UPDATE: The feckless gold digger weighs in here with a chorus of usual suspects. It is quite humorous to watch.
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
At the conclusion of the last ice age, there was a surplus of ice on many parts of the planet. Nature took care of most of that over the next few thousand years, melting most of it, and sometimes it got pretty dramatic. The resulting legends have become part of the mythology of many cultures, from Gilgamesh to Noah, as dramatic release of pent up ice and/or water flooded lands and drove people before it relentlessly.
Sea level rose 110 meters in 8,000 years. It’s risen a couple of meters in the 6,000 years since then. It is now rising at somewhere between 2 and 3 millimeters a year. (We think. It’s very tough to measure, because the earth is changing its levels and the sea gets pushed around by the wind, getting quite a bit higher in some places than others. And when the change is that small, it’s tough to be sure.)
It is the most effective way to get people’s attention about global warming, and it has been used, overused and abused since 1988. It’s one thing to worry about the cuddly cubs of polar bears, and we can watch with (very) detached sympathy as farmers struggle under drought, but show us a picture of a modern city with water above the window line and we will pay attention.
Wikipedia, which doesn’t always play fair when climate issues are discussed, has the chart everyone needs to see to provide perspective on sea level rise. Titled ‘Post Glacial Sea Level Rise, it shows a dramatic rise in sea levels that stopped dead 6,000 years ago and a very flat line since. You could balance a glass of water on the last 6,000 years of that graph.
This hasn’t stopped the marketing gurus from trying to play to our ancestral horror stories and modern fears of flooding. Because there’s still enough ice left in Antarctica and Greenland to cause dramatic sea level rises, all they have to do is say that global warming will melt that ice and we’re in trouble. And so they do.
Again, we are forced to separate the hype from the science. Remember that the IPCC projects sea level rise this century of 18-59 cm, unless dramatic loss of Greenland and/or Antarctic ice occurs. That’s from their AR4 report. They thus wash their hands and ask what is truth? From the minute that AR4 was published, a string of papers, conferences, publicity events (such as parliamentary cabinet meetings held underwater) have been screaming from the headlines and news reports, drumming into us the message that dramatic loss of Greenland and/or Antarctic ice will in fact occur.
But just as with other aspects of their publicity push, they have to contradict their own scientific findings and theories to make this case.
As the climate has warmed over the past 130 years or so, the margins at the ends of both Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice caps have melted a bit. Climate theory predicts that increased precipitation in the much larger middle of these ice caps will be in the form of snow, which will turn into ice and counterbalance some, most or all of the melt around the edges. It would take millenia to melt it all, and the IPCC thinks that even with the world continuing business as usual, that our emissions will peak around the end of this century, shortly after the population peaks. Emissions will then decline.
But, in a scenario that many will find sadly familiar, those with a political agenda have grabbed on to some straws, such as the GRACE studies we looked at yesterday, and are busy hyping possible mechanical changes to the ice sheets (which do happen) and are simultaneously trying to blame those mechanical changes on global warming. They hijacked the science and spun it. (It’s not the scientists–not in this case.)
The upshot is that spear carriers for the activist side of climate politics are still going on about dramatic sea level rise. They’ve responded grudgingly to criticism and are not as quick to say it will happen soon, but they’re afraid to acknowledge that what they fear would actually take millenia and would need continuous warming for the entire period for it to come to pass.
They can’t give up on the images that have the most visceral impact. They will dance around the details for days, using rhetorical tactics and resorting to whatever level of insults are necessary to change the subject–as I know from personal experience on dismal wailing sites such as Deltoid and Only In It For The Gold, which could make a fortune selling sackloth and ashes online.
The bulk of Greenland’s ice cap sits in a basin that the ice itself helped to create. It isn’t going anywhere. Nor is the vast majority of ice in Antarctica, although the thin peninsula that points to South America has been judged to be at grave risk in studies that date back to the 1930s–long before global warming was of much concern.
The need for exaggerated images such as those of flooded American cities has caused as much anti-scientific double talk as the Hockey Stick chart, which is really saying a lot. And with more of their symbols getting picked off one by one, thanks to the work of people like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, they are holding on to this one for dear life.
When journals like Nature ponder what they call an anti-scientific backlash and aim it at the conservatives in the United States, they really should preface their remarks with a frank examination of how science has been abused in both practice and communication, and analyse how those trumpeting the modern call of Doom have started this reaction.
As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming, I feel a bit left out. But I think Nature is just looking for an easy target and throwing mud at it, hoping some of it will stick. I will be on the other side of the fence come election time, but not because of that.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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“As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming,…”
Do you mean ‘anthroprogenic’ moderate global warming?
I wish I had a dollar for every time the warming trend since the LIA gets passed off as human caused, through the slight of hand of dropping ‘anthroprogenic’.
Tom,
Perhaps also good to mention the wiki graph current sea level rise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
In the 20th century sea level has risen faster than in the few thousands of years before, and it has slightly increased over the course of the 2oth century.
