Really wishThwaites would 'chill' out - th-waite for us to get our act together - and stop having such a 'melt-down' 🧊🧊🧊 🔒Remove your personal information from the web at joindeleteme.com/DRBEN and use code DRBEN for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international Plans: international.joindeleteme.com
this isnt actually good news because ice that was siting on land is now much closer to floating in water which is where most of the sea lvl rise will come from frozen water takes up more volume than liquid
I was in Antartica during '78-'82. I talked to a graduate student who had said his grant was being denied because his research found reduction of ozone layer. This has always been an ironic memory from my time in Antartica.
There You go! Are we in a Medieval Catholic_Vatican instructed: "Only this is the proper Science Aeon"? Today it is more the UNO, or who controlls them; Blackrock? Rothchilds, Templers?
Why? By that time the source of the problem was going away because of emission treaties (with a very long tail - as such the student was studying a problem already resolved - since then the Ozone layer has been slowly recovering - even for Australians. I am sure this is proof that science is a lie for you.
@@glacieractivity That problem wasn't actually solved until the adoption of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer on September 16, 1987.
If his data was inconsistence with a consensus of peer reviewed and recreated data finding the opposite to be true, perhaps he was just a shitty scientist and that was why he lost his grant. There was nothing saying his data was of good quality. Plenty of crappy scientists loose funding when they are repeatedly proven to be wrong.
When water turns to ice it expands like crazy, meaning that when this ice melts, sea level would not rise much at all... Since you only see the top of the iceberg, and most of the ice is under the water and takes up alot of space, but will take up alot less space if it turned into water.
So the people who just found out they were wrong about how the glacier is behaving are now convinced they know how to save the glacier they don’t understand. Using geoengineering to do something never done before with unforeseen consequences to the same thing they already don’t understand. I get skeptical when I say it out loud like that.
You can use this synopsis to explain the entire BS climate narrative, as well: The industrialists who {apparently} caused the manmade excess C02, are the same ones who claim to know the real reasons, it is happening 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hi Ben Thanks for the great video. I'm a glaciologist and I want to just make a couple of comments here. Firstly, a part of the reason for the potentially rapid retreat of marine-based glaciers on retrograde bedrock slopes is a process known as Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI). This process is part of the internal dynamics of the flowing ice. The rate of ice discharge across the grounding line is strongly related to the thickness of ice at the grounding line, so when the grounding line retreats into deeper water, the thicker ice causes increasing flow rates, driving thinning and further retreat in a positive feedback process. However there are still question marks around MISI including the potential for other processes to constrain the rate of retreat. Secondly, at about 12:55, you discuss the glacier collapsing within a decade, but this isn't a credible prediction, and no study that I know of has ever suggested this. The article you show mentions the Ice Shelf collapsing within a few years. It's very important to distinguish the ice shelf from the ice sheet or glacier. The ice shelf is the floating ice fringing the ice sheet, discharged from the glacier but still attached to it. In some cases, ice shelves are vital to the stability of the glaciers feeding them. However, the Thwaites Ice Shelf is actually a highly fragmented jumble of partially detached blocks of ice. Recent studies have suggested that the Thwaites Ice Shelf isn't particularly crucial to its stability. It is entirely possible that parts of the shelf could collapse within a decade or so, but it is highly unlikely that the partial or even total collapse of the shelf will have an immediate catastrophic impact on the rest of the glacier. Thwaites will almost certainly still be around 100 years from now, possibly in a significantly diminished state but it will still be recognisably Thwaites.
Thanks for the solid facts 👍 I’m a maritime architect (engineer, etc). I think we’re all tired and skeptical of the “settled science” scaremongering..! Thank you for your first hand expertise and clear explanation.
@@NobbiesGnomeRescue, glad I could share some information. I need to be clear that the scientific community is absolutely concerned about climate change. Global warming being real and manmade is about as close as you can get to a settled topic in science. But there are a lot of details that we don't fully understand - after all, we're dealing with an immensely complicated system, we have a limited observational record (especially for ice sheets which generally evolve slowly in response to climate forcings, but which may also have tipping points and feedbacks), it's still a relatively young field of science and our models are continually improving in robustness and resolution. But at the same time, the issue requires calm, level-headed dialogue and thinking, and international cooperation. The noise, from all sides, is absolutely not helpful. Unfortunately a lot of well-meaning activists are fairly clueless about the science, the media loves to sensationalise anything, and the issue has become an identity-politics football. All of which makes the job of scientists to share the science ten times harder. If anyone claimed that rising sea levels would inundate coastal cities imminently, they were lying or clueless. At the same time, sea level rise is still a major societal issue which will require adaptation efforts in coming decades. Misinformation and disinformation from all sides needs to be challenged. TLDR: The worst case scenario isn't going to happen, but the likely scenarios are still generally bad news and we need to work out the details of their impacts and how to mitigate against them. And misinformation and disinformation from all sides needs to be challenged.
Hi Mat. I had been researching the human induced reduction in the frequency of the Keremt/African Easterly Wave (AEW) chain reaction which governed the mass of solar reflective marine stratocumulus cloud over the (north) equatorial Atlantic. Less cloud = more ocean surface heating [+-300W/m2] and visa versa. Since the ocean heat absorbed in the equitorial regions is circulated poleward clockwise, there would be a correspondning increase in the undermining of 'vulnerable ice shelves' i.e. an increase in calving resulting in a colder ocean surface due to floating icebergs, growlers and bits. Irony here is that there is the historical record of transatlantic ships stopping their engins at night from Britian to New York for fear of hitting icebergs - except for the 1912 incident involving the Titanic. The above narrative had been extensivley researched and it was found that we humans had interfered in one of the precursors to this meso scale meteorological chain reaction, part of which results in a false negative Global Mean Temperature (GMT) around the start of the last century to about 1920 ; ; ; ; that the observed northern SST/atmospheric temperature was inversial to the atlantic SST subject to AEW cloud cover, thus applied solar heat. Not surprisingly this has caused a lot of upset with those who promote the meissions longwave radiative forcing arguement - to such an extent that I have 5 times tried to get the police involved - since scientific fraud is being used to pull the wool over the eyes of a great many people. If you are serious about modeling or predicting the demise of the arctic ice shelves, I suggest you download the relevent ocean temperature data [HadSST1: UK met office] and compare historic arctic events and [north] Atlantic SSTs. The [vulnerable] North Atlantic ice shelves deminished far faster than you seem to recognise, to the extent that dangerous ice floes were reaching 51'N by 1912. This was not due to a fabled anomaly since the 1760s, this was only from 1902. Good luck. CM
@@conormcmenemie5126, thank you for sharing this with me. I only deal with the ice sheet side of things, but I have colleagues who are concerned with the oceans. Do you have any studies you can share with me so I can get a bit more detail?
The permafrost melting is very much more devastating, when it is releasing mega tons of methane (not easily capturable) into the atmosphere, this can only add to a runaway greenhouse effect.
@@conormcmenemie5126 AGU will publish anything you pay them to publish. No peer review, so not using the scientific method at all. Nobody cares about fake journals.
And there is still the possibility that most of humanity may already be extinct by the time sea levels rise. Very little consideration is given to the fact that the level of agricultural failure caused by abrupt climate change can be a worldwide event, killing billions.
Agricultural failure will be the result of mass monocrop farming and the introduction of chemical fertilizers. We need to get back to regenerative farming (crops and grazing) and restoring wild animal habitats that are being destroyed continually.
@dennisward43 starts at home too, everyone should be growing something they can eat and composting all or as much of their organic "waste" as possible.
Though I'd like to say that when people pay for art they often have a certain view in mind and the artist will sacrifice his artistic integrity. So to get the check it's the art of finding out what the check pays for.
@@God-Will-ing and like art gangs use it to hide their ill-gotten gains, though science is used by the biggest gangs , the governments , though they use it to justify why a profitable side gig must exist or some other scheme to leech money or reduce supply, like for water or housing.
I thought that was was widely known but it was not included in the discussion. I would hope it was included in any numerical models used by the oceanographers who study this glacier. Yes salinity matters too. Maybe the buoyancy of fresh water helps drive outflow near the ice?
It's NOT a+b. "Pure water has its maximum density at about 4°C, but the maximum density of water occurs at lower temperatures as salinity increases. Temperature variations are more important in warm ocean waters, whereas salinity variations are more important in cold ocean waters." NOAA claims that they measured 4.5C & 34.7ppt -> 1.0275, 0.5C & 34.6ppt -> 1.0277
Hey ben, not to say any of what you said was false, but could you start sharing sources and whatnot in the description? For people wanting to read more about it and such
@@DuckDodgers69sharing sources is more rigorous, build trust and makes verifying the information easier. Being against sharing sources is anti scientific in itself
@@DuckDodgers69Maybe so people can be held accountable for what they say rather than just falling back on “just look it up yourself.” Your high school teacher wouldn’t let any form of fact based writing go without proper citations, so why should adults be given the luxury not to?
@@DrBenMiles I hope your office is equal to, or higher, than your new home, otherwise your going to have to move to a new office as well?! 😮 LOL. I am 'lucky' where I live in Napier, New Zealand, because in 1931, an earthquake raised the East Coast up by 1-2 meters, so we are already ahead of the 'game'. However, we are overdue for an Hikurangi Trench quake. We could go down or we could go up. Up or Down, the devastation will be disastrous!
you forget the 91 volcanoes under the ice in West Antarctica where one of them is erupting but cannot be seen because there is 3-4 km of ice on top of it, the heat from the lava melts the ice from below and we have known that for 20+ years just not that it was from lava from vulkans, in 2017 a uk professor discovered that there were 91 volcanoes under the ice which provided the heat to melt the ice, the temperatures down there have been measured for the last 50 years and show no change + that there is a cold ocean current that circulates around Antarcticaintact
@@emilyrusso-rd6pq It's not the first time in the last 3.000 years that it's been warmer than now, look at ice cores from Greenland, the fact that there's organic material in Siberia is because it was once warmer there so plants could grow, by the way, it was once far inland 12.000 years ago, and the water level was about 100 m lower than today, the narrow land bridge over the Bering Strait they're talking about was enormous, from the Aleutians to the Bering Strait for about 3.000 km there's a maximum of 75 m of water, except in the most western part where there's a hole several km deep, the same is north of the strait and about 3.000 km up there's no deeper either and the continental shelf extends from north Greenland, past Canada, Alaska Siberia, Russia to north Norway, that methane is produced is natural because bacteria eat the dead organic matter when it's thawed up and they inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, their excrements as are long molecule chains, enzymes go through and make new food for plants that they are mostly made of, and all the c atoms they encounter, (the c atom comes from co2 that the plant has once taken in and with photosynthesis has converted into a c atom they need and 2 o atoms for our oxygen), this is the only way that the c atom can enter the cycle again, because nothing goes to waste, methane is a natural and important part of the planet's system, methane rises, hits ozone at 20-22 km altitude and continues upwards, on the way up, methane breaks down the ozone it hits (this is the cause of the ozone hole over the South Pole), above ozone it is broken down by the sun's UV light and c falls down again, at some point it will slide down into the magma due to the tectonic plate shifts such as e.g. along the west coast of america, down there it turns into co2 again which comes up from cracks like radon does and out of volcanoes to enter the cycle again, the amount of methane's influence on the reflected ir heat is the same regardless of the amount, a bit the same as with co2, it is certain ir frequencies that can affect methane as it is with co2 and again only in a narrow area in the upper ir area where there is only a little ir, so all in all the globe has experienced much more heat than now and much more methane emissions than now, the previous interglacial period alone was 5-7 degrees c. warmer, and you have to remember that until 12.550 years ago siberia was in a warmer climate in Siberia because the poles were 2.5-3.000 km from where they are now, the north pole was down around hudson bay,
No, it really isn't surprising. Water is in a class of substances which are unusual for a key reason: They become less dense upon solidifying. This is usually accompanied by a reduction in density at low temperatures. Water has a peak density around 4 degrees. So if it was just pure water, if the water 4 degrees and hotter, we would expect the coldest water on the bottom and the hottest at the top. If it 4 degrees and lower, we expect 4 degrees at the bottom and colder at the top. This is also why during winter lakes freeze at the top first and that layer of ice slowly builds down. The salt complicates it.
We humans seem to be brilliant T living in denial. Many people still think that Global Weather Change is bogus, and argue that it’s. Natural cycle. That way, we can’t do anything about it, so no guilt, and just keeping on burning fossil fuels! Argh.
