Studie toont aan dat het Antarctica ijs onder de waterspiegel in hoog tempo smelt.......

The Guardian bracht afgelopen maandag het bericht dat onderzoek tussen 2010 en 2016 het bewijs heeft geleverd voor een sterke wegsmelting van het ijs van Antarctica, vooral onder de waterspiegel........

Hiermee worden eerdere schattingen over de wegsmelting van ijs op Antarctica naar de prullenbak verwezen. Bij de oude schattingen ging men uit van de twee grootste gletsjers op Antarctica en keek men zoals je al begrepen had naar het zichtbare wegsmelten van ijs.

Tot nu toe dacht men dat vooral het ijs aan de Noordpool veel sneller wegsmelt dan dat van Antarctica, met de nieuwe studie blijkt het juist andersom te zijn.........

Met dit onderzoek wordt tevens de noodzaak aangetoond dat maatregelen tegen de zeespiegelstijging vooral in de laag gelegen gebieden op aarde drastisch moeten worden vervroegd, zo niet zullen deze gebieden (vooral in de Stille Oceaan) snel onder water verdwijnen.........

De hoogste tijd ook dat men wetgeving gaat opstellen waarmee landen, die niets of te weinig doen om de opwarming nog enigszins te beperken, voor het Internationaal Strafhof kunnen worden gesleept. (vergeet niet dat er nu al een groot aantal mensen is omgekomen door de gevolgen van de klimaatverandering...) 

Je snapt al welk land als eerste voor de rechter zou moeten staan, inderdaad de VS!* Hetzelfde geldt overigens voor de leiding van oliemaatschappijen die al lang op de hoogte zijn van het feit dat de verbranding van fossiele brandstoffen de oorzaak is van de klimaatverandering...... Zo wist Shell dit al in de 80er jaren en Exxon zelfs al in de 70er jaren...... Exxon verzweeg dit voor het publiek en Shell heeft dit nog enige tijd als leerstof voor het voortgezet onderwijs aangeleverd, waarna men het begin 90er jaren schielijk op heeft geborgen in een voor de burger en journalistiek ontoegankelijk archief.......

Underwater melting of Antarctic ice far greater than thought, study finds

The base of the ice around the south pole shrank by 1,463 square kilometres between 2010 and 2016

 An Adelie penguin standing on a block of melting ice in East Antarctica. Photograph: Reuters

Jonathan Watts

Mon 2 Apr 2018 17.18 BST

Hidden underwater melt-off in the Antarctic is doubling every 20 years and could soon overtake Greenland to become the biggest source of sea-level rise, according to the first complete underwater map of the world’s largest body of ice.

Warming waters have caused the base of ice near the ocean floor around the south pole to shrink by 1,463 square kilometres – an area the size of Greater London – between 2010 and 2016, according to the new study published in Nature Geoscience.

This map shows the changes in grounding line migration alongside ocean conditions around Antarctica between 2010 and 2016

The research by the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds suggests climate change is affecting the Antarctic more than previously believed and is likely to prompt global projections of sea-level rise to be revised upward.

Until recently, the Antarctic was seen as relatively stable. Viewed from above, the extent of land and sea ice in the far south has not changed as dramatically as in the far north.

But the new study found even a small increase in temperature has been enough to cause a loss of five metres every year from the bottom edge of the ice sheet, some of which is more than 2km underwater.

“What’s happening is that Antarctica is being melted away at its base. We can’t see it, because it’s happening below the sea surface,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd, one of the authors of the paper.

“The changes mean that very soon the sea-level contribution from Antarctica could outstrip that from Greenland.”

The study measures the Antarctic’s “grounding line” – the bottommost edge of the ice sheet across 16,000km of coastline. This is done by using elevation data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 and applying Archimedes’s principle of buoyancy, which relates the thickness of floating ice to the height of its surface.

The team were able to track the movement of Antarctica's grounding line using European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 across 16,000 km of the coastline. These graphic show how horizontal motion of glacier grounding lines is detected using satellite measurements of their elevation change
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5569573/Warming-oceans-melting-Antarctica-beneath.html#ixzz5BnF6ltmQ 

The greatest declines were seen in west Antarctica. At eight of the ice sheet’s 65 biggest glaciers, the speed of retreat was more than five times the rate of deglaciation since the last ice age. Even in east Antarctica, where some scientists – and many climate deniers – had previously believed ice might be increasing based on surface area, glaciers were at best stable and at worst in retreat when underwater ice was taken into account.

“It should give people more cause for concern,” said Shepherd. “Now that we have mapped the whole edge of the ice sheet, it rules out any chance that parts of Antarctica are advancing. We see retreat in more places and stasis elsewhere. The net effect is that the ice sheet overall is retreating. People can’t say ‘you’ve left a stone unturned’. We’ve looked everywhere now.”

