Yo..the rate of earthquake posts on new stuff has been slow for months, and I read a post by Canie to say that other earth-related science was fair game, so here I go again. This is an email I just sent to "urban sister" and "heartland wife":

I finally checked the link on climate change. It is not real clear from that link what Allegre thinks. The article says we should be doing something about it, proposing solutions, carbon sequestration, rather than just holding confereces. So, he must still believe it is a problem...just not as big a problem as many others think. I am going to start posting on the earthquake site (which can include other science) my concerns about over-hyping this. As we've discussed a few months ago in email, I don't think the Greenland ice cap can entirely melt this century....so sea level rise from this may be a couple of feet rather than 20. It may indeed become doomed to melt soon though. I have doubts about whether the West Antarctic Ice sheet will melt this century (I think that is an additional 20 feet of sea level, but am not sure). Meaning...I don't know if it will melt significantly or not. The Antarctic peninsula is part if West Antarctica, and there is melting there, but it is skinny and stick out north...so the ice volume on it is not huge.

I am particularly interested in the following problem. If worldwide temperature has gone up 1 deg F/0.6 deg C in the last 50 years, and there are big affects in the Arctic, as models have long predicted, then the rest of the world must have warmed less. I saw a story at the end of the national news last week (ABC?) about Pikas going extinct mountain by mountain...as it gets warmer, they move up the mountain, until there is no mountain left. They reported it like it had already happened on a fair amount of Colorado mountains. But, 0.5 deg C is only about 50 m of vertical (dry adiabatic lapse rate) to a bit less than 100 m. This should not be affecting the Pikas much yet...unless the temperature increase is greater in the mountains. The operative word is "yet".

Another example is the Save the Bay new letter/magazine, that said Bay water levels have gone up 11 inches the past century. This is true, but it is the local (relative) sea level rise. Rhode Island is sinking, so part of this (half) is the sinking rather than global sea level rise.
Chris

• Claude Allegre..global warming