Water..is it's own fundamental element. Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Aether. That's why it doesn't behave like, or have the characteristics of, any other substance.
@@FourthWayRanch Density plays an important role. If cold water/ice was denser, then as it cools from the cold air, it would sink down, making the bottom layers the coldest, with the ice building up on the bottom.
exactly. fear mongering for fake man made climate change sciense . all for carbon taxes that will do nothing but impoverish people while unjustly enriching proponents of the lie
part of it *is* floating, but also since the grounding line is receding so much there's an ever larger amount of glacier that used to not be floating and is still supported only by its own tensile strength, which is why the glacier is breaking up (because that part of the glacier may be over water but it's not actually floating)
@@junovzlatotally. What’s scarier to me how what I guess could be called “the coast” under the glacier is under sea level. So a large portion of the actually grounded ice will also melt.
I'm in a really bad mood at the moment, but that bit about the marketing team being off the day they named MATHGZ actually put a smile on my face and made me chuckle. Thank you. I needed that. 🙂
Well, somehow I thought that it is a common knowledge, that below 4°C water becomes less dense until it freezes. As water cools below 4°C, the hydrogen-bond network becomes increasingly rigid, forming structures similar to ice. These structures take up more space, lowering the density. Seems, that this is a surprise to some scientists. Hint: this is the reason, why water freezes from the top. Not from the bottom.
Exactly! The warmth from the Earth will heat the water. He's talking about water over land - not the ocean. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's annoyed about this.
current year scientist are mostly activists and/or funded by activists trying to own/stick it to the "uneducated" people that are "science deniers" Climate scientists have a phrase "Bill chill" in their science arena because a lot of climate science is funded by Gates who will stop funding you if your science is "wrong"
But is it? Sure there are many dangers with methane but there are also advantages. One of these is the new farming land that will open up and the extra plants that grow that will reduce global Co2 levels.
The modern forms of the world's major coastal cities were constructed in under a century. The most cost effective solution, by far, is for humanity to move inland. In the US, most major coastal cities already have declining populations. Nothing is forever...
Eeeeh Idk Florida gets hit by 3 hurricanes in a row in less than a month and they think the jews did it or they'd it's normal And they still aren't leaving
I think this will have to be done because there is no chance that some countries like China are ever going to reduce their massive carbon emissions, at least until half of China goes below sea level.
Interesting. It is possible to view the record of what will happen as the warming trend increases... look at Greenland and Scandinavia as well as Doggerland to see the effects of climate change both up and down the temperature scale. Greenland once warmed enough to have large forests on the southern tip, and Doggerland was once above sea level as was the communities in the Black Sea currently around 30 to 240 feet below sea level today. Akra and Kalpe to name a couple. Fossils and rock strata also point to a time when the sea levels were much higher than they are today. As recently as 1200 AD, there was a summer village in the Swiss alps that was buried under a glacier. We can see its remains now that the glacier has receded. So what causes those cycles and can we use them to our advantage? One advantage is it spurs engineering advances to counter the man made portion, and the replanting and preservation of forests, another means of tempering climates locally. But that does not answer the more extreme cycles, such as the Greek, Roman and Medieval events previously noted. Interesting. I will be watching to see what other information you wish to share. Thank you.
The eglywsyg rocks in Llangollen in north Wales was at one time under the sea. As a child back in the 60's my brother and I used to go fossil hunting and always came home with some
And until 200 years ago we weren't burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale. If you imagine we haven't significantly changed the atmosphere by doing that and seriously disturbed those cycles you mentioned, might I advise a little experiment? Start your car in the garage and close all the doors. See how long your natural cycles continue for if you introduce large amounts of waste gases from fossil fuel combustion into your personal biological equation. Now extrapolate to a larger environment with more of those gases.
15:21 I argue though with the decrease in suitable housing, infrastructure, and homes for population, maybe it does make more sense to build homes inland at 150miles to prepare for a situation like that.
All very big astroid trajectories have been calculated. We are safe from planetary killers for quite some time. Unless something comes in fast from outside the solar system. Only regional destruction is still possible, but very unlikely.
Sorry the Sun has us set for the next stone age in 10 20 years, sneaky suspicion more like 5, then the ice age kicks what little ass of humanity's is left of us. But we survived it many times before odds we will again. Half credit
It's not just a matter of melting ice. Most of Bangladesh is barely above sea level now. 140 million people are suddenly going to have to go somewhere else. Their nearest neighbor is India, but remember if you can there was a long and nasty war between Moslems and Hindus in India and that's how we ended up with 2 new nations: Bangladesh and Pakistan, both Moslem nations. The current leader of India is working to "purify" India to make it strictly Hindu. I foresee problems.
It’s not a mystery that the water is colder against the melting ice surface than below it. The temperature of the water on the undersurface of the ice shelf is colder because the process of melting ice is endothermic. Ice absorbs 333J/g from its surrounding water when it melts. Melting 200g ice (at 0 Celsius) in 1liter of water at 25C results in a 15.9C reduction in water temp. We could probably tell how quickly the ice is melting just by measuring the temperature differential. This has nothing to do with the fact that the melted ice is fresh water. But the fact that it is fresh causes another phenomenon. Fresh water that forms from melted ice against the shelf, is lighter than salt water so it floats above the salty sea water in the absence of mixing and stays against the undersurface of the shelf for a time. But fresh water is colder yet has a slightly lower viscosity than sea water, so under the influence of gravity it might tend to “slide off” the sea water under the slope of the shelf, like liquid slides off a hillside. So maybe that’s how it makes a down-sloping current against the shelf.
Invoquing fusion latent heat values does not really help to make your comment very convincing. Fluid mechanics engineer here. Viscosity has nothing to do with this problem. Temperature and salinity gradients, tides, ocean currents, and ice shelf buoyancy are the driving forces here. And as it was mentioned in other comments, the dilatation coefficient of liquid water changes sign below 4 C. So the densest liquid water you can find is at 4 C. Therefore having a reversed temperature gradient below 4 C is totally OK. By reversed I mean that the density and temperature gradients are of the same sign, unlike in usual warmer waters where they are of opposite sign. Having low salinity melted water on top of the water column only increases the density gradient, which is already stable. The thing that is difficult to understand here I think is why the flow of water goes the direction opposite to what was previously thought, I.e. top cold and less salty water going down along the subsurface and not the other way round. But I'm sure there are already papers about that in dedicated scientific journals!
The reason for this inverted gradient of the hot-cold water is that it's hard for convection to occur in cone-shaped volumes. The same happens with a cup of coffee when the cup's bottom is much smaller than the top. The surface layer becomes colder but its volume is much greater than the bottom layer which it should replace. On the other hand, the upper, similar in volume layers have much less difference in temperature to start the convection. The other reason is that the top, cold layer has *very* uniform density and temperature because of the [fixed] melting point of the ice and uniform [lack of] salinity. To start a convection cycle, it needs a spot on the surface which is even colder/denser than its surrounding in the same layer. Once it starts, though, it gathers velocity (momentum) which keeps it going (especially if the gradient of density is reversed - which is more likely when the column of water is higher) and *that's* the reason for those "chambers" on random places, deep into the shelf.
The temperature-reversal is easy to explain, if the water is below 4°C (as seems likely): although - normally - warmer is less dense, that reverses for water below this temperature (quite apart from salinity's contribution) and, indeed, on freezing the water expands significantly, which is why ice floats on water, where most substances' solid forms sink in their liquid forms. (One of the other exceptions is blancmange.) So the almost-freezing water melting from the bottom of the glacier is colder - so *less* dense than - any water below 4°C below it and the water is stratified to have (however close any of it gets to) 4°C at the sea-floor with the temperature rising from there towards the bottom of the ice sheet.
Oh, and the reason why the "good" news isn't can be put another way: even if less ice offshore from the grounding line has melted, it doesn't help - because ice shoreward from the grounding line has its weight supported by land, but ice oceanward from it has its weight supported by the water on which it floats (except for close to the grounding line, where mechanical forces within the ice can transfer some of its weight shorewards). What causes sea levels to rise is the volume of ocean plus the buoyancy contribution of the ice floating on it - effectively the volume of water equal to the mass of the floating ice - so the more ice the water has to support by floating (rather than mechanical stress, via bodies of ice, grounded on the underlying sea-floor or land). So what matters is how far the ice-sheet gets undercut by the sea, not how much of the ice-sheet melts. The part of the ice-sheet supported by land extends, at best, on some diagonal sea-wards from the grounding point: as the grounding point moves shorewards, that diagonal goes with it. All the ice beyond that diagonal is supported by - so weighing down upon, and thus effectively contributing its mass to - the oceans, so contributing to global sea-level rise.
Dutch person here. We are working on this but 3 meters requires a lot more effort. It would require up to 4 times more sand depositing than we are currently doing. We have about 1500 km of dykes and levies that we are currently reinforcing and raising and making room for the rivers and improving our pumps etc. But three meters is a lot. And we are at a max of 7 meters below sea level.
@strangekwark Let's hope we are giving back to the sea . We need to restore Nature so back to a river delta and remove as much Dikes and polders so water can flow freely. Always wanted sea side property. 😂
@@strangekwark Zolang we maar goed kijken wat het zeeniveau doet en de rivieren ook genoeg aandacht blijven geven houwen we het wel droog voor het grootste gedeelte. En als de rest van de wereld nou eens gaat luisteren naar nederlandse ingenieurs maar dat zal wel niet.
I think, hear me out, we should open all our fridges at the same time, freezers too, maybe crank up the AC to max. If we get enough people together, maybe we can return to the ice age.
you do realize that ac and refrigeration work by pumping warm air outside right? turning ac up to max would only make it worse, raising temperatures outside of the contained room. this is an example of dangerous ignorance. i am aware this is supposed to be a joke, but it is a dangerous suggestion
So out of the ice retreat I have one question? How much snow has fallen in the interior of Antarctica compared to the loss of ice at the shelf? And how did those numbers compare?
Exactly, that is what Ben is not looking at. It really doesn't matter what happens at the bottom end, that will vary due to a variety of factors, it is how fast the glacier is growing inland. Growing faster (which it is) makes it flow downhill faster and calve more at the bottom end. Looks scary in footage, but actually good news that the glacier is accumulating, not retreating.
@@antimatter4444, West Antarctica is not growing however. Some regions inland are accumulating more ice than previously, but this doesn't balance out increasing ice discharge around the margins. Moreover, there is the potential for very rapid retreat due to feedback processes in the ice flow system.
Ok so do we know how much water is actually getting frozen as well per how much is thawing? It is in negative temps there so some amount of water has to be freezing at the other end that's moving towards this end.
Great video, I read the information a while back however this video done a great job explaining the threat. But the better question is, was the threat imminent regardless of CO2? After-all the sea level rose 120m+ in the past 12,000 years
Where I live we are about 1 KM above sea level. No worries about this. Not to say there is no worries. If sea level rose 3 meter that would mean surface area of the oceans increased massively. More water vapor and more going between drought and massive flooding. This is already been seen over the past 20 years. More pineapple expresses for mountain coast of BC more eastern flooding coming form the eastern rockies.
@@redstang5150, there's no contradiction there. Global mean sea level has risen approximately 3.5 cm since then. Current rate is approximately 3.5 mm/year.
WRONG AGAIN - Not one mention of the volcanic activity that east Antartica is sitting on. Last time I looked volcanoes cause a lot of melting when they became active underneath an ice sheet. Earths gravitational cycles which are influenced by the Milankovic cycles cause increased volcanic activity during interglacial periods such as the Holocene we are currently in. This causes melting in that region. Why is the remaining 90% of Antartica showing no signs of melting and sea levels show not a single shred of evidence of any accelerated rise. This would be global news, yet there is nothing unusual going on. Fake news would have pounced on this if it was occurring. We are at the end of this interglacial and guess what happens after that. Fear the cold, worship the warmth while it lasts.
I love all that footage of icebergs floating in ocean. There is some wonderful physics involved in floating ice. It floats because there are air bubbles in it. And volume of solid part of ice above the water equals volume of bubbles below the water surface. That means, all the ice already floating in ocean can melt and nothing really happens.
10:29 ... for Reasons we still don't know? Maybe large Laboratory measurements of water-viscosity under these conditions T, p, sal, chem, should be repeated/done! Viscosity of water is more dependent on temp than Density (which itselve is max at 4°C). Below 4°C the water molecular structure changes notably, H2O molecules build groups with stronger H - OH bridges!
