Tag Archives: climate desk

Caribbean Coral Reefs “Will Be Lost Within 20 Years” Without Protection

by JeanneMinaya Posted on July 6, 2014

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Most Caribbean coral reefs will disappear within the next 20 years unless action is taken to protect them, primarily due to the decline of grazers such as sea urchins and parrotfish, a new report has warned.

A comprehensive analysis by 90 experts of more than 35,000 surveys conducted at nearly 100 Caribbean locations since 1970 shows that the region’s corals have declined by more than 50 percent.

But restoring key fish populations and improving protection from overfishing and pollution could help the reefs recover and make them more resilient to the impacts of climate change, according to the study from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the United Nations Environment Program.

While climate change and the resulting ocean acidification and coral bleaching does pose a major threat to the region, the report—Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012—found that local pressures such as tourism, overfishing and pollution posed the biggest problems.

And these factors have made the loss of the two main grazer species, the parrotfish and sea urchin, the key driver of coral decline in the Caribbean.

Grazers are important fish in the marine ecosystem as they eat the algae that can smother corals. An unidentified disease led to a mass mortality of the sea urchin in 1983 and overfishing throughout the 20th century has brought the parrotfish population to the brink of extinction in some regions, according to the report.

Reefs where parrotfish are not protected have suffered significant declines, including Jamaica, the entire Florida reef tract from Miami to Key West, and the US Virgin Islands. At the same time, the report showed that some of the healthiest Caribbean coral reefs are those that are home to big populations of grazing parrotfish. These include the US Flower Garden Banks national marine sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Bermuda and Bonaire—all of which have restricted or banned fishing practices that harm parrotfish.

The Caribbean is home to 9 percent of the world’s coral reefs, but only around one-sixth of the original coral cover remains. The reefs, which span 38 countries, are vital to the region’s economy and support the more than 43 million people, generating more than $3 billion annually from tourism and fisheries and much more in other goods and services.

According to the authors, restoring parrotfish populations and improving other management strategies could help the reefs recover. “The rate at which the Caribbean corals have been declining is truly alarming,” said Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of IUCN’s global marine and polar program. “But this study brings some very encouraging news: the fate of Caribbean corals is not beyond our control and there are some very concrete steps that we can take to help them recover.”

Reefs that are protected from overfishing, as well as other threats such as excessive coastal pollution, tourism and coastal development, are more resilient to pressures from climate change, according to the authors.

“Even if we could somehow make climate change disappear tomorrow, these reefs would continue their decline,” said Jeremy Jackson, lead author of the report and IUCN’s senior adviser on coral reefs. “We must immediately address the grazing problem for the reefs to stand any chance of surviving future climate shifts.”

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Caribbean Coral Reefs “Will Be Lost Within 20 Years” Without Protection

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Watch President Obama Making Fun of Climate Deniers

by NormandDoolette Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama is getting cheekier in speeches that mention climate change. Earlier this month, he berated climate deniers at a commencement speech at the University of California at Irvine, comparing their view to the idea that the moon is “made of cheese.”

And now, speaking before the League of Conservation Voters Wednesday night, Obama fully cemented his role as the “mocker-in-chief” of climate deniers, to use Politico’s words. Here’s one part of the speech:

It’s pretty rare that you encounter people who say that the problem of carbon pollution is not a problem. In most communities and workplaces, et cetera, when you talk to folks, they may not know how big a problem it is, they may not know exactly how it works, they may doubt that we can do something about it. But generally they don’t just say, ‘No I don’t believe anything scientists say.’ Except, where? asking the audience In Congress!

Obama also mocked the idea that climate change is a “liberal plot,” and much more, getting plenty of laughs from the crowd. You can watch part of the speech above.

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Watch President Obama Making Fun of Climate Deniers

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We Just Experienced the Hottest May on Record

by AntwanHockensmi Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last month was the hottest May globally since records began in 1880, new figures show.

The record heat, combined with increasingly certain predictions of an El Niño, means experts are now speculating whether 2014 could become the hottest year on record.

Data published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday showed the average land and ocean surface temperature last month was 0.74C above the 20th century average of 14.8C, making it the highest on record.

Previously, the warmest May was 2010, followed by 2012, 1998 and 2013.

Worldwide, March-May was the second warmest ever by NOAA’s records—2010 holds the record for that period. April 2014 was also the hottest April ever by NOAA’s records.

