The BBC has perfected the use of weasel words to create alarm. They have a lead story today :
The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated.
Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft).
“It has been hypothesised for more than 30 years now that the WAIS is inherently unstable,” he explained.
And how many other global catastrophes have been forecast over the last 30 years? Seems like a new one nearly every week. The article goes on –
“A sea level rise of just 1.5m would displace 17 million people in Bangladesh alone,”
But the author wants us to worry about 200 years from now.
In other words, if the global average was one metre, then places like New York could expect to see a rise of 1.25m. Responding to Professor Bamber’s paper in Science, British Antarctic Survey science leader Dr David Vaughan described the findings as “quite sound”. “But for me, the most crucial question is not solely about the total amount of ice in West Antarctica, because that might take several centuries to be lost to the ocean,” he told BBC News. “The crucial question is how much ice could be lost in 100-200 years; that’s the sea level rise we have to understand and plan for.”Even with this new assessment the loss of a fraction of WAIS over those timescales would have serious consequences and costs that we’ve only really just begun to understand.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WilkinsIceSheet/images/wilkins_avh_2007.jpg
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I sincerely hope that Lord Monckton will be given a role in the next British government, if only to rearrange the British Bare-faced-lying Corporation from the top down.
What an incredible decline in ethics for such a historically highly respected news organization.
Another “if things continue the way they are” story… Well, if things continue the way they are going now, we’ll be too stupid to reproduce by then. Problem solved.
Thanks, Steve. The actual story is even more offensive with its ‘scientific’ context. Are not the ice shelves actually floating? I can’t imagine the ice has the stuctural strength to support itself. So melting would be like the ice in a drink. Wait, though, maybe the southern ocean would get cold and desalinated enough to drive off the fish and the penguins would all starve. I knew there was something I could feel guilty about! end sarc
How sad. The BBC long ago lost any sense of scruples or integrity on the issue of man’s supposed impact on climate change.
They’re so totally in the tank for the alarmist camp now that facts no longer matter (see climateaudit re:Steig bogus analysis of Antarctic temp trends, or the Catlin follies, e.g.).
You cannot debate BBC logically any more than you can debate the Vatican about the existence of angels.
High priests, heaven and hell, mythical Eden, original sin, salvation through penitence and sacrifice – – – it’s all the same for the true believers.
There must be a couple of reporters who are beginning to feel the prickly heat of real-world facts who might start challenging the AGW dogma. But that takes cojones, no?
So a study is published supporting the idea that the effects of AGW might be less severe over a couple of centuries than previously imagined, and you’re condemning it?
Own goal.
“woulda,coulda,shouda”
what grandpa always said! lol
My mind boggles that so many
prognosticate about so much with so little knowledge;
that so many believe it is possible, even easy, to reduce CO2 emissions;
and that doing so will rapidly and materially drop CO2 concentration below some magic point;
and that so many believe doing so will solve most of the world’s ills no matter how tenuously they are connected to climate.
Here’s a thought: pick an issue you really care about and then go try to solve it directly. Do people need clean water? How do you produce it and deliver it? More and better food? Think about how you can do that tomorrow, next, month, and next year. Go do it. The list is endless and focusing on reducing CO2 isn’t helping anyone or anything nor is it about to.
“Coulda-woulda-shoulda” I call it. I like to watch for the hard-soft wording, such as: “… *will not* raise global sea levels as much as previous projections *suggest*…”, and “The *crucial* question is how much ice *could* be lost …” and to not belabor the point, “… *would* have *serious consequences* …”.
This stands out at me like red flags, but then I’m an Engineer.
The future will be much like today. Only longer.
Talk about a contradiction in terms – science by press release.
