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Melting ice sheets could raise sea levels high enough to flood coastal areas around the globe by the end of the century, according to scientists gathering in Denmark today for a three-day climate-change conference. The phenomenon could affect regions including Florida, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and the Maldives, the British Guardian newspaper reports.

The meeting, which brings 2,000 scientists to Copenhagen, is a run-up to December's international climate talks, where officials are set to draft a successor to the Kyoto treaty to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Experts will also update the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released its findings on global warming two years ago. Some of that new information centers on the effects of glacier melts in Greenland and Antarctica.

"It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe," David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey told the Guardian. "Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises."

Not only are ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica breaking up faster than scientists expected, but more of their melt water is flowing into oceans, he said, which will raise sea levels by 3.3 feet (1 meter) by 2100. The IPCC previously estimated that sea levels would rise by 7.9 to 23.6 inches (20 to 60 centimeters) by then.

The meeting coincides with a gathering of climate change skeptics in New York City, who are debating topics like "Global warming: Was it ever a crisis?" "The only place where this alleged climate catastrophe is happening is in the virtual world of computer models, not in the real world,” Marc Morano, a spokesperson on environmental issues for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and  speaker at the Heartland Institute meeting, told the New York Times. You can read our coverage of last year's confab, including participants' claim that the real threat of climate change is to polar bears. And find out why monitoring Antarctic ice melts is tricky business.

Image of Greenland ice sheet/Hannes Grobe, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research via Wikimedia Commons

3 Comments

1. 1. PUSI 08:46 AM 3/11/09

   Current concentration is on sea, glacier, ice-cap, and stock exchange levels are at best misguided.
   Our economic system that which is supposed to guide us in management of our home, system Earth, is a fatally flawed nonsense.
   Economics does not measure the significant variables, defining natural resources as of zero value and only costing the human inputs of resource extraction or destruction. Thus our most important resources are outside the fundamental supply/demand cost function used to manage the almost meaningless variables. Further the free-market only serves those present to bid; the future (including future generations) shall have nothing to bid on.
   Humankind's making of many non-renewable resources inaccessible within 300 years of the industrial revolution is conclusive evidence of these failings.
   Our problem shall not be solved by addressing symptoms such as greenhouse gasses with the likes of emissions trading systems but by addressing the cause and behaving sustainably. For an activity to be sustainable the time for Production of the natural resources involved must be less than the time for which they are Used; i.e. P(t)/U(t)<1. This is the Produce Use Sustainability Index (PUSI).
   Economic reform that causes our economic system to reflect the realities of our Earths system must be our focus.

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2. 2. JHSibal 08:11 PM 3/11/09

   It is worth noting that Washington DC is largely build in a swamp and that at some point, presumably not too distant, the climate doubters in our government will have the ability to show how well they can tread water as they continue to scurry to their meetings poo pooing global warming.
   Reality does have a nasty way of rearing its unpleasant head amid denial and I do hope the Heartland Institute, located on the site of another swamp but in this case, Chicago, will have now doubt a splendid repartee as they are forced to move to the third story of their building in the next decades.
   American capitalism as now practiced has brought us the banking crisis and the Detroit melt down. Not to mention that the most conspicuous area of US production excellence these days in cluster bombs and other methods of annihilating human beings. To any dispassionate observation, it would seem to be a good time to move on and address facts and not theories, shun the Orwellian sophistry of changing he Department of War to the humorously named Department of Defense; but just as Detroit denied the oil shortages in the 70s and responded with mass production of the Hummer, a logical, reasonable response to global warming and raising sea levels seems doubtful. I've never seen problems as disappearing, just festering. However, given the track record of pro-active political will, until sea walls are necessary for our country's capital, I don't see any meaningful response being possible.
   I am a great believer in and have benefited from our 19th century capitalism but please, please, can someone tell the powers that be that it is the 21st century and that, as PUSI notes above, there are COSTLY variableness which must be noted in the equations?
   And where are the Republicans of a century ago who fought for clean water delivered to every tenement and a window in every space in an apt considered a room?

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3. 3. Shoshin 01:30 PM 4/1/09

   Only two problems that I see:
   
   1. Sea level rises are miniscule and within the range of natural causes
   
   2. AGW is a load of horse hockey.
   
   Other than those minor issues, carry on.

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