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The Antarctic Ice Sheet

19 Comments

OK, there seems to be a Twitter panic going on, so I went and read Alan Boyle’s story about it. That was the first time I heard that (even if the models are valid) the problem is two hundred years off.

Isn’t there anyone out there who understands discount rates?

[Update a while later]

Here’s more detail from John Timmer:

Even in the short term, the new findings should increase our estimates for sea level rise by the end of the century, the scientists suggest. But the ongoing process of retreat and destabilization will mean that the area will contribute to rising oceans for centuries.

Sorry, but I’m not going to worry about “rising oceans for centuries” today. Even the end of the century is effectively discounted to zero. It’s economically insane to reduce economic growth now to prevent something that won’t happen for decades.

[Late afternoon update]

As I noted on Twitter earlier:

19 thoughts on “The Antarctic Ice Sheet”

  1. Or possibly up to a millenium, with the “most likely” scenarios playing out over a 200 to 500 year period.

  2. A few meters higher water level, big deal. It’s an incontrovertible fact that about ¼ of the current land in Florida was underwater a few thousand years ago. What caused that? Better yet, all the global warming alarmists ought to be interested in restoring water level to its proper preindustrial place which is apparently several meters higher. Thankfully all those coal fired power plants are helping to restore the Earth.

    1. The coal plants are cooling the Earth owing to the SO2 forming an acid fog in the stratosphere. Sheesh!

  3. I am confused…what is causing the record sea ice? Tropical temps? It just doesn’t make sense to have ice shelves collapsing when everything else is freezing at record rates, unless it is from brittle fracture.

    1. Sea ice has a complicated relationship with temperature, and in fact temperature is often not the most important effect on it. In this case the west antarctic ice sheet extends out over water but sits on top of land. Most importantly, the land that the base of the ice sheet sits on is like a hill, and the surface gets deeper farther from the ocean. What that means is that as the base of the ice sheet is undercut if it progresses past the crest of the hill then you have water filling up the depression behind the hill, accelerating the melting of the base of the sheet. The start of the process of undermining the ice sheet has more to do with ocean currents than with temperature per se.

  4. born01930 – most of the ice sheet in question is sitting in a below-current-sea-level depression. Warmer water is getting underneath, lifting the sheet and causing it to flow out.

    Dr. D. ¼ of the current land in Florida was underwater a few thousand years ago. – except Miami wasn’t even a gleam in anybody’s eye back then. Now that coastline has a few million people living on it, who are going to want to go someplace.

    Rand – It’s economically insane to reduce economic growth now to prevent something that won’t happen for decades. – so even a fraction of a percent reduction is insane? Future values work both ways. Imagine if you’d bought and held Apple from the IPO, for example.

    1. so even a fraction of a percent reduction is insane?

      Yes. Anyway, all arguments to reduce carbon just went out the window, since rise is now “inevitable.”

      1. Sea level rise was inevitable ever since carbon dioxide began to rise above ambient equilibrium and the truly massive global energy imbalance began to make its effects known. It’s only you flat earthers who have begun to catch on to that inevitability after decades of denial. Snowmobile enthusiasts have been aware of this since around the mid to late seventies at the very latest.

          1. It would actually be a power imbalance, if it existed, which it hasn’t for the last closing on two decades (nearly 18 years).

            Guest is just repeating the liturgy. He hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about.

        2. Now I’m super curious why “Snowmobile enthusiasts” are the new Chosen Ones to discover this sacred knowledge and what this knowledge could be.

          Any snowmobile people here that would deign to illuminate us?

    2. Where is this warmer water coming from? Has to be volcanism since the surface isn’t any warmer

  5. If Rand is declaring the melting of the antarctic inevitable, is he now accepting Climate Change?

    1. I have never denied that the climate is changing, you moron. Only an idiot like you would imagine that there was a time when the climate was ever static.

    2. If Rand is declaring the melting of the antarctic inevitable, is he now accepting Climate Change?

      “IF”. I must admit there is a strong case for banning dn-guy right here. Rand clearly hasn’t changed his view. The post is just nuisance harassment.

  6. I listened to a lecture given by a scientist who is researching Salem Sound in Massachusetts Bay. He’s doing everything…core samples…the works.

    In the first paragraph of his lecture he states that the water levels of the Sound have been rising steadily by dozens of feet for 13,000 years. Displayed a graph. Steady rise…..13,000 years.

    And the SUV market had nor really taken off 13,000 years ago.

    Even more astonishing, with that sort of steady (his word) rise over that period of time, they have the gall to suggest that the fraction of millimeter or so is due to AGW?????

    They should have their Bill Nye Science Guy cards taken away forthwith. Turn in that propellor cap.

  7. I agree with you on this one, at a 5%/yr discount rate you need a return of $131 in 100 years to financially justify spending just $1 now.

  9. As noted by others, the source of the deep warm water allegedly driving this alleged collapse would seem to be key here. I see nothing addressing that question. If one cannot say whether this key driver is temporary or not, then one cannot make useful predictions about its future effects.

    And that’s what we have here, folks, another long-term prediction by people (AGW proponents) who haven’t, to say the least, established any base of credibility for themselves where long-term predictions are concerned. Given the notorious miscues of the Warmists anent the alleged imminent “disappearance” of the Arctic ice cap Real Soon Now over the last decade or so, on what basis are we to assign this latest allegation any value?

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