NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased
Greenland’s Riviera – their green southwest. Will another Maunder minimum
grip the region in cages of ice again, or will bells ring in the portside squares,
as they did in the 1300’s before that cooling came, and ships sailed the fiords?
(Source: NASA)
Excerpt:
Washington Post correspondant Juliet Eilperin, in her 12-26-08 report entitled “New climate change estimates more pessimistic,” dutifully surveys the latest bleak findings of the climate change community. Her primary source is a recently released survey comissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program – expanding on the findings of the 2007 4th IPPC Report on Climate Change. Apparently this “new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.” One of Eilperin’s primary examples of alarming new data is reported as follows:
“In one of the reports most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as 4 feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.”
Three years ago what NASA quantified as an alarming loss of annual ice loss from Greenland was easily demonstrated at that time to be an insignificant loss, and today NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased since then.
http://ecoworld.com/blog/2008/12/26/pessimistic-reporting-optimistic-data/
The link says that even with the higher value of 40 cu. mi./yr, it gives a rise of 2 inches per century. Isn’t that about half of what the Royal Navy has observed for the last two hundred years?
So much for my dreams of oceanfront property in Colorado.
Hey, if it bleeds it leads. If the guy was reporting that the ice loss was no big deal, the article would never see print, so he reports impending disaster. Simple enough concept.
All these sea level claims are stupid.
Ask this Eilperin bimbo to put her money where her big mouth is.
€1000 ($1400) annual average sea levels will not rise more than 2.5 cm in the next 5 years (i.e. 50 cm in 100 years).
Heck,
Ramstorf says 7 cm in the 5 years,
Gore says 30cm in the next 5 years! (LOL!)
It ought to be a sure thing for these alarmists!
Fact is: you won’t find one single scientist, no matter how alarmist, who will bet money on his/her alarmist drivel.
C’mon Eilperin! Let’s bet on it!
Let’s write up a contract for an official bet and distribute it to the alarmists.
You aint gonna find one who will sign it.
Awhile back I offered the bet to Gavin and his other big-mouth colleagues – not a single one even dared to negotiate it. Those blowhards wouldn’t touch their own projections with a 10 foot pole!
What planet do these people live on? Have not the latest satellite measurements shown sea levels not rising, ocean temperature not increasing? Where is the warming, where is the water from the melted ice? Oh, right, it is increased water vapor causing more precipitation, except water content of the atmosphere has gone down. Sounds like a bunch of desk jockeys who need to get a real life, and some honest scepticism. They certainly are not scientists.
Atmosperic H2O http://i39.tinypic.com/2j31onm.jpg
Sea Level: http://i39.tinypic.com/2u4q13o.jpg
Just this morning saw this link, which is of interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
Pierre,
I didn’t know that you had offered this wager to anyone. I find it hilarious that the alarmists would not bet a paltry 1400 bucks on their own projections!
Mike
Odd.
If temperature change continues to accelerate as it has the past ten years, by the year 2100, Hell (well, every Great Lake, the Salton Sea, Dead Sea, Great Salt Lake, and the English Channel at least) will have frozen over and the IPCC would STILL be predicting that glaciers in Greenland would begin melting at ever-increasing rates.
Do the writers (the reviewers ?) even look at data any more?
A “scientist” in NZ recently claimed that Koala bears may be endangered in NZ because ecalyptus trees will be harmed by increasing CO2 – thus, the bears will be killed on the ground when they leave one (dead) tree to get the next (dying ?) tree as they escape starvation. Well, http://www.co2science.com has 4 research articles alone that sow ecalyptus trees growing as much as 26% FASTER with increasing CO2.
Do the AGW extremists even read their own subject’s basic research reports?
Are there any more vacancies at the rubber room hotel for this poor self absorbed fruit cake?
Mike Bryant,
That’s how I shut em up at parties, or whereever.
They all like to pontificate about AGW and SLR etc…until, that is, you ask them to put money down. Often they say they have to think about it, go home a check real data, and then you never hear from them again.
A lot of money could be made here. Enough people are totally brainwashed and convinced, so it should be possible to get a few thousand suckers to bet.
And what the heck,
I just e-mailed the following to MS EILPERIN:
———
Dear Ms Eilperin,
– Al Gore says: 20 ft sea level rise in about 100 years (i.e. 12 inches every 5 years).
– Prof Stefan Ramstorf of the Potsdamer Institute in Germany says: 4ft 8in by 2100. (i.e. 2.5 inches every 5 years).
I say that the average annual sea level will not increase more than 1.25 inches in the next 5 years. Far below what you and the two above mentioned gentlemen are warning.
So, being the generous guy I am, I’m asking you to bet $1,500.00. If the average sea level is more than 1.25″ higher in 5 years (2013) than it is in 2008, then I’ll pay you $1500. If it is less, then you pay me $1500.
What are you waiting for? The overwhelming consensus says you will win the bet!
———————-
Anyone think she’ll respond?
Bet she doesn’t.
2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
“…on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. “…on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.
“First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.”
“Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.”
“Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.”
Pierre Gosselin ,
I will add my €1000 to it.
It’s part of the “psicological thing” that an alarmist does not relay his believes to himself, does not create a straight line between what his/her believes are and personal life — It’s all a “conceptual thing” that should not be brought to themselves personally but be thrown at everybody else. Obviously on principle that it will not affect them.
Doing what you did is, and always will, be the only way to test an alarmist believes. — The contract idea is just great.
I find it proof of the AGWers’ hypocrisy and lack of credibility how seldom — as in not once, so far as I can tell — any of them mention the all-time record Antarctic sea ice extent of 2007. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
Granted, the 1979-2000 mean is meaningless, pretty much, but it is what’s used, and 2007 is clearly the maximum sea ice extent in the satellite era. How come these climate experts get to decide that the record minimum of 2007 in the Arctic is significant but the record maximum in the Antarctic is so insignificant as not to merit a mention?
You can tell people who don’t follow these things the way those of us on this site do that Antarctica hit its record maximum sea ice extent in 2007, and they look at you like you are out of your mind. They would have heard about it, if it were true — right? Right?
Ummm, wrong!!
Meanwhile, we are sitting within a hair’s breadth of the zero-anomaly line for global sea ice extent. Further proof of the sudden new warming bringing about the end of time any second now. OK, ten more seconds. Come on, ten more! Just give me a few more seconds. And now, the end of time….
(Ten more seconds.)
Robert Cook PE
While I am in complete agreement that AGW is a bunch of hooey in deference to my antipodean friends I must point out that Koala’s don’t live in New Zealand, they’re native to Australia. That they are Australian doesn’t hurt your point that they’re not endangered by AGW it just gets the country right.
