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Seas Rising Faster Than Projected
New submitter zenyu writes "IPCC's 2mm per year estimate for sea level rise at current CO2 levels has proven too optimistic. Sea levels have been rising 3.2mm per year in the last two decades. The IPCC's 50 cm — 100 cm projection for the next century may prove equally optimistic."
Just vote out the damn Republicans and their big-oil anti-science agenda and focus on energy efficiency.
Just tell those seas you don't believe in global we fucked up the climate change.
That's the cheap choice. And it's all we're gonna do.
This is their entire purpose in life - to force you to pay to do anything by using their energy resources. And, they're going to do everything they can to make sure any bad news about energy consumption goes away.
Remember kids, this is why you fight the energy companies. Do everything you can to fight them back!
Do you deny that Americans are generally the cause to all of the world's problems?
Bad news about energy is good news for energy companies, that means they can have a new excuse to charge more for energy.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I've grown extraordinarily pessimistic that anything can or will be done about climate change at this point, and my only thought at this point is that we just need to enjoy what we can until the inevitable self-inflicted pain and suffering we will endure from its affects.
So let's all party for tomorrow we may die.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Every estimate has been overly optimistic. Can anyone see a problem with this? Essentially throw out the best case scenario and look at the worst case scenario as the baseline. Anyone not panicked at the thought of this IS A FOOL! After a decade plus of denial we come out with the worst case scenario is our best case. Basically three foot of ocean level rise is the best we can hope for and the likely result is twice that. Kiss all that coastal property goodbye! Forget all that because it mostly affects rich people. Just look at the Great Lakes. They stand at record levels. Remember this ISN'T the bad this is the best we can expect for the next 100 years and it may get worse after that. Drought is likely to be the norm not to mention storms damage. In 10 or 20 years the conservatives will blame the liberals for not telling them how bad it could get. Okay from a liberal here's how bad it can get, ever see Road Warrior???? That's bad. Good is probably Soylent Green. Any questions????
It really is as bad as we thought. Editors still let him publish.
Yawn.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
I would call this pessimistic and the new projection optimistic.
I've got beach front property in Pensylvania that I plan on selling in 2030.
All we are going to do about it is shoot the climate scientists for not doing enough to warn us.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
No, Obama didn't drop the sea level. That great crag you saw rise from the oceans was just one of his caves as it reared its ugly head. :(
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
dry land is not a myth! I've seen it! :)
sorry couldn't help it
One of the most regretful moments of my life was when a few people from an organization I don't remember were visiting my school, claiming that rising sea levels are nothing more than myths and scare stories. I clearly remember the guy in front of the class being all smug, saying "I'm sure you've all seen the movie Water World. Well, that's just Hollywood because the sea is never going to rise. Ice floats on water and has actually a lower density than water, therefore, if it melts, the sea level is going to stay the same or actually -lower-....".
I was in agony, on the one hand I wanted to shove Antarctica, an entire continent packed with ice, full in his face, but my shyness, fear of being at the center of attention and making a scene by completely discrediting these highborn scientific authorities that had come to talk to us, made me stay quiet.
Man, how much I regret having stayed quiet.
Their approach is:
ask your self what would Jesus do?
Lets all start building rafts.
Any one want to be a raft entrepreneur? lots of wood in South America forests you know.
Well, time to get off my island and move to highgrounds. No way I'm buying a house on sea level or lower.
Lucky we got plenty of those here.
See http://www.amazon.com/Glass-House-Climate-Millennium-ebook/dp/B005U3U69C
recent data doesn't show any increase in rate of sea level rise:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
looking at the decadal rate of increase it has actually been falling off for last 5 years:
http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sea_level_rise_fig1.jpg
doesn't appear to be any significant alteration in rate of rise over last 100 years, rate of rise in 30's-60's was about the same as current:
http://www.oceanclimatechange.org.au/content/images/uploads/2012_sea_level_fig1.jpg
A rather big factor that needs to be taken into account is that since the 1950's there has been a massive amount of ground water abstraction for agriculture that is estimated to contribute something like 0.4-0.8mm/year to sea level rise (15-25% of total).
http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2012/05/120531-groundwater-depletion-may-accelerate-sea-level-rise/
According to whom? As far as I know, there's no way to measure sea level to that degree of accuracy, taking into account all of the variable factors. NASA JPL admits to “spurious” errors in current satellite based sea level and ice altimetry. That is to say, the lack of a stable reference frame. Worse for the catastrophists, a paper in GRL shows there to be a 60 oscillation in the majority of long tide records.
