A region of ice in Antarctica is breaking up. It's area is 570 square kilometers, which in the grand scheme of things is not large. The problem is that the loss of this ice creates a threat to the Wilkins ice shelf. This ice shelf is 3250 square kilometers, and if it goes sea level could rise by 5 to 10 meters.
From the article:
From the article:
As of the 2001 IPCC report, scientists believed that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was unlikely to collapse in the next 1000 years.
2 comments:
A significant enough rise in the sea level would create a refugee situation within our borders (and many other nations) and result in lots of general instability and chaos....
Will we be telling future generations, "Rhode Island used to be our smallest state, until the Flood"?
The thing that bothers me is the amount of error in the scientists' projections. They thought this ice shelf would be ok for 1000 years as recently as 6-7 years ago. Admittedly, it's still ok, but I wonder what their new projections are? This highlights the chaotic, and essentially unpredictable nature of climate.
But volume is not chaotic! They don't have a clue how much sea level rise this ice may create. Their numbers are 5-10... 5 to 10! Look at it this way: that's half an order of magnitude! I wonder what makes it so hard to measure the volume of that ice.
But, yeah, we couldn't handle the refugee situation that Katrina created. That was just one city. Florida has several major cities. Not to mention all the other coastal cities.
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