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Could Collapsing Antarctic Glaciers Raise Sea Levels Sooner Than Expected? (salon.com)
"We may be headed for an ice apocalypse which could result in the flooding of coastal cities before the end of this century," writes long-time Slashdot reader whoever57. Grist reports on two of the largest and fastest-melting glaciers in Antarctica which "hold human civilization hostage."
There's no doubt this ice will melt as the world warms. The vital question is when... Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world's oceans -- an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet... Each new iceberg that breaks away exposes taller and taller cliffs... In the past few years, scientists have identified marine ice-cliff instability as a feedback loop that could kickstart the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet this century -- much more quickly than previously thought. Minute-by-minute, huge skyscraper-sized shards of ice cliffs would crumble into the sea, as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as deep underwater as the height of the Empire State Building. The result: a global catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen... When [land-based ice] falls into the ocean, it adds to the overall volume of liquid in the seas. Thus, sea-level rise.... All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt...
A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica... Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard's findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.
If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."
A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica... Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard's findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.
If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map."
The parable of the boy that cried wolf seems very apt for this story.
I dunno. Why don't we try it and find out?
(responding to: how were all of the last predictions?)
Pretty accurate.
Yep. So far the predictions have been matching the measurements pretty well.
This particular article, however, verges on the sensationalist. Do note it's talking about sea level rise by the end of the century, not the next decade or two, and I also notice that, although what the actual scientists quoted talked about was two meters by the end of the century-- and note that this is on the high edge of what other scientists think, the authors of this article immediately jump to "but maybe it will be worse!" and talk about four meters of sea level rise. So, they took the highest estimate from any scientists, and doubled it.
Instead, pay a little more attention to this quote from the article, buried somewhat far from the sensationalist headline:
"Some scientists aren’t fully convinced the alarm is warranted. Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, says the new research by Wise and his colleagues, which identified ice-cliff instabilities in Pine Island Bay 11,000 years ago, is “tantalizing evidence.” But he says that research doesn’t establish how quickly it happened."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The ice isn't floating "in the glass", it's sitting on a land mass above the glass, genius.
Where do you Dunning-Kruger imbeciles keep coming from?
The article attempts to spread FUD around "megacities" vanishing, but in reality why do you not think any sea level rise would be engineered around just as the Dutch have done for over a hundred years?
One issue I have though is that it seems like the current estimate of three feet rise over the next 100 years has already taken into account additional ice melt. I am pretty suspicious there is some double-booking going on here, which would be the norm for the climate "science" community.
Another form of double accounting is pretending like we are anywhere near on track for the models that actually predict full ice melt; they are models based on the assumption we'd see runaway exponential warming which is not happening. That's how you know it's truly FUD, when they try to make a case not even viable at this point seem likely.
Yep. So far the predictions have been matching the measurements pretty well.
According to the data Gore projected the first time the boy cried wolf the Glaciers are supposed to be gone already.
Quit projecting so hard.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
And thus, conservatism was reborn as shitting on yourself because you can.
Fill the glass to the top with water so the ice sticks out the top. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Science. Thanks for playing, morons.
You do know that Antarctica is a continent, and the miles-thick ice sheet under discussion is on land, not floating, right?
Fill a glass to the top with water. Then, melt ice somewhere else, and pour the melted water into the glass. The glass will overflow.
I think you're confusing glaciers with icebergs. invert an empty glass and put the ice on top, when it melts there will be a puddle.
Nullius in verba
There's certainly a lot of them about, lately.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Statements such as "If sea levels rise by six feet, "around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world's most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map." are massive exaggerations. If this was even on the same side of the planet as reality those some places would be screwed every high tide.
You just forgot one point; a lot of ice is above sea level.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.
Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.
So there's not enough to worry about now? We don't have problems that need work this year? We have to worry about what "might happen"? I should be worrying that Mumbai might flood in 80 years? There's no chance they might find a solution between now and then? We all have to argue over who's the bigger bastards, the deniers or the over-reactors? Me, I got more important things to worry about
I suppose all you Slashdot sheeple actually believe there is a place called "Antarctica" and that there are "glaciers" there. It's because you've been brainwashed by Marxist-run universities and their so-called "science" which is just SJW virtue signaling.
You should view my series of 7-hour YouTube videos called, "Why Science is for Losers" and subscribe to my channel. Use the promotion code: "88_14WORDS_Hexen_WhiteWolfMRA".