The IPCC always said that various positive feedbacks were not included because the science wasn't clear enough. That always implied that the AR projections were the best possible case, and don't forget that those were the consensus opinion - meaning that if the Saudi delegates didn't agree it wouldn't go in the AR.
I just hope the AR5 will be a little more realistic and a wake-up call.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
They measured once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No, we'll simply be heading for a world with sea levels that are a few feet higher and temperatures that are a few degrees higher a century from now, ample time to adapt without much effort. It's not like we need to move New York or Miami overnight.
The IPCC projections don't include the water added by the Greenland Ice Sheet melting.
Expect it to get a lot worse as more of that melts.
Contrary to most others, I always look into these studies and read them, to form my own opinion. Sadly, I rarely see an article written by a journalist that is even remotely close to the truth, especially when it comes to science. So before I draw any conclusions I want to see what exactly was measured, how it was measured and how the conclusions came to be. But... alas, no source as far as I can see... :-(. Anyone found the original study?
I'm sure everybody wants the best for our planet, but I'm also convinced that all fossil fuels that can be dug up, will be converted to CO2 eventually.
If we want CO2 levels to stop rising, we have to stop burning fossil fuels, or turn the CO2 back into C and O2.
It's that simple.
In general when someone makes an estimate of something, they are too low 50% of the time and too high 50% some of the time. Somehow they are always underestimating the figures. Doesn't seem very likely to me. More likely people are just exaggerating to get attention. If this isnt happening then looked at from a scientific point of view. If the model they are using for the climate is consistently giving figures that are too low, it doesnt mean we must give more credit to that theory, it means we must look for a new one.
We need an immediate and massive shift to nuclear as a short-term measure to keep up with our ravenous energy demands. It's better to risk a few localized Chernobyl/Fukushima disasters than have an assured global disaster. We should shoot for a goal of having all fossil fuel burning slowed to a trickle within the next 10 to 20 years.
As a long-term measure we need to continue the shift to solar, wind, biofuels, and other alternatives and slowly ween ourselves off the nuclear sources of energy.
We, as citizens of the world who are aware of this problem, need to create the political impetus to make this happen. You are not powerless. Post links to good articles about climate change to Facebook and Twitter. People will respond to these issues if they hear enough about them. Don't worry about looking like a buzzkill talking about this stuff. Use humor to get your point across.
... were visiting my school....
I assure you that if you spoke up, you would have been belittled by the smug asshole, your teacher would have joined in or told you to shut up, you would have been sent to the office, your parents called, and suspended. You then would probably would have been forced to apologize to those kooks.
No you did the right thing. And not only that, I can be pretty sure those smug asshats walked away thinking they did a great job getting the "word" out about the "truth". Those people are delusional. All the data in the World will never change their mind. And as more things are done (hopefully) to deal with Global Warming, those people will be scratching their heads wondering why there's so much support for such actions. Kind of like the Fox News crowd who couldn't believe that Obama kicked Romney's ass in the elections. Actually it is the same crowd.
The Fox News - Talk Radio crowd are so ill informed that they are living in a delusion of what reality is. Why right now, they firmly believe that Obama is going to pull some sort of a legal thingy doodle and be in office until 2020. But that's another story and post ....
a) If plants love CO2 so much, how come it's increasing in the atmosphere? Are the plants picky about what they eat???
b) Heat putting water in the air is how we know there is a positive feedback (cf "Bongo (13261) on Wednesday November 28, @05:04AM (#42114983)") and that water won't fall and remain on the same spot.
Humans may be excellent at adaption, but you aren't. You refuse to adapt (changing your source of power is an adaption to the climate problem).
I was sure something would come out like this for the conference - a study done by an organization invested in the climate change alarmism. This one is especially amusing as several peer reviewed studies recently have shown less rise in ocean levels than expected, to almost no rise.
"for the next century " eyeroll
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There are sea level gauges all over the world, some of them with more than a century of data. None of them show the trend this paper claims. Have a look at this site. Here are the first three examples I tried:
Play around with this site. Look at the data. The sea level has been rising at roughly the same level for centuries. Look at the evidence: There is zero believable evidence that sea level rise is accelerating. The IPCC doesn't do science, it does politics.
Deodorant companies tell me that I stink.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
More time to surf!
Because otherwise it wouldn't take instant ice melt to cause people to drown in the coastal regions.
