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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Mar 16th, 2009 07:18 am |
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Sea levels rising twice as fast as predicted Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica force UN scientists to issue dramatic warning
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Sea levels are predicted to rise twice as fast as was forecast by the United Nations only two years ago, threatening hundreds of millions of people with catastrophe, scientists said yesterday in a dramatic new warning about climate change. Rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to push up sea levels by a metre or more by 2100, swamping coastal cities and obliterating the living space of 600 million people who live in deltas, low-lying areas and small island states.
Low-lying countries with increasing populations, such as Bangladesh, Burma and Egypt, could see large parts of their surface areas vanish. Experts in Bangladesh estimate that a one-metre rise in sea levels would swamp 17 per cent of the country's land mass. Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, where 12,000 people live just a few feet above sea level, and the Maldives, would face complete obliteration.
Even Britain could face real challenges in lower-lying areas along the east coast, from Lincolnshire to the Thames estuary, with a much greater risk of catastrophic "storm surges" such as the great flood of 1953 that killed 307 people.
Yesterday's urgent wake-up call to governments about global warming – telling them the data on which they are basing their official advice is flawed – came from four scientists from the US, Australia, France and Germany, who gave a press conference at a scientific meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Professor Konrad Steffen, from the University of Colorado, Dr John Church, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Tasmania, Dr Eric Rignot, of Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, and Professor Stefan Rahmsdorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, are all experts in sea-level rise. Their views represent the mainstream opinion of researchers in the field, taking account of the most recent data.
Only two years ago, the UN's Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its Fourth Assessment Report, or AR4, that the worst-case prediction for global sea-level rise was 59cm by 2100. But the scientists in Copenhagen suggested that the 2007 report was a drastic underestimation of the problem, and that oceans were likely to rise twice as fast.
Yesterday's meeting was a scientific overture to the global conference on climate change, which takes place in the Danish capital in December. The four researchers underlined how critical it is that world leaders act to slash the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from industry and transport which are causing the atmosphere to overheat.
Advance negotiations begin in three weeks in Bonn. On pages 20 and 21, we illustrate in detail just how great the task is, profiling the main emitters of CO2 and what they are doing – or not doing – to cut back. Yesterday's alarm call was clearly intended to inject more urgency into the process.
Rising sea levels are caused by the thermal expansion of the ocean – where water increases in volume as it warms. But although the melting of ice already floating in the sea does not add to the level, because it is already displacing its own mass, melting into the sea of land-based ice most definitely does.
It is the accelerated melting of the vast, land-based ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, caused by rapidly rising temperatures at high latitudes, which is now speeding up the increase beyond anything previously forecast. The Greenland ice sheet, in particular, is not simply melting but melting "dynamically" – that is, it is collapsing in parts as meltwater seeps down through crevices and speeds up its disintegration. Critically, the four scientists said, this process was not taken into account in the AR4 report, leading to estimates of sea-level increase which were far too low.
They revealed remarkable figures showing just how fast it is now happening. Professor Steffen said Greenland was losing 200 to 300 cubic-kilometres of ice into the sea each year – about the same amount as all the ice in Arctic Europe. This on its own is causing the global sea level to rise by more than a millimetre a year, he added, whereas a decade ago Greenland's contribution to sea level rise was non-existent.
Dr Church said that the most recent satellite and in situ data showed seas were now rising by more than 3mm a year – more than 50 per cent faster than the average for the 20th century.
"As a result of improved estimates of the observed rise, the thermal expansion, the melting of the glaciers and of the ice sheets, we now have a much better quantitive understanding of why sea level is rising," he said. "Without significant, urgent and sustained emissions reductions, we will cross a threshold which will lead to continuing sea level rise of metres."
Professor Steffen added: "What we have learnt in the past three or four years is that the ice dynamic is much stronger than the models indicated, and the prediction has to be revised up to a metre or more – which is enormous if you look at the impact."
Britain's Environment Agency was apparently unique when it discarded the IPCC's 2007 advice as flawed. Based on its own estimates, it is planning flood defences for 2100 on the basis of a one-metre rise in sea levels – with a "worst-case scenario" of 2.7 metres.
