In a welcome basket yesterday, the majority of the Supreme Court rebuffed an appeal of its newest member Brett Kavanaugh’s ruling yesterday, back when he was on the D.C. Circuit court. They cavalierly passed on hearing an appeal of a rule, issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama, that regulates hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas. The Trump administration had withdrawn the rule to “rewrite” it—in other words, they’ll do absolutely nothing about a greenhouse gas that is responsible for the warming of the southern ocean.
This insanely dangerous move by the nation’s highest court follows a dire report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday, warning that the world has exactly 12 years to stop 45% of carbon dioxide emissions and just 32 years to reach zero emissions. That unfathomable requirement of rapid decarbonization presents our last opportunity to prevent cataclysmic effects of climate change—by keeping temperature rise limited to 1.5°C—and even then, it may not work. The consortium of the world’s top climate scientists warned governmental leaders that the Paris Accord is nowhere near enough to prevent a civilization-ending apocalypse.
Daily Kos bloggers Meteor Blades and FishOutofWater wrote about the leaked IPCC report; if you have not yet read them, they can be found here and here.
Yesterday, Donald Trump admitted he is in possession of the IPCC report, but had not yet read it. He offered his thoughts, despite having no clue on what the apocalyptic takeaways meant for our very existence, by stating that the scientific findings were no more credible than reports that he has read that the climate is “fabulous”—presumably referring to the baseless propaganda spewed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. If Trump were remotely informed, he would understand that the crisis unfolding in Florida is in part caused by human activity from our use of fossil fuels that heat oceans and feed additional moisture into the storm. Hurricane Michael is yet another in a litany of powerful and ferocious superstorms that has laid waste to cities across the globe.
Nowhere is the scourge of a warming climate more apparent than in the Arctic. But with an influx of resources and tools scientists are now also sounding the alarm on the deteriorating conditions in Antarctica, which holds 70% of the planet’s fresh water in frozen form, and could cause 229 feet of sea level rise if melted.
While the Supreme Court and Trump mock the seriousness of a rapidly changing climate by their inaction, a major ice platform is calving yet another massive iceberg from the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica.
xA new 30 km long rift appeared across Pine Island Glacier since September indicating the upcoming calving of a ~300km² iceberg [1/n] pic.twitter.com/Dnh3YMKYIs
— Stef Lhermitte (@StefLhermitte) October 4, 2018Antarctica’s massive ice shelves, of which Pine Island Glacier is one, hold back the land ice from flowing into the ocean and raising sea levels. They have been melting not only from above, a process that would take thousands of years to accomplish; instead, they also melt below by warming ocean water carving tunnels into the shelf’s underbelly. The relatively warmer water causes the shelf to crack, fracture, and shed massive icebergs, and the glacier consequently loses any resistance to the land ice it had provided. New research has determined that the warming of the Southern Ocean points to two human sources—greenhouse gas emissions from carbon combustion, and ozone depletion from our use of hydrofluorocarbons in refrigeration. Hydrofluorocarbons are the very gas that the Supreme Court just refused to allow the EPA to regulate, by passing on an appeal that now presents the Trump administration the opportunity to delay action and dismantle the EPA by rewriting rules and allowing the can of worms to be kicked down the road yet again.
The lush moss beds that grow near East Antarctica’s coast are among the only plants that can withstand life on the frozen continent. New research shows that these slow-growing plants are changing at a far faster rate than anticipated. Healthy green moss has turned red or grey, indicating that plants are under stress and dying. This is due to the area drying because of colder summers and stronger winds. This increased desertification of East Antarctica is caused by both climate change and ozone depletion. Source: The ConversationOne of the glaciers that hold vast amounts of freshwater locked as ice is the France-sized Totten Glacier in East Antarctica, and it has proven to have more of it floating than previously realized.
The Totten Glacier is one of the fastest-flowing and largest glaciers in Antarctica with scientists keen to keep a close eye on how it melts given the enormous amount of water it could potentially unleash.
Using artificially created seismic waves that help scientists see through the ice, researchers have discovered that more of the Totten Glacier floats on the ocean than initially thought.
"In some locations we thought were grounded, we detected the ocean below indicating that the glacier is in fact floating," said Paul Winberry from Central Washington University, who spent the summer in Antarctica studying the Totten.
The findings are important because recent studies have shown the Totten Glacier's underbelly is already being eroded by warm, salty sea water flowing hundreds of kilometres inland after passing through underwater "gateways".
The newly renamed Matataua Glacier lies in the Royal Society Range in Antarctica. The changes sparked by the #MeToo movement have now reached Antarctic glaciers. Last week, the Marchant Glacier was renamed the Matataua Glacier in the wake of a finding of sexual harassment against its namesake, geologist David Marchant. Boston University found Marchant created an environment that was hostile and harmful to fellow researchers, particularly women. Antarctic glacier gets new name in wake of sexual harassment findingUnlike West Antarctica, which has floating ice shelves, the East Antarctic Ice shelf lies above sea level and is the largest ice sheet on Earth, containing around half of Earth's freshwater. It was assumed to be less sensitive to a warming climate than West Antarctica, but new data suggests that 2°C warming in Antarctica, if sustained over a couple of millennia, would lead to melting in an area of the East Antarctic Ice shelf well below sea level. It is predicted that we will fly way past the 2°C threshold within just a couple of decades.
The findings show:
The ice sheet had retreated from its current size during some of the interglacials, when temperatures were as little as two degrees warmer than pre-industrial times. The most extreme changes in the ice sheet occurred during two interglacial periods 125,000 and 400,000 years ago, when global sea levels were between six and 13 metres higher than they are today. Ice loss from the EAIS likely made a significant contribution to those higher sea levels in the past.Dr. Wilson said: "What we have learned is that even modest warming of just two degrees, if sustained for a couple of thousand years, is enough to cause the ice sheet in East Antarctica to retreat in some of its low-lying areas.
"With current global temperatures already one degree higher than during pre-industrial times, future ice loss seems inevitable if we fail to reduce carbon emissions."
This is the brutal truth about climate science, and what continued denial has in store for all of us.