Friday 15 May 2009

OK. Panic over.

From the BBC:

The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated.

Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft). Previous estimates had forecast a rise in the region of five to six metres... When the idea first emerged in the late 1970s, it was estimated that global sea level would rise by five metres if the WAIS collapsed. Current projections suggest that a complete collapse of WAIS would result in an increase of up to six metres.

But Professor Bamber said that no-one had revisited the calculation, despite new data sets becoming available, and scientists developing a better understanding of the dynamics in the vast ice sheets. The original estimates were based on "very basic ice thickness data", he explained. "Ice thickness data gives you information about the depth of the bedrock underneath the ice sheet. Over the past 30 years, we have acquired much more ice thickness data over the whole of Antarctica, particularly over West Antarctica. We also have much better surface topography..."

Responding to Professor Bamber's paper in Science, British Antarctic Survey science leader Dr David Vaughan described the findings as "quite sound".

"But for me, the most crucial question is not solely about the total amount of ice in West Antarctica, because that might take several centuries to be lost to the ocean," he told BBC News. "The crucial question is how much ice could be lost in 100-200 years; that's the sea level rise we have to understand and plan for. Even with this new assessment the loss of a fraction of WAIS over those timescales would have serious consequences and costs that we've only really just begun to understand."


So they're pencilling in a 3.3 metre rise over several centuries? Due, WTF? That's hardly something to terrify your children with, is it? They'll have to do a bit of serious rewriting to make it a bit scarier, methinks.

2 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLlUgilKqms

neil craig said...

Over the last few days we have had breaking news reports from the BBC reporter on the Arctic Ice on the evening news. According to him scientists say that the sea ice melting is "worse than preciously thought" in that somebody has said it might go in 20 years whereas according to St Al last year it was going to take a whole 5 years before it is gone. Despite being their to report on the scientists investigating they had pretty much walk on parts not being invited to say whether the BBC's alarmism was true. Of course the melting of sea ice, because it is floating, wouldn't raise sea levels by 1 mm.

And in fact, over the last year, Arctic ice has increased substantially.

But then that is only in reality.

In BBC world absolutely any lie whatsoever is acceptable if it helps the state to bully us.

Here is them saying, last year, that it would take 5-10 years so their assertion that it is a "more serious" worry that it will be 20 years is merely the sort of lie to be expected from theses obscene, corrupt, genocidal fascist liars.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7461707.stm