{"id":61707,"date":"2022-01-31T07:23:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T12:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61707"},"modified":"2022-01-31T07:23:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T12:23:39","slug":"the-fuse-has-been-blown-and-the-doomsday-glacier-is-coming-for-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61707","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Fuse Has Been Blown,\u2019 and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018The Fuse Has Been Blown,\u2019 and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All<\/a><\/h3>\n

New data suggests a massive collapse of the ice shelf in as little as five years. \u201cWe are dealing with an event that no human has ever witnessed,\u201d says one scientist. \u201cWe have no analog for this\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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\"Thwaites<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Thwaites Glacier<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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One thing that\u2019s hard to grasp about the\u00a0climate crisis<\/a>\u00a0is that big changes can happen fast.\u00a0In 2019<\/a>, I was aboard the\u00a0Nathaniel B. Palmer<\/em>, a 308-foot-long scientific research vessel, cruising in front of the Thwaites Glacier in\u00a0Antarctica<\/a>. One day, we were sailing in clear seas in front of the glacier. The next day, we were surrounded by icebergs the size of aircraft carriers.<\/p>\n

As we later learned from satellite images, in a matter of 48 hours or so, a m\u00e9lange of ice about 21 miles wide and 15 miles deep had cracked up and scattered into the sea.<\/p>\n

It was a spooky moment. Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida. It is the cork in the bottle of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 10 feet. The m\u00e9lange that disintegrated was not part of the glacier itself, but a mix of icebergs and sea ice that had cozied up next to it. Still, the idea that it could just fall apart overnight was mind-blowing.<\/p>\n

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CLIMATE CRISIS, DOOMSDAY GLACIER<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The research vessel \u2018Nathaniel B. Palmer\u2019 was surrounded overnight by icebergs while exploring the Thwaites Glacier in 2019. Alex Mazur<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As it turns out, the ice breakup I witnessed was not a freak event. A few weeks ago, scientists participating in the\u00a0International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration<\/a>, a $25 million five-year-long joint research program between the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., presented their latest research…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Fuse Has Been Blown,\u2019 and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All New data suggests a massive collapse of the ice shelf in as little as five years. \u201cWe are dealing with an event that no human has ever witnessed,\u201d says one scientist. \u201cWe have no analog for this\u201d Thwaites Glacier One thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2756,32589,19144,17203],"class_list":["post-61707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-antarctica","tag-jeff-goodell","tag-rolling-stone","tag-thwaites-glacier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61708,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61707\/revisions\/61708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}