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I also read recently that the Greenland ice sheet is melting from the bottom, not the top, so it is like a large dam which will be released in the next few decades?I think the researchers mentioned that the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is much faster than anticipated and that's why they changed their numbers- as well as the fact that the actual sea level rise is on the higher end of the expected spread. Found a proving recent acticle about this on world news
I think that is a bit misleading. It's melting top-down, but meltwater sinks and will cause additional melting at the bottom around subglacial rivers. This is hardly something new. The Greenland ice sheet is a relic from the last ice age and is not stable under the current Holocene.
If the Greenland ice sheet completely melts, global sea level will rise by 7 meters. But, perhaps surprisingly, not evenly. The sea level around Greenland will drop quite dramatically, and even as far away as Norway the sea level will not change or even drop slightly. The reason is that when the ice mass disappear, there will be gravitational effects and Earth's geoid will change. This means slightly higher sea level rise elsewhere. The sea around Greenland will even drop further due to postglacial rebound, but that is something taking centuries and millennia.
In a world that has never been safer from extreme weather I think the rhetoric is questionable.
I think many of the people on island nations and in coastal areas will have to be relocated to other nations.
Sooner or later. It's a slow process over centuries, and what humans do with emissions can speed it up. Still, if you look at the IPCC reports, there is not a very big difference in sea level rise between the various emission scenarios. In AR5 the difference between the RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 scenarios is just 30 cm by 2100. People relocate for many reasons anyway and sea level rise is so slow that it will hardly catch up with other reasons why people relocate and migrate. Likewise, coastal cities are pretty much completely rebuilt every century, so issues with sea level rise or coastal erosion can for the most part be dealt with through regular city planning. It's not really new. Coastal lines have shifted and cities moved with them through historical times already, whether due to erosion, sediments or actual sea level change.
Yes, we should expect migrations, but blaming climate change is failing to understand why. Crop yields have been steadily (and quite dramatically) increased over most of the world, yet we haven't seen a matching sharp drop in migration. The reason is of course not so much that the climate has improved. People migrate mostly for economical reasons, and if we regard the economical reason and climate change as two sides of the same thing, we will fail to address the problems correctly. If we want to avoid seeing millions of people being forced to migrate, our attempts will fail if we prioritise countering climate change. It will be much more fruitful to battle poverty.In addition to that, the mass migration of people from (say) Central America to North America is being blamed on loss of the viability of crops in these nations because of climate change. So we might be dealing with mass relocations of people from third world countries to more developed nations. We should probably expect such changes.
Well, possibly, but this is in timescales measured in millions of years, whereas climate change is significant over centuries and millennia. Evolution struggles to keep up with changes over centuries or millennia, but not so much with changes over millions of years. What happens through natural processes in 100,000 years is of little concern now, and what happens a million years into the future or more, much less.In about 250 million years from now, the continents will shift away from their present-day positions and form a new supercontinent, and this will severely disrupt the Earth's climate, leading to runaway global warming, and potentially cause a severe mass extinction that could wipe out all remaining mammals, birds, and amphibians at worst.
Mid do you think it would help if we used more regenerative farming techniques? I see farming practices have been changing over the last few decades to include more regenerative and sustainable farming rather than burning out the soil with too much chemical fertilizers.Sooner or later. It's a slow process over centuries, and what humans do with emissions can speed it up. Still, if you look at the IPCC reports, there is not a very big difference in sea level rise between the various emission scenarios. In AR5 the difference between the RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 scenarios is just 30 cm by 2100. People relocate for many reasons anyway and sea level rise is so slow that it will hardly catch up with other reasons why people relocate and migrate. Likewise, coastal cities are pretty much completely rebuilt every century, so issues with sea level rise or coastal erosion can for the most part be dealt with through regular city planning. It's not really new. Coastal lines have shifted and cities moved with them through historical times already, whether due to erosion, sediments or actual sea level change.
Yes, we should expect migrations, but blaming climate change is failing to understand why. Crop yields have been steadily (and quite dramatically) increased over most of the world, yet we haven't seen a matching sharp drop in migration. The reason is of course not so much that the climate has improved. People migrate mostly for economical reasons, and if we regard the economical reason and climate change as two sides of the same thing, we will fail to address the problems correctly. If we want to avoid seeing millions of people being forced to migrate, our attempts will fail if we prioritise countering climate change. It will be much more fruitful to battle poverty.In addition to that, the mass migration of people from (say) Central America to North America is being blamed on loss of the viability of crops in these nations because of climate change. So we might be dealing with mass relocations of people from third world countries to more developed nations. We should probably expect such changes.
Well, possibly, but this is in timescales measured in millions of years, whereas climate change is significant over centuries and millennia. Evolution struggles to keep up with changes over centuries or millennia, but not so much with changes over millions of years. What happens through natural processes in 100,000 years is of little concern now, and what happens a million years into the future or more, much less.In about 250 million years from now, the continents will shift away from their present-day positions and form a new supercontinent, and this will severely disrupt the Earth's climate, leading to runaway global warming, and potentially cause a severe mass extinction that could wipe out all remaining mammals, birds, and amphibians at worst.
Earth's greatest challenge right not is not climate change, solar evolution or tectonic activity, but that the humans are turning the surface of the Earth into crops, pasture, pavement and industry, and dumping our waste into the ocean.
Of course farming must be done in a way which allow the soil to be reused. But I also think farming should be area efficient, so that more land can be given back to nature. Farming takes up huge amounts of land and reduces biodiversity. I hope much farming can be industrialised indoors in multistorey fascilities, perhaps even underground, minimising the footprint. That is a question of energy. It doesn't make sense, of course, if the land freed has to be taken up by solar or wind farms. We would be worse off. Maybe this is something for the fusion powered world. Such things are amongst the reasons why I think energy innovation, in particular in nuclear power, is the key to solve environmental issues. Access to abundant and cheap energy is such a powerful tool to solve many of the world's problems.
Yes I really like how the Dutch do it! For such a small nation they produce so much, only 2nd to the US in farming production I believe. They do it indoors with special types of UV light over multiple floors. Neither fission nor fusion uses as much land as solar and wind do (or ocean space in the case of wind), and there is certainly no chemical run off from indoor farming (which would eventually reach the ocean and cause toxic algae blooms which is what happens here in the summer) and the production of crops with UV light is accelerated.Of course farming must be done in a way which allow the soil to be reused. But I also think farming should be area efficient, so that more land can be given back to nature. Farming takes up huge amounts of land and reduces biodiversity. I hope much farming can be industrialised indoors in multistorey fascilities, perhaps even underground, minimising the footprint. That is a question of energy. It doesn't make sense, of course, if the land freed has to be taken up by solar or wind farms. We would be worse off. Maybe this is something for the fusion powered world. Such things are amongst the reasons why I think energy innovation, in particular in nuclear power, is the key to solve environmental issues. Access to abundant and cheap energy is such a powerful tool to solve many of the world's problems.