Melting Polar Ice 

 One claim made in many news stories is that of melting polar ice caps. The fear here is that sea levels will rise dramatically bringing floods and devastation to millions. However, according to Dr. S. Fred Singer, a climate physicist and author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition, sea levels are a product of conflicting forces (Unstoppable ..., p.47).

Yes, warmer temperatures do melt more glacier ice. But warmer temperatures also evaporate more water from the oceans and lakes, and when this increased moisture in the air gets deposited on the polar ice caps and glaciers around the world, the ice caps and glaciers will actually grow (Unstoppable ..., p.47). The news we hear about glaciers melting (or melting polar ice caps) is selective—yes, some glaciers are melting, but glaciers in other areas are advancing (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism), p.63)! There is this nice balance between melting glaciers adding to sea levels and advancing glaciers subtracting from them.

Time is another important factor when considering melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels. Glaciers and ice caps melt slowly because their surfaces reflect away so much of the sun’s heat. For example, the West Antarctic ice sheet which is 10,000 years past its last ice age, still has 7,000 years worth of ice to melt (Unstoppable ..., p.47). Given that the earth’s climate is historically variable, another cooling period is sure to intervene with this particular ice sheet’s melting.

The world’s longest recording of sea levels has been kept for more than a thousand years in Stockholm, Sweden. According to the keepers of this information, the sea level changes in response to climate variation since 800 A.D. have kept within a small range, with an average variation of close to zero (Unstoppable ..., p.48).

Melting polar ice caps bring with them the fear that certain islands and cities will “sink,” the Maldives and Tuvalu among them. Again according to Dr. Singer’s book, these are non-issues, as far as them being danger signs as alarmists would have us believe. Tuvalu is geologically in a risky position, global warming or no global warming. Its atolls rest on volcanic rock that is gradually subsiding into the sea (Unstoppable ..., p.49). Moreover, on top of this is slow-growing coral which also dies off as it sinks too far to get the sunlight required. 

Despite this predicament, the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite radars have found, since 1993, that Tuvalu’s sea levels have fallen four inches over a decade. This

 is due to an El Nino/Southern Oscillation--a natural periodic phenomenon that does not affect long-term sea levels (Unstoppable ..., p.49). The Maldives, with a population of 300,000, consist of 1,200 low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean that lie only one-two meters above sea-level. Because of this precarious circumstance INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) made the Maldives a priority research target (Unstoppable ..., p.48). They determined that the sea level around the Maldives has been rising and falling for the past 5,000 years, and they see no reason to expect the Maldives to become flooded in the near future (Unstoppable ..., p.49).

Venice is another location mentioned as being threatened by melting polar ice caps causing sea levels to rise. It just so happens, I was in Venice in October and November, 2008. While there, I was surprised to awaken one day to flooded streets! I had heard tales of Venice sinking, but this was a first-hand experience of the problem they face. A Gondolier mentioned to us, as he gave us a tour, that the flooding was a product of global warming. I wasn’t so sure, but wanted to look into it. Well, according to the Italian National Research Council, the relative sea level in Venice has risen 23 centimeters between 1897 and 1983, but 12 of those centimeters was due to land subsiding in and around Venice (Unstoppable ..., p.50). Although the city is erecting mobile barriers and internal water defense structures, it seems that it will eventually indeed sink due to the weight of the buildings and bridges on the soft soils of the coastal region—not because water levels overtake it, as is often implied (Unstoppable ..., p.50).

When thinking about melting polar ice caps and sea levels, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that we live on a planet where the climate has been changing constantly for the past billion years. There will always be an ebb and flow between land and water (Unstoppable ..., p.52). Certain cities that have been built at or below sea levels—like Bangladesh and New Orleans—not surprisingly, will face problems with storm surges from hurricanes. But this is simply a risk inherent in building on waterfront areas—not some predictor of global doom. High-risk waterside building should be discouraged just as a matter of common sense!