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Comments 2501 to 2550:

  1. Rob Honeycutt at 08:14 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart... (sigh) That is surface mass balance. Not total mass balance. The two are very different. Surface mass balance is a subset of total mass balance.

  2. michael sweet at 08:13 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart Vreeken,

    My link at 39 appears to be the KNMI climate change report published at the end of 2021.  It contains the new sea level rise projections.  On the cover it gives 1.2-2.0 meters as projected sea level rise.  It was widely reported in the newspapers at the time.  My link at 38 was to a newspaper summary of the KNMI report.

  3. The Big Picture

    @60

    "You have no justification for saying that the mass loss will come from the southern part of Greenland."

    When we look at the anomaly of the Surface Mass Balance of Greenland of this moment then I think that it gives a good idea of how the Greenland Icesheet reshapes at the moment. The lower parts and the southern parts are losing ice, and the higher part can gain ice due to more precipitation.

    Greenland SMB anomaly March 2023

  4. The Big Picture

    @ Michael sweet, 

    Unfortunately you didn't give a link to the KNMI site, but to some Turkish site. Here's a proper link (please use Google translate):

    www.knmi.nl/over-het-knmi/nieuws/nu-ook-zeespiegelstijging-te-zien-in-het-klimaatdashboard

  5. The Big Picture

    Bart @ 57:

    Yes, I could use Google Translate, but why should I? You are the one trying to make a case here, and if you can't be bothered to provide proper references, proper indications of what you expect people to see in those references or diagrams, then why should we make the effort to guess at what you are trying to show us?

    Now that you have provided a translation of the caption and some of the text for the figure that shows "the magical 12.5% figure", I see that the main text says "the rise in the Netherlands could amount to 60% of the global average sea level rise". No 12.5% there, and a direct refutation of your 12.5% claim.

    What about the caption? It says that the map is showing "the consequences on the Dutch coast of the disappearance of ice in different parts of the Greenland ice sheet".

    The values on that map range from maybe -30% to over +45%. You stated "The mean value of the southern half of Greenland is someting like 12,5%. My assumption is that the mass loss in this century will come from the southern part."

    So, that diagram does not demonstrate that sea level rise in The Netherlands from Greenland ice melt will be 12.5% of the global average. The 12.5% value is a value you picked out of the figure purely on the basis of that's what you want to believe. You have assumed your conclusion.

    Once again, you have no scientific basis for your claim. You have no justification for saying that the mass loss will come from the southern part of Greenland.

    It is obvious that you are just making stuff up, with a smattering of out-of-context quotes or diagrams, with no real understanding of any of the processes.

  6. Rob Honeycutt at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart... Do you understand the meaning of "disproportionately affected"?

  7. michael sweet at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart:

    I do not see the graph you posted at 35 in your paper.  You have a graph at 52 that shows considerably more sea level rise than your graph at 35, but still much less than the KNMI report.

    The KNMI report that I linked was put out after the IPCC updated their sea level rise projections in 2021.  Apparently the paper you link was written before the IPCC updated their projections.  

    The Netherlands National Weather Institute's (KNMI) most recent projections, made after the publication of the paper you linked, are 1.2 - 2.0 meters of sea level rise in Holland by 2100.  If you prefer to look at outdated projections by lesser authorities that is your business.  Every time sea level projections are updated they are increased.  I suggest you try to keep more up to date.

    At 35 you said " I don't see many projections between 1-2 meters here."  That is incorrect, the Dutch National Weather service best estimate is 1.2-2.0 meters.

    Rob at 42: The link to Tamino (copy of link) that I posted at 30 shows the sea level data and explains why you cannot use the average of 1900-2020 to project to the future with a straight line.  He used the data from 1970-2020 and a quadratic fit for the most accurate projection. 

    Peppers: Tamino explains how to project future sea level rise.  He only projects to 2050 because the uncertainty bars become too big after that.

  8. The Big Picture

    Hi Bob, with Google Translate you can read the text in English. Here's a screenshot of the translation:

    Magical 12.5 percent figure

  9. The Big Picture

    Well that source is in Dutch (I presume).

    Please prove a translation of the caption in figure 2.

