Mike Pope

You see what's happened, is that we've just demonstrated that you don't care that what you're saying is untrue. You cannot defend any climate policy and you know it.

Any discussion of science presupposes that the principles of logic and falsifiability must apply to any hypothesis or theory.

Yet you are trying to conduct the whole discussion on the basis that you will just tell everyone what the problem and solution are, based on authority that you can't defend from critical examination, and that any question will be met by telling people they're too stupid to understand. This is the religious not the scientific intellectual methodology, and this is the method of all global warming alarmists everywhere.

When you are in your alarmist echo-chambers, everyone is doing the same thing, all nodding their heads with each other, and that's what you're calling "science".

Then when you come out into the real word, and are confronted with the actual falsfiability of your claims, you want to pretend the whole nightmare is not happening.

But it is.

It is actually disgraceful that proponents of the idea of catastrophic man-made global warming have to be dealt with by first getting their explicit acknowledgement that what they say could possibly be proven false by rational means, and even more shameful that you resist and evade, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

But it didn't work.

Now. What part of me asking you the following questions is "distractions" or "facile posturing":
Do you, or do you not understand that science:
1. does not supply value judgments?
2. cannot consist of appeal to absent authority?
3. cannot rest on assuming what is in issue?

Hi Agnostic,

As an agnostic on sea-level rise, I have to point out that

(a) the entire North Pole ice-mass is sea-ice: whether it melts or doubles in volume, it will make no real difference to sea-level anywhere;

(b) the sea-ice around the South Pole is not appreciably shrinking, it grows and shrinks: but are you suggesting that the South Polar land-based ice-mass is, what, melting, and pouring into the ocean ? If more of it is reaching the sea as ice and then breaking off as icebergs, couldn't that be more like a consequence of more deposition over the past few hundred or thousand years ? And after all, the part of it at the land-sea interface starts floating once it hits the sea, and its breaking-away and melting also won't make any difference to sea-level, except as a result of higher depositions eons ago ?

More on tectonic lifting and subsiding: even the Australian Plate is subducting under the Pacific Plate to the north, under Papua-New Guinea and Indonesia, and slowly rising along the southern coast, hence the cliffs along the Bight are slightly rising, and I would guess, the submergence of islands in the Torres Strait is and always has caused problems.

I suppose something similar is happening with the Indian Plate, subducting along the Himalayas, so that the land on its southern tip is slowly rising out of the sea ? I don't know, just guessing :) If so, then Bangla Desh is in double-trouble.

Sorry, these are the questions of an idiot. I'm also mystified about how sea-level can be measured. Satellite measurements, you may say. That's sound quite scientific really. But measuring what ? Oceans and seas have waves, tides, swells, storm surges, etc. None of it sits still long enough to be measured. So how do they do it ?

Forgive my ignorance :)

Joe

Hi Loudmouth. You are smart enough to ask relevant questions, so I don’t think you are ignorant at all – far from it.

LAND ICE.
In the Arctic land based ice includes the massive ice sheet which covers most of Greenland, the Canadian Archipelago and mountain ranges in the Arctic. All of it is melting and doing so at an increasing rate. Water from these sources is pouring into the ocean BUT, at present, this does not cause a dangerous rise in sea level. The trouble is that the rate of melt is increasing and if it keeps on increasing for the rest of this century (scientists think it will) sea level will definitely rise, possibly by as much as 2 metres by 2100.

Antarctic land ice is divided into two – east and west Antarctica. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) covers over 90% of the continental land mass of Antarctica to a height of over 3 kms. It has begun melting on its lower and coastal slopes.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) covers all the Antarctic islands west of the Antarctic continent and has built up a huge area of ice most of which rests on land now beneath the sea-surface.

Much of the WAIS resting on the seabed is being melted by relatively warm water reaching the Antarctic from the tropics. The rate of melting is accelerating so quickly that ice and water pouring into the Southern Ocean, particularly into the Amudsen Sea could result in a 2-3 metre sea level rise by 2100.

Continued …

Until recently the EAIS was thought to be in balance, that is gaining as much ice as it was loosing – but recent satellite data shows that it too is now loosing ice more rapidly than it is gaining it. I don’t know how this will affect sea level but it has the potential to increase it.

PLATE MOVEMENT
Quite right: Tectonic Plate movement can have an effect on sea level but it is a very, very slow process compared to the melting of land based ice.

ISOSTATIC REBOUND
When huge land masses like Greenland or Antarctica become covered in ice the weight of the ice pushes the land down into the earths crust but when the ice melts, the weight on the land is reduced and the land rebounds or rises and this contributes to change is sea level. However the process is very slow, so the effect on sea level is very small.

SATELLITE MEASUREMENT
Instruments on satellites measure changes in earths gravity. Those changes show a change in the mass of ice covering the Poles - a change which occurs because ice is added or subtracted to existing ice cover. If ice is added, instruments record an increase in gravity and if ice is lost, it shows a decrease. Measurements made by instruments on satellites and on the ground agree with each other on the rate at which land based ice is being lost from the Poles.

They show that land-based ice is being lost and that it is melting at a rate which is more than doubling every decade.

Hope this assists. Lot of stuff on Google.

This is a conversation for 200 years for now. At about 1m per century, the people of today will be a distant memory before this becomes a problem.

Thanks, Agnostic of Mittagong.

2-3 metres ? Ten foot ? An inch a year or so ? Forgive me, but I'm still agnostic on that one.

Waters pouring off Greenland and Canada's north ? Sounds pretty drastic. Do you mean, more than usual ? More pouring off than is deposited ?

So basically, the motors of sea-level rise around the world are the Antarctic Ice-Sheet and Greenland and Canada (and presumably northern Siberia) ?

Joe