New evidence on the melting Pine Island Glacier (PIG), one of the melting Antarctic glaciers that some scientists feel may pose a threat to sea level increases, suggests that it is not climate change that is causing the glacier to melt. From the UK’s Register:
“Many scientists have theorised that the PIG’s accelerating flow is due to global warming. However, recent research – including surveys beneath the bottom of the floating, projecting ice sheet by Blighty’s Autosub robot probe – indicate that this may not be the case.
“The discovery of the ridge has raised new questions about whether the current loss of ice from Pine Island Glacier is caused by recent climate change or is a continuation of a longer-term process that began when the glacier disconnected from the ridge,” says Dr Adrian Jenkins of the British Antarctic Survey.”
The climate experts even suggest that melting ice has beneficial impacts on the freshness of the ocean. While the new findings do not suggest melting glaciers pose no threat to sea level increases, it does show how little we really know about the causes behind melting glaciers.
Rising sea levels could present problems in the future but so far the hysteria of massive sea level increases threatening our world’s coastlines has been unsupported by fact. Nils-Axel Morner, former emeritus head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University, studied sea levels of the countries that would allegedly be affected by higher water levels. Morner, a former reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, found dramatic differences in the observed data and the IPCC’s model predictions for the Maldives, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Qatar, Vanuatu, Venice and northwest Europe. In every instance, the threat of rising sea levels was drastically overstated.
Rising sea levels is one of the many justifications for pushing forward with carbon dioxide cuts. Of course, the policies aimed at reducing sea levels, particularly cap and trade, will have little- if any – impact on sea levels. But it will come with a huge price tag.
