The strongest fears of the population concern the melting of mountain glaciers and parts of the Greenland and Antarctic continental glaciers, which supposedly would lead to a rise in the oceanic level by 29 centimeters in 2030, and by 71 cm in 2070. Some forecasts predict that this increase of ocean levels could reach even 367 cm. (24) In this view, islands, coastal regions, and large metropolitan cities would be flooded, and whole nations would be forced to migrate. On October 10, 1991, The New York Times announced that as soon as 2000, the rising ocean level would compel the emigration of a few million people.
Doomsayers preaching the horrors of warming are not troubled by the fact that in the Middle Ages, when for a few hundred years it was warmer than it is now, neither the Maldive atolls nor the Pacific archipelagos were flooded. Global oceanic levels have been rising for some hundreds or thousands of years (the causes of this phenomenon are not clear). In the last 100 years, this increase amounted to 10 cm to 20 cm, (24) but it does not seem to be accelerated by the 20th Century warming. It turns out that in warmer climates, there is more water that evaporates from the ocean (and subsequently falls as snow on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps) than there is water that flows to the seas from melting glaciers. (17)
Since the 1970s, the glaciers of the Arctic, Greenland, and the Antarctic have ceased to retreat, and have started to grow. On January 18, 2002, the journal Science published the results of satellite-borne radar and ice core studies performed by scientists from CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Santa Cruz. These results indicate that the Antarctic ice flow has been slowed, and sometimes even stopped, and that this has resulted in the thickening of the continental glacier at a rate of 26.8 billion tons a year. (25)
In 1999, a Polish Academy of Sciences paper was prepared as a source material for a report titled "Forecast of the Defense Conditions for the Republic of Poland in 2001-2020." The paper implied that the increase of atmospheric precipitation by 23% in Poland, which was presumed to be caused by global warming, would be detrimental. (Imagine stating this in a country where 38% of the area suffers from permanent surface water deficit!) The same paper also deemed an extension of the vegetation period by 60 to 120 days as a disaster. Truly, a possibility of doubling the crop rotation, or even prolonging by four months the harvest of radishes, makes for a horrific vision in the minds of the authors of this paper.
Newspapers continuously write about the increasing frequency and power of the storms. The facts, however, speak otherwise. I cite here only some few data from Poland, but there are plenty of data from all over the world. In Cracow, in 1896-1995, the number of storms with hail and precipitation exceeding 20 millimeters has decreased continuously, and after 1930, the number of all storms decreased. (26) In 1813 to 1994, the frequency and magnitude of floods of Vistula River in Cracow not only did not increase but, since 1940, have significantly decreased. (27) Also, measurements in the Kolobrzeg Baltic Sea harbor indicate that the number of gales has not increased between 1901 and 1990. (28) Similar observations apply to the 20th Century hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean (See Mean Annual Maximum Wind Speed In Atlantic Hurricanes,) and worldwide.