And then there are those articles I just don’t know how to interpret. A perfect example crossed my screen this morning, about new evidence that suggests Antarctic ice [is] close to melting tipping point-study:

A large part of the ice covering West Antarctica could be lost if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase only slightly from today’s levels and ocean temperatures continue to rise, a study released on Thursday says.

Another related study said if the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed and the East Antarctic ice sheet continued to melt at its marine margins, global sea level would rise seven meters from today’s level.

Antarctica stores about 90 percent of the world’s freshwater.

Both studies, published in the journal Nature, are a result of extensive drilling into the seafloor under the Ross Ice Shelf by a team of New Zealand, Italian, American and Germany scientists.

The floating ice shelf won’t elevate sea levels if melts because it is already displacing water. The real threat comes when the ice sheet behind, which is below sea level, is exposed to the ocean.

The 50-plus core samples, down to 1.2 kilometers (0.7 mile), allowed the scientists to study how previous periods of rising carbon dioxide affected ocean temperatures, ice movements and sea levels.

Oh boy, here we go again–another “it’s way worse than we thought” article, right? Well, maybe, and maybe not, which leads to my Dilemma of Interpretation. The above article also says:

Computer modeling of ice sheet behavior and the drilling data found that the ice shelves protecting the West Antarctic ice sheet could disappear in centuries and the majority of the ice sheet could collapse within a thousand years, said Naish.

A study by Pennsylvania State University in the United States said computer modeling based on the core drilling found that oceanic warming was the primary driver of ice sheet melt and that a five degrees Celsius rise was enough to collapse the West Antarctic ice sheet.

…

It said it might take several centuries for the ocean to warm five degrees Celsius, a temperature required to generate enough ice shelf melting to cause significant retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

“But such an outcome could result from the accumulation of total greenhouse-gas emissions projected for the 21st Century, if emissions are not greatly reduced,” said the article.

So… something really, really bad is going to happen. But it won’t happen for “several centuries.” But it will happen if we stick to business as usual for the next century. And that’s assuming we don’t have any more of those nasty surprises that keep cropping up in climate science. Anyone care to bet we’ve exhausted Mother Nature’s bag o’ goodies?

How are we to view this? It’s so hard getting most consumers and voters to look beyond the next couple of months that I think there’s precisely zero chance of getting more than a minivan full of them to worry about what scientists are saying will happen centuries after they and everyone they know has maximized their personal entropy.

But we don’t need to invoke such scenarios–climate chaos is already impacting humanity in many places and several ways. Surely that’s enough to motivate people, isn’t it (he typed plaintively)? Well, no. That horrific shortsightedness I keep alluding to can be a very cruel governor of our emotions and actions. I guarantee every person reading this site that the vast majority of Americans neither know nor care about all the deaths in Europe in the summer of 2003, even though estimates (which vary, obviously) place the number of victims at about ten times the number who died in the 9/11 attacks. Similarly, most Americans with no connection to the Gulf Coast have very little sympathy for the victims of recent hurricanes here in the US. “Hey, you live in that part of the country, you have to expect storms,” is a comment I’ve heard more times than I care to think about.

I’ve even speculated online (on ClimateProgress) that a massive storm ripping up the US east coast and hitting one or more of Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston would be little more than a TV video clip and a quick trip to the Red Cross site to make a donation for most of the country.

The overwhelming majority of people will only make personal consumption and lifestyle changes when they think they’re reducing the chance of something bad happening to them or their loved ones, or they think they’ll gain (as in saving money).[1]

And yes, this stinks on ice. Whether people are like this because of how we evolved–worrying about the here and now is a good thing when a tiger might eat you in the night–or for some other reason is irrelevant. It’s a trait we can’t ignore or pretend doesn’t exist. We have to recognize it for what it is and do whatever is needed to overcome it. After all, the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are very patient.

[1] And please don’t e-mail me about how many people are members of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, or how many recycle or use CFL’s, etc. I know that “a lot” of people do such things, and for excellent reasons. Hell, my wife and I are two of those people, and I personally know many more. But collectively we’re a depressingly small portion of the population.



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