The man with chicken entrails for brains

Myron writes a pointless paragraph:

The Independent in London this week ran with the latest claim about sea level rise. Their headline illustrated perfectly how ridiculous predictions quickly transform into facts. The story was headlined, "Sea levels rising twice as fast as predicted." The first sentence did not agree with the headline: "Sea levels are predicted to rise twice as fast as was forecast by the United Nations only two years ago..." That is, the soothsayers have read their chicken entrails again and decided that their previous divinations were not dire enough. This has nothing to do with actual sea level rise. For the past several years, sea level rise has been below the average rate of the twentieth century, which in total was about seven inches.

You would expect this from a man who thinks that everything in life that isn't about making money is chickenshit.

The rest of the article (based on physical observations, rather than stuff pulled out of Myron's ass) is pretty terrifying:

Rising sea levels are caused by the thermal expansion of the ocean – where water increases in volume as it warms. But although the melting of ice already floating in the sea does not add to the level, because it is already displacing its own mass, melting into the sea of land-based ice most definitely does.

It is the accelerated melting of the vast, land-based ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, caused by rapidly rising temperatures at high latitudes, which is now speeding up the increase beyond anything previously forecast. The Greenland ice sheet, in particular, is not simply melting but melting "dynamically" – that is, it is collapsing in parts as meltwater seeps down through crevices and speeds up its disintegration. Critically, the four scientists said, this process was not taken into account in the AR4 report, leading to estimates of sea-level increase which were far too low.

They revealed remarkable figures showing just how fast it is now happening. Professor Steffen said Greenland was losing 200 to 300 cubic-kilometres of ice into the sea each year – about the same amount as all the ice in Arctic Europe. This on its own is causing the global sea level to rise by more than a millimetre a year, he added, whereas a decade ago Greenland's contribution to sea level rise was non-existent.

Essentially, the scientists are discovering that their over-conservative estimates in every system (partly in fear of attacks from Myron Ebell and his death-wish nutter friends) are wildly out compared to what we see is occurring. We are so fucked.

Myron's answer is the equivalent of a man who goes out and points to the sea between 6am and 11am today (high and low tides) and says: "Oh look, it's gone down 5 metres. What's the problem? The sea level is always changing."

The question is, do you want your grandchildren's children to die or not?

You do? I thought so.