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Sea level rise increase 1/2 thickness of human fingernail crates media “sea level rise alert” panic
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
During May three new scientific papers appeared addressing results of studies of Antarctica ice loss which sent the alarmist media into a feeding frenzy of ill-informed, exaggerated and erroneous print and broadcast climate reporting panic.
The first two papers were released on May 12 and resulted in ludicrous claims being made by the major news media with the big three anchors including NBC Brian Williams warning that sea level would rise by 13 feet by the year 2100 while ABC’s Diane Sawyer chimed in that Florida would be hit by three or more feet of sea level rise and CBS’s Scott Pelley bemoaning that a large part of Antarctica is melting and can’t be stopped.(1)
These May 13 broadcasts were supposedly based on these two new released studies which addressed research on West Antarctica ice loss involving six specific glaciers.(2)
One of the studies was published in Science and involved use of computer simulations to model behavior of the Thwaites and Haynes glaciers to examine ice loss behavior. The results suggested that early=stage collapse of these long known to be geologically unstable glaciers had begun with sea level rise impacts of 0.25 mm per year likely over the 21 century and that somewhere in the next 200 to 900 years onset of sea level rise increase of 1 mm or more per year could begin.
This study specifically cautions that the simulations used were not coupled to global climate models and as such these simulation results do not constitute a projection of future sea level rise impacts.
The second study was published in Geophysical Research Letters and involved use of satellite radar tracking analysis of ice movement and thickness for the Pine Island, Thwaites, Haynes, Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers in West Antarctica. The study noted that these glaciers constitute about 1/3 of the West Antarctica ice sheet which is equivalent to about 4 feet of potential sea level rise impact.
This study found that over the last 41 years the ice loss from these six unstable glaciers has increased. The study specifically noted that until numerical ice sheet models with realistic oceanic forcing are able to replicate these observations, projections of the evolution of this sector of West Antarctica should be interpreted with caution.
Neither of these studies made any claims regarding sea level rise projections related to these results and in fact cautioned that such assessments were not part of their efforts. Furthermore neither of these studies made any claims that man made climate change was responsible for these findings.
Notwithstanding the very specific qualifiers and cautions contained in both of these studies including cautions regarding the lack of projections of future sea level rise the print and broadcast media “freaked out” with absurd claims of future sea level rise impacts that were not only completely unsupported by these studies but more importantly they were not even addressed in these two studies.
In addition to the NBC, CBS and ABC news anchor absurdities noted earlier the BBC claimed that sea level would rise by 1.4 meters by 2100 and The Guardian claimed that sea level would rise by 4 meters. Based on the material contained in the two published studies the alarmist claims made by NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, The Guardian and many other news organizations about these West Antarctica studies can only be viewed as ill-informed, exaggerated and erroneous. It seems clear that no one involved with these news organizations made any effort to actually obtain, read and evaluate the information contained in the two studies.(3)
On May 19 another study was published in Geophysical Research Letters which addressed the results of new satellite radar altimetry measurements taken over the entire Antarctica continent during the period 2010 through 2013.(4)
The results showed that the total ice loss across the entire continent during this period was “consistent” with prior measurements taken using different satellite measurement technology. The results also showed that the West Antarctica region was experiencing by far the largest amount of ice loss, about 85% of the total with the ice loss about 31% greater than during the period 2005 -2011, the Antarctica Peninsula being about 13% of the total loss and the vast Eastern Antarctica region being only about 2% of the measured loss.
The study noted that the measurements of ice loss in the Antarctica peninsula and Eastern Antarctica regions were more difficult to determine and that for a variety of technical reasons longer time periods would be needed to improve these measurements. Further and as was the case with the previous two studies discussed this third study makes [no] assertions about man made climate change being responsible for the studies findings.
Based on these results the study performed an assessment of the expected change in sea level rise contribution from these latest continent wide ice loss measurements. The results showed the sea level rise contribution to be 0.45 mm per year versus a prior estimates of 0.19 mm per year. The change of 0.26 mm per year is equivalent to about 1/2 the thickness of a human fingernail.
The news media again went into action and botched the reporting of this third study just as they had done regarding the first two studies. The Guardian and the BBC both wrongly claimed in screaming headlines that the study showed that Antarctica ice loss had doubled since the last measurements. It is hard to explain how they could have managed to make such a dumb mistake other than complete incompetence by the news organizations.(5), (6)
The manner in which these three Antarctica studies were reported and broadcast by the news media can only be characterized as an extraordinary example of what climate alarmism and climate science propaganda looks like.
It is clear from how these alleged news reports were handled that the news organizations involved are pushing political and ideological agendas that have nothing to do with objective climate science reporting.
