Global Warming: Long term observations yield unsurprising results

[Surgenator]

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A 10 foot rise in sea level (predicted by 2200) would inundate more than 28,000 square miles of the US alone. That land is currently valued at $900 billion. It is home to 13 million people. The property rights libertarian crowd should be screaming at the top of their lungs.

Sea level rise is not directly caused or influenced by climate change. Sea level change is the result of deep ocean temperature, not surface temperature. When the deep ocean heats up water expands, when it cools it condenses (until it freezes in which case it then expands again).

Sea levels have been rising for the past 20,000 years:



If that was really correlated to climate change then it would mean the earth has been in a constant state of global warming for the past 20,000 years.

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Sea level rise is influenced from surface temperatures. As the surface temperatures increase -> more glaciers melt -> sea level rises as summarized in the plot below. Deep oceans do play a role, and so do glaciers.