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.”
Two papers scheduled for publication this week, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, attempt to make sense of an accelerated flow of glaciers seen in parts of West Antarctica in recent decades.
Oh well
Since Rethugs and teabaggers think it’s all ‘superstition’ let’s let them all move to within 10′ elevation of the coastline. Notice I didn’t mention the 1%, since they know better and are already feathering their nests out of harms way.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio must be the most transparent and ironic politician in history. Rubio is from the Miami area. All of the science points to the fact that as sea levels rise Miami will be the first major American city to be submerged under sea water. Yet on Sunday Rubio said that he doesn’t believe the science concerning global warming. Clearly Big Oil has paid Rubio off. That’s the transparent part. The fact that his home will be one of the first to be under water is the ironic part. Then again maybe he’s been told by the 1% that he need not worry because he’ll be relocated to drier land at their expense.