A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic
by Peter Wadhams
by Peter Wadhams
Please use this thread to discuss Ch. 7: The future of Arctic sea ice - the death spiral.
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The spectre of a seabed oil blowout is discussed in this chapter, as something that would be enabled by the melting of the ice. To "end reliance on fossil fuels" is too extreme, as renewable energy sources can't be deployed fast enough to prevent severe economic dislocation. But what that means is that firstly fossil fuels should be priced to include their environmental externalities, and secondly, that ramping up carbon removal is an urgent priority.DWill wrote:The prospect of an oil tanker disaster or a deep-sea well explosion in the Arctic region, is terrifying. Just one more reason to end reliance on fossil fuels. Wadhams raised the specter in Chap. 5, I believe it was.
Abstract
The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass at accelerated rates in the 21st century, making it the largest single contributor to rising sea levels. Faster flow of outlet glaciers has substantially contributed to this loss, with the cause of speedup, and potential for future change, uncertain. Here we combine more than three decades of remotely sensed observational products of outlet glacier velocity, elevation, and front position changes over the full ice sheet. We compare decadal variability in discharge and calving front position and find that increased glacier discharge was due almost entirely to the retreat of glacier fronts, rather than inland ice sheet processes, with a remarkably consistent speedup of 4–5% per km of retreat across the ice sheet. We show that widespread retreat between 2000 and 2005 resulted in a step-increase in discharge and a switch to a new dynamic state of sustained mass loss that would persist even under a decline in surface melt.
They are equally frightening – the massive risk to planetary security and stability combined with the inability of the world to recognise and address it.DWill wrote:Which is more frightening, the Arctic sea ice death spiral itself, or the opportunity that the phenomenon presents to shipping and the oil industry?
Not confident at all, but this problem shows why it is essential that measures to stop climate change have to work within the capitalist market framework. Locking up of areas like the Arctic can be compensated by increased economic opportunities elsewhere. It is simply impossible that the more revolutionary ideas promoted by many climate activists can be implemented, and in any case they would not work. For example, the Green New Deal is a recipe for conflict, consigning climate policy to bleating at the margins, with the result that advocates of Arctic trade and mining face little effective opposition.DWill wrote:How confident can we be that these economic interests won't be able to prevent any effective action by governments to restore the ice that companies see as barriers to their profits?
If the oil price goes up that can change quickly. It shows the importance of working out how we can sustain a high energy economy while repairing the climate. That is the point of my suggestion for large scale ocean based algae production. On shipping, if energy becomes very cheap it might be possible to develop methods to build a summer ice canal in the Arctic while preventing melting, although I suspect the better option will remain for shipping to go via Suez and Panama.DWill wrote: The only glimmer of hope Wadhams gives is the reluctance, so far, of the oil companies to take on the risk of drilling in the Arctic when they must pay the costs of spills and oil-rig blowouts.
The IPCC finds itself stuck in the middle, developing policies of compromise that satisfy no one. Governments set IPCC policies and terms of reference, and have veto power over documents. The process of “redlining”, whereby governments go through policy documents and mark text they find unacceptable, or the action of Saudi Arabia to prevent formal discussion of the IPCC Report on meeting the 1.5°C report, creates a dilemma for policy makers. A tendency to extreme conservatism (meaning caution not reaction) is produced by the fear that more honest reporting will generate a political backlash. With the Arctic melt, the element of doubt in the rate of melting must have been enough for the authors to be over-cautious in predicting the likely speed. For a scientist who sees the results on the ground like Wadhams, this is highly frustrating, but it takes time for the consensus process to catch up with the research findings.DWill wrote: It's ironic that the IPCC promotes a view that climate change deniers are strongly against, yet Wadhams charges the IPCC with a kind of denialism as well. It denies the evidence of scientific observation in favor of modelling that shows us having more time to put our interventions into effect. Wadhams charges the IPCC with rather serious deception and dishonesty, in fact.