The problem with the speed of the melting is that neigter we, nor the nature has time to adapt. For anybody arguing that it has happened before, it did take hunderts or thousands of years. In this time plants were able to change theyr location by natural groth and migration. With the speed it is happening now, large areas might loose important plants.
For example the swiss mountains are quite heavily populated. Those areas are often protected from loose rocks using forests. If it gets to hot for a type of tree, they might die. Those protections need to be replaced by safety constructions, which cost millions. Also the construction takes time.
The same thing happens with water reservoirs. In other countries all water in the summer comes from glaciers. If the glaciers are gone, all rivers will dry up.
On the bright side, we currently have negated the next ice age that comes in 10'000 years. We wont get glaciers hunderts of kilometers long all across switzerland. If we survive that long...
I was surprised to learn the other day that in some parts of the world, a 7ºC rise in 50 years was observed during the Younger Dryas period. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
I guess it wasn't the best time to be living in either. Funnily, one of the older stories that is still told today speaks of a bunch of people that get on a boat, and everybody else drowns.
> The problem with the speed of the melting is that neigter we, nor the nature has time to adapt.
It sounds like a theory that could be easily verified since Switzerland already lost 50% of its glaciers. Have there been deaths associated to it? Did rivers dry up? Did forests disappear? Did people lack time to adapt?
> Did forests disappear? Did people lack time to adapt?
Tree are dying in a huge number in the Alps due to lack of water, and the wood production industry is still wondering which species to plant instead of the native ones that aren't reaching maturity anymore, so the answer to these two questions is a clear yes.
Most people are either 1) indifferent to the signals of accelerating climate change, revealing the very deep structural flaws on which modern economies have been built or 2) panicking, which reveals more or less the same.
The cumulative impact of industrial scale human footprint cannot be undone in a hurry even if we were to commit economic suicide and return to the stone age. The process is autoregressive (alas more Swiss glaciers will melt) and may hit tipping points (permafrost melting accelerating temperature increase etc) before it gets controlled (assuming we even get to do the "right" things").
This kind of slow but steady and determined (over many decades) turning of the entire Homo Titanic to avoid the worst environmental disruption and settle into a workable equilibrium is an unheard of challenge. This is not the kind of game people know how to play. We are in uncharted territory, economically, politically and morally.
A 3rd group has studied 1000s years of climate history and learned about cyclic variations. I still want to reduce pollution in general, including air particulates and chemicals in water.
The multiple hundreds of IPCC scientists (from every corner of the planet) that are not comforted by the "it was ever thus" theory must be the largest science fraud in history according to that "3rd group".
The rough estimate is that at the current consumption rate the majority of fossil fuel reserves will be depleted in about 50-100 years. So in 150-200 years total from the start of the industrial age, most of the carbon that has been stored underground slowly during billions of years will be released into the atmosphere practically in one instant.
This is not cyclic change. This is detonating the biosphere and hoping it will gently find a new balance without inconveniencing our behaviors.
Technology is not cyclic, it advances. The weather has cycles daily, seaonally, decades and centuries. It is greatly influenced by the sun which we do not control.
If the proposal is energy poverty ideology, who first?
It makes sense that climate change deniers should be punished first.
Forced relocation to places that become uninhabitable (swaping places with the typically energy poor populations that suffer without any responsibility).
Along with a farewell letter stating: dont be mad, its all cyclical, in the future you'll be allright...
Sadly no matter how green Switzerland becomes or is it won't help. It is too small to make any dent it global greenhouse gasses even if it wasn't too late already.
> It is too small to make any dent it global greenhouse gasses even if it wasn't too late already.
It's not like wealthy "green" western countries don't have their share of blame when it comes to global warming and environmental damage, they just don't do it in their own back yard, and instead mostly export it to poor/developing countries where most of the dirty manufacturing of the goods they buy happens and where much of the dirty hydrocarbures get burned.
It's already been documented through studies, that people in wealthy countries actually have bigger environmental footprint compared to people in poor countries (they travel, fly and drive a lot more, buy more stuff online and throw good stuff away more often, use a lot more AC and other energy hungry amenities like heated swimming pools, buy cars more often, etc.).
