Actual headline from press release:
Sea-level rise too big to be pumped away
From the POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK)
Future sea-level rise is a problem probably too big to be solved even by unprecedented geo-engineering such as pumping water masses onto the Antarctic continent. The idea has been investigated by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact. While the pumped water would certainly freeze to solid ice, the weight of it would speed up the ice-flow into the ocean at the Antarctic coast. To store the water for a millennium, it would have to be pumped at least 700 kilometer inland, the team found. Overall that would require more than one tenth of the present annual global energy supply to balance the current rate of sea-level rise.
“We explored a way to at least delay the rise of sea level we can no longer avoid by even the strictest climate-change mitigation strategies. This is estimated to reach about 40 cm by the end of the century,” says lead-author Katja Frieler. “Our approach is definitely extreme, but so is the challenge of sea-level rise.” Burning fossil fuels leads to greenhouse-gas emissions that drive up global temperatures. Consequently, the thermal expansion of ocean water and the melting of glaciers and ice-sheets slowly raise sea levels, which will continue for millennia. Under unabated warming, sea level rise may exceed 130 centimeters by 2100.
Sacrificing Antarctica for saving Bangladesh?
“This is huge. Local adaptation, for instance building dikes, will not be physically possible or economically feasible everywhere,” Frieler says. “Protection may depend on your economic situation – so New York might be saved, but sadly not Bangladesh, and this clearly raises an equity issue,” she adds. “Hence the interest in a universal protection measure. We wanted to check whether sacrificing the uninhabited Antarctic region might theoretically enable us to save populated shores around the world.” Rising oceans are already increasing storm surge risks, threatening millions of people worldwide, and in the long run can redraw the planet’s coastlines.
The scientists addressed the problem from an ice-dynamics perspective, using state-of-the-art computer simulations of Antarctica. Since the ice is continually moving, ocean water put on its surface can only delay sea-level rise – and if it is placed too close to the coast, ice-sheet mass loss and thus sea-level rise after some time could even increase, they found. As a consequence the water has to be pumped a long way inland onto the ice sheet.
“Even if this was feasible, it would only buy time”
The Antarctic ice sheet is up to 4000 meters high, and that would mean an inconceivable engineering effort. Pumping so much water that high up onto the ice sheet requires enormous amounts of energy. Antarctica is very windy, so the power for the pumping could in principle be generated by wind turbines – yet this would require building roughly 850.000 wind-energy plants onto the ice continent. The costs are expected to be much higher than those associated with local adaptation in other studies, though these measures by definition are limited in scope and scale, the scientists state.
“The magnitude of sea-level rise is so enormous, it turns out it is unlikely that any engineering approach imaginable can mitigate it,” concludes co-author Anders Levermann, head of Global Adaptation Strategies at PIK and scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. “Even if this was feasible, it would only buy time – when we stop the pumping one day, additional discharge from Antarctica will increase the rate of sea-level rise even beyond the warming-induced rate. This would mean putting another sea-level debt onto future generations.” Also, the most sensitive coastal ecosystems of Antarctica would of course be seriously affected by this measure.
Greenhouse-gas reductions, local coastal protection, and abandonment
If possible at all, delaying the rise by storing water on Antarctica would only show significant effects in a scenario of ambitious climate policy, strictly limiting global warming. “If we’d continue to do business as usual and churn out emissions,” says Levermann, “not even such an immense macro-adaptation project as storing water on Antarctica would suffice to limit long-term sea-level rise – more than 50 meters in the very long term without climate change mitigation. So either way, rapid greenhouse-gas emission reductions are indispensable if sea-level rise is to be kept manageable. In any way substantial investment into long-term local coastal protection will be required if we want to avoid a stepwise abandonment of coastal areas.”
###
Article: Frieler, K., Mengel, M., Levermann, A. (2016): Delaying future sea-level rise by storing water in Antarctica. Earth System Dynamics
Weblink to the article once it is published: http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/
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There is absolutely ZERO proof that CO2 emissions cause sea level rise.
