Keep an eye out, eh?
Over a longer period – centuries or even millennia – rising temperatures could melt the Greenland ice cap, raising sea levels by an extra 22ft.
Wait for the usual suspects to miss that centuries to millenia. Who do you think will be first? Monbiot in The G perhaps?
Isn’t the Greenland ice cap twice as big as it was a thousand years ago? How much higher were sea levels then?
Nobody has a bloody clue how long it will take. But, somehow, I don’t find that very reassuring.
I keep saying this, but to no avail: anyone, anyone who makes predictions about what conditions will be like centuries or millennia hence is either a shyster or a moron.
In five hundred years’ time, who’s to say that if we don’t want the ice caps to melt we’ll just tell them not to?
Tim adds: Thing is, you can find real live actual climate scientists who say very much the same thing.
>>Isn’t the Greenland ice cap twice as big as it was a thousand years ago?
Where do you get this stuff from?
Markbrinkley: ¨Where do you get this stuff from?¨
Ever wondered why Greenland is called Greenland, it being white and all??
Now, suppose the atmosphere is warming, and suppose the Greenland ice melts? Who is to say all that ice melts into the ocean? Given the Atmosphere is warmer, wouldn´t it hold more water vapour? And if it did hold more water vapour, isn´t there a chance that more rain might fall in arid places, like the Sahara, or Spain? After all, wasn´t spain the breadbasket of the Roman Empire at one point? And if more rain falls in those places, wouldn´t that likely lead to a greener Sahara, or a less arid Gobi? More vegitation might lead to more carbon sequestration which would be a good thing, No?
You might have thought we ought to be looking for ways to speed up polar ice melt, No?
>>Ever wondered why Greenland is called Greenland, it being white and all??
That explains it. So if Greenland was named thus because it was fertile farming country, why is Iceland…..
Tim, I stand by my original assertion: if ‘real life actual climate scientists’ are wombling on about atmospheric conditions 500 years from today then they are either deeply reprehensible hucksters, who should be divorced post haste from the levers of power, possibly by naval gunfire, or else members of a club of cretins so completely fucking retarded it would be a mercy to have them all shot in the back of the neck before the useless fuckers actually do any real harm.
Tim adds: Not sure if I got across my meaning. One such climate scientist of my aquaintance takes the line that, while we might be able to extrapolate out that far, with varying degrees of probability, our inability to project out technology or the economy that far means that we can’t actually come up with anything very useful to say or do about the results of such long term predictions. Who knows, in 500 years time we might all be living on the Moon?
MarkBrinkley
Could you provide me with any figures on how much sea levels have risen, say, in the past 30 years? Seeing as the Earth has been warming almost continuously during these 30 years, sea levels should have risen, right?
Tim adds: Sea levels have, as far as I’m aware, risen about one foot over the past century.
GH, nice one!
The link below contains the best review of research on the effects of increased levels of CO2 that I’ve seen. Has lots of great stats – sea levels have risen at the rate of 7 inches/century over the last 150 years.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
Aaarh! Seven inches! We’d better send the folks in the Third World a pair of very high heels and worry about it again in a hundred years.
I am struck by the idea I’ve heard scientists suggest that global warming will lead to greater rainfall and greening of the earth. Most plants it seems evolved in an ecosystem with far higher CO2 levels, and would benefit immensely from increased levels.
There’s so much we don’t understand, and the last thing we need is politicians playing gesture politics and damaging our economy and environment in the process.
Unintended consequences will rule the day and unknown opportunities will pass us by…