All posts tagged: irreversible

As US Readies Iran Action, Kim Jong Un Vaunts ‘Irreversible & Permanent’ Nuclear Arsenal

As US Readies Iran Action, Kim Jong Un Vaunts ‘Irreversible & Permanent’ Nuclear Arsenal

Published by Jenni Sidey

Kim Jong-un just gave a fresh nuclear speech, vowing that North Korea will expand its atomic arsenal in both scale and sophistication, and that this is necessary given pressure from nuclear-armed “imperialist” superpowers like the United States. Kim presented the strategy during a weeklong congress of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, declaring that his country’s nuclear-armed status is “irreversible and permanent” (though not for the first time). He pledged that Pyongyang will continue to strengthen its arsenal “as long as nuclear weapons exist on the earth” and as long as the country faces threats from “US imperialists and their followers,” according to state media on Thursday. Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP “We have a long-term plan to strengthen the national nuclear force on an annual basis in the future and will concentrate on increasing the number of nuclear weapons and expanding the means and space for nuclear operation,” Kim stated. Kim earlier warned during a military parade in the capital on Wednesday that North Korea would “deliver terrible retaliatory attacks to any forces” …

Quiet cracking is destabilizing Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier leading to irreversible collapse

Quiet cracking is destabilizing Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier leading to irreversible collapse

Published by Jenni Sidey

Debangshu Banerjee, a recent graduate of the Centre for Earth Observation Sciences at the University of Manitoba, with Dr. Karen Alley of the same center and Dr. David Lilien of Indiana University Bloomington., and partner institutions have uncovered a clear pattern behind the slow unraveling of a critical Antarctic ice shelf. Their findings were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface and form part of the Thwaites Amundsen Regional Survey and Network, a core project within the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a major U.S.-U.K. research effort. The focus of the study is the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, a floating extension of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. Thwaites holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 65 centimeters. Its rapid change has earned it the nickname “Doomsday Glacier,” yet the new research shows that its weakening follows an organized sequence rather than random collapse. Study area: Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) and surroundings. TEIS, Thwaites Western Ice Tongue (TWIT), pinning points, shear margin between TEIS and the TWIT, and Thwaites Glacier are also …

Some Arctic warming ‘irreversible’ even if we cut atmospheric CO2

Some Arctic warming ‘irreversible’ even if we cut atmospheric CO2

Published by skeptic

A glacier meets the sea in Dickson Fjord, Greenland Jane Rix/Alamy The Arctic will retain about 1.5°C of warming even if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere returns to pre-industrial levels and the planet as a whole cools. The region is also predicted to retain about 0.1 millimetres per day of excess precipitation, regardless of whether we deploy large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects. “These findings highlight the irreversible nature of Arctic climate change even under aggressive CDR scenarios,” the researchers wrote in the study. Atmospheric CO2 levels are currently about 1.5 times as high as they were in the pre-industrial era, and the Arctic has warmed by more than 3°C. A study published in March found that average sea ice extent would remain 1 million square kilometres smaller even if excess CO2 was removed. In the new study, Xiao Dong at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing and his colleagues predicted the Arctic’s potential to retain warming using 11 independent climate models. In a first, it suggests that precipitation will also stay elevated, …