1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

The least likely scenario is none. 

Why do you say that?

Theoretically AGW could have actually *delayed* this collapse. 

(devil's advocate - bear with me)

If we go with the freeze/thaw loosening theory (seems quite plausible, at least as a contributing factor):

From what I read - there can be some freeze/thaw cycles that happen underneath glaciers, due to some cyclical nature of their movement; they accelerate and decelerate some with the seasons; the changes in friction then resulting in some temperature swings.     In some cases I would imagine there are glaciers for which the ground (bedrock etc.) underneath is typically thawed more frequently than it is frozen.   In some areas in such cases an overall increase in atmospheric temperature can result in *less* freeze/thaw cycling, rather than more.    This can be true on the surface, but could also even be more true at depths due to dampening of the atmospheric effect.    An increase in freeze-thaw cycles would actually only actually happen at places that are specifically on the thresholds where for any given season the ground under the glacier sometimes - but not always - thaws in any given season, and where the thawed period is less than the melted period.

In general - it seems like folks are doing their damndest to try and pin any and all natural disasters on AGW, when mostly they're likely just, well, natural, and would have happened whether AGW was a thing or not.

51 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

He's flailing in a desperate attempt hold onto an unsustainable explanation. First, he claimed that it was an earthquake, even hours after the USGS revealed that the glacial collapse and debris flow triggered the shaking. Then it was past earthquakes that led to destabilization. Now he spins the latest development hoping to evade any climate links, but only exposing his lack of knowledge of both climate and geological processes.

As noted yesterday, frost-wedging can lead to a fracturing, disintegration, and breaking of rock over time. Water finds its way into cracks and microfissures and expands as it freezes. The ice then melts when temperatures warm. This repeated cycle eventually causes larger cracks to develop and, ultimately, the rock to split or break. The warming climate in the high alpine regions of the Himalayas has accelerated this form of rock weathering. 

Finally, notice that he didn't provide a link to the actual story. He wanted to limit his audience to his opinion, depriving them of the full contents. Here's why: the story goes on to state:

Mountain geographer Alton Byers of the University of Colorado Boulder has linked the disaster to climate change. He said permafrost, which has helped hold together high-altitude rock, ice, soil and glaciers for thousands of years, is weakening and becoming increasingly unstable.

However, Cook and Shugar have not established a direct link between global warming and the bedrock failure. While they believe permafrost is melting and may be contributing to the destabilisaton of mountain slopes, they said further analysis is needed to determine the precise cause of the collapse.

In sum, the article he references to dismiss any link to climate change actually does not rule out the role of climate change. All said, based on the full body of evidence and the insights from existing literature, climate change likely played a role, probably through a cascading set of complex processes (glacial melt, rock weathering, permafrost melt, etc.). Its precise role remains to be determined. The least likely scenario is zero impact from climate change. Further analysis will provide greater insight. 

 

 

This stuff is complex enough, and the data incomplete enough, that I can't imagine anyone coming to a conclusion with any degree of confidence.   I mean - we're talking about somehow mapping the details of the bedrock *beneath a glacier* no less, and trying to analyze the freeze-thaw cycles (if they existed in that location, under the glacier) over the past N years to determine if CC contributed to extra loosening that wouldn't have occurred otherwise without CC.   That seems like an impossible task.

The best we could do I think is to somehow measure the amount of these over time and see what is the trend.   This is difficult of course due to the nature of the remoteness of the areas we're talking about; it would require a lot of satellite data details.

5 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

There's no debate.

The objective reality is that this was caused by destabilization of geological mass (ice/rock/water) failing and thus accelerating from elevation.  

The +flux (which means increase) of melt water destabilizes the previous the geologic structural integrity that previously held glacial lake mass, and potentially destabilizing land mass(es) made to fail, at bay. 

A collapse was inevitable. Occurring at significant elevation provided excessive momentum - a structural failure that went on to become mass-gaining.   The land, ice, or both-slide probably inundated and ultimate pushed out glacial lake, and then en masse accelerating down the highly sloped region... Subsequently gaining more  mass most every time in swept through and acquired any alpine lakes and kettle nadirs that may have been transiently filled with seasonal melt ...etc etc.. along the way. Until there's amassed biblical torrent with so much crushing momentum and weight it was capable of setting of seismology detection.  

That's it as far as cause.

The rest is humanity building civility in the fertile/convenience of an alpine river valley, thus inherently placed in potential harms way. 

