ice sheet two miles thick has collapsed in West Antarctica—glaciologists have been dreading this moment for decades, though in recent years, it was more of a question of when than if—and there is nothing that can stop it from melting now.

NASA scientists say so, glaciologists say so, researchers who've spent their entire careers studying the slow and increasingly inevitable melt of our planet's permanent ice stores say so. They say so in two new studies debuting this week; one in Science and one in Geophysical Research Letters. They are all saying we should begin getting comfortable with sea levels that lap up 10 feet higher on our shores in a matter of decades.

Long before the collapse of West Antarctica's Thwaites ice sheet, an organization called Climate Central created this interactive map, which shows how various levels of sea level rise will impact the United States. Grimly and fortuitously, it goes up to 10 feet—the amount that is now locked-in, but by no means the minimum of sea level rise we can expect to experience thanks to climate change. Go ahead, plug your city in, and see what percent chance you have of being driven away by high waters.

For instance, 99.5 percent of the population of Louisiana, as if they haven't suffered enough, will again find themselves underwater when the seas rise 10 feet. Thirty percent of all of the homes in Florida will be submerged; that's 5.6 million people. For Lauderdale, for one, will be nearly below the waves. Only 9 percent of New York City will have to relocate in the face of rising tides, but then, that means 700,000 people will have to find new homes—twice as many as New Orleans.

Even if you don't live at or near sea level in one of those vulnerable areas, the crisis the rise will bring will impact you too; it will either cost heady sums to shore up the flood-walls and prepare the dikes, or chaos and misfortune will reign when a disaster—a hurricane, for instance—hits. Either way, rising seas are a hugely destabilizing force.

That degree of sea level rise may take decades yet. It is driven by warmer waters, not warmer air; in West Antarctica, these great ice sheets are slowly warmed from below, then beaten apart by more ferocious winds—another feature of a climate-changed world, scientists surmise. And the risk is so much greater than 10 feet; the Greenland ice sheet and the other Antarctic stores hold 200 feet of sea level rise in their softening doomsday banks.

Whether we melt all or much of that remaining permanent ice depends on whether we decide to slow our rate of carbon emissions, civilization-wide. If we do not, it will be far more than coastal cities in Florida that we need worry about. If we are smart, we will act swiftly to mitigate our industrial pollution, and begin planning for higher tides. So far, we have not been smart.

"This is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice, told the New York Times. “There’s nothing to stop it now."

sources

_http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2_http://motherboard.vice.com/read/10-feet-of-global-sea-level-rise-now-inevitable

[windowsvistas]

I wonder what type of world we are leaving for our children :s

they will surely curse us for the mayhem we created :angry:

[captcha]

The destruction begins.....

:pope:

[truemate]

time to join a swim class

[go0gle]

I said it before and I say again.

We (people) are worst virus and parasite ever existed on mother earth.

Its not enough that we destroy ourselves by killing each other, but we destroy everything on this planet.

We should be exterminated totally, before its too late.

There is so many things that we could do as individuals, to stop this madness.

But no one (or at least most of us) is prepare to think the long term of actions for all living things on the earth, because it means we have sacrifice many things in our lives.

All we care is about our selfs. We has become selfish idiots.