There are two other main global temperature records in addition to NOAA’s, one kept by NASA and the other by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the UK. The three are combined by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, which ranks 2010 as the warmest on record, and says that 13 of the 14 warmest years on record occurred in the 21st century.

Some forecasters are now predicting a 90 percent chance of El Niño—the weather phenomenon that can cause drought in Asia and Australia and lead to higher temperatures—happening this year, opening the possibility that 2014 will be the hottest year yet.

Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., told the Guardian‘s environment network partner, ClimateCentral: “I agree that 2014 could well be the warmest on record, and/or 2015, depending on how things play out.”

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We Just Experienced the Hottest May on Record

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These Maps Show How Many Brutally Hot Days You Will Suffer When You’re Old

by KristopherMgw Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Risky Business

One of the main difficulties in getting people to care about climate change is that it can be hard to notice on a daily basis. But the prospect of sweating profusely through your golden years? That’s more arresting.

If you’re aged 4-33 right now, the map above shows you how many very hot days—those with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit—you’re likely to experience by the time you’re elderly. It comes from a new report by the economics research firm Rhodium Group, which was commissioned by former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Henry Paulson, the Republican Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush; and Tom Steyer, the billionaire Bay Area entrepreneur and environmentalist.

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These Maps Show How Many Brutally Hot Days You Will Suffer When You’re Old

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Sorry, Conservatives. The Supreme Court Isn’t Stopping Obama’s Climate Plan.

by MonserrateDeGil Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

“Supreme Court Limits EPA’s Global Warming Rules.”

“Supreme Court Ruling Backs Most EPA Emission Controls.”

These are just a couple of the many contradictory headlines in response to Monday’s US Supreme Court ruling in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, a case filed by industry groups and several states challenging some of the environmental agency’s efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. So what’s going on here?

Despite some applauding headlines from the right—”Supreme Court Hits Obama’s Global Warming Agenda,” claimed the Washington Times—the ruling actually had very little effect. “This is not doing much of anything to hobble EPA,” explains Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, adding: “Nothing that is being done today calls into question the EPA’s ability to regulate power plants, both new and existing, under section 111 of the Clean Air Act.”

The decision, authored by Antonin Scalia, is actually the latest in a series of rulings by the Supreme Court on the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The most important of these, 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA, found that the agency had the authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act. In 2011, the court went further in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, ruling that states, cities, and other entities could not independently sue greenhouse gas emitters because the Clean Air Act and the EPA “displace” their ability to do so. It’s on the basis of such rulings that President Obama’s EPA has stepped forward to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of sources, including automobiles, newly constructed power plants, and, most recently, existing or older power plants.

Headlines notwithstanding, those regulatory actions weren’t really at issue in Monday’s decision. Rather, the latest case involved something called the EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program, which issues permits for major new sources of air pollution, or for higher levels of emissions from existing sources. Permitted emitters are required to use the best technology available to mitigate their emissions.

As part of the EPA’s initiatives to combat global warming, the agency had tried to “tailor” this preexisting program, which covered other pollutants, to apply to large greenhouse gas emitters, while simultaneously ruling out smaller emitters like hospitals. Industry groups and some states sued in objection. The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can’t target emitters based on their greenhouse gases under this program, but the court also said the agency can require major emitters already permitted under the PSD program for other types of emissions to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions, too. And by these lights, the EPA can still regulate 83 percent of all stationary sources of these emissions.

So we certainly shouldn’t be worried that the EPA can’t go forward on regulating greenhouse gases now, explains Sierra Club attorney Pat Gallagher. “There’s a slight ding in their program,” Gallagher says. But as he adds, “you’re still capturing most facilities, like 83 percent of the facilities.”

So, don’t freak out. The EPA is still taking major action on global warming. The latest Supreme Court ruling is no catastrophe. The fact that the court is tweaking such minor details in a sense affirms that the EPA’s broad approach to global warming is on track.

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Sorry, Conservatives. The Supreme Court Isn’t Stopping Obama’s Climate Plan.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains How Republicans Blew It on Climate Change

by JulissaStubbs Posted on June 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you care about the place of science in our culture, then this has to be the best news in a very long time. Last Sunday night, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey—which airs on Fox and then the next day on the National Geographic Channel—actually tied ABC’s “The Bachelorette” for the top ratings among young adult viewers, the “key demographic” coveted by advertisers. And it did so by—that’s right—airing an episode about the reality of climate change.

