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Op-Ed: How punctual is Doomsday? The Big Melt is happening

This is the price of incompetence, and the bills are payable now.

Climate change. — © AFP
Climate change. — © AFP

The seemingly endless stream of information regarding the rapid melt of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is doing more than threaten a 3m global sea level rise. It’s indicating a cascade effect of further sea rises. It’s also messing up a lot of predictions.

We’re not talking decades. We’re now talking years. Disasters don’t wait to happen. The oddly convenient date of 2100 for significant rises in sea level is looking more than a bit off. The Thwaites glacier is famous for its size, rate of melt, and protecting a lot of glacial ice which would otherwise melt if it weren’t there. If that ice melts, a major sea level rise is inevitable.

This net scenario is really An Inconvenient Truth, brought forward perhaps a few decades. There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on when major sea level rises will occur, but the bandwidth is now 5-50 years if the Thwaite glacier breaks down. After all, how do you schedule a catastrophe? The caterers will need to know.

The worst case scenario is now looking more likely – A sea level rise of up to 70 metres, which will effectively trash most of the world’s major cities, and displace billions of people into areas which can’t support millions of people.  

For a bit of perspective – 70 metres is about up to the armpits of the Statue of Liberty. That will be the average level of water in the mean streets of New York. The movement of 70 metres of water will also flatten any structures and release a lot of pollution. Then all those nice sane responsible people will need somewhere to go.

Just to make things a bit more interesting, sea level rises will also go up estuaries and flood those areas as well. Some countries will disappear entirely. A lot of the world’s farmland is much less than 70 metres above sea level.

Changes in elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1985 to 2021 are shown. Ice height diminishes (red) as the ice sheet melts by contact with ocean water; it rises (blue) where accumulation exceeds melting. Ice shelves are shown in gray. The missions that supplied data are listed at bottom. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Projections for what will happen and where are all over the shop. The Thwaites glacier has scrambled those projections. A sort of “compound melt” is the likely scenario. More melt means faster melt. The volumes of water released will inevitably increase over time.

This tide won’t go out.

There was an ancient flood worldwide which is believed to be the original Biblical flood. The current scenario is on a scale of multiples of that flood. This will make Noah’s flood look like a Sunday school picnic.

Local effects will trigger secondary issues like dominoes. For example – What happens when a few trillion tons of water start putting pressure on geological faults like the San Andreas Fault? What if rising pressure triggers massive underwater landslides?

You can already hear the media spin on this.

Rent A Tsunami?

Privatized disasters?

Custom catastrophes?

Uber for earthquakes?

Air B&B for 3 billion people?

Another Trump court case taking up more time than the future of humanity, and getting more media coverage?

Geo meltdown  

The land will crumble if this huge amount of water gets loose. Coastlines can’t be stable. The soils behind the existing coastlines aren’t built for the dynamics of tides and the rush of sea water. Most of those soil structures will collapse. That land will be too dangerous to inhabit, reducing the amount of available land further.

Ecologically, what happens if so much land is underwater? Bear in mind that this tide won’t go out. A lot of the chemistry which sustains life and produces oxygen can’t happen on its normal scale. There will be a lot less of both.  

This is what 40 years of denialism and politics can do:

“Let’s talk about global disasters.”

“Let’s talk about taxes and how great we are.”

Result, the current situation. All of these problems could have been well in hand and being fixed by now, but no. This is the price of incompetence, and the bills are payable now.

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

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Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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