Posted on 12/31/2005 6:28:17 PM PST by Coleus
Global warming doubles rate of ocean rise Rutgers-led team shows rising ocean levels tied to human-induced climate change Global ocean levels are rising twice as fast today as they were 150 years ago, and human-induced warming appears to be the culprit, say scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and collaborating institutions. While the speed at which the ocean is rising – almost two millimeters per year today compared to one millimeter annually for the past several thousand years – may not be fodder for the next disaster movie, it affirms scientific concerns of accelerated global warming.
In an article published in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Science, Rutgers professor of geological sciences Kenneth G. Miller reports on a new record of sea level change during the past 100 million years based on drilling studies along the New Jersey coast. The findings establish a steady millimeter-per-year rise from 5,000 years ago until about 200 years ago.
In contrast, sea-level measurements since 1850 from tidal gauges and more recently from satellite images, when corrected for land settling along the shoreline, reveal the current two-millimeter annual rise. "Without reliable information on how sea levels had changed before we had our new measures, we couldn't be sure the current rate wasn't happening all along," said Miller. "Now, with solid historical data, we know it is definitely a recent phenomenon.
"The main thing that's changed since the 19th century and the beginning of modern observation has been the widespread increase in fossil fuel use and more greenhouse gases," he added. "Our record therefore provides a new and reliable baseline to use in addressing global warming."
The new sea level record spanning 100 million years of geologic time is the first comprehensive one scientists have produced since a commercial research endeavor in 1987, which, according to Miller, was not fully documented and verifiable.
The findings by Miller's team argue against some widely held tenets of geological science. Miller claims, for example, that ocean heights 100 million years ago and earlier were 150 to 200 meters lower than scientists had previously thought. Changes at these levels can only be caused by the Earth's crust shifting on the ocean floor. Miller's findings, therefore, imply less ocean-crust production than scientists had widely assumed.
During the Late Cretaceous period (the most recent age of dinosaurs), frequent sea-level fluctuations of tens of meters suggest that the Earth was not always ice-free as previously assumed. Ice-volume changes are the only way that sea levels could change at these rates and levels, Miller claims. This suggests small- to medium-sized but short-lived ice sheets in the Antarctic region, and casts doubt whether any of the Earth's warmer eras were fully ice-free.
Miller's team took five 500-meter-deep core samples of sediments onshore along New Jersey's coastline from Cape May to Sandy Hook. The scientists examined the sediment type, fossils, and variations in isotopes, or different forms of the same elements, at different levels in the cores they extracted. Miller also correlated these measurements with others from throughout the world to substantiate the global nature of their record.
### The Rutgers study included participants from the New Jersey Geological Survey, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Western Michigan University, the University of Oregon and Queens College in Flushing, N.Y. The National Science Foundation provided major funding for the study.
Read it again, that's exactly how it was when I was younger.
I have no idea how old you are or how good your memory is but it was a far superior system. Lawyers weren't allowed to protect idiots from their own actions.
Consumer protection flat stinks.
In each example, there is a theft, a crime and a taking from the unimpeded economy an amount of money to a specific entity who is not entitled to it. In fact, the gun toting robber is at least honest in what he is representing as to his action; he knows he's a thief and lets the rest of the world know the same.
Contrariwise, the corporate officers scheming to steal these consumers' millions to enhance their bottom line are sneak thieves, liars while pretending to be righteous and upright citizens and providers of jobs that add to the community and our commercial health; when, in fact, they're not.
A single day's exposure to the litany of evil acts engaged in by those commercial ventures who believe it's their privilege to steal from consumers and lie about it would illustrate to any doubting person the value of consumer protection from these scoundrels.
Of course, if one believes that it's OK for thieving enterprises to steal from an unknowing public, then, so be it. I cannot control nor can I explain irrationality.
Anyone stupid enoudgh to get had deserves it!
Articulate and cogently said.
Congratulations!
By scientists.
You make no sense.
You know the IPCC assessment backs itself up with peer reviewed literature too, so should I believe that as well?
Everything I need to know about Crichton's (lack of) authority on science I learnt from his lecture: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
Some of the worst logical arguments I have ever read. The problem I have with crichton is that he seems to have some anti-science streak. I read his book Prey. Okay it's reasonable science fiction although gets a bit proposterous in the end - more fiction than science. My gripe was that he didn't realise it was total fiction and instead was trying to make "a serious point", as if his fiction was some kind of eye opener that we should know about. All his books that I know are about scientists getting out of control with dark agendas and how we should fear what they are up to. It's like when hollywood stars think their dumb movies make some serious real world point. They don't.
