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Earth

Half of Glaciers Will Be Gone By 2100 Even Under Paris 1.5C Accord, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 164

Posted by msmash from the everything-going-great dept.
Half the planet's glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years. From a report: Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with 68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science. There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US by the end of the next century if this happened.

This will significantly contribute to sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of up to 2 billion people, and increase the risk of natural hazards such as flooding. The study looked at all glacial land ice except for Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. If temperature increases are limited to 1.5C of warming, average sea levels would increase by 90mm (3.5in) from 2015 to 2100, but with 2.7C of warming, glacial melt would lead to around 115mm of sea level rise. These scenarios are up to 23% more than previous models had estimated.
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Half of Glaciers Will Be Gone By 2100 Even Under Paris 1.5C Accord, Study Finds More

Half of Glaciers Will Be Gone By 2100 Even Under Paris 1.5C Accord, Study Finds

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  • This will significantly contribute to sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of up to 2 billion people

    Ok..I'm puzzled and maybe someone can explain it here.

    How will dumping more water from melted glaciers threaten people "supply of water"?

    Seems like you're putting more water into the "system", not less?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      If sea level rise occurs as some are predicting (HUGE IF) saline water will contaminate fresh-water reservoirs. The thing about the sea is - water water everywhere but not a drop to drink..

    • The frozen water melts during the summer supplying water when it is needed. If it all melts away it doesn't and the water supply becomes irregular. They should stop being in those places

    • Re:Threaten water supply? (Score:4, Informative)

      by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @12:59PM (#63185144)
      You can check here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . As long as glacier are in a stable state, they are a source of water. If they melt all year, bye, bye renewable water for their neighbor region...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The water crisis is the west is glacier driven. Water is stored on the mountain, then melts a supplies fresh water.

      Lake mead, which soon may be too low to supply power or water, is fed by the Colorado river. The river is fed by glaciers in the mountains.

      • The river is fed by snow melt and rain, primarily. Yes, there is some glacial melt. Most snowpack doesn't turn into glaciers.

        • Re:Threaten water supply? (Score:4, Informative)

          by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:18PM (#63186018)

          But the glaciers slow down the snow melting and that is the trick. Without that you get floods in the spring and no water in the summer. Not conductive to survival.

          • Dams are already in place for flood control all along the major drainages. Increase capacity or build more or budget the water more carefully. It's a matter of having the storage capacity available in the spring to handle runoff. That might mean larger draw downs in fall and winter under expectation of higher runoff in spring.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Nope. There are some dams in place to generate electricity and (fewer) as limited water reservoirs. They do not matter in the greater scheme of things for replacing the effects of glaciers. There are wayyyyy too few of them, with too little capacity and, in addition, for most water from melting snow you do not even have places were you reasonably could build a dam to contain it.

              So no. Not a feasible solution in almost all places.

    • many areas rely on meltwater from accumulated snow/ice for their water supply.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is really simple: When the glacier is gone, the natural melting during the summer (replenished in the winter) falls away. This summer-melting keeps water in rivers. If it falls away, no more water in the summer. Oh, and floods in the spring. The thing is the glacier keeps the winter-snow from melting too fast.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Many (most?) places get their fresh water from things like rivers that ultimately start as snowfall in mountains. You get more water while the glacier is melting, but once it's gone you get less. There's also usually some seasonality involved. For example, in the winter while there's more rain or less runoff (because the water falls as snow), and less agricultural demand, the snow builds up in the mountains. Then it supplies the rivers during the summer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dillee1 ( 741792 )
      1) glacier melts will end up in the ocean. Seawater is not potable. 2) glacier act as storage/buffer of fresh water, which are slowly released. Without these buffer, most snow/rain will be rapidly flush down into the ocean. You can flooding in the rain season, and dry up river in the dry season.

    • Those first two items, separated by a comma, are part of a list and not cause-effect. The loss of drinking water is because there are two billion people on the planet that get their drinking water from glacial runoff. Think Northern India.

  • Does anyone seriously think we will keep warming under 1.5C ? Me, I really doubt 2C is doable the way many countries are approaching Climate Change.
    • You mean POTR?
    • Yes, impossible. Does any country managed to reduce its co2 emission anyway(ignoring 2020 obviously)? To reduce co2 we would need to cooperate but it won't happen since everybody is engaged in commercial war and individually, needed changes are colossal. Best scenario, humanity will slowly adapt to the new climate and civilization will go backward for a long time. I'm happy to not be born in 2100+.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        I'm happy to not be born in 2100+.

        Almost everyone is going to be better off in 80 years than they are today even with 2+C degree increase in temperatures. Not as well off as if our generations step up and prevent drastic climate change, but technology advancements are likely to be astounding. Considering technological change tends to accelerate, in 80 years things we will likely see improvements comparable to the last 100-200 years of advancement. Comparing 2100 to today will be like comparing today to a world without electricity and runnin

        • Considering technological change tends to accelerate...

