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Little argument about reality of global warming

Editor: Re: Sea of conflicting information in debate over sea level rise, Community Comment, Jan. 16 Your commentator did not serve your readers well in this poorly organized, confusing and misleading article.

Editor:

Re: Sea of conflicting information in debate over sea level rise, Community Comment, Jan. 16

Your commentator did not serve your readers well in this poorly organized, confusing and misleading article. He has mixed up and trivialized several different aspects of the information on and understanding of ongoing global warming, the consequent sea level rise and how best to deal with coastal flooding.

The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that human activity has caused the recent period of global warming (last half century), 2014 being almost one degree C higher on average than the 1950-80 period. The temperature rise has been up to three degrees C over the same period in some Arctic regions.

The most recent report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, authored by 450 lead authors (unpaid climate researchers), states that current climate change can be clearly attributed to human activity (principally the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels).

I emphasize the phrase climate scientists, because although your commentator states that there are "dozens of examples where respected scientists are deemed skeptics because they don't buy into the man-made warming argument," he is actually referring to a very small group of scientists who are not, in fact, climate scientists.

A recent report on the consensus among climate scientists (those who are actively undertaking fundamental research into Earth's climate and the ongoing changes) is that fully 97 per cent of over 4,000 of such researchers worldwide accept and endorse the scientific evidence for a human footprint on atmospheric and ocean warming, se -level rise and ocean acidification.

The remaining three per cent of those scientists either denied the results of the scientific findings (two per cent) or were uncertain about the evidence (one per cent). There is little "argument" now about the reality of global warming.

Turning now to sea level rise, your commentator appears to scoff at the statement about a possible 20-plus feet of sea level rise, but if he had perused the latest research on this topic he would have found that, based on the clear scientific evidence for the most recent accelerated increase in the volume of the ocean, due to expansion of the warmer ocean and the melting of glaciers and parts of ice sheets, it is predicted that sea levels could, in fact, be up to seven metres (roughly 20 feet) higher towards the end of this century.

What one does about this worrying prediction is, of course, in the hands of our politicians and municipal leaders. But the recommended construction of earthen dikes and rip/rap, although they would "greatly assist in diminishing the effects of storm surge," might not be enough for low-lying communities in view of the fact that storm surges, which happen from time to time due to the combination of exceptional high tides and stormy weather, will occur on top of an already higher average sea level.

I doubt this will bring comfort for the inhabitants of those low-lying areas.

Stephen Calvert