The Alarmists just seem to bounce all over the place. First it was summer heat waves and mild winters (winters were forecasted to be snow free by 2025 for most of NAmerica); then it was Tropical Cyclones. For the last 15 months the melting Artic and Antartic was all the rage. For half a decade, the Alarmists have been in the weather forecasting business. They’ve used every seasonal and monthly climatological extreme to thier benefit. It is incrediable how quickly they can churn out thier “studies” of doom. Hansen’s tipping points are just around the corner. NOAA can’t even forecast the weather 1 month out, or a predict a major change in ENSO but they can say with a straight face what our global climate will be 50 years out.
The Alarmists, stung by the recent neutral to a slightly cooling globe, have reverted to predictions of doom 100 years out. Just 2 years ago Hansen set they year of 2017 as the point of no return. Once again they wax ecstatically about hydrates, methane, blah, blah, blah. In the mean time people are hit with huge heating bills, life threatening cold and snow.
Robert A. Cook, and Retired Engineer,
As an engineer myself (chemical), something seems wrong in the numbers given. I calculated a 40 cubic mile per year addition to the Earth’s oceans should result in a sea level rise of 3.6 inches after 100 years. Data input is Earth diameter 7926 miles, and ocean percent of surface area is 70.7 percent.
Yet, the link says 2 inches per century at 40 cubic miles per year melt.
What do you think? Something is not right!
Pierre,
I’ll bet $1,500 that Ms Eilperin won’t take your bet….
😀
GS
I once participated in a decision analysis to determine which studies on a project would give the most info for the cost. As part of this analysis, and as an introduction to the process of decision analysis, the analyst ask all the scientists involved to provide a range of values for a parameter that they were 90% sure would include the actual value of the parameter after more studies. While this parameter had been investigated, there was still doubt on the actual value. After each member the group had all provided a range, the analyst reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a $100 bill. He then ask how many of the group would bet $900 against his $100 (as they had indicated that they were 90% confident) that the actual value fell within their predicted range. The vast majority of the group wanted to increase their ranges.
If the climate scientists and Al Gore are as sure as they claim, they should not only be willing to cover bets, they should be willing to give odds.
Are NASA changing their tune?
The last NASA information I have stated that “In Antarctica there had been a 1% rise in snow and ice for each decade over the past 30 years”
Is this new information talking about sea ice or the total snow and ice down in Antarctica?
Roger:
Because the oceans are not surrounded by cliffs, increases in ocean water volume do not only go to sea level rise, but also to increasing the surface area coverage. Did you allow for this?
Re 2 or 3.6 inches/century
48 cubic miles is exactly 200 km^3 (suspiciously round figure that)
Density of ice at zero centigrade 0.9167
Density of seawater (average) 1.03
So 200 km^3 ice makes 178 km^3 seawater
Area of the Worlds oceans 360.7 x 10^6 sq km
Sealevel rise per year 178/360.7 x 10 to minus 6 kilometers = 0.49 mm
Sealevel rise over 100 years = 49 millimeters = 1.93 inches.
Actually this whole thing is a joke. You simply cannot measure such a small change in the Greenland and Antarctic ice. Yes, one can measure the altitude of the top of the glaciers to within a few millimeters from satellites, but how do you measure the bottom? Because for such small changes the eustatic changes of the ground under the ice become important. Remember that areas that were ice-covered at the end of the last glaciatian 10,000 years ago are still rising up to 1 mm per year. Nobody knows for sure whether the ground under the Antarctic and Greenland ice-caps is rising or sinking. Most likely both depending on how the ice-thickness has evolved during past millenia. Notice that 200 km^3 spread out over Greenland and Antarctica means a thickness change of about 1.25 centimeters (1/2 inch) of an average ice thickness of about 2 kilometers.
Correction, land rise from the last glaciation is up to 1 centimeter a year.
Roger Sowell (09:02:05) :
You are probably right, I just reported what was printed without checking. A cubic mile of ice would be about 10% less in volume when melted, so perhaps 3.3 inches.
Still no beach front property.
Roger Sowell (09:02:05) :
Could it be that 40 cu miles of ice/snow doesn’t equal 40 cu miles of water?
As an engineer myself (chemical), something seems wrong in the numbers given. I calculated a 40 cubic mile per year addition to the Earth’s oceans should result in a sea level rise of 3.6 inches after 100 years. Data input is Earth diameter 7926 miles, and ocean percent of surface area is 70.7 percent.
Yet, the link says 2 inches per century at 40 cubic miles per year melt.
What do you think? Something is not right!
I get ~1.8 inches.
First, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all here. I just dropped a donation to Anthony in appreciation for the entertaining 2008 year at WUWT. Keep up the great work!
Here are some numbers to keep in mind whenever this type of ‘news’ drivel comes out. You will note the lack of context in these stories.
48 cubic miles per year is 200 cubic km per year of melt.
Polar caps contain 33 million cubic km of ice.
Ocean contains 1300 million cubic km of water.
Glaciers contain 0.2 million cubic km of ice.
Lakes contain 0.1 million cubic km of water.
Annual precipitation worldwide is estimated at 0.2 million cubic km.
I consider it a remarkable claim that satellite measurements of gravitational anomalies over the poles are accurate enough to even see a change in ice of 200 cubic km per year, since this is roughly a 6 ppm change in ice volume. Never mind that the typical error in these measurements is on the same size (5 – 10 ppm). Indeed, the number 33 million cubic km is not even agreed upon! I predict several ‘surprising’, ‘unexpected’ discoveries by cryosphere specialists in the coming years as we learn more about how ancient ice and the geological structures beneath it behaves.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. High CO2 levels during the Cretaceous did this once before. After millions of years, the heat build up caused all the methane hydrates to melt in a matter of months. Then, one day, a dinosaur scrapped a claw against a piece of flint and the whole planet lit up. That would not have been too bad, but the intense heat set off the methane in the gut of plant eating dinosaurs. All of a sudden you then had the skies filled with flying, multi-ton herbivores. That explains the mass extinction of that time.
So, we now know our own fate. Given enough CO2 and enough time and we will all be done in by rocketcows.
Re: sea rise calculation
TTY’s calculation is probably the most accurate – my 1.8 figure used very rough estimates.
‘Guy Skoy (09:29:59) :
Pierre,
I’ll bet $1,500 that Ms Eilperin won’t take your bet…’
another sucker bet….
