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The story
A research team including Hokkaido University found that a glacier in northwestern Greenland lost the equivalent of 5.4 meters of ice thickness over 13 years, publishing the findings in a journal of the International Glaciological Society. They predict that if temperatures keep rising, the rate of loss could double. On 5ch’s Science News+ board, discussion centered on whether this warming is part of the ice age/interglacial cycles that have repeated throughout Earth’s history, or whether human CO2 emissions are the main driver. Many posters also voiced concern about concrete impacts on Japan, such as a shrinking Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) if Okinotorishima sinks below the waves, and beaches disappearing due to sea level rise.
Arctic glacier loses 5m of thickness in 13 years — warming could double the pace
A research team including Hokkaido University compiled findings showing that a glacier in northwestern Greenland, one of the Arctic regions hit hardest by warming, lost the equivalent of 5.4 meters of ice thickness over 13 years, and published a paper on it in a journal of the International Glaciological Society.
They predict that if temperatures continue to rise, the pace of ice loss will double.
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
Among major countries, the US tops the list for per-capita CO2 emissions.
China has a huge population so it's the world's biggest emitter overall, but per capita its emissions are barely different from Japan's (assuming the stats are accurate).
Not really something to freak out about.
A big part of the current warming is human-caused,
so it's probably being treated as a separate category from past natural fluctuations.
Are we going to get massive flooding until there's no land left to live on, just ocean floor?
Okinotorishima, the EEZ base point reinforced with concrete, may still fully submerge in the future… Japan's territory shrinking as sea levels rise
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20260828-GYT1T00305/2/
Do environmental groups have anything to say about that?
People have been saying this since last century…
> On the cause of the shrinking beaches, Masayuki Tomono (43), group leader at the Port and Airport Research Institute, said:
> "Sea levels have risen by about 10 centimeters due to climate change, which is likely accelerating beach erosion."
Isn't the ice's surface area actually increasing lately?
There was a report that as the ice spreads out, more polar bear cubs are drowning.
My place would go underwater, but it'd be perfect timing for a world reset!
There's zero evidence backing this up though.
So what's the evidence, then?
In a nutshell, the evidence is that "the current warming can't be explained without factoring in human activity."
Past climate shifts — like the ice age/interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene — are attributed mainly to periodic changes in solar radiation from the Milankovitch cycles,
and the high temperatures of the Mesozoic era are largely attributed to CO2 released by intense volcanic activity and the arrangement of the continents at the time.
But right now, there's no factor other than human activity that could account for warming on this scale.
but no matter how long we wait, it just stays hot.
The people saying stuff like that are usually "experts" from some completely unrelated field.
The worst offenders are scholars from the social sciences or humanities,
and the media just laps it up and hypes it further.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
When discussing glacier melt, a recurring point of contention is whether it’s fair to lump the ice age/interglacial cycles that have repeated throughout Earth’s history together with the human-driven warming seen since the Industrial Revolution. In the thread, some pointed out that the current rapid temperature rise can’t be explained by natural factors like solar radiation cycles (the Milankovitch cycles) or volcanic activity alone — without factoring in human activity, the explanation falls short. For Japan, the more tangible concerns tend to be less about the glaciers themselves and more about the practical fallout of sea level rise: the submersion of Okinotorishima and the resulting shrinkage of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), plus the erosion of beaches. At the same time, some past individual predictions — like claims that Arctic sea ice would vanish entirely by this century — have not panned out, which is a point readers can easily conflate: the accuracy of any single forecast is a separate question from whether the overall warming trend itself is real.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Global Warming] Arctic glacier loses 5m of thickness in 13 years — warming could double the pace.”
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