I’m trying hard not to adopt a misleading headline. The first article I saw on this was West Antarctic’s Sea-Level Rise May Be Overstated, Study Shows. Apparently the New York Times ran the headline “Study Halves Prediction of Rising Seas” which Jo Romm at Climate Progress found “absurdly misleading.”
I chose mine as an amalgam of the NPR report, the best I’ve seen and reproduced in full at Climate Ark, and the source article, unfortunately behind the paywall.
From the reports, the article makes three points.
First, the findings of the team from Bristol, Delft and Durham change the prospects for sea level rise over the next two centuries not one little bit.
That’s the important part if you see denialists, delusionists or whatever doing their usual job on this one.
Secondly, thereafter we might get run over by a three-tonne truck instead of a five-tonne truck.
Usually it is reckoned that a complete melt of West Antarctica would be worth 5 metres of sea level rise. This study’s modelling indicates that parts of ice sheet may resist melting so we may only get 3.3 metres.
Thirdly, they think there will be changes in the earth’s gravitational pull on the oceans which could result in the water rising 25% more than the world average along the Pacific and Atlantic seaboard of the United States.
But that, too, would be well down the track.
To be frank I don’t believe any new information, insights or understandings have recently appeared on the scene which would alter the estimate last September that two metres of sea level rise by 2100 is plausible and indeed likely under business-as-usual. That’s just my opinion.
Sea level rise comes from four sources – Greenland, Antarctica, glaciers and ice caps (GIC), and finally thermal expansion. All four are proceeding now. GIC is likely to cease contributing later this century when land-based ice caps and glaciers other than those associated with ice sheets have completely melted.
Moreover, the Andrill project found that West Antarctica melted substantially if not completely some 60 times in the last few million years.
So whether Antarctica melts in whole or in part in centuries to come, the prospects for this century remain unchanged and are serious enough.
Also it doesn’t take much sea level rise to cause problems in low-lying islands, river deltas etc. In a comment on a earlier post Barry Brook said:
Yes, both sea level rise, and larger storm surges, will increase the regularity and severity with which saline water encroaches upon low-lying coastal water tables and damages infrastructure. These risks were a particular focus of a recent meeting of climate change scientists in Sydney (Greenhouse 2007, October 2007: abstracts [here] ). One report, by J Hunter [pg 37 of abstract book], used extensive coastal tidal gauge data to show that for every 10 cm of sea level rise, the risk of a given extreme event tripled.
To put this in context, a rise in average sea level of just 30 cm (at the low end of projections and likely to occur within decades) would cause a ‘once-in-a-century storm’ to reoccur every 3 years. Thus major hazards for coastal infrastructure arise long before complete inundation, as you note. (Emphasis added)
Not good. No room for complacency. And along the way we’ll lose all those lovely sandy beaches, so ‘going to the beach’ might mean going to an artificial beach at Southbank here in Brisbane, or in a shopping centre in some absurdly rich countries.
BTW the original report at NPR has a neat interactive graphic on sea level rise vulnerabilities around the world.
How’s this for a headline?
“Estimates of water rise from West Antarctic melting revised from alarming to alarming.”
Sounds good to me, Paul, in terms of meaning, but it wouldn’t get past the sub-editor in most places!
Imagine Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and a just few centimeters of sea-level rise.
I’d like to add up the money we spend in response to disasters like the recent Melbourne bush-fires, New Orleans etc etc – and compare that with the money we spend on preventing these things from coming at us down the track.
We may be quite good at planning just beyond a year or so – but I don’t know if we have the moral attributes required to plan far out enough to deal with climate change.
60 Minutes on the Maldives last night.
If there’s footage of the piece then it’s worth watching.
Thanks for that Vidar. I was thinking of a short post about the Maldives. Also I believe that the Carteret Islands are being evacuated, said to be a first in terms of sea level rise.
We’d like to take this opportunity to offer a preview of our forthcoming blockbuster, Heaven and Earth, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks.
In the Kremlin archives in Moscow, a beautiful young journalist, Miranda De Vinylle, is poring over declassified Politburo documents in an effort to prove that Manning Clark bears ultimate responsibility for the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Instead, she discovers clues to a vast conspiracy by the former Soviet regime to falsify climate science in order to deceive the citizens of the Western world, dupe their rulers into policies which will bankrupt their nations and eventually result in their enslavement by a new, terrible form of godless totalitarianism.
Renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is called in to assist Ms. De Vinylle to uncover the plot before it is too late, only to find himself pursued by a mysterious fanatic known only as “Deltoid”, and his grim agents Brian, Robert, Paul and John Q, whose modus operandi consists of questioning the relevance of symbology to climate science.
Langdon and Miranda make their way to shelter in Australia at the abode of Deltoid’s arch enemy, the renowned geologist Arnie Limp and his assistant Graeme Bird, who insist that they know the truth about the communist climate science conspiracy, and display a remarkable knowledge about a range of topics which are at best incidentally relevant to this question. As sub-plot after sub-plot unfolds, the truth eventually turns out to be even more shocking than our heroes could have imagined. The dramatic high point occurs when Robert Langdon is tragically and fatally mistaken by Graeme Bird for Larvatus Prodeo founder Mark Bahnisch. The film ends in a romantic denouement between Graeme Bird and Miranda De Vinylle on the 9th floor of Torbreck in inner southside Brisbane, with the ocean waters lapping romantically on the 7th floor below them.
That’s very amusing, Paul. I like it! BTW are things a bit slack at the university at the moment? I could do with a bit of help
I’m glad that you found this piece, Brian. I saw it on the google news last week and meant to make a comment to the effect that the denialists had finally put some science into their argument. Having been completly bypassed by reality they have decided to leap ahead to a high estimate of sea level rise and work backwards with the “science of miss perception”. And thanks to Vidar I have to see that article on the Maldives. I’ve recently developed a passion for that part of the world. It is in the gotta go there before it disappears, department.
BilB, there is a useful article in the New Scientist with a short video. The highest point is 2.3 metres above sea level.
Wow, is Plimer’s book is the best selling Australian non-fiction book.
Can’t be, Pedro X, because it isn’t non-fiction.
Charlie Veron, the renowned coral reef specialist, said he checked out what the geology professor said about corals and reefs. He said of Plimer, “every original statement he makes is incorrect and most are the opposite of the truth”.
I suggest there should be a health hazard warning on the book. Reading it might pollute your brain.
Brian #12, as the apocryphal professor said of the apocryphal Ph.D. thesis, Plimer’s book contains much that is original and much that is correct. The problem is that the parts which are correct are not original and the parts which are original are not correct.
Paul, remind me not to take you on in a verbal joust