The Greenland Ice Sheet is Gone
It disappeared by 1959. Earlier even. We just didn't notice.
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Obviously, I may have resorted to hyperbole in writing that headline and subhead. The Greenland ice sheet is still with us, or I would be typing this article in a rubber dinghy. However, I am ringing serious alarm bells.
A study published August 5 in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) revealed startling and irrefutable evidence that the current Greenland ice sheet with which we are familiar is no older than 1.1 million years. Previously, it was thought the second-largest ice sheet in the world after Antarctica had been here since the Pleistocene epoch for the last 2.6 million years. However, this study of ice cores drilled and stored since 1993 revealed a far different story.
Why is that important? Trust me, I’ll get to that. First, let’s consider the sheer physical size of this glacier.
The Greenland ice sheet covers 80 percent of Greenland, some 660,000 square miles (1,710,000,000 square km). It contains twelve percent of the world’s glacial ice, varying in thickness from one to three miles (1.67 km to three km), thickest at its center. If all the sheet were to melt — 696,000 cubic miles (2,900,000 cubic km) — it would cause global sea levels to rise 24 feet (7.4 meters). At the maximum 1.5°C (2.7°F) global temperature rise target established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, sea level is estimated to rise nineteen inches (about half a meter), a serious problem in itself. However, the vast majority of climate scientists agree that target is dead, predicting an average planetary temperature increase of at least 2.5°C by 2100, making a nineteen-inch rise a utopian fantasy as we fail to reduce fossil fuel use.
The increasingly rapid melt of Greenland
Stunningly, Greenland’s ice sheet has been melting 21 percent faster than predicted for the last four decades stark evidence provided by a quarter of a million pieces of satellite data, featuring marked acceleration starting in 2000. As published January 17 in the journal Nature a study titled, Ubiquitous acceleration in Greenland Ice Sheet calving from 1985 to 2022, total the island’s ice sheet loss was estimated at 1,140 billion tons (1,034 billion metric tons). A friendlier summary from NASA can be found here as well.
Imagining cities like Miami, New Orleans, Boston, New York, Mumbai and Jakarta inundated with 24 feet of water are the “fun” fantasies of apocalypse movies. Sorry, we won’t be kayaking by a partially submerged Statue of Liberty and texting exciting pictures to our families and friends. That level of flooding will not occur by the year 2100. However, rest assured what precedes 24 feet of sea level rise on our current path will provide ample entertainment in bankrupting nations and collapsing societies.
As I write, Hurricane Helene which slammed into Florida as a Category 4 event with 140 mph winds is now downgraded to a tropical storm that swept through Georgia and is now making its way into the Carolinas. At 420 miles wide, it’s one of the largest hurricanes and tropical storms to hit the Gulf Coast in history. Just a month ago I wrote about Storm Debby, a mere Category 1 event that caused $12.3 billion in damage with just $1.4 billion of that insured. This will be far worse, and be aware, often times those damage figures in the media only include insured losses. After all, we want to keep everyone calm and shopping.
The damage from Helene will be far worse. How many of these disasters can our tax dollars absorb? How many peoples lives are ruined while Chevron executives are jetting to their yachts?
So how is it that the Greenland ice sheet is already “gone?”
The study I referred to from PNAS is titled Plant, insect, and fungi fossils under the center of Greenland’s ice sheet are evidence of ice-free times. Not particularly droll, and certainly of no interest to the mainstream media, which benefits from providing us the message that heaving, glistening bosoms and large male biceps will save us from apocalypse.
From the study’s abstract:
The persistence and size of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) through the Pleistocene is uncertain. This is important because reconstructing changes in the GrIS determines its contribution to sea level rise during prior warm climate periods and informs future projections. To understand better the history of Greenland’s ice, we analyzed glacial till collected in 1993 from below 3 km of ice at Summit, Greenland. The till contains plant fragments, wood, insect parts, fungi, and cosmogenic nuclides (my bold) showing that the bed of the GrIS at Summit is a long-lived, stable land surface preserving a record of deposition, exposure, and interglacial ecosystems. Knowing that central Greenland was tundra-covered during the Pleistocene informs the understanding of Arctic biosphere response to deglaciation (my bold again).
The physical evidence that plant and insect fragments definitively show Greenland was a temperate, tundra-covered land in the near past (in geological timescales) has deep implications, as do the cosmogenic nuclides because they date this evidence. Here’s a brief explanation of these particles from space which the Earth is awash in, as well as more detailed links for those that wish to dig into the science more deeply.
To all of my MAGA republican readers (zero) I would like to assure you cosmogenic nuclides are not yet another threat to your gender insecurities.
