Sea levels will rise by twice as much as previously predicted as a result of global warming, an important international study has concluded.
The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) calculated that if temperatures continued to increase at the present rate, by 2100 the sea level would rise by up to 1.4 metres ”” twice that predicted two years ago.
Such a rise in sea levels would engulf island nations such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific, devastate coastal cities such as Calcutta and Dhaka and force London, New York and Shanghai to spend billions on flood defences.
Don’t these people read the news? “If temperatures continue to increase at the present rate.” There’s been no significant increase in ten years, and the underlying trend they rely on is based on data which have been destroyed. Only the “interpreted” data are in existence. A huge amount of reconstructive research and new (and one hopes, transparent) calculations are required before we can say what the rate of change actually is, and then real science about the cause of the change needs to be done.
One a meme gets accepted, it can take a long time to die. Papers were being published by real scientists on the Aether Theory for some time after the Special Theory of Relativity was released. Likewise for “N-rays” after the primary researchers had been discredited as honest, but delusional. Of course, it will take a lot of time for an honest reappraisal of the climate data, especially since much of the primary data has been lost. Still, that might not be a bad thing, since much of it was of the very indirect type.
Remember all of the research grant money that is out there for “climate change” studies. If there is no crisis, then there is no grant money. Therefore, there needs to be a crisis to continue/increase the grant money gravy train.
And not just an international study, an “important” international study. Perhaps they should reevaluate based on recent anti-scientific events. From the Times Online:
Also, as has been said before, even if things are warming up (although that trend has disappeared over the past decade), this cycle has been going on ad infinitum since the world was created. How much is attributable to human activity? No one knows but it sure has become a political and financial windfall for a lot of scientists to insist humans cause it, so humans can stop it (with just the right government grant, of course). And for politicians, it’s another way to control the populace and what they can and can’t do, what they can and can’t buy.
Seen much about this in the U.S. media? My daily paper, the San Diego Union Tribune, has ignored it as have most of the networks. As a matter of fact, the UT has been running a series of stories about the dangers of global warming without managing to mention this scandal at all. And they wonder why we don’t trust journalists.
Back in the mid-90’s, Mrs. Rider and I went to Alaska on a cruise. While in Glacier Bay, a presentation was made by one of the National Park Service employees who boarded the ship. She handed out brochures that showed the receeding of the glaciers since John Muir (if I remember correctly) first documented them in the middle of the 19th century. Again, if my memory serves me well, this occurred before the start of the Civil War, around 1850 or so. Her presentation was focused on global warming, as you might imagine.
I asked if there was any evidence that the glaciers’ receeding had starting before Mr. Muir showed up, she didn’t know. I also pointed out that the industrial revolution didn’t really take off (as in creating large amounts of pollution) until 25 years or longer after this first mapping of the glaciers. My final question was something to the effect of “What was the cause of the glaciers’ receeding before the industrial revolution?” She didn’t have an answer, a I recall.
I’ve been more of a skeptic on this topic since.
I have every confidence that my descendants will be able to enjoy the Keys and Low Country as much as I do. Not losing a wink of sleep over so-called global warming and I’ll vote against any politician who thinks it’s a genuine threat caused by human activity.
It’s stupefying that the Times can run this article without an acknowledgement – which it is reporting separately – that the data upon which the IPCC bases its apocalyptic predictions looks to be a product of fraud.
This is getting so ridiculous I can’t stand it any more. We get the same nonsense here in Hawaii about how we’re all going to drown.
I grew up next to the ocean. I have gone to the same beaches since I was a child. Almost daily I jog along the same beach in the same beach park where I have been jogging since 1981, when I came back from school. Here the shoreline is pretty well protected from erosion by a substantial fringing reef. There has been no increase in the sea level. The waves and tide are right where they always have been, the reef is at the same level it has been. If what they are saying is true, the water should already be lapping over the paths and into the street. It isn’t. The only time that the waves have crested into the park was during the two hurricanes we have had during my lifetime. That is to be expected. Bulldozers and shovels came in to put the sand that was washed into the park back into the ocean, and within a month or so everything adjusted back to normal.
This phony science preys upon people who are so ignorant of what is going on around them that they believe every outrageous story they hear. If they spent a little more time out in nature and away from the computer, they would realize quickly this is all a hoax.
FACT: Scientist and scholars around the world fairly much agree that there have been at least four major ice ages: (the late Proterozoic – 600 million years ago, the Pennsylvanian and Permian – between about 350 and 250 million years ago, and the late Neogene toQuaternary – the last 4 million years. Somewhat less extensive glaciations occurred during portions of the Ordovician and Silurian – about 460 to 430 million years ago. [i](obtained from Wikipedia)[/i]
Additionally, there have also been numerous “mini-ice ages,” with the most recent ending only 150 years ago. (Remember reading about Valley Forge?) Regardless of my lack of any expertise in the field of climatology, let me be bold in making a concrete statement which any fool could just as well make: [b] “HUMANS OR NO HUMANS, THE EARTH’S CLIMATE IS NOT STATIC!”[/b] That seems to have been forgotten by the most brilliant of people who are carping about climate change. We’re experiencing climate change? Yeah, so what’s new?
There used to be a time when science rabidly protected the pursuit of unbiased empirical research and data to support any and all conclusions. No more! We are now in an age where profitability dictates conclusions which then need to be supported by some (any) sort of data, regardless of it’s accuracy or authenticity. We’re also in an age where it is nearly to impossible to be a successful researcher unless you are an apostle of some extreme political agenda. Of course, if you don’t write, you die [i](professionally speaking)[/i] and if you can’t get money, you won’t have either a job or professional standing for very long.
To coin a very timely phrase when it comes to any crisis, “just follow the money.” Does anyone remember the “Spotted Owl” controversy? Several environmental groups all but killed the lumber industry in the Northwest, only to have it discovered much later that the data used to pull this off was falsified. Yes! Even with learned individuals, “the ends can and do justify the means.” Unfortunately, this has never been more the case than in the moral drought we currently live in.
A lot of people are aware of how the humanities in colleges and universities have largely been killed off by political correctness and leftwing ideology. But I think most people thought the hard sciences were immune from such influences. In other words, two plus two would always equal four, regardless of political belief.
Unfortunately, we are discovering that science has been equally corrupted, and two plus two no longer equal 4, but whatever answer gives the most ideological bang.
The IPCC estimated that in a worst case scenario, sea levels would rise 17 cm over a 100 year period. that’s 6.69 inches. so double that wouldb e just over 13 inches. Hardly cause for a panic.
Even the doubling of 1.4 meters — 4.5 feet — to 2.8 meters (9 feet), is not that alarming. 10,000 years ago, the Keys of Florida were not islands, but hills on a plain (no industry or autos or even many humans back then). Rising and falling sea levels has been going on since the beginning. We will adapt again.
Jim Elliott
Florida (who knows, someday I might have water-front property)