Tag: sea level

More than a metre

Sea level will rise by more than a metre by 2100 according to the authors of the third chapter in the World Wide Fund for Nature’s new Arctic report, introduced by Gareth a few days ago. Eric Rignot, one of the two authors of the chapter, is principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.  The other author, Anny Cazenave, is an internationally renowned research scientist from France’s national centre for space studies.

The value of the chapter is that it draws together, authoritatively and coherently, the evidence that points to considerably more sea-level rise over this century than projected in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Report (AR4). Happily politicians are taking IPCC reports much more seriously than in the past, but they should not rest on them.  Their responsibility is to be up to date with what the science is saying now. The WWF report assesses the most recent science, and finds that the impacts of warming will be more severe than indicated by the IPCC.

What follows is a summary of the main points made by the chapter.

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A strong voice from Kiribati

A short item in today’s Herald reports the visit to New Zealand under Oxfam’s auspices of Pelenise Alofe Pilitati. I followed up with a call to Oxfam who provided helpful extra material about their visitor. As Chairperson of the Church Education Director’s Association in Kiribati she is acutely aware of the impact climate change is having on the future prospects and outlook of young people. “The future of Kiribati is in our hands – we work very hard each year to support and help students to be successful. We want our children to love their country and love to serve their people. But what is the future of our children when our country is being threatened by global warming?”

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Summing up Copenhagen: what we know now

cop_logo_1_r_edited The synthesis report from the Copenhagen climate congress of scientists held in March has been released. It updates the 2007 IPCC report in the light of the latest developments in the science, and means that the UN Copenhagen conference in December will have an overview of the state of our current understanding of climate change.  

The report has six sections. The first deals with climatic trends and is blunt. Greenhouse gas emissions and many aspects of the climate are already changing near the upper boundary of the IPCC range of projections.  In the case of sea level rise the rate is even greater than indicated by the IPCC projections.  Continue reading “Summing up Copenhagen: what we know now”

Southern freeze

penguin.jpgWhile we’re on the subject of ice, Australia’s Antarctic Climate & Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre today launched two new publications: Polar ice sheets and climate change: global impacts [PDF], and Changes to Antarctic sea ice: impacts [PDF]. Described as “position analyses”, the papers provide an excellent overview of the current state of our understanding of ice sheets and how they’re behaving in a warming climate and the way Antarctic sea ice is responding to climate change.

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Such ignorance must not be allowed to go uncontradicted (*)

homer.jpgLast week an essay — Why I Am A Climate Realist — by NZ CSC “science advisor” Dr Willem de Lange started popping up all over the crank web. I first spotted it at Muriel Newman’s NZ CPR site, and it has since appeared at Monckton’s US lair (complete with a pretty cover). De Lange, a senior lecturer in the Dept of Earth & Ocean Sciences at Waikato Unversity, has not had many starring roles as a climate crank — his biggest claim to fame was a place on the panel discussion after Prime’s showing of The Great Global Warming Swindle last year. But this time he has really stuck his neck out, channelling Wishart’s delusions in this sentence:

It is more likely that the warming of the oceans since the Little Ice Age is a major contributor to the observed increase in CO2.

To show just how wrong he is, I asked Doug Mackie, who is a researcher in chemical oceanography at the University of Otago and regular commenter here, to point out the flaws in de Lange’s essay. Over to Doug:

When Gareth invited me to write a guest post about Willem de Lange’s Why I am a climate realist I knew it was going to be hard. Most of the article is wibble and he really only makes 2 serious points:
– About sea level
-The oceans as the main source of CO2.

(*) Katherine Mansfield, The Advanced Lady.
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