As a science guy my entire life... Why are we still screaming that the sky is falling, when we don't even understand the most basic of Earth's climate cycles? I'll tell you why. Because it's sensational and makes a LOT of people and organizations a LOT of money, that's why.
@@davestagner Houses burn down all the time. It's quite common. How common is catastrophic, anthropogenic climate change? Oh... it's never happened before and is theorized based on unverifiable old temperature readings of dubious accuracy and all the solutions to the problem somehow always consolidate power in the hands of authoritarians and line the pockets of green energy companies? Nothing to question here at all.
@@davestagner We understand that our houses burning down is a potential risk. We don't understand Earth's climate cycles, so people shouldn't scream that, "the sky is falling." - A house burning down - Has happened and will happen again somewhere on Earth - The predictions made in this video - May never occur on Earth
@@DirtDog. Back in the late ‘90s, I and thousands of of software engineers like me spent years of effort fixing Y2K bugs. When Y2K turned out to not be a disaster, lots of people seriously asked “So why did we waste all that time and effort and suffer all those warnings?” But Y2K wasn’t a disaster BECAUSE we heeded the warnings, and fixed the problems. We DO understand Earth’s climate cycles. Not perfectly, not completely, but well enough to make really good predictions. Climate change from rising CO2 levels was first predicted as far back as 1896, by Svante Arrhenius, and his numbers actually held up ok. Here’s what we KNOW - not imagine, KNOW. CO2 traps heat. This can be measured in a lab. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased 50% since the start of the industrial revolution, from 280 to 420ppm. We KNOW this number is rising about 2.5ppm/year, because we’ve been sampling for decades. We know Earth’s CO2 levels precisely going back 800,000 years, from air bubbles trapped in ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica (we can also estimate global temperatures from the same ice cores). We have been precisely measuring temperatures worldwide for over 150 years, so we know how much temperature increase we’ve seen. From this data, we can extrapolate with great confidence the effects of continued CO2 emissions on global temperatures. It doesn’t take a brilliant scientist to understand that increasing global temperatures increases the chances of a Thwaites Glacier failure, or any number of other problems. We’re already observing them. The predictions made in this video may never occur, yes. But if they don’t occur, it will be BECAUSE we screamed the sky is falling long enough and loud enough to actually do something about the conditions that would lead to those predictions inevitably coming true. A 50% increase in CO2 has caused a 1.5c increase in Earth’s temperature already. (That’s 2.7F, if you don’t speak celsius.) At current emissions rates, we will add another 50% in less than 50 years - enough to push temperatures to 3.0c, or 5.4F (that’s assuming we don’t set off a methane cascade from melting permafrost). We have added about a trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere so far by burning fossil fuels - that’s about twice the mass of every living thing on Earth put together. Each kg of fossil fuels burned produces about 3kg of CO2, because the carbon in the fossil fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere. I’m sure most of this is new information for you. Are you alarmed yet? Why not? I am.
Because we understand enough to establish a trend. Just because we don't know the details, doesn't mean we can't tell there isn't a catastrophic problem.
This is a strategic national security threat. An enemy can strike it causing a massive global catastrophe. Plunging major countries into economic duress
This would be very much similar to Mutually Assured Destruction. Right now, no country would be willing to destroy their own just to get back at another country. We ain't there yet, I feel like. Even nuclear threats aren't delivered on because of the fear of nuclear retaliation. MAD keeps the world in check.
"Overall, the Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km² since 2009, with 18 ice shelves retreating and 16 larger shelves growing in area. Our observations show that Antarctic ice shelves gained 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade." (Andreasen et al, 2023). It is from a paper entitled "Change in Antarctic Ice Shelf Area from 2009 to 2019". They use MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite data to measure the change in ice shelf calving front position and area on 34 ice shelves in Antarctica from 2009 to 2019. Also, as the mass gain (661Gt) was given, you could calculate the volume of the ice gained using the formula: Volume = Mass ÷ Density (assume Density of glacier ice 0.9167 Gt/km³). This would give you (well not you obviously) an Ice Gain Volume ≈721km³. That's how much extra of the lovely white stuff there is around Antarctica. Imagine standing in the centre of this extra ice. It would stretch beyond the horizon in all directions and would be 45 storeys high.
I find it hard to envision an ongoing interglacial period that doesn't involve the retreat of ice sheets. Glaciers either grow or shrink, never static.
Great video, as always, but whoever had the idea of using dark grey and dark blue to signify land and water in your animations deserves to have their box of cereal left open (so it goes slightly chewy)! ...you can barely tell the difference between them.
To be fair, him saying it lost 1/8 its overall weight by the end more or less summed it up in an understandable way. Mans was just tryna give us the facts AND he did give a percentage at the end.
a problem with the expensive curtain is that governments will tax us to build it, then when it nears time to build it they will figure out that it wont work and will go back to the drawing board. then they will have another fix available but........... they accidentally spent the taxed money on something else.......... and will need to bring in another tax, which will most likely also dissapear! (faster than the melting ice)
Those processes take too long to make any difference to us. Parts of North America and Scandinavia are still measurably rebounding from the last time they were under ice sheets - but "measurable" is with very precise instruments.
@@tealkerberus748 Not so, In Norway the Rebound is clearly visible from marks made on a harbour wall about 60 years ago. The average rise is 40 cm. No sophisticated instruments needed! Source ScienceNorway website amd many others.
Good question, but the West Antarctic ice shelf is grounded deep under the sea. Hundreds of metres or more I think. Far too much to make up by rebound as the weight of ice comes off anyway.
I'm very disappointed to see that there is no mention of submarine volcanoes, of which there are many under the Thwaites Glacier and scattered around Antartica. There are an estimated 3.5 million submarine volcanoes throughout the globe, which are becoming more active and without a doubt the exposure of molten lava to the oceans, has a dramatic warming effect on the oceans and a melting effect on Antartica's many, many glaciers. It's time for everyone to tell the full story.
This isn't about science, its about making money to earn a living. When the researchers run out of money, the volcanoes will suddenly be blamed for increasing melting, and need more grant money to be studied.
Soyentists: _"This is weird, the warm water is coming from beneath the glacier, instead of going underneath. Guess we'll never know the reason!"_ Me comparing the ice sheet thinning in Antarctica with the map of active volcanoes: _"Yes, truly astounding."_
One thing that never gets mentioned, and which you have also left out, is this addition of 3m of sea level rise, specifically how long this would take. If as you say it's thinning by 4m and it's got a height of 1km it sounds more like 250 years. And if you take this kind of timescale there are other much more pressing issues that will affect people in a much smaller time scale, such as scarce food resources.
You're making a huge assumption that it maintains the thinning at a constant rate. Which it won't. As the ice thins, it will melt faster. It is also not a uniform 250km, remember those scientists that sent that probe? They only had to go through 6 km. In addition, you're thinking that it will all just melt away when a fair chunk of it will likely calve off.
@@ccapwell I must disagree , with governments and the ones running the show they are putting farmers and farms out to pasture , add in weather changes the Americas are going into drought and the deserts in Africa are turning green , if you can't grow your own food in 5 years from now you will be a statistic one of in a couple billion, a world wide planned famine, if i would of put all my savings into tin foil stocks, id be buddies with Bill Bill and Hilary right now, only put in half so wait 2 more years. Tin foil hats for all pretty dam soon, at this rate. Woops off topic, apologies Ted.
I would like some clarity on what you mean by 'sea ice' compared to the ice lost by the Thwaites glacier. Melting floating sea ice doesn't raise sea levels. The Thwaites glacier is on land so its melting would contribute to sea level rise. You say Thwaites glacier has lost 1 trillion tons of ice over the last 25 years. But sea level rise shows no acceleration over the last 100 years or so, just a slow, steady increase; our non submerging Pacific Islands are testament to this. As usual with climate alarmism we wait for any sign of any of the dangers we are supposed to have suffered already, or predicted, coming to pass. A 1 -1.5 degree rise in air temp cannot explain rising sea temperatures.
What's not enough mentioned in the discussion about tidewater glaciers is the effect of the tide itself which is pumping fresh water under the glacier wherever the flood occurs and removes molten freshwater water during ebb.
why dont they park 190583 cars there with their engines running and the ac on, if they open the doors the cold air will come out and stop this disaster.
I live exactlly where scientists say "The Southern U.S. has seen twice the global sea level rise rate since 2010." But I promise you the water has not risen by any perceivable measure. Must be measuring in microns....
Modern day rates of global mean sea level rise are measured in mm/year, and due to all sorts of complicated processes, the rates of sea level rise are very different for different parts of the globe. Future rates of rise could be measured in cm/year if glaciers such as Thwaites are tipped into a state of unstable rapid retreat.
It's really kind of pointless because by the time it happens global temperatures will be above + 3 c. The wet-bulb temperature will be so high in many areas that humans can't survive there for more than a few hours without artificial air conditioning and perhaps living underground as they are in parts of australia.
Does anyone know about the rate at which glaciers build up? Has the rate of snow accumulation increased or decreased with climate change? Will climate change increase the amount of fresh water accumulating in the antarctic pushing sea-level rise more rapidly?
I came here initially for the doomsday glacier, then listened to your elevator pitch for Delete Me, and subsequently disappeared into a 3-day booze bender of identity theft rabbit holes...now I can't find my wallet, and the kid at the packy store claims nobody turned it in after I left...
I'm going to say something controversial here, and I can see a lot of people getting their knickers in a twist, but here goes. That we are polluting the atmosphere with excess CO2 cannot be denied by anyone, also, that we are polluting with Nitros Oxides cannot also be denied - we are a dirty species that is pooping in our own garden is so true it risks becoming depressing and we must do something about that. BUT - how do we know for sure that what is happening to the Antarctric ice sheets and glaciers is not simply a natural consequences of changes that have been happening for the last 12,000+ yrs? Antarctica is so cold because of the circumpolar current of cold water that seperates Antarctic waters from the the surrounding waters of the global ocean and thus prevents warmer waters mixing with water on the other side of the circumpolar current, equally, the air has circumpolar currents that also prevent warmer air from mixing with Antarctic air, thus maintaining the deep freeze we all know and love. There is another aspect of this which I have not seen discussed, Antartic volcanism - we know it exists, we have evidence for the mantle plume under the Ross Ice shelf, forming Ross Island and the volcanoes therein, and we know there are other volcanoes in the region, just buried under the ice, there are places where mountains poke through the ice - in West Antartica alone there are 91 confirmed volcanoes. Takahe is a shield volcano in the Western Antartica Volcanic Province, the last eruption was 5550BCE, but this does not mean it is not active, The Hudson Mountains are also there, calculations suggest they last erupted in 207BCE, but this is not confirmed, we have no idea if there have been other smaller eruptions along the chain in the meantime, and we have no clue as to their activity status under 2.5km of ice. Western Antarctica is a volcanic hot zone, we know that the Ross Mantle Plume is active and it is highly likely that some of the other volcanoes in the region are also active - there is a lot we simply do not know about the geology and the geophysics of Antarctica and especially Western Antartica - whilst unlikely, we have no idea if there is another mantle plume or a branch of the Ross plume that is surfacing under the Thwaites glacier that is warming the surface under the glacier and slowly causing melting from below - far more research is required right around Antarctica, but especially Western Antartica. We need to be careful about attributing every change we see to "global warming" and the activity of humanity - that is lazy science and potentially dangerous.
It would be "lazy science" if it would be like you describe, but it is not. The melting happens everywhere from greenland ice shield, to the north pole to glaciers in mountain ranges. And we know it is not a natural cylce already by the sheer speed it is changing. We talk about 1000s of times faster than any gelogocial record.
@@DerIchBinDageological records = ice cores. How would ice cores form if temps were high for few years in the past. The cold years before and after would be there but the melting years wouldn’t show up necessarily. Using ice cores as a temperature record is a flawed science seeing as how there is no other records to compare with. To assume there is a layer of ice for every year is laughable.
@@DerIchBinDa I would suggest you actually educate yourself on what is happening. Melting in one location does not mean that the cause there is the same as melting in another location. The Northern Polar regions have direct access from the warmer waters that travel upward from the equator/temperate regions - this does not happen in the South Polar regions because of the Polar current and the circumpolar air currents - the geography of the north and south polar regions is wholly different - the north has no cirulating ocean currents and the land reduces the impact of cirumpolar air currents which cannot build to the stregth and the persistance of those in the south as they occur over open ocean that has no land mass or mountains that block its pathways.
