November 23, 2000

4:05 AM

A 7 to 13-metre rise in sea levels is now inevitable, according to a draft IPCC report leaked to the New Scientist (via Robot Wisdom).
posted by Mocata (6 comments total)

Christ almighty. My parents live 500 yards from the seafront...
posted by Caffa at 4:17 AM on November 23, 2000

Funny - i sat through a really interesting seminar the other week by a prof who was studying global climate change trends. He felt that we're on the brink of a long term cooling trend, which will end in another ice age...

some of his research papers are up here.

I often find new scientest reads like a cross between scientific american and the national enquirer...
posted by alex - f at 5:18 AM on November 23, 2000

Oh really. As a layman, which scientific paper should I read then?
posted by Mocata at 9:37 AM on November 23, 2000

Careful reading indicates that the new paper is about the effects of global warming. If the temperature in Greenland rises X, then the sea level rises Y. The writers obviously believe other indications show that global warming is happening fast enough and irreversibly enough to achieve this (over, one notes, a 1000 year period).

Alex's source is a climatologist who studies specific atmospheric warming and cooling effects and believes that the net result of these effects may be an overall global cooling.

In other words, they really aren't contradictory. Maybe it would appear that way in an 11 o'clock news blurb.
posted by dhartung at 10:48 AM on November 23, 2000

All I was trying to get at was that climate change is a very complicated phenomenon, and we really don't understand it all that well. as dhartung said - the article isn't really about climate change, and a lot of the paper is based on speculation about future global temperatures.

I do think that author could have made that clearer, and I don't think the editor had any business slapping together sensational headlines like:

"Washed off the map:
Better get that ark ready, because the sea levels are gonna rise "

posted by alex - f at 1:45 PM on November 23, 2000

If all the ice melts off Greenland couldn't we move some of the displaced people there?

Sorry, bad idea, we'd need lots of coats for them.
posted by mutagen at 3:19 PM on November 23, 2000