The worlds largest ice mass is melting at an accelerated rate due to warm ocean temperatures and is contributing to rising sea levels.
The Totten glacier within the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is the most voluminous single mass of ice in the world.
It is melting at an insane rate as warm water enters a cavity from below.
Further greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and oceans will increase water and air temperatures and could lead to a catastrophic 3.9 meters (12.8 feet) rise in sea levels in coming years.
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The Totten glacier is reaching the point of no return, as far as allowing the ocean to keep the planet cool, while the atmosphere has already passed that point.
Scientists have over the years predicted the catastrophe that is unfolding, but politicians, big business and pseudo-scientists have done nothing to address it.
The earth’s inability to clean up after industrial man does not bode well for his future.
IFLScience reports:
Reporting in the journal Science Advances, the international team note that unusually warm oceanic water is flooding into the glacier’s undercut base at a rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second (4.6 cubic miles per day). That’s enough to cause Totten to shed up to 73 billion tonnes (80 billion tons) of ice per year.
Melting glaciers like Totten directly contribute to sea level rise. Worse, by destroying those near the edge of the continent, masses of ice dammed up behind them are free to flow into the sea.
The icy catchment area of Totten and the EAIS is about the size of Spain. If all of this fell into the ocean, global sea level rise would jump up by 3.5 meters (11.5 feet).
The team, led by the University of Tasmania and the University of Texas at Austin, managed to gather this data by piloting their research vessel into one of the crevasses carved out by the sea. By sneaking in beneath Totten, they were able to see the extent of the erosion in real-time for the very first time.
Like many of Greenland’s glaciers, Totten is being eroded from below by increasingly warm and acidic seawater, which in turn is directly linked to our frenetic flux of greenhouse gas emissions into the oceans. Warm water will always erode away glaciers, but there are certain structural configurations that make it all the more likely the whole icy structure will come tumbling down.
Totten is rooted deep below sea level, resting on the relatively solid bedrock. At certain points, this bedrock is flat, but at others it slopes quite dramatically. If the glacier’s underbelly is eroded back to a point wherein it is resting solely on a sloping region, it will begin to move at unprecedented speeds.
As recent research has revealed, a sloping zone can be found in the glacier’s current mid-region. The last time the glacier was balanced at this tipping point was about 3.5 million years ago. Back then, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were around 400 parts per million, identical to those found today.
So this is all genuinely terrible news. This enormous glacier is disintegrating, and could imminently begin its inexorable, irreversible collapse into the sea – and the world’s only superpower will, come January 20, think that climate change is a hoax. Hurrah!
It’s alright. Just look at this video of an orphaned baby pygmy marmoset getting massaged with a toothbrush and you’ll feel a lot better.
By Robin Andrews / iflscience.com
Edmondo Burr
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why you got videos of animals being tortured on this page. you are a sick person
totally “anti-physics” to say floating ice after melting elevate the water level ! Try it with a full of water glass and ice cubes! Who is posting that article full of errors? Who is Edmondo Burr?? economics and statistics no physics? How can we believe anything from him?
Since water expands when freezing, and ice displaces water equal to it’s volume, how does melting ice raise sea levels? If anything it would lower sea levels.
Ocean waters freezing up accumulates the water (from the ocean) into the air surface above the block of ice thus lowering global water levels. Example; the ice age(accumulation of ice) gave lower sea levels; more land area. Like a sponge.
When the ice finally melts it then goes back into the ocean increasing the global level of water thus less land area.
A normal cycle. Like a sponge.
11.5 foot rise from an area the size of Spain? I’m sorry, but these scientists must have gone to dumb dumb university. The area of the worlds oceans is 72% of Earth- and what percentage is Spain? Go back and re-program your computers to say more of what you want them to say.
Fake News kills!
Most of this type of “information” is supplied by NASA ( a so called space agency) so should be taken with a very large block of salt.
