Story submitted by WUWT reader Mark B
…the estimates currently differ by almost five meters (16.5 feet).
The United Nations’ forecast of how quickly global sea levels will rise this century is vital in determining how much money might be needed to combat the phenomenon. But predictions by researchers vary wildly, and the attempt to find consensus has become fractious.
It is a number which will ultimately establish how billions in taxpayer money will be spent — and it is one which is the subject of heated debate, both among politicians and scientists.
When the next report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is issued in two years, it will include a forecast for how high the world’s oceans might rise by 2100. With 146 million people in the world currently living less than one meter above sea level, the forecast will be vital in determining how much money governments must spend on measures to protect people from the rising waters and to resettle those in the most acute danger.
Eighteen scientists from 10 countries are involved in the task, and their first step is to determine which of the myriad studies relating to climate change’s effect on ocean levels to consider. In the end, they are to establish a possible range, with the maximum being the most decisive — and most contested — number. Even more challenging, the estimates currently differ by almost five meters (16.5 feet).
Story:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,774706,00.html
I wonder if Nils Axel Morner will be one of the experts from the ten countries? I hope he is otherwise I would think that the panel would be somewhat bogus.
Call me a cynic and a pessimist, but I think there is little chance that it will NOT be bogus.
If they are having trouble getting a handle on the fact that sea levels have been remarkably stable, I am sure Green Peace can lend them their crack team of scientists to assist.
It’s going to be really hard to pin this down……
…what with the sea floor sinking and all
/snark
What a colossal waste of time and money. It is not as though we will wake one morning to find that sea levels have risen a meter over yesterday’s level.
A much better use of the money would be to establish a better tsunami warning system for low lying countries/populations.
They should construct two wheels based on whether or not we deal with the “climate crisis”. Obviously, the one based on little or no measures to control “carbon” would have the higher, more catastrophic Hansen-esque range of 5 meters by the end of the century. Then, they could take turns spinning the two wheels, with averages taken for each. Voila, climate science at its best.
Notice there really isn’t a question of if levels are rising but instead of exactly how much?
@ur momisugly F Ross – if you lived in a low lying coastal area you’d care. A lot. It isn’t like you can simply pick up whole cities and move them by 2100 easily. Even if you don’t personally live in a low lying costal area you should care becuase these will likely be systemic costs that we’ll all have to contribute to.
Well put. Whether due to CAGW, cosmic rays, or the sun burpping, the pragmatic questions are: if, how much, and by when? I am sure the Dutch care a lot if it’s going to be 1 foot or 10 feet and if it’s going to be 2030 or 2300. When you’re up to your you-know-what in alligators, do you care who flooded the swamp?
@ur momisugly Bystander – The last time I was in Florida It seemed like there was a distinct lack of builders worried about the rising sea.
Of course I live in Indiana, so no derect worries from me about sea level rise. I just have to watch out for the Millions of climate refugies that will be heading my way by 2010. err, I mean 2020.
(sarc)
The entire premise is bogus. The UN has no responsibility whatsoever to move people that live in places that will already be flooded by moderate typhoons or moderate floods. They either move themselves or they might die. That is pretty much their choice either way. There is no accelerated rise in sea levels. Therefore any paranoid fantasies of doom to the contrary are just children’s games of “what if” and boogeyman propaganda stories for sheep.
“It is a number which will ultimately establish how billions in taxpayer money will be spent — and it is one which is the subject of heated debate, both among politicians and scientists.”
The magic number will be one sufficiently high to cause concern, yet not so high as to create alarm and a “what’s the use, we’re doomed” feeling among the populace. Because, ultimately, $billions in further “climate research”, “green jobs”, “green energy”, and careers based on climate hocus pocus are at stake, so it’s critical to get it right.
Concern about sea-level rise – or, in London, anyway, land-level falling. A return to isostatic equilibrium, I gather, means that the island of Great Britain [mainland England, Scotland & Wales (in strict alphabetic order, naturally)] is rising in the North, and sinking a little in the south. The Thames Barrier [opened in 1984] will probably only provide protection for London until the latter part of this century. but that’s the South East sinking, in part, at least.
Now, I’m looking for help: how do you tell a climate refugee from an economic refugee?
And – will our Masters in Brussels redefine the requirements, so we may not turn away a climate refugee?
The IPCC’s focus is narrow: They assume that sea levels cannot possibly fall.
They have a 50% chance of being wrong before they even start.
The article does not mention the data provided by the University of Colorado at Boulder showing satellite derived global sea level rise rates starting downward about the year 2002. This data is unequivocal in demonstrating that the rate of sea level rise is not accelerating as claimed by climate alarmists but that sea level rise is clearly declining. Not good news for the alarmists.
I would like to know the exact procedures used to estimate that 146 million people live under 1 m above sea level. I would also like to know whether this includes people living in inland depressions (say, around the Dead Sea in Palestine) and in polder areas such as coastal Guyana or Netherlands (where defenses already exist, generally exceeding high-tide level by a generous margin).