And don't forget to hit up my Patreon page, because bringing the truth to the masses is thirsty work, and have you seen the price of Mike's Hard Lemonade lately?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Many coastal cities are largely well above sea level. They may lose a few hundred feet to the ocean but they would not be submerged.
In addition some coastal cities were raised or had seawalls and other protection put in place after earlier flooding or storms.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible. The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith. We can still accept the science they do, but there is no reason to trust their judgment (and again, the emails provided reason to believe their judgment is poor).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Of course everyone knows it's cheaper to just launch 11 meters of ocean depth into space than reduce CO2 emissions...
But what about the pollution from the trillions of rocket launches, or were you planning on using a big straw?
Agreed, if only they could stop having children in this already over-populated world... THAT would be progress!
Come on dude! That's not what I was talking about. Have you ever seen pictures of glaciers hundreds of feet above sea level? My guess is that these things aren't really floating in sea water but are instead resting against the ground way down below somehow.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith.
That's a weird interpretation of the absolving outcomes of multiple commitees' investigatons.
You're wrong. The investigations showed that the science they were doing wasn't outright malfeasance (although the statistics could use some help). The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith. You should have known that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Please cite where Gore said the glaciers would be gone by 2017. It could be that they're already as good as gone but it takes time for large blocks of ice to melt so they won't fully disappear for decades or even centuries. Of the estimated 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park that existed in the mid 1800s only 25 remain today and at the current rate they could be essentially gone by the 2030s.
A few glaciers have been growing, most have been shrinking. As an example the glacier in the crater of Mount St. Helens has been growing but it didn't even exist after the 1980 eruption.
The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith.
Meaning that your bad faith assertion is not a result of evaluating the investigations' results but your own original research? I'm not sure that makes me any more confident about your far-reaching and potentially libelous conclusions.
Ezekiel 23:20
Meaning that your bad faith assertion is not a result of evaluating the investigations' results but your own original research?
Have you read the emails? It's pretty clear that they are people with an agenda, and heavily influenced by emotions.
I'm not sure that makes me any more confident about your far-reaching and potentially libelous conclusions.
Um, in no way did I say you should trust my conclusions. I don't wan't you to trust my conclusions, trust is the anti-thesis of science. Feel free to go read the emails and verify them yourself: that is being scientific.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Antarctica's average precipitation is 166 mm per year. Its surface area is 14 million square km. Therefore it receives an average of:
(0.166 meters)*(14 million km^2)*(1000 m/km)^2 = 2.324 trillion cubic meters of precipitation each year
Since water weighs one ton per cubic meter, that.s 2.324 trillion tons of water falling onto Antarctica every year. Unlike most of the other continents, this precipitation does not flow to the sea as water. it mostly ends up locked up as snow or ice (there are a handful of "rivers" - mostly small streams of glacial meltwater running to the sea). If you assume the ice on the continent has reached equilibrium (amount it gains equals amount it loses each year), that means it has to lose 2.324 trillion tons of ice each year, mostly as icebergs. If it loses more than that, sea levels go up. If it loses less than that, sea levels go down.
That massive iceberg (4x the size of Manhattan) that broke off earlier this year was estimated at 1 trillion tons. While that's a huge amount to lose all at once, it's less than half the amount Antarctica needs to lose every year to maintain equilibrium. The press likes to hype up outlier events like that because it appears to confirm the belief that Antarctica's ice is melting. But outliers are just that - outliers, and not necessarily representative of what's actually happening. The last scientific net gain/loss study I saw actually concluded that Antarctica is gaining ice. Not losing it. Enough to lower sea levels by 0.23 mm per year.
Is that you, Rep. Steve Stockman?
it didn't even exist after the 1980 eruption
Lol, I wonder why? :)
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
As you note yourself in your post, there is no “the predictions”. There are different predictions made by different groups of scientists. Is there a single model or prediction that fits the data pretty well? Or is there a matching prediction to be found for every data point?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I will have to install Firefox and use a search engine other than Google. But I will get it tomorrow. Google and Chrome is being ... Interesting.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
In what world do you consider it booming? Just because the sea ice they live on doesn't appear any more and they're abandoned on the land where humans can see them (not many local news reports for the arctic, plenty for Alaska and Canada), doesnt mean there's more polar bears. Ask ecologists who study that. Oh, that's right: you can't, because they're eco hippies on the same "conspiracy gravy train", so you have to search for a fringe nut who goes against the grain, which would mean the minority position. Which would be "polar bears are fine" if the truth is that their population is tanking. There's much more consensus on reality than there is on imagination.
