Posted on 01/26/2017 2:45:51 AM PST by raybbr
Miami (AFP) - In the last days of Barack Obama's administration, US government scientists warned even more sea level rise is expected by century's end than previously estimated, due to rapid ice sheet melting at the poles.
The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) set the "extreme" scenario of global average sea level rise by 2100 to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters), up half a meter from the last estimate issued in 2012.
"We raised the upper limit of our scenarios," lead author William Sweet told AFP.
"It is possible. It has a very low probability. But we can't discount it entirely."
The figures are among the highest ever issued by the US government, and take into account new scientific studies on the disappearing ice cover in Greenland and Antarctica.
"Recent (scientific) results regarding Antarctic ice sheet instability indicate that such outcomes may be more likely than previously thought," said the report, released on January 19.
It also revised the lower end of the anticipated range, saying nearly one foot (0.3 meters) is expected by 2100, up from four inches (0.1 meters) previously.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
"It is possible. It has a very low probability. But we can't discount it entirely."
Indeed, I did. I even got a Ph.D. by shoving all that sciency stuff in my head.
He, like the DNC, fails because on not being honest.
By weight, Ice takes up more space than the same amount of water. Displacement is why it floats in addition to air bubbles and the like. If the ice on the water melts, the ocean levels would drop.
If all the ice in the world melts we are all dead because that means the earth in the temperate zones is probably 200 degrees, to get BOTH poles above freezing, so let’s not worry ourselves about that happening.
Thank you. The statement as written didn’t make a lot of sense, but it seemed that it was based on something. I mean, the concept was sufficiently complex that it didn’t seem likely that it just bubbled up out of stupid.
So during the last ice age everything was heavier, lighter, or weighed the same?
“new scientific studies on the disappearing ice cover in Greenland and Antarctica.”
Something you rarely hear mentioned is the fact that, as glacial ice melts (due, almost certainly, 95-100% to natural causes) it exposes more and more of the darker ground underneath, which in turn absorbs sunlight/heat, thereby speeding up the process, as opposed to reflecting it as the white ice does. In other words, it is not a linear process.
"The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic."
The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self- sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
"A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3 percent between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases - all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, "is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve.
But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
The Cooling World:
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Original Newsweek article with scary maps and graphs:
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
The Greenland Ice Sheet is about sea level.
OTOH, the land ice, which will affect sea levels as it melts, is very thick in places with great mass/weight that presses down the earths surface, which will spring back as the ice melts.
JASON satellites are use to study ocean topography and GRACE is use to study mass and gravity.
I luv this racket (and it IS a racket) where these scientists make Pollyanna-ish predictions that are so far out in the future that:
1. No one will remember it (in 2100)
2. No one will attribute it to them (when it doesn’t happen)
3. It won’t decrease their current funding. If anything, it creates lots of news buzz now to stimulate their funding.
“US government scientists warned even more sea level rise is expected by century’s end than previously estimated, “
There’s no doubt the sea level will rise but it won’t be coming from the ice sheets. The Mississippi river alone dumps over 550 million tons of sediment into the ocean yearly. Add the smaller rivers, streams, and beach erosion and your probably looking at over a billion tons a year and that’s just the US. The earth is a closed loop system, any sediment deposited in the ocean displaces water causing it to rise and expand out. Just like my stock tanks do about every 10 years causing me to have to dredge them out. Now to get way out there we can bring in earths contraction as it cools and the effect that has at the surface.
You have the /s tag, but I read this very theory put forth by a climate 'scientist' who suggested global warming will lead to cooling. Covering all his bases.
If this were true...people all across the Pacific coast region would be selling their homes. Same in Florida. Yet? We see nothing to demonstrate people believe this wild chatter.
"The mid-ocean ridges of the world are connected and form the Ocean Ridge, a single global mid-oceanic ridge system that is part of every ocean, making it the longest mountain range in the world. The continuous mountain range is 40,400 mi long (several times longer than the Andes, the longest continental mountain range), and the total length of the oceanic ridge system is 49,700 mi long.[2]"--Wikipedia
Ever since the hotels on Miami Beach flooded out, I’ve been a believer in man made global warming. Oh, wait! What?
Place an ice cube in a glass of water. When the ice melts the level of water remains the same. (True, look it up)
Melting the Arctic ice will not affect the ocean level, it is floating like the ice cube. Antarctic ice is supported by land, so melting that would raise the ocean level.
“We raised the upper limit of our scenarios,” lead” translation “our predictions are getting worse not better”
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