
Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return, study finds - InInteraction
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-arctic-idUSKCN25A2X3
======
apsec112
Even if the world is warm enough to melt the sheet completely, that would take
centuries, if not millennia; Greenland's ice is thousands of meters thick. In
a bad scenario, the IPCC forecasts 21st century sea level rise to be a bit
under a meter ([https://www.climatecentral.org/news/zeroing-in-on-ipccs-
sea-...](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/zeroing-in-on-ipccs-sea-level-
rise-warming-hiatus-16532)). This will certainly cause problems, but is
nothing like the complete and rapid destruction some pundits describe.

Major action on carbon emissions is long overdue, and it's great that people
are taking it more seriously now. But an overly-pessimistic scenario has the
same problems as an overly-rosy scenario; if we're all doomed anyway, why do
anything? Michael Mann, the climate scientist who famously brought global
warming to public attention, now also spends time fighting doom scenarios
which also discourage action:

[https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-
magazine/summer-2020/...](https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-
magazine/summer-2020/michael-mann-on-climate-denial-and-doom)

~~~
cel1ne
I like the way the 350.org science page put's it:

    
    
       1.  It’s warming.
       2.  It’s us.
       3.  We’re sure.
       4.  It’s bad.
       5.  We can fix it.
    

([https://350.org/science/](https://350.org/science/))

~~~
roenxi
The 'its bad' section could use some work; it isn't immediately obvious why it
is bad. It says things like 10% decrease in grain yield. World population has
increased by ~40% in my lifetime; so a 10% grain yield is not the biggest
problem we're facing for food security.

Ditto the 10 million migrant number. Australia has 7 million migrants living
here right now; 10 million globally spread over many years is not particularly
devastating.

Climate change is supposed to be a threat significant enough for people to
abandon their way of life, not those so-so numbers.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Is there any evidence at all that global warming is causing any migration? I
look at the problems in Syria and I’m definitely not saying “Yep global
warming causes that.”

~~~
tsimionescu
Given that one of the 10 biggest countries in the world has virtually no
elevation and is already having drinking water problems (Bangladesh), a
migrant crisis is certain.

~~~
Udik
The water problems of Bangladesh seem to have little to do with climate
change. It's a mix of political problems with neighboring countries, arsenic
contamination of the soil, lack of sanitation.

------
jarym
Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with
big challenges - any action taken will be far too late; too little and often
times plain wrong.

So as I read about Greenland’s ice sheets I can only conclude that we are all
doomed. Raising awareness won’t really help; the leaders who could do
something about it simply won’t.

It’s sad and it’s depressing and I’ve no idea what any of us can do to
actually prevent this next global catastrophe.

~~~
ImaCake
>Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with
big challenges

Many countries have done pretty well coordinating a useful response against
this virus. The US has done terribly, but there are plenty of examples of
other nations responding well to it.

~~~
jarym
I think you’re mistaken. No one started to care until Italy happened weeks
after the WHO warnings. China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm
bells in the west.

Even when Italy happened not all countries reacted, instead thinking ‘oh we
don’t have that problem we’re fine’

And then as cases did go up other countries for ‘creative’ with their handling
- the UK totally gave up on testing in March and was secretly thinking to
‘ride it out’ and go for herd immunity.

So the few examples where it was handled well (say Taiwan and South Korea) are
irrelevant when considering the strength of the overall global response.

Now, for dealing with melting ice sheets we need more than a majority of
countries working together to prevent an event that will displace millions of
people but right now the response is similar to how we responded to COVID -
but imo the stakes are higher now.

~~~
ImaCake
My point is that not all countries did bad. Many countries did poorly, but
many others responded well to the crisis and have either kept cases down, had
very few deaths, or managed to suppress their outbreaks.

> China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west.

Yes it did. Australia and NZ started preparing very early for this outbreak.
The results are very evident. The US and the UK responded terribly, and their
people should be very angry.

------
brainless
What I find most interesting is that we, the Human species, do not know what
this means. We estimate heavy losses, maybe near extinction, but we do not
have a reference. We are imaginative but we collectively can not imagine the
worst and act accordingly. This is perhaps why the worst will actually happen.

I am typing this on a keyboard, when I should be getting out there, convincing
others to stop our immediate actions and brace for impact. But I will not do
that because _some unclear calamity is 30 years away_. And I know most people
around me will not change anything either.

