A Farewell To Ice

Up to date, technical, detailed, accessible, passionate summary of how things stand with the Arctic Ice. In the same way that global warming affects the Arctic the most, the clarity and obviousness of the disaster there and on our planet are clearer there than anywhere else, and yet we can’t look at it, or at any rate can’t comprehend it. I read the terrifying facts and try to be terrified, but somehow can’t, or - more likely - am so terrified I can’t see the edge of it.

The albedo change from the loss of the last 4 million km² of ice will have the same warming effect on the Earth as the last twenty-five years of carbon dioxide emissions.

Suffice to say for the moment that the sensitivity calculated in this way 3 is no less than 7.8°C for a CO2 doubling, which is enough to produce a 3.6°C temperature rise just due to our present CO2 levels.

We owe the whole of human civilization to the stability of our interglacial climate

We have destroyed our planet’s life support system by mindless development and misuse of technology. A mindful development of technology, first for geoengineering, then for carbon removal, is now necessary to save us. It is the most serious and important activity in which the human race can now be involved, and it must begin immediately.