  10. The Big Picture

    Bob Loblaw, the magical 12,5% figure comes from this message:

    www.knmi.nl/over-het-knmi/nieuws/de-groenlandse-ijskap-smelt-steeds-sneller

    In Figuur 2 we see the influence of the melting of different parts of Greenland to the sea level rise in the Netherlands. As we see, melting at the east coast of Greenland gives a sea level decline in the Netherlands becourse it's at a short distance. The mean value of the southern half of Greenland is someting like 12,5%. My assumption is that the mass loss in this century will come from the southern part.

  11. The Big Picture

    Actually, I see that Bart's 13cm is the proportion of the overall total of sea level rise that is due to Greenland.  That's not in the figure he refers to. He must be getting that from a different source - one he has not provided a reference to.

    On top of that, he's said  "12.5% of this comes to the Netherlands, that's 1,6 cm." That is a claim that appears to be a figment of his imagination.

    Where does this magical 12.5% figure come from, Bart?

  12. The Big Picture

    Bart @ 52:

    Really? I don't see anything in your figure in #35 that indicates 13cm in 2100. In the diagram you provided, in 2100, the lowest coloured zone is closer to 25cm, and the red ones (SSP5-8.5) range from 55cm to 120cm. The last time anything in that diagram was below 13cm was before 2050.

    You can't even read your own graphs properly.

    Of course, maybe you're still using 13cm from some bogus extrapolation of historical data.

  13. The Big Picture

    Bob Loblaw @50

    "let's start with you explaining what you think makes The Netherlands any different from any other part of the globe that is a long way away from Greenland?"

    Why should I explain it when you know allready know the answer? Back to @35. There we see the projection of the sea level rise for the Netherlands, according to IPCC.

    Also according to IPCC the addition to the global sealevel rise by Greenland in the SSP5-8.5 scenario in 2100 is 13cm. 12,5% of this comes to the Netherlands, that's 1,6 cm. Not very much to be worried about. 

    Sea level contribution

  14. The Big Picture

    Rob @ 49: [questioning Bart]:

    Did you read the paper, or are you just looking at charts without understanding the full context of their meaning?

    That's not an either-or question, Rob. It's quite possible that Bart read the paper and still doesn't understand the full context of the meaning of the charts.

  15. The Big Picture

    Bart @ 44:

    do I have to explain basic geophysics here? When the ice in Greenland melts then only 10 - 15% of it will make the sealevel rise in The Netherlands. That's due to the self gravitation of the ice sheet.

    You have yet to say anything in any of your comments here that represents anything that you can teach me, but let's start with you explaining what you think makes The Netherlands any different from any other part of the globe that is a long way away from Greenland?

    Do you actually think that the people that do sea level rise for a living are missing some aspect of geophysics that only you understand? Do you actually think that they do not know about the factors affecting regional patterns of sea level rise? That's the way you are coming across.

  16. Rob Honeycutt at 04:35 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart, you didn't answer my question. Did you read the paper, or are you just looking at charts without understanding the full context of their meaning?

  17. The Big Picture

    Rob @47 The answer is in Figure 2 and Figure 3. You are right, some of the projections (or the upper end of the uncertainty range) are between 1-2m by 2100. However, the average of all the projections for the RCP8.5 scenario is ca 0.9 meter.

  18. Rob Honeycutt at 03:49 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart @45... Have you read this entire paper? I ask because just reading the abstract it looks to me it supports projections of 1-2m by 2100.

  19. One Planet Only Forever at 03:17 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers @36,

    In spite of all that you have claimed the evidence-based understanding continues to be:

    1. The climate impact problem of developed human activity is real.

    2. The climate impact to date has already seriously compromised the future of humanity, especially due to the locking in of significant sea level rise). And because of the inertia of harmful developed over-consumption by the most harmful portion of the population things will be worse before humans stop making it worse. The continued harmful activity requires more repair (adaptation). And ‘adaptation effort’ delays human development of sustainable improvements. And the required adaptations will not be done for every body (I see not plans for the current portion of the population responsible for the rising sea levels to build flood mitigation systems that will be required for Bangladesh). And in some cases the harm is not repairable (The rising sea level impacts on Bangladesh may not be possible to adaptively mitigate).