Cosmogenic nuclides are a result of the Earth being bombarded by cosmic rays — high energy charged particles – mostly protons and alpha particles, and provide the means for surface exposure dating. Interacting with atmospheric gases, a cascade of secondary particles is produced, as they fall through the atmosphere, each time reducing in energy and dislodging protons and neutrons from atoms, in turn producing different elements or different isotopes of the original element. This cosmic ray flux is absorbed within the first meter of dense surfaces like rock and produces new isotopes called cosmogenic nuclides. Using cosmogenic radionuclides, scientists can date how long a particular surface has been exposed, how long a piece of material has been buried, or how quickly a location or drainage basin is eroding. Because radionuclides are produced at a known rate, and decay at a known rate, it’s possible to estimate how long a sample has been exposed to the cosmic rays. In tandem with the organic matter found, the Greenland ice sheet is much younger than previously thought.
Coupled with proven information about CO2 levels from ice core samples extending back tens of millions of years, it’s evident the Greenland ice sheet formed when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much lower than our current 421ppm, around 300ppm, barely above preindustrial 280ppm levels.
CO2 levels since contemporary measurements were kept
CO2 from the past 66 million years
So here we have coordinated evidence that Greenland’s ice sheet will melt completely at current and far lower CO2 levels. Because CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, even if we could cease GHG emission today the thaw of the Greenland and catastrophic rise of oceans is locked in. Furthermore, in focusing on Greenland, I’m not talking about the rest of the overheated Arctic or thawing of the boreal forest ring poised to emit hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon and methane, which I wrote about here. Nor am I talking about the consensus scientific opinion that this massive influx of fresh water jeopardizes the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) that convects the planet, with serious repercussions for Europe. The question if we were rational creatures is, how can we best protect people from the coming consequences? Would not pulling back from shorelines be sensible? That won’t happen, vain animals that we are. Proof? There’s a $52.6 billion plan to save New York City with dyke walls. Rather than address the root cause of our problem — the unabated burning of fossil fuels and transition to sustainability, we’re going to employ the Army Corps of Engineers (more on the plan) to hang onto our towering monuments of greed and excess.
Shared socioeconomic pathways
The last graph above, “CO2 from the past 66 million years,” deserves additional explanation. On the right axis are “SSPs” or shared socioeconomic pathways. These are climate change driven scenarios of socioeconomic changes up to the year 2100 based on the best case to worst case scenarios of CO2 emissions. Methane is handled separately, its own destructive factor. There are five basic models, with updated scenarios as well, reflected in the graphs and chart below.
SSP1 — Sustainability
SSP2 — Middle of the road
SSP3 — Regional rivalry
SSP4 — Inequality
SSP5 — Fossil fueled development
CO2 concentrations by SSPs across the 21st century
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) considers SSP2-4.5 as likely, 2.1°C to 3.5°C warming above preindustrial temperatures
From the journal Nature Communications, graphs illustrating sea level rise from the world’s two largest ice sheets.
Global surface level temperatures and sea level rise from Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
A trap of our own making
Consider that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaled to 46 years, a number we can grasp, human beings have been here for just four hours, and the industrial revolution started one minute ago. In that sliver of time, we have imperiled our survival on this planet. I wrote of this in The Illusions of Fossil Fuels.
We have taken the balance, harmony and wisdom of slow evolutionary change and with deliberate violence against each other and every other creature that evolved with us leveled the Earth’s forests, rendered her waters toxic and filled it and bodies with plastic. We think dropping good-looking young people on an island with a film crew is engaging with nature. I find the absurdity of what we call life in contemporary America utterly vacuous and alienating. We can do better and must do better.
That better has a name, it’s called Degrowth, better for our minds, our bodies and the planet. I wrote about it here. If we don’t take this path, we’re toast, and we’re going to have to fight for it. It will take blood. The billionaires have no intention of stopping their feast on the planet or you and me.
Boycott, buy only what you need, talk to your neighbors, organize at the local level or join and support existing local organizations. Write letters, sick out, strike and march. Share my work and the work of so many others here on Substack and elsewhere, warning us of what’s here and what will come with inaction. Remember, change always come from the small groups willing to exhibit extraordinary courage. If we act with courage, we keep hope alive.
Greenland is losing 30-41 (depending on author) MILLION TONS OF ICE PER HOUR. C3S estimates that 1.2 trillion tons of global ice are melting annually, so 3.3 billion tons per day, and at this rate 2/3rds of the ice held in the 220,000 glaciers worldwide will have melted by 2,100. Why? One pound of melting ice absorbs 144 BTUs of heat energy. You do the math. However, even the amazingly powerful hydrological cycle (melting ice-->water-->water vapor-->outer space) cannot keep up with our enormous heat energy imbalance: the heat energy equivalent of 20+ Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND (Eliot Jacobson), where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. Do you see why hurricane Helene has caused so much rain and flooding now? The global/Greenland melting ice is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" warning of an existential threat to all life on this planet, and the truth will never cross the airways, if the MSM has control of our science reporting.
Great article, you nailed it. Clear, concise, and excellent graphics.
We are on the same page. My last piece was on how the Boreal Zone (Forests + Permafrost) is a FRAGILE ARTIFACT of the Extreme Ice House climate we have been in for the last 800ky.
The Boreal Zone has acted as a planetary CSS system for 800ky. Now it's on FIRE.