Euopean Climate Institute EIKE Says Antarctica Ice Calving “Totally Normal”, Natural Causes
By P Gosselin on 15. July 2017
The Vice President of the Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) Michael Limburg wrote that the recent ice chunk breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf has everything to do with natural cyclic calving, and that the media reporting has been mostly alarmist hype. EIKE writes:
Antarctic ice shelf breaking is a totally normal process – the Antarctic has in fact gotten colder over the pst 30 years.
Germany’s number one tabloid, Bild, blared out the headline on July 13: “South Pole Breaking Apart!” and quoted alarmist climate scientist Mojib Latif: who warned it is a “warning shot to mankind”.
Bild Leipzig July 13, 2017, thanks to Dietmar Ufer
Climate scientist Mojib Latif called it a “warning shot for mankind”. Source: Bild
Mostly drama and hype
However, EIKE writes that such media reports are mainly drama and hype, and that natural mechanical forces and oceanic currents are behind the calving. EIKE cites facts from the Bremen Germany-based Alfred Wegener Institute.
Antarctic sea ice extent has in fact been growing over the past 4 decades, defying global warming. Source: Die kalte Sonne.
EIKE reminds that the recent ice mass breaking off will have no effect on sea level at all because the ice had already been floating on the ocean surface, and that even if the broken off mass had fully displaced the sea water, the magnitude of the resulting global sea level rise would not have been detectable.
Compared to the total Antarctic ice mass, the broken ice chunk with its 1 trillion-ton mass is only 1/26,000 of the entire ice mass at the South Pole.
Sea level rise not accelerating
Moreover, sea level over the past years has slowed down, and not accelerated, EIKE writes:
Slowing sea level rise from 1993 to 2012, Chart: K.E. Puls
Sea level rise stable
Granted the EIKE chart used above is somewhat outdated, and sea level rise has not been slowing down. Paul Homewood here takes an objective look at sea level rise and writes that alarmists use “two tricks” to back up claims of accelerating sea level rise:
1) They splice the satellite record, which only started in 1993, onto the tidal gauge records.
According to satellites, sea levels have been rising at 3.4mm/yr. Whether this figure is right or not, no half competent scientist would dream of splicing two totally different sets of data together in such a way.
Worse still, their banner figure of 3.4mm includes what is known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which accounts for the fact that the ocean basins are getting slightly larger since the end of the last glacial cycle.
In other words, if the basins were not
1) They splice the satellite record, which only started in 1993, onto the tidal gauge records.
According to satellites, sea levels have been rising at 3.4mm/yr. Whether this figure is right or not, no half competent scientist would dream of splicing two totally different sets of data together in such a way.
Worse still, their banner figure of 3.4mm includes what is known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which accounts for the fact that the ocean basins are getting slightly larger since the end of the last glacial cycle.
In other words, if the basins were not getting larger, sea levels would rise more. To account for this, they add 0.3mm a year to their sea level figures.
This is all well and good, if it were not for the fact that tidal gauges do not include such an adjustment, so the comparison of satellites and gauges becomes incompatible.
2) They compare recent sea level rise with the 20thC average.
However, sea levels were not rising at an even pace during the last century. There were times when it was rising at rates similar to today, and others, notably between 1950 and 1980 when global temperatures were falling, which saw a lower rate of rise.
As the IPCC stated in its 2013 AR5 report:
It is very likely that the mean rate of global averaged sea level rise was 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm/yr between 1901 and 2010 and 3.2 [2.8 to 3.6] mm/yr between 1993 and 2010. Tide gauge and satellite altimeter data are consistent regarding the higher rate during the latter period. It is likely that similarly high rates occurred between 1920 and 1950
ar5-syr.ipcc.ch
So, the current rate of rise is not unprecedented, and does not “prove” that the rise will continue to accelerate. Indeed, if the 20thC record is anything to go by, it could well slow down again, as part of a natural cycle.”
Moreover a recent analysis of tide gauges, where people actually live, sea level was shown to be stable or falling at half of the locations.
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