    3. The problem is the portion of the total population that is most harmful per-person. The total population increasing is a concern. But the problem of the total harm done is the real concern. And that can be understood to be due to the portion of the population that has developed a liking for over-consumption, not just unnecessary energy over-consumption. And the problem within that problematic ‘highest harm’ portion of the population is the portion that has less interest in learning about the harm caused (or the risk of harm) by their pursuits of ‘more personal enjoyment or benefit’

    4. The problem can be solved. It just requires all people, even with an increasing population, to understand and accept the need to limit how harmful they are and to want to be more helpful to Others. There is a planetary limit on how many humans can live sustainably, concurrently live basic decent lives into the distant future. Many studies have established a consensus understanding that the maximum sustainable global population is a function of how much harmful over-consumption develops within the population. The planet can sustainably support more than 10 billion humans living basic decent lives (doing what is needed to live a decent basic live, and limiting the harm done by that essential activity). The planet cannot sustainably support the current 8 billion (or the most harmful 800 million) because of the developed harmful over-consumption within the population (and not just the harmful climate change impacts). Also, the developed systems fail to ensure that every body has the necessities of a basic decent life, including failing to provide basic minimum energy needs to every body and failing to have the ‘needed energy’ be as harmless as possible.

    What is tragically missing from most discussion of the climate change problem, and other human harmful impact problems, is that the solutions require everybody to be governed by the desire to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Some people 'doing their best to be less harmful and more helpful, and trying to help others be less harmful and more helpful' face the uphill challenge of overcoming the harm done by 'people who have developed other interests and related harmful misunderstandings'.

  20. The Big Picture

    The link above does not work. Next try:

    agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2021EF002576

    A. B. A. Slangen, M. Haasnoot, G. Winter, 2022

    Rethinking Sea-Level Projections Using Families and Timing Differences

  21. The Big Picture

    michael sweet @ 39 

    I took my figure (@35) from exactly this report. And here you find an overview of all the different kind of sea level projections (april 2022):

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2021EF002576

    Bob Loblaw @40

    do I have to explain basic geophysics here? When the ice in Greenland melts then only 10 - 15% of it will make the sealevel rise in The Netherlands. That's due to the self gravitation of the ice sheet. 

  22. The Big Picture

    I was going to point out peppers' fundamental errors  but you've beat me to it, Rob!

    All I can add is that as long as there has been life, organic carbon has under the right geological circumstances been buried, preserved and in some less common cases accumulated in sufficient quantities to form ecomonic fossil fuel deposits.

  23. Rob Honeycutt at 00:54 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers @36... Do you honestly need me to explain why you can't just take historical sea level rise data, run a straight line through it, and extrapolate sea level in 2100? This is basic enough that it might be a challenge to find citations. How about you make a guess and we'll see if you can work out why and perhaps, from that, we can help you understand why SLR projections show 1-2 meters for 2100.

    I'll even get you started: Think about ice.

    This is also wrong: "66M years ago we had the meteor strike, and the world went dark under dust for 3-4 years. Everything died, except the microorganizms around the rim of the oceans, around the world."

    Though it is off-topic, it's a good demonstration of how you're simply making things up as you go along. In the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event about 75% of species went extinct. We are direct decendants of small mammals that survived the event.

    Most of the rest of what you state there is also BS (for instance, much of the world's oil actually originates from the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods, not just the Tertiary period following the C-P event) but I'm not going to waste my time.

  24. The Big Picture

    Peppers @ 36: "Do you have cites for your 'abundantly obvious reasons?", Thx"

    Sorry. Rob assumed that he was talking to a reasonably well-informed audience.

    Look at some of the links I gave to RealClimate in my previous response to Bart.

  25. The Big Picture

    Bart @ 38 responds to Rob @ 35 by saying "I don't make a mistake", and then proceeds to explain that he (Bart) has done exactly the mistake that Rob said he was doing: using historical data to extrapolate out SLR over the coming century. Bart even included the quote from Rob saying you can't do that, so Bart has no excuse for not paying attention to what Rob said.

    Bart says he included "an extrapolation of the change by year" - but this is still using historical data to extrapolate. Mistake confirmed.

