How much and how fast will sea level rise in the coming decades? What makes sea level rise hard to predict? Who will be affected? NASA scientists and guests discussed this and much more in a Google+ Hangout on April 2, 2013. You can watch an archived version of the hangout below.
[youtube OvnuswLzWRo]
Hangout participants included:
Josh Willis, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Sophie Nowicki, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Mike Watkins, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Virginia Burkett, U.S. Geological Survey
Andrew Revkin, Pace University & New York Times Dot Earth blogger
Plus, here’s some background reading on sea level rise.
+NOAA: Sea Level Trends
+NASA Climate Indicator: Sea Level
+Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Sea Level Viewer
+NASA News: What Goes Down Must Come Up
+Earth Observatory: Regional Patterns of Sea Level Change 1993-2007
+Climate Central: Surging Seas
+National Geographic: Sea Level Rise
+New York Times: Sea Level and the Limits of the Bathtub Analogy
+Los Angeles Times: Most in U.S. Concerned about Sea Level Rise, Poll Finds
any ideas in the pipeline for reflecting the suns energy back into space in the future
the only ideas in the pipeline are filled with alberta tar.
Thank you for thew excellent and informative discussion.
But, in all this conversation, I couldn’t help thinking of the boiling frog story. Our struggling scientists have been thrown into a perplexingly hot phenomenon, looking to find the trip wire for alarm. Measuring this, measuring that. As for the frogs, Paul Krugman would say, they’ll jump ship. Therein lies your dilemma. But your dilemma is critical to all of us. So, good luck. I think Virginia did a good job pointing out a cause for immediate alarm.
An interesting quotation from wikipedia on the subject of boiling frogs:
“In philosophy the boiling frog story has been used as a way of explaining the sorites paradox. This paradox describes a hypothetical heap of sand from which individual grains are removed one at a time, and asks if there is a specific point when it can no longer be defined as a heap.” —Wikipedia