“It is possible that…”
“It is conceivable that at some point…”
“If current trends continue…”
“The latest projection seems to indicate…”
“While it is not possible to forecast, at some point in the future…”
This is the sort of garbage that says nothing while creating the illusion of danger and the need to act quickly. Even worse is that it can’t really be refuted. No solid objective evidence is presented with which to latch onto. Scenarios are created painting scenes of possibilities. AGW is like a herd of greased pigs. As soon as one grabs onto one slippery pig [fact] the movement trumpets other dangers. You can never seems to get it under control. It was sad to see SWPC play the same game in their press release on solar cycle 24 when they raised the alarm of a possible CME (coronal mass ejection); what should have been a minor footnote was turned into a major paragraph. Too many students with a communication major degree have taken over in the realm of science.
The antarctic is heading for winter anyway – it will be feezing up by now.
Yes, Yes and erosion and sediment deposits, typhoons, tsunamis and winds, rain, floods droughts and vegetation will reshape the river Deltas of the world over the next 200 years as well.
So you got a plan to stop that too? What about solving the continental drift problem, or the subduction issue while you are at it.
I know!!!! an electric car and a Carbon Tax will take care of all these issues!
What a pathetic attempt at a catastrophic future based on AGW theory. Where are the trillions dead, famine desease, cannibalism, wars, plagues and all the end of days stuff… 3 ft of water in couple hundred years…not even worthy of rebuttal.
AP put out a similar story,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520294,00.html
informing us that –
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet can be unstable and has long concerned researchers who fear it could collapse as a result of global warming. Previous studies had estimated that failure of the ice sheet, causing it to slide into the ocean, would raise global seas levels by 5-to-6 meters, or 16-to-19 feet.
but you don’t find out until paragraph 8 (of 10) :
How fast this might happen was unclear, but an earlier study suggested the melting could take 500 years, which would mean a sea level rise of about a quarter-inch a year.
That’s about twice the current natural rate, which would give us 10 feet a thousand years from now.
Makes it tough to sleep at night for worryin’.
This is like, as many 2 billion people will have died because of AGW in 150 years time, i am pretty sure that billions more will have died by that time of causes not related to AGW. A lot more.
By the way, asking about those weaselwords usually leave the AGW-zealots gasping for breath like a fish on dry land, basically you let them explain what might happen is because the trends of the models show a upward curve that might indicate a decrease in cloud coverage wich on its turn could result in rising temperatures and a downward trend in rainfall or something like that.
An old saying goes that “a fool can ask more questions than 10 wise man can answer”. And now we have educated fools who are asking questions to those who have obtained their much praised knowledge from the virtual realm and meaningless statistics.
I believe scientists have had proof that the WAIS is unstable for decades. They know that it collapses about every 100K years and it has been about 100K years since the last collapse.
The way I understand it is that during interglacial periods, water builds up under the sheet and acts as a lubricant. At some point it just slides downhill into the sea and starts forming again. Who knows, maybe THAT is the event that triggers the start of new ice ages. Dumping that much ice into the ocean all at once might act like an ice cube in a gin and tonic and cool the whole southern ocean down.
I was just talking about this with Omni here.
It seems like we get a climate hokum story every other day.
Always with the “maybe” in small print.
Pen Hadrow gets frozen off the ice, picked up by an airplane which wouldn’t have been able to land if their predictions were anywhere close to the truth, and the Beeb credulously reports the ice is thinning much more rapidly then even their worst fears. A bald faced lie.
And then the obligatory West Ant is going to melt story.
The latest in a never ending stream of bald faced lies, from the misinformation arm of the British government.
The US isn’t any better.
Look at the visuals you are forced to use to illustrate this post.
Steig etal. Another bald faced lie from a thoroughly documented liar.
We have to stop expecting these cretins to play it straight. It’s not going to happen.
Sure it’s fun carping on what a disgrace the Beeb is or how awful the Giss is, but that’s not going to get the job done.
This story about west Ant melting away is easily disproven – for us WUWT fanatics.
The rest of the world has a life.
It’s not so easy for them to tell the difference between what is likely and what is cowflop.
SO what do we do?
I’ll tell you what we shouldn’t do.
We shouldn’t be recycling the enemies lies for the sake of having a readily available visual aid.
In Antarctica the sea ice extent is above the 30 year average. Has been for several years.
Show us that picture.
Here. Show us this one.