Also, Switzerland is the world's leading coal trading hub. So while they don't use it very much themselves, similar to green Norway making bank on selling its oil to others, they defiantly build their wealth off profiteering from environmental destruction, so Switzerland is not innocent here.
Switzerland is probably the best example of second hand exploitative wealth in the world. Shady middlemen for chocolate, minerals, diamonds, oil, coal, fucking Nestle etc. Kind of irrationally makes me hate that things are so hunky dory there.
Of course. Since WW2 it's been the major safe heaven of the most vile, shady and criminal wealthy elite. Unironically it's also where the elite goes to have their frozen corpses preserved until they can be resurrected in the future.[1]
Even the financial paradise aspect is exploitative. Every country in the world has reporting and transparency requirements so billionaires can’t just silently stack wealth and skip paying taxes but we’re going to be the one place that says, fuck everyone, we have no morals or ethical concerns, put your money here. I don’t know the laws on the ground but you probably won’t be able to referendum away massive, global corporations.
Also, before the Swiss start congratulating themselves too much, it is not becoming green in any meaningful sense of the word, and its ecological footprint is waaaay larger than justified by its size and than most other parts of the world.
That's sort of true. It's why I stopped thinking about my carbon emissions. Even if I kill myself and bring myself to zero, the net carbon emissions per year will only move from 37.12 billion metric tonnes to about 37.12 billion metric tonnes. And if I 10x my emissions, net carbon emissions per year will still be 37.12 billion metric tonnes.
It's been quite liberating, actually. I got rid of my motorcycle, got a Nissan Titan, and now I fly everywhere. Knowing that no matter how green I become doesn't matter and that if I 10x my emissions means that I'm free to act in whatever manner I choose!
While I don't have any intention of letting my carbon footprint balloon up, there's one point I thoroughly agree with you.
This is not a problem that can be solved with individual responsibility. It just makes you feel guilty. This is a systemic, a societal problem. And until this is addressed by policy, law and international treaty, no manner of individual do-gooding will solve the issue.
Systematic problems are solved by political action. Political consensus to change the status quo emerges from a some group of society taking individual responsibility, and then demanding/voting that society changes to their model.
If no one ever takes the shitty public transit, how will politicians know that they should invest in better transit. Individuals pay the price of taking that shitty public transit and then demonstrate/campaign for better.
If fast fashion is to be ended, you don't keep buying the latest outfits from The Gap every year. You individually pay high prices for the lasting products from niche stores. Then you use your demand as material to go campaign publicly to change norms and/or ask politicians to tax/regulate fast fashion items.
Sure, there are some places where politicians can judge general sentiment and make laws ahead of public sentiment change, but in a lot of cases its the other way around.
Individuals can purchase items created locally, rather than exporting manufacturing pollution to developing nations. As Bud Light sales drop showed, consumer purchasing choices can make change.
You mean on the Swiss? They produce 1,670,000x as much CO2 as me every year, so there's not much point in me eliminating my 20 or so CO2 tonnes. It's a drop in the ocean compared to Switzerland. I could even go 5x up and it won't matter.
I suppose your argument has a couple of things going for it. First you don’t need to change your own behaviour. Second you get to blame someone else for the problems you have created.
You will find it painful though, when you are inevitably forced to change.
That's the key thing. If some group has more emissions than me I can always just blame them first even if I'm contributing to the problem. The objective isn't solving the problem. The objective is to allow me to maximize my share of the pie by using rhetoric to claim that some arbitrary group of people are equivalent to others.
So I live guilt-free so long as Switzerland emits what it does. Once Switzerland and I have emitted the total equal amount of CO2, we can consider ourselves equally liable.
It wouldn't be an infinite decay even in a world with spherical cows because the ice mass is the value decaying and eventually the ice is no longer heavy enough to be called a glacier.
Which makes estimating this particularly tricky (and pointless) because there's no obvious point at which a mass of ice turns from "glacier" to "not glacier". Better to pick something erring far towards "totally obviously not glacier" as a reference point.
