Ice shelf connected to Antarctic's doomsday glacier is CRACKING: Eastern part that is the size of Florida will likely break free within five years and trigger 25 INCH rise in sea levels
A refreshing aspect of the article below is that it gives coverage to the subsurface vulcanism that is very influential in West Antarctic melting. I have been noting it for years but it would seem that even Greenies now feel obliged to mention it.
There is no way of quantifying any global influence or any volcanic influence on the melting so any claim that global warming is involved is mere speculation
The front portion of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica has an 'alarming crack' that could lead to it breaking off in just five years.
Part of the Thwaites Glacier, it is the size of Florida and its melting accounts for about four percent of the global sea level rise.
New data, released on Monday, shows warming oceans is causing the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) to lose its grip on the submarine shoal, or bank, that acts as a pinning point to hold it to the rest of the glacier – which is also causing cracks across its surface.
Satellite images presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union show several large, diagonal cracks extending across TEIS.
'If this floating ice shelf breaks apart, the Thwaites Glacier will accelerate and its contribution to sea level rise will increase by as much as 25%,' the researchers shared during the presentation.
'There is going to be dramatic change in the front of the glacier, probably in less than a decade,' glaciologist Prof Ted Scambos, US lead coordinator for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), told BBC. 'Both published and unpublished studies point in that direction.
'This will accelerate the pace (of Thwaites) and widen, effectively, the dangerous part of the glacier.'
Lead author of the study, Erin Pettit from Oregon State University, compares the growing crack to that seen in a windshield – one small bump to the car and the windshield could break into hundreds of pieces.
When the shelf fails, the eastern third of Thwaites Glacier will melt at an even more rapid pace. Pettit told Science Magazine this would triple the speed and increase the glacier's contribution to global sea level in the short term to five percent.
'We have mapped out weaker and stronger areas of the ice shelf and suggest a 'zig-zag' pathway the fractures might take through the ice, ultimately leading to break up of the shelf in as little as 5 years, which result in more ice flowing off the continent,' the team wrote in the abstract for its presentation.
'The central part of TEIS has no obvious surface crevasses and smooth surface topography, except for the surface expression of a pronounced basal channel aligned parallel to ice flow. Despite this smooth surface, ground-penetrating radar shows a weak zone of thin ice and complex basal topography, including numerous basal crevasses, that is not in local hydrostatic equilibrium.
'This local disequilibrium suggests the presence of elevated vertical shear stresses that further weaken this critical part of the ice shelf.'
Climate change is not the only culprit here, but a study in August found that Thwaites Glacier is also melting because of the heat from Earth itself.
The Thwaites Glacier — which has been called the 'Doomsday Glacier' due to its impact on sea level rise — is being hit with heat from the Earth's crust, as it is only 10 to 15 miles deep below West Antarctica, compared to around 25 miles in East Antarctica.
This results in an a 'geothermal heat flow of up to 150 milliwatts per square meter,' the study's lead author, Dr Ricarda Dziadek, said in a statement.
Since 1980, it has lost at least 600 billion tons of ice, according to a 2017 analysis done by the New York Times, using data from NASA JPL.
'The temperature on the underside of the glacier is dependent on a number of factors – for example whether the ground consists of compact, solid rock, or of meters of water-saturated sediment,' explained co-author and AWI geophysicist Dr Karsten Gohl.
'Water conducts the rising heat very efficiently. But it can also transport heat energy away before it can reach the bottom of the glacier.'
The Thwaites glacier is slightly smaller than the total size of the UK, approximately the same size as the state of Washington, and is located in the Amundsen Sea.
It is up to 4,000 metres (13,100 feet thick) and is considered a key in making projections of global sea level rise.
The glacier is retreating in the face of the warming ocean and is thought to be unstable because its interior lies more than two kilometres (1.2 miles) below sea level while, at the coast, the bottom of the glacier is quite shallow.