These guys are talking through their proverbial a*** !
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
spurious regressions and improper use of regression …
https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/09/on-inappropriate-use-of-least-squares-regression/#comment-770475
As I said..
ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF !
Monte Carlo biscuits are very tasty, btw. 🙂
Down here that have an “unsalted caramel” version.
Seriously YUMMY !!!
More Climate Change Kabuki Theatre.
Actually, these creepy nut cases are actively discussing how to create another Ice Age! They really want this to happen!
Exactly how would their approach cause another ice age?
Well they evidently aren’t aware that all of the ice on the Antarctic continent is racing pell mell down slope out into the southern ocean, so all of that Sorcerer’s Apprentice energy consuming pumperation is going to go for naught anyway.
It might help tourism, so more people can go down there and watch the big splash, when the West Antarctic Ice Mobile falls on their boats.
G
PS On the other hand they seem to have King Canute one-upped, in that he never thought of freezing the tide, before telling it to go back. They will need a real slush fund to carry out this ‘Whack a Mush event.
Luke,
I think that emsnews’ comment would be best explained thusly:
Although it takes the MAJOR ASSUMPTION that increasing CO2 is the driving force behind the increase to the current temperature Maxima. If CO2 IS the driver, and we go back to pre industrial levels (Zero CO2 footprints) then temperatures would fall. A fall of just a couple of degrees and you have increasing Ice sheets, Increasing Albedo, growing Glaciers, in short..the beginnings of an Ice Age.
Andy, the causal links follow from basic physics. What link in this causal chain do you question?
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas trapping heat in the atmosphere.
2. The increase in CO2 from anthropogenic sources has caused the oceans and atmosphere to warm.
3. Thermal expansion of water and melting of ice sheets and glaciers will lead to sea level rise.
Your assertion #2 has yet to be actually established.
“What link in this causal chain do you question?
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas trapping heat in the atmosphere.
2. The increase in CO2 from anthropogenic sources has caused the oceans and atmosphere to warm.
3. Thermal expansion of water and melting of ice sheets and glaciers will lead to sea level rise.”
1.CO2 does not trap heat. It absorbs radiation and emits it, just like all other atmospheric gases do. This slows the process of losing heat to space, which keeps us alive. Notice how it gets cold at night when the Sun goes down…not a very effective “trap” is it?
2.The oceans and atmosphere have been warming since the last glacial maximum ended. Had there not been a Little Ice Age, temperatures would be higher than they are currently. We are living in the coolest interglacial “warm period” in Earth’s history. There is no evidence that atmospheric CO2 can raise ocean temps, nor are current temps unprecedented.
3. Earths hydrological cycle is Earth’s hydrological cycle. Ice melts, sea levels rise, cooling starts, ice forms, sea levels drop. Welcome to Earth.
Luke:
Tide gauges show sea level rise has generally
decreased over the last 65 years.
Around my country’s coastlines, (South Pacific
ocean)the rate of rise decreased by
about 0.8 mm somewhere around 1950, with the
rate of rise decreasing from 1.7mm pa to about
0.9mm pa. That’s nearly 50% and is only two
inches of sea level rise over the next 100 years.
That means:
– CO2 heat trapping is not working especially
the 3.5% released by mankind
– Sea level rate of rise actually reduced over
the period of the twentieth century anthropogenic
CO2 was supposedly at its maximum.
Which also means:
– the oceans are not warming as fast as they ware
in the first half of the twentieth century and
– themal expansion of sea water and melting of ice
sheets and glaciers is not adding as much
meltwater to the sea as you suppose.
This all adds up to shonky computer modelling and
even shonkier interpretation of model output..
You can find out from http://www.psmsl.org (the Permanent
Service for Mean Sea Level). There is a useful tool on that
site which you can use to see how your locality has been and
is affected. From that, you will be able to make more reliable
forecasts of future see level rise.
“Luke March 10, 2016 at 6:55 am
Andy, the causal links follow from basic physics. What link in this causal chain do you question?
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas trapping heat in the atmosphere.”