Their prices are artificially low due to their manufacturing pollution which negatively affects the entire world. Maybe consider environmental parity tariffs against those polluting countries. Or is The West too addicted to cheap stuff?
I guess that depends on the definition of a glacier. If the ice/snow completely melts then I assume that would count as 100%. Even if it is replenished the following winter, if it all melts again the following summer then I don't think anyone would call that a glacier.
I was in Austria on Pasterze glacier [1] few weeks ago. While I was hiking in valley that was not there 30 years ago, I had one question in my mind all the time.
Glacier was formed hundred's years ago. So it was not there before. If we going back to previous state, we are living in incredible times where we are able to see huge landscape changes during one lifetime. I will probably tell my grandchildren in future that I seen glacier that is no longer there. Which is fascinating.
Glaciers form when ice reaches a certain thickness and starts to move under its own weight so they do form all the time, but yes most of our current glacial mass originated during the last glacial period which ended almost 12,000 years ago.
We're technically still in an ice age because we've got ice sheets on the north and south poles.
We are still in an ice age called the Quaternary Ice Age. It just happens to be a warmer period in the ice age. Glacier formation is a function of snowfall and melting. If more snow falls in winter than is melted in summer glaciers will eventually form and start flowing.
It states that there are 10% less glaciers in Switzerland than 2 years ago. So they have melted significantly. It fits the climate alarmism that sells papers and makes people think the world is ending. The amount of ice on Earth oscillates with the Milankovitch cycles and occasionally increases or decreases rapidly with major volcanic eruptions and cosmic impacts and sun activity. The last increase in ice was the so called "little ice age" (1300-1850). I do not believe that any amount of glacier melting is out of the ordinary for Earth. To me the only value articles like this provide is distributing observations of current ice levels and trends.
No need to call me names for providing evidence that supports my opinion that humans aren't doing a damn thing to change the climate for good or bad. If you disagree that's fine. I find Milankovitch cycles and catastrophic events explain enough historical climate change that I can use it as a baseline for what to expect in the future. The climate has changed drastically over millennia without any human influence. It is irrational hubris to look at the small slice of time since industrialization and say "aha, we did something different and the ice is melting it must be our fault". The ice was already melting at an unknown rate. Saying we caused it is a post hoc rationalization. I do not ascribe to the belief that humans are a scourge on the planet and we should do everything we can to undo our sins of using energy to improve the lives of billions of people globally. Since the start of the industrial revolution humans have raised atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 410ppm. A change in atmospheric fraction of CO2 from 0.028% to 0.041%. Plants require 150ppm CO2 to survive and grow significantly better in concentrations around 1000ppm. This is why greenhouses increase CO2 levels inside. Higher atmospheric CO2 means more plants to photosynthesize it. The argument for human caused climate change and that we must do something about the changing climate is simply unconvincing to me. If you are worried about CO2 emissions we are improving on that front by using cleaner fuels like natural gas instead of coal. If we used nuclear we could reduce CO2 emissions even further.
> No need to call me names for providing evidence that supports my opinion that humans aren't doing a damn thing to change the climate for good or bad
You chose a source to illustrate your point that disagreed with you. It didn't support your opinion.
> It is irrational hubris
Argument by incredulity. The science doesn't care about whether we think its hubris.
> Plants require 150ppm CO2 to survive and grow significantly better in concentrations around 1000ppm
Plants do grow better with higher CO2 concentrations - but they also grow much worse with higher heat stress, which counteracts this. Growing crops will become unsustainable in large regions of the tropics.
> The argument for human caused climate change and that we must do something about the changing climate is simply unconvincing to me.
Based on what? What sources have you read? What makes them unconvincing?
> If you are worried about CO2 emissions we are improving on that front by using cleaner fuels like natural gas instead of coal. If we used nuclear we could reduce CO2 emissions even further.
That is true, though natural gas is only as partial improvement. Renewables and nuclear are much better solutions.
I wager that over the next century, more human lives will be harmed by efforts to counter climate change than will be by the changing climate itself.
