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/
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.
I cannot understand that alarmism regarding the sea level rise.
When looking at the plots of the SONEL sea level monitoring project, there is no acceleration of the rise. For example the tide gauge archives of Brest (France) show a modest 200mm rise in 170 years. http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=maregraphe&idStation=1736.php
The BOM (Australia) plots though shorter (1992-2014) than the SONEL ones are showing an almost flat trend in the South Pacific islands: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70058/IDO70058SLI.shtml
Except for the Kiribati islands where tectonic forces are at work towards a submersion: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70060/IDO70060SLI.shtml
So far as I know, the New Zealand autorities have denied the climatic refugee status to the Kiribati inhabitants for that reason.
The fact that there is no acceleration over the last 100y rather argues against the hypothesis that there is a detectable AGW component to the changes.
It does not mean it will continue to rise, though 3mm/a is slow enough not to be the biggest problem we face. Neither will it stop Bangladesh sinking. That has very little to do with seas rising.
Crazy guys. I once met a young scientist from the PIK on a local train in Berlin. We talked about his bike. He told me he was going by bike from Berlin to Vienna for a climate conference. He also mentioned that he would never want to have children with his girlfriend because of climate change.
Apologies for the blockquote error – Mods could you assist please?
So this guy was biking on a train. I think he has fooled himself. He is not biking from Berlin to Vienna, he is taking a train from Berlin to Vienna with his bike.
Jeff
A few months before I met him on the train he took the trip to Vienna – only by bike. Took him about a week for roughly 1.000 Km, as far as I remember. It’s a little bit crazy, but on the other hand: he puts his money where his mouth is. Unlike Leo DiC, Al G and many other warmists.
Yes, these idealist european lefty eco-loons are in the process of choosing to wipe themselves out by not breeding sustainably. Since they are not sustaining their number – I consider that a correct use of the term.
They are now also actively replacing themselves with the displaced people of Syria, a country which until recently had the seventh highest rate of population growth in the world.
The Syrians, Afghanis and N. Africans who fill the vacuum left by the eco-leftist nitwits, will not share the skewed obsessions regarding the environment and family planning.
So, the world will trundle on as it has ever done. With the spoils inherited by those who replicate in greatest number.
Potentially an IQ raising outcome for the rest of humanity
And then there’s the small problem of – desalination, (or are they not bothered about creating a great salt lake).
And then there’s the small problem of – pumping water that freezes at 0°C through 700km of pipes at -40°C, (they could use a 50/50 water/antifreeze).
And then there’s the small problem of – removing antifreeze, otherwise it wont turn to ice, (or are they not bothered about creating a great liquid lake that will melt the existing ice there).
And then there’s the major problem of – finding sufficient beds in a secure institution for these dorks.
Sea water freezes at about -2°C. So your first problem isn’t too important. Your second one is a little more serious. They would likely need to use heated pipes.
No problem, they’d just add heaters to the pipes and keep the water liquid.
I see a business opportunity.
Death Valley in the US is about 80 or so metres below sea level.
Get some desal plants built.
Build a pipeline.
Once the water starts syphoning , you can use turbines along the path to generate some of the power for the desal plants.
The US gets a very big new lake of clean water for agriculture / recreation and the problem of sea level rise is solved.
If you need more storage, the Salton Sea comes to mind.
As soon as I saw this article, I thought of the proposed Qattara Depression and Dead Sea Projects:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea%E2%80%93Dead_Sea_Canal
I have no idea what effect these would have on world sea level, but it does suggest a new funding source for project enthusiasts to pursue.
Who knows, maybe some poor inland Egyptians will someday own beachfront property! 🙂
Siphon from gulf of California to Death Valley… Put power generation on it and ride the tidal flow. Dig out the basin another 100 meters, and ship it to Bangladesh for fill, or to New Orleans, if you like. Stock the lake with saltwater fish, sell real estate, boats, and have higher humidity to the east. Evaporate out water at the edge.. Like Ghandi … Make salt. Death Valley National Inland Sea.