    Anyone who is reasonably well-informed about sea level rise projections understands that such projections need to include physics and processes that will cause sea level rise - glacier dynamics and their response to temperature and precipitation changes; climate warming and associated changes in ocean temperatures (including horizontal and vertical distributions of temperature change). Projections require understanding the future path of these factors - and the past sea level is not necessarily an indicator of the future of glaciers and global temperatures.

    RealClimate often covers this topic, and covers it well. A few related pages there:

    dont-estimate-acceleration-by-fitting-a-quadratic

    sea-level-in-the-ipcc-6th-assessment-report-ar6

    why-is-future-sea-level-rise-still-so-uncertain

    Another mistake made in Bart's short comment: the Netherlands doesn't need to worry about Greenland's contribution to sea level because it is "not very much here". (Granted, the last few sentences of Bart's comment are very poorly worded, so it's hard to understand exactly what point he is trying to make.)

  26. michael sweet at 00:40 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart Vreeken:

    This link appears to be the KNMI report (in Dutch).  The illustration on the front page shows 1.2 - 2 meter sea level rise (I cannot read the report).

  27. michael sweet at 00:27 AM on 18 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart Vreeken:

    According to the Dutch Weather Institute (KNMI),

    "sea levels will rise 1.2 to 2 meters (3.3 feet-4 feet) over the next 79 years if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced immediately and the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet accelerates."

    I found a description of the Dutch Weather Institute as the national weather authority in the Netherlands.  Certainly there are projections of up to 2 meters of sea level rise in the Netherlands.  Can you provide a link to support your claims?  I cannot read most of your graph but it appears to be dated 2005.  More recent projections have been much higher than older projectins.

  28. The Big Picture

    828,000 kilometers per hour

  29. The Big Picture

    HI Rob!

    Do you have cites for your 'abundantly obvious reasons?", Thx

    One Planet, huge effort and thanks for it!

    In that rise in population from 1B to 8 B ( Im going to use 1900 to present, although 1B was in the 1800's), the USA rose from 76.3M to the 335M now. China went from 336M to 1.3B, and so on. The world gained porportionally and if a household used blank amount of energy, it increased 5 fold in the US in quantity and so on. The new population was not all in low production regions.

    I am minded of the basic business principal of the 3 terms, reduce outgo, increase income (per unit), and doing more of it. The doing more of it is the mark of the run away businesses. I would not dilute the 800% rise in population with trace factors, to not tell yourself the truth that population, the 'more of it' is the core of this issue. 

    And it is important. Because if one realizes this, you can consider if this is in the solar system's realm of inevitibles rather than in our hands. I mean, the sun is moving 828k/hr around the milky way, we are orbiting 18.5 miles per second around the sun, and all the countless other intricacies of our solar system which would be folly to address. Might be dangerous even...

    Its a question, as Rob poses above, of doing the best we can. He says what is being done is at least stemming the flow. I disagree, but if population is the cause we may be better oriented to aid in adaptation to the changes. Nothing really is wrong and there is no reason to fear a runaway cycle as the cause is not mysterious then.

    Nasa concludes more warmth likely adds more energy to the environment, but they do not know if, how much or where. I would think it does add. But what of it is my mext question. The problem is addressable in the quality of our shelter.

    Hurricane Dorian was the largest in 84 years ( an example on the Nasa Site), so it matched one as large before the industrial revolution was in great effect. Nasa's point it, its still a guess.

    But Florida level of sheltering, where 150 died in 200mph Ian last Sept, was better than the 200k who died in crumbling buildings in Syria. Thats what we can put hands on, to aid in this issue.

    https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2956/how-climate-change-may-be-impacting-storms-over-earths-tropical-oceans/

    I would like to add one more mode of thought, which I dont see addressed here much. And it is only remote, so please do not categorize me as conspiracy oriented. My thoughts are how we best use our hands and feet on this. Not whether the problem exists.

    But I find this interesting.

    66M years ago we had the meteor strike, and the world went dark under dust for 3-4 years. Everything died, except the microorganizms around the rim of the oceans, around the world. The myth is that oil deposits are decomposed dinosaurs, but really it it the rotted countless trillions of these happy cells which had a heyday for a millions years with no other competition for the enriching co2 and oxygen in the environment. These tiny crustaceans died with the oxygen in its calcium and sequestered away ox as well as co2, of which these 2 chemical elements are bossom brothers.