It is important to mention that anytime you place civility under a geological feature, eventually, given time, something like this is going to happen.   It is perhaps of even more importance to mention, the acceleration of climate change is going to bring about this sort of thing with increased frequency.  This is so for a lot of geo-physical reasons; each case analyzed precisely. In this case, the chain of events described above would likely occur at some point in geology, anyway, but the relationship to rapidly non-restoring climate change is directly provable/moved it up in geological history.

Everywhere around the world where these risk zones that can be sought out and identified should be addressed.  Now.

But won't be... so that people can instead get off on these marvelously dystopian horror shows, watching what are likelier than not to become regular matinees as we go on blithely in denial or just stupidly forward in (humanity's end time?) history.

Just wait until Greenland goes on ahead does the impossible whence its land-locked ice slides on off into the ocean, setting off a 22 ft global tsunamis that doesn't run back out to sea after it sweeps in for lunch and eats 3.8 billion lives one single afternoon.  Or Antarctica... Luckily for humanity huh, these regions are "presumed" be slower contributors to sea-level rise. Weee. But, no one thought an entire planet and all it its integrated systems, could up and rise a half degree C in the spring of 2023 ... and stay there, either.  

Has anyone else paused in a moment of startling realization that we are living in an era where the impossible actually happens?  

By the way, the Greenland massive landslide in September 2023, remember?  The one that set off a 200M mega-tsunami through the Dickson Fjord, it was also seismically detectable, worldwide for that matter.  The planet rang like a bell for nine days. 

OK - you were sounding sensible up until those last couple of paragraphs.

Entire Greenland ice mass "sliding off" and causing 22-ft global tsunamis that would kill 3.8 billion people?   Not even suspension-of-disbelief Hollywood goes to that lengths of ridiculousness.

Sorry but it's crap like this that feeds deniers.    They like to point to dire predications that didn't come true, and just deny the whole thing as a result.   Suggest you revisit your strategy, because it's counter-productive, and very un-realistic/un-scientific, and it does your discipline a disservice.   (assuming that you actually are a meteorologist)

20 hours ago, Prismshine Productions said:

Wtf happened here in Antarctica to lose over 300k... shelf calfing?

Sent from my SM-S176V using Tapatalk
 

Yeah wow that's weird.

Wouldn't a calving event though cause the level to go up, not down?  (given that this a measure of sea ice, not land ice)   I believe that this measure allows for ice that has broken free but is still within the area of measure.

Perhaps a large berg just exited the area being measured, and thus is not longer considered "Antarctic sea ice"?

19 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Well if you dont know science you'd consider it whacked out. 

Putin has openly stated he's preparing for Siberia to become the world's new bread basket and he's quite excited about it and if you'd look at a map of what parts of the world are warming the fastest you'd definitely agree. And you don't think Trump wants Greenland only for military reasons do you?

As far as sunsets are concerned I've lived in many parts of the world and there is nothing like the colors you see in a desert sunset bar none. As far as locations one might want to live are concerned my main interest is astronomy and for that you want to get away from the ocean, water vapor is nothing more than an air pollutant that traps other air pollutants close to the ground and creates annoying and unhealthy haze. I spent decades living by the ocean so I know. The best place to live for low air pollution and the clearest skies is up in the mountains why do you think that's where the world's greatest and largest observatories are located and where the lowest asthma rates are?

Re: Putin and Trump - that's politics, not science.

Re: Observatories - these have *always* been in place high in the mountains, since long before CC became a thing.   E.g. Mauna Kea in 1901, Kitt Peak in 1960, etc.   Mountain air has *always* been known to be cleaner/clearer than seaside air since the beginning of time, and that has nothing to with CC.   It's basic physics / meteorology, as well as where people live.   It's actually the opposite of of what you claim - part of the reason why mountain air is so clear is ironically *because* for most people it's more desirable to live on the coast.

So - perhaps try again with your reasoning.

On 8/5/2026 at 12:39 PM, LibertyBell said:

As I discussed with Chris last year the boreal forests will be completely gone before or by 2100. That will solve the forest fire problem. I am willing to make that sacrifice if we can save tropical forests like the Amazon and others like Hawaii. There's far more biodiversity in the tropics than in any other part of the world.  The Amazon is called the lungs of the planet for a reason. 