TTY, Retired Engineer, and others,
Thanks for the responses, and the civility! (not so common on other sites…)
No, I did not account for additional ocean area due to rising water. The gross numbers do not justify such fine-tuning, IMHO. Using a global diameter of around 8000 miles, and a rough value for water coverage of the surface of 70 percent or so, the numbers would not be that different unless an awful lot of land gets submerged.
But, getting a different number by a factor of 2 is a big difference. Even allowing for ice shrinkage as it melts into water (the roughly 10 percent given above) will not account for the numbers in the article.
My point? It is seldom a good idea to believe anything reported in the news. The list of factual errors that I have spotted over the years is rather long.
Also, TTY, it appears you are using planar geometry to get the 1.93 inches. I used spherical geometry.
On a related topic, has anyone seen (anywhere published) the contribution to sea level rise from water formed from combustion of hydrocarbons? Taking into account coal, oil, natural gas, and wood, there has been roughly 7 cubic miles of water created from such combustion in the past 100 years.
However, plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen during photosynthesis, thus somewhat decreasing the sea level. Does anyone know what the balance is between these two? My suspicion is that combustion creates more than plants destroy.
A little off topic – but I noticed one comment in this posting regarding SSTs so I thought I would add it:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Oh, just tell them that more CO2 means more photosynthesis which is an endothermic reaction and cools the planet.
Ms. Eillperin, and her cohorts, have only one mission: to convince everyone they are right, and therefore to promote their political agenda. Despite the FACT, that her story is direct contradiction with the observations means nothing. The motivation is the old technique: “A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”
This is not a case where rational discussion of science facts will change any minds as long as these people have control of the press, etc. This is purely a political battle, not a scientific one, unfortunately. Yes, reality will win out eventually, but my worry is that won’t occur until after all the political/economic damage is already done. At that point the AGW’ers won’t care because they will have accomplished what they set out to do.
Britain should brace itself for a New Year ‘big freeze’ as forecasters predict temperatures plunging to as low as -13C (8.6F). At least two weeks of widespread frosts are expected as a cold front sweeps in from Siberia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3999747/Britain-braces-itself-for-New-Year-big-freeze.html
Pierre Gosselin (07:50:47) :
Let’s write up a contract for an official bet and distribute it to the alarmists.
You aint gonna find one who will sign it.
Awhile back I offered the bet to Gavin and his other big-mouth colleagues – not a single one even dared to negotiate it. Those blowhards wouldn’t touch their own projections with a 10 foot pole!
A damning indictment indeed!
Personally I would love to see a high profile bet taken.
Steve Keohane (07:57:08) :
Atmosperic H2O http://i39.tinypic.com/2j31onm.jpg
Sea Level: http://i39.tinypic.com/2u4q13o.jpg
WRT the second graph – is that rate of increase of sea level on the vertical axis?
If so, that would indicate that the rate of increase in sea level has flatlined over the last two years and is possibly starting to trend down. A very inconvenient fact for the AGW Alarmists.
However the sign is still positive, and the sea level is still rising – just that the rising is decelerating.
Unless I’ve misunderstood the graph (possible) the statement “latest satellite measurements shown sea levels not rising” is somewhat hyperbolic.
Although I really get where you are coming from…
@tty (10:15:43) :
Thanks, somehow i was not sure about my claim of 400 km^3 of melted ice that would raise the average sealevel by 1 mm.
Robert A Cook PE (08:16:15) :
Odd.
…
Do the writers (the reviewers ?) even look at data any more?
…
Do the AGW extremists even read their own subject’s basic research reports?
If you work in a field where
(1) data is blithly manipulated to tease out “the man made global warming signal”
(2) data and methods are not routinely archived and published to allow for independent verification.
(3) the result of “man made global warming” is assumed prior to the research being conducted.
(4) data is trumped by the fictions of computer modelling.
(5) Alternative explanations (i.e. natural variation) for climatic change are not funded or researched.
and
(6) Non-consensus scientists are vilified, and if possible – denied employment.
There is nothing “Odd” about ignoring the data.
On Kangaroo Island in South Australia there are approx 3,000 (yes, thousand) ‘excess’ koalas that are in danger of being culled due to dwindling food supplies. They are breeding too fast to keep up with the gum trees rather than losing food through AGW.
This has been an extremely emotional discussion over here due to them not being able to be easily relocated as they are very particular about the type of gum leaves they will eat.
They are also often on the ground when they move between trees so this is not an increase in danger for them, regardless of why they are not still in their cosy tree forks, stoned out of their little brains on eucalyptus leaves.
The True Believers always hedge things, “could”, “up to”, “may”.
No money on that bet. If things turn out different, well, the model ‘predicted’ it, especially after a slight adjustment.
Oceans: about 131,000,000 sq mi
40 cu mi melt x 100 years, about 253,000,000 inches / sq mi
Got off my duff and came up with 1.9 inches like tty, not allowing for ice to water shrinkage. Sphere and planer will come very close for a thin layer. Seems to me that this is much less than what we have observed in the past 30 years.
They’ll need a lot more than this to scare folks properly.
Robert A Cook PE (08:16:15)
“A “scientist” in NZ recently claimed that Koala bears may be endangered in NZ because ecalyptus trees will be harmed by increasing CO2”
pablo an ex pat (08:49:40)
“While I am in complete agreement that AGW is a bunch of hooey in deference to my antipodean friends I must point out that Koala’s don’t live in New Zealand, they’re native to Australia.”
While we are about educating our antipodean friends, perhaps it’s worth pointing out that the Koala is a marsupial and not a bear.
Sorry to be repetitious (I posted this on another thread) but there IS one industry that is betting Billions of Dollars on the next decade’s climate. The Seed Companies. Any ideas on how they’re betting?
>€1000 ($1400) annual average sea levels will not rise more than 2.5 cm in the next 5 years (i.e. 50 cm in 100 years).
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm. A rate of 2.5cm in 5 years would be huge and nearly double the current rate of rise.
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
David you said:
“I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm. A rate of 2.5cm in 5 years would be huge and nearly double the current rate of rise.”
David did you even read the NASA numbers?
To my mind there is only one thing left to the AGW believers and that is the melting of the Arctic sea ice.
You can forget about urban heating, satellite measurements of the troposphere, different sources of graphs, temperature gauge positioning, record snowfalls and the number of Koala and Polar bears – what happens to the Arctic sea ice next summer will be the key.
I would like to know why the Arctic ice extent has suddenly dipped down:
http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
But so far, no-one has given me a satisfactory answer. In the last topic on ‘Blizzards in India’ I asked the question about volcanic activity affecting ice extent but this is also unanswered.