The results could prompt an upward revision of sea-level rise projections. 10 years ago, the main driver was Greenland. More recently, the Antarctic’s estimated contribution has been raised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But its forecasts were based on measurements from the two main west Antarctic glaciers – Thwaites and Pine Island – a sample that provides an overly narrow and conservative view of what is happening when compared with the new research.

The study’s lead author, Hannes Konrad, said there was now clear evidence that the underwater glacial retreat is happening across the ice sheet.

This retreat has had a huge impact on inland glaciers,” he said, “because releasing them from the sea bed removes friction, causing them to speed up and contribute to global sea level rise.”

Topics

• Polar regions
• Climate change (Environment) 
• Glaciers 
• Climate change (Science) 
• Antarctica

=====================================

(De kaart en tekeningen zijn overgenomen van de MailOnline, daar ik de tekeningen van The Guardian niet over kan nemen.)

* Plus de huidige en alle voorgaande VS regeringen, dus ook die van slang Obama, onder wiens bewind een begin werd gemaakt met het dumpen van steenkool op de wereldmarkt, waardoor vooral arme landen in hoog tempo een groot aantal kolencentrales bij hebben gebouwd. Onder Obama werd zelfs de aanzet gedaan tot het bouwen van een enorme kolencentrale in natuurgebied de Sundarbans van Bangladesh, NB een land dat al zucht onder de gevolgen van de klimaatverandering..... Ofwel: hoe fout kan je zijn......

Klimaatverandering speelt zich voor onze ogen af.............. En nog zijn er figuren die ontkennen dat de mens de oorzaak is, puur en alleen voor het geldelijk gewin op fossiele brandstoffen............

Het volgende artikel vond ik op het blog van Stan van Houcke, die het van Truthdig haalde en Truthdig nam het op haar beurt over van Popular Resistance, zo dat hebben we weer gehad.

In dit artikel betogen de schrijvers Kevin Zeese en Margaret Flowers, dat de gevolgen van de klimaatverandering zich voor onze ogen afspelen, daarbij verwijzend naar de Orkaan Harvey. Vandaag komt er een andere orkaan over Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius en Sint Maarten, orkaan Irma, nog veel zwaarder dan Harvey, Irma is een orkaan in de categorie 5++...... Men verwacht windsnelheden tot 285 km/u. of zelfs hoger........

In Azie waren de gevolgen van noodweer nog veel groter dan in  de VS waar enkele tientallen doden te betreuren waren, daar zijn nu al meer dan 1.800 dodelijke slachtoffers geteld (en niet 1.200, zoals in het artikel hieronder genoemd).

Het 'Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change' (IPCC), een VN orgaan dat al vanaf 1990 rapporteert over de klimaatverandering, is verrast over de snelheid van de opwarming en de gevolgen die de klimaatverandering heeft voor veel landen (neem weer de kracht van orkanen en het groeiende aantal orkanen). Voorts geeft de opwarming in een aantal landen temperaturen die tot zelfs boven de 50 graden stijgen........

Het U.S. Global Change Research Program heeft onlangs haar rapportage gelekt naar de pers, daar men bang was, dat de Trump administratie dit rapport zou vernietigen...... In het rapport wordt een overweldigend bewijs geleverd voor het feit dat de mens verantwoordelijk is voor de klimaatverandering...... Overigens, Shell en Exxon hebben dit al voor 1990 (Exxon al in de 70er jaren!) bevestigt met onderzoek, dat daarna snel in het archief werd verstopt.......

Lees het volgende uitstekende artikel (en zie de berichten onder de links in het artikel):

Climate Breakdown Is Happening Before Our Eyes

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org
September 3rd, 2017

This piece originally appeared on Popular Resistance.

Climate breakdown, as George Monbiot calls it, is happening before our eyes at the same time the science on climate change grows stronger and has wider acceptance. Hurricane Harvey, which struck at the center of the petroleum industry – the heart of climate denialism – provided a glimpse of the new normal of climate crisis-induced events. In Asia, this week the climate message was even stronger where at least 1,200 people died and 41 million were impacted. By 2050, one billion people could be displaced by climate crises.

Climate disasters demonstrate the immense failure of government at all levels. The world has known about the likely disastrous impacts of climate change for decades. Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which  operates under the auspices of the United Nations and was founded in 1988. The IPCC published the first of five reports in 1990. Thousands of scientists and other experts write and review the reports and 120 countries participate in the process. The most common surprises in successive reports are more rapid temperature increases and greater impacts than scientists had predicted.

We Can No Longer Ignore the Science and the Evidence Before Us

The science on climate change has become extremely strong as the final draft of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report showed. The document was leaked last month because scientists feared the Trump administration would amend, suppress or destroy it. The report describes overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change impacting us right now and the urgent need to get to zero net carbon emissions.

