From Rutgers University
Global sea level likely to rise as much as 70 feet for future generations
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.
The researchers, led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, reached their conclusion by studying rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand. They looked at the late Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.
“The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, as well as some of the marine margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work. “Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world’s coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world’s population.”
“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” Miller said. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.”
Miller said, however, that this research highlights the sensitivity of the earth’s great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. “The natural state of the earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,” he said.
Miller was joined in the research by Rutgers colleagues James G. Wright, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences; James V. Browning, assistant research professor of earth and planetary sciences; Yair Rosenthal, professor of marine science in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; Sindia Sosdian, research scientist in marine science and a postdoctoral scholar at Cardiff University in Wales; and Andrew Kulpecz, a Rutgers doctoral student when the work was done, now with Chevron Corp. Other co-authors were Michelle Kominz, professor of geophysics and basin dynamics at Western Michigan University; Tim R. Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Center at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand; Benjamin S. Cramer of Theiss Research in Eugene, Ore.; and W. Richard Peltier, professor of physics and director of the Center for Global Change Science at the University of Toronto.
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One problem with this analysis, a 2C warmer planet might not accumulate ice at the poles when there is no ice, but it might accumulate ice when there is already an ice pack. Climate is not necessarily as simple as that. It’s not an amount of ice for a certain temperature. It’s a rate of ice increase that depends on the temperature and the amount of ice already present.
David Cage says:
March 20, 2012 at 12:36 am
I just hope the stupid scaremongering of all those even remotely involved in climate sciences does not discredit science to such a degree that all the other branches are tainted
Ian W says:
March 20, 2012 at 4:57 am
Sorry its already too late. Looking at responses to research stories now all researchers are being tarred with the same ‘research results for rent money’ responses…..
The real damage to science though is the universities churning out graduates that have been brainwashed to believe and not been educated enough to realize that they have been brainwashed. What chance any new good engineers or scientists from that group?
___________________________
All I can tell you is that I was a Lab Manager for years and I gave up on the younger crowd. I would not look at anyone under 35. This was because of poor manners, a worse work ethic and a Know -it -All attitude that dynamite would not penetrate.
Hmmm ….. CO2 was @ur momisugly the same levels but temps were 2 deg C warmer ….. Sounds like there are other forcing mechanisms besides CO2 @ur momisugly work. Oh yeah, that’s what skeptics have been saying all along. Life for the alarmists is not easy – the data just won’t cooperate
There’s something I’ve wondered about for some time.
Antarctica is said to be the driest continent on Earth. It’s so cold that all the moisture freezes out of the air.
Wouldn’t we therefore expect a warming world to permit water to travel much further inland, and to accumulate as much more snow and ice than currently exists there?
Has anybody calculated the effect this would have?
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1052257
Award Abstract #1052257
“Pliocene peak sea level and warmth: Integration of a Virginia corehole array and deep-sea isotope and trace metal records.
“Investigator(s): Kenneth Miller kgm@rci.rutgers.edu (Principal Investigator) …
“PIs promise to establish the sea level rise associated with warm Pliocene high stands. This is critical to our understanding of the cryosphere during a time that has been suggested by many to be similar in some respects to conditions expected by the end of this century.
Awarded Amount to Date: $75488”
The conclusions are absurd.
“They looked at the late Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.”
Did anyone explain to Miller that the Earth was spinning faster than it is now (the day was much shorter in length and the earth’s shape was different).
Comparing the present to the late Pliocene epoch is ridiculous.
Leo Morgan says:
March 20, 2012 at 11:04 am
There’s something I’ve wondered about for some time.
Antarctica is said to be the driest continent on Earth. It’s so cold that all the moisture freezes out of the air. Wouldn’t we therefore expect a warming world to permit water to travel much further inland, and to accumulate as much more snow and ice than currently exists there?
Has anybody calculated the effect this would have?
