Bill McKibben and 70 others arrested

[An Inspector Calls]

The oceans cover 70 % of the globe, the land 30 %. A sea level fall of 6 mm must therefore correspond to an average extra 14 mm over the land. Considering GRACE shows some land areas in water deficit I find the claim that the sea has fallen because it's rained a bit just a little feeble.

Yes, I agree, the trend is still solidly up. But remember, to serve as in indicator or proxy for global warming, the rate of rise of sea level has to accelerate; if shows no sign of accelerating then there's been no change in the behaviour of sea level for the entire period since industrialisation began to produce significant quantities of CO2. And there's no sign of that acceleration whatsoever; the present fall counters any claim for an acceleration most strongly.

[JohnB]

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Urge Obama: Reject Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline

Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama call on President to build clean energy legacy

OTTAWA (September 7, 2011) - Nine distinguished recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have written to President Obama, urging him to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, saying his decision offers "a critical moment" to make good on his pledge to create a clean energy economy.

[ujoni08]

AIC, I take your point, but I do believe we're looking at many, many variables. While there is a drought in some parts of the world, others have been flooded to record levels. In the Queensland floods:

'The central Burnett towns of Gayndah and Mundubbera saw major flooding on 28–29 December. The Burnett River peaked at 18.25 metres (59.9 ft) at Mundubbera—the highest river height since 1942'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80 ... and_floods

The Mississippi:

'On May 10, the river reached 47.8 feet (14.6 m), the highest level reached at Memphis since 1937'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Missi ... ver_floods

That's a massive amount of water drawn out of the sea.

Anyway, I think we should wait and see what the sea levels are doing over the next few years before forming an opinion. In the meantime, surely we can act to mitigate changes, and if they don't turn out to be as bad as we feared, we won't have lost anything. Conversely, if we don't, and they DO turn out bad, well... that'll be too late.

Just my thoughts.

[vtsnowedin]

AIC, I take your point, but I do believe we're looking at many, many variables. While there is a drought in some parts of the world, others have been flooded to record levels. In the Queensland floods:

'The central Burnett towns of Gayndah and Mundubbera saw major flooding on 28–29 December. The Burnett River peaked at 18.25 metres (59.9 ft) at Mundubbera—the highest river height since 1942'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80 ... and_floods

The Mississippi:

'On May 10, the river reached 47.8 feet (14.6 m), the highest level reached at Memphis since 1937'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Missi ... ver_floods

That's a massive amount of water drawn out of the sea.

Anyway, I think we should wait and see what the sea levels are doing over the next few years before forming an opinion. In the meantime, surely we can act to mitigate changes, and if they don't turn out to be as bad as we feared, we won't have lost anything. Conversely, if we don't, and they DO turn out bad, well... that'll be too late.

Just my thoughts.

Any water measured in a river will be back in the ocean within days. To change sea level water has to be stored out of the water cycle long term such as in ice caps and aquifers or released from them.

[ujoni08]

VT, thanks for that. Yes, I guess most river water will flow to the ocean, but a lot of the total rainfall surely also goes to refill aquifers and gets absorbed into the soil, into plants, etc.

Plus, if the sea level has dropped slightly, and the sea ice is at one of the lowest levels

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Then where is the water?

Jon

[vtsnowedin]

VT, thanks for that. Yes, I guess most river water will flow to the ocean, but a lot of the total rainfall surely also goes to refill aquifers and gets absorbed into the soil, into plants, etc.

Plus, if the sea level has dropped slightly, and the sea ice is at one of the lowest levels

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Then where is the water?

Jon

If it actually has fallen slightly then the water is most likely just in the atmosphere looking for a place to rain out. The amount of floating sea ice is immaterial as it only displaces it's own mass. The land based ice caps and glaciers are where the real storage that can make a difference is. The arctic ocean floating sea ice does make a dandy non biased thermometer that no one on either side can fiddle with.

