Lord Justice Canute and the melting ice-caps
jimroland | 14.10.2007 19:32 | Climate Chaos | Education
Al Gore's advisors respond to High Court ruling here: http://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/gore/about/news_and_events/inconvenient_truth_court_rulin.aspx
Most notably:
‘Error’ one2
Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.
The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”
Comment from John Shepherd: We simply do not know how long this melting will take. The judge presents the conventional view, but overstates the case, because there is now rapidly accumulating evidence that the melting is happening much faster than was expected. Respected senior scientists such as Jim Hansenvi believe that there will be substantial melting during the lifetime of children already born: whether or not that is “in the near future” is debatable. The geological record shows that rates of sea-level rise of up to 5 meters per century have happened in the past. The big uncertainty is whether or not we are in the process of doing enough to trigger another such rise.
vi See Hansen’s website at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/, and for a fuller discussion of this issue, my own commentary at http://www.climatechangecorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4898
Most notably:
‘Error’ one2
Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.
The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”
Comment from John Shepherd: We simply do not know how long this melting will take. The judge presents the conventional view, but overstates the case, because there is now rapidly accumulating evidence that the melting is happening much faster than was expected. Respected senior scientists such as Jim Hansenvi believe that there will be substantial melting during the lifetime of children already born: whether or not that is “in the near future” is debatable. The geological record shows that rates of sea-level rise of up to 5 meters per century have happened in the past. The big uncertainty is whether or not we are in the process of doing enough to trigger another such rise.
vi See Hansen’s website at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/, and for a fuller discussion of this issue, my own commentary at http://www.climatechangecorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4898
jimroland
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