Photo source: Silvan Leinss – Own work – CC BY-SA 4.0
Since the turn of the new century, every aspect of climate change has gone ballistically, up, up, and away, not looking back, leaving the 20th century fairly harmless, but only on a relative basis, especially compared to the rip-snorting 21st ieu. It’s a whole new ballgame, starting with this new century.
Society is witnessing a great acceleration of climate change far and then modeling by climate scientists, and it can be dire.
This century is being adapted to be a turning point of radical change with solid evidence of problems below the line most commonly found in a rapid meltdown phase of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a goal that is too big to miss. It melts faster and faster out of the reach of climate models, which for reasons that are not fully explained, can not keep up with the penetrating ice mass.
Beginning with this decade, the pollution of Greenland took flight. This is undisputed because its acceleration has found a familiar ring among all major ecosystems, planet-wide. In short, accelerating climate change is universal. It is a terribly dangerous threat to the integrity of life-changing ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, three massive unusual pale events in just five years; all the result of rising ocean temperatures driven by global warming, up to 90% mortality at some locations. (Source: Australian Academy of Sciences).
Greenland represents 23 feet of sea level embedded in ice up to two miles thick and will probably take hundreds or thousands of years to melt completely, but for today’s purposes it does not count! What counts are the coming years on the road to 23 feet. And, that is a double whammy when one considers how far the models of scientists have come. It is best to support for the least.
In time, sea levels will rise 1-2-3-4-5 feet, and more, but within an unknown time frame. Keep even one foot in mind for an increase in spells worldwide coastal disasters. A Noah’s Ark scenario is not necessary to support coastal cities across the planet.
The rule of thumb for sea level rise is: One inch sea level rise underwent 50-100 inch beach coastline. So, in plain English, if one inch equals 4 to 8 feet of submerged beach, then one foot will in turn fall 48 to 96 feet of shoreline. (Source: NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory). That’s a lot, especially for Miami Beach, where the city already has to elevate streets (Google: “Miami Beach is Raising Streets at 2 Feet to Combat Rising Seas” to see a photo).
No one knows how high seas will rise soon, but seas will rise well above the average increase of the previous century, reckon. Actually mark it in a calendar not to be forgotten, maybe 2025 or 2030 or at the latest 2050, but that is only guesswork and not part of the latest study on reducing Greenland, as follows:
“A new study finds that accelerating the retreat and thinning of Greenland’s glaciers that began 20 years ago is driving the ice sheet to total meltdown.” (Source: Going, Going … Gone: The melting ice sheet of Greenland hit a point of no return in the early 2000s, Inside Climate News, 15 August 2020).
Admittedly, the study identifies this century, the year 2000, as the beginning of “accelerating retreat”, which includes a major impact point for disaster scenarios for climate change occurring everywhere, such as Siberia, Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest, and the Arctic. They experience bizarre climate events that threaten to change entire ecosystems.
And, importantly, the Greenland ice sheet was against more than 200 years of industrial time, because snow in each autumn / winter rebalanced the ice loss of the previous spring / summer, until the year 2000. Then things changed. Now, the said study claims that the former rhythmic balance in the nature of ice loss, followed by ice buildup since eons ago has been lost forever. It’s gone!
Unfortunately, the situation is only getting worse, according to Ian Howat, who was co-author of the study, even if the warming stops today, the ice melt will continue: “Glacier retreat has the dynamics of the entire ice sheet in constant state of loss, Ibid.
A “constant state of loss” means: There is no effective solution to the big meltdown. Still, according to scientists, by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, such as the CO2 emissions from car tailpipes and other fossil fuel use devices, the meltdown process could be slowed down, giving people much more time to build seawalls than the 21st centuries of accompaniment in a new genre, “The Seawall School of Architecture.”
After all, there is no chance that emissions will be curtailed. In today’s real world, it’s just not on the dock. Greenhouse gases have grown rapidly since China decided to mix a cocktail of High-end Capitalism and the Communist Party of China; thereafter, each week it builds a market with new coal-burning stations such as clockwork to meet capitalist demands for cheaper products for America and the world, beginning in the late 1970s.
For perspective purposes on how quickly the weekly expansion of Chinese coal plants affects climate change, the 10 / yr-to-20 / yr lag effect between atmospheric emissions and climate change effect should keep in mind, for example, record high temperatures in ‘ the Arctic and Greenland and Antarctica coincide with striking acceleration of climate change in the first two decades of this century at the height of China’s construction of a new coal plant every week, beginning 20 years before the new century. Connect the dots.
According to The Economist, May 21, 2020: “A slew of new coal-fired stations threaten China’s green ambitions.” China is relaxing curb on building coal-fired power plants. Does this mean that the IPCC should call on China for its failure to comply with the Paris 2015 climate agreement?
Not only China but also Japan is aiming to build 20 new coal-fired plants, and India is planning many new coal-fired plants. And, that is only half of the renaissance of fossil fuels today, by looking forward to this decade, oil barons, such as Saudi Arabia and the US, aim to increase oil and gas production by up to 130% by 2030, which means that substantially higher CO2 emissions lead to warmer temperatures leading to higher sea levels leading to increased flooding of coastal cities.
Where is the IPCC when it really is needed or is it hopelessly feckless?
In truth, the underlying Greenlandic message is not subtle; it simply builds seawalls, thereby protecting hundreds of millions of people, businesses and urban environments from massive floods, and soil pollution and aquifer pollution through salt water. Coastal cities around the world have to start building enormous sea dikes, in some cases that extend for miles above the city limits, possibly up to a full coastline, as rising waters find cavities in structures.
Remarkably, the planet keeps truckin ‘.
