Category: Antarctica

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Antarctica

November 27, 1969 – Canberra Times runs pollution article, mentions melting ice-caps

Fifty four years ago, on this day, November 27, 1969, the Canberra Times ran a piece about pollution….

Paul Backshall of London Reuters with Pollution: Gases in the Atmosphere article, reprinted in Canberra Times Thursday 27 November 1969, page 18 Check out Trove here.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that everyone was writing articles about air pollution at this point. Someone in Reuters in London had written something of that ilk, and the Canberra Times had syndicated it. 

What I think we can learn from this is that newspapers are hungry beasts and will syndicate things, even if it doesn’t have much of local spin to it, especially if the issue is popular enough.

What happened next

The Canberra Times kept reporting. Everybody was aware of what was at stake. What didn’t happen was that we didn’t stop the party. And now, the hangover…

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

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Antarctica

November 20, 1973 – “Is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Disintegrating?”

Fifty years ago, on this day, November 20, 1973, a researcher asked the question in the blog title.

1973 Is the west Antarctic ice sheet disintegrating? T Hughes, Journal of Geophysical Research. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JC078i033p07884

While there is no explicit mention of climate, it shows the ideas was around, and perhaps put the idea in Mercer’s head?

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was people had been looking at sea level rise for a while. They knew that the ice-caps were melting (different causes were being thrown around). The above article does not mentioned carbon dioxide buildup. It is just part of the general pattern of well, “the world’s getting warmer” and there are consequences for that…

What I think we can learn from this/what we should know. 

The crucial thing is that while the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is sitting on bedrock, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is basically a lot of ice perched on mountain tops. So much less stable because warmer water can get underneath and loosen it. 

What happened next

In 1978 John Mercer’s paper “West Antarctic ice sheet and C02 greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster” was published in Nature. It didn’t cite the Hughes 1973 paper, but it DID cite the following – 

Hughes, T. 1975. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Instability, disintegration, and initiation of Ice Ages. Reviews of Geophysics, Volume13, Issue 4, Pages 502-526 https://doi.org/10.1029/RG013i004p00502

Btw, the answer to Hughes’ 1973 question has become an emphatic “hell yes.”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

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Antarctica Arctic

October 8, 1978 – The Times runs an “ice caps melting” story

Forty five years ago, on this day, October 8, 1978, the Times ran an article, on page 15, about the ice caps melting, based on a Nature article.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that US scientists had produced lots of data and reports that really pointed to a warming world because of carbon dioxide. The World Meteorological Organisation and UNEP were doing the same. The First World Climate Conference was coming up in a few months …

What I think we can learn from this – the Times used to be a real newspaper.

What happened next

We did not act on climate change. And the Antarctic did indeed start to properly melt, as had been hypothesized in 1973. And the West Antarctic ice sheet is exquisitely vulnerable because it is sitting on mountain peaks rather than bedrock.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

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Antarctica

January 31, 2002 – Antarctic ice shelf “Larsen B” begins to break up.

Twenty one years ago, on this day, January 31, 2002, things began to fall apart.

31 January 2002–7 March 2002- the Larsen B sector collapsed and broke up, 3,250 km² of ice 220 m thick, covering an area comparable to the US state of Rhode Island, disintegrated and collapsed in one season.[6] Larsen B was stable for up to 12,000 years, essentially the entire Holocene period since the last glacial period, according to Queen’s University researchers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larsen_Ice_Shelf

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was folks had been talking about the impacts of greenhouse gas build-up on the Antarctic for a looooong time (try January 25, 1978)

What I think we can learn from this

Humans ignore warnings, especially if paying attention would be inconvenient to powerful people who have the ability to ‘help’ everyone else ignore those warnings.  Profound observation, I know – it’s what you have spent all month enjoying, no?

What happened next

It helped the film-makers who gave us “The Day After Tomorrow”(2004)  with their opening scene 

In 2005 British Sea Power’s album Open Season included a song called “Oh Larsen B”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HN0rqVJT4U

You had twelve thousand years and now it’s all over

Five hundred billion tonnes of the purest pack ice and snow

Oh Larsen B , oh won’t you fall on me?

Oh Larsen B , desalinate the barren sea

Oh I think it’s the start of the end

Like saw blades through the air

Your winter overture

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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Antarctica

Jan 26, 1978: “West Antarctic ice sheet and C02 greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster” article in Nature…

On January 26 1978, a paper was published in the journal Nature, about the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet due to rising climate emissions. This paper, pithily titled “West Antarctic ice sheet and C02 greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster” was written by John Mercer. You can read more about Mercer (who was a bit of a character) and the fact that he’d been researching and thinking about this since (deep breath) 1968, here…

In the 1978 paper Mercer pointed out 

“A disquieting thought is that if the present highly simplified climatic models are even approximately correct, this deglaciation may be part of the price that must be paid in order to buy enough time for industrial civilisation to make the changeover from fossil fuels to other sources of energy”

Why this matters. The sea level rise, among other things. We’re toast.

What happened next? Well, we’re not there yet. But we will be soon (a while in human lifespan terms, an eyeblink geologically speaking…) And the East Antarctic Ice Sheet? Not looking too clever either…

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Antarctica Ignored Warnings

Jan 23, 1995 – The Larsen B starts to break up with us.. (Ice, Ice, baby)

January 23 1995, the Larsen B ice sheet starts to splinter. This is in Antarctica. And it probably gave us the opening scene of “The Day After Tomorrow”, a not very good disaster flick from 2004f essentially a retread of nuclear war movies of the 1980s. 

The MP Chris Mullin, refers to this in his diary entry of the same day, but I cannot get hold of it right now – will update when I do.

Meanwhile, this from Squall, a wonderful newspaper from the 1990s.

Why this matters. 

The signs of the times have been with us too long before. Those poor children protesting as part of youth strike don’t always realise that since long before they were on planet they have been betrayed again and again.

 What happened next?

 We got more and more sure that the Antarctic is not stable. We’ve had warnings since 1978, (see Jan 26th post). And now well, it’s really not looking good, is it?