"These startling new predictions spell disaster for millions of the world's poorest people," said Rob Bailey, Oxfam's policy adviser on climate change. "Poor coastal communities in countries such as Bangladesh are already struggling to cope with a changing climate, and it can only get worse. This must be a wake-up call for rich countries who are not doing anywhere near enough to prevent these cataclysmic predictions from becoming a reality."
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Merlin
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Posted: Tue Mar 17th, 2009 02:48 am |
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That article was followed 1 day later by this:
 A new Gallup poll shows public skepticism over global warming is increasing.
According to a report published on Gallup.com, Americans are becoming less worried over climate change. The Gallup poll found that a record-high 41 percent now believe that climate change is "exaggerated," with the most cynicism coming from Americans age 30 and up. The survey also shows that more Americans doubt that alleged global warming has had an effect on the current climate.
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Torquemada
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Posted: Wed Mar 18th, 2009 02:45 am |
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| Sweet. Cya later San Francisco!
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christdependent
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Posted: Wed Mar 18th, 2009 04:07 am |
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Torquemada wrote: Sweet. Cya later San Francisco!
See you later sodomaters!
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Merlin
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Posted: Wed Mar 18th, 2009 04:52 am |
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See you later sodomaters!
Are you talking to Yoda? That thing about cruising the gay chat was probably just a joke.
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christdependent
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Posted: Wed Mar 18th, 2009 05:37 am |
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Merlin wrote: Are you talking to Yoda?
No-duh.
I'm talking to the freeks in Frisco.
That thing about cruising the gay chat was probably just a joke.
Oh, "probably",...yeah and Quentin Crisp was just an act.
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stiggywiggy
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Posted: Mon Mar 23rd, 2009 04:37 am |
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You are aware of course that any one of us here could spend the next several days cutting and pasting web info from PHDs of all stripes who claim the precise opposite: that global warming is a crock. When we got to 10,000, I doubt we'd have scratched the surface.
Of course, you could do the same with your side. No one here at AARM is a climatologist, nor a meterologist, nor a geologist, nor an oceanographer. So we all have to rely on so-called "experts." Is there any reason that you have a higher regard for the expertise of the few scientists quoted by Michael McCarthy (who?) than you do for the multitude of other scientists who refute what these guys claim?
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Pastor John
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Posted: Mon Mar 23rd, 2009 04:56 am |
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Yeah. Let's talk about the dinosaurs. I hear they found one down in Guatemala.
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Merlin
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Posted: Mon Mar 23rd, 2009 06:40 am |
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scientists who refute what these guys claim?
Here's your chance, stiggy: find one scientist who refutes the claim that ocean levels aren't rising because the polar ice caps are melting.
Last edited on Mon Mar 23rd, 2009 06:41 am by Merlin
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AyHyperbole
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Posted: Thu Mar 26th, 2009 08:14 pm |
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Merlin wrote: scientists who refute what these guys claim?
Here's your chance, stiggy: find one scientist who refutes the claim that ocean levels aren't rising because the polar ice caps are melting.
I don't think you'll find that, but that's not the minority argument.
The minority argument is that the polar ice caps are melting because of a cyclical variation in solar activity rather than as a result of human activity.
But this is a small minority. A formal survey of climatologists who are actively publishing their research taken just this year reports that 97% of them have concluded that global warming exists and that its primary cause is human activity.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php
97%, by the way, is 75 out of 77. Climatologists actively performing research on climate change are a fairly small international community.
And when you consider that the dissent amounts to exactly two people: well, it's possible that they're geniuses ahead of their time, but it seems more likely that they're sloppy scientists on someone's payroll.
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AyHyperbole
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Posted: Thu Mar 26th, 2009 08:24 pm |
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AyHyperbole wrote: And when you consider that the dissent amounts to exactly two people: well, it's possible that they're geniuses ahead of their time, but it seems more likely that they're sloppy scientists on someone's payroll.
Just to quote my post...
Although the study kept the names of the surveyed scientists private, it looks pretty likely that the two dissidents we're talking about are Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer.
Lindzen, from what I've read, does appear to be a qualified, independent scientist. He might be characterized as an incredibly cautious scientist - he has a far higher standard of proof than most people.
Which means he's often just about the last to accept what everyone else has already concluded. For example, Lindzen is also one of the last remaining scientists to argue that cigarette smoking is not necessarily a cause of lung cancer, pointing to flaws in the literature on the risks of tobacco.
