Home Solar Power

Image by Cherrylynx via Flickr

Are Rising Sea levels The Real Danger Of Global Warming?

I think that one of the reasons that global warming is not perceived as a serious problem by many people, is that they just do not believe warnings of mass extinction by the more alarmists among us.

Even though mass extinction has happened in the past, and is indeed going on right now, lets talk about a more probable event.

CO2 levels are rising

In 2009, the CO2 global average concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was about 0.0387% by volume, or 387 parts per million by volume (ppmv).

This is 103 ppmv (36%) above the 1832 levels of 284 ppmv. I found an interesting video that shows what this actually looks like. Watch the video below

Antarctic cores indicate that atmospheric CO2 levels were about 260 – 280 ppmv immediately before industrial emissions began, and did not vary much from this level during the preceding 10,000 years.

In simple terms after being stable for 10,000 years there has been a dramatic rise in CO2 levels in the last 170 years. And the rise has been accelerating the closer we get to present day.

It can be directly linked to the industrial revolution and the subsequent use of fossil fuels. As the world grows more populated and more countries become industrialized the level will make an even sharper rise.

Studies show that present carbon dioxide levels are higher now than at any time during the past 20 million years. A very interesting fact that is that CO2 levels are believed to have been much higher than now, if you go back even farther, and life was still thriving. True, but unfortunately we are not dinosaurs.

CO2 And Rising Temperatures

The earths climate does show many periods of fluctuating temperatures and science has confirmed the link between rising temperatures and CO2 levels. Here is an equation to remember, more CO2 = higher temperatures, higher temperatures means more glaciers melting.

There is also an interesting study that suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is becoming unstable. Read more here:  The Discovery Of Global Warming.

The oceans have already risen 10 or 20 centimeters in the 20th century, about ten times as fast as the average sea-level rise in previous millennium although the main causes are still being debated.

One contribution to the sea-level rise was entirely clear. Water expands when heated. The consequences may seem obvious, but amid all the talk of melting glaciers, for decades nobody seems to have given a thought to other simple effects.

Finally in 1982 two groups separately calculated that the global warming observed since the mid-19th century must have raised the sea level significantly by plain thermal expansion of the upper ocean layers.

But a thermal expansion could not account for all of the observed rise. The scientists figured the rest came from melting glaciers, most of the world’s small mountain glaciers are in fact shrinking.

A lot of people are tired of hearing about the human race going extinct, I have my doubts, but consider this, since the end of the Ice Age, earth’s temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees and sea levels have risen an incredible total of 300 feet!

It does not take much imagination to connect the melting of the glaciers that covered a significant part of the earth, and the rise in sea levels.

Worse, new evidence suggested that the warming was itself starting to cause changes that would generate still more warming, resulting in more ice melt, and even higher sea levels.

Even now there are signs that disintegrating ice sheets could raise sea levels faster than most scientists had expected.

Mass Chaos

Forget about extinction here is one aspect of global warming to take seriously, sea levels are rising and will continue to rise. The sea levels alone are cause for alarm.

The last time the planet was just slightly warmer than now, the sea level was roughly 5 meters ( a little over 16 feet) higher. That height submerged coastlines where many millions of people now live, including cities like New York City and a huge part of states like Florida, and the coastlines in between.

Most of us have lived in relative comfort in this country, and it can be hard to imagine that the life we live, and the environment we currently live in could drastically change in a matter of decades or even years.

But what do you think will happen to our society when large portions of the most heavily populated areas of this country and indeed the world are under several feet of water?

Chaos, tens of millions of people displaced, vital financial and industrial institutions in ruin, personally I do not want to see it or be a part of it, but is anyone listening?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study: Earth’s polar ice sheets vulnerable to even moderate global warming (scienceblog.com)
• Study suggests greater sea level rise from warming (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Rising CO2 will cause catastrophic sea level rise finds Antarctic study (telegraph.co.uk)