Tuesday evening, I had the privilege of sitting down with the show’s host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, to discuss this milestone, and how he feels generally as the 13-part series comes to a close. (The final episode, entitled “Unafraid of the Dark,” airs this Sunday night.) “The ratings are exceeding our expectations,” said Tyson, fresh off the climate episode triumph. But Tyson emphasized that to him, that’s not the most important fact: Rather, it’s that a science show aired at all in primetime on Sunday night.

“You had entertainment writers putting The Walking Dead in the same sentence as Cosmos,” said Tyson. “Game of Thrones in the same sentence of Cosmos. ‘How’s Cosmos doing against Game of Thrones?’ That is an extraordinary fact, no matter what ratings it earned.”

I spoke with Tyson in the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Hall in DC, below a painting of the society’s founders signing its charter in 1888. Tyson, wearing a glittering space-themed tie, sipped white wine before moving upstairs to a reception where he was destined for an hour of handshakes and selfies. Later that evening—after a special advance airing of the final episode of Cosmos—he would electrify a packed room by explaining to a young girl how solar flares work, a display that involved him sprawling across the stage (and his fellow panelists) as he contorted his body to mimic the dynamics of the sun’s plasma. The show concluded with Tyson explaining how “plasma pies” (as he dubbed them), ejected towards us by our star, ultimately become the aurora borealis and the aurora australis.

There were other Cosmos luminaries on the stage—including executive producers Brannon Braga and Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow—but Tyson won the room that night. Easily.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, surveying some of the universe’s awesomeness in Cosmos. Fox/National Geographic

Overall, Tyson notes, Cosmos premiered not only on Fox but on National Geographic Channel and, globally, in 181 countries and 46 languages. “It tells you that science is trending in our culture,” Tyson averred to me. “And if science is trending, that can only be good for the health, the wealth, and the security of our species, of our civilization.”

And yet, many members of our species still deny that the globe is warming thanks to human activities—a point that Cosmos has not only made a centerpiece but that, the program has frankly argued, threatens civilization as we know it. Tyson is know for being fairly non-confrontational; for not wanting to directly argue with or debate those who deny science in various areas. He prefers to just tell it like it is, to educate. But when we talked he was, perhaps, a little more blunt than usual.

“At some point, I don’t know how much energy they have to keep fighting it,” he said of those who don’t accept the science of climate change. “It’s an emergent scientific truth.” Tyson added that in the political sphere, denying the science is just a bad strategy. “The Republican Party, so many of its members are resistant to embracing the facts of climate change that the legislation that they should be eager to influence, they’re left outside the door,” said Tyson. “Because they think the debate is whether or not it’s happening, rather than what policy and legislation can serve their interests going forward.”

You can argue, in fact, that that is exactly what happened this week. One day after Cosmos’ highly rated climate episode aired, the EPA announced its new regulations for power plant carbon dioxide emissions. The whole reason that the Obama administration went this route—regulating carbon via the Clean Air Act—was that climate legislation (the first option, and the more desirable option) was impossible. The legislative math didn’t work. It would never pass.

Now, Republicans are extraordinarily upset by the EPA’s rules, as the agency moves in to fill a legislative vacuum. But thanks to their denial, they may well have lost their chance to find a more ideologically desirable solution, like a carbon tax. (In fairness, some coal state Democrats were also responsible for the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin famously shot the bill with a rifle in an ad for his 2010 Senate campaign.)

That’s bad for our politics, just as climate change is bad for our civilization—but it is surely some small saving grace to at least learn, thanks to Tyson and Cosmos, that science is not bad for the television business. The success of Cosmos, Tyson thinks, changes what can be on TV; how future network programmers will think, in the future, about what constitutes desirable content.

“It will open up their definition of what can be in primetime television,” he said.

On our most popular episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, Neil Tyson explained why he doesn’t debate science deniers, and much more. You can listen here (interview starts around minute 13):

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains How Republicans Blew It on Climate Change

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How Much Cleaner Will Obama’s Climate Rules Make Your State?

by OMNSherita Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate strategy—a plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants. The main takeaway was that by 2030 the regulations will cut these emissions, the biggest single driver of global warming, by 30 percent compared to 2005 levels. But under the hood, things get a little more complex.

