Guest Commentary by David Middleton

This just eliminated 81% of all of the potential catastrophic sea level rise in the Warmunists’ Little Red Book…

June 13, 2018

Largest ice sheet on Earth was stable throughout last warm period

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The largest ice sheet on Earth was stable throughout the last warm period in geologic time, indicating it should hold up as temperatures continue to rise.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the world’s largest potential contributor to sea level rise (175 feet, if the whole thing melted). Unlike the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, though, it’s been resistant to melt as conditions warm.

New research published in Nature shows that land-based sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were mostly stable throughout the Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago), when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were close to what they are today – around 400 parts per million.

[…]

Purdue University

Table 3 from USGS Professional Paper 1386-A-2.. 65 out of 80 potential meters of ice-related potential sea-level rise resides in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Statue of Liberty has been saved!

You can’t get there from here!

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is stable below and probably a little above the dashed red line. Zachos temperature calculation on the right vertical axis is only for an ice-free ocean. The left vertical axis uses a conversion suitable for the Quaternary.

Here a zoom in on the Pliocene and Quaternary…

Current temperatures are well below the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which is about 3 C cooler than the Pliocene.

The study actually found that much of East Antarctica has been solidly frozen for at least the past 8 million years.

Of course, the Warmunists have to conclude with an obligatory speculative non sequitur…

“The findings indicate that atmospheric warming during the past eight million years was insufficient to cause widespread and/or long-lasting meltback of the EAIS margin onto land,” the team of scientists write in the new study, titled “Minimal East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat onto land during the past eight million years.”

The findings not only clarify the past impact of rising temperatures on East Antarctic ice, but confirm the accuracy of models scientists are using to assess past and future consequences of a warming planet.

“These findings add to the growing body of evidence that curbing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide can still ensure the stability of significant amounts of ice in Antarctica and around the globe,” said Shakun.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-east-antarctica-frozen-million-years.html#jCp

Really?  The finding that much warmer temperatures in the past failed to melt the East Antarctic Ice Sheet “confirm the accuracy of models scientists are using to assess past and future consequences of a warming planet.”… It’s not even grammatically possible to confirm the accuracy of models of “future consequences.”

How do these people get away with continuously falsifying their own hypotheses and declaring the confirmation of those hypotheses.  This is like drilling a string of dry holes and calling it a confirmed discovery.

References

Shakun, Jeremy D.,   Lee B. Corbett, Paul R. Bierman, Kristen Underwood, Donna M. Rizzo, Susan R. Zimmerman, Marc W. Caffee, Tim Naish, Nicholas R. Golledge & Carling C. Hay.  Minimal East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat onto land during the past eight million years.  Nature volume 558, pages284–287 (2018).

Williams, R.S., Jr., and Ferrigno, J.G., eds., 2012, State of the Earth’s cryosphere at the beginning of the 21st century–Glaciers, global snow cover, floating ice, and permafrost and periglacial environments: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386–A, 546 p.

Zachos, J. C., Pagani, M., Sloan, L. C., Thomas, E. & Billups, K. Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292, 686–-693 (2001).