Another interesting question I’d like to know about is the slope of those low-lying coastal areas. Suppose a very flat coastal area with 1% slope (which is a very low slope). This means that the coast is 1 m above sea level at 100 m from the high-tide coastline, and 2 m if you are 200 m inland.
There are indeed areas that flat, e.g. mangrove and swamp areas in Florida or some parts of Central America’s Atlantic coasts, e.g. Honduras or Belize, and also some areas near the mouth of large ricers such as the Amazon. I have seen some large beaches in Brazil that seem to be that flat, although most are steeper. All in all, it seems to me that they are not so many, and they are not heavily populated. There are, indeed, some historic places (such as Venice) where a sea level rise of 1 m may cause damage, and some cities (like New Orleans) that could do with better levees as painfully seen with Katrina; but we are not talking hurricanes or tsunamis here, only normal sea levels (which is what sea-level climate-related projections mostly deal with).
I would also like to see those projections envisaging large rises in sea level. Most of SLR is thermal expansion of water under higher water temperature, and this cannot be that much in view of existing temperature projections. Melting land ice can contribute more, but the most catastrophic models do not envisage nothing much for the next 100 years (Ridley et al, for instance, cited in AR4 in this regard, and working on the ASSUMPTION that Greenland Ice Sheet may gradually melt completely, project a complete melting in around 3000 years, causing an average addition of about 30 cm per century to the sea over those 3000 years, with a MAXIMUM rate of 55 cm/century at some point along the way, and much less than average in this century or the next few ones.
Now, it has to be acknowledged that a dramatically rising sea level is one of the scariest parts of possible changes in global climate, and thus a bit of exaggeration about its magnitude and speed is the least one may expect, since it would be advanced with the noble purpose of getting the message across,just to wake Humankind up from its slumber, even if the figures do not exactly add up.
I have lived in the same community [which incidentally does have low lying beach frontage] for the last 67 years and have observed no changes in sea level even though I pass through that area on an almost daily basis. If sea level rise were ever to be a real problem here I’m sure that the owners of the many expensive motels/hotels in the beach area would long ago have demanded some sort of barrier to be erected. And …building in the beach area continues apace.
Storm surge is a horse of a different color, but to me the projected sea level rise is just that: “projected.”
It looks to me like the warmist circus falls apart without their master orchestrator, the late Dr. Stephen Schneider. I don’t think this cacophony would have occured under his watch.
Bystander says:
July 16, 2011 at 10:44 am
“Notice there really isn’t a question of if levels are rising but instead of exactly how much?”
A prognosis of falling sea levels has no chance of attracting any funding so it’s useless for today’s government scientists and will only be explored by self funded amateurs.
Does anyone know of a plan-of-action should sea levels drop precipitously?
Thanks to Stefan Rahmstorf with his disintegrating WAIS scare tactic, the Dutch government is already preparing to spend billions on a fairytale future sea level rise.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/fig4metgrav.gif
Adaptation is what people have done for over 80,000 years. Mitigation is what governments force us to do.
Estimates of sea level rise by 2100 currently differ by almost five meters (16.5 feet)? Is that between Al Gore’s and the high end of everyone else’s estimates?
While Googling about Al’s Inconvenient “20 foot” figure, I found this 2008 piece which highlights how quickly the “overwhelmingly settled scientific consensus” has altered:
Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ says sea levels could rise up to 20 feet. Is this true?
Asks Steve from Florida
From the abstract:
Gore’s docudrama: 20 ft “in the near future”
IPCC 2007: 0.18 to 0.6 meters (0.59 to 2.0 feet) over the next 100 years.
2008 paper: 0.8 meter by 2100 plausible, >2m “physically untenable.”
Now, in the Spiegel Online piece:
The surprising part? Hansen still has a reputation to risk.
Got that? It’s a problem to look at the period with the great “unprecedented” CO2 and temperature rises, you must start from when CO2 and temperatures (and the amount of purported “CO2 greenhouse effect”) were lower to see an accelerated rise now. Gee, does it have to be a year from the 1800’s? Don’t we have the proxy data to start from the beginning of this interglacial? Wouldn’t that show a spectacular current accelerated rise in sea level?
In 2008 the science said: At worst it’ll be less than a meter by 2100, Greenland and Antarctica can’t melt fast enough to contribute to anything more.
Not alarming enough. Research funding and schemes for UN-led Global “Carbon-based Unit” Control are at risk. Therefore…
Now Climate Science™ says: Could be five meters by 2100!
Resistance is futile! You will allow your economic distinctivenesses to be eliminated and you shall be assimilated into the Collective! The alternative is Extinction!
Why don’t those 146 million people just MOVE then?
With, say, 10 decades to do it, they could, for example, move (on average) 20 meters a year to remain dry. That’s only 5.5 cms a day.
I could manage that.
in 100 years from now they will still be down by the sea side debating is it 1mm or 2mm rise
rbateman says:
July 16, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Does anyone know of a plan-of-action should sea levels drop precipitously?
The most obvious question to me would be who owns all that new property now? Does the person who owns a beach front lot suddenly become the owner of the dry land in front of his home that was once part of the ocean?