April 1, 2016

Antarctic ice sheet melt could cause five foot rise in Boston's sea level

New York Times -  For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization.

    The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds - if not thousands - of years to occur.

    Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner.

Reuters  - This could spell disaster for many low-lying cities, lead author Robert DeConto at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said in a statement of the findings published in the journal Nature.

For example, Boston could see more than 1.5 meters [5 feet] of sea-level rise in the next 100 years. 

Via Richjard Brenneman

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and its much more likely that the Yellowstone Super Volcano will blow before that, which will cover much of the midwest in volcanic ash and probably end the US as we know it (not to mention drastically deplete food production for a few years.

So, yes, by all means - let's go Full Luddite over unproven science! Oh and yes, there's always the prospect of another Ice Age cycle as our Sun goes quiet as it sometimes done.

These two events and cycles are proven by science. Man-made climate change? Not so much, although we do have a pretty huge correlation now established between funding for climate science studies already assuming climate change and all of the hysterical calls for global government and regulation of human activity to solve the non-existent threat!

Anonymous said...

The correlation is between funding for deniers and the fossil fuel industry. But then I realized the previous post was on April Fool's Day.