Dramatic Change In West Antarctic Ice
Could
Produce 16ft Rise In Sea Levels
by
Michael McCarthy, February 2, 2005
British scientists have discovered a new threat to the
world which may be a result of global warming. Researchers
from the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
have discovered that a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously
assumed to be stable may be starting to disintegrate,
a conference on climate change heard yesterday. Its
collapse would raise sea levels around the earth by
more than 16 feet.
BAS
staff are carrying out urgent measurements of the remote
points in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) where
they have found ice to be flowing into the sea at the
enormous rate of 250 cubic kilometres a year, a discharge
alone that is raising global sea levels by a fifth of
a millimetre a year.
Professor
Chris Rapley, the BAS director, told the conference
at the UK Meteorological Office in Exeter, which was
attended by scientists from all over the world, that
their discovery had reactivated worries about the ice
sheet's collapse.
Only
four years ago, in the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worries that the ice
sheet was disintegrating were firmly dismissed.
Professor
Rapley said: "The last IPCC report characterised
Antarctica as a slumbering giant in terms of climate
change. I would say it is now an awakened giant. There
is real concern."
He
added: "The previous view was that WAIS would not
collapse before the year 2100. We now have to revise
that judgement. We cannot be so sanguine." Collapse
of the WAIS would be a disaster, putting enormous chunks
of low-lying, desperately poor countries such as Bangladesh
under water - not to mention much of southern England.
The
conference has been called by Tony Blair as part of
Britain's efforts to increase the pace of international
action on climate change, in a year when the UK is heading
the G8 group of industrialised nations and the European
Union.
Mr
Blair has asked it to explore the question of how much
climate change the world can take before the consequences
are catastrophic for human society and ecosystems.
Yesterday,
it heard several alarming new warnings of possible climate-related
catastrophic events, including the failure of the Gulf
Stream, which keeps the British Isles warm, and the
melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland.
But
it was the revelations of Professor Rapley, head of
one of the world's most respected scientific bodies,
which were the most dramatic, as they reopened a concern
many scientists assumed had been laid to rest.
Antarctica
as a whole is a land covered by very thick ice, but
the ice sheet covering the eastern half of the continent
is very stable as it sits on rocks that are well above
sea level.
Worries
about the ice covering the western half first surfaced
more than 25 years ago when it was realised that the
base rocks are actually well below the level of the
sea.
In
some circumstances, it was feared, such as a melting
of the edge of the ice sheet from rising temperatures,
sea water could get under it and eventually lead to
its collapse.
Yet
the 2001 IPCC report, the principal consensus view of
the international community of climate scientists, thought
that very unlikely, and said such a collapse was improbable
before the end of the current century, or even for 1,000
years.
What
puts a very big question mark over this, Professor Rapley
said, was the recent discovery of the extremely rapid
discharge of ice into the Amundsen sea from the WAIS
at three remote ice streams, Pine Island, Thwaites,
and another unnamed site.
"There
is a very dramatic discharge from this region which,
five years ago when the IPCC report was written, we
just didn't know about," he said. "What we
have found completely opens up the whole debate."
It had only been recently discovered, he said, because
the area was so remote. But BAS scientists, with US
help, had established a base in the area to investigate.
Professor Rapley said there was some evidence that the
discharge was a relatively recent phenomenon and it
might be caused by rising ocean temperatures.
Margaret
Beckett, the Environment Secretary, who opened the conference,
added another ominous prediction when she said that
major global warming impacts on the world in the next
20 to 30 years could not be avoided. Whatever we do,
potentially disastrous world temperature rises will
take place because they are already "built into
the system," she said.
Her
forecast that we are powerless to prevent major damage
from climate change is accepted by scientists but it
is rare for such a frank admission from a politician.
It reflects the concern at a high level.
It
was amplified by senior climate researchers, who said
the amount of future warming to which the world is firmly
committed, because of greenhouse gases that have already
been put into the atmosphere, will be enough to threaten
the survival of many ecosystems and wildlife species
such as polar bears and penguins.
