Catastrophic Sea Level Rise

Update 8/2/11:

One of the things that might be an issue in guestimates of sea-level rise is the fact that tides change over the years.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes.

Due to phenomena such as ice ages, plate tectonics, land uplift, erosion and sedimentation, tides have changed dramatically over thousands of years and may change again in the future, a new study concludes.

The rest: The tides, they are a changin!

 

Original posting:

Just to put things in persepctive… (click to enlarge)

A subtle change of about 120 meters (almost 400 feet.) Right side is the present and this goes back 32,000 years. I think Al Gore & Co. are about 16,000 years off with their predictions.

WUWT on Sea Level Rise acceleration

Global Warming Sinks an Island? Not.

A friend sent me this page via Stumbleupon. Disappearing islands are always interesting, whether due to storms, land subsidence, erosion, floods, etc. (Based on current sea level measurements in that area it would take 4,000 years to sink that 2 meter high island. )

Naturally they find some professor who’s goofy enough to blame it on global warming. I guess that means that global cooling must have caused the island to appear back in the 70s? After all, there was a global cooling scare about that time.

WattsUpWithThat has some fun with the story and proves that warming had nothing do do with the disappearance.

Note that sea levels DID rise quickly, and by a lot, as the last ice age ended. There is a huge, well developed city (mentioned in the post) that’s under 120 feet of water. So Al Gore may be right about sea level rise destroying civilization, but he’s over 9,000 years too late.  I wonder how many other ruins from that period are also underwater? It’s not a tiny city they’re showing there.

There are some other interesting links to relevant stuff in the comment section of that post:

• Interestingly enough the same professor mentioned above attributes most of the “sea level rise” to land subsidence, due to the weight of sediments being washed down by the rivers in the area. Climate Change Hoax
• Some people like to point to the Carteret Islands as victims of sea level rise caused by warming. Even Wikipedia, hardly skeptical to warming claims, debunks that idea.
• Bangladesh: losing mangroves to shrimp farming leads to food loss and environmental insecurity
• More on that little island: Sea level rise? Global warming? I don’t think so…
• Indications of a city that’s just a bit deeper…
• An expert’s remarks on the sea level rise (very little.) He has some interesting things to say about the IPCC, as well.

Update:

More WUWT: No real sea level rise – info on coral atolls, fresh water lenses, atolls wise with sea level. Atolls are created by sea level rise, not destroyed by sea level rise.

Another paper: Sea levels are stable

SPPI on that little island: The birth and death of an island in the Bay of Bengal