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In honor of Pakalolo, Friends of Gaia present News from our Polar Regions / Thwaites update [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-01
In honor of Pakalolo, Friends of Gaia present News from our Polar Regions
While nearly all of our attention is being absorbed by the dismantling and raiding of our country, environmental collapse is proceeding on course — wrecking its own havoc — but in this case justifiably and on a much grander scale.
You’re in ‘fool-topia’ if you can’t see that the saddest atrocity being fomented by this power-grab is the distraction it provides for continuing to avoid a sane response to the escalating decimation of our interstellar home. The consequences of this ongoing neglect have never been more grim, nor the abuse more savage.
Just ask Gaia — her ravaged biosphere bleeds out loud.
But the truth is, the real source of our inaction lies deeply buried within us.
Distraction provides ‘justification’ to forestall owning our manhandling of Mother Earth, while it intercedes against attempts to stop our recklessness. It is in the nature of things, that as ‘parasites’ we’ve always demanded our ‘pound’ from her — but we now no longer make an effort to give back, having become chronically dissatisfied with any amount of ‘flesh’.
Ironically, most of this monstrously self-indulgent excess becomes waste, generated by our pursuit of yet further distraction.
While there are those who appear preconditioned to respond to the ‘abstraction’ of distant catastrophic events as if reacting to a ‘bell’, its ringing goes unheard by those deaf due to pleasures-and-troubles of a more pedantic sort. Their ears are stoppered by desire and their concerns sidetracked by self-interest.
Our pursuit of material ‘dust-devils’, tugs the ring in our nose — and as we succumb to sloth and convenience, the vortex of consumption drags us down.
Judging from the experience of a friend who visited Antartica, I’m certain that if I were to ever call upon Thwaites, its extraordinarily intense physicality would slice through my DNA and alter my life trajectory — much as light is bent by massive celestial bodies.
On the other hand, I suspect that the crushing awe of being there would overshadow any fears of its as yet intangible collapse.
Immaculate distillation on such a grand scale conspires against comprehension to leave us flailing at the unfathomable.
If this constitutes our ‘best’ response at ground zero, what chance do we have for finding ‘decent seats’ at any distance from this grand stage, set for tragedy.
For while distance can bring perspective, by doing so it ‘waters the wine’ of emotions, blunting them.
Most likely, we’ll watch it play out while gleaning its meaning only subliminally, where it can be tucked away to be locked down by the greater power of ‘normalcy’.
Any threat to that ‘comfort’ remains the true focus of our concerns, compelling our delusions to contain the unmasterable and evade the unavoidable.
~~~~~~~
Antartica
Thwaites update:
Although the Eastern Ice Shelf is ‘fully cooked’ and ready to be ‘served’, Thwaites is still ‘basting on a back burner’.
As the main course, it will be served later.
Source: Copernicus
(Deterioration at Thwaites Glacier January 25, 2025 Satellite image Copernicus EU, h/t Rob Larter)
Thwaites is the only portion of the West Antarctic ice sheet that projects out over water, bottlenecking the rest from sliding into the Southern Ocean. It is now well-known that when it fails, sea levels will rise an estimated 11 feet worldwide. What remains unknown is precisely when this will happen, as there is still not enough known for better accuracy.
The only thing certain is that our world will become unrecognizable.
https://www.science.org/content/article/discovery-recent-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-raises-fears-new-global-flood
Being in a virgin present, unidentifiable by past measure, we find ourselves in ‘Plato’s cave’ trying to discern darkened paths from shadows. Glaciologists grapple for consensus, but do agree full collapse isn’t imminent.
Past that, processes involved are too complex and variable to shelter surety.
Their projections have been checked by the sudden arrival of ‘distant’ event horizons, formerly thought tossed to safer distances.
Complicating matters is the damage being inflicted underneath the glacier by warming ocean temperatures which carve long vertical cavities from the bottom up. This undermines the Thwaites ‘tongue’, along with the Eastern and Western Shelves, in ways difficult to access.
~~~
It never ceases to boggle my mind that for the relatively minor enrichment of a few, we are squandering vast wealth and will now likely lose the entirety of life’s treasures. It would be far wiser and cost effective to purchase all of the worlds remaining oil, rather than fuck trash our home as we allow greed to drain the life blood out of Gaia.
~~~
Not long ago, in the Amundsen Sea Embankment, satellites detected a substantial break up of the melange of fused broken ice which forms a bulwark surrounding the sea-abutting edge of the glacier, buffering it from direct exposure to rough warming seas and providing partial stability.
As this is detritus crumbles it is being flushed with Thwaites’ calving ice into the open seas.
Kilometer size Icebergs that were recently anchored by this fused mishmash of broken ice are no longer stationary as it breaks up.
https://x.com/KrVaSt/status/1882757850784817159
Yet there seems to be enough rubble left to stay ice loss and keep the glacial tongue at bay.