"I
believe that most of the warming we are expecting over
the next few decades is now virtually inevitable, and
even in this time frame we may expect a significant
impact," Mrs Beckett said.
Source:
tinyurl.com/4chjy
Global
Warming Approaching Point Of No Return, Warns Leading
Climate Expert
by
Geoffrey Lean, January 23, 2005
Global warning
has already hit the danger point that international attempts
to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's
top climate watchdog.
Dr. Rajendra
Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC www.ipcc.ch),
told an international conference attended by 114 governments
in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that
the world has "already reached the level of dangerous
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere"
and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts
in the pollution if humanity is to "survive".
His comments
rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried
to slap him down - not least because it put him in his
post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to
international action on global warming, complained that
his predecessor was too "aggressive" on the
issue.
A memorandum
from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 specifically
asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr. Robert Watson,
the chief scientist of the World Bank, "replaced
at the request of the US". The Bush administration
then lobbied other countries in favour of Dr. Pachauri
- whom the former vice-president Al Gore called the "let's
drag our feet" candidate, and got him elected to
replace Dr. Watson, a British-born naturalised American,
who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
But this
month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States
on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former
head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute, himself
issued what top United Nations officials described as
a "very courageous" challenge.
He told
delegates: "Climate change is for real. We have just
a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather
rapidly. There is not a moment to lose."
Afterwards
he told The Independent on Sunday that widespread dying
of coral reefs, and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
had driven him to the conclusion that the danger point
the IPCC had been set up to avoid had already been reached.
Reefs throughout
the world are perishing as the seas warm up: as water
temperatures rise, they lose their colours and turn a
ghostly white. Partly as a result, up to a quarter of
the world's corals have been destroyed.
And in November,
a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded that the
Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world
and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in
the past three decades.
The ice
is also 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s and
is expected to disappear altogether by 2070. And while
Dr. Pachauri was speaking, parts of the Arctic were having
a January "heatwave", with temperatures eight
to nine degrees centigrade higher than normal.
He also
cited alarming measurements, first reported in The Independent
on Sunday, showing that levels of carbon dioxide (the
main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over
the past two years, suggesting that climate change may
be accelerating out of control.
He added
that, because of inertia built into the Earth's natural
systems, the world was now only experiencing the result
of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects
would occur as the increased pollution of later decades
worked its way through. He concluded: "We are risking
the ability of the human race to survive."
Source:
Global-Warming.net/pointofnoreturn.htm
Global-Warming.net
News and Archive
|
Climate
Change Poses Threat To Food Supply
Scientists Say
by Michael McCarthy
|
Kyoto
As An Opportunity
by Christopher Flavin and Janet Sawin
|
Can
Global Warming Be Curbed?
|
Climate
Lawsuit
|
The
Heat Is On To Tackle Global Warming,
But Can Kyoto Deliver?
by James Reynolds
|
Action
Call As Kyoto Begins
|
Kyoto
Protests Disrupt Oil Trading
Violent Clashes At London Energy Exchange
After Greenpeace Activists Use Direct Action
To Mark Global Warming Treaty
by John Vidal and Terry Macalister
|
It's
Much Too Late To Sweat Global Warming
Time To Prepare For Inevitable Effects
Of Our Ill-Fated Future
by Mark Hertsgaard
|
Mocking
Our Dreams
Climate Change Exposes Progress As A Myth
by George Monbiot
|
Apocalypse
Now:
How Mankind Is Sleepwalking To The End Of
The Earth
by Geoffrey Lean
|
Global
Warming:
Scientists Reveal Timetable
|
Runaway
Global Warming Chart
Runaway Global Warming Began In 2002
|
Keeling
Curve Chart CO2 ppmv 1958 to 2004
The 380 ppmv Of CO2 We Now Have In Our Air
Is More Than The Last (at least) 420,000
Years
|
Interview
with Ross Gelbspan Conducted by Scott Harris
|
Global
Warming
Could Be Twice As Bad As Feared: Computer
Model
|
| | |