A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves

Oh my! I'd say that judgement is a bit premature.

We are talking about a planet-scale engineering project; something that is millions of times the scale of anything that has been attempted.

We have only d 13 landing on it, and only something 70 space craft have travelled to Mars or beyond[1].

We have only just found traces of water there, and who knows what else is available (or not).

We have never even attempted to terraform anything, and the closest we've come has been maybe things like desert control programs.

And yet it is supposed to be common knowledge that "it can't be done"? Sure, that is likely to be true, but the idea that we already know the specific things that will stop us seems unlikely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes

There hasn't been very good news from the Antartic lately.

After seeing the reception Brian Cox received lately by Australian senator Malcom Roberts on an episode of QanA it's pretty clear we have no hope in world leaders doing anything significant about it. There is way too much self-interest and sociopathic behaviour going on by the majority within these circles of governance and "power".

Too many of us are waiting for the UN to just fix this issue; however, we've relied on the UN and it's narratives of change for too long and the truth is, we the masses need to change our own behaviour, it's our responsibility, somewhere we lost our way. I know there are good people working in these organisations and others like it, doing really good things, there just isn't enough of them or they're not having a big enough impact.

It seems pretty clear that democratic governance has severely failed us on this issue and many others in recent years, and as a society I think we need to try to understand why and correct it. Democracy is obviously not a bad idea, but in most western countries, the current configuration seems to be problematic and corrupt. It's not sustainable.

I have a strong feeling it's now too little to late and the only hope now is to take matters into our own hands by ignoring what democratically elected "leaders" are telling us they're doing and start doing it, get our own hands dirty. Divest, install solar panels (decentralisation of power production is important), consume, travel, eat thoughtfully, don't have so many kids etc.

By the look of it, the only way to make it through the madness ahead will be kindness and compassion for the earth, all living things and each other . If not, mother nature will each us a very harsh lesson, I think she is already starting to balance the books.

Unfortunately this storm is not just going to blow over, it would be nice if it would, but it's not going to.

Thanks. He isn't actually saying these numbers (-25 m, 8m) are expected in 2100, he's stating that the peak higher sea level in the older but comparable times (that is during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian around 115 kyears ago) was up to 7 meter higher on the extreme points. Which is a good illustration that the "bathtub mental model" is false. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is much more constrained to cite that, they present the following (the 2013 results):

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Cha...

The worst projected total average increase at 2100 is around 40 cm if we do some corrections in our fossil fuels use and around 80 cm (on average) if we don't (so called "business as usual", they technically call it "RCP8.5" (1)). The local increases (which we now know can be significantly different) are drawn with the scale up to around 1 m for the "some corrections scenarios" if I understood. But it will go up afterwards for hundreds of years, and it can't be stopped.

Mitrovica believes these are too conservative as even the current measurements already hit the upper bounds. It seems anyway the world is more or less behaving in the "business as usual" sense regarding the fossil fuels.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P... It's worth always looking at the RCP8.5, as that's what's going to happen if no significant changes happen. It's not "the most improbable" but "the most probable if nothing changes" and I admit I personally tend to see the graph with more paths as "OK this one is the highest, it's extreme" when it's the default one!

It also reminded me of the Mars trilogy, but because the separation of a major Antarctic ice shelf and the resulting mass flooding on Earth was the trigger for the second revolt on Mars.

I think I'll just make a new account on a fresh IP and profile and see how it goes. This is getting old in a hurry. Thanks for turning a regular user into something a little less straightforward though, top moderating.