By Steve Goddard
The World Cup was bad news for Holland, but that isn’t what I am talking about.
The world’s preeminent climatologist Dr. James Hansen (who is well known for quiet understatement) has forecast that Holland will drown in the next century. Looks like East Anglia is doomed too. Is that a bad thing?
If that isn’t bad enough, NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Key West, and Miami are toast!
Dr. Hansen says :
I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century.
According to the University of Colorado, sea level has been rising at 3.2 mm/yr since 1994, and has generally been slowing down over the last five years (except for the El Niño spike.)
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
That means it will only take 312 years to rise one metre. Which is not far off from what it has been doing for the last century.
It is imperative that we make plans to protect Holland. First step is to hire Hansen to put his finger in the dike. Second step is to teach their strikers how to kick the ball somewhere besides straight to the goalkeeper.
At least they didn’t lose a penalty shootout this year.
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@Geronimo
I live in East Anglia too. Have you visited the sea-cliff at Dersingham Bog (near the village of Wolferton)? The interesting thing about the cliff is that the sea is a good 2 miles away on the horizon. The sea receded after the end of the last ice age (presumably because post-glacial bounce). So at the end of the century we might be back to where we used to be anyway.
Alan The Brit has it nailed. Its another attempt at driving down property values before Hansen makes his off to purchase.n Scaremongering generates billions $$$ on shorts. Why no one went looking at the money being made on climate scare tactics thus far astounds me. The SEC will do it for almost any other type of market manipulation so why not this one?
A history of wrong predictions. I was once an athlete but no longer. Perhaps Hansen was once a PhD …….
Is this prediction about sea level rises any more credible than his predictions about sea level impacts on Manhattan for the current period?
stumpy says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:15 am
Whilst Hansen is OTT as usual, it is a serious problem in the long term for many places, and we can expect 150mm of sea level rise in the next 100 years. The Somerset levels in the UK are already experiancing problems. People will have to adapt, the question is when, now or in 200 years?””‘
You would think that people would be smart enough to just take one step back from the beach….
….in 100 years
I’ve lived on this same rock, in the middle of this same ocean, for over fifty years. As I get older it’s getting harder and harder to climb in and out of the boat at the dock.
I swear, sea levels are falling, not rising.
When should we sceptics declare victory
As the aim of us sceptics is simply to have the predictions of climate based on real provable science, and as the “global warming scamsters” have been so humiliated over recent months. I would like to ask a general question: “what would we sceptics constitute as signifying victory?”
After all there are going to be people like Hansen, Mann and Corporal Jones who will believe in Manmade warming if the the glaciers started sweeping past their ivory towers. There will always by politicians like Gore out to make a quick buck and eco-groups will only give up on the global warming scare when there’s a better scare to scare us with. So, we are never going to convince everyone that climate science should be a testable, provable, impartial/apolitical science like every other (good) science.
So what constitutes victory? We are not trying to prove that mankind has not made some impact on global temperatures. Nor are we saying that a rise in temperature may not impact us humans.
What we are saying is that: we cannot tolerate people who try to hide the failings of the manmade global warming hypothesis; we cannot tolerate people who ignore the obvious problems of Urban heating or worse try to say they do not exist, also we cannot tolerate those who assume warming must be detrimental because “everything done by mankind to the environment must be detrimental”.
So what does victory look like? It surely can’t mean silencing idiots like Mann and Hansen, because our strength is that we welcome criticism of what we say because free speach and open discussion with honest criticism strengthens our case; it does not diminish good science!
And on the political front, there will always be people on the left, and capitalists wind-developers on the right, and liberal grant-hungry people in the middle who see global warming as a god given opportunity to push their own kind of politics on the rest of us. We’ll never stop these people!
So what does victory look like?
Is it when the science community themselves are so ready and able to criticise the theories of their peers that people like us are no longer needed?
Is it when governments finally realise further legislation is unnecessary – or is it when they roll back what they have done?
Is it when people like the CRU admit the failings of the global temperature monitoring network? And put in a decent system that gets around the problems of urban heating etc.?
Is it when the media throw the PR from Hansen in the bin as a “non story”?
Is it when the majority of people think we have “done enough” on global warming?
What is it?
