PrintMarch 13, 2009
California's Wet Dream
I live in a state managed by a pack of damned lunatics. Not only have the spendaholics who comprise the California legislature submerged us with an unsustainable budget deficit and then swamped us with the largest combined tax increase in the Golden state's history to attempt to pay for it -- now they have spent money on gawd-awful research which proclaims the state is about to go under water -- literally.
According to yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:
"Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday."
The scare screed continues:
"Rising seas, storms and extreme high tides are expected to send saltwater into low-lying areas, flooding freeways, the Oakland and San Francisco airports, hospitals, power plants, schools and sewage plants. Thousands of structures at risk are the homes of low- and middle-income people, the study said."
This so-called "study" was concocted by the Pacific Institute (www.pacinst.org), a nonprofit propaganda outfit in Oakland. The hogwash was paid for by the California Energy Commission, Caltrans and the state Ocean Protection Council. I have no idea how much money was shelled out to fund this poppycock, but I can assure you, it was a blasted waste of taxpayer dough. The Pacific Institute's mission statement says, "We envision a world where the basic needs of all people are met, where resources are managed sustainably and the natural world protected, and where conflicts over resources are resolved in a peaceful and democratic fashion."
Wonderful. My beloved California is purchasing purposefully misleading goo-goo
eco-doctrine from a leftist group.
eco-doctrine from a leftist group.
It gets even worse. On the Pacific Institute's Board of Directors is Anne Ehrlich, wife of ghoulish Malthusian, Paul Population Bomb Ehrlich. Both are esteemed members of the Stanford University faculty. The Ehrlichs have issued some wild lines over the years, including my favorite from one of their golden green oldies, Population, Resources, Environment: "A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States."
With Board members like Anne Ehrlich -- who desires to kick America back into the Stone Age -- anything coming out of the Pacific Institute's pipeline should be considered hazardous to the truth.
Enter Mr. Convenient Lies
All of this nonsense about rising tides has been greatly aided by the mischievous activity of one of the Ehrlich's personal friends, Al Gore. In his Oscar acclaimed work of fiction, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore includes a troubling scene which involves a graphical representation of the world's major cities drowning due to a rise in sea level from the melting of Antarctica and Greenland.
Gore focuses first on Western Antarctica. He calmly claims, "If this were to go, sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."
Gore focuses first on Western Antarctica. He calmly claims, "If this were to go, sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."
By "go" Gore is implying, melt.
He then couples that fictional cataclysm with the total melting of Greenland. Using vague, unreferenced charts supposedly illustrating the amount of melting from Greenland's glaciers and ice sheets, Gore emphatically states, "because of what is happening in Greenland right now, the map of the world will have to be redrawn." He then prophesies: "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level..."
Playing the role of mad scientist, Gore then graphically reveals Florida flooded, San Francisco swamped, "tens of millions of people" near Beijing displaced, "40 million people" near Shanghai forced to flee, and "50 million people" becoming refugees in Calcutta and East Bangladesh.
Adding further to his fright-fest, Gore, in a troubled monotone says, "This is the World Trade Center Memorial Site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said ‘never again'. But this is what would happen to Manhattan." Exquisite Hollywood graphics inundate Ground Zero with a tsunami of water. Gore then claims, "They can measure this precisely."
How? He never says. But clearly he seems to be likening global warming to the evils wrought by the Islamo-fascist's who drove planes into buildings on 9-11.
Gore tags the scene by asking, "Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists?"
Adding further to his fright-fest, Gore, in a troubled monotone says, "This is the World Trade Center Memorial Site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said ‘never again'. But this is what would happen to Manhattan." Exquisite Hollywood graphics inundate Ground Zero with a tsunami of water. Gore then claims, "They can measure this precisely."
How? He never says. But clearly he seems to be likening global warming to the evils wrought by the Islamo-fascist's who drove planes into buildings on 9-11.
Gore tags the scene by asking, "Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists?"
Apparently, the 5 foot rise in ocean levels forecast by the new Pacific Institute diatribe assumes that Gore is correct in believing that Greenland is about to melt like the wicked Witch of the West -- something even the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has never been willing to hang their pointy hat on.
Sea Level Rise: can you say "Teeny-weenie"?
Ever since the end of the last Ice Age, the global sea level has been gradually increasing. The melting ice and snow from that bitter cold event continually trickles into our great oceans and seas. According to the IPCC, over the past 20,000 years sea level has increased nearly 400 feet.[i] Breaking it down further, over the past century the average sea level rose 1.8 millimeters per year[ii] (try placing your thumb as close to your forefinger as possible, without the two touching -- that is the amount of sea level rise each year).
Hardly frightening.
Gore's implication that if the West Antarctica ice shelf were to melt, sea level would increase 20 feet is obviously cherry-picked from the IPCC which, as part of an obvious set of improbable, hypothetical scenarios states, "the collapse of [the West Antarctica Ice Sheet]... would trigger another five to six metres [16-19 feet] of sea level rise...that would take many hundreds of years to complete."[iii]
What Al Gore failed to mention was the IPCC section from which his West Antarctica and Greenland melting scenarios were lifted is entitled, How Likely are Major or Abrupt Climate Changes, such as Loss of Ice Sheets or Changes in Global Ocean Circulation? The section begins with this disclaimer:
That means that over the next 90 years, even the usually enthusiastic global warming editors at the U.N. are not anticipating the kind of predictions that Gore, or for that matter, the Pacific Institute, lay forth.
Also, some additional snapshots from the IPCC regarding Antarctica:
- "All studies for the 21st century project that Antarctic [ice] changes will contribute negatively to sea level..."[v] (italics mine). That means despite the dramatic film Al Gore shows of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula calving and crashing into the sea, there is more snow and ice accumulating on Antarctica than is breaking off and melting into the surrounding waters).
- "...for the last two decades...Antarctica as a whole has not warmed."[vi]
- Regarding the potential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, "...no quantitative information is available from the current generation of ice sheet models as to the likelihood of timing of such an event."[vii]
- "...accelerated sea level rise caused by rapid dynamic response of the ice sheets to climate change is very unlikely during the 21st century."[viii]
Regarding Greenland, the IPCC states:
- "...the total melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would raise global sea level by about seven metres, is a slow process that would take many hundreds of years to complete...no quantitive information is available from the current generation of ice sheet models as to the likelihood or timing of such an event"[ix]
Translation: the total melting of Greenland is a pipedream, as is the scientific sewage flowing from the Pacific Institute.
Oh, and by the way...Mr. Gore? If all of these predictions are spot on and the ocean is soon gobble up San Francisco...do the right thing. Make a statement by selling that fancy pants condo you own in the future flood zone.
And to the legislators feeding from the public trough in Sacramento: spend your precious per diem cash on these kooky studies-not our hard earned tax dollars.
Brian Sussman is a conservative talker on KSFO 560AM in San Francisco. He is also a award-winning former television meteorologist.
[i][i] International Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, The Physical Science Basis, 2007, Chapter 5, Page 409.