~~~
neckardt
> We estimate heavy losses, maybe near extinction

Do you mean human extinction or extinction of certain animal species? I can
definitely see certain animal species dying out, I couldn't see a scenario
where humans die out though. If you mean human extinction could you provide
some further reading?

~~~
seer
Might not be the most likely scenario, but a runaway green house effect is
certainly possible.

If a positive temperature feedback loop happened to the earth’s atmosphere we
could definitely end up like Venus, where no living thing can survive.

And as engineers we understand that positive feedback loops cause changes in
exponential progression. It can be “almost fine” for a while and then suddenly
“there’s nothing we can do” even in human timescales.

And it could happen fast enough that humans don’t develop tech robust enough
to survive other planets unsupported, so game over for humanity, better luck
next time.

I personally don’t think thats going to happen, but to be honest I wouldn’t
want to risk it.

~~~
ivalm
Earth survived way higher co2 levels and we don’t emit nearly enough sulfides.
There is essentially zero chance of Venus event happening. I’m more inclined
that climate change can cause catastrophic war than runaway to ultra high
temperatures.

~~~
imtringued
Past CO2 levels aren't relevant because over time things like solar irradiance
change as well. The amount of CO2 needed to maintain a certain global
temperature shrinks over long time frames (hundreds of millions of years) as
the sun gets hotter and hotter until it finally dies.

~~~
ivalm
Except sun hasn’t become meaningful hotter in the past hundred mil years.
Also, we would need lots of sulfer dioxides to get emited, which isn’t
happening.

Will earth suffer over the next billion years and lose atmosphere? Sure, but
that’s not what’s happening now.

------
sprainedankles
> The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world
> for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification.

I didn't realize this (or at least, am surprised it's _twice_ as fast).
Apparently the key factor is loss of sea ice. Can anyone ELI5?

~~~
cma
I'm not sure this is the reason for this specific observation, but one
mechanism I've read of was that arctic air is very dry relative to equatorial,
and any heating up increases its humidity, and in turn water vapor is a much
more intense greenhouse gas than many other things, so it can cause more
localized warming, which feeds a cycle. Why it isn't a complete runaway
process i don't know, and I may be misremembering the details.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
And of course, Siberia and Canada will start emitting vast amounts of methane
as permafrost thaws.

~~~
082349872349872
At least if the northeast passage opens up, we'll have a sea route between
china and europe that doesn't go past the resource-cursed middle east.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage)

------
dlivingston
There is already a pile of canary bodies on the mine floor. Just toss this one
on top of it.

Oil and gas is a multi-trillion dollar industry. It’s not just an industry
that a few companies rely on, or a few cities, or a few states: the economies
of more than a few wealthy _countries_ rely fully or partly on oil and gas
revenue.

Consequently, there has been a massively-funded multi-decade disinformation
campaign w.r.t. climate change, calling itself “climate skepticism.”

But: the brilliant part of this disinformation campaign was to politicize it.

If it were just: “we have questions about the science”, well, once those
questions are resolved, then climate skeptics have nothing left to stand on.

But once you politicize it: now it’s more than the science. It’s about your
tribe and your team.

~~~
anonunivgrad
When “scientists” are openly pushing for particular solutions (always
involving massive government control and global wealth redistribution), they
are politicizing it too.

When the “green” movement also opposes the best alternative energy, nuclear,
it’s worth being very suspicious.

That is of course all orthogonal to whether it’s actually real and preventable
and worth acting on. Though that last question requires expertise beyond
climate science. It also requires a fine understanding of economics and
international power politics. When climate scientists pretend to have those
too, people should be skeptical.

~~~
refurb
I personally believe in manmade climate change but when I read about things
like the "global warming pause" I get concerned.[1]

About 5 years ago there was a lot of discussion about the "pause" in the
warming trend between 1998 and 2012. Nature devoted an entire issue to it.[2]

But then I start reading that the pause never happened.[3]

And if you read the wikipedia page, it sounds like there is still a lot of
controversy within the climate change community whether or not global warming
actually paused.

I'm not a climate scientist, so maybe I'm missing something (happy to be
educated), but shouldn't we be able to tell pretty definitively whether or not
the planet had been warming over that decade? Isn't there a standard way to
measure global temperatures? It seems like it would be difficult to spot
trends if _how_ you're measuring it is changing over time.

I read about how "if you interpolate arctic temperatures" or "account for
ocean temperatures" the "pause" disappears. But how do we know the new
analysis is right and the old one was wrong? What's if it's the opposite?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus)
[2][https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp](https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp)
[3][https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18122018/global-
warming-h...](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18122018/global-warming-
hiatus-pause-never-happened-studies-explain-climate-change-risbey-oreskes-
mann)

~~~
clusterfish
I would think us engineers would appreciate the complexity of accurately
measuring total net energy absorbed by a whole damn planet. It's not just raw
temperature readings from buoys. Incremental improvement of models and some
debate to sort out the reasons for temporary inconsistencies is to be expected
in science.

None of this is really any excuse to be doubting climate change in general, or
the severity thereof. All of _that_ is just politics, not science. Scientists
know that our models are just as likely to underestimate the effects of
climate change as they are to overestimate them. It is only politically
motivated opinionistas that focus exclusively on one of those possibilities.

