sea level rise

Fears About Ice Sheets Melting

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By William Ward – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The world is drowning in articles about catastrophic sea level rise (SLR), reminding us that if the ice sheets melt, 260 feet of water will flood our coastal cities. We know that sea level today is 20-30 feet lower than it was at the end of the last interglacial period 120,000 years ago. We also know that sea level has risen 430 feet since the end of the last glacial maximum 22,000 years ago. Research shows this rise was not monotonic but oscillatory, and during periods over the past 10,000 years, sea level has been several meters higher than today. So, evidence supports the possibility of higher sea levels, but does the evidence support the possibility of catastrophic sea level rise from rapidly melting ice?

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #356

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The Week That Was: April 13, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Number of the Week: 2 inches per century?

Ignorance of History: Since its Third Assessment Report (AR3 or TAR) the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has tried to suppress history. It featured Mr. Mann’s infamous “hockey-stick” showing that in the Northern Hemisphere the Earth’s surface temperature was cold with some variation from 1000 AD until the late 1800s. Afterwards temperatures rose significantly with increasing human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). (Summary for Policymakers, p 3, 2001) The “hockey-stick” has been thoroughly discredited, but not withdrawn.

Assume for a moment that the claim is correct and the industrial revolution with its CO2 emissions caused the earth to warm. Humanity is far better off than it was before. Prior to the industrial revolution, many parts of the globe were in the grips of a little ice age.

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30 Years of NOAA Tide Gauge Data Debunk 1988 Senate Hearing

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

NOAA has updated its coastal tide gauge measurement data through year 2018 with this update now providing 30 years of actual data since the infamous 1988 Senate hearings that launched the U.S. climate alarmist political propaganda campaign.

In June of 1988 testimony was provided before Congress by various scientists, including NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, claiming that man made greenhouse gas emissions were responsible for increasing global temperatures with the New York Times reporting, “Global Warming Has Begun, Experts Tells Senate”.

The Times article noted that “The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century. Scientists have already detected a slight rise in sea levels.”

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Antarctica and “Alarming” Sea Level Rise

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By Rud Istvan – Re-Blogged From WUWT

WUWT reader KS of North Dakota emailed a request to ctm based on reading ‘alarming’ Wired journalism concerning $50 million being spent to further study the ‘dangerous’ Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. KS asked if WUWT could perhaps produce a factual overview. ctm asked me to provide it, since I had written an extensive essay ‘Tipping Points’ in ebook Blowing Smoke on this very sea level rise (SLR) subject (and more). What follows is a lightly rewritten and slightly expanded/updated excerpt for KS and the rest of WUWT.

There are only three ice sheets in the world with the potential to accelerate SLR to alarming levels: Greenland, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

In ‘theory’ Greenland could melt, since there is observed summer melting. It cannot calve (slide into) into the sea (although there are fringe glaciers like Jacobshaven that do, the Titanic sinking being evidence) because Greenland is bowl shaped. At the observed average annual ice mass loss of the past ~2.5 decades (from 1990) Greenland would theoretically take 27000 years to melt. At the ice mass loss rate since 2000, it would only take 14000 years and would increase SLR by a distinctly unalarming ~0.5mm/yr. In reality, given Greenland’s latitude and central ice sheet elevation, melting is impossible—as ice cores reaching back to the Eemian prove. Calculations and references behind this brief summary are provided in ‘Tipping Points’.

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The Clever Ruse of Rising Sea Levels

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By Jay Lehr and Tom Harris – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Alarmists try to frighten people, and stampede them into terrible energy decisions

For the past 50 years, scientists have been studying climate change and the possibility of related sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans. Despite the common belief that increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere could result in catastrophic sea level rise, there is no evidence to support this fear. Tax monies spent trying to solve this non-existent problem are a complete waste.

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Sea Level Rise Preparation Plan Puts Pacifica Property Owners on Edge

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By Brooks Jarosz – Re-Blogged From KTVU

The Fairway Park West neighborhood in Pacifica has been the place Jeff Guillet and his family have called home for nearly a decade, but he’s concerned his property and its value could soon be at risk with the passage of a new coastal plan.

The City of Pacifica is working on updating the Local Coastal Program plan or LCP, which includes preparing for sea level rise over the next 50 to 100 years. It involves making tough decisions to prepare for the worst case scenario. Guillet claims his entire neighborhood is located in a hazard zone, made up of any land west of Highway 1 in Pacifica.

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‘Global Warming for the Two Cultures’

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By Dr. Richard Lindzen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Over half a century ago, C.P. Snow (a novelist and English physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government) famously examined the implications of ‘two cultures’:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.

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