And here's the other thing this planet was fully ice free for 85 percent of its history. Its greatest biodiversity happened when there was no ice on the planet at all. The Mesozoic Era! I consider this poetic karma in a sense the Revenge of the Dinosaurs. The real climate the planet should have had if it wasn't hit by something much worse than human induced climate change a 10 km wide asteroid that hit the Yucatan. I have seen multiple computer simulations of this horrendous event and there's absolutely nothing humans could ever do that would be worse than that global catastrophe. I also strongly adhere to Gaia Theory the history of the planet has shown it will recover from anything and if it could recover from that catastrophe it can recover from literally anything. Humans might not but the planet definitely will and its biodiversity will definitely improve once humanity is gone. Also remember that other species have altered the planet far more than humanity ever could, for example blue-green algae aka cyanobacteria without whom none of us would even be here. 

As far as sea level rise is concerned I don't even know why anyone would ever want to live at or near sea level. The air is much heavier and higher dew points lead to higher air pollution by trapping car pollutants close to the surface. World governments should mandate people and families moving to higher ground. On top of that as we colonize space and the melting of ice caps causing an excess of water on this planet I have it on good authority that we will use emerging technology to move the excess water to space colonies and to Mars in the coming decades. That will solve our excess water problem and our sea level rise problem and we will also remove excess water vapor since it's a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

 

As far as the boreal forests are concerned as the temperature warms that area will become the new bread basket of the world with boreal forests replaced by farms and towns. Russia already has plans to do that with Siberia and I'm sure Canada will too. As people migrate farther north this will be great news for the tropics as our main concern should be preserving the great biodiversity of the tropics.

O....K....

Sorry, but lots of really wacked out stuff here. 

I'll happily buy land near sea level from anyone who happens to own it and shares your viewpoint.   I kinda like the beach - good sunsets and waves and all that (to answer your "why" point).

I won't, however, be investing in any boreal farmland futures.

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

You objected to my description of "wildfire-swept France" with a map that was largely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The 2026 wildfire season has been very severe in France and also a bad one in the European Union.  

My providing information about France and the European Union to address the flaws in the chart that was used to object to my point about France does not argue that climate-change effects stop at the EU or that they exclude Russia. The posted chart was not appropriate for judging the severity of the fire season in France. 

More data are not automatically better if that additional data is irrelevant to the question at hand. Excluding the irrelevant data that had nothing to do with France wasn't "cherry picking." Including irrelevant data to dismiss the narrowly focused point concerning France creates a misleading picture.

Look at the context here though - the climate change discussion thread.

If this were a "weather events" thread - I would agree that there's no implication of a tie-in between the big France wildfire spike, and I wouldn't have made my point about having to look at the bigger picture.   

But since this is in fact a climate change discussion thread, and since there are lots of assertions out there that CC causes increase in wildfire activity - it seems reasonable that there's an assertion of implied tie-in with that set of stats that was posted; vis a vis France's big spike in wildfires being due to CC.   My point then of course being that no - it's not due to CC (the context of the thread), it's due to a localized weather event (and possibly other factors such as bad fire control management).

How about we look at *all* areas:

Africa:

Americas:

Asia:

Europe:

Oceania:

15 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Several things:

1) Your posted chart includes Russia. It has been an above average fire season in the European Union so far. As per Copernicus:

2) France is having its worst fire season (Copernicus) in some two decades:

3) Climate change has contributed through its impact on heat/drought, which increased the vapor pressure deficit (dried the vegetation). The impact of climate change--how much more likely, how much worse, etc.--the fires would have been has not yet been assessed in the attribution studies. It's had a contribution. The extent of the contribution remains to be determined.

4) Climate change is expected to lead to an increase in extreme wildfires.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00575-8

 

So you're saying CC's effect are somehow limited to the EU, and do not include Russia?

Sorry - that's still cherry picking data.    

The more data you include, the better picture you get.   Stop excluding data that doesn't fit your narrative.

(Also Nature isn't exactly an unbiased reliable source.   Also - "is expected to"?   Since CC is already here - if it results in wildfire growth - shouldn't this already be happening?   Why would this need to be a prediction, rather than an observation?)

1 hour ago, GaWx said:

But wildfire stats, depending on what you examine, don’t necessarily show that wildfires have increased over the decades and in some cases have shown marked decreases. Some of that is likely due to better firefighting resources.

Indeed - not an expert on the subject but that's almost certainly the case.  Not just better firefighting equipment so much, but better detection and tracking methods (primarily satellite).   Of note is that, in the US at least, there are essentially no more manned fire towers - they're all just obsolete and for tourists these days.

That plus there are more people living in areas that used to be remote, thus it's less likely that given fire will grow to unmanageable size before it gets noticed.

