“Climate Craziness of the Week – MSM jumps on alarming headline“. Anthony Watts dismisses a University of Leeds report that the melting of floating ice, mainly because of salinity and temperature differences, can make a small contribution to sea-level rise. And the “MSM” are talking about it! Shocking. The paper is Recent loss of floating ice and the consequent sea level contribution by Shepherd, et al. 2010 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Nothing like mocking new knowledge because it isn’t significant enough. That’s anti-science I guess. The general opinion was that the melting of floating ice would have no impact on sea-level because of Archimedes’ principle, but it turns out that the estimated volume difference is 742 km²per year! A large number to be sure, but spread over the entire ocean very modest.

Anthony mocks this because the calculated annual contribution is an almost unmeasurable 49 micrometers (0.000049 m). But what would his position be if this hadn’t been calculated and included? Undoubtably outrage.