Armed with this information, people have 100 years to stop living below sea level. Do you think they’ll start packing their bags now or wait until the water is on the first floor?
fFreddy says:
July 12, 2010 at 5:17 am
Going off on a tangent somewhat, an interesting picture of the extent to which the earth’s spin affects sea level :
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/what-would-earth-look-if-it-stopped-spinning
—————-Reply
I seriously doubt there would be much redistribution of the oceans if the earth stopped spinning. Currently the earth is an oblate spheroid, and (if memory serves me correctly) is about 23 miles larger through an equatorial diameter than a polar diameter because like surface water, the plastic earth is made oblate by the daily spin. Adjustments for the lack of such centrifugal force on the water would also have to be applied to the earth itself, giving what I believe would be approximately the current earth’s distribution of oceans.
stumpy says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:15 am
Whilst Hansen is OTT as usual, it is a serious problem in the long term for many places, and we can expect 150mm of sea level rise in the next 100 years. The Somerset levels in the UK are already experiancing problems. People will have to adapt, the question is when, now or in 200 years?
___________________________________________________________
Yes, but the trillion dollar question is when will we experience the next “little ice age” or worse the big one.
Most scientists agree we are near the end of the Holocene. A warm and wet climate people can deal with even if there is flooding. Cold or very cold and dry is the real killer and no one is paying that problem any attention. Some AGW papers even suggest Man’s CO2 emissions are keeping the climate from transitioning into a glacial age. According to Joe Bastardi we have two out of the three game changers in place right now. A quiet sun, and a change in the thirty year ocean oscillations to the cool cycle. All we are missing is a major volcano to cause a “year without a summer” so I suggest watching the bottom white spot of the Icelandic volcanoes/glacier and the Alaskan and Russian Volcanoes
What the scientist have to say about a little ice age.
FROM NASA:
“The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.” http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
Shahinaz M. Yousef of Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, forecast, in 1995 and 1996, that cycles 23 and the following two to three solar cycles are expected to be weak cycles similar to those cycles that occurred around 1800 and 1900. Implications of Gleissberg cycle
The big one
“..Professor Paar, from Croatia’s Zagreb University, has spent decades analysing previous ice ages in Europe and what caused them…”Previous ice ages lasted about 70,000 years. That’s a fact and the new ice age can’t be avoided….”This could happen in five, 10, 50 or 100 years, or even later. We can’t predict it precisely, but it will come,” he added…And he added: “The reality is that mankind needs to start preparing for the ice age. We are at the end of the global warming period. The ice age is to follow. The global warming period should have ended a few thousands of years ago, we should have already been in the ice age. Therefore we do not know precisely when it could start – but soon.” http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2010-02-10/8836/Croat_scientist_warns_ice_age_could_start_in_five_years
Dansgaard (Greenland Ice core team) noted three rapid climate collapses are linked to orbital features that diminished the radiance from the sun… Climate Crash
Abrupt and sudden climatic transitions and fluctuations: a review: …A number of persistent oscillations exist, particularly one about 1500 years, but their amplitudes vary considerably between time periods. The Holocene appears to be no more climatically benign than the similar period in the Eemian. The importance of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation for generating abrupt climatic changes in Europe, particularly in association with sudden pulses of fresh water, is illustrated. The concept of antiphase temperature changes between the North and South Atlantic is discussed. Externally generated abrupt climatic deteriorations owing to explosive volcanic eruptions and variations in solar irradiance are also discussed…” 2001 Royal Meteorological Society
Milankovitch cycles:
“A census of Plio–Pleistocene (5–0 Ma) terrestrial palynomorph assemblages from ODP Site 1123, located 1100 km offshore eastern New Zealand and in a water depth of 290 m, reveals marked variations in warm- (Cyathea, tall tree Podocarpus/Prumnopitys, Dacrydium cupressinum) and cold- (Halocarpus, Phyllocladus, Nothofagus fusca type, Coprosma) climate indicator species at Milankovitch-scale periodicities. Time series analysis indicates that the vegetation record is covariant with marine climate proxies carbonate content) and is strongly coherent at the 40-ka and 100-ka orbital frequency.
click
Milankovitch cycles from an CAGW perspective: http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climate_projects_04/glacial_cycles/web/index.html“>the Milankovitch Cycles
“… Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started.”
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
Given the 1974 CIA Ice Age document one wonders if we are being diverted towards “global warming” on purpose by those who know a glacial age is coming and want to insure the “elite few” survive it in style. Remember the seed vault?
Would some please buy Hansen some Prozac? The guy(and the rest of the AGW crowd) have some serious anxiety/depression problems. If pharmaceuticals aren’t the answer can we have an intervention with a capable therapist?