To the subject at hand though - in general it's completely invalid to point to localized (time or region) flare-ups of wildfire activity and blame them on climate change, since the overall trend is downward.   MMGW deniers will point to this and assume / assert that the data cherry-picking is done for all data.   As such - my advice to anyone trying to use data to prove MMGW - don't use wildfire data, because it's not a valid indicator.

Re: "Wildfire swept" - I hope people don't think that's due to CC.   Because if so - look what Europe as a whole shows:

It's an extremely low wildfire year across Europe as a whole.

https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.statistics/seasonaltrend

10 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Current State of Sea Ice Cover | Earth

OK thanks.

I see the description of the two: "Sea ice extent is the integral sum of the areas of all grid cells with at least 15% ice concentration, while sea ice area is the integral sum of the product of ice concentration and area of all grid cells with at least 15% ice concentration."

I *think* I get the distinction but not sure.   Is it the case that "extent" include 100% of every grid cell, for cells with > 15% concentration; whereas "area" includes only the area of ice itself within all those cells?

(thus why extent is larger than area)

(I had been using the NSIDC page which only shows extent - https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph)

2 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I was just pointing out that there are two different metrics commonly reported - actual area and extent (areal coverage of 15% or greater). Both values are reported.

Guess I haven't seen the other - the actual area thing.  Got a link?

I'm wondering how they would define that.   Presumably the 15% thing is because there's no well-defined line of the "edge of the ice" eventually the ice starts just breaking up into a bunch of floating icebergs, that extend out for hundreds or even thousands of miles (all the way down to Bermuda even sometimes); how would one measure the "area" of such a thing, especially on a daily basis?   Would they just sum up the total of the surface area of all icebergs?  (including "the big one in the middle")   That seems like an impossible task.

On 7/2/2026 at 1:50 PM, TheClimateChanger said:

Also note sea ice extent (coverage of 15% or greater) versus area.

Not sure what you mean.  There is no "versus".   It is area - that's what km^2 is.   The extent is the measure of the area - i.e. over how much area the ice extends, with coverage of 15% or greater.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

5 hours ago, GaWx said:

 
 Although US heat related deaths are rising and should continue to rise from GW, it’s true that far more people have died from cold than from heat (>10:1) and thus GW should in theory result in a net of fewer cold/heat related deaths there for a good while into the future. And this isn’t even taking into account any increases in food supply attributed to longer growing seasons and increased CO2 fertilization effect. So, CC clearly has some benefits regardless of the often emphasized harms that include rising sea levels, increased extreme flooding incidences, and more powerful tropical cyclone peaks/heavier rainfall from warmer temps holding more moisture and slower moving (on avg) TCs:

Heat- and Cold-Related Mortality Burden in the US From 2000 to 2020

The Yale University Institutional Review Board approved this case series

Findings  This case series of 54 223 429 deceased individuals found that both low and high temperatures were significantly associated with mortality burden, with low temperatures associated with more mean annual deaths (45 992) than high temperatures (3414). However, the burden from high temperatures increased by 53% from the 2000-2009 to 2010-2020 study periods.

 The annual mortality count attributable to low temperatures increased by 7% between the 2000-2009 and 2010-2020 study periods, from 44 278 to 47 551 annual deaths. However, the annual mortality count attributable to high temperatures increased by 53%, from 2670 to 4091 annual deaths.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2841063

One thing of note is that data doesn't take into account demographics.   Specifically:

 - The rate of change is not population-adjusted

 - It does not account for age

As our population ages (boomer bubble) the rate of deaths from both heat and cold, all other things being equal, are going to rise, since older people are more susceptible:

https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/out-cold-most-common-wintertime-injuries-warming-world

It's also very much a measurement problem.   Whether or not someone has died as a cold-driven or heat-driven factor is very subjective.   E.g. that same data shows a far lower number - and decreasing not increasing - for worldwide cold-related deaths:

35 minutes ago, Brewbeer said:

nice touch, but there are numerous and varied factors hat influence food production; specific evidence is required to conclude they are directly related 

 

Related how?   The data presented shows they very much are related, in time.

I didn't intend to address/imply a *causal* relationship - that increased CO2 / global warming actually causes increased food supplies.   While there is probably some driver there (e.g. myriads of data shows that higher levels of CO2 generally results in more plant growth, and warmer temperatures could open up new areas to agriculture that were previously too cold) - the main driver has been simply higher levels of production - more yield per acre.   As you say this is due to a myriad of factors including hybridization etc.    One big factor certainly has been mechanization - the development and more ubiquitous use of more efficient harvesting and processing tools (combines etc.), more efficient transportation (trucks, trains, ships, etc.) - things that rely on fossil fuels.

