How High Will Seas Rise? Get Ready for Seven Feet

[phantom power]

Given the complexities of forecasting how much the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to increases in global sea level, the IPCC chose not to include these giant ice masses in their calculations, thus ignoring what is likely to be the most important source of sea level rise in the 21st century. Arguing that too little was understood about ice sheet collapse to construct a mathematical model upon which even a rough estimate could be based, the IPCC came up with sea level predictions using thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of mountain glaciers outside the poles. Its results were predictably conservative — a maximum of a two-foot rise this century — and were even a foot lower than an earlier IPCC report that factored in some melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2230

[GreenStormCloud]

1. It didn't happen during the Medieval Warm Period.

The Earth was warmer then than now, and the seas didn't rise. Why should they rise so dramatically now.

Global Warming is real, but the hype isn't.

[Richard D]

3. at the rate things are going . . .

. . . the next climactic period will make the medieval warming period look cool. Also it's likely that the medieval warming period largely affected Europe and not much the rest of the world.

[joshcryer]

4. The Medieval Warm Period was not as warm as now, globally.

We are already past global Medieval Warm Period temperatures, which is a point of heated contention within MWP conspiracy theorists. (Conspiracies that Mann et el were manipulating data, etc.)

[NickB79]

5. The Medieval Warm Period only affected the North Atlantic

And thus, western/northern Europe and possibly northeastern North America. The Earth as a whole was NOT warmer than today during that time.

[Double T]

2. Damn, I was hoping the Financial District (wall street) in New York City would be underwater.....

then swept out to sea.

[wtmusic]

9. By that time hurricanes will be pounding the coast up to Maine

You may get your wish

[madokie]

6. So there is enough ice to raise the oceans level seven feet?

for some reason I highly doubt that as there is one hell of a lot of ocean on this planet, lots of surface area. How much has the seas risen so far in this warming era we're in now?

[GliderGuider]

7. Way more than that.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/HannaBerenblit.shtml

Geographic region: Greenland
Percent: 10.82
Volume: 2,600,000 km3
Percent: 7.9
Maximum sea level rise potential: 6.5 m

Geographic region: Antarctica
Percent: 84.64
Volume: 30,109,800 km3
Percent: 91.49
Maximum sea level rise potential: 73.44 m

If both Greenland and Antarctica were to melt completely, the seas would rise 250 feet.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. There's easily enough ice on land to raise the oceans by 7 feet and more

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

Those are the figures if everything melts. Even with the highest temperatures forseen, it would take hundreds, possibly thousands, of years for all of the East Antarctic ice sheet to melt; it's over a mile thick, on average, and much of it is very, very cold at the moment. But if it did all melt, it would produce a huge rise in sea level. The West Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland are, however, much more liable to melt, and faster. The question of how fast is now quite important (if it takes several hundred years, then there's a chance to remove the man-made CO2 from the atmosphere before it has much of an effect; if its faster than that, the effect comes earlier, and we get the sea level rise from thermal expansion and from the ice melt at the same time, which will be very bad news).

[Strelnikov_]

10. And that 80 m represents inundating the land on which 80% of the worlds population

lives.

[pscot]

11. I'm ready, man

I have two boats, and I'm thinking about getting another, if I can get my wife's permission, that it.