In the international standard atmosphere, the 0°C isotherm is at 7,500 ft. Let’s say that a 2°C increase in surface temperature has a linear effect; that would put the 0°C isotherm at 8,500 ft. This is not going to stop glaciers forming on plenty of the world’s mountains. Any increase in humidity would cause more precipitation to fall and the glaciers, although they would start higher up, would probably extend to lower altitudes because of the increase in the flow of ice.
Interesting hypothesis.
Title of the paper please. Is that so hard to do in the text?
I would like to read the actual source. Not some media mumbo jumbo.
We have just been informed that researchers, led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University did come to some wrong conclusions.
STOP PRESS – STOP PRESS!!
We can now reveal that although their study results are mainly correct, “the time-span of thousands of years conclusion”, cannot be substantiated as new and later research by a former bicycle repairman and tractor-mechanic – turned professor of EIFW and Planetary Assumptions Owen R Darhipsy – shows that it is happening much faster than the good Miller and his team first anticipated. – That the year 2100 sticks in our minds, he says, is no coincidence. –It is because unconsciously – we know that – for life as we know it – that is the end year.
Sorry, Dr Owen R Darhipsy says, but all you fossil- guzzlers are still a boil festering in your grandchildren’s minds.
– But there is a solution he says – and he urges humans to build more and bigger boats. – And – don’t forget the rafts, he adds.
If you think this is all BS, then all I can say is that I was not the one who started it!
A few million years ago, Antarctica was not as centered on the South Pole
as it is now. There was a cooling trend over the past several million years,
especially from 3 to 1.1 million years ago. The cooling trend was in large
part from Antarctica drifting to a location favoring year-round ice over
nearly all of the continent.
Also, I have seen that the 2 degree C rise to avoid is 2 degrees C above
pre-industrial temperature levels, when HadCRUT3 averaged around .25
degree C below its baseline. In recent years, HadCRUT3 has been around
.4 degree C above its baseline. So, maybe as little as 1.35 degrees C of
warming from where we have been in recent years is the maximum that is
“safe”. 2 degrees of warming on top of .4 degree above “HadCRUT3
baseline” may be unsafe.
There is also the matter of global climate sensitivity to change of CO2.
In recent years, I have mostly come up with .67 to 1.48 degree C per 2x
change of CO2 (on log scale). For example, I use the woodfortrees.org
tool, using it on a recent 13 year period that I selected for appearing to
have little linear trend in ENSO or AMO. (Beginning of 1999 to beginning
of 2012.) That says warming rate of .044 degree/decade, which I think
*may be* the result of CO2 increasing at rate of .199 log scale doubling
from 1980 to 2010. This *may indicate* climate sensitivity to CO2 being
.67 degree C per 2x change of CO2.
I have done other efforts, such as a recent one on considering 2001
version of HadCRUT (before it had significant downward adjustment of past
times), from its 1944 spike to its 2005 hump. That is close to 1 cycle of the
~64 year period that is easily visible in HadCRUT. As a result, I come up
with climate sensitivity to CO2 change around .7-.9 degree per 2x change
in CO2.
Another effort I have done is identifying and removing the ~64 year periodic
component in HadCRUT3, to isolate temperature increase due to increase
of greenhouse gases. Further, I figure how much of the remaining warming in
1973-2005 was from anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases other than
CO2, which was largely stalled in the mid 1990’s. At that rate, I came up with
climate sensitivity around 1.25-1.48 degree C per 2x change of CO2.
However, the 2001 version of HADCRUT shows less warming from 1973 to
1978, and even greater ~64 year periodic component, than 2008 version and
more recent versions. So, if I redo that work using HADCRUT having less of
adjustments, I would probably come up with climate sensitivity a little less than
1.3 degree C per 2x change of CO2 – possibly close to the “zero feedback
figure” of 1.12 degree C per 2x change of CO2.
“Posted by News Staff”
WUWT has acquired some News Staff! Good stuff.
———–
Paid for by big oil via Heartland no doubt. Nefarious Contrarians!! 😉
Gail Combs says on March 20, 2012 at 10:37 am:
“All I can tell you is that I was a Lab Manager for years and I gave up on the younger crowd. I would not look at anyone under 35. This was because of poor manners, a worse work ethic and a Know -it -All attitude that dynamite would not penetrate.”
