Rachael Ramirez reported on CNN that, “Greenland is experiencing its most significant melting event of the year as temperatures in the Arctic surge... Greenland lost more than 8.5 billion tons of surface mass on Tuesday, and 18.4 billion tons since Sunday.”
Alejandra Borunda writes in National Geographic that, “The Greenland ice sheet, which would raise global sea levels about 24 feet if it disappeared, is shrinking faster than at any time in the past 350 years and is on track to exceed melt rates for the last 12,000 years.”
And the ice sheet won’t be coming back in our lifetimes:
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in its 3900+ page report from 234 leading scientists delivered this week, “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”
The Vice Chair of the IPCC report, Ko Barrett, senior climate advisor for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said, “This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years. The changes we experience will increase with further warming.”
Our existential climate crisis today, and every day going forward, is the most pressing problem facing all of us, and should be the top news story until we fix it — or there is no more human news.
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