ionus, you dropped a decimal somewhere. If all the icecaps melted, sea levels would be around 60-70 meters higher; 5m is on the high end of recent projections for sea level rise in the next century, with the bulk of Antrarctic ice remaining . Even a half-meter rise would be very costly, since it would mean most of the world's seaports and coastal cities, which are kind of by definition at sea level woulc be flooded much more frequently, with much more property damage, since the storms would be starting from a half meter higher base level.
@MontereyJack,
No, there is only evidence for the water being 5m higher in the planets history and it is known there have been periods of no ice...the planet usually does not have ice, as mountain glaciers or sea ice .
Quote:Even a half-meter rise would be very costly
How much would a half metre drop cost ?
Better read your sources again, ionus. Shorelines are kind of evanescent. The 5 meter rise refers to the last previous interglacial,(and also as some present-day calculations for the way high end of estimates for sea level rise in the next century). It's not some sort of all-time record. And since we now have ice cores that date back close to 800,000 years, including 760K ones from mountain glaciers, and 800K ones from Antarctica, and you can't have an ice core that old without ice being there then, the world's ice, particularly Antarctica, where most of it has stored, has not all melted for the last seven ice age-interglacial cycle. It may have melted completely tens to hundreds of millions of years ago, but it was a good deal hotter then (and CO2 was much higher). It's pretty clear that the world is not operating the same way now. The calculation of how much water is stored in the Antarctic ice cap and Greenland is relatively straightforward. So is figuring out how much that would raise the world's sea level. Given the data, Euclid probably could have done it, and if it ALL melts, it's gonna raise sea level much more than 5 m, which again is a figure from when most of the world's ice was unmelted. Ice age glaciers were gone,m but ice caps and at least some glaciers were not. Sorry, you're wrong.
And since a half-meter drop in sea level diesn't look like there's any way it could happen until the next ice age sets in, and the current calculations of orbital cycles put that between about 20000 up to 50000 years in the future, no one's particularly worried about it yet. Check back in 15,000 years and we may start worrying about it then. It'd probably be cheaper, since it would remove most of the world's present coastal cities from a lot of coastal storm damage.
@MontereyJack,
Relatively recent sea levels :
http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/ancient-sea-levels-rewrite-ice-age-transitions
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/02/mediterranean-sea-level-was-much-higher-in-past-experts-discover-scientists-cant-explain-why-it-was-.html
Very modern sea levels :
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm
The problem is compounded by the land rising once the weight of glaciers is lifted, but only after a time delay .
Quote:the world's ice, particularly Antarctica, where most of it has stored, has not all melted for the last seven ice age-interglacial cycle.
Thats because the world is still in an Ice Age even during an interglacial period . 5m rise is for the land still being at the level of when the weight of ice is on it .
Quote:Euclid probably could have done it
Which is why it is so surprising that the Global Warming crowd get it wrong . Any ice that is currently afloat can be discounted as it is already displacing its own volume of water . This leaves the polar and mountain ice to raise the levels .
Quote:It'd probably be cheaper, since it would remove most of the world's present coastal cities from a lot of coastal storm damage.
Whilst taking away their livelihood ? How many ports would still be able to operate if we raise them by half a metre ?
Quote:Shallow seas covered approximately 35% of the continents during the Middle Permian, and less than 15% at the end of the Permian. A similar change in the area of modern shallow seas would result from a 210-m drop in sea level. If the rate of sea-floor spreading were reduced by 5 cm a year for 8 m.y., the average depth of the ocean would increase by about 200 m. During a period of slower spreading, cooling sea floor would sink closer to ridges, and increase the volume of the ocean basins. Changes in the rate of sea-floor spreading are considered a reasonable mechanism causing the eustatic change in sea level associated with the Permo-Triassic faunal crisis. "During much of Paleozoic and Mesozoic time ... land surfaces were much lower than they are today. An appreciable rise in sea level was sufficient to flood large areas; a drop of a few feet caused equally large areas to emerge ...." (Newell 1963, p. 92).
The Journal of Geology © 1975
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress
It is not a simple matter of no ice, huge seas .
ionus, you're wrong again about isostatic rebound. It started happening as soon as the ice caps in the last ice age started melting about 10K years ago, and is still going on. Rebound was relatively rapid after the ice was removed, and is much slower now--different kinds of rebound. A .5m rise in sea level cannot be accounted for by rebound, as it seems you're arguing, since rebound means the land is higher, so the sea level would be lower, but in fact sea level is rising in comparison with the land. In fact sea level rise is caused by glacial ice melting, and by thermal expansion of seawater as it warms, and is reduced by rebound, but that reduction is not as great as the expansion and rise.
And nobody is claiming floating ice melting raises sea level. But mountain glaciers, the Greenland ice cap, and meltin of land-based Antarctic ice do in fact raise sea level. Floating ice melting can have other effects, tho. Open water has a higher albedo than ice, which means it absorbs more heat and reflects less, so less Arctic ice means the Arctic Ocean warms faster, and makes expansion of the Arctic ice cap again less likely--it's a feedback effect.
