LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
sea level has been falling very quickly along the coast of Scandinavia since the end of the last ice age due to post- glacial rebound (Niskanen, 1939; Milne et al., 2004). Also, despite claims that very vulnerable islands in the southwest Pacific are being deluged by sea level rise, modelling based on real world obser- vations has shown that these islands have been keeping above sea level due to lateral accretion and over wash (Tuck et al., 2019).
Further, a risk assessment modelling study of sea level was performed for the naval base in which a rise of 0.5m was envisioned (Burks-Copes, 2014). This is an increase of sea level on the order of 500mm. If we assume that sea level will rise at two millimeters per year, then the assessment is unrealistic as no model can predict what sea level will be like in 250 years! On top of this, Mr. Spalding states that this 0.5m rise is a “tipping point.” Such a term is alarmist and not scientific. It has no place in the peer reviewed literature.
Towards the end of the article, it is
stated the CO2 emissions from cement manufacturing and power generation are the main contributors to global warming. This is a fallacy that has been carried forward by the environmental movement since its inception. Water vapor has the greatest warming effect.
Water vapor and CO2 contribute 78.5% and 19.6%, respectively, to global warm-
ing at 285 ppmv of CO2 and 77.1% and 20.9%, respectively, to global warming
at 570 ppmv of CO2 (this can be inter- polated as respective contributions of 77.9% and 20.2% at today’s total atmo-
spheric CO2 concentration of 415 ppmv; Barrett, 2005).
Additionally, as research has pro- gressed, the volume of emissions of
naturally occurring CO2 has been revised upward due to the discovery of more sources and increased emis- sions. Natural sources which have been enhanced by a warming climate include soil (Hodges et al., 2019), thawing tun- dra (Commane et al., 2017), lakes (Del Sontro, Beaulieu and Downing, 2018) and organic sediment at the bottom of streams and rivers (Comer-Warner et al., 2018). Newly discovered sources of
CO2 emissions include submarine vents (Cardenas et al., 2020) and prokaryotes (Smith et al., 2019). The presence of the new sources and verified increases in emissions requires reconsideration of the concentration of natural and anthro-
pogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, and the redesign of the global carbon budget and climate models.
6 TPG •
Jul.Aug.Sep 2020
Lastly, it must be noted that shrink- ing Arctic ice is not prima facie proof of climate change. The naturally occurring Arctic Oscillation (AO) has the greatest effect on the variance in the wind condi- tions which, in turn, affect sea ice motion. High index AO winter wind anomalies increase the movement of ice away from the Eurasian and Alaskan coasts form- ing polynyas. This makes the ice more prone to melting during the following spring and summer. During the summer, low index AO conditions bring southeast- erly wind anomalies which increase the movement of ice away from the Alaskan coast and increase the movement of warm air onto the ocean. This decreases the amount of ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas (Rigor and Wallace, 2004).
While the AO is operating, the cold water of the East Greenland Current sends fresh water and ice south into the Atlantic Ocean through the Fram Strait while the adjacent West Spitsbergen Current flows north and carries warm salty water into the Arctic at a depth of 200m to 700m. Only a little ice was pushed out into the Atlantic during the nineteen sixties, the late nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties. In contrast, a lot of ice was expelled during the period from 2005 to 2008 (Smedsrud et al., 2011). However, during the past few decades, sea ice has continued to decline. This reduces ice export and increases Greenland Sea and Nordic Sea salinity. Subsequently, Greenland Sea and Nordic Sea heights fall and the gyre circulation increases. The intensification of the gyre pumps more warm Atlantic Water into the Nordic Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The end result is much more sea ice melting, but it is not certain that melting will predominate in the future as freshwater inflows from the surrounding continents and the Arctic Ocean, itself, contains vast quantities of freshwater (Wang et al., 2020).
References
Barrett, J., 2005, Greenhouse mol- ecules, their spectra and func- tion in the atmosphere, Energy and Environment, v16, n6, p. 1037-1045,
https://doi. org/10.1260/095830505775221542.
Burks-Copes, K., Russo, E., Bourne, S. et al., 2014, Risk Quantification for Sustaining Coastal Military. U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. 14 Apr 2014
https://www.serdp-estcp.org/con- tent/download/45483/424535/file/ RC-1701%20Final%20Report.
Cardenas, B.M., Rodolfo, R.S., Lapus,
M.R., et al., 2020, Submarine groundwater and vent discharge in a volcanic area associated with coastal acidification, Geophysical Research Letters, v47, n1, 9 pp., DOI: 10.1029/2019GL085730.
Comer-Warner, S.A., Romeijn, P., Gooddy, D.C. et al., 2018, Thermal
sensitivity of CO2 and CH4 emis- sions varies with streambed sediment properties, Nature Communications, v9, n2803, 9 pp., DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04756-x. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04756-x DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04756-x
Commane, R., Lindaas, J., Benmergui, J. et al., 2017, Carbon dioxide sources from Alaska driven by increasing early winter respiration from Arctic tundra, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v114, n21, p. 5361-5366,
www.pnas.org/cgi/ doi/10.1073/pnas.1618567114.
Del Sontro, T., Beaulieu, J.J. and Downing, J.A., 2018, Greenhouse gas emissions from lakes and impound- ments: upscaling in the face of global change, Limnol. Oceanogr. Lett. v3, n3, p.64–75,
https://doi.org/10.1002/ lol2.10073.
HadCRUT4, 2017, The Hadley Climate Research Unit annual global mean surface temperature dataset, http://
www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/had- crut4/data/current/
download.html
Hodges, C., Kim, H., Brantley, S.L. et al., 2019, Soil CO and O concentrations illuminate the relative importance of weathering and respiration to seasonal soil gas fluctuations, Soil Science Society of America Journal, v83, n4, p.1167-1180, DOI: 10.2136/ sssaj2019.02.0049.
Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011, Sea-level acceleration based on U.S. tide gauges and extensions of previous global gauge analy- ses. J. Coastal Research v27, n3, p409-417,
https://doi.org/10.2112/ JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1.
Jevrejeva, S., Moore, J.C., Grinsted, A. et al., 2008, Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?, Geophys. Res. Lett., v35, n8, 4 pp., L08715, https://doi. org/10.1029/2008GL033611
Karegar, K.A., Dixon, T.H., Malservisi, R. et al., 2017, Nuisance flooding and relative sea-level rise: the impor- tance of present-day land motion, Scientific Reports, v7, n11197, 9pp.,
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