A reader of the Cornwall Newsletter wrote,

Question-is it true that ocean levels around Bangladesh have receded for several miles? Haven’t glaciers reduced in size and in some cases dramatically? Liberals claim these are proof of global warming.

Answers:

1. About Bangladesh losing land to sea level rise: According to the Science and Environmental Policy Project, “New data shows that Bangladesh’s landmass is increasing, contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say. Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh’s landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually. [...] The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, crisscrossed by a network of more than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30 percent of its food production. Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country could be under water by the end of the century.” (From SEPP)
2. Some glaciers in some parts of the world are increasing in extent, others are diminishing. There doesn’t appear to be a significant change in their trends versus what they have been for millennia, since the world emerged from the Ice Age ending about 11,000 years ago. The most extensive region of glaciers (as distinct from the large ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which together contain about 99% of the world’s ice) is the Himalayas, and item 7 and its “related items” links in this week’s newsletter will take you to material showing that the glacier melt rate in the Himalayas has not accelerated in recent decades, during the period of alleged unprecedented, manmade warming. For more excellent discussion of glaciers, see the NIPCC report, chapter 4 (beginning at p. 135). For a brief discussion of the Himalayan glacier situation, see my article at Baptist Press.
3. Neither rising sea level nor melting ice (whether continental sheets or mountain glaciers or sea ice) is evidence of warming, whether manmade or natural. Ice melts when surrounding temperature exceeds 0 deg C (32 deg F). What causes the surrounding temperature to exceed water’s freezing point is an entirely distinct question. Further, surrounding temperature can actually be falling (e.g., from 60 to 50 deg F) and ice would still melt, though at a slower rate. The rate of melt will increase as surrounding temperatures rise, but neither the melt itself nor its changing rate is evidence of what causes the surrounding temperature to rise or fall. Consequently, anyone who appeals to shrinking glaciers or continental ice sheets or sea ice as evidence of manmade global warming is doubly mistaken. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the Ice Age, and there is no evidence that they are now rising more rapidly than over the millennia. But their rise, brought about mainly by melting land ice (not at all by melting sea ice, since when floating ice melts the level of the water in which it floats doesn’t change), though partly also by land subsidence, is also no evidence of global warming, whether natural or manmade. For further on sea level, see the NIPCC report, chapter 4 (beginning at p. 184). For a brief discussion of sea level, see this blog post, or the Call to Truth (beginning at bottom of p. 4).