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One of the great fears generated by global warming is that the ocean is about to rise and swallow our coasts. These concerns have been heightened by the substantial uptick in Atlantic hurricane activity that began in 1995.

Huh?

The problem with the whole sea level rise due to ice melt is the fact that there is nowhere near as much ice as there was during the ice age.

At the end of the last ice age the sea level did rise by a couple of hundred feet but there isn't a miles think ice cheet covering millions of sqaure miles of land today.

It is simply impossible for the scientific community to ignore what is going on, even as prone to exaggeration of threats as it has grown to be. The planet is warming at the low end of projections. Antarctica is undoubtedly gaining, not losing ice. Greenland appears to either lose a little ice, or, in the recent study of Johannessen, gain dramatically.

And that is being generous to the globull warming freaks.

19 May 2005 - According to a new study published in the online edition of Science, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet gained about 45 billion tons of ice between 1992 and 2003. The ice sheets are several kilometers thick in places, and contain about 90% of the world's ice.

Using data from the European Space Agency's radar satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2, a research team from the University of Missouri , Columbia , measured changes in altitude over about 70% of Antarctica's interior. East Antarctica thickened at an average rate of about 1.8 centimeters per year over the time period studied, the researchers discovered.

The region comprises about 75% of Antarctica 's total land area and about 85% of the total ice volume. The area in question covers more than 2.75 million square miles - roughly the same size as the United States.

(This means that more than 90 percent of the world's glaciers are growing thicker … while the media keeps yelling about the ones that are melting.)

Greenland icecap growing thicker

- 20 Oct 2005 - Greenland 's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw, scientists said today. Satellite measurements show that more snowfall is thickening the ice-cap,
especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science.

"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 cms (1.9 inches) a year or 54 cms (21.26 inches) over 11 years," according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies
and Operational Oceanography in Norway.

23 Jul 2005 - According to glaciologists, the Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier southeast of Greenland is now moving towards the sea at the "astonishing" rate of more than seven miles (12 km) per year.

The discovery came after recent measurements of the glacier were compared to those taken by NASA in 2002. During the 20th century the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier remained stable. Now it appears to be moving as much as 38 meters
(117 feet) per day.

"Glaciers act in the same way that a river does with a source and a mouth. The source is high in the mountains or at a higher latitude, where snow falls to contribute
to the source of the glacier and to feed it, allowing for advancement. This is rather like a conveyor belt, where snow falls at the top of the mountain, this additional
weight pushes the ice sheet further down, and then ends in the sea, where parts will break off to become icebergs.

The article blames the glacier's advance on "global warming."

They want it both ways, don't they? If the glaciers recede, it must be caused by "global warming." And if they advance? It must be "global warming." The trouble is that the public believes it. What a masterful piece of deception.

You can read the rest of the article, written by Matt Taylor, at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/23072005news.shtml
.

"It is inevitable that one of tomorrow's headlines will be that scientists have dramatically scaled back their projections of sea level rise associated with global warming."

SSUUURRREEEE they will (snicker, snicker). I hope the author isn't planning to hold his breath while waiting.

I even question the notion that there has been any sea level rise. Against which datum is such a "rise" being measured? And using which measurement points along the coasts? Since most measurement points are located at the perimeter of the Atlantic (because there are simply more people, cities and harbors there) and given the fact that the Atlantic has a passive margin (e.g. it is in tectonic tension) therefore the land along it is slowly sinking. Any measurement of "sea level" made at any such location is suspect.