On the basis of what exactly do you dismiss the multiple recent studies that point to likely rates of sea level rise of one meter (+/- 0.5 or so) up to 2100 (and continuing thereafter btw)?
It looks greener over there on your side of the fence, but it’s the nature of manure to inure you to illusion.
==============
I have to laugh at the use of polar bears as the icon for alarmist scare stories. [ I think the Atlantic cod was their first choice but who can get worked up over a fish ? ]
Polar bears cannot possibly exist. Regardless of the impostors in the zoo, whatever they are, polar bears all drowned in the last warming period [or 3 ] unless they could tread water for 100 years or more.
They evolved between 120,000 and 200,000 years ago and it has been much hotter than today several times since then.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/temperature.html#65Myr
http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/Post_Glacial_Sea_Level_present.jpg
Before anyone criticises Tom for being too ‘lukewarm’
Check out the ‘attacks’ in the comments he gets at the likes of deltoid, and
‘Only in it for The Gold’ – Michael Tobis
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/09/fullerminations.html
Also remeber, Tom is the CO-author of ‘Climategate: the crutape letters. That Anthony Watts prominently displays at the top of this blog!!
You won’t see much support for him as any sceptical comments will be ‘moderated away. Except Tom’s as that would be too obvious.. 9maybe you could try?)
Tom is a guest here – and in my opinion, it is also one of the best posts here, because.
It is in the language that most Main Stream Journalists can understand…
clearly seperating IPCC science (up to 59cm rise – within the realms of natural variability anyway) and the hype and scares of the various emotive, lobby groups…
At some point the MSM will decide to depart ‘en herd’ from the CAGW bandwagon, and decide that they were all real ‘sceptical’ all along..
this moderate ‘lukewarm’ voice will do much to achieve this…..whilst very sceptical of catstrophic AGW alarmism, as it shows middle ground that most members of the general public can support…. the public, who, until now have found it difficult to express any ‘mild’ scepticism, such is the extreme tribalism of the ‘climate’ camps.
I must start my own blog, it does seem fun
Wonder how the “Post-Glacial Sea Level Rise” graph would look after being processsed by Hansen and Mann through their computers at GISS and the University of Pennsylvania?
You know what the whole problem is? In the last 6000 years, all the change in sea level can simply be attributed to measurement error. How did you measure the sea level 6000 years ago, to a point of accuracy of mm? Just no way.
Do we know that what changes we see in sea level are not due to the crust uplifting/sinking because of plate tectonics, or just crustal motion in general?
It’s complicated.
OOh Bart I can answer that one… On the basis that they are unsupported by the actual availabale data and they require temperature changes wildly above those observed or reasonably predicted, and/or they seem unaware of the latent heat of fusion for all or that ice and imagine that it isn’t necessary.
A computer model with garbage assumptions is not science even if it is a “recent study”.
My apologies. Left out the link to the original article:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545
Sea level follows the geode which is not the same as the surface of the earth. For instance the sea levels in the Indian Ocean are some 140 mt below that of the Atlantic. The latest estimates shows that some Pacific islands, thought to be drowning, are actually growing in size. This may not be sea level fall but the fact that these islands are coral islands and coral has the property of growth so making new land. Most corals will grow to follow sea level rise so claims of drowning coral reefs is another load of rubbish. What coral cannot live with is sea level falls.
Bart Verheggen says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:26 am
On the basis of what exactly do you dismiss the multiple recent studies that point to likely rates of sea level rise of one meter (+/- 0.5 or so) up to 2100 (and continuing thereafter btw)?
ummm, because they are models and have yet to be proven with observed data?
Thomas:
Pleas stop these silly posts. I have a great Ark building business that I am starting and my neighbors are interested as they read The Toronto Star (Sometimes known as the Red Star) and know that a flood of biblical proportions is imminent. This is my first opportunity to make money in ages and you would ruin it. All of my Arks will be powered by wind turbines…. may I send you a brochure? I can offer a 10% discount of you will cease these rational articles.
Please include a picture of a drowning Polar Bear in your next article so I may offer it to my neighbors as proof of Al Gores coming 20M sea rise which will flood the interior of Ontario!
Thank you for your attention to this important matter!
… seriously — keep up the good work. You do know I was kidding — don’t you?
The bottom line in that post was that emissions are causing global warming.
“Climate theory predicts that increased precipitation in the much larger middle of these ice caps will be in the form of snow, which will turn into ice and counterbalance some, most or all of the melt around the edges. It would take millenia to melt it all, and the IPCC thinks that even with the world continuing business as usual, that our emissions will peak around the end of this century, shortly after the population peaks. Emissions will then decline.”
Every one of your posts contains a tenet of AGW heavily wrapped in the bleedin obvious. The banal coating is so thick that commenters are sidestepped into discussions about the icing and not the cake. Anybody new to this site and to the climate debate would read one of your peices uncritical of AGW ‘science’, see that there is no opposition and assume that even the skeptics agree in the CO2 pollutant premise.
