Sea Level Rise Maps for Oz

[pgc hunter]

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/envi...222-1952d.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_tide

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Originally Posted by Waxing_Gibbous

One of my wife's colleagues, a teacher for heaven's sake, believed that 90% of the Carbon in the atmosphere came from humans!!!
Not even close:
80% comes from the oceans.
10-15% from Photosynthesis (she also didn't know that plants give off CO2)
5% comes from 'other sources', People, Vulcanism, seepage from the earth etc.

If anything, we should at least get the numbers right (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosph ere):

Many sources of CO2 emissions are natural. For example, the natural decay of organic material in forests and grasslands, such as dead trees, results in the release of about 220 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. In 1997, Indonesian peat fires were estimated to have released between 13% and 40% of the average carbon emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels around the world in a single year. Although the initial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the young Earth was produced by volcanic activity, modern volcanic activity releases only 130 to 230 megatonnes of carbon dioxide each year, which is less than 1% of the amount released by human activities.
These natural sources are nearly balanced by natural sinks, physical and biological processes which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For example, some carbon dioxide dissolves in sea water, and some is directly removed from the atmosphere by land plants for photosynthesis.
...
Burning fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum is the leading cause of increased anthropogenic CO2; deforestation is the second major cause. In 2008, 8.67 gigatonnes of carbon (31.8 gigatonnes of CO2) were released from fossil fuels worldwide, compared to 6.14 gigatonnes in 1990. In addition, land use change contributed 1.20 gigatonnes in 2008, compared to 1.64 gigatonnes in 1990.
This addition, about 3% of annual natural emissions as of 1997, is sufficient to exceed the balancing effect of sinks. As a result, carbon dioxide has gradually accumulated in the atmosphere, and as of 2008, its concentration is 38% above pre-industrial levels.

So, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 38% due to human activities, which is the key point. Humans are burning off all the carbon that took millions of years to get deposited as fossil fuels - all released back into the atmosphere in just a couple hundred years. That has never happened before. And while one can argue at length over the possible consequences of that it does seem rather obvious that such a massive increase in such a short time since industrialisation is going to have a significant effect. And the most logical effect is a global warming.

Sure, there have been climate change before and, yes, it is constantly ongoing due to change in solar output, change in Earths orbit, the precession etc etc, but all happen over geologic time scales where ecosystems have time to adjust and evolve to suit the changing conditions. A rapid change, such as the one that might logically follow the current fast burning of all fossil fuels, will of course have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and for our biosphere as a whole. Yes, the Earth will keep spinning and we'll still be here, but it will make the recent financial crisis seem like a tiny blip.

Originally Posted by Waxing_Gibbous

Nothing. Not one single doomsday scenario that has been predicted since this claptrap started making the rounds in the '70s has come to pass. The icecaps have NOT melted. Forests continue to grow. Animal species continue to breed and thrive. The Ozone layer remains intact.

The ozone layer remains intact only because the use of ozone depleting gases were banned on a global scale very quickly when it became apparent how serious the problem was. It is only now starting to slowly recover.

[Barrykgerdes]

It is rather a lost cause to convince the climate change believers or their oponents one way or the other. Time will tell what the climate will be like. I am not worried.

When we have science based on statistics rather than the truth we will always have this argument principally because incomplete information can be used to prove what you like. Take for instance the increase in Co2. Those who say the increase in Co2 is causing global warming because of statistics and those who say that global warming causes an increase in Co2. In truth Co2 at the level it exists in the atmosphere has no effective bearing on temperature.

Remember without our greenhouse we would have night and day temperatures like the moon. Water vapour and air mass movement is our savior of the greenhouse.

As for melting polar caps causing a rise in sea level. This could happen but the mean temperature on earth will need to rise by at least 10 degrees. Mankind won't survive that for long. Changes in coastal sea level will most likely continue to occur as they have done for thousands of years due to the fact that our land masses are continually moving and tilting as they run into each other.

I must admit I studied science in the days pre-political correctness and we tested everything by experimentation

Barry

[miki63au]

"....ecosystems have time to adjust..."

Rolf, have you checked that with the mammoth?

[Paul Haese]

I just want to say two things.

1. South Australia once again does not even seem to figure, where are our maps?

2. If all this climate change talk by everyone was as urgent as it is made out, we would be driving eco cars now (car companies could sort this quickly if we really needed), power would be solar on everyones houses and coal fired power plants would be illegal. When they start making laws for immediate changes then I will start believing the hype. Any real scientists here that actually know what is really going on or are we all just looking at stuff that we are told.

