A gigantic cavity — two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall — growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.
Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/huge-cavity-in-antarctic-glacier-signals-rapid-decay
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday February 03 2019, @01:12AM
It's not just CO2.
There are many other gasses are better insulators than CO2. Methane is ~28 times better thanCO2 at keeping the heat in, Nitrous Oxide is ~275 and the HFCs that were introduced to replace the Ozone destroying CFCs are even worse, 1000 to 10,000s of times worse depending on the gas.
Its the CFC and HFCs we need to put the main focus on. We need to get rid of those. There are alternatives already available, we just need to use them.
*references used;
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials [epa.gov]
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions [ourworldindata.org]
https://www.danfoss.com/en/about-danfoss/our-businesses/cooling/refrigerants-and-energy-efficiency/refrigerants-for-lowering-the-gwp/hydrocarbons/ [danfoss.com]
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