Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment
pnas.org
pnas.org
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Incredibly misleading title. The expected ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise are, per the article:
26 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions from the Paris agreement)
51 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions)
69 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions and incorporation of thermal expansion)
The 2m value comes from the large error bars in the predictions. Global climate change is a huge problem, but misrepresenting results from a scientific study like this is just presenting ammunition to climate change deniers on a silver platter. I suggest replacing 'to' with 'may' in the title, as that is a better summary of the article.
You won't find the answer and that should make the most critical thinkers amongst you to question how much you actually can rely on much of these predictions about the future 30-80 years out.
It seems like that would be a great place to start if you want to convince people that they should spend a lot of money on something that isn't even demonstrated to be a problem we can't handle already now.
What are you ready to do, who's money and freedoms are you ready to spend on being "safe rather than sorry"?
This is the real question we should be asking ourselves.
I said nothing about CO2, who and/or why.
Not that this isn't still terrifying, worth of action, worthy of international collaboration, and so on. Just let's be accurate about our titles.
The land here is on average rising with 1 cm per year out of the ocean.
1) The Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan (1 Republican) support: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org/). With this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax* is directly returned to citizens as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state. This is the organization cofounded by NASA scientist James Hansen, who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago.
2) If you're a millennial/gen Z, and you're more skeptical of a market-based solution, the Green New Deal and Sunrise Movement are making waves. Rather than a concrete policy in Congress, they have a set of principles/values that they are pushing forward. This includes economic and social justice issues.
*Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt. That fundamental price signal, where renewable energy becomes cheaper relative to fossil fuels (and similarly less fossil fuel-intensive goods are cheaper relative to fossil-fuel-expensive ones) reverberates throughout the economy. However, it's worth noting that while this solution should theoretically appeal to Republicans, almost none have stepped forward...
Aren't they strongly anti-nuclear? Putting science behind ideology is not a very good position to take about climate change.
CCL tends to be more pragmatic and have many more nuclear proponents.
If you look at sociology and anthropology, the evidence of the ability of human civilizations to handle problems with the time scale nuclear waste requires seems to be lacking. That the physics says it can be done safely does not prove that the other fields of science say it is likely to be done safely.
Is it? That's how France ended up with the yellow vests. It seems likely that demand for fossil fuels will prove rather inelastic, such that everyone just ends up paying more and not changing behavior in a significant enough way.
1) In British Columbia, consumption of fuel has actually _gone_ up despite a tax on carbon (now at $35/ton). It had initially gone down when the tax was introduced...
2) The theory of change of the fee and dividend model was that it wouldn't enlarge the state, and therefore it would be attractive to Republicans. I've seen firsthand all the hemming and hawing of Republicans, and I've pretty nearly lost confidence in any of them coming forward--let alone with the conviction and speed we need. It's more likely to me that a liberal majority will strong-arm a green new deal type program in the next decade.
But that's just my take.
> It seems likely that demand for fossil fuels will prove rather inelastic
Doesn't the contrast between the US and Europe belie that? Petrol prices are double or more in much of Europe and their cars are smaller and more fuel efficient, their cities are denser, they drive less miles per capita, they invest more in public transport, use more bikes and scooters, etc.
In other words, it’s co-opting the environment crisis to push for wealth redistribution.
That's a questionable comparison since we don't have reliable data from before 1993.
If the actual sea level rise was 3mm/year recently, we should surely not expect it to rise 25mm/year on average for the next 80 years?
I don’t understand your last point. A 2m rise by 2100 isn’t the prediction of the article, it’s more likely under a metre. 2m is the 95th percentile outlier or something.
Even so, if carbon emissions are continuing, the rate of warming will increase. Also I’d expect to see a hysteresis effect, where the effects of warming lag the cause so it wouldn’t be surprising to me to see an acceleration of its consequences.
Finally, if the rate of sea level rise could up to triple in a few decades, why couldn’t it triple again? And again? I just don’t see the basis of your argument.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
I don't doubt humans are affecting the climate. I do doubt that humans can extrapolate the effects of what they are doing out into the future very well.
With a brother who has a master's specialising in glacier reduction (and a keen interest in data science) he is finding it a demoralising experience looking for companies who actually seem to be taking action.
> Today the Earth has 148 million sq. km of land area, of which 16 million sq. km is covered by glaciers. A sea level rise of 66 meters would flood about 13 million sq. km of land outside Antarctica. Without polar ice, Antarctica and Greenland would be ice free, although about half of Antarctica would be under water. Thus, ice-free land would be 128 million sq. km compared to 132 million sq. km today.
I can't check all the calculations, but this result doesn't seem too terrible since we'd likely be able to migrate affected people in time.
Seriously, if that is what you honestly think happened without hyperbole... I worry for 2020.
"They recognize it and want to do something" doesn't mean shit when you're by far the worst part of the problem. Especially when "wanting to do something about it" and "doing something about it" are ridiculously different things.
Sounds like you'd imagine a permanent eclipsing body is something that would employ an orbital insertion into earth orbit, which is your own assumption.
But not while maintaining anything like current first-world culture. You either need to reduce energy consumption significantly or reduce population significantly.
Two guesses how that plays out.
The temp rises are another thing that we can adapt to. Maybe even some global engineering to thwart it. But again it will be at great cost. And this will probably have the bigger impact on all of us. Our eco-system is very susceptible to small temp changes.
With this kind of massive industrial effort, it's probably cheaper to build big towers and get rid of excess heat by pumping it up and radiating it into space off the night side of the planet. You don't need to make ice, you just need to reduce global temperatures. You could accomplish the same thing with a shield in space to reduce insolation.
What you'd need is something like a thermal->chemical energy converter. You could even make it do something useful, like desalinate water.
However, good luck pulling enough thermal energy from the air or ocean to have any significant effect on global climate.
On top of that, sea-level rise is not some even distribution around the globe, some places will get more others will get less. It's a very local phenomenon.
This is so misleading yet this level of inaccurate reporting is the basis for the current political debate.
Meta studies are to often used as political tools NOT science.
I 10 years when the climate catastrophism hopefully have subdued we will se a host of lawsuits against the words offenders of this scaremongering and "cry wolf"
Yes the climate is changing yes it's getting slightly hotter.
No there isn't any scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change we don't know how to deal with.