John's blog

The chart below is adapted from a similar graph in Dr. Peter Ward's book, "Under a Green Sky." It plots all the mass extinction events of the last 500 million years against the best estimate of carbon dioxide levels (CO2) at the time. According to his analysis, all major extinctions occured when CO2 levels exceeded a thousand parts per million (ppm). 

This is a fascinating and ominous correlation, which I will explain in a moment. First, a word about Peter and the book cited above. He is well - qualified, beyond being an emminent professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has received many honors; was featured on some television shows; gave a talk at the highly reputed TED conferences; and has written 17 books. (Although we have recently become friends, I was a reader and fan for several years prior.)

Amid the politics and disappointment from the climate talks this week in Durban South Africa, there has been a little trickle of insight into the real story about sea level rise; one that even good journalists missed. The last major IPCC report on climate change was easily mis-read to say the the forecast for sea level rise this century was only about 7 - 17 inches (18 - 59 cm). Those are the numbers they put in a table; what nearly everyone overlooked was the explanation of what was NOT included in that forecast.

Those familiar with the work of the big global findings about climate change - The UN-IPCC -- have been aware for four years, how they inadvertently made a huge mistake at creating a false impression about future sea level rise. Over the next few years the story will become clear. It's a bit terrifying. The misunderstanding -- or perhaps mis-representation, is quite easy to grasp, if you just know where to look, and realize what they are saying, it's rather plain to see. The best way to show the problem is to go to the source, which I will do in a moment.

Japan is still struggling to cope with the aftermath of the major tsunami that hit March 11 this year. The destruction ranges from people, homes and entire communities, to wider damage from the nuclear power plant catastrophe, damage to their electric power system, and their economy. It will be a long time before they fully recover from this disaster. And it should be remembered that as tsunamis are produced by undersea earthquakes, that the cause of this problem is geologic, with essentially no connection to the current concern about changing climate. [The possibility of a climate change connection was cited in a previous blog post, if you are interested.]

The Day After Tomorrow was a good sci-fi film about the shut down of the gulf stream causing Manhattan to go into a deep freeze, within days. It pretended to be a glimpse into what could happen with climate change.  Absolute Nonsense! It was believable only because we have such terrible understanding of geologic timescale. With increased frequency I hear or read such things as:

"Climate Change?  Of course, it's happened before."

"Sea level will rise a few feet and then go down."

"These volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes are signs of cataclysm. The magnetic poles are starting to shift AGAIN."

At the risk of spoiling the party, let's sprinkle some "reality dust" on those ideas.

This chart shows the relative changes in global average temperature, CO2 (carbon dioxide), and sea level over the last 420,000 years. The data is derived from different sources that corroborate and confirm the findings. Data sources include air bubbles trapped in layers of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica; isotopes of oxygen that are temperature markers; isotope markers of diverse elements in layers of deep ocean sediments; ancient coral reefs and speleothems; salt marsh core samples; and physical evidence of ancient shorelines, above and below the present. (Chart from NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen.)

Rising Sea level is one of the main concerns about a warming planet. You would think it would be simple: the ice melts; the sea rises. Like most things in our complex world, it's not that simple. Surprisingly sea level went down in 2010, by a considerable amount. This new finding by the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena California, sheds light on a counterintuitive reversal factor.

To understand what happened, let's have a brief review of sea level's big "bullet points."