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"the melting of ice caps attributes very little to ocean levels"
true for landless Arctic, but not true for Antarctica
no. just, no. the melting of ice caps attributes very little to ocean levels (which is the perceived issue). ocean levels change in large part to thermal expansion of water. the ice caps are just a nice visual aid/thermometer
"the melting of ice caps attributes very little to ocean levels"
true for landless Arctic, but not true for Antarctica
Are you willing to read anything that is haresy against your AGW dogma?
Fire has occurred for much longer than man has been around and yet we accept that man can create fire, correct? Just because there are natural causes for a phenomenon does not preclude it from being anthropogenic in nature as well. You don't believe scientists have considered prior shifts in climate before considering the causes of the current changes? We have accepted scientific explanations for recent ice ages that are not applicable to current climate change. Whether you choose to believe them or not is up to you but the idea that "it happened before" somehow precludes current climate change from being caused by humans does not not survive long under the most basic of scrutiny.the earth has been warming and cooling for billions of years. we've been studying global temperature for roughly a century and suddenly we have doomsday predictions. I wonder what caused the last ice age, or the subsequent global warming that got the planet out of the ice age... probably exhaust from our SUV's
Lost my other reply but just to summarize: Saying the ice caps are merely visual aid/thermometer and that thermal expansion is the main culprit in sea level rise displays a serious lack of understanding of the science at the poles.
i didn't say the ice caps melting have no effects. in the scope of sea level rising, though, it is a rather insignificant contributor compared to thermal expansion
I disagree with that assessment. Last time I looked, they are pretty close in effect. Boutons is actually right. It's the land based ice like Greenland and Antarctica that have an effect. It is floating ice that doesn't change the level, like the norther cap.
That simply isn't true. You're confusing the melting of sea ice with the all ice near poles. The icecap at the southern pole is enough water to raise sea level by over 60 meters. Thermal expansion will likely be maybe 2% of that figure.
There is so much idiocy in that WSJ op ed.
This section especially. A lot of the statements alone are not false but they are completely out of context and foolish. IE, warmer temps have been shown in papers like Seager 2007 to have a slight increase in precipitation in the American SW. However, the overall point of that paper - and many others - is that evaporation will increase far more than the increase in precipitation. So the slight increase in precipitation certainly isn't going to do any good.Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC's emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher.
The line about most experts not thinking 2 degrees results in net damage is amazing as well. But I guess in an Op Ed for the WSJ you're just allowed to throw whatever you want against the wall since you don't have to provide sources and people with extreme conformation bias like Darrin will just eat it up.
As for the first opinion piece you posted, it states that models produce natural variability in their runs. They do. But capturing natural variability on a short time scale is nothing more than a coin flip. They assume the natural variability is accounted for in the model runs approximately which is why you see observations on the tails of their distributions. However, thats a piss poor assumption.
Furthermore, they once again focus on air temperatures while ignoring the fact that oceanic heat content is at all time levels. This is the equivalent of saying there's no problem because your candle is not on fire while the house around you burns. The oceans contain FAR more energy and are much slower to warm.
pro-corporate/BigCarbon WSJ's take on AGW is as reliable as David Barton on history or Bible-thumpers on biological evolution.
LOL...
Really?
Wrong again. It would be much more than 2% because to melt all that ice, the global temperature would have to be so much greater. The sea temperature would be greater too!
For it to be warm enough to melt all the antarctic ice... What would the thermal expansion be...
Think about it. I say thermal expansion alone would be at least 20 meters.
The average ocean depth is 3790 meters. If thermal expansion increases that by 0.5%...
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 09-14-2013 at 12:05 PM.
I can understand you blasting away at a WSJ op-Ed, but the previous thing I posted wasn't an "opinion piece", it is a published paper.
Did you even open it and read it? Its not the same as a newspaper Op Ed but its not peer reviewed. Its a commentary piece.
From the upper right portion of the article: opinion & comment
That being said, Nature Climate Change is probably the preeminent climate change journal. The article is not without worth, I just feel a major problem is the fact that natural variability can definitely be underestimated by the models in a short time frame. This is a short time frame. It is definitely on the low side of model projections but it IS within model projections which is the important part.
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