(ps as to your "as long as they move when waterline has moved", then global government would not be bad as long as people had a say in the government (as they do in the USA now, for example: not direct democracy there and apparently you think it all fine).
You have got to admire the objectivity of Slashdot readers. I posted an article with a reference to the NOAA site that has global sea-level data online, for all to see. This data contradicts TFA (which is primarily a political report). Slashdot did not disappoint - within a couple of minutes, my comment was moderated into nonexistence..
Here's a second chance: go look at the actual, raw data. Lots of stations have data for nearly a century. None of them show the kind of recent change in trend that the article claims.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
No, the claim was that it wasn't a problem because plants love CO2. Except that this isn't a solution because plants aren't taking it up.
Not happening.
Increased CO2 assists plant growth OF SOME PLANTS (and oddly enough diluting the evolved insecticides they produce thereby making them more palatable to pests) WHEN GROWN IN A GREENHOUSE by 30%.
Most of our food crops use the C4 path and are harmed by higher CO2 levels.
Really, completely and utterly clueless, only driven by soundbytes from the popular denialist tropes.
....is the loaded language used by the report writers specifically and AGW theorists in general.
One is "carbon pollution"...that's great as it attempts to automatically put somebody who has questions in the role of supporting pollution. A disingenuous position at best...morally corrupt at worst.
Another is "..may be biased low". Yeah, sure...but they may *also* be "biased high". Based on recent purchases by some of AGW theorists (such as Al's beachfront property) I'm wondering how much *they* really believe it themselves.
Just noticed that here in the morning....I'm sure more hyperbole will pop out once I've dug into the latest claims....
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
This comment is sort of like an Italian criticizing Nazi Germany in 1939. Perhaps you have forgotten that your country and indeed pretty much the entire WORLD has been all too eager to assist the US government in perpetrating its crimes against humanity?
Maybe it isn't the individual people that are the problem, but rather the politicians? Just maybe?
I thought the seas stopped rising in 2008...somewhere around January or February.
Coulda sworn I heard that a zillion times.
WTF?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes, because the U.S. is so evil and corrupt--as opposed to all of Africa, South America, Asia, most of the Middle East, etc. And despite never having had an empire to speak of--like Britain, France, Mongolia, Italy, Iran, etc.--the U.S. is clearly responsible for all the problems in the world. And when it comes to invading other countries, well, clearly no one compares to the U.S.--certainly an enlightened country like Britain would never consider something as brutish as invading 90% of the countries in the world. Only the evil, uncouth U.S. does that!
Yes, the U.S. is the cause of all your problems. You bear absolutely no responsibility for any of your own goddamned messes. It's all those evil Americans' fault.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
'In the 1970s scientists were predicting an ice age, now it's global warming.'
There's plenty of deniers who claim warming isn't happening, who claim its a conspiracy to raise taxes, who cite a Time magazine article from the early 1970s (when global warming actually still was more or less a consensus) as evidence of some discrepancy in the sciences, because apparently 40 years of scientific advances can be refuted by misquoting what scientists 'believed' in the past.
Deniers won't be able to find 'safe places' to camp out, it's not like one can just find a bunker and ride it out for a couple of years. Even if some now accept that warming is taking place, the science is still being denied. The net effect, doing nothing, is the same. The difference amounts to splitting hairs.
Although it's true there are parts of the world that won't be hit as hard as others, and those of us who live there won't have to worry about camping out.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
There have been a handful of volcanic events -- fewer than 10 -- on the scale of humanity's current CO2 emissions. All of them are associated with global extinction events.
Our CO2 emissions are equivalent to roughly two Pinatubo-size volcanic events per day. On an annual basis, we exceed the emissions of the most violent eruptions of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Keeping in mind, most of these global extinction event periods of volcanism were not exactly rapid events. They happened in geologically short timescales: less than a million years. It is entirely likely that we are experiencing the most rapid change in atmospheric composition that the planet has experienced.
As other commenters have mentioned, the last ice age *did* nearly wipe us out, and even if that were not a concern, an ice age is not what I would call a small issue! Whatever your delusions of civilization's endurance, you surely can not extend to massive decreases in primary production.
It is already too late to prevent disaster. You don't get to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that everything will continue on its merry way as if nothing is happening. Civilization will not simply "endure" whatever happens on the planet. It is actually a fleeting, rare, and fragile structure.
There's a lack of awareness on both continents that media is to truth what McDonald's is to food.
