Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
IPCC report shows Antarctica has “negative contribution to sea level” over the 21st century
The recent ridiculous and scientifically flawed media claims of large Antarctica related sea level rise impacts due to “unstoppable” glacier ice loss supposedly reflected in two recent scientific papers looks even more absurd when these made up claims are compared against the Antarctica scientific findings of the UN IPCC AR5 WGI climate report.
Recapping the wonderfully informative reporting by the major “news” networks on May 12 about these two Antarctica ice loss studies we have:
NBC’s anchor Brian Williams asserting that these new studies reflect that sea levels would rise by 13 feet over the next 100 years because of the glacier ice loss which was caused by global warming and is unstoppable. Virtually nothing Williams said was reflected in what was contained in the new studies.
Williams failed to understand that the two studies did not say anything about sea level rise projections, made no mention that man made global warming was driving these glacier ice loss results and additionally appears to have ineptly borrowed his made up 13 foot number from a newspaper article (The Guardian which claimed a 4 meter sea level rise) which managed to confuse “feet” with “meters”. What impressive reporting by the NBC news anchor!!
But Williams was not alone in his zeal to invent the alarmist story line regarding the two new Antarctica studies. ABC’s anchor Diane Sawyer warned us that NASA had issued an “alert” about rising sea levels based on a 40 year study of glaciers in Antarctica that showed they were melting so fast is was unstoppable. She warned that low lying states like Florida would be hardest hit with sea level rise of 3 feet (another made up number) or more by 2100.
CBS’s anchor Scott Pelley not to be outdone by his competition warned that the studies showed that a large part of Antarctica is melting and cannot be stopped. Again the CBS report used yet more numbers telling us sea levels would rise by 4 feet by 2214 and then later by another 6 feet.(1)
The BBC told us that these melting glaciers would cause sea levels to rise by 4 feet when they melt.(2)
Apparently none of these news agencies actually obtained, read and evaluated the studies which did not address sea level rise projections at all nor did they make any claims that man made global warming was driving the study results. One of these two studies mentioned that the amount of ice in these glaciers which represent about 1% to 2% of the total Antarctica ice mass is equivalent to about 4 feet of sea level. That information was not associated with a sea level rise projection estimate or any specific time period.(3)
The UN IPCC AR5 WGI report, which is often used as a source of climate information by the news media, deals extensively with climate issues regarding Antarctica including the continents contribution to sea level rise from climate change.
Amazingly the UN IPCC AR5 report says this:
“Taking all these considerations together, we have medium confidence in model projections of a future Antarctic SMB increase, implying a negative contribution to GMSL rise (see also Sections 13.4.4.1, 13.5.3 and 14.8.15).”
That’s right – the IPCC says that its Surface Mass Balance (SBM) models for Antarctica show that its projected future climate behavior causes sea level to decline not increase!
Furthermore it explains this finding by saying:
“Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bracegirdle et al., 2008).” (13.4.4.1)
The IPCC AR5 report acknowledges that Antarctica is losing ice from some of its glaciers in West Antarctica and the Antarctica peninsula with the following findings:
“The Antarctic ice sheet has been losing ice during the last two decades (high confidence). There is very high confidence that these losses are mainly from the northern Antarctic Peninsula and the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, and high confidence that they result from the acceleration of outlet glaciers. {4.4.2, 4.4.3, Figures 4.14, 4.16, 4.17}”
“There is very high confidence that these losses are mainly from the northern Antarctic Peninsula and the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica. {4.4}”
“The Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica is grounded significantly below sea level and is the region of Antarctica changing most rapidly at present. Pine Island Glacier has sped up 73% since 1974 (Rignot, 2008) and has thinned throughout 1995–2008 at increasing rates (Wingham et al., 2009) due to grounding line retreat. There is medium confidence that retreat was caused by the intrusion of warm ocean water into the sub-ice shelf cavity (Jenkins et al., 2010; Jacobs et al., 2011; Steig et al., 2012).” (4.4.5)
“There is low confidence that the rate of Antarctic ice loss has increased over the last two decades (Chen et al., 2009; Velicogna, 2009; Rignot et al., 2011c; Shepherd et al., 2012); (4.4.2.3)”
“As with Antarctic sea ice, changes in Antarctic ice sheets have complex causes (Section 4.4.3). The observational record of Antarctic mass loss is short and the internal variability of the ice sheet is poorly understood. Due to a low level of scientific understanding there is low confidence in attributing the causes of the observed loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet since 1993. Possible future instabilities in the west Antarctic ice sheet cannot be ruled out, but projection of future climate changes over West Antarctica remains subject to considerable uncertainty (Steig and Orsi, 2013).” (10.5.2.1)
“Due to a low level of scientific understanding there is low confidence in attributing the causes of the observed loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet over the past two decades. {4.3, 10.5}”
The IPCC AR5 report addresses the West Antarctica and Antarctica peninsula glaciers in considerable detail showing that these glaciers have been experiencing ice loss for decades, that the reasons behind this ice loss are associated with warming oceans and ice sheet internal variability in the region and that the causes for this ice loss behavior are unidentified and uncertain. Furthermore the IPCC acknowledges that the total Antarctica ice loss has not increased in the last two decades.