Totally unconvinced either way.

[miki63au]

Paul, the scientist you ask for is bought-up by the P.C.
They have a mortgage and family to feed. CSIRO, BOM are wetted before they able to publish anything.
Go blog, watts-up with that

Sea Level Rise? Yeah try to heat up the ocean with a hairdryer.
Better off with the Sun UV, much more efficient and penetrating...

[Trixie (Carey)]

Any real scientists here that actually know what is really going on or are we all just looking at stuff that we are told.

Well I guess I am a "real" scientist. I work primarily in the Oil and Gas industry and more recently in the Coal seam gas industry. I guess I am one of the bad guys as I am employed by the main industries who dont want climate change to be human driven. I started off very sceptical of the whole thing - after all scientists are renowned for not wanting to believe other scientists theories For obvious reasons, Petroleum geoscientists have been discussing this issue for some time and opinions are still split. Of my immediate collegues I would say about 30% are still sceptics, 10% still fence sitting and the rest think we have a problem.

How serious is the problem? I dont know. I think now even the sceptics agree we are pumping out a heck of a lot of CO2. The debate still rages as to whether this will effect the earths climate. I am inclined to believe it will, both from what I have read and my own work in geology, but to what extent? I dont know - who does? We can try to model it but they are just models.



Modelling and understanding paleoenvironments is my daily job and one of the things you can see straight away is that climate and sea level change are complex things. It is not as simple as saying the temperature will have by x degrees for the ice caps to melt. There are a lot of other factors involved. For example, ocean currents have a huge effect on the planets ecosystem. You dont need a huge temperature rise to disrupt the ocean currents and that has serious knock on effects. The southern circumpolar current is keeping Antarctica nice and cold right now but what sort of temperature rise will we need to disrupt this current? I dont know, I am sure there are people out there who do.

One other thing I have seen is the work the CSIRO (I think it is them) have been doing on the effects of elevated CO2 levels on plant uptake and the results suggest there is a point where higher CO2 levels have an adverse effect on the plants health/growth/productivity and this could be a serious issue for food security as well as biodiversity. Once again it is the knock on effects of reducing plants ability take up CO2.

Sure, there have been climate change before and, yes, it is constantly ongoing due to change in solar output, change in Earths orbit, the precession etc etc, but all happen over geologic time scales where ecosystems have time to adjust and evolve to suit the changing conditions. A rapid change, such as the one that might logically follow the current fast burning of all fossil fuels, will of course have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and for our biosphere as a whole. Yes, the Earth will keep spinning and we'll still be here, but it will make the recent financial crisis seem like a tiny blip.

Sky viking has said it better than me so I will just quote.

This whole issue is so much more than plain temperature change. Once again I have to emphasise RATE OF CHANGE. A lot of the earths extinction events can be tied to what is termed "catastrophic" events. On the geological timescale human CO2 output is such an event. I know many sceptics will roll their eyes at the term as it sounds very tree huggy and emotional but in the geology world it really it is a term for a sudden, large change in conditions.

It is the catastrophic events which have the biggest impact on life. SkyViking has already pointed out the ecosystem does not have the time to adjust to such an event. Geological history has shown the earth does eventually adjust but takes a long time in the order of 1000s to millions of years and there are casualities.

I dont think we are engineering our own extinction (not yet anyway) but our way of life will change and our ecosystems will change. Vulnerable people and a lot of our wildlife will be effected. We, in the developed world, the ones causing the problem, may not even feel any effect but to say business as usual is a pretty selfish way to live. I feel we owe it to our children and our grand children and the planet which is our home to try to do something about this. I dont want to be telling my grandchildren they will never see the wonders of the Great barrier reef because I was too selfish and lazy to bother about changing my lifestyle to save it.

So what am I doing? Lets face it, I am a consumer like the rest of us, I have a comfy lifestyle and too big a carbon/pollution footprint, I work for big polluters. I am one of the bad guys. The answer is I am not doing enough. I have made some lifestyle changes (not enough by a long shot) but most of the time I just whinge about the authorities and hope I am wrong.

To the sceptics all I can say is please please be informed when you decide to take your stance. I want to be wrong, I really really want to be proven wrong.

If you choose not to believe in climate change that is fine but do your research read all of the work with an open mind. Not just the recent stuff. Scientists have been talking about this issue for more than 30 years. Dont just read the alarmist environmentalists articles or those of the vocal sceptics. A lot of work is being done by scientists around the world, most of which does not make it to the general public but it is out there. Read them, then make your decsion, this is too important an issue to just follow the masses.

