Guest commentary by David Middleton
Global Sea Level Could Rise 50 Feet by 2300, Study Says
Characterizing what’s known and what’s uncertain is key to managing coastal risk
October 6, 2018
Global average sea-level could rise by nearly 8 feet by 2100 and 50 feet by 2300 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high and humanity proves unlucky, according to a review of sea-level change and projections by Rutgers and other scientists.
Since the start of the century, global average sea-level has risen by about 0.2 feet. Under moderate emissions, central estimates of global average sea-level from different analyses range from 1.4 to 2.8 more feet by 2100, 2.8 to 5.4 more feet by 2150 and 6 to 14 feet by 2300, according to the study, published in Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
[…]
“Global average sea-level could rise by nearly 8 feet by 2100 and 50 feet by 2300 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high and humanity proves unlucky…”
No fracking way! Global sea level can’t even rise by 3 feet by 2100…
RCP8.5 fraud alert!
The study, published in Annual Review of Environment and Resources hasn’t actually been published yet and it appears that it will be pay-walled. The abstract is unusually abstract…
Future sea-level rise generates hazards for coastal populations, economies, infrastructure, and ecosystems around the world. The projection of future sea-level rise relies on an accurate understanding of the mechanisms driving its complex spatio-temporal evolution, which must be founded on an understanding of its history. We review the current methodologies and data sources used to reconstruct the history of sea-level change over geological (Pliocene, Last Interglacial, and Holocene) and instrumental (tide-gauge and satellite alimetry) eras, and the tools used to project the future spatial and temporal evolution of sea level. We summarize the understanding of the future evolution of sea level over the near (through 2050), medium (2100), and long (post-2100) terms. Using case studies from Singapore and New Jersey, we illustrate the ways in which current methodologies and historical data sources can constrain future projections, and how accurate projections can motivate the development of new sea-level research questions across relevant timescales.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources Volume 43 is October 17, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
50 feet of sea level rise by 2300 is worse than bad science fiction. The same lead author had 50 feet (15.2 meters) of sea level rise by 2300 as beyond the upper range of RCP8.5 (bad science fiction) in 2014.
References
Horton, B. P., Rahmstorf, S., Engelhart, S. E., and Kemp, A. C.: Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300, Quaternary Science Reviews, 84, 1–6, 2014.
Horton, Benjamin P., Robert E. Kopp, Andra J. Garner, Carling C. Hay, Nicole S. Khan, Keven Roy, Timothy A. Shaw. Mapping Sea-Level Change in Time, Space, and Probability. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 2018 43:1
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If you wanna scare everyone, why stop at 50? Go for a hunnert. Hunnert-fifty!
There should be precaution limits to people making absurd precautionary claims.
As is their “humanity proves unlucky” absurd claim.
If a massive meteor hits Earth, then some to many humans will be unlucky.
The oceans have been higher in the past, minimally affecting life. Land creatures just move inland. Humans can build sea walls.
Just more alarmism for the gullible.
What does science say about how high sea levels would rise if ALL the polar ice and glaciers melted? Can anyone point me to studies? Thanks
About 264’… mostly from the melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet…
Which hasn’t significantly melted since at least the Mid-Miocene.
And has been present since the Late Eocene.
The figure for West Antarctica above is completely unrealistic and ignores that most of the WAIS is below sea-level and will only fill out the same volume (but at 10% greater density) after melting. A realistic figure is about 3-4 meters.
The same also applies to some extent (but much less) to Greenland and East Antarctica.
The total potential sea-level rise is probably about 230 feet, for complete melting which definitely hasn’t happened since the Early Eocene, and is doubtful even then. Inland Antarctica may never have been ice-free since it arrived at the pole. Recent studies of IRD (ice-rafted debris) strongly indicate that there were tidewater glaciers even during the Eocene, probably somewhat similar to conditions in southern Alaska today.
I will believe there is sea level rise when the UN moves shop.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/un-headquarters-and-usd1-2-billion-upgrade-and-rising/
Cheers
Roger
The narrative of scary rises by 2100 look like they are unlikely to come true, so the goalposts have been moved yet again. The year 2300 is well beyond the lifetime of anyone alive today. The badly wrong predictions of the past have proved to be totally wrong and the doomsayers may well regret their stupidity of actually living to see their own rubbish being shoved back in their faces. They had arrogantly anticipated a victory for their propaganda.
The words of uncertainty – “could” are scaremongering. The moving of the goalposts right out of the park may be a fatal mistake. Most people live for today and 280 years in to the future is of no concern. If humanity is even still in existence then,or the history airbrushed, I will bet anything that the predictions will be shown to be wildly wrong by a factor of over 10. Lefties will jump up and down and claim it was out by only one decimal point.