Additionally the IPCC AR5 WGI report also shows that the huge Eastern Antarctica area which is the largest ice mass region with 90% of the continents total ice mass, is in fact gaining ice mass by noting the following:
“The recent IMBIE analysis (Shepherd et al., 2012) shows that the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula are losing mass at an increasing rate, but that East Antarctica gained an average of 21 ± 43 Gt yr–1 between 1992 and 2011. Zwally and Giovinetto (2011) also estimate a mass gain for East Antarctica (+16 Gt yr–1 between 1992 and 2001).” (4.4.2.3)
The UN IPCC AR5 WGI report doesn’t support at all and in fact offers clear scientific evidence to the contrary which both refutes and embarrasses the alarmist sea level rise claims made by the major news media and their “star” anchors concerning their ludicrous reporting on the latest Antarctica ice loss studies.
Thus we have the two new scientific studies themselves and the findings of the UN IPCC AR5 WGI report both of which completely debunk the alarmist baloney put on the air and in print by the “news” agencies regarding these most recent studies.
The news media really “blew it” and provided an astounding demonstration of their monumental political bias and climate science incompetence in their reporting about this Antarctica related climate story.
(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://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27381010
(3) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/13/the-media-over-hyped-the-west-antarcti
ca-climate-propaganda-reporting/
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These latest results are new projections of glacier dynamics of individual large ice streams, I don’t think IPCC has been in a position to assess such projections as they did not exist at the time of the writing of AR5 WG1.
Kate Forney says:
May 29, 2014 at 3:36 am
Just like our fine, young president. The real power in the United States is that damn teleprompter.
Guess the IPCC is still smarting from the Himalayan Glacier debacle. Otherwise, they would be the head cheer leaders of these incompetent PR outlets.
Antarctica is too terribly cold to be anything other than a massive sea level sink in a mildly warming world, just like a freezer that clogs up when it gets humid. This isn’t rocket science, but don’t tell that to the National Aeronautics And Space Administration who are doing their damnest to officially make Muslims proud by helping shut down fossil fuel use here as Britain sends Phil “Hide The Decline” Jones to a Saudi university that he now uses as attribution for his latest up-adjusted global average temperature plot that climate “science” now considers the gold standard, ignoring Space Age satellites that falsify its recent incline. I guess how alarming it all is depends though on what the current leftist definition of “is” is.
Does every reporter and alarm crying careerist finally *know* it’s a scam at this late hour of inquiry? Oh yes they do, for what excuse is there now for not knowing it, as they discount the Internet, preposterously, digging deeper into the profound madness of pure evil, which evidently sells well as they cement themselves into doomsday cultism with not a hint of self-consciousness humility.
@- Larry Hamlin
“IPCC report shows Antarctica has “negative contribution to sea level” over the 21st century”
No it does not. It correctly identifies the ongoing rate of land ice loss from the Antarctic continent, but remains neutral on whether that rate will increase.
However the recent papers identify a process which will ensure that the rate of mass loss of land based ice will definitely increase when the ice blocking the glacier outflows melts out. This may take another few centuries before the fast mass loss starts, but the collapse could come sooner. The IPCC has a history of being exceedingly conservative in its estimation of sea level rise and has consistently underestimated the actual rate of ice mass loss and seas level rise in each of its reports.
All US TV networks except Fox are part of the Democratic Party. Spreading socialist propaganda is part of their job. They’re not fabricating phony global warming disasters for sound business reasons, i.e., to increase ratings and sell air time. In fact the farther to the left they are, the worse their ratings, e.g., MSNBC. They’re doing it for the same reasons John Kerry, Al Gore, Ed Markey, David Axelrod, Stephanie Cutter, Barack Obama, etc., etc., do it – to tighten the government’s grip on its subjects. The more disastrous the news about climate change, the more people will be willing to accept greater government regulation and higher taxes to “combat” it.
