Seas Rising Faster Than Projected

New submitter zenyu writes "IPCC's 2mm per year estimate for sea level rise at current CO2 levels has proven too optimistic. Sea levels have been rising 3.2mm per year in the last two decades. The IPCC's 50 cm — 100 cm projection for the next century may prove equally optimistic."

Re:Energy companies will fight this report

[ciclano]

Energy or oil? If to defeat the much less powerfull tobaco industry misinformation war took 50 years. Oil companies have much more money and resources.
We must demand that the oil companies collect the garbage generated by the product they sell just as happens with batteries and tires.

No significant change for a century.

[PerMolestiasEruditio]

recent data doesn't show any increase in rate of sea level rise:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ [colorado.edu]
looking at the decadal rate of increase it has actually been falling off for last 5 years:
http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sea_level_rise_fig1.jpg [masterresource.org]
doesn't appear to be any significant alteration in rate of rise over last 100 years, rate of rise in 30's-60's was about the same as current:
http://www.oceanclimatechange.org.au/content/images/uploads/2012_sea_level_fig1.jpg [oceanclima...nge.org.au]

A rather big factor that needs to be taken into account is that since the 1950's there has been a massive amount of ground water abstraction for agriculture that is estimated to contribute something like 0.4-0.8mm/year to sea level rise (15-25% of total).
http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2012/05/120531-groundwater-depletion-may-accelerate-sea-level-rise/ [nationalgeographic.co.uk]

Re:Denier

[Anonymous Coward]

Hows those new copyright laws working out for yas... Handed any of your citizens over to the usa lately? Done any threatening lately because we wanted mister wikileaks?

You're just like the USA. A puppet bitch for the multinational companys. Now bend the fuck over maggot. Or i'll sic the riaa on your ass again.

Re:Denier

[will_die]

You need to read into the numbers to find out why you are wrong. There are two main problems with USA life expectancy numbers:
1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.
2) To many foreigner who were born in poorer countries. The countries you have listed and other with higher life expectancy have one thing in common fewer percentage of people who were born outside of that country or were born in poor countries.
Look at charts to see life expectancy from ages 5,25,50,75 and that listing changes.

Re:One consistent theme

[dkf]

Plants love CO2.

On the other hand, plants aren't so keen on heat stress. There's multiple effects going on, some of which are positive and some negative and many of which are non-linear, and that's why this stuff is so hard to work out: balancing the relative sizes of all these things to get the overall picture (especially in non-equilibrium situations) is viciously difficult.

Re:One consistent theme

[WhiteSpade]

I'm definetely not an expert on this, but I think it's a combination of a lot of things. Cities were using too much water for utilities and no returning it, then there are some climate concerns, but I think the biggie (both from an actual cause, and political view) is the St. Clair River [jsonline.com].

---Alex

Re:Denier

[characterZer0]

Also: Big Macs, 64 oz. sodas, and no exercise.

Re:Denier

[Cyberax]

" The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. "
Bullshit. In reality average lifespan in the *US* is calculated WITHOUT taking child mortality into account.

IPCC politics

[bradley13]

You have got to admire the objectivity of Slashdot readers. I posted an article with a reference to the NOAA site that has global sea-level data online, for all to see. This data contradicts TFA (which is primarily a political report). Slashdot did not disappoint - within a couple of minutes, my comment was moderated into nonexistence..

Here's a second chance: go look at the actual, raw data. [noaa.gov] Lots of stations have data for nearly a century. None of them show the kind of recent change in trend that the article claims.

Re:One consistent theme

[seven of five]

Just look at the Great Lakes. They stand at record levels.

Actually, they're near record low levels due to drought [freep.com].

Re:Denier

[MyLongNickName]

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/your-life-expectancy-by-age [worldlifeexpectancy.com]

This shows that an average 25 year old in Germany has a longer life expectancy than his counterpart in the U.S. by about 1.2 years.Interestingly, an 80 year old in the U.S. has a longer life expectancy than Germany.

In all fairness, I am not sure that this spells any significant difference in health care as the U.S. has a much higher mortality rate from car accidents than any European country. Regardless, the original discussion was about other countries having poor health care compared to the US, but these numbers show otherwise.

Re:Denier

[Anonymous Coward]

Except America actually spends more than Europeans on healthcare!

Read it [cdc.gov] and weep, fuckhead.

Re:IPCC politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than Alaska's armpit (to coin a phrase), pretty much all going up, mostly in the 0-3mm/year range, but a hell of a lot of yellow and quite a bit of red. What exactly makes you claim it in some way debunks TFA? It appears to support it at first glance.

Re:Denier

[serviscope_minor]

It is not possible to continually provide any service which has an ever increasing cost to everyone for "free" without eventually running out of money or having to limit that service. Because math.

The US costs $6000 per person for health care with 80% coverage.
In the EU it costs around $3000 for 99% coverage.

You see: it doesn't matter where the money comes from, whether people pay direclty out of pocket or from what you mockingly call "entitlement programs".

The money has to come from somewhere in all cases.

In the USA case, people earn it, then pay it.

In the EU case, people earn it, the government takes what it needs and pays it.

But it's still coming from people who earn it.

And in the EU, LESS total money is needed, by a factor of 2.

So you can blather all you want about "entitlement programs" and ranting about social secutity, but the EU system with it's much bigger entitlement programs will run out of money for health care WAAAY after the US.

Because math.

Re:I've given up

[jackbird]

That's a finding based on the genetic diversity of mitochondrial DNA, which is not a methodology you'd use to determine the present population of the planet.

More here [nih.gov]. Scroll to "An Evolutionary Scenario for Ancient Expansion of Modern Humans" for the nontechnical gloss.