Rather than a consistent national standard, the proposed rule sets a different standard for every state, based on the EPA’s assessment of what each state can realistically achieve using existing technology at a reasonable cost. The goal applies to a state’s carbon intensity, the measure of how much carbon pollution comes from each unit of electricity produced in that state, rather than total carbon emissions. States like Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, rely heavily on coal power and have a higher carbon intensity than states like California that are more energy-efficient and have more renewable energy. By 2030, each state will be required to meet a carbon intensity target lower than where it is today; how much lower, exactly, depends on what the EPA thinks the state can pull off.

States will have broad leeway to devise individual plans to meet their targets, which could include installing air-scrubbing technology on plants themselves, adopting more robust energy efficiency standards, or switching from coal to cleaner sources like natural gas or renewables.

Here’s a ranking of which states will have to shrink their carbon footprint the most:

Tim McDonnell

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How Much Cleaner Will Obama’s Climate Rules Make Your State?

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"Cosmos" Explains How Global Warming Threatens Civilization as We Know It

by Darrell6Martin932@gmail.comDarrell6Martin932@gmail.comDarrell6Martin932@gmail.comDarrell6Martin932 Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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So now Cosmos has really done it.

The show had already enraged climate deniers by explaining just how big a problem global warming is. But clearly, it wasn’t done. On the latest episode, entitled “The Immortals,” host Neil deGrasse Tyson explores a grandiose theme if ever there was one: What it would take for our species to get off-world, as well as whether we’ll ever be able to successfully contact alien life. Both are, in effect, chances at immortality, since either our species—or at least the information we create and transmit into space—would thereby live on, perhaps even beyond the death of our sun.

But guess what: Both forms of immortality, according to the show, are threatened by factors that can disrupt the stability and the longevity of human civilization—and that includes human-caused climate change.

To understand how that could be so, you need to first understand something that loomed very large in the thoughts of Tyson’s predecessor, Carl Sagan, and that underlies this latest Cosmos episode: The Drake Equation. Derived by the astrophysicist Frank Drake, the equation is basically a formula for trying to determine how many technologically advanced civilizations there might be in the Milky Way galaxy, and how likely it is that our own civilization would be able to contact them. It looks like this (for much more detail, visit the SETI Institute):

N = R* · fp · ne · fl · fi · fc · L

N, the quantity we’re trying to identify, refers to how many civilizations there are in the Milky Way galaxy, that have reached a technological state whereby they can make radio transmissions into space, rendering them theoretically detectable by other civilizations on other planets. It is a product of these factors: R*, or how fast stars form that could support intelligent life; fp, how many of those stars, in turn, support planetary systems, like our own solar system; ne, how many planets in each of these solar systems could at least theoretically, due to their environment, support life; fl, how many of those planets turn out to be places where life indeed develops; and fi, or how many of those planets produce life that has intelligence.

And then come the two terms of the equation that are perhaps the most interesting: fc, denoting “the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space”; and L, denoting “the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.”

Here’s a video of Sagan explaining the equation from the old Cosmos. Note that its final term (referred to above as L), for Sagan, is visually represented by a mushroom cloud—for civilizations that destroy themselves with nuclear weapons won’t last long enough to send radio signals into space for a very long period of time. Or as Sagan observes, some civilizations “might…snuff themselves out in an instant of unforgivable neglect.” They might blow themselves up.

The new installment of Cosmos has, in effect, replaced that mushroom cloud with a coal plant. Exploring the theme of civilizational collapse in a Jared Diamondesque vein, Tyson proceeds to look into all the factors that cause civilizations to fall away, thus in effect exploring that last crucial term in the Drake Equation, L (although the show does not mention the equation by name). Here, things like violence and war loom large, but so do major destabilizing environmental or climatic shifts. As Tyson puts it, “Whether or not we ever make contact with intelligent alien life may depend on a critical question: What is the life expectancy of a civilization?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson visits present-day Iraq to explain the rise—and collapse—of ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Fox/National Geographic

To illustrate this, the show focuses in particular on Mesopotamia of more than 4,000 years ago, home to some of the earliest writing, as well as myths that have lived on and achieved at least some modicum of immortality, like the epic of Gilgamesh. Yet the Mesopotamian civilization was done in by violence, as well as by environmental pollution (too much irrigation of farmlands with salt-laden water) and climate change, or more specifically, an epic drought. They thought it was a divine punishment. We know better…or do we?

