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25 Years of Satellite Data Shows Global Warming Is Accelerating Sea Level Rise (usnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are speeding up the already fast pace of sea level rise, new satellite research shows. At the current rate, the world's oceans on average will be at least 2 feet (61 centimeters) higher by the end of the century compared to today, according to researchers who published in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Sea level rise is caused by warming of the ocean and melting from glaciers and ice sheets. The research, based on 25 years of satellite data, shows that pace has quickened, mainly from the melting of massive ice sheets. It confirms scientists' computer simulations and is in line with predictions from the United Nations, which releases regular climate change reports. Of the 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) of sea level rise in the past quarter century, about 55 percent is from warmer water expanding, and the rest is from melting ice. But the process is accelerating, and more than three-quarters of that acceleration since 1993 is due to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the study shows.
Okay, but will this rise affect me in my lifetime, or can I safely ignore it and pass this problem off to the next generation like I plan on doing with the national debt?
The key difference between the two is that the national debt is little more than a pattern of bits on some spinning disks (as the GOP seems to have suddenly realized), whereas the rising sea levels are a serious physical threat (which they have unfortunately not yet realized).
Okay, but will this rise affect me in my lifetime, or can I safely ignore it and pass this problem off to the next generation like I plan on doing with the national debt?
Because people generally like living above water. Because there are existing places that will become untenable to maintain and/or unsafe with higher water levels and fixing that doesn't seem like a lot of fun.
There are are a whole lot more 'becauses' to add.
Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.
Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society.
...and so on... and finally:
Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Donald Trump claims global warming is a myth... and yet he's building sea walls for his golf resort in Ireland to protect it against the sea level rising!
He doesn't say it's a myth, he says it's a hoax.
He agrees that the climate is changing, but believes that it's not due to man-made changes in the environment.
Trump never said climate is changing, Kellyanne Conway claimed he believed that, which is completely in line with their standard practice of spinning Trump's outrageous statements into orthodox GOP doctrine.
Conway tells us nothing about what Trump believes, Trump is absolutely notorious for contradicting his administration's official positions, his spokespeople, and even himself.
Trump only ever has two kinds of comments about climate change, either some variation of "it's a hoax" or "it's cold, therefore no global warming!". The position you give Trump is something far more nuanced than he's ever expressed himself.
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It's not a lie if they admit to it. And it's not denialist if it's science. "Science based" isn't "OMG the satellite data doesn't fit the theory, let's change the satellite data". "Science based" means, lets find a model that fits the data and doesn't ignore inconvenient truths. But instead there's idiots like you that scream DENIALIST at the slightest suggestion that the 'cooked' data isn't necessarily being cooked correctly.
So let's recap:
On the one hand, FACT: land based temp measurements have been altered, and the original data lost/destroyed.
FACT: satellite sea temperature measurements don't jive up with measurements at sea on a heat-retaining boats, so some people have decided to change the satellite data, not the data most likely to be wrong.
Just a day ago there was a story about one island getting bigger instead of sinking. Even though the possible explanation (bad weather, you know like the kind of thing global warming might cause, bringing extra sediment to the shore) but I noticed how quickly some idiots like you jumped to call it a denialist story.
There are real factors that need to be taken into account into temperature readings. Like for example, temperature shifts being affected by things like Global Dimming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming. So maybe global warming has been going on for a while, but global dimming was hiding the effects, and now all of a sudden that we're cleaning up the cause of global dimming, and it's putting an artificial slope on the temperature rise.
But it seems like the narrative of 'Things are Bad Bad Bad' is too important to factor in any diminishing factors, or question that the data wasn't cooked 100% the right way. You've joined a religion, I'm going to stick to science.
Then you're an idiot. I'm not talking about individuals. This is government debt, and the government itself defines the meaning of those bits arbitrarily.
All across the political spectrum, the American people seem to be convinced that they are entitled to more government services than they are willing to explicitly pay for. If the current "pyramid scheme" strategy ever stops working, there are plenty of other avenues the government can use to simply redefine or restrict what that debt value means.
Meanwhile, the actual physical sea level just keeps rising. Ironically, if the worst case scenarios do pan out, the government would probably take on scores of trillions of dollars in additional debt in futile attempts at keeping our coastal cities habitable.
I just read the abstract. As I understand it, they have 25 data years of very noisy data. Based on this data, they have deduced a quadratic equation (think: upward-curving parabola). They then state: "simple extrapolation of the quadratic implies global mean sea level could rise 65 ± 12 cm by 2100".
Of course, extrapolation of a quadratic leads to massive increases in the Y-value. Any kid doing 9th grade geometry learns that. The question is: Why should we believe that this quadratic equation - derived from so few data points - is accurate, and wil continue unabated into the future?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
There is a gran of truth in what he says. The grain of truth is that shifting climate will make arable terrain less arable, and will open to potential moderate climate terrain which was not arable or is poor. So shifting climate may actually reduce globally the amount of field which are good for agriculture. Nothing to do with evolution.... Just with simply top earth quality for what we currently grow. As for your kip about a repeat of 2017: actually 2017 and the last 3 or 4 decade are decades where there was the LEAST amount of war, compared to last centuries... As for population upheaval , the same can be said qualitatively. 2017 forced mirgation is nothing to compare if whole frigging region decide to go north or south because their agriculture is in the shitter , in say 75 or 100 years.
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Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.
Right ... that's why there aren't any European plants growing in the Americas. Because we can't just go ahead and plant them; no, they have to evolve first.
Just because some plants do well in a non-native habitat it doesn't not follow that most plants (particularly crops) can effectively adapt to a very different climate, or equivalent farmland can be found in another region.
Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society. ...and so on... and finally:
Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.
So ... basically a repeat of 2017?
Quelle horreur.
Americans experienced a mild increase in Muslim migration and a drug epidemic and elected a demagogue Trump, one of the major riots leading up to the French Revolution was caused by a flour shortage, German's experienced massive reparations after WWI and elected Hitler, Russians got hammered in WWI and had the October Revolution, etc, etc.
In fact, high food prices were one of the causes of the Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring combined with the Iraq War caused the migrant crisis in Europe which is another factor that elected Trump and scared Britain out of the EU. And the Arab Spring looks a lot like the mass migrations you'll see when Climate Change starts to kick in (and the equivalent South American migration into the US).
It's not a complex formula. When populations are stressed they lash out, they either riot and or elect leaders who raise a ruckus on their behalf. And climate change causes a lot of stress.
I stole this Sig
To deny that there are clear cut benefits to global warning is asinine. My country for example is looking at massively increased agricultural production and reduced costs associated with extreme cold winters.
Negatives? Weather patterns become more extreme, so more repairs to infrastructure will be needed. Former is huge for nation's GDP. Latter is tiny in comparison. Add to that the fact that like most nations that sat under the ice during ice age, our land is rising out of the sea faster than sea is rising, there are clear benefits even on local level.
And then there's the whole "new paths for maritime travel" aspect which is bound to increase efficiency by a significant margin.
That's why catastrophism folks like you espouse is just as dangerous as "global warning isn't happening" BS. Both are equally wrong, and both turn people from the sane actions that we actually need to take to make our transition to existing in a slowly but surely warming climate and all changes that brings with it.
Instead we get "we should do nothing" and "we should do everything" idiocy on each side. When sanity is off the table at the start, and all you have is crazy partisans on each side debunking each other's idiocy, no actual discussion on what should be done can take place.