Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped

riverat1 writes "Sea level rise won't stop for several hundred years even if we reverse global warming, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. As warmer water is mixed down into the oceans, it causes thermal expansion of the water. Under the best emissions scenario, the expected rise is 14.2 cm by 2100; under the worst, 32.2 cm from thermal expansion alone. Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that."

Not too bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but 14.2cm in 80 years doesn't exactly seem so bad (or even 32.2cm for that matter). Surely cities that are going to be effected will have ample time to relocate those in "danger".

Overall rise

[zrbyte]

Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that.

How big is the effect of thermal expansion in comparison to melting of ice? How much would be the additional rise in the worst case scenario?

Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

I really thought our cunning plan of exporting [institutef...search.org] our coal consumption to Asia was going to work. I mean, nothing that happens over there is in the Environment, right?

Yes we knew this

[cpu6502]

This paper is just further evidence that we've already released enough CO2 to continue the warming trend. Even if all humans disappeared, like one of those History Channel Life After People episodes, the globe would continue to warm towards a non-ice age state.
 

Hell yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

That coastal property I bought in Arkansas for 48 BTC is going up uP UP!!! My investments own.

remove excessive CO2?

[pak9rabid]

This may be a stupid question, but isn't there a way to collect massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, compress the carbon into some sort of solid composite, and store it somewhere where it's land-locked (similar to how trees store carbon in wood)?

Re:It's briefly touched upon in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is, it is only ankle deep. Tidal variations are greater than that. Any map showing New York underwater or Florida off the map because of a 14" rise in sea level is wrong. If that were the case, high tide would cause the same flooding.

Re:remove excessive CO2?

[ethergear]

Beyond growing wood or some other plant matter, not really.

Re:Nothing to worry about

[pixelpusher220]

What if Jesus sent you scientists warning you what you were doing was bad?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bullshit.

[Mr. Firewall]

Sea levels stopped rising in 2008 [youtube.com] and, according to some interpretations of the data, have actually been declining ever since.

Re:Bye Florida!

[TapeCutter]

Meanwhile NC recently banned their civil engineers from considering the impact of any rise in sea levels due to AGW, they insist that infrastructure planning must only use the historical sea level records for forcasting future sea levels.

As for TFA, the phenomena of thermal inertia has been understood for decades (it's why the hottest weather occurs a month or two AFTER the summer solctice, and is also the origin of the "pluto is warming" canard). More and better data have added weight to that knowledge and more finely tuned our accounting of what mechanisim is responsible for what portion of the changes (such as the recent stories about the draining of aquifiers contributing to the rise). All this is because the IPCC avoids using data that is less that 2yrs old in it's reports, they're currently approaching the cut off date for new data to be added to the 2014 reports so you can expect to see these kind of stories over the next month or so. The next two years will be spent arguing over the expected 100k or so individual review critisisims of the draft reports.