It is not just science that confirms the climate crisis, it is also people’s experience with extreme weather, constant record breaking temperatures, and deadly heat waves as well as collapsing mountains in Alaska, the shrinking Colorado River and an ice free Arctic as a few examples. People have experienced a series of extreme storms – Hurricanes Harvey, Katrina and Sandy being the most notable this century –droughts, fires and other physical evidence that make it hard to deny climate catastrophe. Climate denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years.

There is no doubt that these storms are made more deadly by climate change. Harvey was a tropical storm until it went over the warm Gulf of Mexico and grew into a hurricane with record rainfall. Climate expert Michael Mann explains that warmer water resulted in greater moisture being absorbed, more rain and more flooding. Sea level rise added to the greater flooding. The stalling of the storm over Houston was also predicted by climate forecasters because the jet stream pattern has changed. Climate change had the same effects on Hurricane Sandy in New York City.

Science is denied because many profit from the dirty energy status quo and denying or even hiding the existence of climate change. There is litigation against oil and gas companies and an SEC investgation because records show they knew their products were causing climate change going back to the 70s but funded research to hide reality.  ExxonMobil is being sued by shareholders for misleading investors and faces shareholder challenges. Coastal communities are suing dozens of oil and gas companies for continuing to pollute after they knew the damage they were doing. 

Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, now the Secretary of State, used a fake email account to discuss climate change and many of those emails are now missing. Youth suing over the destruction of their environment and climate change are seeking Tillerson’s testimony and emails.

There are many climate criminals to point to with the dirty energy companies at the top of the list. There are 100 companies responsible for 71 percent of green house gas emissions. Good government would hold them responsible.

Historic Failure of Government

The three decade life of the IPCC has coincided with deep corruption of government by the energy industry, sprawl developers and other dirty energy profiteers. The anti-science movement in the United States, which includes government officials, industry and others who deny climate change exists, provides cover for elected officials to do nothing or act inadequately on the urgent reality of climate chaos so that corporations continue to threaten the planet.

The United States elected a climate denier, Donald Trump, who describes climate change as a hoax and has appointed officials who are complicit in denying climate change, closely tied to polluting industries and favor policies that result in climate breakdown, and many of whom were part of the misinformation network on climate. Trump has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, putting the US out of step with the world on the issue. The Trump administration has sought to hide evidence of climate change, but people have been sharing climate documents with other governments and scientific groups before he hid them. Thirteen cities joined together to publish Trump-deleted climate data.

Trump has conducted a witch hunt against believers in climate change. These actions have resulted in the unusual step of climate scientists protesting the Trump administration.

But, even presidents who recognize climate change reality have not taken action to confront it.  Unlike Trump, President Obama played a more hidden hand in his undermining of climate policy. His energy strategy favored “all of the above” energy including oil and gas and his office approved carbon infrastructure and off-shore drilling. Obama showed dirty energy extraction is a bi-partisan concern, as Alison Rose Levy clearly reminds us. Obama undermined the 2009 Copenhagen climate accord and weakened the Paris agreement. He was preceded by the marinated in oil Bush-Cheney administration. Those two administrations wasted 16 years of critical time to respond to climate change.

Federal decisions had local impacts as can be seen in Houston, the fourth largest city. The federal government inadequately regulated superfund sites, pollution from oil refineries and chemical plants in the area. These were all part of “Cancer Alley” or the “Chemical Coast” – names used to describe the petrochemical capital of the United States. When flooding came, so did disaster in these areas. A  1.5 mile radius around one chemical plant had to be evacuated and toxic waste sites flooded.  Of course, the environmental racism that led to these dangerous polluters being put in poor neighborhoods, usually communities of color, is now resulting in massive pollution in those areas and will cause health problems.

But inadequate response to climate change often includes state and local governments (some states and cities are taking positive steps). Texas is an example of decades of failed government as it has taken no action to adapt to climate change over the last three decades. Bills were introduced to do so but the legislature failed to act. Why? Because the laws included the words “climate change,” e.g. calling for a “climate change vulnerability assessment” and were perceived as a threat to the oil and gas industry.

The metropolitan area of Houston contains 6.5 million people over urban sprawl the size of New Jersey. Zoning regulations allowed for unregulated growth, even in areas prone to flooding, creating a large population on a flood plain. The area has had a long relationship with the petrochemical industry which has been able to get its way, but being business friendly to the industry is going to become very costly. The city is sinking at 2.2 inches a year in large part because of oil and water being pumped from under it.

The failure to act on climate for the last three decades also means that government will spend more as each crisis has multi-hundred million or even multi-billion dollar costs. In addition, people today are leaving a bill of hundreds of trillions of dollars to future generations. It would be much less expensive if government acted responsibly and put in place infrastructure and technology to adapt to climate change as well as to ameliorate it now. The disaster in Houston is an opportunity to make those changes.

