I first realized about 16 years ago that the loss of the Earth's most vulnerable ice sheets (West Antarctica, Greenland) was inevitable and irreversible. And so here it is.
The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday.
The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.
“This is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. “There’s nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.”
It will take several centuries for the "collapse" to play out, but the process will likely be complete a thousand years from now. Sea level will eventually rise about 4 meters (~13 feet) from this event alone.
The "collapse" is indeed a collapse on the geological time scale, which encompasses millions and billions of years. On the much shorter human time scale, which encompasses weeks, months, years and decades, there is no collapse. There is only an inexorable rise in sea level as "time" goes on.
This is really happening said NASA's Thomas P. Wagner. Uhmm... well, yes, it is, but the need to say that points to the central problem, doesn't it?
What a species we are! It is totally absurd to try, over and over again, to convince humans that what is really happening is really happening, and then fail to convince them almost every time. It is absurd because it is utterly futile. I'm certainly guilty on that score. Even writing this post is absurd.
And to be absolutely clear on this point, I am not talking about active climate "deniers" or the vast majority of humans whose ignorance is bliss. I am also talking about all those apparently well-meaning and intelligent people who think we can run industrial civilization on windmills and solar panels. I am including all the "good" people, the "green" people like Connie Hedegaard who tell us that Growth Is Good.
And I can only laugh when I think about the general denial of the fact that something called "Human Nature" exists, especially in light of the fact that it is an integral part of Human Nature that you can't convince humans that what is really happening is really happening. Talking about climate change makes people's heads explode!
And with that observation, we have can now fully comprehend reached peak absurdity the absurdity of the human situation
I don't think that we have yet reached "peak absurdity," although we may now be able to recognize that PA is out there on the horizon.
Posted by: g-minor | 05/13/2014 at 11:23 AM