I just love this title – Bleak forecast: Arctic sea ice just misses record melt: Scientific American Blog – considering that the money quote pretty much cancels out the scaremongering quote in the first two paragraphs:
bodes ill for Earth’s future… continued drastic melting … a disaster … a harbinger of what’s to come for the rest of the world …
In the next paragraph, a careful reader will discern that things have improved since last year:
This year’s ice shrank to just 1.74 million square miles—860,000 square miles less than the average extent since 1979—and only slightly more than last year‘s record 1.59 million square mile icepack.
Watt’s Up With That has more, including some graph-y goodness. Interestingly, in spite of all this drastic, distastrous melting that’s been going on for to two years, according to the Scientific American blog, there’s no ongoing coastal flooding. When the ice caps melt, weren’t the seas supposed to rise?
Why, yes. They were. Here’s a blast from the past – enjoy!
“When the ice caps melt, weren’t the seas supposed to rise?”
Well yes, but this is talking about the arctic ice pack, not the antarctic. As you know, virtually all arctic ice floats, therefore whether it melts or not doesn’t directly affect sea level (though the knock-on effects of having no ice there may well).
I believe there has been ongoing sea level rise, though only of the order millimeters, and then mostly due to the effect of heating on the density of the ocean. That always blows my mind – imagine how much energy must be involved to get the world’s ocean chain to expand measurably!
That IS mind blowing.
We were supposed to have floodiing measured in feet – quite a few feet, as I recall – not millimeters or even inches; I don’t recall anyone making a distinction between arctic and antarctic. (Last I heard, antarctic was growing; another inconvenient truth for the AGW apocalypse types.)
But now that we’re cooling again – whether due to natural cycles, lack of sunspots, or both – the ocean will eventually be cooling off too. Then the crisis of the polar bears will finally be over and we’ll be asked to whip ourselves into hysteria over some tropical species which is in danger of freezing to death.
I’m not sure of the ‘then’ that you’re talking about, so I can’t comment on whether we’re supposed to have had feet of flooding by now (except to say, obviously, that we haven’t!). If anyone has told you that melting arctic ice would *directly* raise sea levels, however, they were so stupid I’m surprised they could even formulate words.
As I recall, Al Gore warned about sea levels rising twenty or so feet.
That’s true, though it’s important to remember 2 things:
1. It’s not supposed to have taken effect yet, so the fact that we don’t see it isn’t surprising.
2. He was exaggerating wildly – theoretically sea levels could rise that much in the next century or so, but almost nobody is predicting that they actually will. This was plain stupid on Gore’s part.