Discussion > A temperature timeline for the last 22,000 years
Do you believe all that stuff Phil?
As EM pointed out the claims of anthropogenic influence on the climate are empirically accurate. I am wary of quantifying the impact on human welfare as the signal is going to be hidden by all the other factors, though the IPCC WG2 is clear that diseases are worse and crop yields down (Hi Kim) due to climate change.
The Global Humantarian Forum had a go at quantifying the impacts a while back ... Click.
Phil Clarke
EM. With regard to societies withstanding sea level rises, I refer you to the Netherlands.
ACK
Ooops....Messed up the link try this
Phil Clarke
We're going to build a dyke around Bangladesh? Wow.
Phil Clarke
ACK
I'm well acquainted with raised beaches. The Magilligan complex is 40 miles North of my home and an area I have studied with A level Biology and Geography groups.
The professionals have studied it too.The top of the raised beach is 7 M above current sea level and is about 7000 years old. Half of the difference is due to a 3m high sea level pulse during the Holocene Optimum, and the rest to isostatic uplift.
If you accept the link between increased temperature and increased sea level, why do you not expect it to happen this time?
Consider it as a scientific question, not a rhetorical one. What scientific case can you make to explain why you do not expect the current multi-degree temperature rise to affect sea levels as it did in the past?
Entropic man
EM. Why do you keep asking me questions as if I have written things with which you disagree. Whenever have I argued that sea level will not rise (in stable settings) as a result of a warmer climate either in the past or future? What I do not believe is that there has been any acceleration in the sealevel rise since the end of the LIA. In other words, if humans have caused a global rise in temperature, this is not translated in a change in rate of sea level rise.
PC. Climate induced sealevel rise is not the problem in Bangladesh. Their problems are continued subsidence caused by sediment compaction and flooding caused by typhoons.
ACK
Storm surge and flooding are all made more damaging by Sea Level Rise. Dutch style land reclamation would cost billions, in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Phil Clarke
http://www.image.ucar.edu/~nychka./IDAG/Papers/Church_Acceleration_Sealevel.pdf
Phil Clarke
Does anyone know why the sea level rose in the past to levels higher than they are now?
I have never doubted that sea levels have been higher and lower.
golf charlie
PC. First conclusion from the paper you linked to - "If this acceperation were maintained through the 21st century, sea level in 2100 would be 310+-30mm higher than in1990..."
Big IF
WOW 28-33cm sealevel rise over 84 years. Even in Bangladesh I would imagine the natural distributary levees are about this height. The problem is, as I stated earlier, cyclones. Sea level rise is offset by sediment accumulation.
ACK
EM your link to the Magilligan area didn't work. I can only find a description of a sand dune complex. If you are relying on a Holocene sea level change it's not a raised beach in the conventional sense.
ACK
A higher sea level means storm surges - which are the most damaging imp[act of a cyclone at landfall - start from a higher position, then there's the intrusion of salt water into aquifers and the loss of productive land, and about 20% of Bangladeshis live less than 1m above (current) sea level.
A warming climate will contribute to slowing the reduction in poverty. While the lives of everyone in the region will be altered by climate change, the impacts of progressive global warming will fall hardest on the poor. Low crop yields and associated income loss from agriculture will continue the trend toward migration from rural to urban centers. In Bangladesh, 40% of productive land is projected to be lost in the southern region of Bangladesh for a 65cm sea level rise by the 2080s. About 20 million people in the coastal areas of Bangladesh are already affected by salinity in drinking water. Rising sea levels and more intense cyclones and storm surges could intensify the contamination of groundwater and surface water causing more diarrhea outbreaks.
Phil Clarke
Phil Clarke. "We're going to build a dyke around Bangladesh? Wow"
Are you perhaps unaware that Bangladesh has polders?
ACK
Phil Clarke. So now you use a reference for a 65cm rise by the 2080s. Which is it to be?
ACK
One is global, the other is a projection of the change in local effective SLR (ESLR).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818113002191
HTH
Phil Clarke
Oh, good grief! This is getting ridiculous!
We are constantly being told that weather is not climate, and “deniers” should stop pointing out that cold spells might be evidence we are not going to burn up soon. Now, we are being told that when humans can be blamed on the weather, then it is yet more proof of AGW! Which is it, Mr Clarke? Can weather events now be used to claim proof of human-caused climate change? Can separate, unlinked weather events really be human-caused? Can these events – none of which are actually unprecedented, having had many similar occurrences in the past – really have been caused by humans? Have you heard of the Great Storm of 1703? Is there any evidence that similar events have NOT happened in other locations around the world in the three centuries since or, for that matter, the three centuries before that event? Or could it be that, now that "we" (meaning, principally, the main stream media and political organisations) are aware that such events can be used to further various agendas, "we" are not reluctant to use them to do so? Could it not also be that, now communications are such that a sneeze on one continent can result in an immediate “Bless you!” response on another, that we are able to indulge in the vicarious thrills of witnessing events as they unfurl, rather than wait for the rather more truncated, sanitised, thus less enthralling reports we had in times past? Extreme weather has always occurred, it is just recently that we can all witness it as it occurs.
