Incentives and HFC-phase down: what are the most efficacious options?

February 14, 2022

At the meeting in December of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), glaciologists released some alarming observations: the Antarctic Thwaites glacier is torn by cracks and risks of crumbling completely at time intervals estimated from 5 to 10 years. The news is alarming because this glacier – more or less, as big as Florida – contains enough water to raise sea levels around the world by about half a meter. Already today, the melting of the glacier contributes to 4% of the current annual rise in sea level. Not fortuitously, this glacier is also called “Doomsday glacier”. As reported by the foreign press, Thwaites is worrying but there are many other large glaciers in Antarctica that retreat, thin and melt as the Antarctic Ocean is warming. Many are held back because Thwaites acts as a buffer. If Thwaites collapsed, scientists believe that the melting process will accelerate for others as well, leading to the collapse of the entire ice sheet and to the catastrophic global sea level rise by several metres. If this happened, there would be no coastal city in the world that, over time, would not be submerged, with a disastrous cost for life and economies. A scenario from Armageddon!

Again, prevention is better than cure: nobody has calculated what the described scenario can mean in terms of costs, but catastrophes in Summer 2021 in Europe should help you to do the math. Read more