Amino: “Third step is to teach the referees how to see their star player being pulled from behind as he is trying to kick a goal.”
Difficult call for the ref, star player was outside the area, the pull failed to impede him and he finished up one-on-one with the goalie. Had referee blown, Holland, who should have been down to nine men by that time anyway, would have got a free kick on the edge of the area and Puyot sent off, if they failed to score we would now have everyone asking why the ref allowed play to go on. And I’m a fan of Holland, or at least Dutch football!
Sorry “…if they failed to score we would now have everyone asking why the ref allowed play to go on.”
Should read:”…if they failed to score we would now have everyone asking why the ref HADN’T allowed play to go on.
Dave N
“It could sound even scarier by expressing in µm”
A well used tactic with CO2 – 385 ppm sounds far worse than 0.038%, although personally I prefer ‘one molecule in every 2600’.
Tallbloke – thank you for the reminder of “Three ha’pence a foot”. My dad had that on a 78 rpm record and I knew it by heart when I was small, even though I had no idea what Bird’s Eye Maple was! A ha’pence was a half penny, for those too young to remember, and a foot was about 30cm.. 🙂
Schiphol Airport is currently 4m below sea level. So by 2107 it will be 5m below sea level!
Well, that’s definitely worse than now.
James P says:
July 12, 2010 at 8:15 am
A well used tactic with CO2 – 385 ppm sounds far worse than 0.038%, although personally I prefer ‘one molecule in every 2600′.”””
James you forgot the untimate in scare tactics, billions of tonnes
Gail Combs says:
July 12, 2010 at 7:43 am
We could argue with thousands of scientific papers (as the one below) and reasons, but, as we all know, this is not about science, data, proper or not properly placed weather stations or whatever, this is, specially in J.H. a.k.a “trains” case, is craziness taken to the limit. (it was politics up to november 2009, up to Climategate, from then on it is just a crazy “moment of inertia” to keep getting some money)
Solar Forcing of the Stream Flow of a Continental Scale South American River
http://www.iafe.uba.ar/httpdocs/reprint_parana.pdf
change that “n” to an “l”, ultimate 😉
“Looks like East Anglia is doomed too. Is that a bad thing?”
By and large it won’t be a bad thing, though maybe Suffolk (where Gainsborough took his photographs) will be missed a bit. I lived in Essex for a while and it’s a simply awful place.
I wonder how much bed wetting causes water to run to the sea? Raising the sea level.
Surely they have trillion dollar schemes to protect us and the planet.
stumpy says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:15 am
Whilst Hansen is OTT as usual, it is a serious problem in the long term for many places, and we can expect 150mm of sea level rise in the next 100 years.
OTT… Over the top… is that the same as making stuff up? Terrifying the public with fanciful nightmares? Lying and profiting from the lies?
150mm… 6″ in 100 years! I started screaming in horror when I read that and I’ve yet to stop. (OK, that last sentence is OTT).
Dr. Hansen says :
“I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century.”
Whereas, I find it inconceivable that anyone takes Dr Hansen’s predictions seriously at all when he predicted 20 years ago that half of Manhattan would be submerged under seawater by now.
FYI, the sea-level at Manhattan has barely risen an inch in that time!
I think those kind of warmistas are using AGW as a displacement, focusing on AGW allows them to ignore other problems, which they can’t handle emotionally.
As a dutchman originating from the zeeland area and vacationing at the coast from my early youth i may probably share with you an observation . The beaches nowadays are larger and more robust than in my early youth . This may be caused by supplemental sand brought to the shoreline during the recent years , but this is not the complete real story as in the first years this sand was washed away rapidly and needed to be resupplied every year in order to keep the coastline away from the dunes . Nowadays by just looking at the sea the water is further away from the dunes than ever at high tide and the beaches are really very wide at low tide as they have hardly been ever before . In zeeland the inhabitants have always struggled with the sea , but their mission statement reads Luctor et emergo and no matter what mr hansen is preaching this will always be the case .
Henry chance says:
July 12, 2010 at 8:46 am
Do you mean BIG DIAPERS INDUSTRY is behind GW?
I don’t care if Holland drowns … as long as the rest of The Netherlands stays dry.
In addition to the sea rising, the former swampland has been shrinking because they ‘layed it dry’ and the Scandinavia icemelt causes the continent to tilt pushing the country down. But we Dutch have been dealing with that since since the year 1200 (founding of Amsterdam) and even before that people lived there. We’ll manage just fine, so please keep your Hansen. 🙂