Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped

riverat1 writes "Sea level rise won't stop for several hundred years even if we reverse global warming, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. As warmer water is mixed down into the oceans, it causes thermal expansion of the water. Under the best emissions scenario, the expected rise is 14.2 cm by 2100; under the worst, 32.2 cm from thermal expansion alone. Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that."

Comments

1st derivative sea level

[vlm]

For a good time ask two groups of people what the 1st derivative of sea level is:

1) Enviroloonies and save the earthers will step out of their Priuses (and/or SUVs) and swear Gaia earth mother goddess set the 1st derivative of sea level to be always and forever more zero until the evil political opponents raped the earth and elected Reagan. Zoning committees and housing developers will demand congress pass a law to make the 1st deriv of sea level be zero by pure fiat, or Gaia earth mother goddess will get an arrest warrant for not holding the 1st deriv constant, should she ever descend to earth from heaven in her birkenstocks and unshaven glory when she makes an apparition at the drumming circle or maybe the homeopathic clinic... these are the same people who claim they could never have predicted a hurricane could strike the coast so the inland people should all pay to bail them out, every couple years, over and over and over and over...

2) Geologists and scientists in general will point out that other than very rare short term local maxima/minima the 1st derivative of sea level has never been zero and probably never will be, and anyone planning on the sea level never going up or down is doomed to unhappiness.

The two groups can't make any sense of each other, mostly because only one group lives in a scientific reality.