BILLION LIVES AT THE RISK IF WE BURN REMAINING FOSSIL FUELS

[AF-Roger]

New work from an international team including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira demonstrates that the planet’s remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 50- or 60-meter (160 to 200 foot) rise in sea level. Because so many major cities are at or near sea level, this would put many highly populated areas where more than a billion people live under water, including New York City and Washington, DC. It is published in Science Advances.

“Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica, we can’t keep taking fossil fuel carbon out of the ground and just dumping it into the atmosphere as CO2 like we’ve been doing,” Caldeira said. “Most previous studies of Antarctic have focused on loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Our study demonstrates that burning coal, oil, and gas also risks loss of the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Caldeira initiated this project with lead author Ricarda Winkelmann while she was a Visiting Investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Winkelmann and co-author Anders Levermann are at the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; co-author Andy Ridgwell is at the University of California Riverside.

Although Antarctica has already begun to lose ice, a complex array of factors will determine the ice sheet’s future, including greenhouse gas-caused atmospheric warming, additional oceanic warming perpetuated by the atmospheric warming, and the possible counteracting effects of additional snowfall.

Read more Billion lives at the risk if we burn remaining fossil fuels | The Market Business

 

[marketerbybirth]

“Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica,

It is really an interesting fact that, the countries who are emitting more greenhouse gasses and depleting ozone more than anyone else are also SHOUTING more on its depletion than anyone else. Now when it has been established that we are growing in risk, dont know what is still keeping them from taking the appropriate actions. USA consumes more coal than anyone else to generate " Cheap" electricity. So, I always feel sort of exhausted and and irritated whenever I read such stuff.... come on guys we know we are loosing, so what? lets do something practical rather then repeating the same thing again and again.

In fact, we are increasing the consumption of bad fuel day by day... See Germany, as they are shifting their power generation from nuclear to Coal, so its like swapping a small evil with a bigger evil .