Show it often so that other media will bump into it by accident. Because a picture is worth a thousand cartoonish Nature cover “maybes”.
And file Steig away as evidence for the coming climate fraud trials.
Antarctic sea ice extent seems like it is significantly above average:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
and possibly on the verge of record territory. Does anyone have a chart that shows the daily average Antarctic sea ice extent for the last 30 years? Are we close to record territory for this point in May?
It seems almost comical that the BBC has published an article about “what if Antarctic ice melts”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8050094.stm
when Antarctic sea ice extent may be verging on its greatest extent every measured by humans.
I’ve posted this link previously, but here is an article from back when the BBC was respected and had the courage and integrity to tell the British people the truth:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/56456.stm
Was there not a prediction that New York was going to be overflowing with horse manure before the advent of the automobile? The prediction was right, except it was at the BBC instead of in New York.
Recent research indicates it would take 1,000 years or more for the WAIS to melt:
Their results show that over the past 5 million years, the West Antarctic ice sheet transitioned between full, intermediate, and collapsed states in just a few thousand years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/edsumm/e090319-07.html
Great Post – Beautiful graphics
Hey, if all that ice is just going to “collapse” anyway, why not make use of it? I would bet people would pay quite a premium for a bottle of antarctic glacial water. Just set up a ship offshore that is a bottling factory and send crews on shore to “harvest” the ice before it has a chance to collapse. You could probably get $10 a bottle for it in the high-end joints. Maybe even vodka made from real antarctic glacial water. Call it Penguin brand!
Seriously, no sense in letting such a potential economic windfall go to waste!
I think my inner Ferengi is talking.
Scary stuff. And Steven Chu says flooding makes billions of people at risk. (I don’t know why, but I recall a story in my good old Bible.)
Related stuff: The possible collapse of the Wilkins ice shelf on the West Antarctica was recently subject for a study, and two examples of the report of this — including (the better) Dot Earth — is described here:
http://www.cejournal.net/?p=1428?????
The too alarming article says:
“Computer modeling of ice sheet behavior and the drilling data found that the ice shelves protecting the West Antarctic ice sheet could disappear in centuries and the majority of the ice sheet could collapse within a thousand years, said Naish.”
The Nature paper says:
“Transitions between glacial, intermediate and collapsed states are relatively rapid, taking one to several thousand years.”
Also the start of a collapse isn’t possible before the water surrounding the ice is 7-9 F warmer than now, so it may start the next century — if it starts…
The WAIS is not unstable….it’s the BBC!
Don’t worry all tose wind farms operating around the world will solve the problem. OOPS they already have – global temperatures have cooled simce 1998 – they weren’t useless afterall!
The following extract is from The Christian Science Monitor. Note that it mentions/claims that the loss of WAIS is “accelerating” at a dramatic pace in the last 10 years. Can you let me know how true and verifiable this is?
http://features.csmonitor.com/discoveries/2009/05/15/if-w-antarctic-ice-sheet-melts-how-high-will-sea-levels-rise/
Even more startling is evidence since the peak of the last ice age, he continues. At one point, the sea level rose 20 meters in 500 years. “That has to be from the ice sheets,” he says. “That shows they can do something really pretty spectacular.”
Today, it would take a meltdown of all of West Antarctica’s ice sheet, all of Greenland’s, and a significant chunk of East Antarctica’s to push sea levels that high.
Which brings him back around to the WAIS today. Work that he and his colleagues have been conducting as they try to track changes in the mass budget for the WAIS, particularly the sections of ice sheet that empty into the Bellinghausen and Amundsen Seas – a region of the WAIS that he says is particularly unstable, given its underlying topography.
“All the losses, and they are big losses, are taking place along that coast,” he says.
Melting has accelerated dramatically in 10 years
“The take-home message is that the loss has been accelerating really quite dramatically in the last 10 years,” he says. The same holds true for Greenland, even with the uncertainties that attend the measurements.
What’s worrisome, he says, is the gap between the range of responses climate models show for Greenland and Antarctica’s ice compared with what scientists are observing.