Just a fun fact for you: In Vanda Lake in the Wright Valley, 10,000 years of accumulated salts at the bottom, have created a salt concentration higher than the sea. Fresh melt water that flows over the top can't mix with it except by diffusion. A 4 meter (13ft) thick frozen layer forms and floats on top of the 70 meter (230ft) lake. With crystallization at the bottom of the fresh water ice and evaporation at the top, the ice crystals are aligned vertically and act as light pipes. Trapped heat at the bottom of the lake has the salty water at 25 ℃ due to the solar effect of the floating 'polarised' ice 'cover'. Some parts of the lake have been measured at 45℃. At a thin 'niche' layer, algae grows, where it receives enough nutrients below and ideal heat just above.
@@David-yo5ws That's pretty interesting. I'd never expect there to be such hot water in Antarctica. So the ice would need to be clear without snow cover in order for the sun's energy to get through and warm the water.. What keeps it snow free?
@@charjl96 Excellent reasoning indeed! Called "The Dry Valleys" there are two large valleys that cover an area of 3000 sq km (1,160 sq miles) on the eastern side of McMurdo Sound. Similar oases exist in the Bunger Hilss, Wilkes Land; in the Vestfold Hills, Princess Elizabeth Land and also on the peninsula. Once carved out valleys from glaciers but were uplifted, some of these areas, with constant dry winds with humidity less than 10%, has meant some of the valley has not seen snow or rain for over 2 million years. Ref: second edition Reader's Digest ANTARCTICA released 1990.
Climate change is actually one of the reasons I dont want to have kids for now. The future is not looking bright unless big corporations find a way to make slowing down climate change profitable for them! Capitalism will be the end of us, I swear!
You missed a significant point about water. It is densest at 4 degrees C. As the water gets colder from that point on, it actually gets less dense. This is why ice floats. The fresh water melt will add to the situation but it's not the main cause.
Initially I thought he misspoke when he said half the Eiffel tower, but then he messed up the height of the empire state building too, is this some kind of bit from the channel?
I think we need a good disaster movie focused on Thwaites suddenly sliding into the ocean, causing world-wide tidal waves and wiping out our cities. That could help raise awareness, and maybe get us to a place where we could fund an international effort to mitigate the coming cataclysm. Unlike the comet-hits-earth disaster movies, there's currently no chance of the Thwaites "comet" not impacting all our coastal cities in a big way. An insulating wall around Thwaites sounds like an excellent idea, to delay the inevitable. Maybe we could also take measures to give us slowly rising waters rather than sudden tidal waves? If we melt the Thwaites glacier slowly from behind, shrinking it to nothing before it collapses, then we could bypass the cataclysmic aspects of the rising sea level. Even better, if we melt it from behind with sunlight and pump that water to a place closer to the south pole, where it's land-locked and too cold to melt, then maybe we could avoid the waters rising altogether.
01:14 This is phrased really poorly. The pause makes it sound like the glacier is as tall as either the Eiffel Tower or the Burj Khalifa, even though what you meant to convey is that it is as tall as the Burj Khalifa with half an Eiffel Tower on top.
At its highest point, It is hardly uniform and at it its shortest is only few meters deep. The better measurement would be to state its volume in CUBIC km and stop sensationalizing by throwing out nebulous comments about height and width.
10:25 it also has to do with the fact that ice is less dense than water, so near freezing water must at some point become less dense than the surrounding warmer water. It’s the reverse of most things melting and freezing, so not many people even consider it.
Summery - save 16 minutes of your life: This video is about the Thwaites Glacier, a glacier in Antarctica that is melting rapidly and could cause significant sea level rise. The video discusses the latest research on the glacier, including the discovery of a warm water plume that is melting the glacier from below. The video also discusses the potential consequences of the glacier's collapse, including flooding of coastal cities.
This is why I am afraid of the ocean. What do you mean, there is a wall of everlasting ice that control the current, and it can dilute the salt in the sea?
Me too! I thought Mike Lindell, owner of My Pillow, was offering a new color option on his pillows! I love lavender, but that glacier-blue color would appeal to men, perhaps, a bit more. Thanks, Mike, for all you have done for America and our great Constitution! You are a godly man, and you understand the importance of good sleep hygiene for Americans to be great patriots. I love your pillows and all your other products, too!
We do nothing, the seas have been much high and lower in the past. We haven't been around long enough to even try to understand. The planet is doing what its been doing for billions of years.
@@travelinventor9422 wasn't there a record drought in europe a year or so ago. News channels were breathlessly reporting this unprecedented weather. Until a large rock was exposed with engravings on it saying things like " if you can see this, start crying" The implication that this was unprecedented was not true and even the lowest iq person would see this. It was funny to see play out.😁
@drewlovelyhell4892 There's a very, very long list of things that might happen. Have you got a plan for all of them? And how's your quality of life while you worry?
the northern hemisphere ice age glacial maximum ended 20000 years ago. since that time the 5000 ft of ice sitting on North America ,Europe ,Russia, china and everything between began melting and now most of that ice is melted and the oceans have gone up 400+ ft as a result of this and it has changed the chemistry of the water due to the huge amount of fresh water which might make surface seawater freeze more easily. so we are in. the event called the interglacial warming phase which has in the past even turned the arctic into tropical forests. earth sciences have much documentation on the ice ages and one thing for sure is we are not in control even though I bet they would like to be🤔
West coast cities are in danger of becoming reefs, making western mountain areas oceanfront. That will lead to further erosion of the land (in all areas then oceanfront). Essentially, we are living in a time where we can observe and measure major oceanic and geological changes to our world. That also includes atmospheric and environmental changes. Whether or not we are contributing to that acceleration of change, it's here and we can study it. The story of life is adapt or go extinct. We can adapt and we can become more knowledgeable of how changes take place, what their affects are, and how we can address and adapt to those changes. What a great time to be alive!
Have you ever had a glass with some water in a glass with ice. If you know science, you'll know that the ice in the water takes up space. When it melts, the level of liquid stays the same because the ice has already taken up that space. In theory, the glacier should do the same thing! The glacier has taken its space already as a solid. Once it melts, turning into a liquid, the space that holds the solid water (ice) fills up the space with liquid.... thus the level of water remains the same whether the glacier is a solid or a liquid. The ocean levels won't rise! Make sense? 😮😊
I was thinking that too. But then I wonder if the scale of it changes how that dynamic works. But then again I’ve never had a cup spill of over water flow even when filled to the top with ice and to the brim in liquid.
Guess what, the Ice didnt form magically below or on top of water, it formed on LAND, so thats basically adding ice on top of an already filled glass of water
While Thwaites does contain enough ice to theoretically raise sea level by two feet, notice that some of the ice volume of Thwaites is below sea level because the ground below it is below sea level. So what we need to know is: How much of the volume of Thwaites Glacier is currently below sea level. Consider, if half of the ice volume is already below sea level, then a complete melting of Thwaites would raise sea levels by one foot, not two. If even more is below sea level, the potential sea level rise is lower still. Next we need to ask whether any of the many volcanoes found beneath the ice in Antarctica are beneath Thwaites Glacier? If they are, are they at least part of the reason the water is warming beneath the glacier? After all, if volcanoes are doing much of the melting of the glacier, there's nothing we can do about it.
I just returned to Antarctica. People are worried about this glacier, but there's huge icebergs trapped in lagoons where the entrance and exit are thru ice fjords. If those fjords calve, there's a lot more to worry about
And if the warm water is flowing outward because of geothermal/volcanic activity underneath the ice near the melt zone, an underwater curtain would retain more heat within the melt zone and it would begin to melt faster.
Water is at its highest density at 4C, maybe that's why colder water (i.e. colder than 4C) stays on top? (Granted: at 10:43, I've not yet watched the whole video (; )
Really wishThwaites would 'chill' out - th-waite for us to get our act together - and stop having such a 'melt-down' 🧊🧊🧊
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Really beginning to think you science communicators are on the WEF payroll.
What is your reasoning behind you calling it 'hot' water and not 'warm' water? Is this in order to sound more dramatic?
If we can spend 50 billion for aid to a war we can spend 50 billion for this curtain.
I think you'll remember (if you saw 'Guest House Paradiso'), that "it's not _Thwaites"..._
this isnt actually good news because ice that was siting on land is now much closer to floating in water which is where most of the sea lvl rise will come from frozen water takes up more volume than liquid
I thought the thumbnail was of the latest super-deep foam mattress! I can't be the only one...
You weren’t.
You're not
Now that you mention it
Same
I only clicked on the video to see if I wasn't the only one
I was in Antartica during '78-'82. I talked to a graduate student who had said his grant was being denied because his research found reduction of ozone layer. This has always been an ironic memory from my time in Antartica.
There You go!
Are we in a Medieval Catholic_Vatican instructed: "Only this is the proper Science Aeon"?
Today it is more the UNO, or who controlls them; Blackrock? Rothchilds, Templers?
Why? By that time the source of the problem was going away because of emission treaties (with a very long tail - as such the student was studying a problem already resolved - since then the Ozone layer has been slowly recovering - even for Australians.
I am sure this is proof that science is a lie for you.
@@glacieractivity That problem wasn't actually solved until the adoption of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer on September 16, 1987.
If his data was inconsistence with a consensus of peer reviewed and recreated data finding the opposite to be true, perhaps he was just a shitty scientist and that was why he lost his grant. There was nothing saying his data was of good quality. Plenty of crappy scientists loose funding when they are repeatedly proven to be wrong.
@@glacieractivity me when no knowledge of time
If we nuke the Thwaites Glacier first, the ocean can't melt it. 🙂
Good plan, let's do it!
Calm down America.
@@DrEnzyme Killjoy...
Sir who the fuck are you
Why are you so wise in the ways of science
When water turns to ice it expands like crazy, meaning that when this ice melts, sea level would not rise much at all...
Since you only see the top of the iceberg, and most of the ice is under the water and takes up alot of space, but will take up alot less space if it turned into water.
So the people who just found out they were wrong about how the glacier is behaving are now convinced they know how to save the glacier they don’t understand. Using geoengineering to do something never done before with unforeseen consequences to the same thing they already don’t understand. I get skeptical when I say it out loud like that.
Right. I say leave it alone and let it do what it’s gonna do.
You can use this synopsis to explain the entire BS climate narrative, as well:
The industrialists who {apparently} caused the manmade excess C02, are the same ones who claim to know the real reasons, it is happening 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yep; typical, my anti-narratives comment got deleted!
my thoughts exactly
Oh! Are you insulting quackadamia!?
Hi Ben
Thanks for the great video. I'm a glaciologist and I want to just make a couple of comments here.
Firstly, a part of the reason for the potentially rapid retreat of marine-based glaciers on retrograde bedrock slopes is a process known as Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI). This process is part of the internal dynamics of the flowing ice. The rate of ice discharge across the grounding line is strongly related to the thickness of ice at the grounding line, so when the grounding line retreats into deeper water, the thicker ice causes increasing flow rates, driving thinning and further retreat in a positive feedback process. However there are still question marks around MISI including the potential for other processes to constrain the rate of retreat.
Secondly, at about 12:55, you discuss the glacier collapsing within a decade, but this isn't a credible prediction, and no study that I know of has ever suggested this. The article you show mentions the Ice Shelf collapsing within a few years. It's very important to distinguish the ice shelf from the ice sheet or glacier. The ice shelf is the floating ice fringing the ice sheet, discharged from the glacier but still attached to it. In some cases, ice shelves are vital to the stability of the glaciers feeding them. However, the Thwaites Ice Shelf is actually a highly fragmented jumble of partially detached blocks of ice. Recent studies have suggested that the Thwaites Ice Shelf isn't particularly crucial to its stability. It is entirely possible that parts of the shelf could collapse within a decade or so, but it is highly unlikely that the partial or even total collapse of the shelf will have an immediate catastrophic impact on the rest of the glacier. Thwaites will almost certainly still be around 100 years from now, possibly in a significantly diminished state but it will still be recognisably Thwaites.
Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Thanks for the solid facts 👍
I’m a maritime architect (engineer, etc). I think we’re all tired and skeptical of the “settled science” scaremongering..! Thank you for your first hand expertise and clear explanation.
@@NobbiesGnomeRescue, glad I could share some information.