The Bad Science (BS) is strong in this one!
OK Luke let’s take your 3 claims/assumptions at face value and call them basically correct. What is the next question that a scientist would ask? It would be this, ‘Given those 3 assumptions, HOW MUCH of the warming that we have observed is due to Anthropogenic CO2, and how much of the warming is due to natural factors ?’Now If you can answer that one, AND demonstrate your results, then there is a lovely little cash prize waiting for you in Stockholm.
I don’t believe it’s “proverbial.” 🙂
Crackpotsdam Institute for Climate Impact
If the galaxy has a center of stupidity, it is surely there (Stefan Rahmstorf et al.)
Or Damn Potty !
Ramsdoof and Helumschubert ought to for a rap duo.
for = form….
Maybe invite Schubby’s mate, the pope, to help as the low end.
In Holland, a long time ago, we would use windmills to move water. There’s a thought!
They became economically non viable.
Gee let’s pump salt water ? into the middle af Antarctica. How much salt water? All of the world’s current resivoirs if full contain water adequet to raise SL about .5 inches.
Perhaps they could use windmills to do this.
I am speechless …
What were sea levels during the Midieval Warm? Oh I forgot, that never really existed, so the continuing rise in sea levels if totally unprecedented. And if you believe that, would you like to invest in my new venture–Homeopathic Voodoo Accupuncture/sarc
And what were the sea levels during the Little Ice Age? Were they one meter lower than today?
No, about half a meter:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.178.7972&rep=rep1&type=pdf
tty said;
(try this again…) I don’t think so…try again.
Sea level rise is forecast to be 40 cm by the end of the Century. Oh Lord, if only we had the technology to build a two foot wall!
Well said, this kind of panic has caused zoning laws to be change in Australia. It’s not skyscrapers being tipped over as the ex-vice president’s cartoons would have it.
40 cm rise by the end of the century, but “sea level rise may exceed 130 centimeters by 2100.” I’d like to see how they work this out.
“sea level rise may exceed 130 centimeters by 2100.”
==================
hey why stop there? didn’t Hansen predict 1200 centimeters by 2030? that the highway in front of his office at the time would be covered?
of course by 2100 all the people making the prediction will long be dead, so there is zero consequence to them of being wrong. all the grant money will have long been spent.
who could ask for a better job. getting paid today to deliver something 80+ years in the future, long after you are dead.
Are these guys taking ice?
They need all the ice to chill all the Kool-Aid they’ve been drinking
” so New York might be saved, but sadly not Bangladesh”
according to climate science, the total land area of bangladesh is shrinking due to rising seas. according to the data, it is growing at a rate of 30 sq km per year. i am reminded of tony heller’s favorite word. that word is “moron”.
…and its not like coastal cities in India were ever flooded and destroyed in the distant past, long before evil CAGW could be blamed.
https://nileshoak.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/flooding-destruction-of-dwarka-5525-bce/
That is the same argument as “lung cancer existed before people smoked cigarettes”.
“That is the same argument as “lung cancer existed before people smoked cigarettes”.”
No it’s not. Smoking cigarettes have been scientifically linked (and rigorously at that) to an increased chance of developing lung cancer. CAGW is a hypothesis at best, and a very weak one at that. There is zero evidence that current rates of sea level rise are “abnormal”, “unnatural”, or “unprecedented”.
Apparently you didn’t realise that CO2 has a trans-temporal effect. It’s so powerful that it controls PAST sea-level as well.
Liar is more accurate.
Reminds me of other real hare-brained schemes I’ve heard about to “Save the Earth!” from this fake apocalypse. One I saw in National Geographic years ago involved putting tens of thousands of reflective discs into orbit to deflect sunlight. With a detailed illustration and everything. You couldn’t make this up.
Skiers know this concept well as snow machines, but ohyeaah, that is one badass diesel running it.
Um…pardon my ignorance…but if the weight/pressure of adding water/ice to the surface would “speed up the flow of ice to the oceans” can’t THAT be causing the supposed sea level rise ALREADY happening? And um…how much would 850,000 wind energy plants built on the continent WEIGH…even if they were FREE to build?
