sea levels would be a concern.
Ridiculous. It would take hundreds of years and a complete ice cap meltdown to come anywhere near sea level increase concern. In hundreds of years coastal settlement will dramatically change for other reasons not related to sea level height. Just think of the nature of coastal building of the US a hundred years ago. Think how quickly big buildings go up and down. They seem so permanent, but practically nothing will remain of our society in a hundred years. It will change because we will find better ways to build. That has been the history of civilization. Why should it change? A slow down in materials science? I don't think so. Right now materials science is accelerating.
You have to watch out for linear extrapolations. The world works non-linearly, but prediction is necessarily linear.
but how can the scientists be certain the rise will be that significant?
Who says whomever is a scientist? Most of the loudmouths don't know shit about science. They shoot off their yaps off for political reasons, and, they don't know that they're doing that. They're brainwashed just like the public. You hear the brainwashing going on every day through all forms of media. It is uncool not to believe.
The head of NOAA fits that bill. He's mad, because you continue to drive a car. He won't admit the slightest doubt in his conviction even though the ice record shows the earth goes through periodic global warming and cooling periods correlated with rising and falling CO2 levels. It is to be emphasized here that the right word is "correlated", but the guy asserts "causal" even though there's no evidence for causal.
I took this from the NOAA site:
Large-scale measurements of sea-ice have only been possible since the satellite era, but through looking at a number of different satellite estimates, it has been determined that Arctic sea ice has decreased between 1973 and 1996 at a rate of -2.8 +/- 0.3%/decade. Although this seems to correspond to a general increase in temperature over the same period, there are lots of quasi-cyclic atmospheric dynamics (for example the Arctic Oscillation) which may also influence the extent and thickness of sea-ice in the Arctic. Sea-ice in the Antarctic has shown very little trend over the same period, or even a slight increase since 1979. Though extending the Antarctic sea-ice record back in time is more difficult due to the lack of direct observations in this part of the world.
As you read the NOAA site at first you get the hysteria and innuendo, the brainwashing fallout, but gradually they back off to admit the obvious truth, usually in fine print somewhere hard to find. They couldn't merely mouth the brainwashing that they're so prejudiced to believe because the rest of us scientists would turn our backs on them. Also, they know they could be dead wrong. Real dead wrong, and I claim, they are. They won't debate me nor will they debate anyone who can stick it to them. You may have noticed this, that is, notice there seems to be very little vocal professional opposition. One does not play Giordano Bruno no matter how liberated an era claims to be.
Another fact should be mentioned. Mankind only generates 7% of the CO2 each year. The loudmouths claim that earth's climate is delicately balanced so that 7% counts. It's total hokum. Such a claim is inconsistent with all we know about earth's history. 20 years ago I tried to support this argument by claiming small quantities of jet exhaust released in the stratosphere ate up relatively large amounts of O3 allowing more UV to hit the surface. It's still a persuasive argument, has been made by others since, but it isn't pursued because it's difficult to make the measurements to support it and it would be rejected, global warming notwithstanding.
couldn't the water be redistributed to the land via thunderstorms? or perhaps some other dynamic?
Several years ago on this thread I gave the global warming yields higher rains due to increased evaporation argument. The world gets greener. Although there's several different views on this point it's hard to refute. Since then I've studied everything on the subject and my view is that McKitrick is at least right, but probably too conservative. I stay with what was concluded 30 - 50 years ago when science was minimally invaded by ax grinders. We're headed into another mini ice age, but that won't become evident for another 100 years. By that time energy will be total non-issue because we will have controlled nuclear fusion. All solar and wind junk will be thrown away and people will laugh at stupidos who put them in place.
We will be getting a lot colder over the short run as was clearly indicated by last summer's high cirrus clouds with their profuse curl turbulent ice crystal formations. I'm still seeing them now. That's unheard of on the west coast in December and it means this winter will be very cold. |
