Rapid loss of Antarctic ice may be climate tipping point, scientists say

15 comments

1. Those whose wealth relies on the status quo have made a calculation that they will be dead before the starving mobs come for them, or that their wealth will protect them from the collapse of the ecosystem. I suspect they will discover quite soon that they are bad at math.

2. This whole paper should be deeply disturbing to anyone who values life on planet earth. Here’s a few takeaways:

   – The Antarctic Sea Ice over recent years has undergone a regime shift. The loss of ice is abrupt, non-linear, and likely now self-perpetuating due to feedback loops like albedo loss and ocean heat uptake. In other words, we broke the Antarctic Sea Ice system.

   – The West Antarctic Ice Sheet tipping point may already have been breached. I.e. even at current CO2/temperature levels, it may already have begun to irreversibly collapse.

   – The Antarctic Overturning Circulation is slowing down even more rapidly than the AMOC.

   – Regime shifts in Antarctic ecosystems. Expect significant extinctions.

   – Much of these changes are interacting and self-reinforcing. Classic domino type dynamics.

3. So for those who like a good story that is coming too close to reality read some books called red mars, blue mars, green mars. They basically predicted this happening and the fall out of a quick sea level rise.

   Note the number and percentage of people who live within 10 feet of sea level. What this means is mass migrations if the land ice melts quickly.

   Get ready for new neighbors if you live a bit far from shore.

4. One day we are going to wake up and all the headlines will say stuff like this, but only in the *past* tense. Scientists and headline editors alike will just suddenly experience “The 100th Monkey” and collectively stop framing their message in “possible future” grammar and instead report on what we see in the rearview mirror

   Seems like we are just going to skip over the headlines about “is” and “now”

5. Not “may be” is.

   A Blue Ocean Event is something we’ve been talking about for a decade or longer. And btw is the mother of all feedback loops.

   Once that albedo changes from nice reflective white to absorbent blue the warming will be unstoppable until the next ice age.

6. Is there any hope? Or have we all been dead men walking since the 1980s?

7. [deleted]

8. It’s obvious that our leaders have lost any serious resolve to do something about climate change, especially in the U.S. It’s totally up to us as individuals now, stop air travel, go vegan, drive less. We cannot vote for somebody to solve this problem for us, we need to alter our own lifestyles. Corporations need customers. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I sincerely and empathetically ask you to consider that it’s because you know you could be doing more. It’s easy to blame the billionaires, but there are lot more of us and if we actually got serious we could change the world.

9. Humanity doesn’t care. We only care about show of force and deportations. We are on self destruct mode.

10. Psssht just wait there’s numerous tipping points from “mother nature.”

11. I’d love to live to see all the Boomers in Florida lose everything. Won’t happen, but boy it would be nice

12. Was always one of the most overwhelming aspects of climate change.

13. C’mon man. We’ve been seeing this alert about a tipping point for 20+ years.

14. #MAY BE…. -__-

15. >”A regime shift has reduced Antarctic sea-ice extent far below its natural variability of past centuries, and in some respects is more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than Arctic sea-ice loss,” it said, referring to melting at the North Pole.

    The way I looked at this before, when we saw signals of a “BOE” in the South Pole, is like the fantasy trope of “*While we were busy focusing and arguing over this thing in the North, a great darkness was forming in the South, hidden from view and very powerful.*”

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