These people can’t really be this stupid can they? I mean they’d need people to dress them, feed them, remind them to swallow….and exhale…and stuff. How did they get jobs in science?
“how much would 850,000 wind energy plants built on the continent WEIGH”
Don’t forget the 850000 helicopters to de-ice these plants.
And how much OIL would be burnt up in the de-icing?
Ok…if its so COLD on the continent that the water pumped onto it would surely freeze…then what the £%÷× is causing the ice currently ON the continent to melt NOW? This boggles the mind.
They say the ice sheet is melting from below.
Then it can’t be atmospheric emissions that are causing it.
I think they don’t say that. I think they say the ice shelves melt from below, which is, of course, what you could expect to happen in a warming (interglacial) world. Scientists who claim WAIS might collapse usually carefully don’t claim that it would be simply caused by CAGW, but rather neatly claim AGW is speeding up the collapse without mentioning how much or how it was becoming unstable already without AGW. Then comes a journalist who is ‘on message’ and says AGW is gonna melt WAIS. And I’ll get the blame for using C in CAGW though it was the journalist who added it there.
The train of thought which changes some melt and distant future into total melt very soon is interesting, because it, in my opinion, is caused much by journalists who affect the opinion of other journalists, rather than the progress of science itself.
Wanna bet? I think the best solution here is to set up insurance industry around that. If you can insure against sea level rise, we’ll quickly find out what the markets think about its price.
“but if the weight/pressure of adding water/ice to the surface would “speed up the flow of ice to the oceans” can’t THAT be causing the supposed sea level rise ALREADY happening?”
“then what the £%÷× is causing the ice currently ON the continent to melt NOW?”
Come on Aphan, you have provided your own answer. There is some surface melting in Antarctic during the summer – mostly coastal regions. I believe most of the melting is because ice is pushed into the sea.
The method would only work if the ice piled up on the land did not simply flow back into the sea.
There is practically no melting in Antarctica except on the Peninsula. There is som sublimation, but virtually the whole ice loss is due to coastal calving.
Environmentaly correct would be to first desalinate the water.
Exactly so. Maybe they could reopen those glorious desalination plants that saved all the Australians before they were shut down and mothballed.
Oh wait, I have an even better idea! Let’s send ALL the climate doomsayers to Antarctica and employ them in pushing on the glaciers to keep the ice from reaching the sea. Every brainwashed high school graduate could serve a shift, too. Like being in the Peace Corps, only now they could spend one semester saving the world from sea level rise by pushing on Antarctic glaciers.
I’m so brilliant. heh heh
There must be a plug somewhere that we can pull to decrease the sea level. I suggest they apply for another research grant to find that plug.
But the steam arising from the water hitting the magma would contribute to the most powerful greenhouse gas – water vapour! You’d have to add an ice-machine as the steam escapes and lock the ice away somewhere really cold.
Hey Ben! “There must be a plug somewhere”
Good idea! Maybe the drain goes all the way through to the hollow earth. Problem solved!
Of COURSE I am joking. Although I would not be surprised to read that some CAGW supporter now claims that “the acidic oceans have eaten away the inside of the Earth!” Maybe that is how they will justify the “adjustments” claiming that deepening ocean basins are hiding true sea level rise.
Or … the aliens that have been actively stealing our water over the last couple hundred of years were apprehended by the galactic police corps, and being found guilty, their sentencing including returning the water.
It is just the unintended consequences of an ignorant courtroom decision….
World of Warcraft: Antarctica
Well, it couldn’t be much worse than the last expansion pack…
I suggest that a pilot plant be built for a start. It would be fueled from the otherwise useless windmills in the Baltic Sea and outside the North Sea border (hope I get the names right). Next, pipelines ending on the roof of the Potsdam institute are built. After a short period of tuning and trimming by pumping water on the ground, the pipelines are connected and the Institute building is gradually filled with water. This would make it easy to monitor the relation between the change of water level in the sea and the amount of water pumped away. I easily predict the emergence of dozens of top-quality research reports and regular papers warranting future research grants and well-paid positions at the institute. Unfortunately, the thoroughly wetted building would have to be abandoned, which again would constitute an endless source of new money for replacing it with a much larger one.