That’s a brilliant idea. But the energy for the desalination would be considerable.
Why are you concerned about whether it is a freshwater lake or an inland saltwater sea?
And can I suggest that I may know of a yard in which several hundred miles of unused XL size pipeline are currently stored up.
As new, but with slight cosmetic surface rust. Buyer collects.
Fresh water is better for drinking / agriculture.
Don’t want to risk salt water getting into the aquifers.
The salt is also a useful byproduct that can partly offset the costs.
Both the Dead Sea and Qattara depressions already contain very large quantities of salt so You don’t need to worry about groundwater contamination. All endorheic basins do.
And there are several more salt lakes/playas near coasts and well below sea level: the Danakil Depression, Chott el Djerid, Salton Sea and Lago Enriquillo for example.
Put another one to the Dead Sea… 300 M below sea level.
Yeah, it’s actually a shame that we missed out on the opportunity to flood the Mediterranean Basin.
Let’s not let that happen again.
Why wait for nature to flood depressions when we can do it first?
Holy crap – the entire delusion relies upon GIA.
Sea level rise acceleration can only be manufactured using GIA.
Antarctic ice sheet melting can only be manufactured using GIA.
But what is GIA based upon?
Upon a big heap of complete unknowns and guesses about how bouncy the mantle is and what it may or may not be doing over millennia. All unproven speculation.
And when tested in reality by GPS – then always shown to be way off from the real-world measurable rates.
But, of course, the alarmists will then say – “but, are you proposing that there is a conspir@cy amongst thousands of climate scientists?”
Nope – because almost none of the hoards of climate “scientists” actually understand what went into the GIA models. And certainly none of them, if sealed in a room, could derive a similar bunch of predicted rates from scratch.
And basically almost every work on the fundamental principles of GIA seems to have one name – Peltier – attached to it.
So, one man is now responsible for the entire fiction of sea level rise acceleration and antarctic melting.
Wake up alarmist idiots. If the GIA rates prove to be flawed – then your entire delusional belief system could melt away overnight. And without sea level rise or uplift or crustal deformation.
Defamation perhaps. Of character.
Antarctica is fine. Antarctica ain’t going anywhere. You are – you’re going away!!!
Greenpeace opposes the plan, because of the danger that the world would topple.!!??
If Greenpeace opposes, surely that means it is a working idea?!
I, personally, support this plan. I believe that spraying billions of gallons of sea water into the middle of the Antarctic will have no negative impact in the forseeable future.
I wrote that just to write it.
Seriously, people who come up with this shit need to have their degrees revoked then spend six months in public humiliation. Spraying sea water into the arctic is ******** moronic. Children know to desalinate it.
It would cost less to desalinate and store the excess see water in freshwater reservoirs for use in agriculture that would then reduce the CO2 resulting in a lack of sea level rise (omg .76 meters wah wah)
It’s quite clear that these people are suffering from the serious illness called ‘The Potsdamien Drift’, which is brought on when pseudo scientists, are worried about their massive finance stream tailing off. It affects their brain and there is no cure for the disease at the moment. It is caused by having to do the awful job of sitting at their desks four days a week, trying to justify the massive salaries that they have been used to over many years. Its an illness that gets worse over the years, and it is very rare that they will ever be cured. So please let us show a bit of sympathy to these people. Incidentally,global warming sceptics rarely experience this terrible affliction.
prjindigo….why not just build dams in temperate regions of the world? Rivers are already fresh water…. no need for desalination. result would allow us to generate electricity and if we built enough dams to hold back enough water to accommodate a full meter of sea level rise we’d have enough water to recharge aquifers and support agriculture world wide. Presumably less water entering the oceans through the river systems of the world will translate into less sea level rise on the principle that water finds its own level. One would think that there would be a huge gain in reliable electricity production. No need to work and solve the problems attendant to pumping any kind of water in a -40C environment So simple really.