Which brings us to our own civilization, a global one that is currently digging a deep hole of its own—climate change—which could threaten a major collapse. We might, unfortunately, be one of those “civilizations that self-destruct,” in Tyson’s words. Here’s Tyson’s big statement about it (you can watch the video here):

TYSON: In one respect, we’re ahead of the people of ancient Mesopotamia. Unlike them, we understand what’s happening to our world. For example, we’re pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, at a rate not seen on Earth for a million years. And there’s scientific consensus that we’re destabilizing our climate. Yet, our civilization seems to be in the grip of denial, a kind of paralysis. There’s a disconnect between what we know, and what we do.

Being able to adapt our behavior to challenges is as good a definition of intelligence as any I know. If our greater intelligence is the hallmark of our species, then we should use it, as all other beings use their distinctive advantages, to help ensure that their offspring prosper, and their heredity is passed on, and that the fabric of nature that sustains us is protected. Human intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen. The ease with which it can be sweet talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired tendencies, sometimes themselves disguised as the light of reason, is worrisome. But if our intelligence is the only edge, we must learn to use it better, to sharpen it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies. To use it, as cats use stealth before pouncing, as walking sticks use camouflage, to make it the tool of our survival. If we do this, we can solve almost any problem we are likely to confront in the next 100,000 years.

The show then ends by envisioning a better future, one in which we emerge from the cloud of denial, recognize our problems, and face and get past them. If we do that, and peer far enough ahead, Tyson notes that we can imagine a world in which “the last internal combustion engine is placed in a museum, as the effects of climate change reverse and diminish,” and in which “the polar ice caps are restored to the way they were in the 19th century.” And ultimately, one in which we get off world, explore the stars—and discover a fate that is no longer specifically tied to Earth alone. A form of immortality.

In other words, you might say that the latest Cosmos makes the grandest statement yet for why we had better do something about climate change. And here’s the thing: It looks, based on previews, like the next episode will focus even more deeply on the subject.

If anything can shift our culture towards a broader appreciation of science, then, this show may really be it.

On our most popular episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, Tyson explained why he doesn’t debate science deniers, and much more. You can listen here (interview starts around minute 13):

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"Cosmos" Explains How Global Warming Threatens Civilization as We Know It

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North Carolina GOP Pushes Unprecedented Bill to Jail Anyone Who Discloses Fracking Chemicals

by VanA79ngqbcu Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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As hydraulic fracturing ramps up around the country, so do concerns about its health impacts. These concerns have led 20 states to require the disclosure of industrial chemicals used in the fracking process.

North Carolina isn’t on that list of states yet—and it may be hurtling in the opposite direction.

On Thursday, three Republican state senators introduced a bill that would slap a felony charge on individuals who disclosed confidential information about fracking chemicals. The bill, whose sponsors include a member of Republican party leadership, establishes procedures for fire chiefs and health care providers to obtain chemical information during emergencies. But as the trade publication Energywire noted Friday, individuals who leak information outside of emergency settings could be penalized with fines and several months in prison.

“The felony provision is far stricter than most states’ provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets,” says Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking regulations.

The bill also allows companies that own the chemical information to require emergency responders to sign a confidentiality agreement. And it’s not clear what the penalty would be for a health care worker or fire chief who spoke about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues.

“I think the only penalties to fire chiefs and doctors, if they talked about it at their annual conference, would be the penalties contained in the confidentiality agreement,” says Wiseman. “But the bill is so poorly worded, I cannot confirm that if an emergency responder or fire chief discloses that confidential information, they too would not be subject to a felony.” In some sections, she says, “That appears to be the case.”

The disclosure of the chemicals used to break up shale formations and release natural gas is one of the most heated issues surrounding fracking. Many energy companies argue that the information should be proprietary, while public health advocates counter that they can’t monitor for environmental and health impacts without it. Under public pressure, a few companies have begun to report chemicals voluntarily.

North Carolina has banned fracking until the state can approve regulations. The bill introduced Thursday, titled the Energy Modernization Act, is meant to complement the rules currently being written by the North Carolina Mining & Energy Commission.

