U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-ME) whipped up far-fetched climate change fears at a conference last week, claiming a “pulse” of sea-level rise may begin within 20 years that would raise sea level by as much as one foot per decade and at least 200 feet total.
In reality, sea level is rising by merely one foot per century and there is no plausible scenario in which sea level soon accelerates by a factor of 10.
Speaking at the Camden (Maine) Conference last week, King said a pulse of sea-level rise 15,000 years ago raised sea level one foot per decade and 390 feet total.
“[I]f we’re getting into a situation where the ocean rises a foot a decade, or even a foot every two decades. It’s going to be enormously expensive. It’s going to have huge impacts around the world. And it’s going to have huge national security implications,” said King, according to the Camden, Maine, Free Press.
That’s a big “if.” And a far-fetched “if,” at that.
As shown in the figure below, when sea level rose at a pace of one foot per decade 15,000 years ago, the Earth was rapidly emerging from a full-blown ice-age glaciation.
Ice core samples taken from Greenland show temperatures were in the midst of rising 30 degrees Celsius, or about 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
By contrast, temperatures have risen a measly one degree Celsius since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Moreover, temperatures peaked between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago and then declined through the Little Ice Age, which ended approximately 130 years ago.
Temperatures would need to continue rising at their present pace for at least another couple of centuries before reaching – once again – the warmth that prevailed during early human civilization.
That means King is making an implausible claim when he asserts another massive sea-level “pulse” may occur in just 20 years.
King claims temperatures are fast approaching a tipping point, which will melt most or all of Greenland’s ice.
However, such melting did not happen during the extended, much warmer period 8,000 to 4,000 years ago.
If Greenland’s ice came nowhere near melting when temperatures were much warmer than today, by what logic is Greenland’s ice likely to start a dramatic melting now?
The reality is there is no reasonably plausible scenario in which another massive “pulse” of sea-level rise occurs anytime in the foreseeable future.
The much more likely scenario is a return to the frigid cold and sea-level decline that occurs when the Earth enters another ice age glaciation – a cycle for which the Earth is soon due, according to temperature data reported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), below.
Read more at Climate Realism
I’m 72. I know the spots I fished on the coast as a boy in the late 1950’s and the ocean level is exactly the same as back then.
How does this scaremongering still have a pulse?
It should have been dead a long time ago, killed off by inconvenient facts.
In truth, the answer is obvious. We are not so much Homo sapiens as Homo sancta (forgive me if the latter Latin is not quite grammatically correct). We are a religious species more so than wise and the call of Neo-Paganism is strong, even amongst those who espouse Atheism. This rubs off on others who wish to be seen as caring and, before long, a zombie Apocalypse of CO2 is upon us, refusing to die no matter how many contrary facts are thrust towards it.
With most of the Wisconsinian glacial ice now gone, having melted over the past 15,000 years, there is not ice mass left to force any sort of sea level “pulse.” There remains at the poles just the relatively hard-to-melt ice that would melt only through extraordinary changes in the planet’s climate, which are not at all going to be the result of any human efforts, even if civilization made a concerted effort to heat the atmosphere with the objective of melting the poles to raise sea levels. Smart people know enough to ignore the idiotic claims of people like King. The problem is, there are a lot of misinformed people out there ready to believe this nonsense.
A flooded Earth and Dryland was a ll part of Kevin Kosner’s big box office flop WATERWORLD where he swims dolphin style and making total fool of himself
The senator is no King, he’s a Clown! He should resign immediately due to incompetence.
There is not enough water on the planet for a 200 foot sea level rise. These people are idiots.
Just another False Prophet of Eco-Doom telling us their usial load of Malarkey and getting their M.S. Media to listen to their poppycock then Parrot it to the rest of us all
Just another prophet of doom. This is getting very monotonous. Maybe this can help him … https://www.villages-news.com/2020/12/09/the-millimeter-tidal-wave/