The historic failure of government action on climate change shows a fatal flaw in a representative democracy that is based on the corruption of big business money and serves the corporate interests who profit from the flawed status quo.

People Rise to the Challenge

Throughout much of this history, particularly in the 21st Century, people have been challenging the dominance of the oil, gas and coal industries and pushing government to confront climate change.

Even before Trump came into office, there were massive protests during the Obama administration against the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline and other carbon infrastructure throughout the country.  People protested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is an arm of the oil and gas industry disguised as a federal agency. Obama’s FERC commissioners were a rubber stamp for the industry, now, Trump’s FERC continues the practice.

People were escalating actions during the Obama era saying the time for direct action on climate change is now. Protests were on an upswing before Trump was elected. Last September, Bill McKibben recalculated the climate math showing how time was running out.

From the first day of the Trump administration people were taking action. Climate activists blockaded Trump’s inauguration making it more difficult for people to attend. In addition to protests against specific carbon energy products, people mobilized for #DayAgainstDenial Protests across U.S. to call attention to climate change.

People pushed businesses and local governments to pledge to reduce carbon emissions resulting in over 1,400 U.S. cities, states and businesses vowing to meet Paris climate commitments.  Last week, nine eastern states jointly agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent more than their previous target.

There is widespread climate change action, which is ‘unstoppable’ despite Trump’s policies. In fact, Trump’s presidency may be leading to an escalation in movement action as people know we can no longer hope to win by simply voting or speaking out. People are showing they are willing to risk going to jail for a livable future. And, we have begun to see cases where juries are not willing to convict people for climate change protests.

Climate change affects each of us and is an issue that unites us. When crisis hits, we need to act as a community in mutual aid of each other. Those cmmunity relationships can be built now so we are ready in times of crisis.

The only way we can mitigate and adapt to climate breakdown is by working together toward the common goals of reducing our carbon footprint, moving to a net zero carbon energy economy as soon as possible and putting in place the infrastructure needed to adapt to the climate crisis.

Popular Resistance
==============================

In het artikel wordt nog over Obama gesproken, die klimaatakkoord van Kopenhagen wist te ondermijnen en het klimaatakkoord van Parijs wist af te zwakken t.b.v. de fossiele maffia......... Daar wil ik nog aan toevoegen, dat Obama ook de dumping van VS steenkool op de wereldmarkt heeft gestimuleerd en zelfs toestemming gaf aan een VS bedrijf, om een enorme kolencentrale te bouwen aan de rand van een belangrijk natuurgebied in Bangladesh, de Sundarbans....... De Sundarbarns is overigens een grensoverschrijdend natuurgebied en ligt deels in India

PS: de klimaatsceptici kan je zonder meer gevaarlijke psychopathische figuren noemen, die schijt hebben aan het grote aantal mensenlevens waar de klimaatverandering nu al een eind aan heeft gemaakt. Daarnaast sterft een ongelofelijk aantal mensen wereldwijd vroegtijdig (na een akelig ziekbed) aan de gevolgen van langdurige inademing van auto-uitstoot, in Nederland ligt dat aantal rond de 18.000 op jaarbasis..... Alleen dat feit zou al genoeg moeten zijn, om als de donder de uitstoot van fossiele brandstoffen omlaag te brengen....... U weet het: men vergiftigt liever de gewone bevolking, dan echte maatregelen tegen uitstoot te nemen, dat kost niet alleen een berg geld, maar brengt ook de enorme winsten omlaag, die de fossiele maffia jaar in jaar uit maken (na een kleine inzinking door de crisis)........

IPCC ook al ingepakt door kernenergie lobby........

Het IPCC stelt in haar laatste rapport, dat tegen de opwarming van de aarde, ook kernenergie een noodzaak zal blijven. Maakt 't uit, dat we niet weten waar we met het kernafval naar toe moeten, dat een groot aantal centrales eigenlijk te gevaarlijk zijn, om nog door te laten draaien en de gigantische rampen in Tsjernobyl en Fukushima. Rampen die in feite nog doorwoeden, die in Fukushima zelfs ongecontroleerd, zoals telkens weer blijkt, zelfs een steeds groter gebied van de Stille Oceaan is nu zwaar besmet met radioactiviteit.... Ditzelfde orgaan, doet amper wat aan de F-gassen, die bijvoorbeeld in de EU nog jaren gebruikt mogen worden, maar die zorgen voor een onevenredig harde stimulering van de opwarming van onze aarde......

De aarde redden van opwarming (wat al niet meer kan, alleen beperken kan nog), door diezelfde aarde onbewoonbaar te maken met nucleaire straling.......... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Ongelofelijk! Wat zijn de kosten van dat klimaatpanel?