A team of researchers reports Antarctica’s enormous Thwaites Glacier is on the verge of collapse, with warm water seeping under the weakest parts of the glacier and melting it from below. Researchers deployed a robotic submarine to penetrate the vast ice sheet, which is roughly the size of Florida. They found the glacier is susceptible to rapid and irreversible ice loss that could raise global sea levels by more than half a meter. Its collapse could destabilize surrounding glaciers that could raise the Earth’s oceans by a further three meters — or nearly 10 feet.

From DemocracyNow!

  • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    :maybe-later-kiddo: uhhhh there's nothing to worry about, California just announced that they're going to ban the sale of new gas vehicles in 30 years. Stop the fearmongering disinformation

  • redthebaron [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    the only advice for not being a doomer on climate is really just DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT, DO NOT LET IT SINK IN, which is not great as that is what brought us to this point in the first place

    • shimmer [undecided]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Nah, everyone should go through a period of depression and grief about climate change.

      • redthebaron [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        i don't disagree with that i have spent a substantial amount of my life being real fucked up about it, but it is rough to get out of bed and go to work when your brain is like that, which is where the advice come in, the good ol' reptilian brain is really good at making you not think about stuff so you can continue existing

        • shimmer [undecided]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Yeah same, I went through some shit starting in about 2013. Ended up just traveling around doing drugs for a few years. I was looking for a community to hopefully have some people to grow food and eventually die out with. I got tired of working on other peoples shit though so I went and got an easy and fun job at a resort for a while.

          Next thing I know a decade has passed and I probably should have been trying to make some money or learn a skill.

          • SnackClip [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            10 years in our time is still nothing at all geologically. People who became hermits 50 years ago because they thought we were doomed were still right basically.

  • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I hope a benevolent God is real so that way the monsters responsible for this can stay FAR away from heaven.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Even fucking covid was too much an inconvenience for :stonks-up: for there to be any lasting damage mitigation. :doomer:

  • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The scientists were also surprised by a second finding. They discovered an underwater glacial landscape much more complex than expected, dominated by strange staircaselike terraces and crevasses – big cracks going all the way through the ice shelf.

    who is walking on those stairs

    A 2021 study found the ice shelf could shatter within the next five years, and last year scientists said the Thwaites Glacier is hanging on “by its fingernails” as the planet warms, with the potential for rapid retreat in the coming years.

    :scared:

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I wonder how people would react if Thwaites was to suddenly break off. Would society finally wake up and take actual concrete action, or would there instead be debates about how this isn’t related to human-caused climate change but is instead from the climate is always changing / solar activity / these things happen / it’s a 1 in 1,000,000,000 event and we were due / insert other creative argument.

    a_dance_with_fire comments on Warm water melts weak spots on Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier', say scientists

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      If COVID has taught us anything it's that a significant part of the Westoid population would rather choke to death on their own fluids than take simple public health measures like wearing a mask.

      They're going to yell about their freedoms even as the seawater floods into their lungs.

      • barrbaric [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yep, COVID was like an easy mode trial run on fast-forward for how our society will deal with the many coming crises. It won't, and billions will die.

    • fox [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I fear that while most nations would absolutely take action if meters of coast vanished overnight, the US has so devolved its ability to do anything to parasitic private interests that it would be unable to take any climate action besides tax incentives to build solar. If Florida sank beneath the waves, the libs would be celebrating the loss of a red state, the chuds would be shooting up synagogues in vengeance, and the government would try to find contractors to repaint road signage to avoid Florida

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Some will and most won't. We've already seen from Covid which societies will give a damn and which ones will scream about freedom as they find themselves homeless with insurance refusing to cover them.

    • huf [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      they'd just blame china and do nothing.

      except possibly start a war.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Knowing the ongoing clown car crash pileup and escalating circus fire, this may be spun as another justification to send more subsidies to :my-hero: to Save Humanity(tm)(r) with Martian escapist fantasies.

  • shimmer [undecided]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Here's a map where you can see what different sea level rise looks like, click "launch" https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slr.html

  • FuckYourselfEndless [ze/hir]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Is there a map tool on the internet one can use to see how fucked the world is by varying levels of sea rise?

  • HoChiMaxh [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    My org doesn't think climate change is an effective topic to organize around :lenin-rage: