Moving the Carbon Goal Posts

This week there was a story in the media that was saying that sea level rise as a result of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would not be as bad as previously predicted. The implication of the way the story was being reported was that we don't have to worry. Yet even while saying that they were factually reporting that the predicted rise has been cut from five meters to three metres.

There are two reasons why this story in particular caught my eye. The first is that a three meter rise is not something to worry about? It appeared as though there was a collective (by the media) misunderstanding of basic maths. The second was that to have recalculated the level of rise in sea levels there must be new data regarding the thickness of the ice.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is important in climate change induced sea level rise, as unlike the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet, it sits on rocks in the sea and not wholly on the land. Therefore It will melt faster than the ice that sits on the land. As warmer sea water will accelerate the melting. Just as the summer sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic. There the summer Sea Ice will be substantively gone in three or four years.

In the West Antarctic, the sea ice shelves have collapsed already. This speeds up the melting of the ice sheet as the warmer sea water undermines the sheet.

So was the media accurately reporting the paper published in the Magazine Science? On reading the paper, it looked as though the media were reporting the study correctly. Although I still take issue with the assumption that a three metre rise in Sea Level is nothing to worry about. All you need to do is think of adding three metres to the highest tide and you soon realise that will create devastation.

Even reading the paper by Jonathan Bamber of Bristol University, I was left perplexed by the conclusions. I am fully aware that the science is complex and that I may not fully understand all the aspects of the processes, but the more I thought about the problem, the less I agreed with the paper.

A major part of the argument seems to be based upon the rate that the WAIS disintegrates. While there are new measurements of the thickness of the Ice, the total mass is still sufficient to give rise to an sea level increase of five metres. However what is being argued in this paper is that if the slower the rate of melting is, the less the sea level will rise. Now I know that Jonathan Bamber is a professor at a university here in England, but basic kindergarten science will tell you that if you add a bucket full of water to a bath, the bath water rises by that bucket full. The principal is the same but just on a larger scale when talking about billions of tonnes of ice being added to the worlds oceans.

While it is correct that the level of sea level rise has not been a great as would have been expected as a result of thermal expansion, we do have a thirty centimetre rise when fifty was expected, this has been because more water vapour has entered the atmosphere. This is why storms are more energetic and wetter, why rain events are causing more flooding and why the warming effects of the Carbon-dioxide are accelerating.

To then assume that the rate of absorption of water vapour by the atmosphere will continue is simply incorrect. At some point the atmosphere will become saturated. This is why we are seeing the predicted extreme weather events already.

I am not being critical of the work that Jonathan Bamber Et Al have done, as the team have tried to incorporate complex science in the the models, it is the conclusions that are quite frankly incorrect. The current estimated maxima of atmospheric water vapour is the equivalent to a seventy five centimetre rise in sea levels. However, that would also mean that the planet would have total cloud cover and all sunlight would be blocked. That would not be a solution to climate change as with that level of atmospheric moisture would create a cycle of rapid heating and heavy rain with the heat being retained under a blanket of cloud.

Therefore, even if the when the WAIS does disappear the rise in less than traditionally forecast, then the weather would be creating serious flooding over the land masses that the effect will be the equivalent to the full five metres. With the devastation and impact making no land area safe.

The other impact that Jonathan Bamber Et Al are predicting is the gravitational effect on the Sea Level. They are saying that places like the West Coast of the Americas will see a greater rise than other coasts. While I can understand the thinking on such a concept, and agree to a point, again the science does not stack up.

Just as in a bath if you create waves there are times when the water is lower at one end of the bath. Again scaling up to the whole planet, eventually the new sea level will find an equilibrium. Much the same as happens now with the tidal effects of the Moon.

In trying to incorporate these complex aspects of the physics and on a global scale, Jonathan Bamber Et Al, have misunderstood the basics. Further, the effects of the loss of the these Ice Shelves can not be taken in isolation. If we loose the West Antarctic Ice Shelf then the East Antarctic Ice Shelf will also be disintegrating. As even with a three metre rise in sea levels from the WAIS major parts of the East will also be under water. Thus East Antarctic Ice Shelf will be eroding from wave action and the warmer seas. As will be happening with the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Therefore a sea level rise of even a metre will accelerate the loss of the Ice Shelves across the planet.

The problem is that far to often in relation to climate change, people (Scientists included) are trying to say that we can mitigate the effects of the pollution we have created. And allow the pollution to continue. The problem is that Climate Change policy has been based upon limiting the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere to three hundred and fifty parts per million. Even though we already have three hundred and eighty five parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. Whoops!

The target is now four hundred and fifty parts per million. To me it is like a community urinating into the water supply, sooner or latter it will lead to the water poisoning that community. The effect of the carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gasses upon the climate is making our planet uninhabitable. We are long past the point where we need to know the exact numbers of metres that the sea will rise, what is needed is a serious effort into stopping the pollution and finding ways to heal the planet.