Climate Change Fraud - Because the debate is not over - CU study: Sea rise speculations exaggerated

CU study: Sea rise speculations exaggerated

Written by Brittany Anas, Colorado Daily

Thursday, 04 September 2008

Global warming findings to be published in Science

A new University of Colorado study debunks the scientific speculation that global warming will cause seas to rise by 20 feet or more by the end of century.

In fact, the study says, global sea rise exceeding 6 feet looks to be a physical impossibility.

Tad Pfeffer, a fellow of CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and his colleagues made calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers and ice caps. The team concluded the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of roughly 3 to 6 feet by 2100.

Pfeffer said the research calling for the more extreme 20 to 30 feet of sea rise by the end of the century is not backed up by solid glaciological evidence. Still, the team’s most likely estimate of seas rising roughly 3 to 6 feet by 2100 would be potentially devastating to huge areas of the world in low-lying coastal areas, he said.

“The gist of the study is that very simple, physical considerations show that some of the very large predictions of sea level rise are unlikely, because there is simply no way to move the ice or the water into the ocean that fast,” Pfeffer said.

A paper on the subject will be published in Friday’s issue of Science, according to CU.

Accurate sea level predictions are crucial, Pfeffer said, so that policymakers can plan effectively to prepare cities and countries around the word.

“If we plan for 6 feet and only get 2 feet, for example, or visa versa, we could spend billions of dollars of resources solving the wrong problems,” he said.

Co-authors of the study are Joel Harper of the University of Montana and Shad O’Neel of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and a University of Colorado Faculty Fellowship.

The team researched the three primary contributors to sea rise and discovered the following:

Greenland: Researchers assumed future sea level rise at about 2 meters — or about 6.6 feet — by 2100 produced only by Greenland. Since rapid, unstable ice discharge into the ocean is restricted to Greenland glacier beds below sea level, they identified and mapped all of the so-called outlet glacier “gates” on Greenland’s perimeter — bedrock bottlenecks most tightly constraining ice and leaking water.

“For Greenland alone to raise sea level by two meters by 2100, all of the outlet glaciers involved would need to move more than three times faster than the fastest outlet glaciers ever observed, or more than 70 times faster than they presently move,” said Pfeffer. “And they would have to start moving that fast today, not 10 years from now. It is a simple argument with no fancy physics.”

Antarctica: The majority of ice entering the ocean comes from the Antarctic Peninsula and the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, said Pfeffer. Most of the marine-based ice in west Antarctica is held behind the Ross and Filcher-Ronne ice shelves, which Pfeffer’s team believes are unlikely to melt by climate or oceanographic changes during the next century.

Small glacier and ice cap contributions: These formations contribute to about 60 percent of the world’s ice to oceans at present, a percentage that is accelerating.

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