I am in no doubt that this is the intention of your recent series. Lumumba couldn’t have done it better.
John:
Are you referring to this little gem:
Webb, A.P., Kench, P.S., The dynamic response of reef islands to sea-level rise: Evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the Central Pacific, Global and Planetary Change (2010), doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.05.003
I do like the fact that their measurement approach is simple, very direct and readily validated. It involves no computer models with debatable assumptions.
Ron Broberg-
The oildrum sea level graph you linked to, with modern sea level rise extrapolated back in time, is absolutely hilarious! Thanks for the great cartoon to end the week.
You linked to this graph as a joke, right?…
If I am. Wrong, I am, but in studying Glacial geology books I recently purchased, I just do not believe Sea level ice can rise much higher. Based on the Milankovich cycles, we appear to be on the latter part of the inter-glacial period.
We just left our third global cooling period 310 years ago in the last 10,000 years. The Axis of the Earth has slowly been tilting up for the last 5000 years of the first half of a 26,000 year cycle causing less exposure to Polar over the next 7,000 years.
Somewhere there is a breaking point when the axis tilt is so high, the Earth is farther away from the Sun and sunspot activity drops off that, Somewhere in front of us is a 10,000 year slide into the pre-stages of the next Ice Age.
On a side bar, per Halley’s Bible Handbook’ 1st 100 pages, The Missoula Glacier Lake Model and the known migration of people here on Earth during the last Ice Age, one of the most feasible places for a re-creation of the Missoula Model in the Mount Ararat area is the Country of Armenia, today.
Armenia is a Mountain Bowl. It is off the valley between the Caucus and the Black Seas. It is a feasible set up for the first major Glacier deluge from Russia about 16,000 years ago.
It would also explain why the deluge myth of Noah ended up in 12 countries from England to the American Indians with roughly the same story line and the same number of people.
In studying the Mountain ridges to the SE of Armenia, using satellite maps, one can find water line marks on the higher, dryer ridges.
If you read Halley’s Bible Handbook, keep in mind that it was written by a Christian scholar at a time ice age research was 60 years old, Christian thought had the Earth created in 4004 B.C. and the Earth was still cooling from creation.
In summary, the myth of Moses, recorded in Genesis could be a 14,000 year old oral history handed down in many languages and writings before recorded by Moses.
Since Moses was an adopted son of Pharaoh and trained in his court, he was priveleged to the Pharoah’s Libraries and Teachers.
Just a exerpt from a Power Point presentation and paper of mine.
Paul
And then there’s this…..
RE:
Paul Pierett says:
September 10, 2010 at 6:12 am
I have graphed the Milankovitch cycles if you ever need a visual of where earth is in relation to each (both historic and future). That said, caution should be used in referring to them. Over brief periods of time a measurable effect from them really does not exist. The eccentricity of orbit will remain quite constant for an extended period of time yet without significant change. Obliquity is double edged. Less polar exposure in the winter… more in the summer. As the angle decreases though the difference in solar radiation between equator and poles increases.
Prince Charles baffled by ‘extraordinary’ climate change scepticism
I would say to all these sceptics – alright it may be very convenient to believe that somehow all these greenhouse gases we’re pouring into the atmosphere just disappear through holes conveniently into space, it doesn’t work like that.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/7993756/Prince-Charles-baffled-by-extraordinary-climate-change-scepticism.html
(It’s not the scientists–not in this case.)
===================================
Tom, the scientists are just as guilty.
Don’t make me have to drag out all those “what if” papers….
Thomas Fuller I appreciate your post here trying to sift out the misinformation, propaganda, and spin and get to the truth.
That is what this site is all about.
[No sure why you can still be a moderate “global warmer”….I guess you meant to tack on that word anthropogenic?….but I won’t hold that against you.] 😉
Heck, I guess that makes most of us mild global warmers….because no one I don’t think is disputing the Earth has warmed over the past century.
But all in all, excellent post.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I rather suspect that these events are too remote in time, and that more recent events, like the Mediterranean breaching the Bosphorus (sp?) is closer in time and more likely to have been the impetus for legends that have come down to us via the cultures that spread out from that region.
@Bart Verheggen & Ron Broberg
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/l2a.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/l3a.png
According to S. J. Holgate, a recognised world authority in geophysical research at the UK-based Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, in his paper published in 2007, the following results represent the most comprehensive measurements of decadal sea-level change rates during the 20th century.
Between 1904 and 1953 global sea levels rose by 2.03 mm per year, whereas from 1954 to 2003 they rose by only 1.45 mm per year, giving an annual mean rate of 1.74 mm per year over the 100 years to 2003, or seven inches per century. Importantly, there was no increase in the rate of change over the whole century.
So, based on these peer reviewed and generally accepted numbers, 20th century sea levels rose at a 25% slower rate in the second half of the century than the first which, on any reasonable interpretation, contradicts the notion that global temperature increases during the last 50 years contributed to any sea level rise!