2012-11-29

We're all going to drown

The BBC reports that the global sea level is rising and we're all going to die:

The study's headline conclusion is that the polar ice sheets have overall contributed 11.1mm to sea level rise but with a "give or take" uncertainty of 3.8mm - meaning the contribution could be as little as 7.3mm or as much as 14.9mm.
14mm a year! That's over 5.1 meters per century! Vast areas of low-lying land will be inundated! We're all doomed!

Oh, wait:

Another author, Dr Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "The next big challenge - now that we've got quite a good understanding of what's happened over the last 20 years - is to predict what will happen over the next century."
So it's 14mm (worst case) over 20 years. 70 mm (7 cm) in a century. Whoop-de-doo. Can we please put the myth of catastrophic sea rise to bed?

I particularly liked the comment:

The findings are in line with the broad range of forecasts in the 2007 assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In 2007 they had 15 of the 20 years of data already, and they were trying to forecast the final 5 years. Colour me unimpressed. Forecast 20 years in the future with reasonable accuracy, and maybe we'll listen. What does "broad range" mean, anyway? Presumably not "claimed range"?

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