Today’s scary story
(CBS) Rising sea levels have been mostly measured in inches in the past decades, but scientists said they could increase more than 20 feet in the future as global warming continues to melt ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
The dire projections are based on a look back at the climate record, with scientists finding that increases of 20 feet have happened at least twice over the past 3 million years when temperatures were very similar to what they are today.
If similar increases were seen across the globe, that could put tens of millions of people living in coastal communities from New York to Miami to Bangkok at risk of storm surges and increased flooding. Even NASA is fearing its launch pads could be threatened by climate change.
Many of these coastal communities are already seeing increased flooding – and that is just from global sea levels rising around 8 inches since 1880. Records also indicate the rate of sea level rise has intensified since the 1990s.
Eight inches of sea rise over a period of 135 years is actually well below what should be expected during a Holocene warm period, looking at the average of 6-8 inches of rise per century over the last 7,000 years. Remember, cool periods last longer, meaning sea rise would be lower than the average, and even negative, hence, to make the average, warm periods, which have typically been shorter than the cool periods, must have much higher sea rise.
But, hey, this is about Scaring People, so, reality need no intrude, and this is totally going to happen In The Future, you guys!
“Modern atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are today equivalent to those about 3 million years ago, when sea level was at least 6 meters higher because the ice sheets were greatly reduced,” he said. “It takes time for the warming to whittle down the ice sheets but it doesn’t take forever. There is evidence that we are likely seeing that transformation begin to take place now.”
OK. So, what caused that in the past? If you say “nature, of course”, then why can’t nature be the primary driver now?
“As the planet warms, the poles warm even faster, raising important questions about how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will respond,” Dutton said. “While this amount of sea-level rise will not happen overnight, it is sobering to realize how sensitive the polar ice sheets are to temperatures that we are on path to reach within decades.”
Strange, since Antarctica is not warming. The amount of Arctic ice has been getting bigger and bigger over the past few years. Greenland is not melting down. And, still, there is no proof, just conjecture and stale talking points, that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for the current warm period.
Anyhow, I see that Anthony Watts took a stab at the “science” surround this pronouncement of doom. Really, though, this goes directly to
Dutton said understanding the response of the ice sheets “will be very important to guide policy makers or inform decisions on mitigating sea level rise.”
“One of the most burning questions for policy makers is how fast sea levels will rise,” she told CBS News. “We want to know will sea levels rise gradually as ice sheets retreat or will they rise very suddenly due to rapid ice sheet collapse? That is a fundamental question that we are trying to get at by looking at the past records.”
Yeah, this is all about getting Government to Do Something, which means forcing citizens to act like it’s a crisis, something Warmists refuse to do now, despite their dire prognostications.
