Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Mind Over Matter, Nov 10, 2011.

  1. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,205
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

    But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

    Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
    Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

    The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

    Comment?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Most of the sea rise does not come from melting ice. If he thinks that, he doesn't even understand the discussion.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    exactly, it comes from expansion of the oceans caused by increased surface temp.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    Curious... what is the expansion of sea water per degree? To what depth would that have an effect? Obviously it's a huge surface. But the height of ice cliffs seen crashing into the sea would not require such a huge surface area to equal a shallow depth of expanded sea water to compare the roughly 100% contribution of ice per unit volume as opposed to the fractional % contribution by heating a few degrees.

    Just wondering, I will read up on it.
     
  8. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,416
  9. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,890
    Here:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    At a constant Salinity, as temperature increases, density decreases.
    The mass of water in the oceans is constant (more or less), therefore the volume must increase to accomodate it.
    \(v=\frac{m}{\rho}\)
     
  10. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    I did a quick check on Dr Mörner, an interesting fellow. First of all the INQUA does not agree with Dr Mörner assessment.

    But really sent up a huge red flag on this fellow was that he has written several papers supporting the belief that dowsing works. Yikes! :bugeye:
     
  11. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,738
    If the ice melts in Greenland or the ice melts in the Antarctic, there will be massive sea level rise.
    The earth is warming. No one doubts that.
    At the moment, the amount of ice in the Antarctic may be growing due to increased snow fall. It has long been virtually a desert in terms of snow fall.
    Greenland may also be adding ice for the same reason.

    Climate change scientist would have more credibility if they did not keep on making predictions about what will happen.
    The world's own checks and balances are more than a match for man, but unfortunately they are not concerned with our well being.
    This experiment we are running could result in a world baking hot, or freezing cold, or one much the same as it is now.

    As for these old professors, they seem far more likely to adapt wacky theories once they retire than anyone else.
    When I hear the words "retired professor", I always think "potential loony".
    Doesn't everyone?
     
  12. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Sea level rise from anthropogenic global warming (melting of land ice and warming of oceans), which is ~4 inches since 1950 (most of the warming prior to that is considered mainly of natural origin), has not been sufficient to cause any island that was even just a foot above mean low tide, a century ago, to disappear.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    There are however other reasons for land to subside and local waters to rise.

    And that's because it wasn't lost to global warming to begin with.

    http://articles.timesofindia.indiat...0962_1_island-ghoramara-lohachara-and-bedford
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2011
  13. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,738
    Interesting Graph,
    But, sorry, I don't get your point.
    Could you spell it out a bit?
    And does the satellite information have any particular importance?
     
  14. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Claims that the rising sea level from global warming has claimed any inhabited islands is simply incorrect, which is indicated by the finding that Lohachara island is emerging again. It's actually just a sand delta and it's major changes are based on the river, not the rise of the ocean.

    As the chart shows, the total sea level rise over the last century was only about 8 inches.

    Or do you think anyone was actually living and building what we would think of as permenant stuctures (not fishing huts) on an island, that 100 years ago, was only 8 inches above the mean high tide mark?

    To put it in persective, probably the two countries with a legitimate short term concern is Tuvalu (population about 10,000) as Tuvalu's nine coral based islands today average about 3 meters above sea level and the Maldives (population about 300,000), whose 200 inhabited islands are only about 2 meters above normal high tide.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu

    Each averaging FAR higher than 8" and yet both precariously close to the high tide mark.

    Both of them will likely have to make some adaptions by mid century, but neither of them is likely to have to be abandoned either.

    The most problematical is probably Male with over 100,000 people and the 2nd most densely populated island in the world, but then they keep importing land, so my guess is they can build it up faster than the seas can rise.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malé

    The majority of people most likely to be impacted by rising sea level later this century are the large number of people who live in very low lying river deltas on the Indian Ocean. They will have to move back a few miles.

    The satellite data seems to confirm the trend we see in the land based gauges.
    A slow steady rise in the level of our oceans.

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2011
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    A 4 inch rise in sea level is a hell of a lot of water. 4 inches every 50 years would have quite a significant impact.
     
  16. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Eventually
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Corals are also dying due to rising temps and acidification, so these islands may disappear after all.
     
  18. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    So the sites of early Americans, offshore in the Northwest coast, were these were buried by subsidence, ice melt, both, and does that correlate with 20 cm per 100 yrs?

