Slashdot Mirror
New Science Suggests the Ocean Could Rise More -- and Faster -- Than We Thought (washingtonpost.com)
Chris Mooney, writing for the Washington Post: Climate change could lead to sea level rises that are larger, and happen more rapidly, than previously thought, according to a trio of new studies that reflect mounting concerns about the stability of polar ice. In one case, the research suggests that previous high end projections (PDF) for sea level rise by the year 2100 -- a little over three feet -- could be too low, substituting numbers as high as six feet at the extreme if the world continues to burn large volumes of fossil fuels throughout the century (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled). "We have the potential to have much more sea level rise under high emissions scenarios," said Alexander Nauels, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia who led one of the three studies. His work, co-authored with researchers at institutions in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, was published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters. The results comprise both novel scientific observations -- based on high resolution seafloor imaging techniques that give a new window on past sea level events -- and new modeling techniques based on a better understanding of Antarctic ice. Further reading: Sea levels to rise 1.3m unless coal power ends by 2050, report says (The Guardian).
Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" said that a collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or West Antarctica could raise sea levels by 20 feet "in the near future". The near future has not yet passed and neither ice sheet has melted yet so the jury is still out on that one.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
We haven't had a hurricane season worth a damn since Katrina, actually. Hurricanes have been tame as shit until this year. (And don't get me started on "Superstorm Sandy", which wasn't even a hurricane when it hit New York. It only cost so much because NYC was unprepared, and it was hyped up because it was NYC and the media fucking LOVES NYC.)
As for fires, California is ALWAYS on fire.
They already have. Insurance actuaries have been factoring in climactic effects for years now. Every time you buy house or property insurance, you're paying into the "AGW Fund".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
New Science Suggests the Ocean Could Rise More -- and Faster -- Than We Thought
Maybe. Possibly.
But aren't we already suppose to be under ten feet of water?
Huh? Where did you get that? Nobody predicted ten feet-- over three meters!-- of sea level rise by 2017.
The very first IPCC report-- back in 1990--predicted "an average rate of global mean sea level rise of about 6 cm per decade over the next century (with an uncertainty range of 3 – 10 cm per decade), mainly due to thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of some land ice. The predicted rise is about 20 cm ... by 2030, and 65 cm by the end of the next century."
The most recent (5th, 2014) report (here https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess... ) says 25 cm to 70 cm by 2100. (That's the one that this news item is reacting to).
Nobody predicted 10 feet by 2017-- you should look back and find who told you that had been the prediction and never believe them again.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
New Science Suggests the Ocean Could Rise More -- and Faster -- Than We Thought
Maybe. Possibly.
But aren't we already suppose to be under ten feet of water?
I don't know what you suppose, but the first IPCC report, published 1990, said "For the IPCC Business-as-Usual scenario at year 2030 global-mean sea level is 8-29 cm higher than today, with a best-estimate of 18 cm. At the year 2070, the rise is 21-71 cm, with a best-estimate of 44 cm." (page 261) According to NASA satellite data, we are at ~8.5cm since 1990 (and the IPCC AR5 has similar results (SPM page 11)) We have 13 years at (currently) ~3.5mm/year left, so we probably will end up at about 14cm, well within the uncertainty interval, and not far from the best estimate - and very far from the 10 feet you have apparently heard from some crap source.
Stephan
That phrase "as early as"--what does it mean, exactly? If you call this a "prediction"-- what did it predict, and how can you tell whether it is accurate?
Here's a good discussion: https://www.carbonbrief.org/gu...
And here's a nice one with a pretty graphic visualization: http://sciencenordic.com/when-...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Somebody needs to make a study about how many *different* conclusions have been made in the last 20 years and how those studies have faired when compared to reality.
That's been done. Read the IPCC report. And I mean, actually read it. They do a lot of comparing different models.
I'm just going to guess that two things are true. 1. The ones the press cover and are most often cited by activists are the most inaccurate over time.
Now, that has an element of truth in it: the press likes catastrophe, so they tend to emphasize the flamboyant studies, and write headlines that make them sound even more dire. It's only two or three paragraphs in that they mention the actual consensus.
And 2. Not one study, if old enough to verify, shows the dire consequences we are routinely told about.
I've been graphing the predicted temperatures from the oldest greenhouse effect models (Manabe & Wetherald, and the original NAS report), and they have been matching the actual temperatures to well within error bars. So, on this one, no, the studies "old enough to verify" actually do check out pretty well.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com