    As such, an inordinant amount of oxygen was also captured and the current level of oxygen dimishment has us at about 900 feet altitude now compared to sea level saturation back then. Saturation is going down and the equivolent as altitude is increasing.

    Forbes: Air bubbles trapped within ice provides clues to the atmospheric composition at the time of "deposition" and can be analyzed for paleo-oxygen levels. The study finds that over the past 800,000 years the amount of oxygen found in the atmosphere has decreased by 0.7% and continues to decline.

    I think it is something like 14M years before oxygen reaches where we would need masks to visit the beach, so this is a mild bit of input on this supercharged forum.

    But what is the solution to this? More weather and rain is needed to wash the shells with all this captured oxygen back in to the oceans, to restock the active environment with the element.

    Do we know what we are doing to pick any possible cycle of earth or the solar system itself, and interfer with all these conclusions and guesses. Why is it not prudent to ask these questions?

    I dont think it is invasive to make umbrellas, levee's, bunkers and warm towels!

    Thanks everyone, D

  30. The Big Picture

    Rob Honeycutt @ 32

    "You're making exactly the same mistake as Bart. You can't use historical data and merely extrapolate out SLR over the coming century, again, for abundantly obvious reasons."

    I don't make a mistake. First, I don't say that the sea level rise isn't change. I make an extrapolation of the change by year, so the increase is allready included. As we can sea, there's a lot of noise in the data, so the trendline is not very clear. Second, we all know that such a simple trendline does not include everything.

    When I look at the latest projections for the Netherlands (I live there) my extrapolation is not too bad. I don't see many projections between 1-2 meters here. 

    On global scale it's little different, for the part of Greenland is not so very much here. 

    Projected sea level in Holland

  31. One Planet Only Forever at 13:32 PM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    I believe that it is important (and may be helpful) to reasonably (rationally) evaluate (question) the following questionable (interesting) claims that have been made:

    1. The increase of CO2 has been caused by the growth of global population (from 1 billion to 8 billion).

    JasonChen and Peppers have both made versions of this claim in this comment string.

    There does appear to be a correlation. But correlation does not mean causation. The details within the full picture of human population impacts are important to understand.

    Not every human has caused, or benefited from, an equal amount of harmful impact. And the personal difference of magnitude of impact among the global population is massive. A multitude of evaluations, enough to establish a consensus understanding, conclude that the majority of the ‘CO2/global warming/climate change’ impact is due to the highest impacting portion of the population (and any population sub-group).

    Said another way: If the highest impacting 800 million of the global population were the only humans to live, global population peaked at 800 million rather than having the global population grow to 8 billion, the climate change problem today would be almost as serious as it currently is with 8 billion now on the planet. And the solution would still be 'rapidly ending fossil fuel use', especially by the highest impacting portion of the 800 million.

    The problem is the highest impacting portion of the population and their bad examples of how to live being perceived as ‘advanced, superior, and desired’.

    2. Helpful developments for the benefit of (the future of) humanity require(d) fossil fuel use.

    JasonChen and Peppers have both made versions of this claim in this comment string.

    Fossil fuel use burns up non-renewable resources. This planet could be habitable for hundreds of millions of years. At current levels of use, fossil fuels will not last 1000 years. Perceptions that helpful development is achieved through fossil fuel use makes no sense. Any benefits ‘relying on continued fossil fuel use’ will end as the resource runs out. And there is the added matter of the many harms caused by fossil fuel use, not just the rapid production of excess CO2 causing rapid global warming/climate changes and changes of ocean chemistry.

    3. Perceptions that helpfulness justify harmfulness.

    When people focus on claiming perceptions of the positive benefits of fossil fuel use they are essentially claiming that perceptions of benefit justify or excuse harm done. They may also try to deny that harm is being done by what they perceive to be a positive action. Or they may try to argue that more evidence that harm is being done needs to be obtained before action is taken to limit the harm done (Waiting until the actual damage done is undeniable ‘based on their perceptions’: Waiting until the car crashes before trying to reduce the chances of a car crash). Or they may try to argue that the harm done is acceptable or enjoyable (that car race was thrilling ...).

    4. Perceptions of potential personal benefit can cause a person to resist learning to be less harmful and be more helpful to Others (and even themselves).