If there has indeed been a decade of global cooling, the oceans eventually must reflect this followed by the Arctic ice extent. If summer ice melt continues to increase then global warming is continuing but no loss of argument for the pro CO2 lobby. But if the Arctic summer ice increases from now on then Al Gore is doomed.
david (13:04:42) :
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
If I was a betting man (and I’m not) I would offer a bet that the UK will be facing rolling blackouts by 2013.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article5404061.ece
Continued lack of investment in effective baseload power has very real consequences and will happen far sooner than a 50cm rise in sea levels.
Especially given that sea level rise appears to be flatlining or even decelerating. http://i39.tinypic.com/2u4q13o.jpg
kum,
Can you give more details? I think this kind of information is very significant in view of the misinformation from the IPCC etc. The seed companies have a vested interest in getting it right while Big Green has a vested interest in alarmism.
For example, for those who are uncertain about whether it is correct that life will be unsustainable when CO2 exceeds 450 ppm, but don’t feel confident about delving into the science themselves, could look at this site:
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
This is from the Ontario govt and recommends CO2 supplementation in greenhouse production to around 1000 ppm. If that’s wrong, and the 450 ppm is right, all greehouse production in Ontario will have stopped. If that has happened, wouldn’t someone have noticed?
>David did you even read the NASA numbers?
Stern has previously provided estimates of people at risk.
How about that collective underwriting of the risks faced by even just one little country. It’s easy being a “sceptic” when there are no consequences for being wrong.
davidc,
I don’t have a clue what they’re doing. I suspect there’s some proprietary knowledge involved. I was kind of hoping that an employee of one of these companies with some knowledge along these lines might respond in some general way.
I know what my “suspicions” are, though.
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm.
This assumes we sit around, wringing our hands, doing nothing. Holland, the country most affected by sea level rises in history, is also one of densest populated countries. In fact the highest population densities are in areas close to or below sea level. Empirically you would conclude increasing sea levels increases populations and not displaces them.
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
What you propose is not a bet. A bet, for example, would be I’d pay for sea defences should they prove necessary in the next 100 years, but you would pay me the amount the sea defences would cost should they not prove necessary.
I’d take that bet for the Maldives, commonly cited as the best example of a state that will suffer from sea level rises, because I know that measurements show sea levels have actually decreased in the Maldives.
How much glacial ice is there locked up in Greenland and the Antarctic and how much is lost to melt each year? Well, if the figures for these are as good as the figures for ice extent in the Arctic, it’s anybody’s guess. Just look at the differences in three recent posted numbers for Arctic ice extent:
NSIDC – 25 Dec – just shy of 13 million km²
IARC-JAXA – 27 Dec (initial reading) – 12.075 million km²
NANSEN – 26 Dec – approx 11.8 million km²
A million km² is quite a ballpark figure to play with for something that’s so much easier to calculate than the measurements of glacial ice.
I would like to know why the Arctic ice extent has suddenly dipped down: But so far, no-one has given me a satisfactory answer.
The recent/current outbreaks of very cold Arctic air in N America, Europe and Asia means warmer (relatively speaking) air has been drawn into the Arctic to replace it.
The graph you show is anomalies, and the dip at this time of year means ice is forming less rapidly than usual due the warmer air.
It’s weather.
Roger Sowell mentioned using spherical geometry.
Scott Gibson mentioned not all sea is bounded by cliffs.
Intrigued by these comments, I decided to check how much _extra_ water the oceans will gain, adding 5cm to the radius of the globe. The surface of a sphere is calculated as 4*pi*r^2, so there should be some effect.
It appears the ocean surface will grow with 5.67 square km. For 5cm, this would have a content of 0.000142 cubic km, or 141,865.56 cubic meters. That’s a lot of water, but not significant at all…
Inputs used:
r = 6,378.137 km
water area = 70.8 %
Cheers,
Remmitt
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm. A rate of 2.5cm in 5 years would be huge and nearly double the current rate of rise.
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
*snort* David, as a person that lives near the coast in Florida, I’m not losing any sleep over “global warming”. I keep seeing exaggerated claims about how the earth is warming and the sky is falling. The earth warms and cools without any input from me or what I choose to drive.
Did you know that James Oglethorpe found thriving (abandoned) orange groves on Amelia Island (NE coast of Florida) in 1735? It is too cold for orange groves on Amelia Island now. The Spanish settlement on the island was wiped out by the British in 1702, so those orange trees had been on their own since then.
A 1900 book on http://books.google.com/books?id=OhcDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA577&lpg=PA577&dq=history+of+orange+propagation+in+the+USA&source=web&ots=qSfKSDPebd&sig=A4sOafdRtxJnpFG8VbK3UXLZTIo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPR1,M1The Fruit Trees of America commented on the excellence of the oranges from the St. Augustine groves.
An 1850 school history book about the state of Georgia commented on the citrus fruits produced by Georgia (oranges, lemons, and limes) and that an acre of orange trees produced 6,000 to 8,000 oranges. How many acres of citrus fruits are under cultivation in Georgia today?
William Bartram wrote about the widespread orange groves throughout NE Florida (including on Amelia Island) during his travels in 1773-1774. Some of the trees were reportedly 150 years old. The NE Florida citrus boom was wiped out by the 1895 freeze.
The Jacksonville Naval Air Station is built on a former plantation that used to have orange groves.
In my lifetime, the citrus belt has retreated from just south of Jacksonville to central Florida.
I find that most people that harangue others about global warming have an abysmal ignorance of past climate conditions.
KOC,
You say:
“If summer ice melt continues to increase then global warming is continuing”
Ice melt is more complicated than that. It doesn’t just depend on “global temperature” whatever that might mean. If you look at the graph on your link you’ll see it defines ice extent as “Area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice”. So “ice melt”, if that means a reduction in extent, will depend on what happens in the ocean at the margins. For example, a change in wind direction or oceans currents (not necessarily warm) which carries ice away from an area (say, from 16% sea ice to 14% sea ice) becomes a reduction in “ice extent” but has nothing to do with melting. It seems to me that the rapid change seen on the graph (if not an “adjustment”)probably reflects an event of this kind. If it reflects “global temperature” it seems that the world stopped cooling for about 2 weeks, then resumed at its pevious rate.
Oh, snap. My html link is going to roger the thread. Please feel free to remove it!
On another site, they talk about the loss of corn that the US produces to feed the world. They talk about the over-wintering of ear worms, yet they never think that the corn could be grown further north (i.e. southern Canada) and that the wheat grown there would move further north as well, meaning no loss of corn or wheat with the potential for more year round crops in the mid-US, which means a net increase in food for the world. Something that will be drastically necessary to feed the worlds ever growing population.
davidc (13:59:05) :
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
This is from the Ontario govt and recommends CO2 supplementation in greenhouse production to around 1000 ppm. If that’s wrong, and the 450 ppm is right, all greehouse production in Ontario will have stopped. If that has happened, wouldn’t someone have noticed?