Would all that extra water give fish massive new homelands in which to replenish their dwindling stocks? Or maybe the melting freshwater glaciers would dilute the salt too much.
These aren't heated significantly by whatever heat might be trapped by slightly more CO2 -- despite what politicians say, seeing as this whole Environment business has become more of just that, with excuses for taxation and making life more difficult for everyone. Unless you pay extra of course.
Instead, just the other week, there was news about some large hot magma plumes being present underneath the Twaites Glacier and other nearby areas, and that is what is heating up this ice. So it may still break out and put a lot of water into the ocean but for different reasons.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
They were found entirely innocent. Like, entirely. You want to try this again, sparky?
This.
I tried to make people realize that we're heading for our extinction until I noticed that, hey, it's gonna strike when I'm no longer around. Why the fuck should I care?
I used to give a shit about people. I actually wanted to prevent disaster until I noticed that this species is too stupid to survive. We're not the first species that can and will eliminate its own livelihood. But we'll be the first that can actively regret it once we're done.
But I won't. Either I'm gone, or I'll simply accept it as the inevitable result of hubris.
Allow me to end on a lighter note: Two planets meet.
P1: You look terrible, what's wrong?
P2: I got homo sapiens.
P1: Ah don't worry, so did I. It will pass.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Conservatives make no sense. Contraception is bad, abortion is bad, but at the same time anything and everything to actually help the people they force to exist is bad too.
A conservative is a person that will fight tooth and nail for you to be born, but as soon as you're pumped out you're on your own.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's why you don't see any measurable effect YET. So far, the ice that's been cracking off and dropping into the sea was the ice already IN the sea.
Now we're reaching the ice that's lying on top of land. Oh, Antarctica, unlike that thing on the top of your globe, is actually a continent. There is land under that miles of ice. That's why we care about melting Antarctica more than we care about the arctic ice going away. That's why this is being talked about instead of the same shit happening on the other end of the marble.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because there's no mountain range in between?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't worry, I've been deconverted no later than when I heard that the effects would only become crippling long after I'm dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nah. The water levels rise without my aid, so my work is done.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
2.16 kilometers = 1.34 miles
The floating ice can't counter-act anything, because floating ice melts to become exactly the same volume of water as it displaced - no more, no less.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The jerks who denied global warming exists held back projects that might have saved millions of lives as well as the stabilization of economies and nations. Yet they will pay no penalty for their idiotic remarks and beliefs. Maybe we should be in deep prayer that the world enters an ice age while the warming pushes in the opposite direction. Wars and calamities are already taking place due to global warming and here we have a US president failing to take meaningful actions to alleviate or moderate the effects of global warming. it is almost like treason when an official acts against the best interests or survival of a nation.
Why does everyone think rising sea levels will force all the people out of cities? People are stubborn and will probably just make floating structures or raised structures on stilts and trade the car for a boat. Then, not only do you not have to leave, suddenly the earth just quadrupled its real estate market.
Here are your failed predictions in Black and White, yet you call other's deniers.
Are you saying these people didn't make these predictions or say these things?
Who is the real Denier?
Fill the glass to the top with water so the ice sticks out the top. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Science. Thanks for playing, morons.
Fill the glass to the top with water then make a platform with toothpicks that will hold the ice above the water. Watch what happens when the ice melts. That's the equivalent of glaciers sitting above sea level on the land melting.
It's endless. Every single day on this fucking website. 'Climatedot'. What a joke it has become.
Try the truth instead:
www.wattsupwiththat.com
www.climatedepot.com
Don't worry, it will never stop. You can't hide from reality forever.
I would be very surprised if you actually find any direct quote from Gore that says that. What you will find is stories claiming he said something like that without any cites to actual quotes from him.
If you remove the weight from the ice over the land mass, it will rise up and still displace the water level.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible.
Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.
Two of your links still worked.
The first was to a NPR story in 2009 quoting a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences saying that if we stop emitting carbon dioxide immediately, the effects due to the carbon dioxide we have emitted will last for "more than a thousand years," basically due to the lag time it takes for carbon dioxide to be desorbed by the ocean. There's no real prediction here- basically, it's an article about the system hysteresis. So, no, this is not a failed prediction.
The second was a link to an article about an editorial by James Lovelock. In a 2006 article in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Professor James Lovelock said billions would die by the end of the century, and civilisation as it is known would be unlikely to survive." I have little respect for Lovelock, but nevertheless, the end of the century is still 83 years away, so this is not an example of a prediction that has failed.