I really think both sides of the debate need to stop slagging each other off and start to have some serious discussion instead of bickering about statistics and hockey sticks from one set of temperature data. The issue is so much more than that.

[ving (David)]

meh! my place is safe :p

[marki]

Ahh judging by the maps the house will be surrounded by water on 3 sides so it will be absolute beach front property. Just bought the SUV and now I have to source a big block V8 to help things along.


Mark

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by marki

Ahh judging by the maps the house will be surrounded by water on 3 sides so it will be absolute beach front property. Just bought the SUV and now I have to source a big block V8 to help things along.


Mark

Start saving for that boat as well. I reckon a 50 footer could do nicely parked out the front.

[Barrykgerdes]

The predicted maximum sea rise was once 60 metres so I remembered this when I bought my block of land 65 metres Above sea level so I should also have the beach just down the road!

Barry

[michaellxv (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

I just want to say two things.

1. South Australia once again does not even seem to figure, where are our maps?

2. If all this climate change talk by everyone was as urgent as it is made out, we would be driving eco cars now (car companies could sort this quickly if we really needed), power would be solar on everyones houses and coal fired power plants would be illegal. When they start making laws for immediate changes then I will start believing the hype. Any real scientists here that actually know what is really going on or are we all just looking at stuff that we are told.

Totally unconvinced either way.

I have to agree that there is so much bull from both sides it is impossible to work out where the truth is.

Logic tells me that human activities of the past 200 odd years must have had some impact, but how much is the critical question.

On the subject of should we be doing something about it all. Well, just from the point of view of creating a nice place to live I would like to see less polution in our cities. Who doesn't like a breath of fresh country air? But, I don't want to see artificial burdens placed on us just to make us feel better about it.

[Terry B]

Originally Posted by tlgerdes

A 1 metre rise and I still dont get a water front property, dam!

Can someone produce a 3 meter rise please, I would like water views at a minimum.

I'd like ocean view as well but I live at 1100m above sea lavel. I don't think any climate change will help me.

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by Nightshift

LOL, another bunch of overpaid scientists with a wacky computer model fed with the variables that suit the scenario.

Maybe someone could explain where this magical 1 meter of water is going to come from? 1 Meter over the entire surface of the oceans is a huge amount of water.

Yawn.... its all so boring now.

Yeah! These stupid scientists never know what they are talking about. I read this weird thoery about the earth going around the sun. Well, as any idiot can check, the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west--clearly it goes around the earth. Oh, and don't get me started on this round earth theory. If it was round how come us guys at the bottom don't fall off. Stupid scientists!

[space oddity]

Those coastal impacts do not look that catastrophic at all. I remember when there were dire predictions of sea level rises of 20+ metres. If ALL (northern and southern) ice caps and ALL glaciers melted all at the same time, the sea level would rise 72metres, but of course, there is a winter season in both regions at some stage of the year, so this dire scenario which I have seen "out there" is just that- "out there."
A fact that the climate doomsayers brand almost heretical is that many plants use MOST of their water in transpiration in the quest to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.At 1000ppm, some plants use 80% less water. Hey, we can have higher yields and grow crops in more arid conditions! Oh, what heresy.
Global warming from a greenhouse effect translates in to higher night time temperatures. Hey, less frosts to damage crops. Once again, the AGW zealots do not want this to be known.
What is the dominant greenhouse gas? WATER VAPOUR that's right, CO2 is a relatively minor contributer.
There have been high CO2 levels in the past(humans can easily tolerate 1000ppm) and the world did not go troppo. In the carbonaceous era, when the world was a warmer,wetter place, forests thrived in areas that are now deserts.The doomsayers conveniently ignore new areas that could become tropical paradises and concentrate on the areas that could become less habitable.
To me, the clincher is that science has become politicized. Scientists are supposed to look at ALL the information and not cherrypick those snippets that fit in to the result that is expected.Many key pieces of known fact are conveniently ignored to allow the modelling to come up with the desired result-scientific fraud if there ever was.Scientists who dispute the AGW line lose their funding and thus their livelihoods. Politics does not mix well with anything since politics and truth are NOT compatible. If it were not for religion / politics interactions, astronomy would be far more advanced than it is today.
A good site for climate change info is climate debate daily. Both sides are represented.

