For years, pushers of global warming have been saying that the seas will soon be inundating the world’s sea shores, but a new calculation of the rise of the oceans seem to show that the former calculations were off by as much as two quadrillion gallons.
Al Gore made himself infamous for his fantastic claims that “soon” melting ice caps would cause the world’s oceans to rise by “20 feet” and would swamp over much of the earth. His claims have been widely ridiculed, even by global warming theorists.
Still, less fanciful predictions have said that the oceans will rise up to some 6.7 inches in the next 90 years. This would still be a major problem, according to climate change adherents.
However, a new reckoning of the rising sea levels finds that previous calculations have have been off, and by quite a bit.
A group of researchers from Harvard and Rutgers Universities discovered that the actual rise in sea levels measured only 1.2 millimeters instead of the previously accepted 1.6 to 1.9 millimeters.
This, the researchers say, means that the actual rise has fallen from the once-imagined 6.7 inches over 90 years to 4.2 inches.
A recent New York Times article noted that this means the difference between the old and new numbers “turns out to be an immense amount of water: on the order of two quadrillion gallons.” That would be about as much water as the whole of Lake Superior.
If this new research stands up to peer review, it could explain why global warming activists have had trouble reconciling measurements they’ve been finding over the last ten years or so.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.