(1)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2014/05/13/abc-cbs-and-nbc-freak-
out-over-melting-antarctic-ice-much-south-flori
(2)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/13/the-media-over-hyped-the-west-antarcti
ca-climate-propaganda-reporting/
(3) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8387137.stm
(4)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/23/climate-alarmists-make-major-blunder-i
n-reporting-antarctica-ice-loss-results/
(5) http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27465050
(6)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/19/doubling-of-antarctic-ice
-loss-revealed-by-european-satellite
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I used Google Scholar.
You can find other studies from Antarctica below re MWP.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/regions/antarctica.php
Other world regions below.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/regions/antarctica.php
Jimbo says:
May 27, 2014 at 10:52 am
Groundwater spread on the Columbia Plateau since the ’70s is about 40,000 years old. Here & on the Ogallala Aquifer of the Great Plains, the water is essentially being mined, recharge being much slower than drawdown.
Jimbo says:
May 27, 2014 at 11:00 am
I’ve noticed in compiling evidence for the global nature of the Medieval WP & the LIA that the studies tend to be older. Even Lamb still remains valid.
Mann had plenty of material available to falsity his claim of regional extent, had he bothered to look.
The Media and Alarmists bloggers had a field day with this. Not a moment goes by without some Alarmist using the Antarctic as a meme for AGW/Climate Change/Extreme Climate, whatever. It surely didn’t help when the President and Secretary of State get involved. Now we have a situation where Alarmists confect two horribly incorrect talking points: The Melting Glaciers of the Antarctic and the 97% consensus. Thus, 97% of Scientists believe that AGW is causing the Antarctic to melt away.
What’s even worse, is that much of the political opposition (i.e., the GOP) is about to concede the argument due to this hyper-ventilation. I’m of the opinion that even if this was July and snow was falling in Kansas, there would be 40% of Americans obsessed with fantasies of melting polar ice, and political, I mean scientific consensus.
There also seems to be a concerted effort by universities and scientific organizations to time the publishing of their “studies” to coincide with pronouncements from On High. For the last 3 weeks there has been the National Climate Assessment, melting polar glaciers, and a recent “study” that reports that 44 out of 50 states in the US will run out of water within the next decade. Again, hyperventilation seems to be the order of the day.
@milodonharlani –
As I understand it, there is plenty of evidence so show the MWP affected Australia, New Zealand, southern South America and Africa. Inter alia, this was the period of the Maori migration to New Zealand, which might well not have occurred if the climate there were as it has been in recent centuries – too cold to be attractive to Polynesians generally in recent times. New Zealand’s climate during the MWP was probably subtropical, more like Queensland.
Do glaciers move faster after they received more snow/ice upstream? I’m wondering if a higher transfer of H2O from land to sea is because of higher transfer of H2O from sea to land.
I have a vague memory of a report that there are some undersea vents somewhere in the region of the WAIS.Can anyone confirm or rebut this.
The third reference after the essay regarding the BBC article should be:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27381010
Thanks for the information.
This latest BBC article refers to 1.2 meters of sea level increase versus the 1.4 meters from the prior BBC article regarding the ice loss from these glaciers.
Can someone please help me find the answers to these 2 key questions:
1. How much longer will these glaciers last if we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow?
2. What is the temperature of the sea where it is in contact with these glaciers?
Just read that back – let me try question 1 again…
1. How likely is it that the glaciers would have collapsed anyway, as a result of ‘natural’ warming, even if we had never emitted any CO2?
Pat says:
There is unfortunately NO such thing left as objective reporting in the US. No matter what the subject is.
There never really was – there was only ever a pretense of objectivity. Originally, newspapers were clearly biased and didn’t pretend to be objective.
Here is the “problem” with the modern press reporting the news. If you are a business or company selling a product, then to get the public’s attention and to induce them to buy that product, you hype the product, imply there is more to the product than there really is. You offer more than your competitors.
But If you are a news organization, then all your competitors have exactly the same news. How are you going to stand out and attract more viewers. Simple — hype the news; pretend you have more news than is really there. Exaggerate; Embellish the story, even make things up.
To the author, Larry Hamlin, Moderators and/or Anthony; I think there is a rather substantive typo in the paragraph reading:
Shouldn’t that read:
“Further and as was the case with the previous two studies discussed this third study makes NO assertions about man made climate change being responsible for the studies findings.”??
After all, the article states that the first two studies made no claims that the ice loss was related to AGW….. So I think the key word got accidentally omitted from this sentence about the third study.
Apologies if others have already noted this — I haven’t read through the comments yet.
Forgive me if I remembered this wrong, but isn’t warming of the ocean at large not possible by IR back radiation from green house gasses? I read somewhere that such IR radiation would only heat a few mm in depth that would trigger evaporation, but not a continuous heating, and especially not to depth enough to cause such melting.
Jimbo, thanks for the research tips and all the great stuff you post here. Best, Marlo
Could a real glacial expert from the pre-alarmist era step forward to tell us just how high ice fields are supposed to stack vertically before it moves?