Must be a misprint – surely they recommend 100 PPM, not 1000 PPM.
At 1000 PPM all the polar bears in the green houses will have drowned…
😉
dear mr watts and friends:
have you read “The Guardian” lately?? they have written this article: “Nasa hunts for its rubber ducks” (22/XII/08). you have post some time ago an article about the “90 bathtub toys” and a robotic probe with a GDS transmitter… apparently they can not find them…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/22/nasa-arctic-icecap-climate-change
¡¡¡FELIZ NAVIDAD Y PRÓSPERO AÑO NUEVO PARA TODOS!!!
“If summer ice melt continues to increase then global warming is continuing but no loss of argument for the pro CO2 lobby. But if the Arctic summer ice increases from now on then Al Gore is doomed.”
Keep in mind that, during summer, albedo is very much a factor given the increased soot over the arctic these days. See: http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/04/a_simple_experiment_1.html
Mike
David
50 cm in a hundred years is not going to displace anybody. About the only people for which this might be a problem is living either in the Ganges delta or on atolls.
Have you ever wondered why deltas and atolls are so close to sea level, rather a strange coincidence eh? The reason is that deltas automatically form at sea level, so for a slow rise like this, they will automatically build up. It’s the same with corals, they grow up to just below sea level, and no further, and they will track slow sea-level changes.
Now if you cut off the supply of sediment to a delta (like for example the Nile) or kill off the corals, then the sea will destroy the delta/atoll fairly quickly. This has absolutely nothing to do with sea level changes, but it is a universal human weakness to try to blame others for your own stupidity.
Roger Sowell said:
“However, plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen during photosynthesis, thus somewhat decreasing the sea level.”
I may have missed your point but during photosynthesis plants take water and carbon dioxide plus solar energy to produce oxygen and carbohydrates – not hydrogen and oxygen. Of these carbohydrates, some are used to generate day by day energy within the cells (the process of respiration where carbohydrate plus oxygen reverts to carbon dioxide and water plus plant-usable energy). Some is used to produce annual growth which rots and eventually goes to carbon dioxide plus water plus energy for fungi etc. The remainder goes into long term growth (i.e. wood) made up of carbohydrates.
Photosynthesis and wood production will, in effect, sequester some water for a period but I cannot see this being a large effect. Fire will speed up the cycle of returning the carbon dioxide and water to the system.
Have I missed your point?
Hi Martin G Atkins,
I know that the Koala is not a bear, hence I didn’t use the bear suffix after its name. The bear suffix is in common use so I don’t see what difference it makes to the story line.
The facts are that they’re not endangered by AGW, period. Just like the Polar bears aren’t but they’re a convenient cuddly animal to use as a poster child in an attempt to garner public support for AGW.
I have long suspected that if Polar Bears lived in a habitat suitable for the production of Palm Oil that the Greens would be mute as to their fate. As they have been until very very recently on the Orangutans, Tigers and Pygmy Elephants resident in Indonesia.
The Indonesian forests have been undergoing massive clearance to provide land for Palm Oil plantations. This self defeating tactic promoted by the EU as a way to reduce CO2 emissions from tail pipes in Western Europe releases huge amounts of CO2 as the underlying peat layers are burnt. Indonesia has gone from nowhere to become the Worlds fifth largest producer of CO2.
I suspect most Antipodeans also know that the Koala is not a bear as by definition Antipodeans are mostly Australians and New Zealanders. Apologies to other countries Down Under if I haven’t acknowledged you.
Remmitt
It’s not the increased surface of the ocean due to the larger diameter that might be significant, but rather the fact that for e. g. a 5 cm sea-level rise perhaps a 10 cm wide strip of land on average would be covered by sea, to an average depth of 2.5 cm. This *might* be significant (and if so decrease the total rise slightly), but to calculate it you would have to know the total length of coastline in the World, and the average slope.
graeme,
The Ontario govt also has a warning somewhere (sorry, no link) about keeping polar bears in the greenhouses. I was wondering why, but now you’ve cleared it up. Thanks.
Aussie John:
Couldn’t they move those koalas to West Australia? They once lived there you know, and a small group that has been introduced at Yanchep north of Perth seems to be doing OK, so apparently the can eat the eucalypt leaves there.
swampie- Excellent post on Florida citrus historical ranges!
I had read similar things in a state horticultural report I stumbled across a few years ago. I live near Tampa, amidst former orange groves that have since been covered with suburbs. The report indicated that orange groves made two significant shifts south, once in the 1980’s and another in the 1990’s as hard frosts wiped out groves in more northern locations. Over the course of a century, the report indicated that the northernmost reach of profitable citrus groves slowly moved from southern Georgia to their present location at or slightly south of Tampa, in agreement with your comments.
I not read not all comments here.
I just what to say that the Planet earth is a great living sistem well, what you whan´t if we treat him bad, what you think will happen?
I think people will only open they´re eyes when the disasters appears, weel no body see.
I´m from Portugal i notice about 7 years all the weather´s changes here. The winter is different and the summer is diferent to, very different. Some people say that is normal how about Current Arctic ???????
we hope all the people in the world start to open their eyes.
Peace for all
Nuno (15:53:53) :
we hope all the people in the world start to open their eyes.
Peace for all
It must be hard to post in a different language – so thanks for the effort.
I would kindly suggest that you first focus on several things.
1. The quality of the instruments and data used to describe the increase in surface temperatures. A good start is here. http://www.surfacestations.org/ What you will note is that the instruments are for the most part very poorly sited.
2. The absence of empirical science and the substitution of political methods for scientific ones. The best exposition of this is at http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
So, before becoming alarmed by what is printed in the Mass Media, and on AGW advocacy blogs such as Real Climate. Make sure that the data the is at the foundation of AGW is valid, and the processes for interpreting that data is also valid.
3. Beware of the trap of pseudo-science. The IPCC currently claim that Climate Change is in the warming direction – hence a continued cold period will falsify their position. This position is beginning to morph into Climate Change is in the warming/cooling “Chaos” direction which covers all events and explains none.
No one posting on this blog wants to harm the planet or it’s living systems.
Keep digging below the surface, and question what those in a position of Authority are telling you.
Alan B (15:17:31) :
“I may have missed your point” … and follows with an excellent summary of photosynthesis.
My point is that plants consume water by splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. You are correct that the hydrogen then combines with carbon derived from splitting CO2.
