daveman
Diamond Member
High School Science Discredits The New York Times' Latest Global Warming Whopper
I was listening to NPR the other day when I heard the New York Times Justin Gillis blithely mention that experts say sea level could rise three to six feet this century!
Hes right. That would be two outlier scientists who are beyond even the new projections made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which likes to bill itself as the consensus of scientists. (More completely, that would be the consensus of scientists who built their careers on the global warming gravy plane and really dont want to go back to coach.)
High school math also has a few problems with a sea level rise of even three feet.
The experts Gillis referred to are looking at the period 1990-2100. According to satellite data (to which some dodgy upwards adjustments have been added), weve seen a rise of 2.9 inches since 1990. The latest published estimates of direct loss from Greenland by 2100 max out at around four inches, and the current IPCC climate compendium has Antarctica actually gaining ice from increased snowfall in the slightly warmer air. Well be charitable and say it actually raises sea level an inch, and add a couple more per the IPCCs estimates of ice loss elsewhere on the planet.
Totaled up, thats 9.9 inches of rise, including what has happened since 1990 and what melting ice could contribute by 2100. Wheres the other 26.1 inches required to get to Gillis minimum of three feet?
The answer is that the 26.1 inches must be the amount that the ocean will expand as it warms. Using the UNs own numbers, that requires a surface temperature rise of 18°F between now and the end of the century.
My guess is that more careful people at the Times know this is impossible.
Further, the planet ought to get cracking on this, pronto, as were about to finish 17 straight years with no statistically significant warming in any of the annual global surface temperature records. In other words, were going to have to go from no significant warming to 2.1 degrees per decade, a figure that, to my knowledge, has never been measured in any of our geological histories of past climate. And that has to start tomorrow.
Getting to six feet of sea level rise requires a massive melting of Greenland. But that was ash-canned earlier this year when Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and her team at Copenhagen University literally got to the bottom of things, meaning the bottom of the 8,000-foot-thick Greenland ice cap. Using generally accepted chemistry, she determined that around 100,000 years ago it was several degrees warmer for 6,000 years than people think is possible in Greenland by 2100. Other chemistry showed that the altitude of the ice was maybe about 1,000 feet lower than today (it actually could have been higher, she noted), meaning 7,000 feet remained frozen.
Thats what happened after a period 60 times longer than what Gillis is talking about.
Hes right. That would be two outlier scientists who are beyond even the new projections made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which likes to bill itself as the consensus of scientists. (More completely, that would be the consensus of scientists who built their careers on the global warming gravy plane and really dont want to go back to coach.)
High school math also has a few problems with a sea level rise of even three feet.
The experts Gillis referred to are looking at the period 1990-2100. According to satellite data (to which some dodgy upwards adjustments have been added), weve seen a rise of 2.9 inches since 1990. The latest published estimates of direct loss from Greenland by 2100 max out at around four inches, and the current IPCC climate compendium has Antarctica actually gaining ice from increased snowfall in the slightly warmer air. Well be charitable and say it actually raises sea level an inch, and add a couple more per the IPCCs estimates of ice loss elsewhere on the planet.
Totaled up, thats 9.9 inches of rise, including what has happened since 1990 and what melting ice could contribute by 2100. Wheres the other 26.1 inches required to get to Gillis minimum of three feet?
The answer is that the 26.1 inches must be the amount that the ocean will expand as it warms. Using the UNs own numbers, that requires a surface temperature rise of 18°F between now and the end of the century.
My guess is that more careful people at the Times know this is impossible.
Further, the planet ought to get cracking on this, pronto, as were about to finish 17 straight years with no statistically significant warming in any of the annual global surface temperature records. In other words, were going to have to go from no significant warming to 2.1 degrees per decade, a figure that, to my knowledge, has never been measured in any of our geological histories of past climate. And that has to start tomorrow.
Getting to six feet of sea level rise requires a massive melting of Greenland. But that was ash-canned earlier this year when Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and her team at Copenhagen University literally got to the bottom of things, meaning the bottom of the 8,000-foot-thick Greenland ice cap. Using generally accepted chemistry, she determined that around 100,000 years ago it was several degrees warmer for 6,000 years than people think is possible in Greenland by 2100. Other chemistry showed that the altitude of the ice was maybe about 1,000 feet lower than today (it actually could have been higher, she noted), meaning 7,000 feet remained frozen.
Thats what happened after a period 60 times longer than what Gillis is talking about.