The Thwaites glacier has experienced significant flow acceleration since the 1970s. From 1992 to 2011, the centre of the Thwaites grounding line retreated by nearly 14 kilometres (nine miles). Annual ice discharge from this region as a whole has increased 77 percent since 1973.
Because its interior connects to the vast portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that lies deeply below sea level, the glacier is considered a gateway to the majority of West Antarctica’s potential sea level contribution.
The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would cause an increase of global sea level of between one and two metres (three and six feet), with the potential for more than twice that from the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
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Problems of charging electric vehicles
Look beyond the glamorous, hightech filled automobiles that most obviously embody the ev revolution and a merciless bottleneck appears. Not even those eyeing a new ev are sufficiently aware of it. Governments are only waking up to the problem. Put simply: how will all the electric cars get charged?
The current number of public chargers—1.3m—cannot begin to satisfy the demands of the world’s rapidly expanding electric fleet. According to an estimate by the International Energy Agency (iea), a forecaster, by the end of this decade 40m public charging points will be needed, requiring an annual investment of $90bn a year as 2030 approaches. If netzero goals are to be met, by 2050 the world will need five times as many.
Governments’ current pledges to phase out ice cars and shift to evs are, it is true, not quite consistent with netzero. Even if roads turn electric less speedily than they should, though, the sums the world needs to spend on charging infrastructure are still stupendous. In a slower scenario envisaged by Bloombergnef (bnef), a research firm, in which ev sales keep rising as battery prices fall but reach just under a third of all vehicles sold by 2030, roughly $600bn of investment would still be needed by 2040. That would pay for fewer chargers than the iea foresees—24m public points alone by 2040 (and 309m in total). If netzero is to be achieved by 2050, bnef puts the cumulative charging investment required at a whopping $1.6trn.
Besides installing too few public chargers, the charging industry’s operational record is poor. The official number currently exceeds what some authorities reckon is needed. The European Commission, for example, thinks every ten evs require one public charger. According to the Boston Consulting Group (bcg), there are now five evs per charging point in the eu and China, and nine in America.
That is in theory. In practice, a survey of chargers in China by Volkswagen (vw) found many inoperable or “iced” chargers (those blocked inadvertently or deliberately by fossil-fuelled cars). Only 30-40% of China’s 1m public points were available at any time. It is safe to assume some inoperability in the eu and America. This summer Herbert Diess, vw’s boss, complained on Linkedin, a social network, that his holiday had gone less than smoothly because Ionity, a European charging network, provided too few points on the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. “Anything but a premium charging experience,” Mr Diess wrote. That vw part-owns Ionity made the criticism sting more.
Drivers can smell trouble ahead. Range anxiety and the availability of public charging is a huge issue (see chart 1). In a recent survey by Alixpartners, a consultancy, in the seven countries that make up 85% of global ev sales the cars’ high prices came third on the list of top five reasons not to switch to battery power; the four others were all worries related to charging.
To assess the scale of the challenge start with the basics. A big advantage of evs is that they can be charged at home—or at workplaces, if employers install chargers. In America 70% of homes have offstreet parking where a charger can be installed (the equivalent figure is lower in Europe and China). bcg estimates that in 2020 home and workplace charging accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total charging energy use in America, seventenths in Europe and three-fifths in China.
Current ev models typically have batteries with ranges of around 400km. Some go over 650km. The average American drives 50km a day, according to Bank of America. Europeans and Chinese drive less. Two types of charger are good enough to top up vehicles, or give them a boost overnight at home or during the working day. The slowest, providing up to 8km of range an hour, can do the job. So do “level 2” chargers that provide 1632km. Both are easy on the wallet. Drivers can use dedicated sockets that cost a few hundred dollars (and are often subsidised by governments) to tap the cheapest electricity tariffs.
