More evidence that rising sea levels are a conspiracy theory (3 Viewers)

1 11bwmech the meme that MiTasol posted is hilarious but the Australian government itself has responded to it because it is essentially big oil-funded disinformation. In 140 years, the sea has risen 8.1 cm (in Sydney Harbor, sorry for not being clear), which is trivial and easily within the range of tidal ebb and flow. And that's the big problem with climate change. It is occurring at too slow a pace (for now) for the consequences to impact Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. And there are far more dire and immediate threats to civilization, such as nuclear war, unrestricted AI development, genetically engineered viruses, comet impacts, volcanic eruptions, and many other manmade horrors that are lurking out there.

I'd advise that you watch a structured debate with fact checking between climate change deniers and any kind of person with a scientific background. The Deniers have been moving the goal posts for around 50 years now. Initially big oil found out that their emissions (IN THEIR OWN STUDY) were causing the planet to warm. Because diminished oil use threatened their business model, they began paying for politicians and media coverage to frame climate change as a hoax. But now that it's clear climate change is real, the Deniers have moved the goal posts from hoax to a natural phenomenon.

As a very wise man once said:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you.' Fool me—you can't get fooled again."

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If you want a really great resource (although contested by people who hate Wikipedia's use of sources, transparency, and public comment):

Marcel said:

The melting of the ice is undeniable. Where do you think that water went?

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I absolutely agree that a lot of ice is melting - especially in volcanically active regions.

I have been unsuccessfully searching for a roughly ten year old report by the first climate scientist to claim massive sea level rises. After he made his claim he was hailed as a hero and several years later given a large grant to do the definitive study on sea level changes. His final report, which was totally rejected by the whole climate science movement, was that the increased evaporation caused by the elevated surface temperatures would almost, but not totally, cancel the increased water from the ice melt, would result in greater rainfall and more unstable weather. He was right on both those last two matters. His report included a photo of a matchbox laying on its side as that was the true sea level change he predicted. I cannot remember the time period. I think it was 50 years but it might have been 20, 25 or 100 years. I should have saved a copy.

Hey AerialTorpedoDude, re

AerialTorpedoDude69 said:

. . . In 140 years, the sea has risen 8.1 cm, which is trivial and easily within the range of tidal ebb and flow. . . .

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It is 8.1 inches, not cm.

For anyone interested, read the following:

"Climate Change: Global Sea Level"

and/or

"Is Sea Level Rising? - NASA Science"

"How Do We Measure Sea Level? - NASA Science"

While it can be argued how much of the sea level rise is due to human action, global warming is happening and cannot be denied based on science. And it is accelerating, which is to be expected based on simple physics, regardless of whether or not it is caused by human actions, or natural phenomenon.

NOTE that the above resources are those of US government based agencies and are readily accessible (here in the US at least).

MiTasol said:

I absolutely agree that a lot of ice is melting - especially in volcanically active regions.

I have been unsuccessfully searching for a roughly ten year old report by the first climate scientist to claim massive sea level rises. After he made his claim he was hailed as a hero and several years later given a large grant to do the definitive study on sea level changes. His final report, which was totally rejected by the whole climate science movement, was that the increased evaporation caused by the elevated surface temperatures would almost, but not totally, cancel the increased water from the ice melt, would result in greater rainfall and more unstable weather. He was right on both those last two matters. His report included a photo of a matchbox laying on its side as that was the true sea level change he predicted. I cannot remember the time period. I think it was 50 years but it might have been 20, 25 or 100 years. I should have saved a copy.

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Sorry to spam everyone with comments, but MiTasol and I commented at the same time and I didn't get a respond to his last post.

The "10-year-old report by the first climate scientist to claim massive sea level rises" is an example of big oil-funded disinformation. This scientist has never existed. It is a myth.

The story was made up to discredit the theory of climate change.

The first scientist to predict a rise in global sea levels was John Mercer. He said that if the Western Antarctic ice shelf collapsed into the ocean, sea levels could rise by 16 feet. As it has melted, his prediction has proven accurate. Read this source:


T ThomasP the source (which is the Australian government) is saying that Sydney Harbor has had an 8.1 cm change in sea levels but globally sea levels have risen around 20cm. I apologize for the poor wording of that comment.

Even if a slab of seafloor 60 miles long and 50 miles wide subsided twenty feet, that would only displace about 1.7 trillion cubic feet of water. There's about 7.5 gallons of water in each cubic foot, so we're looking at about 12.5 trillion gallons of water.

The Earth has about 140 million square miles of ocean surface, about four quadrillion (4,000,000,000,000,000) square feet. Doing the division, the water displacement described above, either raised or lowered (because strike-slip earthquakes generate forces in all three dimensions), should by the calculations I've just done raise or lower the ocean by a total of one ten-millionth of an inch. And that assumes that the subduction doesn't counter the displacement of the lifted plate.

You'd need an awful lot of earthquakes to drop the sea level perceptibly.

I wonder if there was some confusion as to the time period? The global average over the last 32 years has been 101mm. Some areas are more and some are less.


Actually the first scientists to discover the scientific basis of, predict the possibility of, and then the probability of some aspects of human caused climate change, did so in the mid- to late-1800s. I ran across some of this in physics classes back in the 1970s-80s. See the link below:

"How 19th-Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming - JSTOR Daily"

I remember reading a few science-fiction novels that included the phenomenon in their stories. I do not remember the name of oldest story published (that I read), but I think it was written before WWII.