Seriously speaking, it would appear that climate “research” has developed into a safety valve for the kind of idiocy popping up every now and then in all fields of science. Unfortunately, this is the first time such an aberration has had such infinite political and economic impact. That is why we must fight it with objective observations and true scientific method – as long as it is not legally prohibited! Rumors are that the Attorney General in Washington, D.C: is contemplating legal action against people who question the present climate dogma.
Are you saying that the universal idiots attraction law forces idiots to stuck to other idiots?
Then what, a black hole of idiocy is created?
The problem is , when they reach critical mass we all get sucked into their hole !
Apparently the event horizon is currently situated somewhere around the outskirts of Paris.
Kinda like this:
http://www.gifbin.com/bin/320sw0sw7847.gif
Hey BFL! That video reminds me of the keg party at a cavers convention…
Surely we are now getting climate craziness more than once a week?
Carrying water from the sea to the center of Antarctica should provide a lot of jobs for fired climatologists.
Not a bad punishment for all those AGW scammers who have sucked up tax payer money. If the world is actually in danger then let them go there to fix it. I think they would quickly find out how wrong they are. If they don’t like it, let them eat ice.
Bucket brigade!
This would make a great Josh cartoon.
Lol, thanks
Reminiscent of the vision that some revered saint apparently had of meeting a young boy on the beach, who was filling a cup from the sea, and emptying it into a hole in the sand that he had dug. Asked as to what he was doing, the young boy replied: “I am putting the sea into this hole!”.
These guys appears to be equally ambitious.
Look, there are several things wrong with this plan.
First of all, it is ludicrous to try to build and service 850,000 wind turbines. 20 nuclear plants would do. And you build them right into the ice so that of one of them goes off the rails, you just shut it off and let the ice cool it. Easy peasy.
But the bigger mistake is just pumping that water up to the top and letting it freeze. That’s silly. You put it in plastic bags first, THEN you let it freeze. Not any plastic bags of course, but plastic bags made from recycled grocery bags of course. Set up collection depots all over the place so that everyone can participate in saving New York, and Al Gore’s house. Oh and Bangladesh, almost forgot Bangladesh.
Now I’m not talking about plain old bags to pump sea water into. These bags would be special. They’d be shaped like cubes. Dude, not cubes like you put in your drink, but seriously big cubes. Instead of pumping them into the middle of the continent, they could just be stacked up around the edge. We’d build walls of sea ice to hold back the rest of the sea ice. And if a wall falls over into the ocean, we could just send tug boats to tow them back and rebuild the wall.
Even better we could have different shapes of blocks. Sort of like legos. We could build luxury hotels out of ice for example for the elite crowd to come and see how they saved New York and Al Gore’s house first hand.
Oh, and Bangladesh of course.
We’d build walls of sea ice to hold back the rest of the sea ice.
Well obviously I meant using the blocks of sea ice to hold back the dirty, despicable, awful Antarctic land ice. Best part is that a good president could probably figure out how to make Antarctica pay for the wall.
Inspired!
I like it. How much water do we have to pump to uncover the remains of the Malasian Air MH370 wreck? Maybe add some sawdust to the mixture and get Pykerete instead — better melting resistance.
“How much water do we have to pump to uncover the remains of the Malaysian Air MH370 wreck?”
Unfortunately, quite a lot. But taking up your suggestion of using pykrete, what we have to do is to build a massive pykrete ring around the probable crash site, and keep on adding pykrete layers to the top. As further layers are added the ring will gradually extend further and further to the bottom of the ocean. When it touches the ocean bottom, we can use submersibles to undercut the sea bottom from under the ring where it touches, until it touches the bottom all the way round. Then we can install a windmill every 200 metres or so around the rim and gradually pump the water out. This will temporarily raise the level of the ocean, but not more than a few hundred feet (the search area, taking into account the latest info, has quadrupled in size) and eventually the ocean bed will dry and we shall be able to see the remains of MH 370.