    This is the tricky bit. When a person is confronted with evidence that something they have developed a desire and preference for is harmful or risks causing avoidable harm some people will learn to be less harmful and more helpful. But some people will try to argue against the real and potential harm. They will seek out and develop a liking for a misunderstanding that they believe excuses or diminishes the harmfulness of a ‘perceived to be personally beneficial’ activity like fossil fuel use.

  32. The Big Picture

    Peppers @17

    "The modeling ( we love modeling here) by the U.N. is this rises until reaching 10.5B about the end of this century, and then begins to decrease. That is when we will see Co2 level and fall. Meanwhile this push to curb Co2 efforts cannot even keep up with the population rise continuance. The US adds the population of California again, about 2055."

    The proliferation of solar and wind power and reduced use of coal (its still growing but the rate of growth has slowed down considerably)  may have already stopped the business as usual worst case of 5 degrees by end of this century (which is based on certain trajectories of use of fossil fuels, and the available reserves of coal). Some studies on this if you google them . So we don't have to wait until population shrinks, to make a significant difference. 

  33. Rob Honeycutt at 10:42 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers @26... "sealevel.nasa.gov has the sea level rise 2mm a year historically..." 

    You're making exactly the same mistake as Bart. You can't use historical data and merely extrapolate out SLR over the coming century, again, for abundantly obvious reasons.

  34. Rob Honeycutt at 10:40 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Bart @27... "When we make a simple extrapolation of this..."

    The reasons you specifically can't do this should be abundantly obvious. 

    Suffice to say, projections for SLR by 2100 are between 1-2 meters.

  35. michael sweet at 10:08 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers:

    Here Tamino (a statistician) reviews the NOAA forecasts for sea level rise in the USA for the time period 2020-2050.  For Florida they forecast 0.48 meters of sea level rise (over 18 inches).  For the For Texan and Louisiana they forecast 0.59 meters (23 inches).  Sea level rise after 2050 will be much more rapid.  Current sea level rise in Florida is over 10 mm per year or about 4 inches per decade. (That means 4 inches in the decade of 2011-2021)  Your suggestion at 18 of "top out in about 3-5 more inches" is completely absurd.  

     

    Many parts of Florida already have severe problems with "sunny day floding" at high tide.  With 18 inches more water many locations will have to be abandoned.  Billions of follars of real estate will be worthless in 2050.  It is impossible to build levies in Florida because the ground is porous.

  36. michael sweet at 09:15 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    I note that on the US East coast the sea level is rising about 1.5-2 times the global average and on the West coast the rise is about 1/2 the global average.

    On the US Gulf coast in addition to rapid sea level rise the land is subsiding from removal of oil and water.

    sea level rise

  37. michael sweet at 09:03 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    This is the graph of sea level rise from the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado.  It is based on satalite measurements.

    sea level rise

    From the quadratic curve in 2015 sea level is 40.0 mm and in 2020 it is 60.0 mm.  That is 4.0 mm/yr and increasing.

    The sea level rise is related to the temperature.   When CO2 is controlled and no longer increasing the sea level will continue to rise for centurys.  The last time CO2 was at this level the sea level was over 23 meters higher than it is now.   The suggestion that sea level rise will stop when population stops increasing is completely uninformed.

  38. The Big Picture

    Hi peppers,

    Here you see the sea level rise for every single year. As you can see, the sea level rise goes faster and faster. When we make a simple extrapolation of this the sea level in 2100 will be 53 cm higher then in 2000. But we can't predict it very well, due to the unpredictable behaviour of Antarctica and Greenland. 

    Sea Level Rise By Year

    "at 66M years ago we were at 1000ppm and 14+ degrees C higher"

    You can't simply compare 66M years ago with the present situation. 66M years ago the sun had less power. Like all stars, the power of the sun increases during the time. And 66M years ago the position of the continents was very diferent, resulting in different ocean currents and a different temperature balance of the earth.

  39. The Big Picture

    Hi Rob,

    Apologies for not including my reference points. sealevel.nasa.gov has the sea level rise 2mm a year historically and as their projections. That is what I used for the 3-5 inch final rise until our population levels out.