[kenneal - lagger]

But remember, to serve as in indicator or proxy for global warming, the rate of rise of sea level has to accelerate;

No it doesn't. The level just has to continue rising, as it is doing. More land based ice; lower sea level. Less land based ice; higher sea level. A steady increase will do, thank you.

[An Inspector Calls]

Rubbish. Check what's said about this in the literature and see the work of Church desperately trying to spot an acceleration.

http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcrp/docu ... 080221.pdf
[/img]

Stick to the lagging.

[An Inspector Calls]

If it actually has fallen slightly then the water is most likely just in the atmosphere looking for a place to rain out. The amount of floating sea ice is immaterial as it only displaces it's own mass. The land based ice caps and glaciers are where the real storage that can make a difference is. The arctic ocean floating sea ice does make a dandy non biased thermometer that no one on either side can fiddle with.

Or the sea temperature is falling and the sea volume has contracted.

[vtsnowedin]

If it actually has fallen slightly then the water is most likely just in the atmosphere looking for a place to rain out. The amount of floating sea ice is immaterial as it only displaces it's own mass. The land based ice caps and glaciers are where the real storage that can make a difference is. The arctic ocean floating sea ice does make a dandy non biased thermometer that no one on either side can fiddle with.

Or the sea temperature is falling and the sea volume has contracted.

I see no evidence of that. To what are you referring?

[An Inspector Calls]

Just thinking of a possible explanation for the sea level fall, that's all.

[kenneal - lagger]

Just thinking of a possible explanation for the sea level fall, that's all.

Above you've just posted evidence for increasing sea level rise. Where's your evidence for a falling sea level or decrease in sea temperature?

Above you were talking about the requirement for an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. Acceleration is a unit of metres per second per second and implies a curve in a graph such as is shown in exponential growth. That implies a continuously increasing rate sea level rise as is shown, on visual inspection, on your graph from 1880 to about 1930. The graph is then fairly linear until the 1990s but might show an acceleration from then on. It is too early to state that there is an acceleration in the rate of increase because, as can be seen from the graph, the rate can vary from increase to decrease from year to year and the amount of change can vary.

A steady increase in world temperatures could imply the requirement for an acceleration in sea level rise but against that there is the fact that an increase in sea level means an increase in sea area: the sides of the ocean are not a cliff but slope. Also there are underground aquifers which are fed by the increase in sea level. The chalk aquifer under London, for instance, has seen an increase in height of saline water fed in from the sea as the fresh water has been pumped out.

It is not necessary to show an acceleration in sea level rise; an acceleration in volume is quite probable but with a linear increase in height. And as your graph shows, a linear increase is perfectly possible.

[An Inspector Calls]

lagger

The Wiki graph I posted was to illustrate the desperate attempts of authors such as Church to find an accelerartion. The global warmers are gagging for there to be an acceleration in sea level rise.

Where's your evidence for a falling sea level or decrease in sea temperature?

But Obama has delivered on this promise:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262

Healing nicely, I'd say!

Previous page. Do you follow these threads at all? The implications of that graph have been the focus of much of the discussion since I posted it.

And if you're so confident about sea level being a good proxy for global temperatures then can you explain why the rate of sea level rise did not respond to the cooling period between 1940 and 1975? And why did the sea level rise rate accelerate between 1880 and 1930 when there was very little change in atmospheric CO2?

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Has any work been done to try to measure the physical change in the size of the basins that contain the oceans?

If there is an increase in silting or upwelling of sub-oceanic magma reducing the volume available for the ocean to slosh around in would we know?

How does the increase in dissolved CO2 impact the volume of a given mass of water?

What about fish stock declines and any reduction in sea level due to less fishy displacement?

Any one know?

[biffvernon]

...

Above you've just posted...

another thread hijack.

This thread is about Bill McKibben and the Tar Sands Keystone XL Pipeline project.

Here's how the campaign is developing.
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/what-come ... ion-09-06/

Perhaps sea level rise discussions merit their own thread.