Sea level rise doubters don’t hold water
Feb. 27, 2013, 9:33 a.m.
LEAKY LOGIC: The writer says the sea level rise case put by Carl Stevenson (pictured) of Dora Creek is less than watertight. Picture: Paul Callaghan
LEAKY LOGIC: The writer says the sea level rise case put by Carl Stevenson (pictured) of Dora Creek is less than watertight. Picture: Paul Callaghan
ONCE again, we have misinformation from those who seek to deny the reality of climate change (“Policy tide set too high”, Lakes Mail, February 21).
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Cr Paxinos said “the science on global warming was divided”. What he did not say was that 97 per cent of climate scientists support the predictions of the IPCC.
Also, the claims put forward by the other 3 per cent have been shown time and again to be false.
The arguments put up by Mr Stevenson are also not valid (“Local pours water on sea benchmarks”, Lakes Mail, February 14). He quoted the small amount of sea rise due to melting of polar ice caps over the past 20 years to claim future predictions are wrong.
However, his calculations are wrong on two counts.
Firstly, the melting of polar ice is only a small part of the predicted sea level rise.
Most of the rise will come from the warming of the oceans. When water heats it expands and takes more room.
Secondly, his use of past figures to calculate a future one is not sound statistically. Trends and future effects need to be factored in.
As an example, take another set of figures. The global population grew from 1 billion in 1804 to 2 billion in 1927, a period of 123 years.
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Using this figure to calculate the future population, it would grow to 7 billion by the year 2542.
In fact, that figure of 7 billion was reached in 2011.
– John Moyse, Dora Creek
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