What Congress Doesn't Understand - Thwaites Glacier; What Congress Does Understand - Money

[hatrack]

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For the first time, a team of scientists in January adventured to Thwaites' stormy, icy plains, and drilled a hole to the elusive grounding zone. They lowered a probe down the 2,000-foot void and discovered the saltwater was 2 degrees above freezing. That's bad, if you're a glacier. "That's really warm for a glacier," said David Holland, the director of New York University’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory who traveled to Antarctica for the recent expedition. "That's why the glacier is thinning and retreating." How quickly will Thwaites melt? Even 10 years out, we don't know what Thwaites will look like. "It's completely unclear," said Anandakrishnan.

What's clear, however, is Thwaites' relentless retreat, ultimately driven by a warming atmosphere. These changes are far outside the realm of what most members of Congress — empowered to make supreme laws of the land that determine the nation's fate — can easily grasp. There's good news and pretty bad news when it comes to what the 535 members of Congress realize about the most threatening glacier on Earth — and critically, the necessity to rapidly slash carbon emissions to potentially curb Thwaites' melt.

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"We've never watched this happen before," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Those ocean temperature numbers right at the grounding line are a sign that Antarctica is really in trouble." Should Congress treat Thwaites' underwater melting — in a place so remote and whose collapse could be decades away — as an immediate threat? "All signs point to it being a big deal," emphasized Willis.

Many members of today's Congress will be long dead, in a few decades. But they'll have had the opportunity to listen to scientists bringing back grim news from the farthest reaches of the planet. Thwaites' consequences, already contributing 4 percent to global sea level rise, will be seen everywhere. "These things are coming to get us," said Willis. But in Washington, Thwaites has a big disadvantage: the prodigious amounts of money fossil fuel companies give to Congress. As a new study starkly concluded, "The more a given member of Congress votes against environmental policies, the more contributions they receive from oil and gas companies supporting their reelection." Led by Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, oil and gas lobbyists spent $124,697,322 in 2019. That's how you buy votes.

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https://mashable.com/article/thwaites-glacier-what-congress-knows/

[Mickju]

1. We are totally screwed.

I'm getting very tired of saying that. It has no effect as far as I can tell.