As for rising temperatures, I am sorry, but the records have been so heavily and blatantly tampered with I have difficulty accepting ANY of it, any more. 1938 was long accepted as the hottest year on record for many years, beating even the el Niño spike of 1998, but it has now been “homogenised” until it is a barely noticeable blip in the records. With so many historical records being “homogenised” downwards, with the more modern records being “homogenised” upwards, no-one with any trust in true science should believe a word you say.
Similarly for the developing claim that temperatures are now hotter than they have ever been – once more: sorry, but the Holocene Optimum was several degrees warmer than today; the world has cooled quite a bit since then, as part of the gradual decline into the next ice age; what we are enjoying, today, is just part of the cycle of this decline – by Entropic man’s desired date of doom, he might be right in that there is a problem, but it is more likely that it will be one caused by cooling, not heating. Warming is good; what little warming we have had, to date, has been beneficial; what little warming we are likely to have in the future will also been generally beneficial. There is a reason why the Holocene Optimum has (did have?) that label, Optimum.
Radical Rodent
Entropic man: as the current rise in sea-levels is about 1.5mm per year, it is probable that Dungeness and Hinkley Point will have been shut down and will be forgotten mounds in the countryside by the time the seas encroach upon them. Doggerland did have the problem of handling the melting ice from the Ice Age – a considerably greater quantity of ice than we are talking about, now; which does indicate that the present rate of rise is hardly “unprecedented” (except in its low rate, of course). Also, as the ice masses on Greenland and Antarctica are growing, then we have no need to worry about floating ice sheets melting to contribute to rising levels. The rise in sea-levels that we are witnessing is the thermal expansion of water as the world continues to heat since it was frozen. Many of the countries “threatened” by rising sea-levels are actually growing – Bangladesh being a good example; though, incorporating so much river delta from such a vast river complex, this should not be a surprise for anyone with even a modicum of rational thought. As kim has pointed out, it is when the levels start to fall we should really worry, though we will probably already be very worried at the chilling prospects, by then.
Minty: I suspect Mr Clarke, and many like him, consider the problems of other countries to be those that only the white man can solve, as the poor locals have not the wit to solve them themselves.
Radical Rodent
… the claims of anthropogenic influence on the climate are empirically accurate.Wrong, again. There is not a jot of evidence that humans have any influence on global climate change. And the link you later gave was a joke, right? You are aware that cold weather kills 30,000 every year in the UK alone? There is no evidence, at all, that climate change has damaged crops, and the prediction that “rising temperatures” (ho ho ho) will cause half a million deaths a year has no basis in fact, either. When have heatwaves, floods or forest fires not occurred, by the way?
You are either incredibly gullible, Mr Clarke, or extremely stupid, or being paid to be either or both those.
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
Could you please supply scientific evidence for all the inaccurate statements you are making.
Entropic man
Heh, Phil, here's a little gem stolen from Tim Ball speaking of WG-2: 'This report identified all the negative effects of warming like a cost/benefit analysis that only considers the cost'.
I'd add that a lot of the so-called 'costs', the negative effects of warming, are fantastical, a product of the disparity of funding between alarmists and skeptics.
Nature will eventually settle the hash of this fabricated narrative of dangerous warming. It might not even take cooling to do so, merely the failure of the climate catastrophes to appear.
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kim
PC. Bangladesh has little to fear from sea level rise but much to fear from tidal amplification, itself caused by human interference with channels
https://judithcurry.com/2013/10/07/bangladesh-sea-level-rise/
ACK
Years ago I realized that there are several places on Earth where weather and climate catastrophes are inevitable, because of the human need to dwell in places that produce food. One is the in the shallow Bay of Bengal, where low lying land is inhabited and cultivated, despite strictures, because food can be grown there. Inevitably, a typhoon causes tremendous casualties. Another is the edge of the Sahara, where only a few years of improved rain causes settlements which will inevitably be wiped out. Lately, I've realized that the great river valleys are another.
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kim
Before Phil or EM nitpicks I should amend that to 'shallow parts of the Bay of Bengal'.
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kim
ACK
Sorry. The habitas website was working this morning. Now I get the error message "The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred."
Entropic man
ACK
I notice that I am not the only one expecting to see 2C above pre-industrial in the 2050s.
Sandy S
I agree. Ecosystems are disrupted by rapid climate change, but recover in time. As a species we are similarly adaptable.
Civilizations are less able to cope with rapid change. It is difficult to pick up a nuclear power station like Dungeness or Hinckley Point and carry it inland. Far too much of our civilisation's invested capital and infrastructure is in a similar position.
There is also the crowding problem. When Doggerland flooded the population density was low enough for its people to move to higher ground. Now there is nowhere left to go. Note how eager the UK is to accept refugees.
Nor will it be easy to feed a population of 7 billion and growing when the available agricultural land is going to decrease.
As a species we will survive, with a lower population and an uncertain level of technology, but getting from here to there promises to be bloody.