Awareness of climate change and the interconnected environmental crisis is growing throughout the world. Protest movements led by Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate increase in number and scope, demands for action are repeated, louder and louder, anger and anxiety mounts. And yet politicians and corporations, complacent, trapped by outdated ideology and motivated by short term self-interest, respond inadequately if at all.
Reality clashed with the BBC version of false consensus in a remarkable edition of HardTalk last month.
Sea level has been stable, at current levels, throughout recorded history for 5,000 years. That’s about to change. Still, it’s very difficult for people to imagine a change in sea level after 5,000 years of rock solid stability.
Nevertheless, assuming sea levels do rise markedly, one of the biggest questions of the century is whether the world is prepared for sea level rise?
As a guess, the answer is: No, not even close.
Bob Dylan's "Watching The River Flow," with Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on guitars, Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass.by Gaius PubliusJust sitting on this bank of sand, watching the river flow.At the start of the year I wrote:
#LarsenC break-up extends the march of ice shelf retreat toward the pole, as climatic limit recedes to the south [UPDATED with latest break] pic.twitter.com/JdX97nsw2h— Climate Signals (@ClimateSignals) July 12, 2017
The "Seneca Cliff" is the point at which a system that grew large slowly, starts to collapse rapidly. This is the way the 1929 stock market and 2008 banking assets collapsed (image source). Any complex system can go over the Seneca Cliff, says climate scientist Ugo Bardi.
Animated visualization of the startling decline of Arctic sea ice, showing the minimum volume reached every September since 1979, set on a map of New York with a 10km grid to give an idea of scale. As it plays, note the sudden drops in 1992, 1995, 2006 and 2012. Collapses aren't linear (source).by Gaius PubliusI've written before about Arctic sea ice and how the area encompassed by ice at the end of summer is shrinking.
By Rud Istvan | Climate Etc. | May 18, 2014
Sea level tipping points are a popular CAGW/media theory, easily suggested by images of calving icebergs and summer meltwater rushing down Greenland moulins. But they are alarmist precautionary mitigation fantasies rather than remotely possible future scenarios on multi-centennial time scales.