          Especially in wartime. I hope it doesn't take one or more major wars during the next 80 years to bring about the advances we'll need. Of course, there's always the fact that the higher temperature will evaporate more seawater and that some of it will condense into rain over land, providing us with more fresh water. How much that will help, I've no idea, but it's something we should be taking into account instead of just assuming that all of the ch
        • 1972 club of rome doesn't agree with this narrative. Resource exhaustion and demographic decline will stop infinite economic growth.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Are you stupid or what? With a collapsed civilization there will not be any more tech advancements.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      https://www.rferl.org/a/macedonia-fake-news-sites-us-election-conservatives/30906884.html

      Not a chance! Between first world deniers hindering much needed change and the third world's ever increasing use of climate harming power supplies there's no way we'll keep it below 1.5C.

      Doesn't mean we shouldnt keep trying though

    • There's a longshot of some breakthrough form of economical carbon capture technology. Although I wouldn't bet on it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Thermodynamics says that carbon capture will cost more in energy that you got by releasing the carbon in the first place. So you're ALSO postulating a huge source of more energy than we can use. You might be able to do that with large fields of solar panels, where the carbon capture was in the form of liquid hydrocarbons, and the excess got stored, but I can't imagine that it would never get used. (Possibly, though, it could be used for making plastics, and wouldn't end up in the atmosphere.)

        You could do

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Some scientists have really convincing arguments we are already at 2.5C "locked in", i.e. nothing can be done about that anymore. 1.5C is a pipe dream, nothing else, pushed by deniers that do not want to face reality.

      Incidentally, civilization collapse is is already possible at 2.5C. But I guess the deniers will only be satisfied if we reach 4C (at which human extinction is a very real possibility) because fighting climate change is "leftie" or "socialism" or "for weaklings" or some such suicidal dysfunctio

  • Why should I care? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @12:58PM (#63185138)
    I'll be long dead by then
    -- Boomers and other selfish individuals

    • Re:Why should I care? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @01:33PM (#63185246)
      Between boomer and the last gen, there are 3 or 4 gens. We didn't do anything either, still driving cars, eating meat and buying more things than needed, like boomers. I bet my lifestyle generates more co2 than the lifestyle of my parents.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        Lifestyle choices aren't where people should be focused. That is what marketing campaigns try to make us focus on, so companies can keep up business as usual. We need to focus on the politicians each generation is voting for and what changes those politicians are fighting for. That is where real change will happen, and so far the younger generations are the ones pushing this change.

        Trying to get people to recycle isn't a plan to save the planet, it is a plan to allow companies to continue making plastics at

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GlennC ( 96879 )

          We need to focus on the politicians each generation is voting for...

          I don't know how things are where you are, but here in the United States, the Party has almost everyone thinking that "Team Red" and "Team Blue" are their only choices.

          Meanwhile, the Party's corporate ownership uses their marketing teams to keep up business as usual.

          As always, I invite anyone to prove me wrong.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            They really are two different groups angling for power. It's just that both of them are after power, and both feel that centralizing power in the government is their best choice. So they aren't that different in their basic goals. The Dems are slightly more concerned about avoiding bad press (which is why they concentrate more on various media). The Repubs are a bit more interested in the very wealthy controlling everything. (But only a bit.) And they've got different sponsors, though that changes ove

        • People young or old will never elect politician promising ban of cars, end of meat and living in dense urban area. Those are the kind of hard to swallow needed lifestyle change. They indeed need to be enforced by laws and accepted by a majority.

          the younger generations are the ones pushing this change.

          People are saying this at each next generation. Current generation is as dumb as other, dreaming of big cars, eating burgers. Check tiktok, see what is popular there (spoiler: not eco influencers).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Sorry, living in dense urban areas is less generally destructive than living in a more spread out way. Of course, the real benefit would be to decrease the population, but I'm not volunteering for that, are you?

        • It DOES start at home because the reason that almost all industry, manufacturing, mining, farming, forestry, commerce exists is so that people can become consumers and buy the stuff companies produce to make our 21st century lifestyle overly cushy and lazy!

          If consumers cut down then there will be reduction all along the manufacturing chain which means less GHG and less pollution. Might not be good for jobs though, but the rich trust fund never-had-to-work-a-day-in-their-life climate activists can't

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eth1 ( 94901 )

        Between boomer and the last gen, there are 3 or 4 gens. We didn't do anything either, still driving cars, eating meat and buying more things than needed, like boomers. I bet my lifestyle generates more co2 than the lifestyle of my parents.

        Why should I do anything? No one else is, and if I'm the only one doing it, then 1) the effect is too small to do anything, and 2) it just makes my quality of life go down. The only sensible thing for me to do is continue in my own best interest. Having children might change that attitude, but there's no getting around point 1 - you need *billions* of people to do something to make a difference, and being the first to move puts you at a disadvantage over those who wait.

        Same thing is more or less true of cou

        • Exactly, that's why nothing will change. Worst, climate change doesn't affect every countries the same. Why change if your country is ok or making more money by selling more food/water/whatever to others? They may show empathy by sending some hashtag like #prayForCountryX.
      • Boomers created this world. The younger generations are still driving and still eating meat because those are the options presented to them. No car means no job in almost every city in the country. San Francisco and New York have functional transportation systems but they also have rents so high virtually no one can afford them except the extremely wealthy. As for meat it's not like you get to say in where the government subsidies go for food. Never mind the fact that vegetables are much more difficult and

      • We didn't do anything either, still driving cars, eating meat and buying more things than needed, like boomers.

