I now regret writing those posts on The Newsroom clip, as I regret all my interactions with the Flatland public. But rather than take those posts down, I will simply finish the job. The word in the title refers to the scientific finding back in May that the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) appears to be inevitable and irreversible.
The EPA guy in Sorkin's TV show cited sea level rise as the reason he had lost hope, so it will be of some interest that loss of the WAIS will add 4 meters (about 13 feet) to global mean sea level (GMSL). And today, another study indicates that the melt rate of the WAIS has recently tripled.
A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade...
The total amount of loss averaged 83 gigatons per year (91.5 billion U.S. tons). By comparison, Mt. Everest weighs about 161 gigatons, meaning the Antarctic glaciers lost a Mt.-Everest's-worth amount of water weight every two years over the last 21 years.
The rate of loss accelerated an average of 6.1 gigatons (6.7 billion U.S. tons) per year since 1992. From 2003 to 2009, when all four observational techniques overlapped, the melt rate increased an average of 16.3 gigatons per year — almost three times the rate of increase for the full 21-year period. The total amount of loss was close to the average at 84 gigatons.
Simplifying, the only thing that fictional EPA guy was guilty of was having a bad attitude.
He did not express the obligatory hope. He didn't harmonize with "seasoned journalists" and progressive do-gooders. He didn't filter the bad news. His attitude was: fuck it.
Of course, it is much easier to have a character in a fucking TV show say unpopular but realistic things than it is to do it in real life as I do. In Flatland, it seems that only a fictional character can say those things, for many reasons I don't want to get into today.
And was the Sorkin character wrong? Not at all, which I pointed out. We are almost certainly committed to at least 66 feet of sea level rise in the coming centuries, and probably a lot more. We are certainly committed to 13 feet of sea level rise from the loss of the WAIS alone.
These coming changes are I-R-R-E-V-E-R-S-I-B-L-E.
And does that fictional EPA guy have every right to have a bad attitude? Of course he does. So I saw a little of myself in Sorkin's character because I too have a bad attitude. And anyone on this fucking monkey planet who is in touch with reality feels the same way. Somebody should speak for them—all 17 of them
Sea level rise is only one problem among many which our clueless and self-defeating species has created in the 21st century (unofficially, we are in the Anthropocene). And those problems get worse and worse everyday.
So, why would it puzzle anybody when I say that the delusional species that created those growing problems is also incapable of solving them? But of course that deep quandary continues to baffle humans, despite the fact that their incapacity is what almost all the available evidence demonstrates.
My, my, there's that bad attitude again.
Bonus Video (hat tip, Alex)
All I can do is laugh to myself, and say, "Thanks, Dave." What more need be said?
Posted by: Dave Jewett | 12/03/2014 at 02:22 PM