Source:
"Politicians, actors, and “climate activists” warn us regularly that meltwater from massive ice sheets in the Antarctic and the Arctic will soon drown our coastal towns and cities, and the process will become “irreversible.”
... Looking at Figure 1 .... in the last 140 years, the oceans have risen only about nine inches.
... Now compare Figure 1 to Figure 2 and see the close correlation between the rise in ocean level and the increase in known ocean surface temperatures.
... the volume of water increases with a temperature rise.
This data proves that the sea level has risen at about the same rate that the oceans have been warming.
... with gigatons of water in the oceans, even a small temperature rise can cause a measurable ocean-level rise.
The incorrect assertion that the melting polar ice is the cause of the ocean-level rise is even contradicted by the UN/IPCC, whose Fifth assessment report stated: “Water volume rises with temperature because of thermal expansion—another primary driver of sea-level rise.”
... What about the melting of the land glaciers?
The Antarctic contains about 90 percent of the world’s ice mass ...
About 44 percent of that Antarctic ice is in the ice shelves (it’s floating at the coastal edges), mostly in the western regions on the Pacific Ocean.
More than 50 percent of the Antarctic sheet is land-based and can be several miles thick.
Historical data confirms that there are few days per year where the temperature is above freezing, and then for only a few hours per day and only along the coast.
Consequentially little or no continental Antarctic ice ever reaches the oceans.
During bright and sunny days, a small amount of surface of the continental and shoreline ice is destroyed by infrared rays from the sun.
But this ice does not melt into the water ... it sublimates directly into water vapor.
When the sublimated water vapor reaches the cold Antarctic air, the vast majority of it quickly turns to snow, and falls back on the glacier.
The winds blow only a tiny amount over the Antarctic ocean.
Nearly zero goes into the oceans as water.
... Yes, there was substantial glacial melting in Greenland, Alaska, and other northern hemisphere locations, which added some waters to the oceans during the warming of the past several decades.
... these glaciers tend to melt and then increase in about twenty-year cycles, depending on the local conditions.
A number of these glaciers are now growing at a significant rate, like the famed Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland.
... the long-term batting average seems to be about half growing and half shrinking.
... At the local level, the ocean can appear to “increase” or “decrease” due to changes in the land caused by land settling, such as we see in downtown Boston, where the landfill of 150 years ago keeps on settling, giving the appearance that the ocean is rising.
At the local level, there’s also the sedimentation effect ... the sand and soil of the Mississippi valley are continuously eroding and are carried into the streams, then rivers, the Mississippi, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico.
Another significant factor is the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
... One last item is “the spring back effect.”
During the last Ice Age, parts of North America, Europe, and Asia were covered by ice as much as one mile thick or more.
... The weight of this massive ice crushed and compressed the Earth for tens of thousands of years.
... like a spring, the land is still recovering from the disappearance of the glacial mass and slowly expanding and springing back up.
... satellite data of the last forty years confirms this (sea level) rise of about one to two millimeters per year before any of these complex adjustments are made.
... The bottom line is that activists grossly distort the effect of mankind on sea level."