Oct 24, 2023
Study Reveals Climate Change NIGHTMARE May Now Be Inevitable
If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to collapse, which a recent study warns may be inevitable,
- 10 minutes
In this bonus episode,
let me warn you and apologize in advance.
We're gonna scare the out of you.
But because this isn't about Halloween and
this isn't political this is real,
this is real numbers.
And it isn't about the everyday
politics and Trump stuff, but
[00:00:15]
the numbers we're about to
show you are super scary.
But you need to know them,
you need to know them.
Otherwise, we're not gonna take
the action we need to take.
Okay, having given you that prelude,
here we go.
>> Speaker 2: An alarming new scientific
study suggests that the collapse of
[00:00:31]
the West Antarctic ice sheet may
be unavoidable at this point,
regardless of anything we do
in response to climate change.
Now, as you all know, we're not even
doing enough to deal with climate change.
But even if we were hitting our
goals in cutting CO2 emissions,
[00:00:49]
it is unlikely, according to this study,
to really impact what's happening
with the West Antarctic ice sheet.
So the study was published just this week
in the journal Nature Climate Change.
And if the authors are in fact right,
the consequences will be absolutely
[00:01:05]
devastating, especially in
coastal parts of the country,
including in New Orleans and
also in Florida.
South Florida would
basically be underwater.
Now, the West Antarctic ice sheet near
the southern tip of South America is
considered to be one of the most
important potential contributors to
[00:01:24]
sea level rise because of climate change,
right?
So the ice melts, and
that increases the level of the water.
Now, the new study suggests that
changes to ocean circulation caused
by global warming allow more warm water
to eat away at the ice shelves in the,
[00:01:43]
I can never say this right,
the Amundsen Sea, accelerating melting.
The ice shelves buttress glaciers
with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Those glaciers would likely
see irreversible retreat,
collapsing the ice sheet, the study says.
[00:02:01]
Now, how exactly did the researchers
come to this conclusion?
Well, they looked at something
known as basal melting, and
that's when warm ocean currents
melt the ice from beneath.
And then they analyzed
the rate of ocean warming and
[00:02:17]
ice shelf melting under different
climate change scenarios.
Now, they found that if the world limits
temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,
which is not on track to do, [LAUGH]
we're not on track to do that, climate
change could still cause the ocean to
warm at three times the historical rate.
[00:02:37]
Even significantly cutting planet-heating
pollution now will have limited power to
prevent warmer oceans from triggering the
collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet,
the report found.
And so Kaitlin Naughten, who is an ocean
modeler, she doesn't model near the ocean.
[00:02:56]
She looks at the ocean and
what's currently transpiring with
it [LAUGH] with the British,
I'm trying to make this a little
less devastating than it really is.
So she's with
the British Antarctic Survey, and
she's also the lead
author of this new study.
[00:03:12]
Here's what she says about their findings.
It appears we may have lost
control of the West Antarctic ice
shelf melting over the 21st century.
I really wanna stop having
to say West Antarctic.
I'm having difficulty with it, but
nonetheless, West Antarctic ice sheet
[00:03:29]
melting is one impact of climate change
that we're probably just going to have to
adapt to, and that very likely means some
amount of sea level rise we cannot avoid.
Coastal communities will either have
to build around or be abandoned.
And based on what the study says,
it sounds like they're just gonna have to
[00:03:47]
abandon it, especially if you
live in areas like South Florida.
It will be underwater.
Now, the study does leave some
key questions unanswered,
including how much melt our
emissions to date will cause, and
also how fast it is expected to happen.
[00:04:05]
Super curious about that.
I think that's an important
question to answer.
Now, what we know for
sure is that this year,
Antarctica saw alarmingly
low levels of sea ice.
And here's more on that.
>> Speaker 3: That growth of
that sea ice is so massive,
[00:04:20]
it doubles the size of
the continent every single year.
But the problem is that this year and
last year to a similar extent,
that ice has not been
growing nearly as quickly.
I wanna put up this other chart here.
This shows the traditional,
[00:04:36]
that line at the top is what
a normal growth of the sea ice is.
That red line below is where we are now.
It is a marked difference that is
roughly the size of Alaska that is
missing ice now in the southern ocean.
>> Speaker 2: That's pretty terrifying.
[00:04:52]
Okay, so the most recent study doesn't
make specific sea level rise predictions,
but other researchers have estimated that
the total collapse of the West Antarctic
ice sheet could contribute to about 10
feet, 10 feet to overall sea level rise.
[00:05:08]
And that melt process would
likely take several centuries.