Terry Oldberg,
In your first comment, you appear to esteem “clarity of communication” and assail us, once again, with a putative distinction between two synonyms.
Your second comment reveals no such sensibility; look how your scorn for punctuation transforms an intended (probably) adverb into a conjunction, thereby creating an orphaned subordinate clause, which is syntactically incoherent and, semantically, as bereft of value as your tedious cavil.
Maybe the next generati0n of news people will report on the growing Laurentide continental glacier growing over northern Manitoba, and how this has been such a big boom to down hill and cross country skiing in the province.
The MSM is told what to report by the political controllers. Just as AGW can’t be proven, so the preceding statement. Equally valid
Davd Hoffer
Oldberg made a reasonable request which you sneered at in response. You can do better than that, can’t you?
If anyone is interested in sea level, go survey the NOAA tide guages. With a few exceptions where subsidence or uplift is a factor, these all indicate that mean sea level has remained unchanged since the last century.
See what you can discover when you go look for yourself! When you do, the whole myth of rising sea levels collapses.
My only problem would be using the IPCC report to debunk the warmists. It lends to the report having credibility and not being a political document.
‘The news media really “blew it”’
—
It just goes to show that it’s okay to deny “settled science” if you do it in an alarmist direction. Just don’t deny it in the other direction or the same news media who deny science themselves will label you as a “science denier.” Isn’t hypocrisy grand?
We might be on the back foot, but increasingly at the global level it just isn’t going to matter. China and India will keep digging for coal and their economies will carry on growing while ours will stagnate. If current trends continue, in a few decades the beliefs and actions of the leaders of Europe and the USA simply won’t be important at the global level.
Izen says:
“However the recent papers identify a process which will ensure that the rate of mass loss of land based ice will definitely increase when the ice blocking the glacier outflows melts out.”
You must be remarkably ignorant of glaciology if You think that this process was “identified by the recent papers”. It was originally suggested by Mercer in 1968 and put on a more quantitative basis by i. a. Hughes, Weertman and Thomas in the 70´s. It was described as “glaciology’s grand unsolved problem” by Weertman in 1976. It still is, though it has been discussed ever since.
There is still no real evidence of previous interglacial WAIS collapses (though ANDRILL suggested that it might have happened during the Pliocene).
What is the climatological definition of glacial ‘instability’? What is the climatological definition of glacial ‘collapse’? Does ‘unstoppable’ to a climatologist mean that things will carry on as before?
I think we should be told.
@Navy Bob –
Well said.
I would add that I think the news anchors at CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN believe the crap they’re broadcasting. They worship Obama as though he were a god, the personification of Gaea. They will do and say anything and everything to advance Obama’s agenda. Journalists they are not; they are pure propagandists.
Thank goodness for the Internet – at least there is an alternative to the twaddle about climate being put out by these coelenterates.
“If anyone is interested in sea level, go survey the NOAA tide guages.”
Not very useful for determining the global sea level as NOAA seems to operate gauges only on US territory and Central America., which is a very small subset of the global coastlines. In addition, changes in the open ocean will not be caught my tide-gauges anyway.
So how many landlocked oceans do we have on earth anyway ??
As far as I know, ALL of planet earth’s oceans are connected together by a continuous water path.
So why do you need any more than one tide gauge to read the sea level ?? The sea surface ought to be gravitationally level, except for natural fluctuations like tides and waves, all of which should average out to zero.
“””””…..Terry Oldberg says:
May 28, 2014 at 9:54 pm
For clarity of communication, an important distinction should be recognized between a projection and a prediction. A projection is non-falsifiable thus being non-scientific. A prediction is falsifiable thus being scientific. It appears from Mr. Hamlin’s report that the IPCC’s models make non-scientific projections of sea level rise rather than scientific predictions……”””””
For clarity of communication (of course), when somebody makes a “projection” of some future sea level rise; NOT a “prediction” you understand; and subsequently, as in circa that “projected” sea level risen time, it is found that the sea level did not rise by the “projected” amount, either significantly undershooting, or significantly overshooting the projected sea level rise, is not that a failure of the “projection” to materialize. And is not a failure of a “projection” to materialize, a “falsification” of the original “projection”; “falsification” for this purpose, being synonymous, with the “non-occurrence” of the earlier “projected ” possibility ?? ??