Tuesday, January 27, 2009; Page A04
"Greenhouse gas levels currently expected by mid-century will produce devastating long-term droughts and a sea-level rise that will persist for 1,000 years regardless of how well the world curbs future emissions of carbon dioxide, an international team of scientists reported yesterday.
"Top climate researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Switzerland and France said their analysis shows that carbon dioxide will remain near peak levels in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gases, which dissipate relatively quickly.
...
"The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that if carbon dioxide concentrations peak at 600 ppm, several regions of the world -- including southwestern North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa -- will face major droughts as bad or worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Global sea levels will rise by about three feet by the year 3000, a projection that does not factor in melting glaciers and polar ice sheets that would probably result in significant additional sea level rises."
Huh?
Let's review a little history. The Kyoto conference was a failure for two reasons. 1. The US has not ratified their 7% reduction committment. China, India and Russia made no commitment to reductions. 2. It was widely admitted that even if all countries made a committment of reducing emmissions by 8%, it would not significantly reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Presumably nothing short of eliminating the human race would help. So what has happened since 1998?
Very few countries made progress by 2005 toward their 2012 CO2 reduction goal. The few that have reduced emissions did so for reasons unrelated to Kyoto, for example the economic collapse of the USSR. The price of oil and other economic conditions have far more to do with CO2 emissions than political rhetoric.
And what about sea level? 30 foot rises! in 1000 years. 92 cm per century for ten centuries. Somebody is fudging the numbers again. In the 20th century, in geologically stable areas, sea level rose 20 cm at a constant rate, the prime contributor being thermal expansion. Previous estimates of the maximum possible rise had been 80 centimeters including the maximum rate at which glaciers could travel to the sea. Every "expert" has a different number. None of them seem to explain where they got it. Let's be grateful they didn't plot this new "hockey stick" on graph paper.
The predictions simply don't hold up when compared to historical records. If CO2 content is the critical factor in the temperature of the atmosphere, why have temperature and sea level risen so steadily in the past 8000 years? Why is there absolutely no correlation between CO2 content and temperature over geologic history?
As for the dust bowl threat, don't these people even read human history? 5000 years ago southern Iraq was a vast forest. The human race was not destroyed as a result of the desertification of Babylonia, no matter what caused it.
So now the big news is that nothing we can do will change anything and [therefore] we must act now! Somehow, the message is getting garbled. Apparently we can all agree that nothing we pitiful humans can do is likely to affect global temperature. So how much money will it cost to try? And how much money would it cost to move up hill 30 feet in the next 1000 years?
By the way, is anyone asking what the benefits may be of "global warming?" If they aren't asking, why not? If there are no benefits, then show that to be the case. This "thing" looks less like science than politics.
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