~~~
refurb
I had a career in science so I completely understand how models that predict
the future are refined over time, that isn't concerning at all. Saying "we
predict temperatures will rise between 0.5C and 2.0C this century" is just
smart science.

But my comment isn't around a future prediction, this is measuring _the
temperature right now_. You mention "the complexity of accurately measuring
total net energy absorbed by a whole damn planet", which I can understand is
complex, but ignore "net energy absorption" for now, let's just focus on "what
was the average temperature last year". Would I be correct saying we're still
not sure how best to get that data?

~~~
Johnjonjoan
The best way to get the data would be to measure how much energy the planet
absorbs vs how much it emits. The earth just wants to be in equilibrium so if
these amounts aren't equal the climate is changing and the difference can tell
you to what degree (excuse the pun).

The problem is that the earth transfers energy between many of its systems
(think Ocean conveyor belt) and it's incredibly difficult to keep track of the
energy. So any measurements of the earth directly that don't measure all the
systems are likely to be inaccurate.

Edit: yes there is a global average surface temperature but due to the reasons
above it's not a great indicator.

------
sradman
Original paper _Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by
sustained glacier retreat_ [1]

> We show that widespread retreat between 2000 and 2005 resulted in a step-
> increase in discharge and a switch to a new dynamic state of sustained mass
> loss that would persist even under a decline in surface melt.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2)

------
Normille
HEADLINE: "Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return..."

FIRST LINE OF ARTICLE: "Greenland’s ice sheet MAY have shrunk past the point
of return..."

[my emphasis]

So f--king sick of clickbait headlines!

------
chmod775
What does "point of no return" mean in this title?

~~~
patosai
There's a Reuters article about this topic which states:

> Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice
> likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming
> emissions, new research suggests.

~~~
ooobit2
The fact that we were just saying, as recently as 2016, that things hadn't
become "catastrophic" yet, only to four years later make _yet another_
correction that vastly accelerates past existing predictive models is why
climate change continues to be seen as debatable. We need to either admit that
we _don 't know_ or start acting consistently like we _do know_.

Pushing out an article with a headline like, "Major-global-feature is past the
point of return," is not exactly selling the idea of a carbon tax. And the
only argument against the critics has been, "Well, it could get _even worse_!"
You mean in 60 days, when we announce something like "China will be underwater
by February 2022?" Investments to curb climate change start to look like snake
oil when we're saying something can be fixed by it but then announcing 30 days
later that it no longer can.

~~~
magicalhippo
> The fact that we were just saying, as recently as 2016, that things hadn't
> become "catastrophic" yet, only to four years later make yet another
> correction that vastly accelerates past existing predictive models is why
> climate change continues to be seen as debatable.

So they got the speed wrong, but it was still in the same direction.

Scientists have for years been worried about the state of the Greenland ice
sheet, and have repeatedly said it's diminishing ever more quickly and that's
not good.

It's not like they went 180 on this.

~~~
ooobit2
It's absurd I have to reply with this: _Climate change_ continues to be seen
as _debatable_ because _climate change models_ keep being _corrected_ past the
degree of correction most people understand _invalidates similar models_ in
_other fields of science_.

So, using a pharmaceutical as an example: If Pfizer published findings that
stated an HBP pill permanently reduced blood pressure by a specific amount
after 60 days, then four years later came out and corrected that to _10 days_
, most people would be concerned that the extra _50 days_ of treatment carried
significant risk of lowering blood pressure too far, and would ask whether
Pfizer did enough to prevent such a significant risk of lowering blood
pressure too far. And almost everyone would be more cautious about taking
other Pfizer medications. Makes sense, right?

That's what people do with climate science models in the general public. When
someone asserts confidence in a model one year then publishes a significant
correction to that model the next, skepticism over the integrity of all of
their models is reasonable. If they messed up so bad here, we need to know
whether it's isolated in scope.

That said, the entire model was about _speed_. No one inferred a general
direction of decline. They asserted high confidence in a model that, given
additional data, completely changed. There is a rule of logic in data that as
new records are added, each record becomes an increasingly smaller proportion
of the overall dataset, and save for extreme anomalies, the expected rate of
change for the model given each additional record declines on a curve. That is
why random sampling of a population is used instead of the population. After a
certain number of records, the relevance of any _N_ new records are
insignificant to the output. If the addition of new data completely threw off
their model, even as a time series, they're overfitting or underfitting, but
either way, they are not going to be trusted as a source of reliable
information.

What I'm saying is we need to _stop doing that_. If we talk about the models
as just being marginally accurate, we're more likely to stem attempts to
debate the entirety of climate science. Regardless of how smart or stupid you
think those who debate climate change are, they do influence barriers to act.

