Global warming: Don’t sell the beach house yet, Barbie
It’s been known for some time among scientists that the many dire predictions about rising sea levels to come because of global warming were overstated, because the evidence shows clearly that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing, obviously taking up much of the moisture being lost elsewhere on the planet.
Add to that the fact that the Arctic ice sheet is essentially a big ice cube whose even total melting would be a net zero gain as far as sea level (due to water displacement by the current ice), and the threat to the world’s coastlines is clearly drastically less than the “Waterworld” scenarios of the most fervent Algorites would paint it.
Now comes research from scientists in the U.S., UK, Germany and Netherlands that found evidence that ice caps existed in Earth’s past even when the planet was much, much hotter than it is now or is likely to be in the future, reports the Telegraph. (The study is reported on page 189 of this week’s Science. The link is here, but you’ll have to be a member or pay for the article to read it online.)
According to the researchers, at the height of the Cretaceous “hothouse,” there were still massive ice sheets up to 60 percent the size of the modern Arctic ice cap.
The researchers’ evidence supports previous studies that concluded the sea level actually DROPPED 25 to 40 meters during this period, about 90 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic and the tropical oceans were reportedly as warm as human blood.
According to the Telegraph, Dr. André Bornemann, who led the research at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California, said, “This study demonstrates that even these super-warm climates were not warm enough to always prevent ice growth. However, paradoxically past greenhouse climates may actually have aided ice growth by increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere and creating more winter snowfall at high elevations and high latitudes.”
Wonder if these researchers will ever get a Nobel prize?
Subscribe to the RSS feed
If average global temperatures rose, the Arctic would get colder. The Antarctic, on the other hand, would get warmer. It’s all about ocean currents. If the Gulf Stream goes, so does the temperate climate of North America and Europe (since the Gulf Stream carries warmer water and air from the south to the north).
Cody, you’re right, it’s all much more complicated than the global warming scenario of Mr. Gore. Ocean currents, precipitation, undersea volcanic activity, solar output variations, plus the predictable wobbling in Earth’s orbit all have influence on the climate. And there are probably other mechanisms we don’t understand or maybe even suspect.
Comment by Cody — January 11, 2008 @ 1:18 am
Well, Al Gore geared his movie towards people who knew next to nothing about global warming, to get them aware if not fully knowledgeable about it. When it comes to much of the American public, you have to simplify a bit. But as far as I know, Gore never said that was all there was to global warming. Then again, I’ve never watched An Inconvenient Truth.
Comment by Cody — January 13, 2008 @ 2:16 am