NOTE that increased water vapor in the atmosphere acts as a green house gas pretty much just like CO2.

Some basic math re melting of the ice caps and the potential subsequent rise in sea level.

The Antarctic ice sheet contains about 85%-90% of the ice on the planet Earth.

The land area of Antarctica is ~5.48 million square miles.

The average ice thickness (from 0 ft in some coastal areas to the maximum inland) of the ice sheet is 1.4 miles (that's right - nearly 7,400 ft thick).

The amount of ocean area on the surface of the earth (as in Thumpalumpacus's post above) is ~140,000,000 square miles.

If we ignore the north pole Arctic ice sheet (it is mostly floating) and the other mountainous glaciers/ice sheets on land (Greenland, the Alps, the Himalayas, etc) then we can multiply the land area of Antarctica by the average ice thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet and figure out how much additional water the oceans will have to accommodate (at the most, assuming nothing else changes):

5,480,000 x 1.4 = 7,672,000 cubic miles of ice melt.

If we then divide the increase in volume of liquid by the total area of the oceans:

7,672,000 ÷ 140,000,000 = 0.0548 cubic miles (that's 8,066,447,770 cubic feet) of water per square mile of ocean surface.

If we then divide the cubic foot volume of water increase by the area of a square mile in feet:

8,066,447,770 ÷ 27,878,400 = 290 feet of sea level rise.

How many areas along the coasts, and areas inland if accessible by waterways (current or past), will be covered by such an increase in sea level?

The calculated rise in sea level would be offset to a degree by whatever land areas ended up being covered by water, since the effective land area would decrease by some amount and the effective ocean area would increase by a similar amount. I do not have the data to calculate the amounts involved.

Even if we assume that 50% of the ice melt becomes a continuous weather event - ie evaporation and condensation to rain - that would still be a sea level increase of 145 feet. Ask the same question as above as to the effect on low lying coastal and inland areas.

But now you have an enormous increase in water vapor in the atmosphere at any point in time, acting as a greenhouse gas, and increasing the ambient temperatures even more. Plus, you also now have enormous rainfalls all over the Earth. If you spread the 145 feet of ice melt trapped in the continuous weather event evenly over the surface of the earth, that would result in rainfalls of:

If the total surface area of the Earth = ~1,966,628,896 square miles, and

The total ice melt tied up in the continuous weather event is 1/2 of the total ice melt of 7,672,000 cubic miles = 3,836,000 cubic miles, then

3,836,000 ÷ 1,966,628,896 = 0.00195 cubic miles of rain per square mile of the Earth's surface per day on average, or a little over 10 ft of rain per square foot of the Earths's surface per day, or a little over 5" per hour.

Obviously, the rain would not be constant all over the Earth all the time, but that just means that if the rain was only falling on 1/2 the Earth's surface at any point in time it would be double the amount per hour or day on the other half of the planet and/or at other points in time.

And this is if every thing else remains the same (it would not).

Incidentally, the highest total yearly rainfall in today's world is about 400 inches, so averaged out over 365 days that is only about 1.1 inch per day, while the record rainfall (anywhere) is about 17 inches in one hour.

Talk about erosion by ocean waves and rain. Yikes!

Bleh! Hopefully I did the math right.

AerialTorpedoDude69 said:

The first scientist to predict a rise in global sea levels was John Mercer. He said that if the Western Antarctic ice shelf collapsed into the ocean, sea levels could rise by 16 feet. As it has melted, his prediction has proven accurate.

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Please provide evidence that the sea level has risen 16 feet. The house I grew up in was maybe 5 feet above sea level and is still about the same height above sea level because the beach and road are in pretty much the same places in relation to the harbour.

If the sea level had risen 16 feet the whole town would be under water.

MiTasol said:

Please provide evidence that the sea level has risen 16 feet. The house I grew up in was maybe 5 feet above sea level and is still about the same height above sea level because the beach and road are in pretty much the same places in relation to the harbour.

If the sea level had risen 16 feet the whole town would be under water.

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Mercer said that IF the entirety of the Western ice sheet collapsed into the ocean, it would raise sea levels globally (on average) by 16 feet. But because the entirety of the ice has not fallen into the ocean yet, only parts of it have, his prediction has proven accurate.

I envy that you grew up along the Australian coast. Can't imagine a more beautiful place to have lived. I love Australia.

ThomasP said:

NOTE that increased water vapor in the atmosphere acts as a green house gas pretty much just like CO2.

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Note also that the ice caps are fairly reflective and absorb less radiant heat from sunlight than does the much darker ocean water. As you reduce Earth's albedo, you increase its heat, which will melt yet more ice, revealing more blue-water ocean, and so on.

That is only one process that can become a vicious cycle; there are others, such as methane-release from thawing tundra. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. These points are both basic physical geography even as I studied it in 1988.

If you doubt the power of the greenhouse effect, just look at Venus, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Should we be contributing anything to such a risk? No. We should be using climate mitigation wherever we can and worry about the economics later, because those rich folks will be just as dead as the poor folks who have no say in the matter if we don't fix our footprint.