Just thinking aloud here innit but, something similar.
In the (same) way that then Aral Sea modified the weather/climate around it, why not take ourselves off to, say for example, the Sahara.
We dig ourselves some big shallow holes, easy digging coz its just sand innit, and fill them with sea water. and keep them full.
So, the lakes we create then evaporate, that makes clouds (incidentally cooling the place) The clouds make rain (cools the place even more) and, after the addition of a bit of Rock Dust available from grinding up the nearest mountain, plants will grow and it will be lovely. Again. Like it was 6,000 years ago.
Then, following the wisdom of ancient people around the world who say ‘plants bring rain’, the whole thing looks after itself and we can use the rain to wash away the salt lakes we originally created.
What’s not to like? A bit like Alan Savory and his desert management/improvment technique
(Improving, via some fresh and pulverised rock, the highly weathered (Laterite) soils must maybe be done first though)
This is literally as the idea from the lets cover the arctic with soot to melt it and prevent an ice age department
Won’t all that mass cause Antarctica to tip over and capsize? 🙂
Don’t be silly! You need 8,000 Marines to cause that to happen! 🙂
I’m all for a bit of blue sky thinking, but I don’t think people should actually publish every dimwit idea they come up with before it is rejected. Submitting techno-fantasies like this to the world as some kind of peer-reviewed science merely embarrasses science and raises questions about the “peers”.
Well, as Dr S has said, keep an open mind but no so open your brains fall out.
There was recently a discussion here in the comments about this exact idea. The conclusion was much the same – the energy to pump the water would beway too high. Can’t find it now.
…” this would require building roughly 850.000 wind-energy plants onto the ice continent.”….
..So they admit, windmills for energy are useless !
THis can’t be a serious article. The ice generated would be soot tinged from all the diesel used to run the pumps, melting the ice. The heat generated would also melt the ice.
April Fools is still a few weeks away.
“…from all the diesel used to run the pumps…”
Nope, they thought of that already; “this would require building roughly 850,000 wind-energy plants”.
That’s 2,550,000 million blades whirling. On the bright side, there are no birds, bats or raptors to mince.
Wot? Sea level rise is a problem? sssheeeesh!
Crisis? Wanna know what to do about it? … can’t figure it out yet dear worriers?
Have you seen the south china sea lately?
I can see Bruce Willis leading the engineering team to make this possible. Coming SOON, to a theatre near you.
Lemme see…that was the Potheads Institute for Youmustbesmokincrack?
So this is what it comes to? Having run out of things to study that are alarming but unproveable and/or unlikely they are starting to write papers about things that won’t work at all? That’ll keep the gravy train rolling for years. There must be loads of things that never happened, aren’t happening and won’t happen in the future that can be written about in learned journals – or even in ‘Nature’ and it’s many spawn.
Jamal Munshi March 9, 2016 at 10:06 pm said:
“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 to that great American philosopher, Professor Y. Berra, who said “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
Some have mentioned filling the Death Valley, the Dead Sea and the Qattara Depression. You don’t really have to go that far, no need to fill the depressions. Oases are fertile because the water table is close to the surface. The sandy desert is not fertile because the water table is way down. It is way down because of the extremely high rate of evaporation through sand dunes. During the war, steel plates were laid on level sand in the Sahara to provide a runway for fighter planes. Inevitably there were oil leaks. The combination of steel plates and oil leaks produced a ‘soil’ which was far less permeable to water vapour, with the result that with the occasional rain the water table rose and the desert started blooming.
Now pump desalinated water from the coast to the sand dunes and pour it on, with a goodly coating of waste oil on the surface. Quickly it will saturate the sand and the desert will bloom. The Sahara Desert could probably absorb a foot of water every year for centuries. And there is always the Kalahari, the Sind, and the Namib, plus Saudi Arabia.
