Comments on: Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ says sea levels could rise up to 20 feet. Is this true?

By: Stuey

Stuey — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:20:52 +0000

“The researchers think that knowing how high sea levels may rise will let countries gauge how much they need to spend on new infrastructure, such as levees, to prepare for changes to their coastlines.” The construction of levies would simply add more CO2 to the environment as would the building of new housing. The people who are below sea level will have to move but to where?
Too much time is spent on nitpicking the scientific results. The heat is rising, the poles & glaciers are melting, and if anything the conservative scientific community has under estimated both the rapidity of the enormity of the changes. Our species does not have the smarts to deal with this problem.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:11:06 +0000

So, I have been studying the reported temperatures in Connecticut, USA for the past year and guess what? Average temp is down! OK, one years’ worth of data isn’t enough….but what is? The projections used in “An Inconvenient truth” come from models, which have not been tested. In fact, the models cannot predict weather or temperatures in any particular geographic region, they only predict averages for the entire world. The predictions are wrong. They’re better than they were, but they are still off by a great extent.
My answer: keep observing the world around us; report the facts as observed; take action when necessary; keep your money in your pcket until it is time to do something.

By: Alexis

Alexis — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:08:11 +0000

I don’t really care if Al Gore was off on his calculations. What he’s trying to do is try to make people feel the need to help the earth. If fear is the only way to get people to start helping, I say go for it! People don’t seem to notice the severity of things until something big happens, and, by then, it’s usually too late.

By: terry

terry — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:47:38 +0000

To the young people out there, every so many years we must face another claimed historic calamity for our planet. Al Gore is adding his alrmist hysteria. His outlandish projections are not supported by the scientific community. If he didn’t have the nerve to claim a 20ft water level increase no one would listen. In recent history claims of a 1 degree rise and drop in earth temp have caused mini hysteria.I guess that means that we are at the optimum temp today. What drivel!

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Some other research to ponder:

Response of the global ocean to Greenland and Antarctic ice melting -
D. Stammer, Institut für Meereskunde, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Millennial Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel CO2, D. Archer and V. Brovkin, Climatic Change 90:283-297, 2008.

D.Stammers study looks at the flow of water around the world and points out that it takes a number of decades for water deposited in the Atlantic to distribute around the worlds oceans. eg. the Atlantic may ‘bulge’ initially so that sea levels are higher at Atlantic coasts.

I’m not sure how much this applies to current rates of break up, melting.

But even if it takes one thousand years to reach 20 ft, does the time scale matter?
As D. Archer (Chicago Uni) points out, a proportion of CO2 we emit today will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years (if we don’t do anything to draw it down). So maybe Gore got the time scales wrong (or not so wrong?) but if we carry on as we are, massive sea level rises are inevitable.