News-entertainment media is a product, not a service or an ideological obsession with being truthful.
They report on what they think most people will want to hear.
This includes misleading you as to the long-term consequences of the things the voters seem to like.
Right... It's all because of evolution.. I like sugar, salt and fat... That's why the sea level is rising!! :-)
Europe seems to echo American ideals of social progress and political identity. Our rallying cry in WWII was that we have freedom and other guys don't; Europe seems to have followed that same model.
In addition, your quasi-socialist systems have many problems that are evident from outside the country, such as creating a huge debt load that is gradually rising and choking your economies. It will take some time to see.
I don't view this as a question of American versus Europe however, in that Americans are adopting the same quasi-socialist systems. I think they'll work, for a little while. Then the free rider problem, game theory problems and a tendency to collect vast numbers of takers while penalizing the makers will begin to work against them.
It might take 70 years (USSR) or longer.
Is that a lot of us are going to be sitting on waterfront property pretty soon! Friends and I had discussed what it would take to get the populace of the U.S. to believe that climate change is having a negative impact on our environment. We determined they'd have to wake one morning to open their front door and step out into a lake.
It doesn't care if you are conservative or liberal.
Saying "The left lost the battle long ago" is counter productive. Also I find it laughable you seriously claim you consume legumes based on their carbon footprint. Especially after all that veiled rhetoric of your own.
Is there a UN Treaty? Is it signed?
Bullets in your head bitch.
Is there a UN banksters?
Bullets in your head bitch.
Is there a UN police force
Bullets in your head.
Either the state secrets go or the UN does.
WHICH BITCH?
Although it's true there are parts of the world that won't be hit as hard as others, and those of us who live there won't have to worry about camping out.
No, but we'd have to dig in and stock up like survivalists. We probably couldn't keep a few hundred million displaced people out anyway. Right now a trickle of Africans are trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. When Europe south of the Alps becomes uninhabitable, the North will be overrun. As will Canada and Siberia.
A mean rise of 3.2mm per year times two decades, at 10 years per decade (assuming arithmetic mean -- if it was geometric mean the summary should say so), comes out to more than 25 inches. That's more than two feet. That's a significant claim, and one we should be able to easily verify.
If sea level had risen by more than two feet, a lot of coastlines should have moved. Significantly. We should be able to see this change on *maps*. Can you name one place in the world where this has happened, where it cannot be easily and obviously explained via more traditional mechanisms (river delta deposits and so on)?
I am not aware of any such example. I'm going to try to keep an open mind here, global warming enthusiasts: feel free to chime in with *specific*, *verifiable* examples of particular geographical locations where a coastline has shifted because of a sea level rise in excess of two feet. If the claim were true, I'd expect it to be quite easy to come up with examples from several different continents. Feel free to list as many examples as you can.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Its about 2.5 inches rise over two decades. You may used 2.54 centimeters = inch instead of 25.4 millimeters. I did that too first calculation.
For NaNoWriMo I started writing a story about 'The Great Migration' and realized that rather than describing early human evolution, it was perfectly suited to describe the coming decades.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Currently. I've read about 80% of the satellite rise is thermal expansion of warming water and 20% due to ice melt. But ice melt could become more important as arctic melting accelerates.
This is so wrong. This is NOT happening. The 'projected' sea levels were that by 2012 most of Florida would be under water as well as many major coastal cities. Since that never happened history was re-written and this new fabricated trash appears.
Get a life slashdot'rs and put it back in the pants!
Isn't an 8C rise part of the spread of scenarios? Yet we seldom hear "warming less than expected."
To be fair we did hear there's been no significant warming for 16 years, but with the caveat that 16 years is still too short to mean anything.
There are basically a lot of different ways to analyse the data and make a case for filtering out this or that signal depending on whichever theory one is applying.
If it doesn't warm enough, you can filter that out by invoking a natural cycle.
Bought a house in an area that does not get large storms, and placed at 180m elevation. If nothing is done, at least I won't drown.
Math FAIL. .32 cm per year * 100 years = 32cm
Headline isn't consistent with its own data.
So being on campaign to fend off all those people trying to invade all the time dosnt count?
People that live in first world countries other than the United States are used to getting more from their governments. It oh so slightly biases culture into an attitude that they are less responsible for their lives.* "The government will take care of you." is not an unheard of attitude. In the US, well, you are mostly on your own. It is no small wonder that Americans get a bashing on responsibility: they accept it, while other countries deny theirs.