        I got rid of my car for a few years. It wasn't great. If you need more than two bags of groceries in a single trip, it's actually really bad.

    • I'll be long dead by then
      -- Boomers and other selfish individuals

      Including the economist who is the biggest enabler for inflationary monetary policy - and who had no children - John Maynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead!"

      (That's one reason I prefer the likes of Hayek, Friedman, add Adam Smith.)

    • âoeIn the long run we are all dead...â

      â John Maynard Keynes, the favorite economist of /.ers.

  • These scenarios are up to 23% more than previous models had estimated.

    That's the problem with climate modelling - there are so many factors and interactions that we don't know about, and it seems they almost always make even the most dire model-based predictions hopelessly optimistic.

    And then there are the unexpected consequences, such as Alaskan waterways becoming acidic and turning orange [wired.com]. So there's yet another way that global warming is messing with the potable water supply.

    • I hear that using quantum computers, the climate models can arrive at totally wrong answers in a fraction of the time it currently takes!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Not all the models are hopelessly optimistic. But the IPCC, at least, trims the more pessimistic forecasts from it's predictions.

      OTOH, is the orange water undrinkable? If it's really iron oxide, then it shouldn't cause any problem. Iron oxide is not bioavailable, so it should be like drinking water with fine sand particles in it. (Things that live in that water might reasonably have a very different opinion.)

      • But the IPCC, at least, trims the more pessimistic forecasts from it's predictions.

        To be more precise, the IPCC trims the most unrealistic/unsupported forecasts from its predictions. Those just happen to be the most pessimistic.

  • Sure they will (Score:2, Informative)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 )

    LA Times 2009: "all of Montana's glaciers would be gone in 2020"
    (The Independent inÂ2000): "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" ,
    (The Vancouver Sun in 2008) "Snows of Kilimanjaro to Vanish by 2020"
    (Lancaster Eagle-Gazette in 2013) "Arctic summers may be ice free by 2020"

    1989 Noel Brown, director NY office of the United Nations Environment Program: âoe10ââyear window of opportunity to solveâ global warming or âoeentire nations could be wiped off the face of Earth by risi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      You do realise that newspapers aren't peer reviewed journals, right?

    • Between 1966 and 2015, all of the 26 named glaciers in the park got smaller. Some lost as much as 80% of their area, and the average loss was 40%

      Your takehome? "They said they'd all be gone by 2020 and they weren't!!"

      Do you not see the real issue here?

  • Once upon a time there was a glacier that was on land below sea level. In the summer of '23 water began to seep below in great enough quantities to destabilize the large block of ice. So began a new bay that slowly, year by unpredictable year for hundreds of them following created chaos in seafaring and coastal operations of all kinds. The people that lived on the coasts were sad and moved to places where people already lived. The people that came had different ideas than those who already lived there and s
    • You know that actually happened to Doggerland, right?
      • I do now! Thanks. Really fascinating. I'm trying to track down that Time Team episode referenced in the Wiki article, but I can't seem to find it in USA easily. Too bad, would have been neat to see some visuals attached and about the peoples then.

        I suppose we would have a lot of time to study it. I have no real idea of when or what actual form an ongoing event like that would entail or how long it would take to reach stability or even the knock-on effects. Just making up a story, based on what I think woul

  • Soylent Green will be People, it seems.

  • We are long past the point of no return on this. Each glacier will disappear eventually. Ones that face north (in the northern hemisphere) will last longer than similar ones that face south for instance, but they will all be gone eventually. All glaciers associated with UNESCO world heritage sites in Africa will be gone by 2050, including Kilimanjaro National Park and Mount Kenya. Also by 2050: Glaciers in Pyrenees Mont Perdu (France, Spain); Glaciers in The Dolomites (Italy); Glacierized patchesin Ye
    • Not necessarily. A supervolcano eruption could spew enough sulfur dioxide into the air to trigger another ice age... but I wouldn't count on it. Not sure if I should be rooting for the Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption or not... it's a little too close to my home on the Pacific.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Incidentally, should that happen we will have glaciers, but we will not have crops anymore. That is an extinction-level scenario.

  • Most people don't understand the purpose of climate change activism. It is not to "save the planet" or to stop the climate from changing. It is something much more immediately practical.

    Whether or not the warming goals are achieved is entirely secondary to the agenda. The primary purpose is to provide the rationale for Doing Something(TM), where that something is to sequester large sums of money from the public purse into the private bank accounts of corporations.

    • Yeah, Greta Thurnberg is making MILLIONS off her climate activism, isn't she? /s (As an added bonus, she just got a rapist arrested. Andrew Tate's victims thank you, Greta! You are correct, Tate should have recycled his pizza boxes!)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Are you stupid, a paid shill or just utterly evil?

  • That's why I always keep my freezer fully stocked with ice cubes!
  • Both are going to happen in the next 30 years. Trust us!

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