
Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment - howard941
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/05/14/1817205116
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evandijk70
EDIT: The title has been updated: it used to say: "Ice sheet contributions to
future sea-level rise to exceed 2m by 2100"

_________________________________________________________________

Incredibly misleading title. The expected ice sheet contributions to future
sea-level rise are, per the article:

26 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions from the Paris agreement)

51 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions)

69 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions and incorporation
of thermal expansion)

The 2m value comes from the large error bars in the predictions. Global
climate change is a huge problem, but misrepresenting results from a
scientific study like this is just presenting ammunition to climate change
deniers on a silver platter. I suggest replacing 'to' with 'may' in the title,
as that is a better summary of the article.

~~~
briandear
It’s definitely ammunition, deservedly so. This sort of misrepresentation is
par for the course. “The world is ending in 12 years.” I seem to hear that
every 12 years just when people have forgotten about how the world was
supposed to have been flooded already. Activists seem to have a ha but if
exagération, if not downright lying.

~~~
coldpie
Please read the IPCC reports, not ... whatever your current source is.

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Jigg
To be clear, the 2m increase is the analyzed 95th percentile (very high end)
of the estimates of this meta-study, when you take both glacial melt and
glacial expansion. The median values for low and high estimates are 69cm and
110cm.

Not that this isn't still terrifying, worth of action, worthy of international
collaboration, and so on. Just let's be accurate about our titles.

~~~
mc32
Doesn’t Earth’s being a spinning oblong sphere mean some places will
experience only minimal change while others will see significant change? So
all this is “average” rise.

~~~
parhamn
It's a much more complicated process (e.g. the weight of the ice changes the
shape of the mantle). The Verge did a good high level overview of some of the
different factors in play here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5zh3yG_-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5zh3yG_-0)

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ridicter
If you're interested in getting involved in addressing climate change, here
are two options for citizens to get involved:

1) The Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it
currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan (1 Republican) support:
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
([http://energyinnovationact.org/](http://energyinnovationact.org/)). With
this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax* is directly returned to citizens
as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state. This is the organization
cofounded by NASA scientist James Hansen, who first testified to Congress
about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago.

2) If you're a millennial/gen Z, and you're more skeptical of a market-based
solution, the Green New Deal and Sunrise Movement are making waves. Rather
than a concrete policy in Congress, they have a set of principles/values that
they are pushing forward. This includes economic and social justice issues.

*Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt. That fundamental price signal, where renewable energy becomes cheaper relative to fossil fuels (and similarly less fossil fuel-intensive goods are cheaper relative to fossil-fuel-expensive ones) reverberates throughout the economy. However, it's worth noting that while this solution should theoretically appeal to Republicans, almost none have stepped forward...

~~~
sampo
> Green New Deal

Aren't they strongly anti-nuclear? Putting science behind ideology is not a
very good position to take about climate change.

~~~
ridicter
I think their position is: 1) don't shut don't existing nuclear plants to
replace them with fossil fuels and 2) wind and solar should make up the new
energy mix. But for what it's worth, the membership has diverse views. I'm
pro-nuclear.

CCL tends to be more pragmatic and have many more nuclear proponents.

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lazyjones
So how much was the actual global sea-level rise in the past 10 years and how
does it relate to previous estimates?

~~~
mythrwy
Maybe something like this?

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm)

I don't doubt humans are affecting the climate. I do doubt that humans can
extrapolate the effects of what they are doing out into the future very well.

~~~
cheerlessbog
That article describes one scientist's hypothesis based on an extreme year -
another more conservative scientist is quoted also. The thing to pay attention
to is peer reviewed consensus, which is still alarming.

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kisamoto
Not to hijack this thread but does anybody know of a list of companies/start-
ups who are trying to combat climate change/protecting the environment
especially if they are hiring?

With a brother who has a master's specialising in glacier reduction (and a
keen interest in data science) he is finding it a demoralising experience
looking for companies who actually seem to be taking action.

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foxyv
If you are interested in seeing a map of sea level rises, the NOAA publishes a
website with one. At 7 ft there are significant coastal differences.

[https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/](https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/)

~~~
lazyjones
Here's a more complete picture for the case when _all_ ice melts and sea
levels rise by 60+ meters:
[http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html)
(note: by a "skeptic")

> _Today the Earth has 148 million sq. km of land area, of which 16 million
> sq. km is covered by glaciers. A sea level rise of 66 meters would flood
> about 13 million sq. km of land outside Antarctica. Without polar ice,
> Antarctica and Greenland would be ice free, although about half of
> Antarctica would be under water. Thus, ice-free land would be 128 million
> sq. km compared to 132 million sq. km today._

I can't check all the calculations, but this result doesn't seem too terrible
since we'd likely be able to migrate affected people in time.