However, without adaptation,
10 feet of sea level rise would likely
submerge much of Miami and
South Florida make Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
oceanfront property and inundate
the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook
[00:05:26]
in New York City,
according to National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration maps that give
rough estimates of sea level changes.
So look,
I don't know what to do about this.
[00:05:43]
This feels too apocalyptic, and
I'm not sure the message of,
there's nothing we can do about
it is really all that helpful.
>> Speaker 1: No, look, I think that there
is something we can do about it, but
we all have to turn right now, and
we're not even close to turning.
>> Speaker 2: And we're not going to Cenk.
[00:05:59]
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, well,
let's see what happens.
So now, the reason I say that is because
we're about to show you some extra graphs
that are even scarier.
So this year is very,
very likely to be the hottest year ever.
September was the hottest September ever.
[00:06:14]
October is on track to be
the hottest October ever.
July was the hottest month in human
history of recorded human history.
And inside July was the hottest
recorded day in human history.
So this stuff is getting crazy,
and all the numbers,
as you're gonna see in a second,
are off the charts.
[00:06:31]
It used to be a gradual rise,
now it's spiking.
It went from linear to exponential.
So it is way worse than
the scientists imagined.
The right wing told us,
don't believe the lying scientists,
believe the oil executives.
[00:06:47]
Okay, and you talk to an average right
winger now, they believe the propaganda.
They're like, no way,
man ExxonMobil's right.
All the scientists are paid off, and the
oil companies don't care about profits.
But the scientists,
they're the ones that are corrupt.
All across the world, scientists in
Botswana, and Nigeria, and Cambodia,
[00:07:05]
and Brazil, apparently they're all
paid off, but not the oil executives.
So they've gotten this propaganda to work.
What we need you to understand is
that's the same exact thing that
the tobacco companies did.
Don't believe the stupid scientist.
[00:07:22]
Smoking is good for you.
Yeah, fill up your lungs with all this
tobacco, it won't give you cancer.
But eventually, Ana, what happened
is people started getting cancer
at such high rates that they were like,
yeah, I didn't enjoy my wife dying.
No, it turns out these sons
of bitches were liars, right?
[00:07:39]
And that's what the oil executives are.
And there's going to be a massive
reckoning with the politicians and
the executives that lied us into
this worldwide oblivion, okay?
And I wanted that reckoning to be
political and rhetorical, etc.
[00:07:55]
I don't want anybody to
do anything stupid, okay?
Now, having said that,
I have the Miami policy.
I go as often as I possibly can,
cuz I don't think we're gonna make it to
the timeframe that they're talking about.
I think Miami is gonna be
gone in our lifetimes.
[00:08:11]
So now it's starting to flood in
Miami when it doesn't even rain cuz
the ocean is rising, okay?
So all those things that the right
wing said were apocalyptic before, no,
the scientists were wrong
in the opposite direction.
They were too conservative.
[00:08:27]
It's happening much
quicker than we imagine.
So let's give you the rest.
>> Speaker 2: So let's talk about these
charts that you had mentioned earlier.
So if you take a look at how quickly
temperatures are rising and how severely
temperatures are rising, a good way to
visualize it is this following chart,
[00:08:42]
because it shows you September's
unprecedented temperature spike.
You see that on the right hand side.
I mean, no previous September was
close to as warm as last month,
which was 0.93 degrees
Celsius above normal.
[00:08:58]
The margin by which it was the warmest
September on record was by
itself record setting, and
it followed a record hot summer and
the earth's hottest month and
day during July.
>> Speaker 1: There's five other
charts that look exactly like that.
[00:09:15]
Everything is spiking.
And we're in a bad pattern too,
because El Nino has come.
So El Nino normally makes things warmer,
but
when you combine climate change with
El Nino, it's through the roof.
And so we've gotta get it under control.
There is no planet b.
[00:09:31]
There is no other plan.
We all live here.
This is a moronic idea that Elon Musk
put out a long time ago about,
I'm going to build spaceships so
we can move to Mars.
Mars is a disaster.
Why would we wanna move to a planet
that is currently uninhabitable?
Why don't we protect the one where we
actually do live and can live if we don't
[00:09:50]
burn all the goddamn fossil fuels on
the planet and destroy the thing?
And it's because of short term profits.
And so
we've gotta find a way to get beyond that.
If we don't, they're like
the dwarves in Lord of the Rings.
They're gonna dig and dig and
dig until they release the Balrog.
[00:10:08]
And those charts are showing
you that the Balrog is coming.
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