~~~
magicalhippo
> Makes sense, right?

No, because it's an entirely different scenario. It's not at all similar to
making some blood pressure medication.

------
Johnjonjoan
The way I see it climate change could be awful but it's never going to be
catastrophic as long as we're alive. All we have to do is send up hella
reflectors to block the sun and we can be cool again.

The real risk IMO is making the oceans acidic with all this co2. That has the
potential to be really really catastrophic.

~~~
GOONIMMUNE
> All we have to do is send up hella reflectors to block the sun and we can be
> cool again.

The amount of reflectors required would necessitate literally millions of
conventional rocket launches. At 1 launch per day it comes out to thousands of
years to accomplish a project like this- far too slow to effectively address
climate change.

~~~
Johnjonjoan
We don't need to block all of it or anywhere near. We have hundreds of years
to do this, why wouldn't we make them in space?

If you read my comment you would realise I didn't say we could use it to
address climate change but that climate change would never become catastrophic
(read runaway greenhouse effect) because we could do it as a last resort.

------
Yetanfou
Given the record early and massive snowfall this year [1] the alarm can be
reset - 5,5 gigaton fell on the 12th of august, 2,5 gigaton on the 11th and 4
gigaton on the 10th. Greenland is accumulating ice mass about a month earlier
than normal.

Of course this is just as sensationalist as the Reuters article so take it
with as much salt as you did when you read Reuters.

[1] [http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-
conditions/](http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/)

------
chrisco255
Greenland just had several days of record gains in ice in the middle of the
melt season. 3 of the last 4 years were net gains in ice mass for Greenland.
This is sensationalism. Climate shifts can absolutely occur in both
directions.

To see latest Greenland ice charts:

[http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-
conditions/](http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/)

------
axaxs
I feel like people saying 'who cares' haven't been looking. And also like
affected places aren't crying loud enough. I was driving through Daytona
earlier this year, and stopped just to see their coast. It was gone. The
wooden steps leading down to the non-existent beach were half covered. That
is, you couldn't even get to the bottom of the stairs. This is a beach people
used to park on.

~~~
kortilla
Coastal erosion is not the same thing as sea level rise.

Sea level rise can’t account for that drastic of a change.

~~~
axaxs
I feel like too many people report 'facts' without experience. I'm reporting
experience without 'facts'. Maybe you're right, I just wanted to give a real
life account from a low lying area.

~~~
beaner
Well that doesn't really help. If the reason is coastal erosion and not sea
level rise, then you're not saying something that's relevant to the point.

~~~
axaxs
I don't mean to be anti-science, I'm just reporting what I saw with my own
eyes. And it wasn't just Daytona. I saw a fisherman in Indian River County
standing on what had to be 2 foot of beach. Erosion happens, but why is the
water so high to even erode it?

~~~
dx87
Water doesn't have to be high to erode the shore. It'll slowly sink into the
water as the lower ground is washed away, regardless of whether the water
level is rising.

------
dkobia
The irony that maybe our ancestors escaped Mars eons ago after similarly
destroying the planet to seed earth and start afresh. Untrue but plausible
based on how we've handled things this far. Self-interest and the tragedy of
the commons.

------
sadmann1
So, what is there left to do?

~~~
omosubi
There have been calls to put sulfur dioxide into the air above the artic to
reduce sunlight about 2% and limit the amount of energy that reaches it.
Sounds like we'll need to do something like that if we don't want to turn
places like Florida and southern Vietnam into ocean

~~~
dylan604
Yes, there's exactly 0% chance that this ends badly. I don't know why the lady
swallowed the dog to chase the cat to catch the bird to eat the spider...

~~~
omosubi
I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's a proposed solution. We'll
need to do something rather drastic if we want to have any chance of saving
the world as it is today

------
jb775
...Until it freezes again

------
xwdv
So it’s over, the planet will likely be rendered uninhabitable probably within
the next century. Is there any point in even having a new child now?

~~~
chki
>So it’s over, the planet will likely be rendered uninhabitable probably
within the next century.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion but the planet won't be
uninhabitable. Certain areas will be uninhabitable and there will probably be
massive displacement of people paired with food shortages. But complete
resignation is not only unhelpful but also unwarranted.

~~~
klyrs
"Massive displacement" is a tepid euphemism in sight of current politics
around human migration, which will only get worse as resources become scarce.
Should Canadians be as cruel as Americans have been to their southern
neighbors. Hope ya like toilet water, eh.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
It's a tepid phrase because the effect just won't be as big as you're
thinking. Nobody in the United States is going to need to escape to Canada -
the primary displacement problem is that the specific places which support
effective agriculture will change.

~~~
klyrs
There's also the matter of heat waves; summers are increasingly lethal and
we've barely started.

