An inconvenient truth: Global warming appears to have stalled
Melting ice and rising sea levels continue to make headlines in the mainstream media.
Reports of this phenomenon often include pictures of Pacific islands being submerged or even New York City underwater. However they rarely, if ever, report the actual extent of sea level rise.
According to Nasa and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea levels have been rising at an average rate of 2 to 3 millimetres per year since the late 1800s, when records began. There has not been a significant increase in that rate since the 1930s, when some scientists think global warming began accelerating. This rate in sea level rise is measured using tide gauges around the world and satellites. But the rise is not uniform: In some parts of the world sea levels are actually falling (the 2-3mm rise is an average). Some scientists have even questioned the methodology used to determine the rise, claiming that too many gauges were being used in areas of rising seas and not enough in areas where they were falling. Meanwhile some glaciers are actually expanding and, with more than 150,000 glaciers in the world, it is all but impossible to quantify changes in this ice cover. The 2-3mm annual rise does prove, though, that there has been more melting than freezing.
In the past five years, however, Nasa and the NOAA have actually recorded sea levels falling by a few millimetres. This coincides with bitterly cold winters in both hemispheres, stalled global warming according to reliable data sets, and ice gains in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
Enter Thomas Frederikse from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He authored a scientific paper that indicates the mass from all the ice melt is creating an extra load which is pushing the sea bed down by as much as 1mm per year. Nasa adjusted its charts to reflect this new reality.
Meanwhile Nasa and the DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) both confirm that the Greenland and Antarctic landmasses are growing as more ice accumulates on their sub-zero surfaces. But after conducting a Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, Nasa concluded that calving of old ice around the edges of these landmasses outweighs the gains in their overall growth. This type of science is not precise since it offers different estimates for exactly how much ice is being lost, but these studies exist and it’s good enough to keep alive the mainstream meme of melting ice and rising sea levels. With hundreds of billions of dollars going into the effort to fight global warming, it’s imperative that such studies keep coming.
Sam Khoury