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I’ve got the “T shirt” Gail, but as far as I can see, it looks like we (us humans) spawn a generation – or two, or three – of caring, diligent people and then —Pwfifft – for a generation or two pure nonsense people emerge.
Maybe the answer is that sense and nonsense is very equally distributed amongst us and that “the tipping point” is really a “Seesaw”
In the case of “Climate research” let’s hope I am wrong, as ever since Euclid, some 2300 years ago (to my knowledge), first instated the basic “Thermodynamic Law”- (now named “The Zeroth Law”) and up until the late 19th Century when Maxwell proposed and Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857 –1894) clarified and expanded on the electromagnetic theory of light, the research done was a “research” of the Earth System, i.e. the Atmosphere, The Land surfaces and the Oceans, rivers and lakes.
Ever since “electromagnetism” (EM) was discovered, climate-science has gone to pot.
If you wish to study what EM is you will be as baffled – as you already are – if you now study what “energy” really is. – Nowadays, you study models.
Don’t get used to it!
There is another matter: We are likely approaching the end of an interglacial
period of the roughly 100,000 year cycle that has been prominent for about
11 cycles.
Something else: Climate sensitivity to change of CO2 may vary inversely with
global temperature when global temperature change correlates with a change
of amount of greenhouse gases. In fact, I think it probably does. Why: The
lapse rate feedback (a negative one) probably increases as increase of
greenhouse gases increases the lapse rate, and vice versa.
Robbie says on March 20, 2012 at 2:12 pm:
“Title of the paper please. Is that so hard to do in the text?
I would like to read the actual source. Not some media mumbo jumbo.”
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If you are the handsome little Robbie my wife gave birth to some 54 years ago, I’ll gladly strangle you right now, you little so and so.
You must learn that in a written letter you begin either with Dear Sir or Dear Madam (o k maybe madman)
But here on WUWT please tell us, somehow, who you are addressing. – It should be easy enough even for imbeciles
We’ve emitted the same amount of CO2 over 150 years that it took natural processes to outgas over 5 milennia in the last 3 glacial terminations. The same amount of CO2 that accompanied global warming of 6C in a thirtieth of the time. And we’re currently still emitting at an even faster rate. We’re conducting a large-scale, uncontrolled experiment with the atmosphere and we have a poor idea of what the outcomes will be. We are inside the test-tube – we can’t escape the experiment.
I don’t know what will happen or how fast. Optimism about low impacts jar with emphasis on the uncertainty of knowledge. Either the IPCC range of projections is a fair indicator of potentials, or their upper values are too unlikely, in which case one is arguing for greater certainty than the IPCC gives out.
For those who stress unertainty and don’t make the mistake of equating this with more likelihood for lower impacts in the future, I do not know how it is possible to shrug the shoulders considering the scenario in my first para.
For those who are more certain of (low impact) outcomes than the IPCC, I hope you are right.
Darn it, anyhow. I was going to break ground and begin construction of my pleasure boat pier to celebrate the coming of Spring this weekend. But, only 70 feet of rise ? I need an additional 33 feet to be able to dock my boat. And, by constructing now, I can build my pier without swimming or rowing a boat.
I have Miller’s previously published data on Sea level and what he is now saying about late Pliocene sea levels, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, is completely different.
The average over this whole period according to Miller 2005 was -16 metres below today. The variance is from -55 metres to +20 metres. So another bandwagon jumper and I hope he reads that..
All paleo sea level estimates starting 580 million years ago (going in the opposite direction most people are used to but I am too lazy to update it).
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/328/paleosealevelcurves.png
Paleo sea levels are very unusual in that not only are ice levels involved, but also the age of ocean basins, the relative conglomeration of continents etc.
100 million years ago, sea level was 250 metres higher and the continents were 25% flooded by the ocean. Most of our oil comes from this period as a result ….