Complicating this is observed pressure on the ice mass from the west, which may indicate that back pressure has begun to fail in this sector, causing further concern.
https://x.com/KrVaSt/status/1882766127241298253
Indeed, Social Media is awash with speculations of imminent collapse, bringing with it rapid sea level rise. These fears are subconsciously prodded by alarmist tendencies, exaggerating poorly comprehended data when discussing the “Doomsday Glacier”. The name itself can ‘crack caution’ when sober considerations are called for — at which point, a few stray ‘facts’ are usually sufficient to ice reason over and freeze opinions.
It appears that public detachment is dissolving faster than Thwaites can keep up.
Fortunately, Rob Larter who is a marine geophysicist with British Atlantic Survey has weighed in on Bluesky to cool this panic. When it comes to glaciers, his broad ranging and thorough knowledge, which gains depth and perspective from his studies of millennial range time scales, puts him in a better position to survey the long term trajectory of Thwaites demise.
From his bio:
He and his team will investigate sediments deposited in the seas near the Thwaites Glacier, and reconstruct past changes in environmental conditions and the glacier’s response, adding context to projections of future change.
In his Bluesky thread Larter weighs in on the potential of an imminent< collapse of Thwaight, employing the scientific method of objectively analyzing the data, much of which he has collected first hand, while replacing emotionally interpreted lay opinions with known facts, serving as indicators of Thwaites’ past and current state.
A dear friend, who has been long-term Polar curious, describes Prof. Larter as one of the leaders in Antartica ice sheet studies and has generously provided me with the information contained in the Antartica portion of this diary.
~~~
Here is how Rob sees the situation:
Rob Larter: "Some people on this and other social media platforms have been claiming that something dramatic is about to happen at Thwaites Glacier, and implying that this will result of an abrupt rise is sea level within a few years. So what's really going on? 🧵🧪" — Bluesky
Source: Rob Larter / BlueSky
I’m providing his thread in its entirety:
(Public access / Not subject to copyright.)
“Some people on this and other social media platforms have been claiming that something dramatic is about to happen at Thwaites Glacier, and implying that this will result of an abrupt rise is sea level within a few years. So what's really going on?
Through the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration more than a hundred researchers have been conducting studies on many aspects of the glacier over the past six years. Overall, our results paint a grim picture for the future of the glacier and thus the wider West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
We expect the rapid retreat of the glacier observed over the past couple of decades to continue and to accelerate during the latter part of this century and beyond. This sector of West Antarctica will contribute increasingly to an accelerating rate of global sea-level rise.
The current changes that some people are getting agitated about are occurring on the small remnant of ice shelf - a floating extension - that projects from the front of Thwaites Glacier. The ice shelf has been progressively thinning and fracturing over many years.
Until a couple of years ago there were two distinct sectors of ice shelf in front of Thwaites Glacier, separated by a "shear zone" that allowed them to move independently. In front of the fast-flowing central axis of the glacier the Thwaites Glacier Tongue repeatedly grew and broke off.
Source: Copernicus
Up until the early years of this century the Glacier Tongue typically grew to a length of more than 70 km before calving as a giant tabular iceberg. The last tongue became iceberg B22a. In more recent years it has extended a much shorter distance before each time it broke off.
Ice flowing from the axis of the glacier is now highly fractured, so instead of forming a tongue it breaks very soon after flowing into the ocean. As a result, this part of the glacier is now fronted by a mélange of icebergs (typically 1–2 km across) and sea ice.
Source: Copernicus
This leaves the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, which extends from the slower flowing eastern part of the glacier, as the only intact area of ice shelf at the front of the glacier.
Several years ago scientists studying the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration identified that changes underway there would lead to it being lost soon, probably within 10 years. tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/ …
Since this research began, a new shear zone that cuts diagonally across the ice shelf has developed rapidly, allowing flow of the main part of the ice shelf to accelerate. This has resulted in substantial change over the past two and a half years, as shown by this pair of Sentinel-1 images.
Source: Copernicus
Here are those two images as an animated gif, clearly showing the changes that have occurred from September 2022 until now. So what does this mean for the future of the ice shelf and the glacier itself?
The ice shelf is undoubtedly going through its death throes. Breakup events observed on other ice shelves show the exact timing of final break up is impossible to predict. Fortunately, however, unlike many other ice shelves, this one has not been doing much recently to slow the flow of the glacier.
Over the past couple of years, while the ice shelf has accelerated seaward, the rate of flow of the glacier has not increased in response. The fact that this ice shelf is not holding back the glacier is shown most clearly by the development of large rifts across the upstream part of the ice shelf.
These observations are described further in this explainer article and the research paper it includes a link to. thwaitesglacier.org/news/thwaite …
So in summary, yes the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf is expected to be lost sometime over the next couple of years, perhaps even this Antarctic summer. However, this is not expected to result in an abrupt increase in the rate of ice loss from the glacier.
In the longer term though, over the rest of this century and beyond, the outlook from Thwaites Glacier and the wider West Antarctic Ice Sheet is grim. Progressively increasing rates of ice loss, contributing to an accelerating rate of global sea-level rise, are expected.”
