There's been a spat of "news" items around the Thwaites glacier recently. Even though it's been hitting the news from time to time for many years now. I think what's driving the news this time is the fact that the water measurements near the base of the glacier are about 3.6°C, whereas previously it was estimated to be about 2.0°C (see first video link above).
But the issue goes deeper than this mere mis-estimation of temperature (see second video link above). Sure, that will increase dramatically the rate at which the "plug" of Thwaites pops out. And as Thwaites goes, so too does the Pine Island glacier and indeed virtually the whole of the West Antarctica Icesheet, resulting in a global sea level rise of at least 10', and that before the end of the century. Eric Ringot is on record as saying it is difficult to know what a "tipping point" is but quite clearly we know not only that the "fuse is blown" (his words) and that we are well past anything like a tipping point for West Antarctica.
But the issue is yet deeper! Previously I learned that AGW would take ~1,000 years to modify the global thermohaline circulation, particularly working its way through to the circumpolar current around Antarctica. While that's still true, in a pedantic sort of way, it's also significantly untrue in the sense that rather obviously that mechanism was bypassed. Bypassed to the tune of ~100x the melt rate than heretofore estimated. Oopsy!
In other related news - the world is estimated to have burned a record amount of coal last year. This won't be coming from from NA or the EU to any significant degree. In fact, those areas are continuing their ablation of coal power at record setting rates. This then highlights the real issue for all things AGW as we head into the coming decades.
Namely, it matters almost entirely what China, India, Brazil, the rest of S and SE Asia, and Africa do. And essentially not at all what new reductions happen in the USA/Canada, Japan, or the EU. The issue is no longer up to the "West" to solve to any significant degree (with the small possible exception of Australian coal).
I'll draw a parallel to Lennon's song Imagine. It's a popular tune and got a bit of a celebrity boost last year. The lyrics are really quite nice, a perfect mix of longing and ennui, but they are terrible anthropology. At scale, humans don't act like the lyrics in Imagine tell us to and never have. Because we can't. So, while it sounds good to 'sound the alarm' in the "West" about our coal and other fossil fuels use, like the lyrics to Lennon's song it's really is a distraction from the real solutions we'll need over the coming few decades. Let's hope the deciders at COP27 can address the issue head on and not simply imagine a solution that merely sounds good.