Naturally, this will all be paid for by the Australian government (sorry, the Australian taxpayer) and we will get the blessing of the rest of the world for a demonstration of our munificence. We shall also pay for the pykrete walls surrounding the world’s coastlines (except Syria and Iraq – who started the whole trouble in the first place.)
When the plane’s remain have been lifted to dry land (outside the ring, of course) we shall then let the water back in, using the 12 000 ft drop to power turbines, which will provide clean, green electricity for 1000 years, and as the ocean levels drop the walls around the coasts can be gradually removed. When they are finally gone, all the world will thank Australia for having saved all the other countries from the perils of rising sea levels.
Oh come on! Nobody could be stupid enough to seriously suggest something that mind-bogglingly ridiculous!
Sure they would. Obama’s science advisor wanted to pump sulfates into the atmosphere (seriously) to cool the planet.
This foolishness reminds me of the fable of the guy that tried to drink the sea…..the outcome would be the same. I don’t care what they use, they will never have an effect. They fail to realize how very large it is.
It’s just when you think there can’t be any more nutty ideas to “save the planet” and lo and behold they manage another even better one.
How about if they tied a bit of string to the tail of the next rocket that’s fired into space and then use that to pull a bigger bit up till they can pull up a pipe to pump water into space to freeze into a shield to reflect sunlight, so reducing sea level rise and shading the earth!
Right now I’ve sorted that I’m off back to my nice room with the soft wallpaper and lighting????
James Bull
The most absurd thing is that apparently scientists were involved in the writing of this article.
scientists were involved in writing the paper…. sure they were.
God help science today.
“There must come a time where conduct disqualifies people from using the S word to describe themselves.”
I agree, but it appears it’s not today. My best guess is these “scientists” have never even seen a pump or know how they work. ~1.45 psi per meter of rise means 4,000 meters of static head is 5,800 psi working pressure on a large diameter pipe? Yea, no. Booster pumps along the way might work.
I don’t believe it… I have heard the secret Nazi UFO base under Antarctica can easily levitate that tiny amount of water on to Antarctica with their anti-gravity technology. Just take a closer look where this claim is coming from: POTSDAM! There you have it… and they still have that secret moon base, as well. OK, it is not secret any more since they made a movie about it.
Do we really need to pay people for this? Some things really can be answered after performing a back-on-the-envelope calculation – so how is it possible to make a living out of this, including retirement plan?
“Do we really need to pay people for this?”.. No we don’t. They should contract it out to King Canute, he understands these things. He’ll do a far better job at a price much cheaper than Frieler, Mengel and Leverman. Canute has far more experience than anybody in these matters, even though he has had the odd failure. But that was a long time ago.
You malign Canute. Re-read the story.
I have never been to the Nazi UFO base under Antarctica, but I know some people who have. They say it is very spacious, with the interiors done in a muted Trans-Atlantic Liner style. The fittings and furniture are, ofcourse, from the Berlin Bauhaus period.
Sea level rise scare off the locals
Property Sharks move in and buy up all the premium beach front coastal property.
Jeezuz, what these loony tunes don’ t seem to have thought of is that sea water is saline ( that means ‘salty’ boys and girls – oh not forgetting our bisexual , transsexual and trans-gender climatologists, no offence ! ).
Now if we POLLUTE the vast icy continent with salt water, we will surely start a massive melting of the ice cap.
This idea should not have got further than silly idea some had during coffee break before being laughed out of the room.
But no, this the damn potty boys from Potsdam. And some of these guys have PhDs … ooooow, impressive.
Clue: why do we put salt on the roads in winter? To lower the melting point and reduce the amount of ice.
Antarctic ice is being melted from below by slightly warmer salt water, so the best idea they have is to start pumping that slightly warmer salt water all over the ice sheet in the hope that it will ….. Oh, hang on ….
They would mess up the future ice cores.