    And at 66M years ago we were at 1000ppm and 14+ degrees C higher, and there are hundreds of sites with charts showing the same data. Some wanting to have the ppm look extreme just use an 800k year graph, which is the basis of the hockey stick chart.

    But, our recent increase is extreme, matching our wild conquering of the human condition and the 800-1000 % increase in our numbers. I have no idea of our wisdom as a species around all this, except lengthening our lives and solving misery, pain and premature death was hugely addressed in a wildly successful way.

    One might weigh all these factors and decide if our current state is worth it. I would not take all of that for granted however and only complain about the weather now. Should we go back or should we have skipped all that advancement?

    For me, I want to consider all of this when thinking of it.

     

    Thx Rob, D

  40. The Big Picture

    A question for those who seem to at least somewhat doubt the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change: did you notice the glossary entry for that and follow the link to the explainer? If not, here is the direct link https://sks.to/consensus-explainer. Perhaps read that before commenting again.

  41. The Big Picture

    re #23, that's very elequantly written, Philippe.

  42. Philippe Chantreau at 03:26 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    I see all of the familiar red flags of BS with Jason's posts. Attempting to present "the science" as something vague and abstract is a major one.

    The science is as far from a metaphysical concept as can be. It is composed of a very large numbers of scientific studies and articles, peer-reviewed and published in science publications, with methods, data and results. All of these, when considered as a big picture, point in a definite direction. The scientific consensus, as I have remarked many times before is not just agreement between experts' opinions. It is mostly a convergence of scientific research results, that experts are familiar with because they are experts. From there, major principles can be established, that are no longer a matter of debate, or not to the extent that would have major consequences.

    The attempt at establishing "factions" has for objective to give the appearance that reality is dependent on what camp we think we belong to. That is the ultimate fraud. This is the reason why there has been a push for a "blue team-read team" approach by some, using what is essentially lawyers' skills to make a case where there is not one at all. They know they can manipulate an audience effectively and make them not just believe that down is up but even fight for it. Heck these days, the AI bots mentioned higher could possibly do this even more effectively than sleazy lawyers, they only would have to have access to all the mind manipulating techniques used by advertisers, marketers and said lawyers to fool people.

  43. Antarctica is gaining ice

    Pfff, it looks like knowledge of psychology is more useful here then knowledge of Antarctica and climate change. How to react? A person called 'One Planet only forever' makes his or her own analyzation about 'people like me'. But isn't even willing to tell his or her own name. Why is that? I think an open discussion without hide-and-seek is more effectful and respective. About my motivation: my only motivation is trying to understand Antarctica and sharing information on that. And discussing that, but in a positive way. OK, lets stay on topic.

    We had a discussion about the  the collapse of the Conger glacier's ice shelf. Here's an article on Change in Antarctic Ice Shelf Area from 2009 to 2019. In this period the ice shelves around Antarctica have gained a modest 0.4 %, or 5,304.5 km2 the study says. The study does not include the last three years. A low sea ice extent won't be good for the ice shelves, so I think we can expect that they lost some of there area.

    egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2022/egusphere-2022-1087/egusphere-2022-1087.pdf

    And then a rectification. I made calculations on the total discharge of Antarctica, based on the Surface Mass Balance (SMB) and the GRACE data. But the SMB calculated here also includes the ice shelves, and that part does not count for the mass change of the ice sheet. So, the SMB for the grounded ice will be less, and the discharge of the grounded ice will be less. In the literature I found numbers like 1750 Gt/yr.

    Moderator Response:

    [BL] I tried to give gentle advice - which applied to all - but now I have to shift to moderator role.

    I have snipped the portions of this comment that violate the Comments Policy.

  44. Rob Honeycutt at 01:50 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers @19... "Which will top out in about 3-5 more inches to correlate it with sea leveling."

    And your citations to the research that supports this statement are... where?

    Currently the projections suggest over 1 meter of SLR by 2100 and more to come in the centuries to follow.

    Remember, the last time the earth had over 400ppm CO2 we had an ice-free planet. We are in uncharted territory stretching back a few million years.

  45. Rob Honeycutt at 01:46 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Jason @14... "That means pulling up above the canopy to a point of view where we can see the consensus faction and their beliefs alongside the other major factions and their beliefs."