I need to be clear that the scientific community is absolutely concerned about climate change. Global warming being real and manmade is about as close as you can get to a settled topic in science. But there are a lot of details that we don't fully understand - after all, we're dealing with an immensely complicated system, we have a limited observational record (especially for ice sheets which generally evolve slowly in response to climate forcings, but which may also have tipping points and feedbacks), it's still a relatively young field of science and our models are continually improving in robustness and resolution.
But at the same time, the issue requires calm, level-headed dialogue and thinking, and international cooperation. The noise, from all sides, is absolutely not helpful. Unfortunately a lot of well-meaning activists are fairly clueless about the science, the media loves to sensationalise anything, and the issue has become an identity-politics football. All of which makes the job of scientists to share the science ten times harder. If anyone claimed that rising sea levels would inundate coastal cities imminently, they were lying or clueless. At the same time, sea level rise is still a major societal issue which will require adaptation efforts in coming decades. Misinformation and disinformation from all sides needs to be challenged.
TLDR: The worst case scenario isn't going to happen, but the likely scenarios are still generally bad news and we need to work out the details of their impacts and how to mitigate against them. And misinformation and disinformation from all sides needs to be challenged.
Hi Mat. I had been researching the human induced reduction in the frequency of the Keremt/African Easterly Wave (AEW) chain reaction which governed the mass of solar reflective marine stratocumulus cloud over the (north) equatorial Atlantic. Less cloud = more ocean surface heating [+-300W/m2] and visa versa. Since the ocean heat absorbed in the equitorial regions is circulated poleward clockwise, there would be a correspondning increase in the undermining of 'vulnerable ice shelves' i.e. an increase in calving resulting in a colder ocean surface due to floating icebergs, growlers and bits. Irony here is that there is the historical record of transatlantic ships stopping their engins at night from Britian to New York for fear of hitting icebergs - except for the 1912 incident involving the Titanic.
The above narrative had been extensivley researched and it was found that we humans had interfered in one of the precursors to this meso scale meteorological chain reaction, part of which results in a false negative Global Mean Temperature (GMT) around the start of the last century to about 1920 ; ; ; ; that the observed northern SST/atmospheric temperature was inversial to the atlantic SST subject to AEW cloud cover, thus applied solar heat. Not surprisingly this has caused a lot of upset with those who promote the meissions longwave radiative forcing arguement - to such an extent that I have 5 times tried to get the police involved - since scientific fraud is being used to pull the wool over the eyes of a great many people. If you are serious about modeling or predicting the demise of the arctic ice shelves, I suggest you download the relevent ocean temperature data [HadSST1: UK met office] and compare historic arctic events and [north] Atlantic SSTs. The [vulnerable] North Atlantic ice shelves deminished far faster than you seem to recognise, to the extent that dangerous ice floes were reaching 51'N by 1912. This was not due to a fabled anomaly since the 1760s, this was only from 1902. Good luck. CM
@@conormcmenemie5126, thank you for sharing this with me. I only deal with the ice sheet side of things, but I have colleagues who are concerned with the oceans. Do you have any studies you can share with me so I can get a bit more detail?
Antarctica has a "west coast?" I thought it only had a north coast.
Sorry but this is a dumb question
@@00shivanihow do you define “west” on Antarctica?
@@00shivani Maybe just answer the question rather than give your opinion on the question.
@@ZER0-- freedom of speech 🤷🏽♀️
@@00shivani Freedom of speech doesn't excuse rude behaviour. Don't like being criticised? Well, that's freedom of speech for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The permafrost melting is very much more devastating, when it is releasing mega tons of methane (not easily capturable)
into the atmosphere, this can only add to a runaway greenhouse effect.
COMPLETE CRAP. Read Goode et al 2021. . . . . . . shortwave, not longwave.
@@conormcmenemie5126 AGU will publish anything you pay them to publish. No peer review, so not using the scientific method at all. Nobody cares about fake journals.
To be honest I wasn't too surprised that colder water was on top. After all water has a maximum density at about 4°C.
Fool. We all know water over land is colder at the surface. The 4 degree warmer water would sink because it is denser than 1 degree water.
That is so racist.
@@SchantaKlausimbecile. Cold water is more dense. Just like cold air. And you're calling that dude a fool? 😂
40f
@SchantaKlaus wamer water is "less dense," it is higher, not lower
And there is still the possibility that most of humanity may already be extinct by the time sea levels rise. Very little consideration is given to the fact that the level of agricultural failure caused by abrupt climate change can be a worldwide event, killing billions.
Agriculture is killing people all over the place without any climate change. Metabolic diseases are a killer of mass numbers of people.
AI/Robots will kill most within the next 50 years..
I farted it was abrupt enough? You feel difference in climate?
Agricultural failure will be the result of mass monocrop farming and the introduction of chemical fertilizers. We need to get back to regenerative farming (crops and grazing) and restoring wild animal habitats that are being destroyed continually.
@dennisward43 starts at home too, everyone should be growing something they can eat and composting all or as much of their organic "waste" as possible.
"Science is the art of finding things out not the art of having all the answers." I like that you are a realist, not an activist.
Though I'd like to say that when people pay for art they often have a certain view in mind and the artist will sacrifice his artistic integrity.
So to get the check it's the art of finding out what the check pays for.
@@akmon3490
This indeed does make science an art.
@@God-Will-ing and like art gangs use it to hide their ill-gotten gains, though science is used by the biggest gangs , the governments , though they use it to justify why a profitable side gig must exist or some other scheme to leech money or reduce supply, like for water or housing.
Junk science is what they are talking about. It's ALL junk science when it comes to climate change being affected by man.
Passivism is realism.... 🤨
Hey, the water is the most dense at 4•C, thats another reason why -1 at the top and 0.5 at the bottom. Salinity is a plus.
I thought that was was widely known but it was not included in the discussion. I would hope it was included in any numerical models used by the oceanographers who study this glacier. Yes salinity matters too. Maybe the buoyancy of fresh water helps drive outflow near the ice?
That is the reason you're right.
@@fpadams It is widely known but maybe not by Dr Miles.
It's NOT a+b. "Pure water has its maximum density at about 4°C, but the maximum density of water occurs at lower temperatures as salinity increases. Temperature variations are more important in warm ocean waters, whereas salinity variations are more important in cold ocean waters." NOAA claims that they measured 4.5C & 34.7ppt -> 1.0275, 0.5C & 34.6ppt -> 1.0277
@ can be easily. Just wanted to highlight this another important aspect.
Hey ben, not to say any of what you said was false, but could you start sharing sources and whatnot in the description?
For people wanting to read more about it and such
Why not try to do the "work" yourself if you're that curious
Totally. I'll post them tomorrow when I'm in the office 👍
@@DuckDodgers69sharing sources is more rigorous, build trust and makes verifying the information easier. Being against sharing sources is anti scientific in itself
@@DuckDodgers69Maybe so people can be held accountable for what they say rather than just falling back on “just look it up yourself.” Your high school teacher wouldn’t let any form of fact based writing go without proper citations, so why should adults be given the luxury not to?
@@DrBenMiles I hope your office is equal to, or higher, than your new home, otherwise your going to have to move to a new office as well?! 😮 LOL.
I am 'lucky' where I live in Napier, New Zealand, because in 1931, an earthquake raised the East Coast up by 1-2 meters, so we are already ahead of the 'game'.
However, we are overdue for an Hikurangi Trench quake. We could go down or we could go up. Up or Down, the devastation will be disastrous!
you forget the 91 volcanoes under the ice in West Antarctica where one of them is erupting but cannot be seen because there is 3-4 km of ice on top of it,
the heat from the lava melts the ice from below and we have known that for 20+ years just not that it was from lava from vulkans,
in 2017 a uk professor discovered that there were 91 volcanoes under the ice which provided the heat to melt the ice, the temperatures down there have been measured for the last 50 years and show no change + that there is a cold ocean current that circulates around Antarcticaintact
Does this train of thought have a caboose?
@@jamesvandamme7786 threy search 91 vulkan under the ice
threy search 91 vulkan under the ice
The same way they don't talk about the permafrost melting in Siberia, releasing enormous amounts of methane....
@@emilyrusso-rd6pq It's not the first time in the last 3.000 years that it's been warmer than now,
look at ice cores from Greenland,
the fact that there's organic material in Siberia is because it was once warmer there so plants could grow,
by the way, it was once far inland 12.000 years ago,
and the water level was about 100 m lower than today,
the narrow land bridge over the Bering Strait they're talking about was enormous, from the Aleutians to the Bering Strait for about 3.000 km there's a maximum of 75 m of water, except in the most western part where there's a hole several km deep,
the same is north of the strait and about 3.000 km up there's no deeper either and the continental shelf extends from north Greenland, past Canada, Alaska Siberia, Russia to north Norway,
that methane is produced is natural because bacteria eat the dead organic matter when it's thawed up and they inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, their excrements as are long molecule chains,
enzymes go through and make new food for plants that they are mostly made of, and all the c atoms they encounter, (the c atom comes from co2 that the plant has once taken in and with photosynthesis has converted into a c atom they need and 2 o atoms for our oxygen), this is the only way that the c atom can enter the cycle again,
because nothing goes to waste, methane is a natural and important part of the planet's system, methane rises, hits ozone at 20-22 km altitude and continues upwards, on the way up, methane breaks down the ozone it hits (this is the cause of the ozone hole over the South Pole),
above ozone it is broken down by the sun's UV light and c falls down again,
at some point it will slide down into the magma due to the tectonic plate shifts such as e.g. along the west coast of america, down there it turns into co2 again which comes up from cracks like radon does and out of volcanoes to enter the cycle again,
the amount of methane's influence on the reflected ir heat is the same regardless of the amount, a bit the same as with co2, it is certain ir frequencies that can affect methane as it is with co2 and again only in a narrow area in the upper ir area where there is only a little ir,
so all in all the globe has experienced much more heat than now and much more methane emissions than now, the previous interglacial period alone was 5-7 degrees c. warmer,
and you have to remember that until 12.550 years ago siberia was in a warmer climate in Siberia because the poles were 2.5-3.000 km from where they are now, the north pole was down around hudson bay,
No, it really isn't surprising. Water is in a class of substances which are unusual for a key reason: They become less dense upon solidifying. This is usually accompanied by a reduction in density at low temperatures.
Water has a peak density around 4 degrees.
So if it was just pure water, if the water 4 degrees and hotter, we would expect the coldest water on the bottom and the hottest at the top.
If it 4 degrees and lower, we expect 4 degrees at the bottom and colder at the top.
This is also why during winter lakes freeze at the top first and that layer of ice slowly builds down.
The salt complicates it.
Ice being less dense than water is the reason icebergs float, if it was denser, they would sink.
These freeze at the top first because the wind is colder than the earth at the beginning of winter. Not because of density
We humans seem to be brilliant T living in denial. Many people still think that Global Weather Change is bogus, and argue that it’s. Natural cycle. That way, we can’t do anything about it, so no guilt, and just keeping on burning fossil fuels! Argh.
Water..is it's own fundamental element.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Aether.
That's why it doesn't behave like, or have the characteristics of, any other substance.
@@FourthWayRanch Density plays an important role.
If cold water/ice was denser, then as it cools from the cold air, it would sink down, making the bottom layers the coldest, with the ice building up on the bottom.
3:00 thanks for this cuz my brain is like “well if it’s already floating then this means nothing” but that illustration is indeed alarming
exactly. fear mongering for fake man made climate change sciense . all for carbon taxes that will do nothing but impoverish people while unjustly enriching proponents of the lie
part of it *is* floating, but also since the grounding line is receding so much there's an ever larger amount of glacier that used to not be floating and is still supported only by its own tensile strength, which is why the glacier is breaking up (because that part of the glacier may be over water but it's not actually floating)
@@junovzlatotally. What’s scarier to me how what I guess could be called “the coast” under the glacier is under sea level. So a large portion of the actually grounded ice will also melt.
I'm in a really bad mood at the moment, but that bit about the marketing team being off the day they named MATHGZ actually put a smile on my face and made me chuckle.
Thank you. I needed that. 🙂
Well, somehow I thought that it is a common knowledge, that below 4°C water becomes less dense until it freezes. As water cools below 4°C, the hydrogen-bond network becomes increasingly rigid, forming structures similar to ice. These structures take up more space, lowering the density.
Seems, that this is a surprise to some scientists.
Hint: this is the reason, why water freezes from the top. Not from the bottom.