What I don’t know (among thousands of things!) is whether this water consumption is accounted for in the climate models. Perhaps the amount of water consumed is trivial?
I also do not know much about the rotting and decay chemistry of dead plants and trees. I have read that some methane is produced, but again, how much of this is incorporated in the climate models?
Koalas are fussy feeders and will only eat the leaves from a specific type of Eucalyptus. There are relocation progams for many types of native Australian animals including the Koala. Unfortunately these animals have a nasty habit of quickly overbreeding and overpopulating the areas they are relocated too.
Koalas are also suffering from Chlamydia which has been severely affecting their populations. Tasmanian Devils have been suffering from some sort of face tumor and there is a fear that they are in danger of going extinct.
Animals (like AGW ) are an emotional issue and science and logic are thrown out the window where emotion lies.
Journalists and correspondents such as the article above never need to rely on science, maths and logic – only emotion (fear)
Nuno:
Are you from the Arctic as well?
(14:03:43) :
>David did you even read the NASA numbers?
Stern has previously provided estimates of people at risk.
How about that collective underwriting of the risks faced by even just one little country. It’s easy being a “sceptic” when there are no consequences for being wrong.
It’s even easier to be an AGW advocate when the response to skepticism is ad hominum “arguments,” snickers, etc., but never a clear response to the substance of the “skeptics” question.
I’ve read a number of your posts, and noted your confusion about skeptics. They, we, are following a practice called “questioning the data.”
Perhaps if you’d ever received any real training in the sciences, you’d have recognized the process.
With regard to “people at risk,” I think I can speak for many of us in stating that we are more concerned with the certainty of damage to human life if the AGW hoax continues to gain political power.
>David
>
>50 cm in a hundred years is not going to displace anybody. About the only people for which this might be a problem is living either in the Ganges delta or on atolls.
Of which you are not one. Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala and northern Vanuatu. Can we prove these were due to sea level rise – of course not – but with 20-30cm of rise so far and atolls which are like table tops it’s certainly played a part.
The consequences if the world backs your non-peer reviewed ideologically driven rambles and weather wiggle watching and you are wrong will be massive. And the best odds I see here are for 50:50 on a massive 5mm/year sea level rise…
Why not commit to providing insurance for people who run the risk of displacement?
“Keep in mind that, during summer, albedo is very much a factor given the increased soot over the arctic these days.”
Yeah, thanks for that pointer Mike, here’s another ref I found after googling:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/HansenNazarenko2004.pdf
from way back (relatively speaking) in 2003. And it is something that I would believe – even though James Hansen could be Public Enemy no 1 on this website.
Seems then that renewable energy may be a good thing as soot may be a bigger villain in the piece than CO2 including to our health. That is unless we can clean up global power stations to make them soot free to the atmosphere.
david:
I doubt it. Got a cite for that?
Vanuatu and Tuvalu are only two feet above sea level. If there was any danger of their becoming inundated by a rising sea level, Al Gore would be hyperventilating in front of every camera and microphone, and the UN/IPCC would be screaming “Consensus!!” The fact that they don’t mention those islands tells you all you need to know.
On another site, they talk about the loss of corn that the US produces to feed the world. …, yet they never think that the corn could be grown further north (i.e. southern Canada)
Corn is grown in large quantities in southern Canada.
And while we think of corn as a mid-western crop, New York is the second highest corn producing US state.
David: “Why not commit to providing insurance for people who run the risk of displacement?”
When all else fails, whip out the “Precautionary Principle”.
How much are the premiums on this insurance?
Smokey is right. One of Al Gore’s many exposed errors was his claim that Tuvalu people had already been evacuated to NZ. Completely false.
King of Cool (17:27:32) :
‘Seems then that renewable energy may be a good thing as soot may be a bigger villain in the piece than CO2 including to our health. That is unless we can clean up global power stations to make them soot free to the atmosphere.’
Why not clean up cool fired power plants and remove the soot before it gets into the atmosphere? It would cost less
Soot is a real eviromental issue, not CO2
The way coal is mined is an eviromental isssue, not CO2.
The toxic gases from exhaust pipe is an evriomental issue, not CO2
If you are using CO2 as ameam to justify the end then you are no better than Enron, IGA and now we can add Mr. Madoff to the list.
40 cubic miles a year of ice?
It is estimated that 600 to 1000 cubic km of ground water is removed, and added to the hydrosphere, by human use, EVERY YEAR.
My calculation is that the use of ground water could add 1-2 mm/year to ocean level rise.
David,
Why don’t the people on those islands move uphill a little? That is what happened on Vanuatu when land subsidence made their previous home untenable. David, when my house flooded the third time I moved. It is called adaptation. Everyone does it including the people of Vanuatu. If you don’t learn what things are within your sphere of influence, you will have a very frustrating life.
ameam = a means
a 5cm increase in earth radius = a volume increase of ~25,500 cubic kilometers
4*pi*6378.137*6378.137(surface area)*.00005(5cm) = 25560.39 km^3
That equals 6240 square miles using 70% as the ocean surface area
you get 4368 cubic miles
over a century that would be 43.68 cubic miles a year
a 5cm increase in earth radius = a volume increase of ~25,500 cubic kilometers
4*pi*6378.137*6378.137(surface area)*.00005(5cm) = 25560.39 km^3
That equals 6240 cubic (correction) miles using 70% as the ocean surface area
you get 4368 cubic miles
over a century that would be 43.68 cubic miles a year
Florida was once mostly underwater, and probably will be so again sometime in the future. Sea levels rise and fall, shorelines change, erosion takes place followed by replenishment followed by erosion. Those species that adapt survive, those that don’t , don’t. It is more logical to spend time and money adapting than trying to prevent. We know how to adapt, we certainly don’t know how to prevent or, more importantly, what to prevent.
As I read hrough this thread my mind keeps going back to:
7F warmer… and it was a very prosperous time for mankind.
“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If (we) go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”
CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory ‘Arrogant’
Network’s second meteorologist to challenge notion man can alter climate.
By Jeff Poor
david:
Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala [sic] and northern Vanuatu.
People are not being ‘displaced from Tuvalu because the ocean is rising. Tuvalu is sinking (and yes, there is a difference) due to excavation on the island
Australia’s National Tidal Facility (NTF) has had a monitoring station in Tuvalu since 1993 and over the last nine years, the sea level around Tuvalu had risen an average of 0.9 millimeters per year — that’s 0.03 inches per year or a grand total of .27 inches since 1993.
http://www.skepticism.net/articles/2002/tuvalu-is-not-sinking/
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=1
What’s happening is that the leadership of Tuvalu is jumping on the ‘Help us we’re sinking due to global warming’ bandwagon in hopes of gaining aid money from surrounding countries.