Sea level is headed down now…
Oh, and in about 1500 years we are headed into the next Ice Age Glacial, so any projections beyond that are meaningless. It’s baked into the cake in our orbital mechanics.
And Antarctic Ice is already growing… that ice comes from water that comes from the ocean…
And…
Oh, nevermind. This is just so brain dead. Folks need to go to dinner at the nearest warf and notice that the water is NOT higher. There are “ports” in Italy, Greece, Turkey and all over the place that are now inland, as water levels have dropped since the days of the Roman Empire.
Interstellar Bill says
Warm oceans = high CO2.ectrob
Warmistas confuse the effect with the cause.
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They don’t get confused at all. But when you have feedback effects, cause and effect become kinda meaningless or at least not useful.
Anyone who has a decent understanding of electronics will tell you that if feedback is present in a circuit, perturbing the input will change the output and perturbing the output will change the input.
In the case of CO2 an initial warming produces more CO2, which in turn causes more warming, which produces more CO2 and so on……… It’s this cycle of multiplication that allows tiny solar isolation changes to move the earth out of an ice age.
BUT
The process does not have to start with warming. The initial change can be a change in CO2.
At least they had the decency to say the ice caps would melt over time, not instantly. And 70 feet? Last I checked, it was just a few inches!
Excuse me for butting in LazyTeenager but you say on March 21, 2012 at 5:47 am:
“They don’t get confused at all. But when you have feedback effects, ———.
————-. In the case of CO2 an initial warming produces more CO2, which in turn causes more warming, which produces more CO2 and so on……… It’s this cycle of multiplication that allows tiny solar isolation changes to move the earth out of an ice age.
BUT
The process does not have to start with warming. The initial change can be a change in CO2.”
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All the evidence from Ice Core graphs show that warming (T) came first, and then the atmospheric CO2 level started rising. – At no point during that rise do the two graph lines (CO2 and T) cross over.
BUT
Once they (CO2 and T) are at the top and have stayed for a while, T starts falling back while CO2 stays for a while longer. (Just as the situation is at the moment – and has been for the past 8 or 9 thousand years) –
Why should that be happening if CO2 is the driving force behind warming?
When I first started looking in the matter of global warming about six years ago I ran across a pdf by a geologist out in California. IIRC he was at one time the state geologist. In that paper he said the high stands that represented sea level height before the last age are still visible in certain parts of California. He said we have a good 40 meters yet to go before the next glaciation kicks in.
This kind of makes coming sea level rise a natural occurrence with or without CO2.
Unfortunately I don’t remember his name and the pdf I saved was on a pc that died of heat death and took all the insides with it.
The authors have clearly constructed their model to showing rising grant income for themselves.
Looks like a good paper. But the residents here dislike any actual research into climate, preferring planetary influences, oceanic cycles and tarot readings.
The level of misunderstanding above is enormous. Surely the best is thinking that N^(-2) is different to 1/(N^2). Oh well.
mfo says:
March 20, 2012 at 11:57 am
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1052257
Award Abstract #1052257
“Pliocene peak sea level and warmth: Integration of a Virginia corehole array and deep-sea isotope and trace metal records.
“Investigator(s): Kenneth Miller kgm@rci.rutgers.edu (Principal Investigator) …
“PIs promise to establish the sea level rise associated with warm Pliocene high stands. This is critical to our understanding of the cryosphere during a time that has been suggested by many to be similar in some respects to conditions expected by the end of this century…..
____________________________________
Oh Great.
You can see that much of South Carolina, North Carolina (and I would expect it is true of Virgina) is old sand dunes. That is why part of NC is called “The Sand Hills” “The Sand Hills are hilly, unconnected bands of sand left from the ocean dunes during the Miocene Epoch.” http://sciway2.net/2001/sc-geology/sandhills.htm
I am sure this area of “Research” is rich grounds for some real scare stories to stampede the naive in the USA into accepting Cap and Trade.
The fact the earth was very different then and that whole tectonic plates have shifted will be left out of the narrative.