Nonetheless, home and workplace charging only gets you so far. As ev ownership spreads from wealthier households to people living in flats or dwellings without the ability to plug in, a public network becomes vital. In America, Europe and China demand for public charging is expected to increase (see chart 2). Public chargers come in three varieties. A common kind is kerbside charging, via converted lampposts or other dedicated points, where cars might park overnight. Then there is “destination” charging, of the sort that is becoming more widely available in car parks at shopping centres, restaurants, cinemas and the like. Both kinds are level2, with installation costs usually between $2,000 and $10,000 per point....
Governments will act. America’s new infrastructure law sets aside $7.5bn for the installation of 500,000 public points by 2030. Mandates such as that recently announced in Britain requiring new homes, workplaces and retail sites to have charging points, adding 145,000 every year, are likely to become more common. A reason for optimism is that improvements in batteries should continue to offer ever longer ranges, and so less need for frequent charging. Newer batteries will be replenished more rapidly than today’s are, and chargers will provide current more swiftly.
Doubts about the ramp-up nevertheless persist. The numbers are still small relative to the vast scale of charging networks the world needs. More money will be required to update electricity grids to distribute power to the new source of demand. bcg forecasts that America, Europe and China, home to most of the world’s evs, will have only 6.5m public chargers between them by 2030—not enough to meet the iea’s global target of 40m. More cars will vie for each charger. Drivers may need to seek patience as well as thrills.
https://blendle.com/i/the-economist/current-situation/bnl-economist-20211210-09b36da6b99
*********************************************Fossil fuels for China: Decarbonisation for everyone else
A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) warns that China has no intention of decarbonising. Although it says it will reduce CO2 emissions, in reality the Communists’ hold on power will slip without the constant economic growth that only fossil fuels can bring.
The paper’s author, China expert Patricia Adams, says that China is intent on becoming the world’s sole superpower and is using every means at its disposal to secure fossil fuels to drive its growth.
Ms Adams said:
"Beijing revealed its hand at COP26, ensuring that the text was watered down to the point of being meaningless."
But Adams warns that China’s insistence that it will reduce CO2 emissions in future hides a dangerous agenda:
"For President Xi, the decarbonisation agenda is just a very easy way to get the West to weaken itself. He will make all the right noises, but nothing more."
As far as China’s Communist Party is concerned, carbon dioxide reductions only make sense for those Beijing wishes to harm and supplant.
patricia.adams@probeinternational.org
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NY Times Claims Brazil Is Turning Into Desert, As Foliage Growth in fact surges
The New York Times published an article Friday titled, “A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land.” The article claims global warming is causing drought in northeastern Brazil, turning the region into a desert. Objective satellite measurements of vegetation, however, show increasing vegetation in northeast Brazil and throughout Brazil as a whole, not the other way around. The Times article is merely another example of agenda-driven fake climate news.
In its subtitle, the article claims, “Brazil’s northeast, long a victim of droughts, is now effectively turning into desert. The cause? Climate change and the landowners who are most affected.” The article adds, “Climate change is intensifying droughts in Brazil’s northeast, leaving the land barren. The phenomenon, called desertification, is happening across the planet.”
NASA satellite instruments have precisely measured the amount of vegetation throughout the Earth since the early 1980s. NASA reported its findings in an article titled “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.” According to NASA, “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Most of the rest of the land shows little change one way or the other, while a very small amount of land shows a decline in vegetation.
As a whole, “The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States,” NASA reports.
In the chart below, provided by NASA, you can see that nearly all of Brazil, including nearly all of northeast Brazil, is enjoying a significant increase in vegetation. Only a few, very small areas of Brazil and northeast Brazil are seeing a decline in vegetation.
The Times is right that where farmers or ranchers are deliberately removing rainforest and replacing it with farms or rangeland, vegetation declines. But that is not due to climate change, and those are about the only places in Brazil where vegetation is not increasing as the Earth modestly warms.
The simple, undeniable truth is that vegetation is increasing virtually everywhere in Brazil. The New York Times, in order to promote a fictitious climate crisis, is telling provably wrong lies to sell newspapers and to sell alarm.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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