How to get the desalinated water? Use solar power. Build large trays, covered with glass, about 15 ft up, and connect to the sea. Then pump air out of the trays – when the pressure drops sufficiently sea water will rise up and flood the trays. As the trays will be heated through the glass by the sun’s rays, the water will rapidly evaporate, leaving a concentrated brine which can be pumped out and back to the sea. The water vapour can be pumped inland to the desired area where in the cool of night it can be liquefied and used to irrigate the “fields”. Why pump water vapour? True, the same mass will be involved, but as the viscosity of water vapour is far less than liquid water (please check, is it?) the energy needed will be greatly reduced.
Note: cooling water from ships’ diesel engines was used to heat sea water for low pressure evaporation to produce ships’ drinking water before reverse osmosis distillers became practical. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_evaporation for much earlier and current applications.
Nice Dudley, like it.
Options are a matter of choice, as is the wallowing in false ‘problems’.
Very imaginative. However, pumping water vapour sounds impractical – either the pipelines have to be heated to boiling point, or the interior has to be kept below atmospheric pressure.
Also note that greening the desert will reduce albedo, which will increase warming … maybe we should rather just cover the deserts with aluminium foil to radiate more heat back out to space.
Mandate aluminum hats…
850,000 windmills….hmmm….
Does the power to manufacture them come from other windmills? At what price per kWh? To make that many requires the effort of a lot of windmills, right? And will those first windmills be made using coal-fired electricity?
If the plan is to use ‘renewables’ to power the manufacture the vast numbers of ‘renewables’ hardware, they had better up up expected cost by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Well, the undercut on these Mediterranean cliffs are about 500 years old (judging by the stalactites hanging on the cliffs). And the sea level is still precisely on the same level as the undercut and the shelf below it. And the Mediterranean has no tides, so this is the only sea level.
And there are loads of these undercuts all around the Med. I saw similar ones in Greece and Spain, so land movements are not the explanation. And a land movement that keeps exactly the same pace as a rising sea level is highly unlikely. Ergo, one might say, the sea has not risen for 500 years or more.
http://s14.postimg.org/jci3z4z5t/undercut_med_cl.jpg
Here is the curtain stalactite, clinging to the cliff above the undercut. A good 500 years? So the cliff face has been there for a number of centuries – these are not cliffs that are retreating year by year.
http://s29.postimg.org/n59kinlav/undercut_stalactite.jpg
Those blue, shiny, cylindrical stalactites are very rare! You’re lucky to have captured one in the wild like that! 🙂
It would be a lot easier to just dig the oceans deeper if they want to lower the sea levels.
Well, you could do this – or you could just develop working fusion reactors. Neither of which will have any effect whatsoever on sea level, but at least the fusion reactor would increase the supply of cheap energy which is necessary to fuel further human progress. Onward to the Dyson sphere!
Would that much weight added to the southern hemisphere cause a wobble in the earth’s rotation leading to the release of more CO2 from the ocean floor and volcanic action, leading to additional Greenland ice sheet melt, leading to higher ocean levels, leading to more pumping … ??? (preposterous istn’t it?)
Damit! I mean dam it. Haven’t they closed something like 400 reservoirs in California because of environmentalists? Fill ’em up. Build more dams all over the world and fill them up. Oh yeah, you could also get power from them that is carbon free.
I suppose they could use Nuclear powered Ice Breakers positioned as close to shore as they can get in summertime, to provide the electricity. For a pilot project they may not need to pump it that far. Then we know that we have a solution that could actually work. If the Sealevel does decide to rise.
We’re told about the calamities that people will face when they can’t get out of the way of seas that are rising about an eighth of an inch per year. Meanwhile people fish in the Bay of Fundy where the sea level changes 50 feet with the tides twice a day.
