Sea-level doom from Antarctic melting

Ya 100 meters. Gotta watch those zeroes. Snowball Earth (happened very long ago) may have phase changed 1000 m of seawater.

 

Sea level rise comes from expanding volume of ocean waters by adding heat, melting continental glaciers, and detaching Greenland and Antarctica ice. Each of those has a current rate that should be in our earlier discussions. Only Greenland and Antarctica ice could provide large accelerations to SLR.


A new constraint on Antarctic ice has been published:


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10614-4


Apparently not summarized at Eurekalert, so readers will use that abstract, or email authors for the pdf. As shall I.


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Overall we are talking about < 1 meter of SLR through year 2100, unless something exciting happens. Some ports and ocean-facing cities may be directly troubled by that. Effects on salinization of coastal groundwater sources may be larger. Effects on storm surges with this (small) increase may be larger. It is all part of multi-factor challenge to Human Enterprise from burning more fossils and heating the place up; a challenge that will persist as long as old fossil-burning money prevails over new come from renewable-energy money in influencing governments’ policies.


That’s simply how century 21 will go. One might hope for more rationality or less distractions to come from Greta Thunberg etc. But it’s old money vs. new opportunities.


Good night and good luck.

 

"I've known since the Venus missions what the Earth climate outcome will be."

Not likely I say. Earth has been through very hot times in the past but kept its oceans. There is not enough fossil carbon to burn to make troposphere sufficiently infrared-dark to ruin the place in that way. Meanwhile, plants will take down some of the added CO2 and mostly, silicate minerals will trap more of it.

Earth has become a place where it would be very hard to change temperature more than 10 oC in either direction in thousands years time frame. Within that range (particularly top half of that range), we shall have to make Human Enterprise work. Or else as they say.

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Don't work over much about deniers. When fossil money dries up they will go quiet or deny ever denying. Have you forgotten those who have already left us?

 

Instead we shall continue to eliminate species and replace them with farmed ones Yay human enterprise!

A sad thing seen recently is major investments in energy production in Africa (renewable or otherwise) being crimped by low credit ratings of nations there involved. We are 'enterprising' kinda slowly.

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But the rich folks yachts and multi homes are joys to behold. Gini index and letting the Genie out of the bottle. Puns are confusing.

 

I learn that Dr. Felicity (mentioned above) is out of office on travel until sometime in July. So email later.

On a yacht somewhere? I wouldn't know.