In all of these “studies” there is never mention of the many uncharted volcanoes that are underwater giving off unknown tons of methane and other gases, but they are quick to use the right buzz words that psychologically point the finger at it all being human caused, which naturally opens the door for the real agenda, carbon taxes ( as if taxing an activity has ever solved anything).
This report is fast on the heels of one other coming from … NASA … showing underwater vegetation growth, even sea cucumbers (which don’t grow in frigid water), but there is not so much as enough vegetation on the antarctic shelf to make a toothpick out of. NASA, the master of fake news and media manipulation.
It seems they will go to any lengths to mis-identify the prime causes of recent world wide increases in Quakes/Tsunami, volcanoes, markedly changed ocean currents, and weird weather. Honestly, how many scientists have forgotten how to look UP? Here are the True Causes of these many increasing changes…
http://beforeitsnews.com/earthquakes/2016/12/huge-media-blackout-regarding-supermoons-orbital-and-axis-changes-quakes-and-tsunami-2598659.html
Good Journeys
We didn’t do anything to hurt the environment, we have fought the Banker and his Corporations all along. Lord Rothschild has the money and is the cause, so have him fix it. Actually, though, other than killing off the world’s non-human creatures, humans are not responsible for the changes in the Earth. I suggest the cause for the climate changes are in the stars.
The comments on this article are just more proof of how utterly stupid humans have become. Brain dead morons.
Like the melt on the Pine Island Glacier system, this one is caused by increased volcanism well below the surface of the ice,…..
I wonder if we have Carbon Taxes and give basically all rights to make anything to China if that would help? Lets stomp the Americans so far down into the Dependent Class they ain’t never ever coming back. Plus China has a Brutal Police State the Billionaires in Switzerland love! Octagon!
What kind of crap is being floated here? The ‘global warming’ liars cannot get everyone to agree with them that the ice is melting in the poles because it isn’t. The poles are simple rearranging their ice (simple explanation). What may melt on one end of an ice sheet or glacier (or even an iceberg) is being refrozen on the other side of it. Most real scientist testify that the amount of ice is staying the same. Now, since the algorites cannot prove that ice is really disappearing they have changed their tune and or now saying that the ice is melting from the bottom (where you cannot see it). Global warming liars should be tied down and have a large chunk of glacier rammed up their a$$ until the body temp goes down to room temperature and stays there.
What a bunch of nonsense. Where do they find these morons?
More “FAKE NEWS”. You learn in grade school ice floats on water. Any melting of floating ice WILL NOT raise sea levels.
what a laugh…the worlds only superpower….snicker snicker..you lost that title years ago and got what you deserved
Agenda driven globalists trying to say CO2 is a polluntant. Greenhouse gasses. Now instead of usless eaters we are useless breathers. Plants NEED those ‘greenhouse gasses’. But besides that…. their statistics are off….all those mathmatices… yet the South pole was warmer, ice free in HUMAN history, as referenced by that Turkish general’s navigational maps. Second thing to think about….global warming indeed, but not caused by mankind…. or how do you plan on explaining that Mars is warming up also. Greenhouse emmiting Martians? I don’t think so. Its the same as in the past. ITS THE SUN STUPID!.
Now then…can all those resources and propagandic hot air (pun intended) be put to the more usefull solution in the war against actuall pollution, including against things like using heavy metal ‘chemtrails’ for weather control, thus actually poisoning everyone and everything? Limit oil exploration to onland , and the same for any chemical processing facility or nuclear power plant… away from coasts and water ways. Japan poisoned the whole North Atlantic…. what is next? Nature is the catisclimic overthrower of while civilizations. Should we not have less technical back ups? Like more non electric steam engions for when the next solar flair up actually scours the earth? Not good to put all our eggs in one basket, our finances in computer storage….and so on….or in the future only the most remote and primitive of tribes will be the survivors to carry on.
Nature is the catisclimic overthrower of while civilizations. Should we not have less technical back ups? Like more non electric steam engions for when the next solar flair up actually scours the earth? Not good to put all our eggs in one basket, our finances in computer storage.Wholesale Snapback Hats