This must be immediate and terrifying, right?
Climate tipping points near for Greenland, but it’s not too late to save ice sheet, researchers say
New research suggests the Greenland ice sheet is on track to cross a critical threshold that could cause runaway melting, but that it’s also possible the threshold will be crossed temporarily, cooling down the planet and ultimately returning the ice sheet to a stable state.
Got that? It could happen, but, you could also get the totally opposite effect. Because research “suggests”. Exactly as the Scientific Method works, right?
The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, underscore the importance of limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 2.7 Fahrenheit) — or returning to that level, or below, as quickly as possible if humanity exceeds it.
“If we change the temperature back fast enough, we don’t necessarily commit to a system change,” Nils Bochow, a climate scientist at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø and the lead author of the study, said in an interview. “We have time to reverse temperatures from this runaway effect.”
The Greenland ice sheet is one of more than a dozen theoretical climate tipping points — rapid, irreversible or abrupt changes — that keep some scientists up at night. And the findings, while alarming, add to a drumbeat refrain from many climate advocates: Urgency is essential, but it’s not too late to avoid the worst of climate change.
The research suggests the critical threshold for the Greenland ice sheet is between 1.7 and 2.3 degrees C of global warming. Bochow said humanity would have 100 years — perhaps more — to cool down and avoid locking in positive feedbacks that would intensify Greenland’s melting. He said that crossing the threshold, even temporarily, would likely cause several meters of sea level rise, but it would still be possible to stabilize the ice sheet.
So, we aren’t even being treated to the “doom in 100 years (when no one will be around to call our doomy prognostications out)” schtick: now it’s “well, maybe in 100 years, maybe more. We don’t know, we’re just throwing sh*t against the wall to scare people and keep our funding gravy train going.”
I’ll believe it when Africans, Asians, and Central Americans start immigrating to Greenland in vast numbers. I am sure there is a lot of great farmland under all that ice. But then again, all those immigrants don’t seem interested in farming when they come to the USA.
Again?
Do they mean a tipping point that made Greenland ‘green’ which allowed the Norse to settle there around 900 AD, grow crops and livestock for almost 400 years until another tipping point was reached and ice/snow covered all the farm land and pastures and the Norse had to leave unless they wanted to starve/freeze to death? Is that the kind of tipping point they’re talking about?
There are still settlements on Greenland today, even farmland.
Greenland is unlike Antarctica where there is little open coast without ice. Greenland has miles of ice free areas along the coasts.
Are you certain that the Vikings left because of ice and snow? Read on…
Yes, Greenland was partially green at one time, but no more recent than 400,000 years ago.
If Greenland passes its tipping point, will it tip over?