…D’oh !! ( sorry, couldn’t help myself ) ; )
If you can pollute “climate adaptation” discussions with enough absolutely loony and unquantifiably expensive ideas like this, it makes the cost of “carbon reduction” schemes seem cheap by comparison. I think that is the point of studies like this — “look here, it’s obviously impossible to adapt to sea level rise; we have no choice but to avoid it in the first place”.
I think my response to your earlier post is less “loony” than the Potty Scientists idea.
This is a very shrewd observation.
There is a phrase for a period or epoch when the sea level rises. It’s called “Interglacial period.” There is a phrase for a period or epoch when sea level falls. It’s called “Ice Age.” I don’t think there is a word for a period of epoch when sea level stays the same for 100’s of years because that doesn’t happen.
great point scott
Well said, Scott.
The CAGW meme (e.g. Mann et al) fraudulently assumes that the earth’s climate systems were static prior to the industrial age. Natural climate forces disappeared in the 20th century and only man’s GHG’s forcings remained afterwards — this is just Genesis re-written for the “progressive” age. Man has been expelled from the garden of eden, his offspring born into sin and must seek redemption to save the mortal earth. CAGW dogma doesn’t pass the sniff test any better than young earth creationism.
“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.
Umm… That is less than 2 cm per year. That also happens to be the natural rate of sea level rise earth has been experiencing since the end of the little ice age.
2mm/yr, not 2cm. (40mm to yr 2100) seems to be the rate of rise at present.
These people are seriously crazy.
What they need to do to solve the problem, is fill penguins with sea water and launch them into orbit.
“is fill penguins with sea water and launch them into orbit.”
Brilliant idea! Better yet, launch them into the sun, cooling the Earth, reducing ice melt and sea-level rise, etc.
Can’t. A giant man-caused iceberg blocked the bay where they used to live and now all the penguins are dead!!! :p
Best idea of the lot! Gold star to you, Glenn. 🙂
Give me $1,000,000 to study this for three years and I’ll write a report on it when I’m done.
Climate Scientology.
This is another job for negative interest rates in the final stages of denial over social and financial conditions.
This article is seriously daft. The authors need to look up cyclothems, and get some sort of a clue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothems
http://www.britannica.com/science/cyclothem
Humans do not have a capacity or option to ‘avoid’ sea level rise, or fall. If you think that’s a human talent or want to pretend that’s a policy ‘option’, you’ve made all sorts of deeply flawed and ignorant presumptions. We are flees on a dog, at best. Sorry your fantasies are not going to work out.
What’s next? Pretend you can stop the tidal change globally?
You see, even if we could stop all tides, globally (which, in case you didn’t know, we can’t, with out removing moon and sun from solar system) that would actually be meddling with a vital feature of the natural systems of the planet.
As would be the attempt to avoid sea level change, you freakin environmental vandals.
For the lazy readers
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/changes/htmls/tropical/upland_readmore_cyclothem.html
This would be a great opportunity to build massive ice sculptures in the image of the greatest dear climate change scare leaders. It could dwarf Rushmore.
Here’s another “duh” question for these geniuses. Why does it have to be pumped onto Antarctica? The oceans go to ALL continents! Surely each continent could just suck up part of it and do whatever the crap they want to with it? Building many pipelines like the ones they build for oil would create “green jobs” (as well as building desalination systems) and provide fresh water to poor countries that so desperately need it.
Better yet, we just fill the special cube shaped bags someone suggested here with sea water and seal them and build liquid filled retaining walls around “sinking” countries and turn wind turbines into giant sprinklers that pump water out of the oceans and spray it on land! Imagine the water parks we’d have!!
Why though? You can just plug a huge pneumatic hose into the nearest volcano and inflate the earth with CO2, and that way the ocean basins would increase in area and volume, and the sea level would fall again.
Two birds, one stone, grasshopper.
Let me guess; they’ve been spiking the Greenie Kool Ade punch again. And had a party, and some “genius” climaloon came up with this “solution” to a non-problem.
