The Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheets—and the Urgent Need for Revolution

by Orpheus Reed | June 9, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In mid-May, two scientific studies were released that came to the same horrifying conclusion—the immense glaciers in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica are collapsing. The lead author of one of the studies, Eric Rignot, said the glaciers "have passed the point of no return." The melt of these glaciers is predicted to occur over the next 200-500 years.

Photo of the West Antarctic ice shelf. Photo: James Yungel / NASA

These glaciers are truly massive works of nature—as large as the state of Texas, with an average thickness of two miles. The glaciers flow off of the Antarctic land mass and extend as ice shelves into Amundsen Sea. The ice shelves are melting from underneath because of contact with warming ocean waters most likely caused by climate change. According to Rignot, their collapse "appears to be unstoppable." (See sidebar: "Antarctic Ice Sheets and Climate Tipping Points.")

The collapse of West Antarctic ice sheets is a very big deal. The system of capitalism is responsible for warming the globe and transforming the climate by its relentless burning of fossil fuels and mowing down of forests worldwide. This warming now seems the most likely cause of melting of these glaciers, thus guaranteeing a global sea level rise of four feet over the next several centuries from these sheets alone. Even worse, the collapse over the next centuries of these glaciers is very likely to significantly accelerate the melt and potential collapse of other Antarctic ice sheets, leading to a much larger sea level rise. On top of this, there is an acceleration of melting already occurring in the Greenland ice sheets in the Arctic near the North Pole due to climate change.

Antarctic Ice Sheets and Climate Tipping Points

The two studies on the collapse of West Antarctica glaciers were done by scientific teams associated with NASA and glaciologists from the University of Washington.

Together, the studies found that these glaciers are melting from underneath. The melting is likely being caused because warmer waters are being brought to the surface by changing wind patterns caused by climate change. The warmer waters are melting and thinning the ice where it contacts the sea. The ice's thinning is allowing the glaciers to flow into the sea at a faster rate than previously occurred. As the glaciers are thinning, the point at which the glaciers are grounded on the land is retreating further inland. This is further accelerating the glaciers' flow outward into the sea where huge icebergs break off. Both studies found that given how advanced this melting has become, there are no longer land barriers under the ice sheets capable of "pinning" them to the land, to stop their increasing flow. This makes their collapse inevitable.

The collapse of glaciers underway in the Amundsen sea sector will likely further accelerate more melting in the West Antarctica glaciers. A total sea level rise of 10 feet or more is possible. At the same time that this is going on at the South Pole, Arctic ice at the North Pole is also melting at an accelerated pace, with huge consequences for the Arctic and world ecosystems. And land ice on the huge island of Greenland is also melting. Sea level rise is caused by the melting of ice on land, not of sea ice. It has been predicted that the complete melting of Greenland's ice alone would raise sea levels 23 feet. This would inundate almost every major coastal city in the world. If the melting of Greenland ice occurs, this would most likely take place over at least many decades and possibly centuries. But Greenland's melting could also become inevitable if things continue on their current course with the buildup of greenhouse gases warming the planet and fueling climate change.

The collapse in West Antarctica underlines a very important scientific point to grasp and act on urgently. People can't be lulled to sleep by whatever they think the appearance of things is on the surface. Forces of climate change are already set in motion today that have a dynamic momentum that can lead to climate tipping points—massive and irreversible changes leading to a leap to a new state of things. The melting of ice sheets, caused by global warming, contributes to further warming. This is because ice and snow reflect sunlight much better than open water. So as the ice melts into water, less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed by the oceans as heat.

The melting of these ice sheets will likely necessitate the relocation of tens of millions of people globally. In Bangladesh, for example, scientists have predicted that by 2050, rising sea levels will inundate 17 percent of the land and displace about 18 million people. Beyond this, we now face potential of rising sea levels flooding all the world's coastlines and whole island countries over the next centuries. Think about many of the world's largest cities—New York, Mumbai, Shanghai, Miami, Osaka-Kobe, New Orleans, etc.—threatened with inundation. According to globalgreen.org, "Two-thirds of the world's cities have populations of five million or more living in at-risk areas that are less than 10 meters [32.8 feet] above sea level."

More powerful storms caused by climate change will come ashore with devastating surges riding these rising seas. Rich ecosystems in the Arctic and Antarctic that sustain whole peoples and in fact the world's ocean ecosystems are facing degradation and possibly elimination. Humanity and the natural balances of the earth are facing environmental disaster. Faced with this, those in power in the capitalist-imperialist system are doing, and can do, essentially nothing of real substance to deal with this tremendous threat to the very future of our planet's living systems. Instead of immediately moving and mobilizing society to stop and reverse the practices that are causing global warming and climate change, the capitalist world powers do the opposite. They are moving even more urgently to seek and exploit new sources of fossil fuels, ruthlessly seeking to beat each other out for strategic power and control.

At the same time, as this crisis heightens they are increasingly compelled to make some moves to address the situation—like Obama's new regulations to limit emissions from coal—even as these moves don't come anywhere close to what is truly needed to effectively deal with this crisis. Such moves can only take place under capitalism in service of the capitalist mode of production, which is the problem in the first place. What they do flows from and serves their strategic interests—of how to adapt to this crisis and maintain their legitimacy and power in the face of a coming catastrophe.

The lack of a complete and drastic change in direction on the part of these powers in the face of the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets and other signs of global environmental emergency is a stunning indictment of this system. These capitalist-imperialists cannot be entrusted with the future of the world's people and environment. The collapse of the glaciers in West Antarctica appears inevitable, but the destruction of at least much of our world ecosystems and humanity is not yet inevitable. The collapse of these amazing ice sheets is a clarion call: it makes even clearer the urgent need for revolution at the earliest possible time to bring into the world a new system of socialism heading toward communism. This would allow society to deal in a real way with the environmental emergency—to do all that's possible to prevent the further collapse of world ecosystems as an essential part of liberating humanity.

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Read Revolution's special issue on the environment: State of EMERGENCY! The Plunder of Our Planet, The Environmental Catastrophe & The Real Revolutionary Solution for a deep sense of the scope of the developing environmental catastrophe, its roots in the system, and the potential for its resolution through revolution. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) is a concrete plan and vision of how a new society would transform the nightmare of capitalism-imperialism, including bringing about a new relationship between humanity and the planet we live on.

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