CO2 Concentration Changes Do Not Drive Sea Levels
From about 7000 years ago to 2000 years ago, or from the Mid- to Late-Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations varied between only about 260 and 270 parts per million, or ppm. Such low CO2 concentrations are believed to be “safe” for the planet, as they are significantly lower than today’s levels, which have eclipsed 400 ppm in recent years.
These high CO2 concentrations are believed to cause dangerous warming, rapid glacier melt, and catastrophic sea level rise.
And yet, despite the surge in anthropogenic CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 since the 20th century began, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that global sea levels only rose by 1.7 mm/yr during the entire 1901-2010 period, which is a rate of less than 7 inches (17 cm) per century.
A new paper even suggests the global trend is better represented as closer to 1.3 mm/yr, or about 5 inches per century:
McAneney et al., 2017 “Global averaged sea-level rise is estimated at about 1.7 ± 0.2 mm year−1 (Rhein et al. 2013), however, this global average rise ignores any local land movements.
Church et al. (2006) and J. A. Church (2016; personal communication) suggest a long-term average rate of relative (ocean relative to land) sea-level rise of ∼1.3 mm year.”
According to Wenzel and Schröter (2014), the acceleration rate for the sea level rise trend since 1900 has been just +0.0042 mm/yr, which is acknowledged by the authors to be “not significant” and well within the range of uncertainty (+ or – 0.0092 mm/yr) to put the overall 20th/21st century sea level rise acceleration rate at zero.
Further complicating the paradigm that contends changes in CO2 concentrations drive sea levels is the fact that ice core evidence affirms CO2 levels remained remarkably constant (fluctuating around 255 to 260 ppm) during the same period that there was an explosively fast rate of sea level rise — between 1 and 2 meters per century (about 10 times today’s rates) — between 12,000 to 8,000 years ago.
Sea levels rose by ~60 meters during those 4,000 years while CO2 levels effectively remained constant. And casting even more doubt on the assertion that variations in CO2 drive sea level rise is the fact that there is robust paleoclimate evidence to suggest that today’s mean sea levels as well as today’s sea level rise rates are both relatively low (from a historical standpoint) and also well within the range of natural variability.
Nothing unusual is happening to sea levels today. For even though we have evidence that modern CO2 concentrations (~405 ppm) are historically high relative to the last 10,000 years, we also possess a growing body of evidence that modern sea levels are still about 1 to 2 meters lower than they have been for most of the last 7,000 years.
35 Scientific Papers: Global Sea Levels Were 1 – 2 Meters Higher Than Now For Most Of The Last 7,000 Years
I better put some science here in case anyone with a brain reads this thread.
Oh hi boomer, don't mind me, I am just waiting for some adults to arrive on this thread!!!
Until your home is flooded out by the Ocean 8O
Al Gore’s New Beach House
Al Gore’s New Beach House
Some people might call you a liar Boomer
like this guy