Climatologists are not meteorologists. Weather events are caused by variability in the ongoing flow of Earth's atmosphere, so weather models are based on fluid dynamics calculations. Climatology uses General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are based on energy and material fluxes between the upper and lower atmosphere, the surface, and the oceans.
So you have to learn to blame the right people!
Ice Sheets Caused Massive Sea LevelLed by Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University, the scientists examined cores from Ocean Drilling Program Leg 174AX, an onshore extension of an offshore expedition. They found indications that sea level changes were large (more than 25 meters) and rapid (occurring on scales ranging from thousands to less than a million years) during the Late Cretaceous greenhouse world (99- 65 million years ago)... Analyses indicate minimal tectonic effects on the New Jersey Coastal Plain at this time, the scientists say. The other explanation for such large, rapid changes is the waxing and waning of large continental ice sheets, they maintain. What is perplexing, however, is that such large and rapid sea-level changes occurred during an interval thought to be ice free... The scientists propose that the ice sheets were restricted in area to Antarctica and were ephemeral. The ice sheets would not have reached the Antarctic coast, explaining the relative warmth in Antarctica, but still could significantly alter global sea level.
Change During Late Cretaceous
(Period was previously
thought to be ice-free)
National Science Foundation
February 27, 2004
Last Updated: December 8, 2004
I smell pure unadulterated BS with this claim, given the marked periods of warming and cooling that happened during that time period.
To put this in perspective if true, there are 25.4 millimeters to one inch. Roughly, it would take, at 2 mm a year, 12 years to rise one foot. I find it hard to believe that the ocean has been rising for past several thousand years at least 1 mm per year. In 2000 years at 1 mm per year, that would amount to an 80 foot rise. Am I missing something here?
Sorry, but no, Dr. Crichton is quite a bit higher in stature than Mikey Moore. He actually had the education and does the research.
Read up on him a bit perhaps.
Actually about 12 years to rise one inch. 2 mm/year x 12years = 24mm....just shy of an inch.
Stand corrected.
I have "read up on him"
btw that post of mine was 11 months old. Confused me a little as I couldn't remember posting it
"...What is perplexing, however, is that such large and rapid sea-level changes occurred during an interval thought to be ice free..."
I would be more than 'perplexed' !
GREENLAND: Of its 840,000 square miles of surface, over 700,000 are covered with an immense mountain of ice that leaves free only the coastal fringes. The thickness of the ice is measured by listening to the echo that comes from the bedrock when a detonation is set off on top of the ice. It is found to be over six thousand feet thick.
"For a long time it was the belief of many that a large region in the interior of Greenland was free of ice, and was perhaps inhabited. It was in part to solve this problem that Baron (N.A.E.) Nordenskjold set out on his expedition of 1883."
He ascended from the icecap from Disco Bay (latitude 69) and went eastward for eighteen days across the ice field. "Rivers were flowing in channels upon the surface like those cut on land...only that the pure blue of the ice-walls was, by comparison, infinitely more beautiful. These rivers were not, however, perfectly continuous. After flowing for a distance in the channels on the surface, they, one and all, plunged with deafening roar into some yawning crevasse, to find their way to the sea through subglacial channels. Numerous lakes with shores of ice were also encountered."
"On bending down the ear to the ice," wrote the explorer, "we could hear on every side a peculiar subterranean hum, proceeding from rivers flowing within the ice; and occasionally a loud single report like that of a cannon gave notice of the formation of a new glacier-cleft...In the afternoon we saw at some distance from us a well-defined pillar of mist which, when we approached it, appeared to arise from a bottomless abyss, into which a mighty glacier-river fell. The vast roaring water-mass had bored for itself a vertical hole, probably down to the rock, certainly more than 2,000 feet beneath, on which the glacier rested."
The Ice Age survived in Greenland. This arctic island reveals how vast continental areas looked in the past. However, it does not explain how ice could have covered British Guiana or Madagascar in the tropics. And what is no less surprising, the northern part of Greenland, according to the concerted opinion of glaciologists, was never glaciated...
from Earth In Upheaval.
Immanuel Velikovsky.
There has been no significant rise in sea level in 150 years; however, it's not too strange if there had been, because the Little Ice Age ended about 1850. :')
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