The main point of the data presented is to disprove the notion that climate change will not be causing "food shortages" - i.e. making food production trend downward relative to population.   There is zero evidence of that, as the data makes clear.

2 hours ago, Brewbeer said:

more people die from cold exposure per year than heat exposure, there isn't much to disagree about with that 

what we aren't going to agree on is that AGW is going to result in a neutral or net reduction in deaths, perhaps from believing that fewer people dying from cold exposure will more than make up for the greater number of people dying from heat related deaths ?

And this isn’t even taking into account any decreases in food supply attributed to changes in the locations of arable land and longer / more severe droughts disrupting water supplies.

 

 

As the planet's been warming food supplies have been going up.   Way up.

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/food-supplies-have-grown-even-faster-than-the-population-on-every-continent

Try again.

*Please* don't be so brainwashed by the scaremongers.   Look at the data behind the claims.   It simply does not support the claims of some growing apocalypse.

17 hours ago, Brewbeer said:

agree if we are referencing folks in the USA who have financial resources and air conditioning; elsewhere across the world?  too bad, so sad

Part of the means of having the resources to have AC is access to abundant inexpensive energy.   In less-wealthy countries that means one thing - fossil fuels.   

Deaths from heat are often caused by excessive strain from physical activity.   Activity that can be relieved by machines that are powered by fossil fuels.

But that aside - let me reiterate that more people die of cold than from heat each year.  You seem to be willfully ignoring that fact.

Holy moley - this thread is starting to get quite extremist, I have to say.

You folks do realize that a lot more people die of *cold* each year, than die of *heat* - right?   I don't think you really want to go where you're going.  

Let's be pragmatic here.   MMGW, while certainly an issue, is not a practical threat to human life, in any way, shape or form.   People are going to die from extreme heat waves - just as they have since the beginning of time.   As the planet warms *less* people will die (and have been dying) due to weather events, not more.

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Ah yes, the famous 1919 heat wave where Orlando had 2 weeks more 90F days than anywhere else. The same year where Pensacola registered 4 days at or above 90F, Miami recorded 6 - yes 6, and Key West a paltry 21. These numbers are unthinkable today. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps century-old local observations, with questionable exposure, rooftop siting, nonstandard instruments, observer changes, missing data, and who knows what else, should not be treated as sacred, apples-to-apples climate records? Or do you just repeat the one raw number that flatters your narrative while ignoring the rest of the statewide data screaming that something may be off?

Orlando is the only one of those cities that's inland, and thus is by its nature hotter than almost every other Florida city.  Florida had almost no inland population then; so best comparison would be to some cities in Georgia.   (there wasn't a single city in FL off the coast - including Orlando - that was over 10k population)

(I used to live in FL, and noticed how the coast of FL rarely got into the 90's compared with inland; they got less 90+ degree days in fact than central NC where I had come from)

On 6/11/2026 at 3:00 PM, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Exactly what predictions are failing, other then nonsense from Al Gore?


.

Google is your friend.

https://www.agweb.com/opinion/doomsday-addiction-celebrating-50-years-failed-climate-predictions

https://bradleyhook.com/why-extreme-climate-change-predictions-failed-what-we-can-do-now/

https://reason.com/2025/04/16/3-apocalyptic-climate-change-predictions-that-failed-to-come-true/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/

(does include some Al Gore stuff)

etc. etc.   Just search on "climate change failed predictions"

On 5/16/2026 at 2:17 AM, Silver Meteor said:

Some good replies on this one (especially the one about banks):

https://x.com/mazemoore/status/2055376238345076837

Wow.

But... he's a climate scientist with over 55 peer-reviewed publications!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_McPherson

Al Gore on steroids

On 5/11/2026 at 12:45 PM, TheClimateChanger said:

What are you talking about? Nobody is "having a discussion with AI"... I use it for assistance in creating an engaging headline, that's all. As Don pointed out, there is, in fact, evidence that it is better at that than a human. And I can say from my personal analytics, that this is certainly the case.

You said "I don't have time to write my own posts."    That sounds to me like the whole post, not just the headline.

Wait - so we're basically having discussion with AI, with TCC as a proxy?

No thanks.

Can we perhaps start a separate "No AI" thread?

22 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

https://www.weather.gov/buf/LakeTemp

OK thanks - that's the raw data at least.  Don't want to provide a link to a larger more readable version of your analysis?