Exactly! The warmth from the Earth will heat the water. He's talking about water over land - not the ocean. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's annoyed about this.
current year scientist are mostly activists and/or funded by activists trying to own/stick it to the "uneducated" people that are "science deniers"
Climate scientists have a phrase "Bill chill" in their science arena because a lot of climate science is funded by Gates who will stop funding you if your science is "wrong"
Belive me, they know...its you who does not understand.
@DornigeChance Believe me... Trust the $cience...
@@SchantaKlaus You really do know how science works, do you.
Id argue losing the permafrost is very much more devastating
Its hard to pick favourites nowadays, huh.
I agree but butt heads don't want to hear about it.
At least that has an effective bandaid fix of geoengineering until the excess methane breaks down. It's a lot harder to fix a collapsed ice sheet.
But is it? Sure there are many dangers with methane but there are also advantages. One of these is the new farming land that will open up and the extra plants that grow that will reduce global Co2 levels.
The modern forms of the world's major coastal cities were constructed in under a century.
The most cost effective solution, by far, is for humanity to move inland. In the US, most major coastal cities already have declining populations. Nothing is forever...
Eeeeh Idk
Florida gets hit by 3 hurricanes in a row in less than a month and they think the jews did it or they'd it's normal
And they still aren't leaving
I think this will have to be done because there is no chance that some countries like China are ever going to reduce their massive carbon emissions, at least until half of China goes below sea level.
Interesting.
It is possible to view the record of what will happen as the warming trend increases... look at Greenland and Scandinavia as well as Doggerland to see the effects of climate change both up and down the temperature scale. Greenland once warmed enough to have large forests on the southern tip, and Doggerland was once above sea level as was the communities in the Black Sea currently around 30 to 240 feet below sea level today. Akra and Kalpe to name a couple. Fossils and rock strata also point to a time when the sea levels were much higher than they are today.
As recently as 1200 AD, there was a summer village in the Swiss alps that was buried under a glacier. We can see its remains now that the glacier has receded.
So what causes those cycles and can we use them to our advantage?
One advantage is it spurs engineering advances to counter the man made portion, and the replanting and preservation of forests, another means of tempering climates locally. But that does not answer the more extreme cycles, such as the Greek, Roman and Medieval events previously noted.
Interesting.
I will be watching to see what other information you wish to share.
Thank you.
400 years ago advancing glaciers were threatening farms and villages in the Alps.
Nice thoughts. Fascinating, very complex stuff
The eglywsyg rocks in Llangollen in north Wales was at one time under the sea. As a child back in the 60's my brother and I used to go fossil hunting and always came home with some
And until 200 years ago we weren't burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale. If you imagine we haven't significantly changed the atmosphere by doing that and seriously disturbed those cycles you mentioned, might I advise a little experiment? Start your car in the garage and close all the doors. See how long your natural cycles continue for if you introduce large amounts of waste gases from fossil fuel combustion into your personal biological equation. Now extrapolate to a larger environment with more of those gases.
15:21 I argue though with the decrease in suitable housing, infrastructure, and homes for population, maybe it does make more sense to build homes inland at 150miles to prepare for a situation like that.
Then the planet gets hit by a big rock from space and we’re back to an ice age.
Nope anything big enough can be detected and it's simple enough to change their course - bucket of white paint can do that
All very big astroid trajectories have been calculated. We are safe from planetary killers for quite some time. Unless something comes in fast from outside the solar system. Only regional destruction is still possible, but very unlikely.
Sorry the Sun has us set for the next stone age in 10 20 years, sneaky suspicion more like 5, then the ice age kicks what little ass of humanity's is left of us. But we survived it many times before odds we will again. Half credit
You think we would be able to redirect one?
@@Xanaduum
Not sure whom you are asking. It depends on the size and how early it is detected. Our capabilities in doing that should also get better.
"Science is the art of finding things out, not having all the answers."
Thanks!
Hey! Thanks for your support
content like this makes UA-cam great. There's a wealth of knowledge out there and the way we share that knowledge matters. Thanks for sharing!
It's not just a matter of melting ice. Most of Bangladesh is barely above sea level now. 140 million people are suddenly going to have to go somewhere else.
Their nearest neighbor is India, but remember if you can there was a long and nasty war between Moslems and Hindus in India and that's how we ended up with 2 new nations: Bangladesh and Pakistan, both Moslem nations.
The current leader of India is working to "purify" India to make it strictly Hindu. I foresee problems.
It’s not a mystery that the water is colder against the melting ice surface than below it. The temperature of the water on the undersurface of the ice shelf is colder because the process of melting ice is endothermic. Ice absorbs 333J/g from its surrounding water when it melts. Melting 200g ice (at 0 Celsius) in 1liter of water at 25C results in a 15.9C reduction in water temp. We could probably tell how quickly the ice is melting just by measuring the temperature differential. This has nothing to do with the fact that the melted ice is fresh water. But the fact that it is fresh causes another phenomenon. Fresh water that forms from melted ice against the shelf, is lighter than salt water so it floats above the salty sea water in the absence of mixing and stays against the undersurface of the shelf for a time. But fresh water is colder yet has a slightly lower viscosity than sea water, so under the influence of gravity it might tend to “slide off” the sea water under the slope of the shelf, like liquid slides off a hillside. So maybe that’s how it makes a down-sloping current against the shelf.
Invoquing fusion latent heat values does not really help to make your comment very convincing.
Fluid mechanics engineer here. Viscosity has nothing to do with this problem. Temperature and salinity gradients, tides, ocean currents, and ice shelf buoyancy are the driving forces here. And as it was mentioned in other comments, the dilatation coefficient of liquid water changes sign below 4 C. So the densest liquid water you can find is at 4 C. Therefore having a reversed temperature gradient below 4 C is totally OK. By reversed I mean that the density and temperature gradients are of the same sign, unlike in usual warmer waters where they are of opposite sign.
Having low salinity melted water on top of the water column only increases the density gradient, which is already stable.
The thing that is difficult to understand here I think is why the flow of water goes the direction opposite to what was previously thought, I.e. top cold and less salty water going down along the subsurface and not the other way round. But I'm sure there are already papers about that in dedicated scientific journals!
Thank you for the perspective / I'm going for your perspective / unlike the first comment here / keep on keeping on friend
As a representative of Florida we have come to the conclusion that Miami can sink or swim
The reason for this inverted gradient of the hot-cold water is that it's hard for convection to occur in cone-shaped volumes. The same happens with a cup of coffee when the cup's bottom is much smaller than the top. The surface layer becomes colder but its volume is much greater than the bottom layer which it should replace. On the other hand, the upper, similar in volume layers have much less difference in temperature to start the convection.
The other reason is that the top, cold layer has *very* uniform density and temperature because of the [fixed] melting point of the ice and uniform [lack of] salinity. To start a convection cycle, it needs a spot on the surface which is even colder/denser than its surrounding in the same layer. Once it starts, though, it gathers velocity (momentum) which keeps it going (especially if the gradient of density is reversed - which is more likely when the column of water is higher) and *that's* the reason for those "chambers" on random places, deep into the shelf.
The temperature-reversal is easy to explain, if the water is below 4°C (as seems likely): although - normally - warmer is less dense, that reverses for water below this temperature (quite apart from salinity's contribution) and, indeed, on freezing the water expands significantly, which is why ice floats on water, where most substances' solid forms sink in their liquid forms. (One of the other exceptions is blancmange.) So the almost-freezing water melting from the bottom of the glacier is colder - so *less* dense than - any water below 4°C below it and the water is stratified to have (however close any of it gets to) 4°C at the sea-floor with the temperature rising from there towards the bottom of the ice sheet.
Oh, and the reason why the "good" news isn't can be put another way: even if less ice offshore from the grounding line has melted, it doesn't help - because ice shoreward from the grounding line has its weight supported by land, but ice oceanward from it has its weight supported by the water on which it floats (except for close to the grounding line, where mechanical forces within the ice can transfer some of its weight shorewards). What causes sea levels to rise is the volume of ocean plus the buoyancy contribution of the ice floating on it - effectively the volume of water equal to the mass of the floating ice - so the more ice the water has to support by floating (rather than mechanical stress, via bodies of ice, grounded on the underlying sea-floor or land). So what matters is how far the ice-sheet gets undercut by the sea, not how much of the ice-sheet melts. The part of the ice-sheet supported by land extends, at best, on some diagonal sea-wards from the grounding point: as the grounding point moves shorewards, that diagonal goes with it. All the ice beyond that diagonal is supported by - so weighing down upon, and thus effectively contributing its mass to - the oceans, so contributing to global sea-level rise.
Call the dutch, we are already prepared for 3 meters sealevel rise
Well you are already 20m below sea level, aren't you?
The dutch have been fighting the ocean for their whole existence. Y’all are prepared
Dutch person here. We are working on this but 3 meters requires a lot more effort. It would require up to 4 times more sand depositing than we are currently doing. We have about 1500 km of dykes and levies that we are currently reinforcing and raising and making room for the rivers and improving our pumps etc. But three meters is a lot. And we are at a max of 7 meters below sea level.
@strangekwark
Let's hope we are giving back to the sea .
We need to restore Nature so back to a river delta and remove as much Dikes and polders so water can flow freely.
Always wanted sea side property. 😂
@@strangekwark
Zolang we maar goed kijken wat het zeeniveau doet en de rivieren ook genoeg aandacht blijven geven houwen we het wel droog voor het grootste gedeelte.
En als de rest van de wereld nou eens gaat luisteren naar nederlandse ingenieurs maar dat zal wel niet.
I think, hear me out, we should open all our fridges at the same time, freezers too, maybe crank up the AC to max. If we get enough people together, maybe we can return to the ice age.
I like your style.
you do realize that ac and refrigeration work by pumping warm air outside right? turning ac up to max would only make it worse, raising temperatures outside of the contained room. this is an example of dangerous ignorance. i am aware this is supposed to be a joke, but it is a dangerous suggestion
@@skop3609 you need to get help
So out of the ice retreat I have one question? How much snow has fallen in the interior of Antarctica compared to the loss of ice at the shelf? And how did those numbers compare?
Exactly, that is what Ben is not looking at. It really doesn't matter what happens at the bottom end, that will vary due to a variety of factors, it is how fast the glacier is growing inland. Growing faster (which it is) makes it flow downhill faster and calve more at the bottom end. Looks scary in footage, but actually good news that the glacier is accumulating, not retreating.
@@antimatter4444, West Antarctica is not growing however. Some regions inland are accumulating more ice than previously, but this doesn't balance out increasing ice discharge around the margins.
Moreover, there is the potential for very rapid retreat due to feedback processes in the ice flow system.
Ok so do we know how much water is actually getting frozen as well per how much is thawing? It is in negative temps there so some amount of water has to be freezing at the other end that's moving towards this end.
Great video, I read the information a while back however this video done a great job explaining the threat. But the better question is, was the threat imminent regardless of CO2? After-all the sea level rose 120m+ in the past 12,000 years
Where I live we are about 1 KM above sea level. No worries about this. Not to say there is no worries. If sea level rose 3 meter that would mean surface area of the oceans increased massively. More water vapor and more going between drought and massive flooding. This is already been seen over the past 20 years. More pineapple expresses for mountain coast of BC more eastern flooding coming form the eastern rockies.
The bad news: Angelenos will start moving to your neighborhood.
Wait we lost 28 trillion tons of artic ice since 1994? It's one of those numbers I have no idea how to wrap my head around
A billion tons of ice is roughly a cube with sides one kilometer in length.
Now imagine 28 thousand of those.
And yet Miami is still above water.
@@redstang5150, there's no contradiction there. Global mean sea level has risen approximately 3.5 cm since then. Current rate is approximately 3.5 mm/year.
Man vs. Nature. The smart money is on Nature.
Nature bats last
WRONG AGAIN - Not one mention of the volcanic activity that east Antartica is sitting on. Last time I looked volcanoes cause a lot of melting when they became active underneath an ice sheet.
Earths gravitational cycles which are influenced by the Milankovic cycles cause increased volcanic activity during interglacial periods such as the Holocene we are currently in. This causes melting in that region.
Why is the remaining 90% of Antartica showing no signs of melting and sea levels show not a single shred of evidence of any accelerated rise. This would be global news, yet there is nothing unusual going on. Fake news would have pounced on this if it was occurring.
We are at the end of this interglacial and guess what happens after that. Fear the cold, worship the warmth while it lasts.
I love all that footage of icebergs floating in ocean. There is some wonderful physics involved in floating ice. It floats because there are air bubbles in it. And volume of solid part of ice above the water equals volume of bubbles below the water surface.