Of the links that were 404 not found, I could dig up one on archive.org, an article on "commondreams.org" about a report from "Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank," headlined that "Damage from Warming Becoming 'Irreversible'." That's not actually a prediction. All the way at the end of the article are two things that might be predictions:
The first: "Even if climate change is more gradual, recent studies have argued that as many as one million plant and animal species could be rendered extinct due to the effects of global warming by 2050."
That's a prediction for over thirty years from now, so, no, that is not a prediction that has failed.
The second: "A recent report by the world's largest reinsurance company, Swiss Re, predicted that in 10 years the economic cost of disasters like floods, frosts, and famines caused by global warming could reach $150 billion annually."
An actual prediction! It's hard to say whether any given damage is "caused by" global warming. However, if you consider hurricanes "caused by" global warming, or droughts, or wildfires, that easily adds up to well over 150 billion. So at best I'd call this a prediction that needs some data analysis to say whether it's accurate or not. For what it's worth, here's Forbes-- not exactly a left-wing cheerleader-- saying the same thing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
So, final summary: NO, this is not a list of predictions that have been turned out to be false.
The actual predictions-- by which I mean, the ones from actual climate scientists-- have mostly been pretty accurate. If you're looking at the sensationalist predictions-- sea level rises of many meters, cities innudated by floods, etc.-- they are for the most part predictions for after the year 2100, not for now.
But the real science predictions aren't sensational enough for the tabloids, and journalists tend to downplay the "in a hundred years" part of predictions in popular articles.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If you're really interested and not just trying to hand wave away things you disagree with out bothering to understand them, here you go. The IPCC reports represent the consensus view of the world's climate scientists. You can start with the first one and see how well they've done over time and how they've refined their understanding of the climate.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
So why not push the so-called "climate experts" to completely opensource their models and explain what they are doing?
The models are open source; they are heavily annotated and explained.
...So wouldn't it be a good idea to have as many eyes overlooking these models?
Yes, that's the way science works. And the models have been downloaded and are being run by hundreds of universities around the world. We do have thousands of eyes looking over the models.
It doesn't take a degree in climatology to find errors in code or mathematics.
And so the fact that people aren't finding those purported errors in code or mathematics, despite thousands of people looking for them, should tell you something
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Those aren't failed predictions. They are about the timeline for action required to prevent the warming from being inevitable. They are not about the timeline for the warming to develop fully.
I'm not sure what the point is here. The Jurassic was a period lasting over fifty million years. Yes, during much of the Jurassic, carbon dioxide was much higher than it is now, and temperatures were correspondingly much hotter, the Earth had no ice caps and no glaciers, and the sea levels were much higher.
I'd point at this as showing that higher carbon dioxide levels are correlated to higher temperatures and higher sea levels.
Yes, we could adapt. Over a time span short compared to fifty million years, the ecology would just settle in to a new equilibrium. But we're not talking about millions of years, not even hundreds of thousands of years here.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Oh it's simple, really. Conservatives believe that children are a punishment for having sex.
I wish I was kidding.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Yes Anartica is a continent. When the ice melts there people can start moving from new york to Antarctica. it all evens out in the end
I like that as a science fiction story, but in the real world, turns out Antarctica is still pretty much unlivable, even after 2 or even 5 degrees of global warming. Too bad, really.
Parts of Siberia might get nice, though.
Or better yet we will awaken some unfathonable creature from the abyss of lake vostok that will wipe out all human life on the planet. this will end global warmig.
Didn't Lovecraft write that one? Tekeli-li!
thats a good thing right. the real reason liberals want to stop global warming is because it would allow dark skinned people to move up north and corrupt your gated liberal white communities.
Now you're just trolling. That was also a science fiction premise, I think; just in this case a Neo-Nazi story.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Actually, Russia does benefit from exporting natural gas, so some of them might actually be on the Russian payroll.
I mean Russia needs them to do something in between meddling in the elections of other countries, right?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In fact, when the ice in my glass of whisky has melted, it's usually entirely empty...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Bullshit. Trust is required for any human endeavor.
You know, I'm a denier of the highest order, but are you thinking icebergs or glaciers? Glaciers, above sea level, are a problem. Icebergs, largely below sea level, not so much.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Let me redo that. You may be flat wrong, we may not "adapt". The climate disruptions to populations may trigger nuclear war and end up killing every last human (or too few to leave behind enough genetic diversity to re-establish ourselves). The risk of that happening goes up if we ignore man-made climate change.