    The consensus is precisely an act of "pulling up above the canopy..."

    The entire point of a scientific consensus is to measure the broad assessments of a wide range of experts. You know, people who have PhD's and study the subject matter every day of their working lives? Those people overwhelmingly accept that, it's real, it's us, it's bad, we need to act rapidly to fix it, and it's not "game over."

    If you want to be inclusive of the minority position that this could all be wrong, that's fine. You know, the standard treatments for cancer could also be wrong and herbal medicine just might save Uncle Bob from an early grave. You can never fully eliminate that possibility. 

    There are definitely people out there who are going to vigorously try to convince your uncle to use herbs and not listen to his oncologist. They are non-experts in oncology. They have strong opinions on oncology. Bob is more that welcome to risk taking their advice. At the end of the day, the likelihood of the oncologist being wrong are substantially lower than the herbalist.

    I peg you as the angry herbalist in this analogy.

  46. Rob Honeycutt at 01:33 AM on 17 March 2023
    The Big Picture

    Peppers @17, paragraph 3...

    Likewise, lately I've been trying to drink more water on a daily basis to stay better hydraded. It's working very well. I feel much more healthy for it.

    That doesn't mean I can breathe underwater and start living like a fish.

    Yours is a climate denier canard from long past that's been debunked a million times over. No one is claiming that humanity hasn't benefitted from the use of fossil fuels. Those fossil fuels have provided a cheap access to energy. It's the access to energy that has benefitted humanity in so many ways. That energy can—and increasingly is—being supplied through cleaner/cheaper methods with renewable energy sources.

    This classic argument is the same as complaining about the advent of automobiles since horses have done so much for us over the course of human history.

  47. The Big Picture

    Hi John!

    I think making such statements at a hair burning level of urgency to be non-science based, saying cities must be moved. There are measurements of an inch a decade in the sea rise and if some levee’s must be installed, at least that approach is better than the truly impossible approach of slowing the rise of Co2 down to below the documentable increase of our species. Which will top out in about 3-5 more inches to correlate it with sea leveling.


    There are other myths about this topic which are added to small scientific findings that lay people have layered into inappropriate conclusions, which exaggerate or awfulize this phenomenon. Not always on purpose, but due consideration is called for when found.

    Its real. We are in a loop. But just as a rise in Co2 being an unexpected consequence of our quest for better health, we see nature being full of cause and effects we cannot see. And what we cannot see we cannot model as well.

  48. The Big Picture

    @ Peppers #17: adaptation gets very costly indeed when you eventually have to relocate all the world's low-lying cities, does it not?

  49. The Big Picture

    I appreciate this summary being addressed again in this way.

    My take is that Co2 is rising as measured and it is human caused. You can overlay the increase from 1B to 8B in population over any of these 'hockey puck' graphs and the more people-more emisions conclusions are solid for me.

    The origin of the issues makes all the difference, and the premise that folks shy away from the historic population boom being voiced because there is nothing that can really be done about it, is non scientific.

    The crisis? Humanity succeeded in mass shelter, food and medicine. Antibiotics in the last 100 years! Infant mortality has dropped from 400 per thousand ( several hundred years ago) to 5.5 per thousand. More are born and huge % more remain living! We suceeded!

    The modeling ( we love modeling here) by the U.N. is this rises until reaching 10.5B about the end of this century, and then begins to decrease. That is when we will see Co2 level and fall. Meanwhile this push to curb Co2 efforts cannot even keep up with the population rise continuance. The US adds the population of California again, about 2055.

    I am responding to the culminating comment, based on no science whatsoever, in the above article: "What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?"

    My response would be to aid people in adaption to this. Any nations greatest resource is people, and the lowest countries of the world gain the most population by this dynamic of population boom. The premise that,"However, the negatives will almost certainly outweigh the positives, by a long shot." This further added statement with no science whatsoever attached helps highlight how unconsidered the whole picture is presented here.

     

  50. The Big Picture

    JasonChen @14 ,

    your comment seems far better suited to politics than science.

    If you have a valid point to make, then you should explain it clearly.   Otherwise you risk sounding very much like a ChatGTP artificial intelligence generator of prose.   (Something I probably wouldn't have considered 12 months ago ! )

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