Roy Spencer, similarly, rejects the scientific consensus on more issues than global warming: he's a proponent of intelligent design theory.
These two men are pretty much all by themselves the entirety of the dissent among publishing climate change researchers.
Last edited on Fri Mar 27th, 2009 01:16 am by AyHyperbole
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Aldaron
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 12:32 am |
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So, basically, we have one guy who thinks cigarette smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, and another who tosses aside evolution for intelligent design.
And people want us to listen to these guys??
Hey, maybe we can get the guy who thinks stars run on electricity (Scott, I think), South Africa's president Mbeki, who reckons HIV doesn't cause AIDS (but poverty does), and team them up with Daniel, who thinks quantum physics is made-up bullshit...
Then we'd have 5 for 5...
Last edited on Fri Mar 27th, 2009 12:35 am by Aldaron
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NorrinRadd
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 03:17 am |
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Aldaron wrote: ... the guy who thinks stars run on electricity (Scott, I think)...
This? Interesting in its way.
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Carol2
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 03:36 am |
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That is an interesting link. Thanks, Wayne. 
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
—Hilaire Belloc
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Aldaron
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 03:57 am |
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Actually, THIS is the one I was thinking of, but your link was quite curious as well.
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yoki
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 02:32 pm |
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But getting back on topic...
I wonder what caused the mini ice age about 600 years ago? Lack of carbon emmissions from fossil fuel consumption?
At least the scientific community has its own apocalyptic scenario in place now.
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Aldaron
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Posted: Fri Mar 27th, 2009 11:03 pm |
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I wonder what caused the mini ice age about 600 years ago? Lack of carbon emmissions from fossil fuel consumption?
You're probably close...one of the hypotheses on the Little Ice Age was that agricultural emissions (methane) and carbon emissions (fires) were down, and revegetation was up (resulting in more CO2 absorbed) thanks to a significant portion of Europe's population being wiped out by the Black Death. Coupled with volcanic activity and decreased solar emissions and you have more than enough for a "miniature nuclear winter".
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yoki
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Posted: Sat Mar 28th, 2009 04:46 pm |
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Aldaron wrote: I wonder what caused the mini ice age about 600 years ago? Lack of carbon emmissions from fossil fuel consumption?
You're probably close...one of the hypotheses on the Little Ice Age was that agricultural emissions (methane) and carbon emissions (fires) were down, and revegetation was up (resulting in more CO2 absorbed) thanks to a significant portion of Europe's population being wiped out by the Black Death. Coupled with volcanic activity and decreased solar emissions and you have more than enough for a "miniature nuclear winter".
Gawd we are an arrogant lot, don't ya think? We even have theories as to how human beings caused major climatic changes throughout history. Methinks our arrogance might even exceed Jehovah's... but then, I guess that is where he got his.
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AyHyperbole
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Posted: Sat Mar 28th, 2009 05:34 pm |
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yoki wrote: Aldaron wrote: I wonder what caused the mini ice age about 600 years ago? Lack of carbon emmissions from fossil fuel consumption?
You're probably close...one of the hypotheses on the Little Ice Age was that agricultural emissions (methane) and carbon emissions (fires) were down, and revegetation was up (resulting in more CO2 absorbed) thanks to a significant portion of Europe's population being wiped out by the Black Death. Coupled with volcanic activity and decreased solar emissions and you have more than enough for a "miniature nuclear winter".
Gawd we are an arrogant lot, don't ya think? We even have theories as to how human beings caused major climatic changes throughout history. Methinks our arrogance might even exceed Jehovah's... but then, I guess that is where he got his.
Deforestation isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Slash and burn agriculture started at least 9,000 years ago. The vast majority of the deforestation of Europe took place between 1250 and 1500.
And I don't think it's "arrogant" to posit that cutting down enormous swaths of trees and setting them on fire would change the composition of the atmosphere. I think it's only logical.
Last edited on Sat Mar 28th, 2009 05:34 pm by AyHyperbole
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prodomal
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Posted: Sat Mar 28th, 2009 09:28 pm |
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AyHyperbole wrote: ..... I think it's only logical.
Not to mention factual. 
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