Shock: CO2 could melt Antarctic ice cap & raise sea levels by 400 feet in just 350 years!

...according to the 100% consensus of  President Johnson's 1965 Scientific Advisory Committee on the Environment. The panel report supposes, on the basis of radiative forcing assumptions for CO2 that are essentially the same as the latest IPCC AR5 report, that "poleward heat flux could increase by 10% [or more] through an intensification of the meridional atmospheric circulation" and "if half of this [alleged energy increase from CO2 by 2000 and beyond was] used to melt the [Antarctic] ice, the process would take 400 years." [that would be 352 years from 2013]



Further, the panel notes, "The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet," although they note the rate required for this "is a hundred times greater than present worldwide rates of sea level change." According to the 1965 panel, "if 1,000 years were required to melt the [Antarctic] ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every ten years, 40 feet per century." Fortunately, global sea level is currently rising at a rate of only about 4 inches per century, 120 times less than this spectacularly failed prediction, and with no acceleration over the past 204 years.



This Presidential scaremongering was just the opposite of what happened in Antarctica, which has just hit record levels of sea ice and continues to gain ice mass.

From page 123 of the scientific consensus in President Johnson's 1965 Scientific Advisory Committee on the Environment:

 

The 1965 report was better on other effects of a CO2 increase, noting on page 124 that 'acidification' of fresh water "will have no significant effect on most plants," and that CO2 fertilization could increase plant growth 25% by the year 2000.