CLIMATE change is one bad news after another. Here is one more. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate. This is common knowledge. What is not so well known is that such rapid ice melts there could have a catastrophic effect on the world's oceans and marine food chain. How so?
According to a study published on March 30 in Nature, a science journal, under a normal ice melt scenario, denser water flows to the sea floor, carrying with it heat, oxygen and life-sustaining nutrients. Carbon emissions have changed all this. As the Earth gets warmer, rapid ice melts in the Antarctic are a regular occurrence, during which massive volumes of freshwater enter the world's oceans, diluting their salinity and density, and thereby slowing the downward flow of dense water to the ocean floor.
Professor Matt England of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and co-author of the study tells The Guardian of the danger the world faces: the whole deep ocean current is heading for collapse if we continue in the current trajectory.
If starving marine life isn't bad enough for the eight billion people around the world, rapid ice melts in the Antarctic will also mean accelerated rise in sea levels and alteration of weather patterns,
There is a solution, though. The world must meet its commitment to the 2015 Paris climate deal. According to another research by the journal in May 2021 quoted by The Guardian, should governments be able to limit global heating to below 2°C hotter than pre-industrial times, we could limit sea level rise to between 6cm and 11cm by the end of the century.
Ignoring this warning by scientists means one serious danger: a total loss of ice sheets in the Antarctic and a 57-metre rise in global sea levels, completely submerging the world's coasts. But is the world making the necessary deep and sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions? No. Even for some countries that think deep and sustained cuts are necessary, it is an amble to net-zero. But at least there is an amble. On such small steps our hope rests.
If the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2022 (WEO) is right, some signs of hope are emerging. Notable recent efforts that have gained global attention are Europe's push for renewable energy in the form of REPowerEU, Japan's green transformation programme, Korea's goal to increase the share of nuclear and renewables in its energy mix, and ambitious clean energy targets of China and India.
Based on these measures, the WEO expects an investment of US$2 trillion a year by 2030, a year that many countries have chosen to go net-zero. In the calculation of the WEO, the high point for global greenhouse gas emissions is just two years away.
After this, nuclear energy and renewables are expected to gain a higher percentage in the global energy mix as they nudge out fossil fuels. We hope WEO's optimism is right.
IEA's executive director Fatih Birol reflects a similar optimism: "Government responses around the world (to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) promise to make this a historic and definitive turning point towards a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system." Such is the irony of war.