(end of Rob’s thread)
As we can see from the images, over this period of time, there has been loss to the outer melange, including a sizable breakup of the glacier tongue. Added to this is related loss to an adjacent portion of the Eastern Ice shelf, which is headed to the ‘history channel’.
While observations of other ice-shelf breakups provide no clues as to exactly when this will occur, it is important to understand that the Eastern Shelf has not had a big role to play in slowing Thwaites progress. As the integrity of the former has suffered from these loses, the latter has not.
All of which tells us that the Eastern Shelve’s final days are fast approaching, but it will not be a contributing factor to Thwaites “doomsday”.
Although inevitable, it’s not imminent
https://thwaitesglacier.org/news/thwaites-eastern-ice-shelf-cracks-spread-not-because-melting
This link helps clarify the fact that the Eastern Shelf is not involved affecting Thwaites’ doom.
~~~~~
All over the world, remarkable things are being revealed as the ice ‘time capsule’ melts.
These can take the form of artifacts, trapped clues to past climates, mastodons, viruses, or even reveal entire hidden living ecosystems.
Source: MSN link
My friend Esther, who faithfully provides me with any environmental links that turn up in her
MSN feed, has sent me one such example of the later:
Antarctic Iceberg Breaks Away to Reveal a Never-Before-Seen Ecosystem - MSN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Arctic
coolspring’s reports from Alaska
Source: coolspring
coolspring resides within the Arctic circle, where he witnesses the future as far as environmental attrition is concerned. This region of the world is experiencing the effects of global warming well ahead of the more temperate lands where the vast majority of us clot.
Lately, coolspring has been observing extraordinary changes in long established, but now de-establishing weather patterns, morphing heat indexes, and the expanding sundry consequences of our immeasurable stupidity. This wreaks havoc on animal survival and behavior as well as all other aspects of the natural environment — which is more accurately categorized now as “unnatural”.
The direct, ungarnished style of his writing lends power to his subject matter. What he’s experiencing is of such magnitude that addressing it bluntly, sets alarm at full volume.
For this reason, I have asked him to compile a record of his observations over this past winter because the changes have been marked and unsettling. Here is his report for our “News fromPolar regions.”
Reports from coolspring
3/6/2025
The winter of 2024-2025 started a little early with snow fall in late October. This had not happened in 20 years. By the second week of November we had a good 2 feet of snowpack when the minus 0 weather hit, still not that unusual although the minus temperatures never made 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. By the middle to third week of November the temperature was around 33-35 degrees F and we were getting snow and rain mix. About 2 weeks later, around the solstice, the lows went into the teens and the highs went to about the mid 20’s F. We might get an inch or two of snow.
I saw no moose and the Corbies (raven and crow) were not dumpster diving or swarming the grocer parking lots looking for stray food. One never leaves bags of grocery’s unattended or un-taped in the back of a pickup truck, because the Corbin’s and raptors will help themselves. This is regular behavior every winter, but not this winter. When the rare moose was seen, it was well fed and sleek.
Source: coolspring
Along the Cook Inlet, the water had an ice skim and the mountains were not completely covered in snow. ‘Forestry’ and ‘Fish & Game’ closed all the snow machine (snowmobile) trails because of lack of snow depth. The lakes and ponds and muskeg (marsh) had ice but not much. The Kenai River and others further south on the Kenai Peninsula were not frozen over. These were conditions during the shortest daylight of the year.
I will continue with the 2025 half of winter in a couple of days.
3/11/25
Winter 2024-2025,
As the January ‘Chinook’ (thaw) moved in, instead of a 5 to 7 days of light rain and daytime averages of 35 degrees F to break the back of winter, we had four or five days of below freezing, and then 4 or 5 days above freezing. This continued thru January into February and finally March.
I don’t think more than six inches has fallen total since January 1, 2025. The Cook Inlet has not had a solid layer of ice. Instead of 2 to 3 foot of ice, frozen lakes and ponds have had maybe six inches. No ice fishing this year.
The mountain range across the Cook Inlet has not had a complete snow cover this year. The bear will soon be waking when the nights stay above freezing and with so little food the bear will start dumpster diving and raiding farm live stock.
It will be interesting to see what kind of wildfire season we will have this summer.
March has been a continuation of five days sunny and 35-40 degrees F. With 25 to 30 degree temps at night the occasional dusting of snow and the normal foot and a half of snow fall this year was about 1 & 1/2 inches. According to O.A.A. we have had a total of 10 inches snow fall this winter instead of the normal 6 to 8 feet.
>3/26/2025
it is 34 degrees F. And it is almost sunrise at 7:00 am Ak, time. It is 5 degrees warmer than normal. Since the beginning of March the daily and nightly temperatures have been 5 degrees F. Above normal. There is almost no snow on the ground and moving water has no ice. Ponds and lakes the ice is rotting. The mountain range on the other side of Cook Inlet the mountain range is about 35-40% clear of snow and ice. All things being equal this is mid April weather.”
No comment.
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[END]
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