Big report out yesterday from an expert panel at the National Academy of Sciences. It’s calling for an early warning system to alert us to abrupt climate change–the collapse of an ice sheet, for instance, that would rapidly–as in days–raise world sea levels ten to thirteen feet. If that doesn’t give you a chill, nothing will.

Take no heart with the notion that these sorts of abrupt shifts are off in the distant future because the scientists were addressing themselves to what could surprise us at any time. The ice sheet allusion refers to the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), which has been poorly monitored despite its potential collapse and the calamity that would immediately ensue.

The committee chair, James White, an earth scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, offered a cogent quote to NPR (link to NPR to follow): “We should be measuring ocean temperatures near the ice sheet…We should be measuring, far better, where the outlets are–where the glaciers go into the ocean. We don’t do that.”

Other potential disasters include the possible release of massive amounts of methane gas in the Arctic. The reports says that is not likely to happen rapidly but methane and other greenhouse gas releases in the Arctic are not getting the attention they deserve. How so? The U.S. has actually cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s monitoring network by 30 percent. That’s the primary global measuring network for measuring those gases.

The committee also looked at gradual changes that could spark fast disruptions, such as areas of the Earth that could no longer grow corn once temps pass certain thresholds.

So yet another committee of scientists offer yet more reasons for us to recognize that climate change is not some pesky problem that will go away, much as House Republicans would like it to: They are now engaged in efforts to cut even more funding for research into the warming.

Here’s the link to the NPR story. You can read or listen to it:

https://www.npr.org/2013/12/03/248474721/ready-or-not-quick-climate-changes-worry-scientists-most