@MontereyJack,
You keep saying I am wrong without saying what exactly is wrong . I could do the same thing, but it would just be pointless posturing . What did I say that was wrong ? A quote is required .
Just adding here, because the one and other likes to to tell about local weather reports (like from central England): we had had 25° C yesterday and the asparagus season started last week, three weeks earlier than usuallly due to the warm winter. (Data from central England are very similar.)
And 'no', this has nothing to do with climate change ... it's just one of those whims of weather which happen now and then.
@MontereyJack,
Quote:The calculation of how much water is stored in the Antarctic ice cap and Greenland is relatively straightforward. So is figuring out how much that would raise the world's sea level.
And the answer is.......
Dont keep us in suspense.....how much will all the oceans rise.....
@Ionus,
Ionus wrote:
Quote:The calculation of how much water is stored in the Antarctic ice cap and Greenland is relatively straightforward. So is figuring out how much that would raise the world's sea level.
And the answer is.......
Dont keep us in suspense.....how much will all the oceans rise.....
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." BO-08
ionus said:
Quote: And the answer is.......
Dont keep us in suspense.....how much will all the oceans rise.....
Answered before you even asked it--is your short term memory going?
60-70 meters.
Better get your water wings ready, H2Oboy, the Republicans, like the killer virus they resemble, have stopped that healing so far.
GOOD NEWS ............
Global warming is over, the new ICE AGE is about to begin ....
Well maybe not good news, the ICE AGE will be devastating apparently.
The doomsters will happy either way I guess ...
http://www.helium.com/items/2125333-prepare-for-new-ice-age-now-says-top-paleoclimatologist
@MontereyJack,
And how was this achieved ? You took the average thickness of ice by the surface area of Greenland, and then again for Antarctica and divided by the surface area of the oceans, allowing for a sphere and an increase in surface area that produces a deceleration of height increase whilst also allowing for the continents to rise as the weight is lifted . You get no marks unless you show your working, otherwise you are just guessing the answer .
How far will the oceans drop if we enter another Glacial Advance ? Are we really going to trust governments and big business to play with the thermostat ?
@Adanac,
Interesting read.....good ref, thanks .
@Adanac,
I am disappointed. No more laughs when temps hit new lows all over the world. AP will be printing stories about that instead, along with predictions of doom within 20 or 30 years.
@okie,
What we need to do people, is release carbon ! It is good for trees and will keep the planet warm ! (actually it wont, but anyone who can put a spin on it one way can surely stop it and spin it backwards) .
@Ionus,
That reminds me of one of the funniest things regarding the global warmers agenda that was talked about a few years ago. The idea of carbon credits was floated, and of course Al Gore was at the forefront of that, and planting trees was one idea proposed that he could earn carbon credits to offset all of his wasteful energy consumption. Here is the funny part. Trees eventually die and then rot, giving off all of the carbon that they ever absorbed during their life cycle, ha ha.
okie says:
Quote: Trees eventually die and then rot, giving off all of the carbon that they ever absorbed during their life cycle, ha ha.
Wrong. Not all. It is precisely because large quantities of plant material's carbon has NOT returned to the atmosphere over millions of years that we have fossil fuels to burn today. You might want to google "carbon sinks" or "carbon sequestration", okie. It's because we are returning millions of years of sequestered carbon from decaying plant matter to the atmosphere in a few short decades that the CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing and the earth is warming.
@MontereyJack,
Bit it was in the atmosphere and the planet self corrected...right ? Assuming the dinosaurs didn't go through the same drama we are currently enjoying . And the vast majority of carbon is released on the plants death...special conditions are required to form coal, and oil is not formed from large plants anyway .
coal and petroleum are special cases of what happens to some of the sequestered carbon after millions of years. Sequestration is going on all the time, and happens in many different forms. Much of the processes operate on time scales of centuries to millenia--we're putting it back in on a time scale of decades, and the total system shows no signs of being able to self-correct on our time scale--we're running too fast for it, and that's the problem. And it's not the trees' death when some of the carbon is released back into the atmosphere--it's its decay, which happens over decades. And a lot of the decay products get consumed by animals or other plants, which use the carbon to build and fuel themselves and their sturcture. That's a part of why it's called the carbon cycle.
coal and petroleum are special cases of what happens to some of the sequestered carbon after millions of years. Sequestration is going on all the time, and happens in many different forms. Much of the processes operate on time scales of centuries to millenia--we're putting it back in on a time scale of decades, and the total system shows no signs of being able to self-correct on our time scale--we're running too fast for it, and that's the problem. And it's not the trees' death when some of the carbon is released back into the atmosphere--it's its decay, which happens over decades. And a lot of the decay products get consumed by animals or other plants, which use the carbon to build and fuel themselves and their sturcture, or they become part of the organic matter which pwermeates rich soil but don't go back to the atmosphere. That's a part of why it's called the carbon cycle.