*on average anyway, would be worth studying for statistical significance per country.
Usually, when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.
-- Mel Brooks, "The Listener"
If you are confused on these issues, why not consult a climatologist? He or she could probably set you straight in a few minutes.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Hmm, I recall some recent studies that showed 14mm per year sea rise.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Quick! Call the Planetary Council and vote for Launch Solar Shades.
Fuck off you communists!!!
They observed ice melt faster than expected in antartica, groendland, glaciers, ... Lets say anywhere, It is just normal consequency that the sea level rise more than expected too.
Once again everyone, all together now, it's not true that scientists were predicting an ice age in the 70s. IT was ONE Newsweek article that spawned this myth. For the record, the original author of that article has gone on record as saaying it's been blown out of proportion and at the time, was never taken as scientific consensus.
Water is really heavy and really expensive to move large distances, or lift up relatively small amounts.
I'm sure most people look at a map and say "Lakes at the top, river at the bottom, water flows from top to bottom, so no problem." Here in Australia, people are always nattering on about moving water from the tropical north to the termperate south as if it is all so very easy and cheap!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Eh?
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Infant mortality in the US is double that in Europe. And, no - that's not because in Europe they "don't count non-citizens". It's because in the US infant mortality is regulated by the invisible hand of the free market.
2) To many foreigner who were born in poorer countries.
No, too many citizens who were born in poorer neighborhoods and don't have health care. SIDS risk for whites is half that of blacks.
Except America actually spends more than Europeans on healthcare!
Read it and weep, fuckhead.
Yes, and on average Americans are also richer. On average they own more yachts. And on average they play more golf.
If you care about the majority of people, the total number spent on health care tells you as much as the total number spent on lawn care.
If the average American was brainwashed by Foxnews then we'd have Romney coming into office in January. That percentage is obviously in deficit and has skewed "average" to those who voted the other way. So I guess we can blame it on the msnbc and MTV devotees now.
Try walking around in Missouri in the Ozark mountains (aka really big hills to the rest of us) and try to not trip over too many sea shells. "Why are there sea shells in them thar hills? you might ask, well because those hills are all the remenants of coral reefs. Those coral reefs weren't put up there by the ground moving up, but by the water moving down.
Most of the midwest US was underwater and an ocean for millions of years. So ask yourself "why exactly are you getting worked up over the oceans moving maybe a centimeter or two in the next couple of hundred years?
I would think you'd all be more exicited to be able to have the amount of beach front property in Nebraska greatly increased.
Mother Nature is God's First Wife, in charge of planetary balance, plant and animal harmony throughout the universe.
Only here on Good Ship Mother Earth is she raped 24 / 7.
"Mother Nature is the prime preemptor / Don't tempt Her"
She is close to losing her temper. Then Hurricane Sandy will be recollected as a breeze.
http://michaelslevinson.com/
Oh. The prophetic line above about the temp—that's c. 1971 in the Television Scripture The Book ov Lev It A Kiss
no, the sea is not rising. it's the sky that is falling.
Predictions can change because we acquire knowledge. It's called the scientific method. Only theists don't let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.
What is the issue is how we deal with it. Why does the World Bank insist of making sooo much money out of this? They are robbing the poor countries blind with interested in the name of progress already, so while everyone is shouting warming of not, their agenda is not being recognised by many.
I liked this perspective: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/19/when-bankers-turn-climatologists
Well that's an interesting point: the Institute of Forecasters (they do studies on the types of things which tend to lead in practice to successful forecasts and models, and the things which tend to lead to wrong forecasts) complain that climatologists don't consult them.
Climatology relies on things like modelling and forecasting and statistics, yet often we hear professionals in those fields complaining that climatologists don't consult them.
There are ancient ruins well below sea level all around the Med. The seas have been rising for millenia, ever since the end of the last ice age.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
Unfortuntaley I dont know any, along with most of the population so I'll have to base my understanding on what I hear on the news and trust they dont exaggerate things. They should have more actual scientists in the media explain how they things work but instead we have a lot of people telling us to be very worried based on "scientific consesus", but no real scientific explanation. I understand the basic idea about how they model climate based on models in computers but the climate of the planet is so complex involving so many factors I find it hard to believe that accurate predictions can be made based on this. Then when the predictions dont match the model it makes me at least think that the theory behind the prediction could be wrong. When you then add to this that this is now a political and econimic issue its easy to see that reporting can be prejudiced because of whats at stake.