[Trixie (Carey)]

In the carbonaceous era, when the world was a warmer,wetter place, forests thrived in areas that are now deserts.The doomsayers conveniently ignore new areas that could become tropical paradises and concentrate on the areas that could become less habitable.

I think you mean the Carboniferous. The first half of the Carboniferous was warmer and wetter but it is a little more complex than that. The continents were all bunched up around the equator rather than where they are today. There was also a major change in climate causing a fairly large extinction event during the middle Carboniferous. In this case it was a major cooling causing collapse of the tropical rainforest and extinction of many flora and fauna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

At 1000ppm, some plants use 80% less water. Hey, we can have higher yields and grow crops in more arid conditions! Oh, what heresy.
Global warming from a greenhouse effect translates in to higher night time temperatures. Hey, less frosts to damage crops.

This is a very broad generalisation. As you correctly say it is very easy to cherrypick the snippets which into the result that is expected.

I have not looked at the climate debate daily site yet. I did find the RealClimate site interesting though.

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by space oddity

To me, the clincher is that science has become politicized. Scientists are supposed to look at ALL the information and not cherrypick those snippets that fit in to the result that is expected.Many key pieces of known fact are conveniently ignored to allow the modelling to come up with the desired result-scientific fraud if there ever was.

This sounds exactly like what you are doing. International scientific opinion is virtually unnainimous that we are in trouble and simple observation with a bit of logic confirms it.

If, for example, you chuck the climate out of whack such that a food source, (fruit, insects etc) in one area becomes available six weeks early and migrating species that depend on that source of food arrive at their regular time... the ecology falls apart. This has been demonstrated conclusively world wide. There are thousands of examples to support the science and I am certainly seeing rapid climate change in my local area.

However, even if you don't believe in climate change a simple guiding principle should apply, that being, "We only have one planet earth available and we better start looking after it or we will be joining the rest of the fossils".

Are you prepared to risk it to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle?

[pgc hunter]

I live 60m above sea level and 20km inland.

I will now pack my bags and move up into the statosphere, because the greenies tell me that I'll drown like a dog before my life is over.

It's a good idea, because who knows what normal huge cyclonic beast of a storm might destroy my humble little abode. But the global warming "climate change" preachers said so, so I shall abide by this new cardinal law and move my behind into the realm of 747's and the ceilings of the most massive thunderclouds. Otha-wize I'll drown and die doh-eth. Oh yers, and I'll try to hold my gas in, I don't want to contribute to the destruction of teh Earths now do I?

[glenc (Glen)]

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1...global-warming
"New research, however, goes further, showing that global warming has actually contributed to Europe's winter blues.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic - increasing at two to three times the global average - have peeled back the region's floating ice cover by 20 percent over the last three decades.
This has allowed more of the Sun's radiative force to be absorbed by dark-blue sea rather than bounced back into space by reflective ice and snow, accelerating the warming process.
More critically for weather patterns, it has also created a massive source of heat during the winter months.
"Say the ocean is at zero degrees Celsius," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
"That is a lot warmer than the overlying air in the polar area in winter, so you get a major heat flow heating up the atmosphere from below which you don't have when it is covered by ice. That's a massive change," he told AFP in an interview.
The result, according to a modelling study published earlier this month the Journal of Geophysical Research, is a strong high-pressure system over the newly-exposed sea which brings cold polar air, swirling counter-clockwise, into Europe."

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by glenc

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1...global-warming
"New research, however, goes further, showing that global warming has actually contributed to Europe's winter blues.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic - increasing at two to three times the global average - have peeled back the region's floating ice cover by 20 percent over the last three decades.
This has allowed more of the Sun's radiative force to be absorbed by dark-blue sea rather than bounced back into space by reflective ice and snow, accelerating the warming process.
More critically for weather patterns, it has also created a massive source of heat during the winter months.
"Say the ocean is at zero degrees Celsius," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
"That is a lot warmer than the overlying air in the polar area in winter, so you get a major heat flow heating up the atmosphere from below which you don't have when it is covered by ice. That's a massive change," he told AFP in an interview.
The result, according to a modelling study published earlier this month the Journal of Geophysical Research, is a strong high-pressure system over the newly-exposed sea which brings cold polar air, swirling counter-clockwise, into Europe."

Highly probable, but those of us that should know better but still insist on sticking their heads in the sand and saying, "I can't see it, so it does not exist", will nominate a hundred reasons why it "just isn't so...".

I suspect they might blink when the NP is ice free for the first time in a hell of a long time... but that wont happen either.