Pumping sea water onto Antarctica makes a lot of sense! But I have an easier solution. Just have everyone open up their refrigerator and freezer doors to cool things down, especially in the summer when it’s so hot. And in the winter it would help water freeze so it wouldn’t be going into the ocean in the first place and raising the level. And we build solar arrays to power everything – it’s free! See how easy it all is? Oh, and I will accept only a modest fee for my brilliant ideas on how to solve this pressing problem for humanity.
C’mon, we’ve got to think rationally about this. We can get rid of this extra water. Now, how many billion of us are there? Right. So, if we each drank two glasses of water a day…/sarc.
Cheaper to flood Western Australia once more, 200m below current sea level and,
it used to be a sea, Just did a canal or a tunnel and the water will flow all by itself downhill.
How many coal-fired power plants would it take to pump all that water from the southern oceans uphill into the interior of Antarctica? I’m guessing a significant percentage of the world’s total power consumption.
Everybody can see the warnings from 2001 about all the flooded areas have happened. Canal street in NYC is under 20 feet of water. Most of Mami is drowning in 4 feet of water. The ice from Antarctica has slide off in the ocean from all this warming. Most of Greenland is ice free. India is suffering from lack of water from no snow fall in the Himalayan mountains. Super hurricanes are washing ashore in the US. It’s worse than we thought. This all happened by 2013. The horror. Whole island nations have disappeared.
Same story, different date. There is no math to support whatever happened to the relationship between co2 and temperature between 1998/1999 and today. How are they able to make those assertions based on what? Their assumptions? Even if this was the hottest year on record, it falls below the lowest modeled temperature for this year. How is that causation?
Why not just pump all the ” EXTRA ” ocean water onto the deserts…they seem to be lacking ….water !
Something rather crucial that’s been entirely missed by the “scientists” and the commenters here is the very large quantity of heat which would be transferred to the Antarctic icecap. Forget all the insurmountable practical difficulties for the moment – by far the most efficient way of transferring heat energy to the icecap would be to pump seawater up there. Water has the highest latent heat of fusion of almost any substance; when it freezes, it will give up that heat to its surroundings – the ice and the air above it.
Have a look at this table of some common substances:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/latent-heat-melting-solids-d_96.html
Water, at 334 kJ/kg has the highest value in the table. Significantly warming the icecap and the air above it doesn’t seem to me to be the solution to any problem we might have now, or in the future. Perhaps the “scientists” might consider the consequences of just another crazy geo-engineering scheme in a little more detail. I’ve just begun doing so, and my mind is already boggling.
From a CAGW point of view, this plan to pump seawater has a major failing. Even if it were feasible, keeping the sea level constant would still not accomplish the goal of killing off 95% of the humans on this planet.
I am in San Diego, so I looked up the sea level history for this location. It appears to be rising slowly and has risen about 200 mm in the last 100 years, or 2 mm/year. Why are they worried about such a slow sea level rise? It hasn’t affected my coastline in my lifetime, 80 years or so.
If we are going to seriously talk about moving some sea water then let’s talk about setting up siphons with in line turbines to generate electricity. There are some basins that could be filled / refilled. One I can think of is the Salton Sea. There are much bigger ones in other parts of the world.
James – the Salton Sea is located over the southern end of the San Andreas Fault – time for a little reflection perhaps.
“Flooding of Ancient Salton Sea Linked to San Andreas Earthquakes:
Study finds that faults beneath the Salton Sea ruptured during Colorado River floods and may have triggered large earthquakes on the southern San Andreas Fault”
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/1929
“Loading of the San Andreas fault by flood-induced rupture of faults beneath the Salton Sea”, Brothers et. al., 2010
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n7/full/ngeo1184.html
Well, that’s germany.
Look up ‘Mauthausen stairs of death’
Thanks Anthony + staff for the guts.
Doing great work – all thumps up!
Best Regards – Hans