Kum
The seed companies are testing and developing new lines of corn,soybean and wheat all the time. Which ever variety does the best in field trials is what we farmers plant. A simple answer is that farmers will be planting varities that respond well to conditions in the previous 5 -7 years. Corn is a c-4 plant meaning it does best in warm weather and it responds to addotional CO2. The trend yield has been going up over the last several years because of improved farming techniques and improved varities.Monsanto is releasing new varities of soybeans with 7-10% improved yields. Better yields because of improved breeding techniques.
Weather during the growing season is the big concern. Will it be dry enought to plant the crop. Will it rain enough to grow the crop during the summer and finally will the harvest season be open to allow a timely harvest.
A simple answer crop yield is affected by the quality of the land it is grown on,Seed variety selection, Skill of the farmer and the level of inputs he is willing to use. Weather/climate is another factor.
One Missouri soybean producer is gettin soybean yields over 130 bu per acre by using improved techniques . The state average is 50 bu per acre.
Weather is just one of several factors affecting crop yields.
Smokey (18:03:30) :
Wikipedia says five meters (at the highest, I guess), and that the Maldives are lower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu
1.2 mm/year, and that rate is decreasing, IIRC.
This is amusing. One of the dings on Gore’s “Truth” by British courts is at
http://inel.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/context-context-context-ait-in-general-and-tuvalu-in-particular/
In a 2002 UN speech, the Governor General of Tuvalu claimed “Indeed our people are already migrating to escape, and are already suffering from the consequences of what world authorities on climate change have consistently been warning us. Only two weeks ago, a period when the weather was normal and calm and at low tide, unusually big waves suddenly crashed ashore and flooded most part of the capital island.”
Speaking of context-context-context, that page is actually a pro-Gore page.
At any rate, while there are evacuation plans or at least negotiations, I didn’t see anything about executed evacuations, especially not for accelerated sea level rise due to humans. It would be nice if people did a little more research before posting such claims.
david:
“Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala [sic] and northern Vanuatu.”
It is disheartening to see that so many people do not have the record right about Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Yes, there have been some problems with erosion from recent cyclones and salt water intrusion on Tuvalu. It seems that Japanese-owned pineapple plantations have extracted too much freshwater from the ground, causing an inflow of sea water and destruction of the underground freshwater reservoirs.
Also, mining has lowered the land surface levels and allowed high tides to swamp more land.
There are many scientists who are trying to provide education on the real problems on these islands, but MSM is apparently not intrested.
Here is one citation worth reading, (but others are also available):
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
david (14:03:43) :
Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala and northern Vanuatu. Can we prove these were due to sea level rise – of course not – but with 20-30cm of rise so far and atolls which are like table tops it’s certainly played a part.
One thing I’m certain of is that coral will continue compacting under pressure of human presence and use, and dissolve in sea water. The only way to protect atolls is to make sure the coral that build them stay alive to enlarge the atoll. Coral die after prolonged exposure out of sea water, so any atoll much higher than sea level was built up when seas were higher or had no human presence to compact them. If atolls are disappearing under water, that to me means there’s too much weight on the atoll, or the sea is returning to the levels that produced the top of the atoll.
You want to help those people living on the atolls? Help make them prosperous by not supporting carbon taxes and the like. Encourage cheap energy; don’t encourage expensive gas just so the “greener” alternatives become cost-effective. Then maybe they can afford to build a dike around their atoll or move elsewhere. Adaptation, not mitigation.
david:
Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala [sic] and northern Vanuatu.
Of course you are refering to some of the most geologically active areas in the world. There have been many mag 6+ events in that area in the last year alone.
Vanuatu is host to some of the world’s most active volcanoes. If any of these areas slip beneath the sea level it wont be due to any perceived rise in sea level by alleged AGW.
Australia’s maligned C.S.I.R.O. has been studying sea levels in Tuvalu for many years. They are careful to only quote level rise in the last few years in their AGW propaganda. If you get the whole study back to the late eighties early nineties you will see some surprises compared to todays levels.
to David:
On the issue of being cavalier: That is not the word that was used, but it probably does capture the essence how many of my opponents would have described me through the years. They said I was too “cavalier” about Y2K, but I did not waste any resources preparing for catastrophe, and I saw too many organization waste precious investment dollars on Y2K. They said I was too “cavalier” about the stodgy Californian electric utilities, but I maintained that the “reform” in deregulation / re-regulation was a recipe for soaring prices, shortages and manipulation. They said I was too “cavalier” about WMD in Iraq, but I feared the cure might be worse than the problem. (One thing on which I was not cavalier — I feared there would be big problems stemming from excessive loans in the subprime area – though I never saw problems this huge. However, I was called a racist and a bigot for being concerned about those loans.)
We must consider unintended consequences before we take “insurance” steps, and so much of what I see in the AGW movement suggests that we would waste money, harm the common people, and damage the environment with many – if not most – of AGW proposals.
Sure is an awful lot of Coronal Hole these days:
http://www.solen.info/solar/
Scroll down 3/4 of the way to the bottom and check out the latest Active Regions for Dec 28 SOHO/MDI.
Thank you, Paminator! I used to collect old Department of Agriculture Yearbooks from the late 1800s-early 1900s as well as old farming manuals from the local used bookstores before they cost a fortune! Now that so many of the old explorers’ books are now online, I like to browse their writings and see the area through their eyes, as it were. The shrinking of the Florida citrus area, however, is something that I have personally witnessed.(Disclaimer: Okay, I haven’t personally witnessed the freezes of 1865 and 1895).
Norm:
On another site, they talk about the loss of corn that the US produces to feed the world. They talk about the over-wintering of ear worms, yet they never think that the corn could be grown further north (i.e. southern Canada) and that the wheat grown there would move further north as well, meaning no loss of corn or wheat with the potential for more year round crops in the mid-US, which means a net increase in food for the world. Something that will be drastically necessary to feed the worlds ever growing population.
Good points all. Again, living in Florida, I have to point out that the warm states are a large producer of cold-weather crops even though the temperatures are far too hot in the summer to produce anything besides varieties of cow peas and okra. It’s simple. We don’t grow them in the summer. We grow ’em in the spring, fall, and/or winter, depending on our location in Florida (or Arizona, etc.)
From the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin for December 23, 2008 from the USDA:
In Arizona, cotton was 85 percent harvested and alfalfa harvest continued. Arizona’s producers were harvesting multiple vegetables and cantaloupe.