~~~
beatpanda
The amount of migration that has completely upended political systems in the
United States and Europe since 2010 or so will be a historical footnote
compared to the migration we will experience due to climate change. The United
States elected a professional wrestling character to the Presidency because he
promised to be cruel to immigrants. Forgive my pessimism but I do not think
"we will be able to migrate affected people in time" barring a major
transformation of our society.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
> United States elected a professional wrestling character to the Presidency
> because he promised to be cruel to immigrants

Seriously, if that is what you honestly think happened without hyperbole... I
worry for 2020.

------
chiefalchemist
Anyone have any idea what a 1m and 2m rise in sea level looks like in terms of
impact to land that is currently dry but will eventually end up underwater?

~~~
dexen
I wholeheartedly recommend the 2006 _An Inconvenient Truth_ [1] as it shows
nice animations of expected flooding of, for example, the Manhattan.

[1]
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth))

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seibelj
It’s quite clear that in 2019 it is not possible to get all powerful entities
in the world to work together on an issue like climate change. We should focus
on band-aid solutions like reflectors in space above the poles that prevent
sun from hitting the earth at all. We are past the “if only everyone bought
electric cars” phase of solutions and need special projects that assume the
amount of CO2 emitted stays the same or increases.

~~~
zatertip
There's no stationary orbit over the poles

~~~
seibelj
I have no idea if that’s possible, what I mean is we should stop trying to get
the US and China to agree on anything let alone climate change so we need
grand silver bullet solutions.

~~~
simias
China does accept the reality of climate change and is enacting policies
against it. It might not be nearly enough but it's not fair to lump them with
the USA on this one.

~~~
briandear
Have you been to Beijing? China is in a class all of its own when it comes to
pollution. It’s not fair to lump the US in with China.

~~~
flukus
Have you bought products manufactured in China? That's your pollution.

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LinuxBender
Are humans advanced enough to engineer around sea rise and temperature
changes?

~~~
maxxxxx
Humanity should be fine. The problem is how to deal with millions of displaced
people. We will probably need a few wars to figure that one out.

~~~
onemoresoop
Humanity may be fine but we're also disrupting other life on the planet that
we can't predict the impact of. Humanity may not be so fine after all..

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zuluwill
potentially very dumb question but could you build hydro power solutions(from
the ice melt/run off) that you then get clean power from / help cool ice...?
So out of my depth here but genuinely curious. Also appreciate building a
hydro power plant on a very unstable platform (ice) is problematic just
curious of other solutions to generate hydro power...

~~~
simonh
Most of these ice sheets are already quite close to sea level and distributed
across vast areas - like most of the coastline of Antarctica. Hydro power
works best with significant altitude drops across very narrow choke-points.

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danschumann
Can't we make solar powered ice makers on a huge scale and just re freeze it?

~~~
maxxxxx
You understand that a refrigerator puts out heat so in the end it’s a zero sum
game?

~~~
cookingrobot
Not exactly a zero-sum game because the earth isn’t a closed system. We’re
constantly getting heat energy from the sun and radiating it back out into
space at an equal rate. The composition of the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses)
decides what equilibrium temperature will be. So if we had big refrigerators
refreezing the arctic (without creating greenhouse gasses), they would put a
ton of heat into the air but it would radiate away into space just like any
other heat captured by the sun, and wouldn’t really affect the earth’s average
temperature.

~~~
maxxxxx
By that thinking you could just cool down the air. No need to freeze the
arctic.

~~~
danschumann
freezing is white and reflects more

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ThomPete
This is speculation not actual scientifically demonstrated furthermore it's
speculation based on the most catastrophic predictions.

On top of that, sea-level rise is not some even distribution around the globe,
some places will get more others will get less. It's a very local phenomenon.

This is so misleading yet this level of inaccurate reporting is the basis for
the current political debate.

Meta studies are to often used as political tools NOT science.

I 10 years when the climate catastrophism hopefully have subdued we will se a
host of lawsuits against the words offenders of this scaremongering and "cry
wolf"

Yes the climate is changing yes it's getting slightly hotter.

No there isn't any scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change
we don't know how to deal with.