True, we may do that even without climate issues, but certainly you would agree the probability of self-annihilation goes up if we change Earth's climate such as to disrupt existing patterns of food and water. Almost every major war has been related to economic slumps of some kind. Putting stress on populations increases both the chances and severity of war.
Table-ized A.I.
Wow, are you literally that dense, or do you just have reading comprehension fail? You didn't actually read any of the investigation reports.
For your sake, I will again repeat: they were cleared of scientific malfeasance. They in no way were cleared of acting in bad faith, they weren't even investigated for that.
As for your complete lie that they were found "entirely innocent," what kind of fruit loop are you? No one ever said they were entirely innocent except you. Entirely innocent? Really? No one is entirely innocent and you damn well know it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are you seriously suggesting that I should read thousands of e-mails and other documents and analyze them?
Either read them, or read the highlights, or remain ignorant, like you are now. Apparently you choose the ignorance option, which is unfortunate.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are the conservatives forcing these same people to fuck? Pretty sure that if you don't want kids that you shouldn't put tab A into slot B. Far more effective than any contraception, also safer for women than abortion.
It's SCIENCE!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Have you taken control groups of scientists in other fields and analyzed their emails? If not, you don't know if all other scientists are paragons of virtue, or maybe like the ones whose internal private emails were published for political effect. Scientists are human, and have all sorts of failings. Despite this, science as a whole has been extremely productive.
You have no reason to think that climate science is any worse off than any other scientific field. Get yourself a control group.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Science is built on reproducibility and evidence. If you are building ideas on trust, then you may still have something valuable, but it's not science.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All scientific advances begin with scientists doing research. They don't always get their interpretations and predictions right. That's why there's always follow-up research.
What this says is that two scientists, making a new model that considers different things, have made a prediction that's different from those made by other scientists with other models. There's no observational evidence right now showing that one is right and the other is wrong.
It's certainly too soon to panic, but equally it's too soon to dismiss the possibility.
Personally, I live something like a couple hundred meters above sea level, and I have no intention of moving to a coast.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Trust in individuals is bad for science. Everybody screws up from time to time, and some individuals are downright dishonest. Trust in the process, and the general community of science, is important. The process has evolved so that science can go forward without trusting specific people.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sea ice floats. It displaces as much water as it masses. Therefore, when it melts and turns into water, sea level doesn't change. You can observe this for yourself with a glass of water with a couple of ice cubes. This isn't quite accurate, because we're melting fresh ice water into saline sea water, but that would reduce the density of the sea water a touch and make sea levels go up.
Land ice has no influence on sea level as long as it sits on land. Put some of it into the sea and sea level goes up.
If we're talking about something denser than water, we can get water level to go down. Imagine a load of steel bars on a barge. They raise the water level by the amount of water they displace, which is proportional to their mass. Dump them overboard, and the steel raises the water level by their volume, which is roughly a fifth of the volume of the water displaced. That's not what we're talking about, though.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Also one of the big reasons we've been getting so many of these stories lately is that the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting, the biggest Earth and space science meeting in the world is coming up on Dec. 11-15 in New Orleans. There will be about 24,000 attendees. Scientists typically release a lot of studies in the period prior to the AGU's meeting so they can present their findings there. So things should settle down a bit after that is over but you can expect stories about 2017 being the 2nd warmest year in the record despite it being a La Nina year long about February so prepare yourself for that.
Look, the problem is where the glaciers melt. When it melts on the opposite side, the land rise is too far, but the water level where you are goes up. Hence, for Australia and NZ it's more critical if the ice shelf melts on the OTHER side of Antarctica, and for NYC and the NE US and E Canada it's more important if the NE glacial shelfs melt in Greenland than if they melt on the SW edge of Greenland.
Look, just quadruple your investments you waste on fossil fuel tax subsidies and tax exemptions and exclusions and spend that on renewable energy like solar and wind. Otherwise, you're toast. Soggy toast.
We'll be fine here in the Pacific NW, by the way. Most of the impacts don't happen here until the latter half of this century.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't expect scientists to be paragons of virtue. It would be nice if they had good judgment, but I don't expect that either: I expect them to publish reproducible results. As long as they do that, there is no scientific malfeasance.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You don't describe conservatives, you describe (religious?) nut cracks.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No no no, you get it all wrong!
Meters, liters, kilometers have no plural!
2.16kilometer (no s) is 1.34 miles!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Titanic begs to differ!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith.