The WMO estimates[0] that over the 50 years from 1970 to 2019, global climate-related deaths dropped to one-third. Not one-third per capita; one-third in absolute number of deaths, even as the world population more than doubled. This can be mostly attributed to the rising standard of living in developing countries, through the use of cheap energy from fossil fuels, which lets people better master their environment.
On the other side, we have the example of Sri Lanka, which banned chemical fertilizer (produced from fossil fuels) and pesticides partly out of environmental concerns[1], and is now undergoing widespread hunger.
I cannot imagine a more intellectually dishonest position than this one which willfully ignoring the vast and accelerating scale of change in the global climate system.
A "vast and accelerating scale of change" that heretofore, as evidenced by data, yielded no climate-related burden on humanity. Atmospheric CO2 went from ~280ppm pre-Industrial Revolution to ~325ppm in 1970 to ~410ppm in 2019[0], during which time we 10x'd the number of humans and as I stated, reduced the human toll on the climate by over 6x in the past 50 years.
But sure, call me intellectually dishonest in the absence of any evidence; without which your position is just another Malthusian or Ehrlichian doomsday prediction.
The idea that there is no climate-related burden on humanity is more intellectual fallacy.
Extreme weather events have been ocurring more frequently and we have hit record-high global temperatures and record-low Antactic ice surfaces. Ocean acidification has real and quantifiable effects on plankton and mollusks which are the base of the global food chain.
You're suddenly shifting the conversation as though doubling the proportion of a gas responsible for global warming in the span of a century was not a concerning thing in geological timescales.
So yeah, not just an intellectual fake but also a willful liar.
I would btw agree that a 2 long observation can also be totally attributed to global (!). The weirdest thing is actually might see also areas in Europe getting colder due to global effect (more freshwater in the Arctic).
We need to a way to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere . Maybe alarmist articles do their job, then they are good.
Question for you: what do you think increased atmospheric CO2 does as far as absorbing heat energy in the global climate system? And why do you disagree with basic thermodynamics?
I don't disagree with basic thermodynamics. I just don't think that CO2 has the outsized effect purported in media. The largest effect of increased CO2 is more plant growth to use the excess carbon.
CO2 has a precisely quantifiable effect on the Earth's energy balance can be empirically proven by filling a chamber with CO2 and calculating its ability to absorb heat or computing a physical model.
You are disagreeing with thermodynamics, you're just insufficiently knowledgeable to understand it. The effects of CO2 to are exactly understood. The only debate amongst climate scientists is how that heat energy is distributed and how it affects other factors like albedo from ice and clouds, which has uncertainties but bounded uncertainties nontheless.
OK, but there are a few questions first.
Is this change desirable, or undesirable? What is the correct number of glaciers and are we moving toward that or away from that number? Why?
If we are expecting the world to stay the same and never change (homeostasis), then we expect what has never been before. Planetary history is one of heating-cooling cycles, occurring well before mankind existed.
It is the speed of change that is the problem. Rather than asking what is the correct number, we should ask how fast are we approaching either extreme. Historically these cycles lasted about 100,000 years, so we can safely consider that as the ideal. So if we are at 10% glacial coverage now, we ideally be at 10% in 100 years, too.
it is undesirable, because it is indicative of climate change which will negatively impact humanity
a better number of glaciers is however many would indicate climate change which positively impacts humanity, or a lack of significant climate change
philosophical stoned-speak about nothing staying the same and stuff going in cycles doesn't change the fact that this is an indicator of current and future climate bad for humanity
For example the swiss mountains are quite heavily populated. Those areas are often protected from loose rocks using forests. If it gets to hot for a type of tree, they might die. Those protections need to be replaced by safety constructions, which cost millions. Also the construction takes time.
The same thing happens with water reservoirs. In other countries all water in the summer comes from glaciers. If the glaciers are gone, all rivers will dry up.
On the bright side, we currently have negated the next ice age that comes in 10'000 years. We wont get glaciers hunderts of kilometers long all across switzerland. If we survive that long...