http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/31/rising_sea_levels_will_seal_fate_of_316_us_cities_study_warns.html
Scientists need funding, and scientists know that if they say, "I found this phenomenon, but it doesn't really seem to do anything" that there will be little funding and no media attention. But if they say, "I found this phenomenon, and it's the end of the world", media attention will skyrocket, followed by more funding to study the problem. From this simple economic mechanism we get fed stories about killer bees, computers freezing up on Y2K, catastrophic global warming in 1817, catastrophic global warming in 1922, catastrophic global warming in 1947, a coming ice age in 1975, and back to catastrophic global warming in the 2000s.
The fact is that the dire warnings of snowless winters in the 1990s were totally wrong. We have had several record-setting winters, followed by the inevitable record flooding as that snow melted in the spring.
And this model for predicting the loss of cities is based on a limited context; what happens when we melt all the ice in the arctic and antarctic ice caps. Well, if that happened by magic, yes, sea levels would rise by about 200 feet. But heat sufficient enough to melt the arctic ice caps would also increase rates of evaporation form the surfaces of the world's oceans, meaning most of that added water would go up into the sky in the form of clouds. Those clouds would then produce two results. First, the high albedo (clouds are white) would start reflecting sunlight back out into space, cooling the planet. Second, more clouds means more rain, which means more fresh water falling on the land, and every day we hear how fresh water is already in short supply across the globe.
All this screaming about global warming is to sell the people a Carbon tax and obedience to a global environmental authority that tells you you must live simpler lives so the rich can have more money with which to "Save Planet Earth" (Reg. Trademark Al Gore). But the reality is that climate on Earth always changes. It was changing before humans were here and will go on changing long after we are gone. The dominant controls over climate are solar activity, as demonstrated when the Maunder Minimum triggered the Little Ice Age, and the shape of the Earth's orbit, which slowly oscillates from circular to more elliptical and back over roughly 100,000 year cycles. When Earth's orbit is circular, Earth is warmer. When the orbit is more elliptical, owing to Kepler's laws, Earth spends more time further away form the sun at the far end of the ellipse and we get the ice ages. So until the global warming crowd can influence the sun or change the shape of Earth's orbit, they cannot really stop climate change. all they can do is trick the public out of money by screaming about it.
Scientists need funding, and scientists know that if they say, "I found this phenomenon, but it doesn't really seem to do anything" that there will be little funding and no media attention. But if they say, "I found this phenomenon, and it's the end of the world", media attention will skyrocket, followed by more funding to study the problem. From this simple economic mechanism we get fed stories about killer bees, computers freezing up on Y2K, catastrophic global warming in 1817, catastrophic global warming in 1922, catastrophic global warming in 1947, a coming ice age in 1975, and back to catastrophic global warming in the 2000s.
The fact is that the dire warnings of snowless winters in the 1990s were totally wrong. We have had several record-setting winters, followed by the inevitable record flooding as that snow melted in the spring.
And this model for predicting the loss of cities is based on a limited context; what happens when we melt all the ice in the arctic and antarctic ice caps. Well, if that happened by magic, yes, sea levels would rise by about 200 feet. But heat sufficient enough to melt the arctic ice caps would also increase rates of evaporation form the surfaces of the world's oceans, meaning most of that added water would go up into the sky in the form of clouds. Those clouds would then produce two results. First, the high albedo (clouds are white) would start reflecting sunlight back out into space, cooling the planet. Second, more clouds means more rain, which means more fresh water falling on the land, and every day we hear how fresh water is already in short supply across the globe.
All this screaming about global warming is to sell the people a Carbon tax and obedience to a global environmental authority that tells you you must live simpler lives so the rich can have more money with which to "Save Planet Earth" (Reg. Trademark Al Gore). But the reality is that climate on Earth always changes. It was changing before humans were here and will go on changing long after we are gone. The dominant controls over climate are solar activity, as demonstrated when the Maunder Minimum triggered the Little Ice Age, and the shape of the Earth's orbit, which slowly oscillates from circular to more elliptical and back over roughly 100,000 year cycles. When Earth's orbit is circular, Earth is warmer. When the orbit is more elliptical, owing to Kepler's laws, Earth spends more time further away form the sun at the far end of the ellipse and we get the ice ages. So until the global warming crowd can influence the sun or change the shape of Earth's orbit, they cannot really stop climate change. all they can do is trick the public out of money by screaming about it.
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