That means, all the ice already floating in ocean can melt and nothing really happens.
10:29 ... for Reasons we still don't know?
Maybe large Laboratory measurements of water-viscosity under these conditions T, p, sal, chem, should be repeated/done!
Viscosity of water is more dependent on temp than Density (which itselve is max at 4°C). Below 4°C the water molecular structure changes notably, H2O molecules build groups with stronger H - OH bridges!
1:05 that’s a neat clip of a rare C47 RATO/JATO take off.
As a science guy my entire life... Why are we still screaming that the sky is falling, when we don't even understand the most basic of Earth's climate cycles?
I'll tell you why.
Because it's sensational and makes a LOT of people and organizations a LOT of money, that's why.
Why do I have house insurance? My house has never burned before.
@@davestagner Houses burn down all the time. It's quite common. How common is catastrophic, anthropogenic climate change? Oh... it's never happened before and is theorized based on unverifiable old temperature readings of dubious accuracy and all the solutions to the problem somehow always consolidate power in the hands of authoritarians and line the pockets of green energy companies?
Nothing to question here at all.
@@davestagner We understand that our houses burning down is a potential risk. We don't understand Earth's climate cycles, so people shouldn't scream that, "the sky is falling."
- A house burning down - Has happened and will happen again somewhere on Earth
- The predictions made in this video - May never occur on Earth
@@DirtDog. Back in the late ‘90s, I and thousands of of software engineers like me spent years of effort fixing Y2K bugs. When Y2K turned out to not be a disaster, lots of people seriously asked “So why did we waste all that time and effort and suffer all those warnings?” But Y2K wasn’t a disaster BECAUSE we heeded the warnings, and fixed the problems.
We DO understand Earth’s climate cycles. Not perfectly, not completely, but well enough to make really good predictions. Climate change from rising CO2 levels was first predicted as far back as 1896, by Svante Arrhenius, and his numbers actually held up ok. Here’s what we KNOW - not imagine, KNOW. CO2 traps heat. This can be measured in a lab. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased 50% since the start of the industrial revolution, from 280 to 420ppm. We KNOW this number is rising about 2.5ppm/year, because we’ve been sampling for decades. We know Earth’s CO2 levels precisely going back 800,000 years, from air bubbles trapped in ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica (we can also estimate global temperatures from the same ice cores). We have been precisely measuring temperatures worldwide for over 150 years, so we know how much temperature increase we’ve seen. From this data, we can extrapolate with great confidence the effects of continued CO2 emissions on global temperatures.
It doesn’t take a brilliant scientist to understand that increasing global temperatures increases the chances of a Thwaites Glacier failure, or any number of other problems. We’re already observing them.
The predictions made in this video may never occur, yes. But if they don’t occur, it will be BECAUSE we screamed the sky is falling long enough and loud enough to actually do something about the conditions that would lead to those predictions inevitably coming true.
A 50% increase in CO2 has caused a 1.5c increase in Earth’s temperature already. (That’s 2.7F, if you don’t speak celsius.) At current emissions rates, we will add another 50% in less than 50 years - enough to push temperatures to 3.0c, or 5.4F (that’s assuming we don’t set off a methane cascade from melting permafrost). We have added about a trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere so far by burning fossil fuels - that’s about twice the mass of every living thing on Earth put together. Each kg of fossil fuels burned produces about 3kg of CO2, because the carbon in the fossil fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere.
I’m sure most of this is new information for you. Are you alarmed yet? Why not? I am.
Because we understand enough to establish a trend.
Just because we don't know the details, doesn't mean we can't tell there isn't a catastrophic problem.
This is the only time I've ever re-watched an ad read on purpose. I thought I didn't see what I saw.... Clever!
This is a strategic national security threat. An enemy can strike it causing a massive global catastrophe. Plunging major countries into economic duress
During WW2, some craft were made of ice. It is incredibly difficult to damage.
This would be very much similar to Mutually Assured Destruction. Right now, no country would be willing to destroy their own just to get back at another country. We ain't there yet, I feel like. Even nuclear threats aren't delivered on because of the fear of nuclear retaliation. MAD keeps the world in check.
"Overall, the Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km² since 2009, with 18 ice shelves retreating and 16 larger shelves growing in area. Our observations show that Antarctic ice shelves gained 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade." (Andreasen et al, 2023). It is from a paper entitled "Change in Antarctic Ice Shelf Area from 2009 to 2019". They use MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite data to measure the change in ice shelf calving front position and area on 34 ice shelves in Antarctica from 2009 to 2019. Also, as the mass gain (661Gt) was given, you could calculate the volume of the ice gained using the formula: Volume = Mass ÷ Density (assume Density of glacier ice 0.9167 Gt/km³). This would give you (well not you obviously) an Ice Gain Volume ≈721km³. That's how much extra of the lovely white stuff there is around Antarctica. Imagine standing in the centre of this extra ice. It would stretch beyond the horizon in all directions and would be 45 storeys high.
I find it hard to envision an ongoing interglacial period that doesn't involve the retreat of ice sheets. Glaciers either grow or shrink, never static.
They don't retreat quite this fast naturally though, at least not at the point in the Milankovitch Cycles we're in now.
good video. i feel i finally understand what they meant by climate tipping point... a literal runaway tipping point event
Great video, as always, but whoever had the idea of using dark grey and dark blue to signify land and water in your animations deserves to have their box of cereal left open (so it goes slightly chewy)!
...you can barely tell the difference between them.
3:32 those numbers are useless to most people. I'd much prefer some percentages or other (real) metrics to get a better feel for what's going on
To be fair, him saying it lost 1/8 its overall weight by the end more or less summed it up in an understandable way. Mans was just tryna give us the facts AND he did give a percentage at the end.
a problem with the expensive curtain is that governments will tax us to build it, then when it nears time to build it they will figure out that it wont work and will go back to the drawing board. then they will have another fix available but........... they accidentally spent the taxed money on something else.......... and will need to bring in another tax, which will most likely also dissapear! (faster than the melting ice)
How much is the weight of ice depressing the land, and when that ice melts will the ground still be below sea level?
Those processes take too long to make any difference to us. Parts of North America and Scandinavia are still measurably rebounding from the last time they were under ice sheets - but "measurable" is with very precise instruments.
@@tealkerberus748 Not so, In Norway the Rebound is clearly visible from marks made on a harbour wall about 60 years ago. The average rise is 40 cm. No sophisticated instruments needed! Source ScienceNorway website amd many others.
Good question, but the West Antarctic ice shelf is grounded deep under the sea. Hundreds of metres or more I think. Far too much to make up by rebound as the weight of ice comes off anyway.
Excellent video and love the subtle jokes as always. *Not a Logitech.....that one got me good
Sun's Magnetic Field Has Flipped. We Have Entered the Solar Maximum!
I'm very disappointed to see that there is no mention of submarine volcanoes, of which there are many under the Thwaites Glacier and scattered around Antartica. There are an estimated 3.5 million submarine volcanoes throughout the globe, which are becoming more active and without a doubt the exposure of molten lava to the oceans, has a dramatic warming effect on the oceans and a melting effect on Antartica's many, many glaciers.
It's time for everyone to tell the full story.
The science was already settled before the volcanoes were publicized, so they're a mere distraction from the narrative. An actual inconvenient truth.
This isn't about science, its about making money to earn a living. When the researchers run out of money, the volcanoes will suddenly be blamed for increasing melting, and need more grant money to be studied.
Soyentists: _"This is weird, the warm water is coming from beneath the glacier, instead of going underneath. Guess we'll never know the reason!"_
Me comparing the ice sheet thinning in Antarctica with the map of active volcanoes: _"Yes, truly astounding."_
@@joeharper448but they’re already being studied though; otherwise we wouldn’t know about their role in melting the ice sheet in the first place.
@@LecherousLizard The places with ice sheet thinning are different than the places with active volcanoes. This isn't some mystery.
One thing that never gets mentioned, and which you have also left out, is this addition of 3m of sea level rise, specifically how long this would take. If as you say it's thinning by 4m and it's got a height of 1km it sounds more like 250 years. And if you take this kind of timescale there are other much more pressing issues that will affect people in a much smaller time scale, such as scarce food resources.
You're making a huge assumption that it maintains the thinning at a constant rate. Which it won't. As the ice thins, it will melt faster. It is also not a uniform 250km, remember those scientists that sent that probe? They only had to go through 6 km. In addition, you're thinking that it will all just melt away when a fair chunk of it will likely calve off.
@@ccapwell I must disagree , with governments and the ones running the show they are putting farmers and farms out to pasture , add in weather changes the Americas are going into drought and the deserts in Africa are turning green , if you can't grow your own food in 5 years from now you will be a statistic one of in a couple billion, a world wide planned famine, if i would of put all my savings into tin foil stocks, id be buddies with Bill Bill and Hilary right now, only put in half so wait 2 more years. Tin foil hats for all pretty dam soon, at this rate. Woops off topic, apologies Ted.
I would like some clarity on what you mean by 'sea ice' compared to the ice lost by the Thwaites glacier. Melting floating sea ice doesn't raise sea levels. The Thwaites glacier is on land so its melting would contribute to sea level rise. You say Thwaites glacier has lost 1 trillion tons of ice over the last 25 years. But sea level rise shows no acceleration over the last 100 years or so, just a slow, steady increase; our non submerging Pacific Islands are testament to this. As usual with climate alarmism we wait for any sign of any of the dangers we are supposed to have suffered already, or predicted, coming to pass. A 1 -1.5 degree rise in air temp cannot explain rising sea temperatures.
When ice falls off of land into the sea, it adds water to the sea.
What's not enough mentioned in the discussion about tidewater glaciers is the effect of the tide itself which is pumping fresh water under the glacier wherever the flood occurs and removes molten freshwater water during ebb.
why dont they park 190583 cars there with their engines running and the ac on, if they open the doors the cold air will come out and stop this disaster.
I live exactlly where scientists say "The Southern U.S. has seen twice the global sea level rise rate since 2010." But I promise you the water has not risen by any perceivable measure. Must be measuring in microns....
Hmmm this smells like bullpuckey
Modern day rates of global mean sea level rise are measured in mm/year, and due to all sorts of complicated processes, the rates of sea level rise are very different for different parts of the globe.
Future rates of rise could be measured in cm/year if glaciers such as Thwaites are tipped into a state of unstable rapid retreat.
2:21. Title was clickbait...
One way or the other eventually the sea will rise as per the rest of time so might be worth looking at defenses well beforehand.
As sea ice is on the rise, sea level drops. Laat winter was the most sea ice measured in recent history.
Or adapt as previous civilizations in the past. An area floods, adapt or move the city. Don’t rebuild like they keep doing in New Orleans.
@@diegomontoya796 The Royal Meteorological Society disagrees with you. What is your source?
It's really kind of pointless because by the time it happens global temperatures will be above + 3 c. The wet-bulb temperature will be so high in many areas that humans can't survive there for more than a few hours without artificial air conditioning and perhaps living underground as they are in parts of australia.
@@diegomontoya796 Intrigued, also I am
Does anyone know about the rate at which glaciers build up? Has the rate of snow accumulation increased or decreased with climate change? Will climate change increase the amount of fresh water accumulating in the antarctic pushing sea-level rise more rapidly?
I came here initially for the doomsday glacier, then listened to your elevator pitch for Delete Me, and subsequently disappeared into a 3-day booze bender of identity theft rabbit holes...now I can't find my wallet, and the kid at the packy store claims nobody turned it in after I left...
Guys, invest in boats, its gonna be fine.
Sounds biblical
I'm going to say something controversial here, and I can see a lot of people getting their knickers in a twist, but here goes. That we are polluting the atmosphere with excess CO2 cannot be denied by anyone, also, that we are polluting with Nitros Oxides cannot also be denied - we are a dirty species that is pooping in our own garden is so true it risks becoming depressing and we must do something about that. BUT - how do we know for sure that what is happening to the Antarctric ice sheets and glaciers is not simply a natural consequences of changes that have been happening for the last 12,000+ yrs?