“Since the start of the century, global average sea-level has risen by about 0.2 feet. ”
Not on this planet. Closer to a tenth of that.
0.2 feet in 18 years would be 0.2 ft × 12 in/ft × 25.4 mm/in ÷ 18 years = 3.4 mm/year
That’s satellite altimetry, not coastal sea-level. The average rate of coastal sea-level rise, measured with tide gauges, at tectonically stable sites with little or no vertical land motion is less than 1.5 mm/year.
So they’re off by a little more than a factor of two (which is bad enough), rather than a factor of ten.
I am not sure why everyone should be concerned about what might or might not happen by AD 2300. Im sure if the founder of NYC or Seattle were told that by 2300 his city would be under water they could not have cared less.
Might be a stupid question but if they can tell the exact level of sea rise and weather in 2300 can they give me tonight’s tattslotto numbers or just the winner of the Melbourne cup .
R W Bainbridge in 1960 mapped 7 advances and retreats from 20,000 yr BP to 6,000 yr BP. (The start time could be moved closer to 18,000 yr BP?) In that time sea levels from from -110 metres ASL to + 2.00 metres ASL. I have sampled out to sea 2 of the 7 advances and retreats and the heavy minerals associated with the +2 metre position on back beach locations on opposite sides of Australia. Now all of this disruptive sea level changes took place before mankind got around to burning coal in huge amounts.
The +2 metre sample sites are clear evidence that the current sea levels have a way to go to get back to what is close to the historic maxima.
It seems odd that most commenters have not understood the basic significance of a continuous ice core record. A continuous ice core for 800,000 years means no ice movement and no melting. Drilling and recovering core to +3,000 m is no mean feat and it also means the drill site is actually quiet stable.
Finally the oldest recorded ice is the recently reported blue ice intercepts at 2.3 million years ago at Allen Hills at a level of close to 2,000m ASL.
Quite fascinating
“A continuous ice core for 800,000 years means no ice movement and no melting.”
Yes, which is why drilling must be on the ice-divides inland where there is almost no motion and temperature never rises above zero. And why such old ice can’t be found on Greenland. There the ice-divide apparently have moved a bit over time, so no really old ice is preserved. Also why definition is bad in these old ice-cores. Accumulation is extremely slow in central East Antarctica.
The accumulation rates are also a limiting factor.
As Niklas Morner has pointed out in this papers in the Elsevier book ‘Evidence-based Climate Change’ the maximum rate of sea level rise that occurred when 10,000 ft + ice sheets that covered huge areas in the Northern Hemisphere melted catastrophically at rates of 20 degrees per century, sea level rose at only 3’/century. Today with no such huge ice sheets to melt and nowhere near warming rates of 20 degrees per century, where is the water supposed to come from to raise sea level by these large amounts?
Not to mention that ice cores have proven that CO2 rise ALWAYS lags global warming so couldn’t possibly have been the cause of the warming.
At the rate modern cities are torn down and rebuilt they will simply “walk” out of the way.
Oh schit, that means i will be 56ft under.
By 2300 Earth’s 100B unimaginably wealthy people will have terraformed Antarctica and Greenland and be using the resulting water for irrigating massive layered farms extending deep into the crust.
Here’s a graph of sea-level at Honolulu (which has a very typical sea-level trend) with +50 feet of sea-level projected in pink, linearly, to 2300 (at a constant rate of 54.202 mm/year):
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Honolulu&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&xtraseg=1&g_date=1900/1-2299/12&x_date=2018/10-2299/12&x1=0.046&x2=15.286&co2=0&thick
Measured sea-level is in blue, +50 feet is in pink.
Here it is with constant acceleration, starting at the current rate (1.48 mm/yr), and culminating in a rate of 106.924 mm/yr, to reach 50 feet by 2300 (a projected 7124% acceleration in rate of sea-level rise):
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Honolulu&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&xtraseg=2&g_date=1900/1-2299/12&x_date=2018/10-2299/12&x1=0.046&x2=15.286&xslope=1.480&co2=0&thick
Note that the average rate of sea-level rise during the last deglaciation, as the great Laurentide ice sheet receded, 14.8K to 7.5K yrs ago, is thought to have been about 14 mm/year.
The thing that puzzles me the most is that Horton, Kopp, Garner, Hay, Khan, Roy & Shaw (the authors) all appear to reside in jurisdictions where cannabis is illegal. But how else could a paper like this be explained?
I recommend everybody states in there will to be buried on high ground