Exposing Staggering Ice Sheet Melt Deceptions
By Paul Homewood
Repost from No Tricks Zone:
In recent months, two new papers published in The Cryosphere have provided a condensed summary of the ice-melt and sea-level-rise consequences of global warming for the Arctic region.
1. Between 1900 and 2010, the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has melted so extensively and so rapidly that the GIS ice-melt contribution to global sea level rise has amounted to 1.5 centimeters for the entire 110-year period. One-and-a-half centimeters. That’s 0.59 of an inch!
2. It gets worse. Between 1993 and 2010, the contribution to global sea level rise has been a disturbing 0.39 of a centimeter. Almost 4/10ths of a centimeter. That’s 0.15 of an inch!
Leeson et al, 2017
“Melt water from the Greenland ice sheet contributed 1.7–6.12 mm [median 3.9 mm, or 0.39 of a centimeter] to global sea level between 1993 and 2010“
Fettweis et al ., 2017
“SMB [surface mass balance, Greenland Ice Sheet] during the 1920–1930 warm period over Greenland was comparable to the SMB of the 2000s, due to both higher melt and lower precipitation than normal.”
“Finally, with respect to the 1961–1990 period, the integrated contribution of the GrIS SMB [Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance] anomalies over 1900–2010 is a sea level rise of about 15 ± 5 mm [1.5 centimeters], with a null contribution from the 1940s to the 2000s“
Breakdown: 1900-2010 GIS Sea Level Rise Contribution
1920s-1930s: GIS contribution to sea level rise: 1.1 cm
1993-2010: GIS contribution to sea level rise: 0.39 cm
1940s-2000s: “a null contribution” [to sea level rise]
Washington Post Peddles Alarmism With Deceptive ‘Trillion Tons’ Of Lost Ice Pronouncements
It’s scary to learn that the Greenland Ice Sheet has lost a “staggering” 9 trillion tons of ice since 1900.
It’s not scary to learn that 9 trillion tons of ice losses actually amounts to less than 1 inch (0.6 of an inch, or 1.5 centimeters) of sea level rise contribution from Greenland meltwater since 1900.
So what does a world-renown news organization like the Washington Post do with this contextually-weighted scientific information? Of course, like most other media organizations in the modern era, the Post attempts to frighten the public with disturbing trillions of tons of lost ice exclamations without emphasizing the modest and nearly imperceptible sea level impact such “staggering” ice losses produce.
In December, 2015, the Post‘s Chris Mooney summarized “Greenland’s massive, centennial contribution to sea level rise”.
Washington Post (December, 2015)
It is apparent from reading the article that Mooney is either (a) unaware that less than 1 inch of long-term sea level impact is not “massive”, and therefore using that descriptor in conjunction with trillions-of-tons of ice loss can be misleading, or (b) he is aware that less than 1 inch of sea level impact in 110 years is not especially alarming, so he buries this inconvenient detail in the body of the article and instead he focuses on employing terms like “staggering” and “massive” and “trillions” and “disturbing” and “alarming” in an effort to conceal.
It would appear that (b) is more likely.
Read the full post here.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This small contribution to rise means that most of the measured rise is due to thermal expansion effects.
All other things equal, the sea enclosed by rocks is not different in concept to the mercury in a thermometer. The thermometer does not have the capacity to wait a while with no change as the temperature increases. It is inexorably driven to expand. So let it be with sea rise. There should be a figure showing how many mm global sea level rises for every 1 deg C rise in “global temperature” however defined. If experts cannot put a figure on that rise, then they have a problem forecasting future threat of damage.
They also have a problem to explain why the sea level did not fall in the mid 20th century, when expert estimates of global temperature fell for 20 years or more.
It is annoying to hear a scientific con. Geoff.
Criteria Paribus (All things being equal) strikes again. This a major problem which besets most, if not all computer modelling programmes, where unknown variables are either assumed to be constant, or are assigned an estimated guess.
In measuring the level of a liquid in a container due account needs to be taken of the behaviour of the container itself. Usually this is assumed to be rigid and hence of constant volume and thus put into the Ceteris Paribus category.
In climatic terms tectonic and volcanic activity ensures that the ocean container is flexible and changes shape and volume. This being continuous yet random. Modelling programmes cannot cope with chaos of this nature.
Any purported scientific paper which claims to be able to measure to within one mm. The sea level and assign a specific cause should be treated with contempt.
In simple terms you will see what I mean if you try to measure the level of water in a plastic bag with a mind of its own.
The real issue is that the dishonest group of scientists pushing their political agenda are getting all the press coverage. The fact that the statements are dishonest or purely for effect is not news …. even though it should be if the press realised the implications of the dishonesty.
Without Trump what further havoc would they have caused. Never in my wildest dreams thought that I would ever praise Trump for anything, but he is the only real hope of sanity prevailing in this corrupted field of pseudo-science!
Jack Broughton
“Never in my wildest dreams thought that I would ever praise Trump for anything, but he is the only real hope of sanity prevailing in this corrupted field of pseudo-science!”
My thoughts precisely.
On what basis are the observed changes attributed to fossil fuel emissions and the proposed remedy proposed as reducing emissions?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3011279
Thanks chaamjamal.
This link is well worth looking at even for the likes of me who has little knowledge on statistics. The abstract is quite explicit.
The link should be sent to as many proponents of AGW as possible and particularly to the BBC so the next time Al Gore et Al grace the airwaves they can be severely put in their place, the moment they mention sea levels. Fat chance methinks; but worth a try.
Now on my must do list.
Have done. The BBC has been informed with the link etc.
“That may not sound like much, but it’s enough water to submerge the entire U.S. interstate highway system 98 feet deep — and to do so 63 times over.”
What sort of an absolutely vacant statement is that from the esteemed Denmarkian & Greenlandian Geological Surveyor, Jason Box? And just how would he submerge the entire US Interstate System? When I travel south through West Virginia on I-79 and then cut to Beckley to pick up I-77 into Virginia I am going over some serious mountains. We are talking highways through 2500-3500′ in elevations. It is a long haul on I-77 up a mountain where a tunnel deposits me into the state of Virginia. There is a second tunnel near the top of another mountain which brings the interstate to the end of the high Appalachian chain and a fairly flat stretch across western Virginia towards Tennessee.
Where do they find these jokers? It is obvious that, thanks to modern science and medicine, “survival of the fittest” is no longer an issue. In the distant past, they would have been edited OUT of the gene pool.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.