Antarctica is so cold because of the circumpolar current of cold water that seperates Antarctic waters from the the surrounding waters of the global ocean and thus prevents warmer waters mixing with water on the other side of the circumpolar current, equally, the air has circumpolar currents that also prevent warmer air from mixing with Antarctic air, thus maintaining the deep freeze we all know and love. There is another aspect of this which I have not seen discussed, Antartic volcanism - we know it exists, we have evidence for the mantle plume under the Ross Ice shelf, forming Ross Island and the volcanoes therein, and we know there are other volcanoes in the region, just buried under the ice, there are places where mountains poke through the ice - in West Antartica alone there are 91 confirmed volcanoes. Takahe is a shield volcano in the Western Antartica Volcanic Province, the last eruption was 5550BCE, but this does not mean it is not active, The Hudson Mountains are also there, calculations suggest they last erupted in 207BCE, but this is not confirmed, we have no idea if there have been other smaller eruptions along the chain in the meantime, and we have no clue as to their activity status under 2.5km of ice.
Western Antarctica is a volcanic hot zone, we know that the Ross Mantle Plume is active and it is highly likely that some of the other volcanoes in the region are also active - there is a lot we simply do not know about the geology and the geophysics of Antarctica and especially Western Antartica - whilst unlikely, we have no idea if there is another mantle plume or a branch of the Ross plume that is surfacing under the Thwaites glacier that is warming the surface under the glacier and slowly causing melting from below - far more research is required right around Antarctica, but especially Western Antartica. We need to be careful about attributing every change we see to "global warming" and the activity of humanity - that is lazy science and potentially dangerous.
It would be "lazy science" if it would be like you describe, but it is not. The melting happens everywhere from greenland ice shield, to the north pole to glaciers in mountain ranges.
And we know it is not a natural cylce already by the sheer speed it is changing. We talk about 1000s of times faster than any gelogocial record.
You realize one pooping in the garden would make plants grow better. Poop = fertilizer
@@DerIchBinDageological records = ice cores.
How would ice cores form if temps were high for few years in the past. The cold years before and after would be there but the melting years wouldn’t show up necessarily.
Using ice cores as a temperature record is a flawed science seeing as how there is no other records to compare with.
To assume there is a layer of ice for every year is laughable.
@@joeweb5581 I bet you are fun at parties!!
@@DerIchBinDa I would suggest you actually educate yourself on what is happening. Melting in one location does not mean that the cause there is the same as melting in another location. The Northern Polar regions have direct access from the warmer waters that travel upward from the equator/temperate regions - this does not happen in the South Polar regions because of the Polar current and the circumpolar air currents - the geography of the north and south polar regions is wholly different - the north has no cirulating ocean currents and the land reduces the impact of cirumpolar air currents which cannot build to the stregth and the persistance of those in the south as they occur over open ocean that has no land mass or mountains that block its pathways.
When he says that hot water is flowing under the ice sheet, I wonder how hot he means?
Warmer than the colder water by a degree or two.
Cold.
Just a fun fact for you: In Vanda Lake in the Wright Valley, 10,000 years of accumulated salts at the bottom, have created a salt concentration higher than the sea. Fresh melt water that flows over the top can't mix with it except by diffusion. A 4 meter (13ft) thick frozen layer forms and floats on top of the 70 meter (230ft) lake. With crystallization at the bottom of the fresh water ice and evaporation at the top, the ice crystals are aligned vertically and act as light pipes. Trapped heat at the bottom of the lake has the salty water at 25 ℃ due to the solar effect of the floating 'polarised' ice 'cover'. Some parts of the lake have been measured at 45℃. At a thin 'niche' layer, algae grows, where it receives enough nutrients below and ideal heat just above.
@@David-yo5ws That's pretty interesting. I'd never expect there to be such hot water in Antarctica. So the ice would need to be clear without snow cover in order for the sun's energy to get through and warm the water.. What keeps it snow free?
@@charjl96 Excellent reasoning indeed! Called "The Dry Valleys" there are two large valleys that cover an area of 3000 sq km (1,160 sq miles) on the eastern side of McMurdo Sound. Similar oases exist in the Bunger Hilss, Wilkes Land; in the Vestfold Hills, Princess Elizabeth Land and also on the peninsula. Once carved out valleys from glaciers but were uplifted, some of these areas, with constant dry winds with humidity less than 10%, has meant some of the valley has not seen snow or rain for over 2 million years. Ref: second edition Reader's Digest ANTARCTICA released 1990.
Professional Floridian here. We will in fact just evolve. Water does not bother us.
Climate change is actually one of the reasons I dont want to have kids for now. The future is not looking bright unless big corporations find a way to make slowing down climate change profitable for them! Capitalism will be the end of us, I swear!
You missed a significant point about water. It is densest at 4 degrees C. As the water gets colder from that point on, it actually gets less dense. This is why ice floats. The fresh water melt will add to the situation but it's not the main cause.
this is not the first time in earths history that this is happened and it wont be the last
What was the earth's human population last time, and what happened to them?
It's the first time in this particular part of the Milankovitch Cycles.
Sure would be great to see pics of those "cathedral like caverns."
Initially I thought he misspoke when he said half the Eiffel tower, but then he messed up the height of the empire state building too, is this some kind of bit from the channel?
I think we need a good disaster movie focused on Thwaites suddenly sliding into the ocean, causing world-wide tidal waves and wiping out our cities. That could help raise awareness, and maybe get us to a place where we could fund an international effort to mitigate the coming cataclysm. Unlike the comet-hits-earth disaster movies, there's currently no chance of the Thwaites "comet" not impacting all our coastal cities in a big way.
An insulating wall around Thwaites sounds like an excellent idea, to delay the inevitable. Maybe we could also take measures to give us slowly rising waters rather than sudden tidal waves? If we melt the Thwaites glacier slowly from behind, shrinking it to nothing before it collapses, then we could bypass the cataclysmic aspects of the rising sea level. Even better, if we melt it from behind with sunlight and pump that water to a place closer to the south pole, where it's land-locked and too cold to melt, then maybe we could avoid the waters rising altogether.
You haven't mentioned the ice gaining on top.
Because there's still a net loss and it wasn't relevant to the video.
The question is
"What can we do about it "?
I have the answer.
NOTHING
Nothing van be done only because political will power is lacking.
Lacking because people shrug their shoulders and say "nothing can be done".
@awf6554
Let's say there was "political will"
What could humans possibly do to stop glaciers from melting?
Surely a tax on Carbon will save us!
@@freedomruss
I agree, also lithium batteries and solar panels will save us too.
Lmfao
People will believe almost any bs now days
@@Dougie1969 Reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Duh.
01:14 This is phrased really poorly. The pause makes it sound like the glacier is as tall as either the Eiffel Tower or the Burj Khalifa, even though what you meant to convey is that it is as tall as the Burj Khalifa with half an Eiffel Tower on top.
At its highest point, It is hardly uniform and at it its shortest is only few meters deep. The better measurement would be to state its volume in CUBIC km and stop sensationalizing by throwing out nebulous comments about height and width.
10:25 it also has to do with the fact that ice is less dense than water, so near freezing water must at some point become less dense than the surrounding warmer water. It’s the reverse of most things melting and freezing, so not many people even consider it.
Summery - save 16 minutes of your life: This video is about the Thwaites Glacier, a glacier in Antarctica that is melting rapidly and could cause significant sea level rise. The video discusses the latest research on the glacier, including the discovery of a warm water plume that is melting the glacier from below. The video also discusses the potential consequences of the glacier's collapse, including flooding of coastal cities.
What a great video explaining what is happening.
What lives in the giant empty spaces under the glacier?
Obviously that's where Godzilla hides along with the secret Nazi base where Hitler still lives. LOL
Full breakdown is now conveniently predicted for long after the doomsayers have passed on.
This is why I am afraid of the ocean. What do you mean, there is a wall of everlasting ice that control the current, and it can dilute the salt in the sea?
Me too! I thought Mike Lindell, owner of My Pillow, was offering a new color option on his pillows! I love lavender, but that glacier-blue color would appeal to men, perhaps, a bit more. Thanks, Mike, for all you have done for America and our great Constitution! You are a godly man, and you understand the importance of good sleep hygiene for Americans to be great patriots. I love your pillows and all your other products, too!
What impact do the volcanoes have under the ice? You should do a show. Keep up the good work!
Not much of an impact. Ice is a strong thermal insulator.
We do nothing, the seas have been much high and lower in the past. We haven't been around long enough to even try to understand. The planet is doing what its been doing for billions of years.
Yes. The eemian interglacial sea level was 8 metres higher than today.
Plymouth Rock is so exactly in the same place that it's impossible to measure any change.
@@travelinventor9422 wasn't there a record drought in europe a year or so ago. News channels were breathlessly reporting this unprecedented weather. Until a large rock was exposed with engravings on it saying things like " if you can see this, start crying"
The implication that this was unprecedented was not true and even the lowest iq person would see this. It was funny to see play out.😁
Not at this point in the Milankovitch Cycles.
These doomsday theories have been going all through my six decades on this planet. But we're still here...
And we all know that if something doesn't occur within a sixty year period, it will never happen. 😒
@drewlovelyhell4892 There's a very, very long list of things that might happen. Have you got a plan for all of them? And how's your quality of life while you worry?
Can’t teach old dogs new tricks
the northern hemisphere ice age glacial maximum ended 20000 years ago. since that time the 5000 ft of ice sitting on North America ,Europe ,Russia, china and everything between began melting and now most of that ice is melted and the oceans have gone up 400+ ft as a result of this and it has changed the chemistry of the water due to the huge amount of fresh water which might make surface seawater freeze more easily. so we are in. the event called the interglacial warming phase which has in the past even turned the arctic into tropical forests. earth sciences have much documentation on the ice ages and one thing for sure is we are not in control even though I bet they would like to be🤔
West coast cities are in danger of becoming reefs, making western mountain areas oceanfront. That will lead to further erosion of the land (in all areas then oceanfront). Essentially, we are living in a time where we can observe and measure major oceanic and geological changes to our world. That also includes atmospheric and environmental changes. Whether or not we are contributing to that acceleration of change, it's here and we can study it. The story of life is adapt or go extinct. We can adapt and we can become more knowledgeable of how changes take place, what their affects are, and how we can address and adapt to those changes. What a great time to be alive!
Hardly catastrophic. Heard this song hundreds of times over the last half century. It’s the young and inexperienced that get alarmed
Did you even watch the video?
Have you ever had a glass with some water in a glass with ice. If you know science, you'll know that the ice in the water takes up space. When it melts, the level of liquid stays the same because the ice has already taken up that space.
In theory, the glacier should do the same thing! The glacier has taken its space already as a solid. Once it melts, turning into a liquid, the space that holds the solid water (ice) fills up the space with liquid.... thus the level of water remains the same whether the glacier is a solid or a liquid. The ocean levels won't rise! Make sense? 😮😊
I was thinking that too. But then I wonder if the scale of it changes how that dynamic works.
But then again I’ve never had a cup spill of over water flow even when filled to the top with ice and to the brim in liquid.
Guess what, the Ice didnt form magically below or on top of water, it formed on LAND, so thats basically adding ice on top of an already filled glass of water
Eureka
How to fix anything : Tax people so much they cant live.
While Thwaites does contain enough ice to theoretically raise sea level by two feet, notice that some of the ice volume of Thwaites is below sea level because the ground below it is below sea level. So what we need to know is: How much of the volume of Thwaites Glacier is currently below sea level. Consider, if half of the ice volume is already below sea level, then a complete melting of Thwaites would raise sea levels by one foot, not two. If even more is below sea level, the potential sea level rise is lower still.
Next we need to ask whether any of the many volcanoes found beneath the ice in Antarctica are beneath Thwaites Glacier? If they are, are they at least part of the reason the water is warming beneath the glacier? After all, if volcanoes are doing much of the melting of the glacier, there's nothing we can do about it.
Thanks for the summary, it was awesome! When you say "some kind of weird messages" I would absolutely love to hear one of them...
BOTTOM: they're arguing the velocity of the shit hitting the fan
I just returned to Antarctica. People are worried about this glacier, but there's huge icebergs trapped in lagoons where the entrance and exit are thru ice fjords. If those fjords calve, there's a lot more to worry about
And if the warm water is flowing outward because of geothermal/volcanic activity underneath the ice near the melt zone, an underwater curtain would retain more heat within the melt zone and it would begin to melt faster.
Water is at its highest density at 4C, maybe that's why colder water (i.e. colder than 4C) stays on top? (Granted: at 10:43, I've not yet watched the whole video (; )
"Small body of ice" - It's the single biggest glacier on earth.
I was quite interested in this, but gave up because there were SO many adverts as well as a sponsor.