Wiseman adds that, other than the felony provision, the bill proposes disclosure laws similar to those in many other states: “It allows for trade secrets to remain trade secrets, it provides only limited exceptions for reasons of emergency and health problems, and provides penalties for failure to honor the trade secret.”

Draft regulations from the North Carolina commission have been praised as some of the strongest fracking rules in the country. But observers already worry that the final regulations will be significantly weaker. In early May, the commission put off approving a near-final chemical disclosure rule because Haliburton, which has huge stakes in the fracking industry, complained the proposal was too strict, the News & Observer reported.

For portions of the Republican-controlled North Carolina government to kowtow to the energy industry is not surprising. In February, the Associated Press reported that under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, North Carolina’s top environmental regulators previously thwarted three separate Clean Water Act lawsuits aimed at forcing Duke Energy, the largest electricity utility in the country, to clean up its toxic coal ash pits in the state. Had those lawsuits been allowed to progress, they may have prevented the February rupture of a coal ash storage pond, which poured some 80,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River.

“Environmental groups say they favor some of the provisions in the Energy Modernization Act,” Energywire reported Friday. “It would put the state geologist in charge of maintaining the chemical information and would allow the state’s emergency management office to use it for planning. It also would allow the state to turn over the information immediately to medical providers and fire chiefs.”

However, environmentalists point out that the bill would also prevent local governments from passing any rules on fracking and limit water testing that precedes a new drilling operation.

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North Carolina GOP Pushes Unprecedented Bill to Jail Anyone Who Discloses Fracking Chemicals

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This Is What a Holy Shit Moment for Global Warming Looks Like

by PeterAsheqwiq Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you truly understand global warming, then you know it’s all about the ice. That’s what matters. Planet Earth has not always had great ice sheets at the poles, of the sort that currently exist atop Greenland and Antarctica. In other periods, much of that water has instead been in liquid form, in the oceans—and the oceans have been much higher.

How much? According to the National Academy of Sciences, the globe’s great ice sheets contain enough frozen water to raise sea levels worldwide by more than 60 meters. That’s about 200 feet. And it makes all the sea level rise that we’ve seen so far due to global warming appear piddly and insignificant.

That’s why scientists have long feared a day like this would come. Two new scientific papers, in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters, report that major glaciers that are part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appear to have become irrevocably destabilized. The whole process may still play out on the scale of centuries, but due to the particular dynamics of this ice sheet, the collapse of these major glaciers now “appears unstoppable,” according to NASA (whose researchers are behind one of the two studies).

Visualization of Antarctic temperature changes. NASA Earth Observatory

The first study, by researchers at NASA and the University of California-Irvine, uses satellite radar to examine an array of large glaciers along the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, which collectively contain the equivalent of four feet of sea level rise. The result is the documentation of a “continuous and rapid retreat”—for instance, the Smith and Kohler glaciers have retreated 35 kilometers since 1992—and the researchers say that there is “no major obstacle that would prevent the glaciers from further retreat.” In the NASA press release, the researchers are still more vocal, with one of them noting that these glaciers “have passed the point of no return.”

The other group of researchers, based at the University of Washington, reach similar conclusions with their paper in Science. But they do so by using an computer model to study one of these glaciers in particular: The Thwaites Glacier, pictured above, which contains about two feet of sea level rise and is retreating rapidly. “The simulations indicate that early-stage collapse has begun,” notes their paper. What’s more, the Thwaites Glacier is a “linchpin” for the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; its rapid collapse would “probably spill over to adjacent catchments, undermining much of West Antarctica.” And considering that the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet contains enough water to raise sea levels by 10 to 13 feet, that’s a really big deal.

It is, again, important to emphasize that just because these glaciers may have passed the “point of no return” does not mean that dramatic sea level rise happens tomorrow. There is a limit to how fast glaciers and ice sheets can move, and the Science paper emphasizes that the entire process may take several hundred years and possibly as much as a millennium.

In the grand scheme of things, though, the consequence would be a very different planet. And West Antarctica is just the beginning. According to glaciologist and Greenland expert Jason Box, when you compare where we are now to where atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean levels stood in past warm periods of Earth’s history, you can infer that human beings have already set in motion 69 feet of sea level rise.

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This Is What a Holy Shit Moment for Global Warming Looks Like

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