    Also, in the graph, the raw data seems to have a wide variance. Why, I wonder. The sea rises and falls widely from year to year? Measurement error? Why is the data almost flat around 1900? Why the ripples in the mean? Sea levels rise and fall over some larger timebase, it says. Where does the water go? Back into ice? Does this correlate with measured snowfall or is that possible to know? Presumably modern data includes a lot of useful information to look for correlations like this.

    Sometimes I see a graph and I'm sold on the idea, sometimes I'm curious how the graph came about.

    Just wondering.
     
  19. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Sea level rise is currently tracking the upper limit of IPCC predictions.

    Over the next century, a rise of > 1 metre is expected, and this may occur by 2050.
    The rate of CO[sub]2[/sub] emission is expected to increase significantly over the same timescale, which could push the global temperature up by 4[sup]o[/sup]C.
    There might be places on the globe where it will just be too hot for mammals. Furthermore, if the expected temperature increase does occur, it makes it much more likely that a major ice sheet will disintegrate and cause a much larger rise in sea level.

    In reality, most of the developing economies "have" to increase their carbon output to maintain growth. They have maybe a century left to do this, before it all turns to custard.
     
  20. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

    Messages:
    10,890
    The answer's pretty mundane actually.

    There are seasonal variations (usually subtracted out) which are cause by the fact that most of the worlds land mass is concentrated in the northern hemisphere. During the northern winter, water evaporated from the oceans is dumped on the land, but it freezes and stays there until the northern summer.

    Over longer time scales variations are introduced by events such as el nino/la nina. Results verfified by GRACE essentially indicate that during a strong el nino event, large volumes of water are removed from the ocean (evaporation) and abnormally large volumes of water are deposited on land, which causes a net drop in sea level.

    Like I said, the mass of water in the oceans is mostly constant, but seasonal variations, and cycles such as enso can alter that.
     
  21. DwayneD.L.Rabon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    999
    Well,
    As I understand it from a local geologist on the west coast of the United States, we lose about 4 inches a year to the ocean. So the west coast of the united states is either being flooded, or we are sinking!!!. If we are sinking this means that the west coast is creating increased tectonic Plate pressure that results in earth quakes in the pacific ocean, such as those seen on march this year which caused the Japan earthquake and tsumai.

    So also if we are sinking we will see a rise in sea level from land sinking not added water from the ice melting at the earths poles.

    Undoubtly both would occur in a world that is sinking or contracting,meaning both sinking and increased ocean volume, as well ice melt.

    Dwayne D.L.Rabon
     
  22. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    One of the things I'm most surprised by, in any discussion of global warming, is how many people seem to think it either isn't really happening, or if it is, it doesn't matter very much.

    The facts are that we don't know enough yet to make any definite predictions. That's why the predictions are general (if global temperatures rise for whatever reason--say the sun gets more active--then there's a greater chance of a major ice sheet melting). So given the general nature of most predictions, most people seem to want to look for a reason that they won't come true, or why any real problem must still be centuries in the future.

    That's fine, I suppose, but there's no way anyone can say for sure that they can second-guess it. We aren't particularly concerned, yet, about the consequences. If we were, wouldn't governments be doing a lot more?
     
  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    Just to dwell on that for a minute.... going back to the chart, and adding what you say here:

    if you start back around 1900 and look at the swing of +/- 5 cm, then slew horizontally to where the max at 1900 his a min at around 1965, it would seem that, in 65 years, the entire amount of precipitation that fell on the whole earth, that amount of water is how much has been transported into the oceans by 1965. That's how much "drier" land has become. Scary.

    I'm still looking at those iso-density lines, they get linear up at the warm temps. Yes, density equals mass divided by volume. But: does the deep water temperature change at all due to global warming. I doubt it. I think the warm water is at (or near) the surface and of course in shallow basins. So, to know how much volume of sea water is expanding, you would need a model to explain the expansion at depth, since it will cool off as you descend and the effect vanishes quickly, I would imagine.

    If I took a pan of water out of the fridge and set it in the sun, the measured amount of expansion would seem insignificant compared to dropping an ice cube in and letting it melt. I have not scaled this properly, but the idea to me seems hard to believe, just as far as a first impression. Obviously the huge surface of the ocean will be the driving factor as to the effect.

    Take a pond for example. In summer I measure the water level. Assume no evaporation. I go back in the winter when the temp. is 60 degrees lower. Intuitively, I wouldn't expect to see a measurable change. It seems like a good science or chemistry project for a school.

    Admittedly, it would take an awful lot of ice to raise the water level of the pond. In either case, I'm not convinced. The scarier idea is that the land is dehydrating, dumping precip faster that it receives it, and this is anthropogenic for climate reasons and for water extraction reasons.
     

Share This Page