If the melting of the Arctic doesn't scare you, these are the things you didn't know!
Antarctica may be melting faster than anyone realizes, and the implications for humanity are potentially disastrous. Not only will sea levels rise increasingly this century, but if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is destabilized, the process could be continuous and irreversible for centuries to come. When this ice melts or calves off, the water flows into the oceans and sea levels rise. If all glaciers and ice sheets melted, global sea level would rise by more than 195 feet (60 meters).A recent report confirms that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, whose mass-loss rates have been rapidly increasing, are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case sea-level rise scenarios.
As the glaciers collapse, It is expected the crust underneath the Antarctic ice caps will lift, bit by tiny bit, to rise and displace more water from Antarctica. Same for Greenland. Worse, as the ice melts, the liquid water will not be as attracted by gravity to the ice caps and will travel to other places and flood them even worse. This is why in eons past when there were no ice caps or glaciers, the oceans were 500 feet or more higher than they are today. Not to mention the Volcano's under Antarctica. Antarctica is home to the largest volcano range on earth, greater than east Africa and the Himalayas. Scientists also believe there are more volcanoes to be found in Antarctica, meaning there are more secrets to uncover. Greenland ice cap is melting now at a rate in one year what scientists estimated would happen in 100 years and we have learned that Thwaites is melting from below also at a much faster rate than thought just months ago in ten years we will see 1000 years worth of glacial melting that means massive refugees coming from Europe, the middle east, Pacific Islands and Asia!
The feedbacks from Antarctic, Arctic and Greenland ice melt / sea level rise, ocean stratification, thawing permafrost, forest fires, droughts and other severe weather events are all very concerning. Some of the social impacts we will see before these become an even bigger significant issue are a 40% decline in global potable water by 2030. Europe and the US have seen huge decline in their aquifer resources. The fossil fuel and meat industry industry need holding to account on the amount of water it uses as this is a more immediate threat to our populations as is air pollution.
An estimated 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 refugees and displaced people by 2030 due to water shortages many from Europe and the middle East. Such numbers will destabilize the affected country and its neighbors and will certainly aggravate their water problems not to mention their food problems. Displaced people are like an army moving across a country: they will consume an awful lot of food and reduce that available to the markets causing runs on food prices and limits on exports.
Water security is seldom spoken about in the west yet both the US and Europe will see accelerating problems with water over the next decade. Niger, the largest country in West Africa, is among the worst for access to clean water — and among the world's poorest. Over 40% of Niger's population lives on less than $2.15 a day. Most people farm, so they struggle with water shortages and frequent droughts in arid, desert-like conditions climate change will reverse this as the greening of the Sahel increases and fresh water resources in other areas dwindle because the land elevation is not as high as Africa's!
Adaptation and mitigation needs to consider both decarbonization and water resources. We are already seeing huge problems with water in the US, Asia and Europe with less snow fall on mountain ranges and decreasing aquifers. Many of the aquifers being bought by billionaires like Bill Gates and pretending they are buying land for farming when they are really hoarding access to clean water! Bill Gates owns a ton of farmland in the United States—as in, about 270,000 acres but no one asks what crops he plans to grow?
The answer is, it doesn't matter... the resource is water! Bush caught similar heat years ago when he purchased 300,000 acres in Paraguay. The acreage included one of the largest freshwater aquifers on the planet. So essentially Big Oil causes climate change and the people who got the money for killing the planet are now buying the most important resource fresh water, does anyone believe it will remain free? The only answer to them is massive investment in atmospheric water extractors which currently are an inexpensive technology. But information about the science and its inventor Moses West is not disseminated to the masses. People over 50 won't see the worst consequences of anthropogenic global warming and those are the people in power now , but it looks like younger generations will. Especially here in America, the science deniers have obstructed humanity's attempts to deal with the problem and if young people don't do everything they can they will see a future worse than any theater of war.
The combined rate of ice loss has risen by a factor of six in just three decades, up from 81 billion tons per year in the 1990s to 475 billion tons per year in the 2010s. This means that polar ice sheets are now responsible for a third of all sea level rise.The Arctic and Antarctic are the world’s refrigerator. Since they are covered in white snow and ice that reflect heat back into space, they balance out other parts of the world that absorb heat. Less ice means less reflected heat, meaning more intense heatwaves worldwide. Polar vortexes, increased heat waves, and unpredictability of weather caused by ice loss are already causing significant damage to crops on which global food systems depend. This instability will continue to mean higher prices for you and growing crises for the world’s most vulnerable.
Arctic ice and permafrost—ground that is permanently frozen—store large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. When it thaws, that methane is released, increasing the rate of warming. This, in turn, causes more ice and permafrost to thaw or melt, releasing more methane, causing more melting. As we lose more ice more quickly and see more rapid permafrost melt, we will start seeing the worst climate change predictions come true. Climate change has affected Europe with rising surface- and sea temperatures, and changes in sea levels and precipitation.
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