Time to rethink a 1-metre rise in sea level as an operational benchmark.
From today’s New York Times: Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans as Antarctic Ice Melts.
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.”
Oh well, it’s going to be ‘relatively slow’ over the next century. No problem, then, in spending a few billion now to build the Massey Bridge to open up lands below sea level.
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West Antarctic Glacier Ice Flows and Elevation Change.
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UPDATE: From Michael Alexander
The nearby headline (NYT on my iPad) to the one above: “Bill to Encourage Energy Efficiency Fails in Senate.” The energy efficiency that would have been encouraged is in buildings, which use 36% of all U.S. energy, and 65% of electricity consumption. They account for 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (U.S. EPA).
What sank the measure? In part, an amendment to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
Now, that’s porn!
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UPDATE: Scot Bathgate agrees that this is the statistically correct way to have a debate about climate change:
Unbeeped language.
I sense another round of denial coming from our friendly peanut gallery.