That's a weird interpretation of the absolving outcomes of multiple commitees' investigatons.
You're wrong. The investigations showed that the science they were doing wasn't outright malfeasance (although the statistics could use some help). The investigations weren't checking to see if the scientists were acting in good faith. You should have known that.
I'm curious what you mean by saying the scientists weren't acting in good faith. Scientists know that if they don't present the results of their research honestly that other scientists will quickly call them on that. They know that their scientific reputations depend on them doing good science. It's insane to believe that there is some sort of worldwide conspiracy among tens of thousands of climate scientists to misrepresent their findings that has lasted for well over 30 years. The first warnings about the potential of CO2 to cause global warming started out in 1896 with Svante Arrhenius and started getting serious in the 1950s. In all that time if there were some fundamental flaw in the reasoning I find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't have found it by now.
A while back, I made a list of various predictions saying that climate change was irreversible, or soon would be irreversible. The East Anglia climate email leak shows that a lot of climate scientists weren't acting in good faith. We can still accept the science they do, but there is no reason to trust their judgment (and again, the emails provided reason to believe their judgment is poor).
There are things happening that are irreversible at least on any time scale that's relevant to humans alive today. Temperatures will not go down unless we can bring the level of CO2 down significantly, ice will continue to melt for centuries until the glaciers catch up to the warming that's already happened and as a result sea level will continue to rise as it melts and as the oceans continue to warm up. Global warming and the climate change that results from it is like a large ship. It takes time to get it moving and will take a similar amount of time to get it stopped.
Of the seven links you give, five are "404 not found" or "Error 553 Website is offline". That's an amazing record, five of seven links dead. But these were mostly to sites like "examiner.com", which was (it's dead now) a site where people could upload blog posts that, if they got enough readers, would give them pocket change.
Fortunately, like a good scientist, I gave you my methodology, so you could repeat the experiment.
And, as a good scientist, I did a statistical analysis: of the three links that either weren't dead or could be tracked down with the wayback machine, zero actually showed predictions that were wrong.
Given that zero out of three links you gave showed failures of prediction, I conclude that, mostly, your google search gives you irrelevant garbage.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The scientists predictions have pretty much always been long term. You just haven't been paying attention.
All scientific advances begin with scientists doing research. They don't always get their interpretations and predictions right. That's why there's always follow-up research.
What this says is that two scientists, making a new model that considers different things, have made a prediction that's different from those made by other scientists with other models. There's no observational evidence right now showing that one is right and the other is wrong.
It's certainly too soon to panic, but equally it's too soon to dismiss the possibility.
Yep. And if the article had phrased it that way, I wouldn't have called it sensationalist.
Personally, I live something like a couple hundred meters above sea level, and I have no intention of moving to a coast.
I plan on not living on the coast a hundred years from now, either.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm curious what you mean by saying the scientists weren't acting in good faith.
They lack good judgment. You can't trust their opinion, because their judgment is clouded by emotion.
Of course, you don't care about that, Mr Riverat1, because all you care about is if they are on your side. For you it's not about science, it's about tribalism.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
CO2 levels just from advanced countries is probably enough to cause damaging warming. There is no stopping billions of Asians, Africans and South Americans from becoming wealthier and demanding the same lifestyle. So the world is screwed. There will be flooding and mass extinctions -- when we do not know.
At some point, perhaps in 100-200 years oil, gas and coal will run out. Then the world will begin a slow healing process. If nuclear energy is still expensive, populations will naturally decline as well.
Unless you would deny billions the comfy high-energy lifestyle westerners have enjoyed, it is too late. Stop wasting time and money fighting the inevitable.
For those who would be flooded out -- you have at least 5 decades to move. Don't expect handouts if you neglect to act in that amount of time.
That sounds like projection on your part.
No, but conservatives think it's a spiffy idea to teach teenagers (you know, those walking hormones) that abstinence as a way to not get pregnant. That's why the religious nutjob states have the highest rates of teen pregnancies and repeat teen pregnancies.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True. But it's a bit like with liberals, it seems the number of sane ones is dwindling into insignificance.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This was already discussed on a previous thread.
Yes, scientists are aware that some ice is floating. The particular article being discussed here, however, is about the ice sheet on Antarctica. Which is a continent, covered by ice over a mile thick.
(* footnote: some of the sea level rise is also due to thermal expansion of the water as it warms).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Have you any evidence that other scientists have less of what you call "bad faith"?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't know if they have better judgment or worse judgment. I didn't make any statement on the field of climatology relative to other fields.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."