Slashdot Mirror
In Progress: Fastest Sea Rise In At Least 2800 Years (www.cbc.ca)
Layzej writes: A new study finds that sea levels on Earth are rising several times faster than they have in the past 2,800 years and are accelerating. Co-author Stefan Rahmstorf explains that the fact that the rise in the 20th century is so large is a logical physical consequence of man-made global warming. This is melting continental ice and thus adds extra water to the oceans. In addition, as the sea water warms up it expands. The data from the past can also be used for future projections, using a so-called semi-empirical model calibrated with the historically observed relationship between temperature and sea level. With the new data, this results in a projected increase in the 21st century of 24-131 cm, depending on our emissions and thus on the extent of global warming.
They could only examine data for the last 3000 years, and the last 200 years of that were inconclusive. It seems that this means the data is less exact the further back in time you look, which is not surprising. And while the sea level has risen and fallen in the past, it was over a much longer time scale.
What is alarming knowledgeable people now is that the rate the sea level is increasing indicates that this phenomenon is influenced by man, and that it is going to cause severe problems in some number of years. How big or small that number is, and what can we do to influence it favorably are really the only things left to debate, unless you're going to cherry pick the set of science and facts that you're willing to believe.
Yeah, about that...
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-s...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's no penetrating you guys' defense shields.
Cautious prediction == "nothing to worry about, no reason to even put it in the news".
Un-cautious but still quite possible prediction == "alarmism, ignore".
They'd been making the cautious predictions for 25 years when Gore's presentation caught on. The cautious predictions of the 1980's and 1990's have all been exceeded by this point.
It is when you're talking to a science denier.
How would you treat an anti-vaxxer or someone who denies evolution?
So what if it is logarithmic. That doesn't mean trapped heat magically doesn't do anything at all. We are observing substantial changes in the ocean, not just sea level rise, but in the actual chemical composition as absorbed CO2 messes up pH levels. And we are also observing higher ocean temperatures, and lower atmospheric temperatures.
As to planetary history, what the fuck difference does that make? Humans didn't exist in the Jurassic, and human civilization only developed in the last 10,000 years, not in the last 100 million years. Significant changes in climate will have, and are already having significant changes on rain belts.
Trying to dismiss AGW by appealing to the fallacious view that it only counts when it is big increases is to betray intense ignorance of an entire discipline. What you're arguing is the equivalent of a Creationist saying "yeah well, we can only observe microevolution!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's worth mentioning also that plate tectonics move faster than the sea-level rise.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."