Florida’s warm, dry weather allowed for land preparations in potato and watermelon fields, and harvest of vegetables to meet holiday demands. Sugarcane harvest was ongoing and citrus was in fair
to good condition statewide, as frequent irrigation was
necessary due to the lack of precipitation. Florida’s citrus harvest was ahead of the previous year, and producers were fertilizing, cleaning groves, hedging, spraying for pests, and preparing for further harvest activities.
Tuvalunacy? Also worth reading:
http://inside.org.au/tuvalunacy-or-the-real-thing/
Stern has previously provided estimates of people at risk.
How about that collective underwriting of the risks faced by even just one little country. It’s easy being a “sceptic” when there are no consequences for being wrong.
Speaking of Stern, relative risks, underwriting, and comparative loss, you might want to consider the following:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/22/global_warming_mitigation_vs_adaptation/
While we are rightly bludgeoning the media for its complicity in hoodwinking society about the ‘global warming threat,’ let us take a moment to pause and remember this:
If the public ever really comes to understand and accept, regardless of the propaganda, that AGW is a farce, we will be witness to one of the largest breaks in trust between the public and the media, and between the public and the scientific community, that we have ever seen. If they ever come to such a realization, the impact will be Watergate-like. And in all reality, given what is at stake, and how the AGW crowd has been acting (i.e., with near complete duplicity) that is exactly how it should be. But the toll will be a high one to pay. The media, for all its faults, and science, for all of its faults as well, are two publicly recognizable modern institutions. That is to say, they do not have roots, like say the Church, back into antiquity or really much before the eighteenth or nineteenth century. They form a very important part of our society today, and what the damage to them from this scandal – for scandal it is – will be is unthinkable.
I hate to point out the obvious but NASA can do simple math and they’re obviously modeling that the sea level rise will accelerate.
If 0.2C warming produces 0.2 inch / decade rises in sea level and assuming a linear response to warming then by 2100 with +2C there should be a 2.0 inch / decade rise in sea level. on average that would be a 1.0 inch / decade rise in sea level in the 21st century or 10 inch rise by 2100. this is closer to the ballpark of 1.5-4.0 feet by 2100. probably very wrong to assume a linear reponse, but less wrong than assuming a constant, unaccelerating meltrate while the globe warms.
I’m actually skeptical of the measurements, and skeptical that you can plug these in as initial conditions and model them into the future, but NASA knows how big the oceans are and can calculate the sea level rise of a constant 48 cubic miles of meltwater a year.
I see this is a tag team effort.
Lets just do a little fact checking. Sea level rise in Tuvalu is not due to land sinking. The tide gauge is GPS leveled and managed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The rate of sea level rise in the record in running at +7mm/year taking into account land movements. The early recordings by the University of Hawaii were poorly leveled and referenced and are not usually used as a result (the instrument is attached to a structually unsound jetty behind the government hall).
The high point in Tuvalu is 5m but the most heavily populated island of Funafuti averages less than 1m above sea level and the high point is a coral rubble on the ocean side less than 3m above sea level and uninhabitable. In truth the highest point is actually the rubbish dump on the northern end of the island. Not exactly offering the opportunity to move uphill.
Already one of the island of Tuvalu across the lagoon from Funafuti which was inhabited has disappeared. The island group has been inhabited for near 2000 years, using a fresh water lense and subsisdence agriculture. The lense of Funafuti is now brackish or saline, and the island experiences major flooding on an annual basis…. to a depth few cm’s (significant given the 20-30cm of sea level rise).
The Cateret Islands in PNG are facing similar issues with massive erosion which has been linked to rising sea level http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carteret_Islands . The University of Tasmania – Dr John Hunter – is doing work in this area. Much of the population of the outer islands have already shifted.
The Torris Strait Islands off the north of Australia are suffering repeated and historical unprecedented inudation episodes.
Much of Vanuatu is elevated – peaks well over 1500m, but that doesn’t help if you are on an atoll. This has not helped the low island of Tegua (which is rising due to geological processes) but which has experienced a net sea level rise of ~7mm/year.
With 20-30cm of sea level documented in a litany of scientific papers and a satellite record which shows 3.1mm/year how can we pretend that sea level rise is not happening, or that it cannot be driving these very obvious problems? The highest record in the satellite series (accounting for pressure and seasonal factors happened this very year – ). Add another 50cm and you have 200 million people at risk, including major cities.
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
>Australia’s maligned C.S.I.R.O. has been studying sea levels in Tuvalu for many years.
Les Francis, CSIRO is the Australian government research agency with thousands of scientists working across a broad number of fields. If there work is so flawed, perhaps you might point me to just one scientific paper that you have published which corrects their work, or even just one scientific paper by an Australian Climate Sceptic on anthropogenic climate change in a peer reviewed journal in the last decade.
The sea level data from Tuvalu does not come from CSIRO, it comes from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology through the National Tidal Centre. This centre was previously attached to Flinders University in Adelaide (again not CSIRO).
If you are going to shoot from the hip, at least do some simple fact checking.
“Sure these people can move… but why should they? ”
Because a volcanic atoll without continued volcanic activity that is only one meter above sea level will erode to under sea level in a relatively short period of time. In other words, it is doomed anyway and isn’t a sustainable place to live. That is why they should move.
david wrote:
With 20-30cm of sea level documented in a litany of scientific papers and a satellite record which shows 3.1mm/year how can we pretend that sea level rise is not happening, or that it cannot be driving these very obvious problems? The highest record in the satellite series (accounting for pressure and seasonal factors happened this very year – ). Add another 50cm and you have 200 million people at risk, including major cities.
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
What’s 3.1mm/year ~ less than an inch and a quarter in 10 years? That’s not “inundation” and it’s also a lot less than the difference between low tide and high tide levels. If they don’t want to move, they can raise their houses on piles. Three feet higher should be good for more than a hundred years by your figures. Many communities in my country build their houses that way.
NASA can do simple math
Lamont, I think there is a probe splattered on the Martian surface that might be evidence that they can’t.
David
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
Why should they? Shorelines have come up and gone down across the world over geologic time, and man has had to adjust and move any settlements that may have been inundated in the past. Why are the Tuvaluans any different? No one made them settle their island did they?
Melting sea ice will not be a problem it will actually lower sea levels (try it yourself – put an ice cube in a glass of water mark the level then let it melt the water level will fall) I do not know if this is enough to compensate for land ice melting.
I hate when republicans straightly neglect these things .. just because they want to be different with democrats in their opinions.
Yesterday i was watching Fox .. some guy plainly reused this thing saying that its all about two business group carbon based (petro) and non carbon based .. the reality is its some one else suffering from global warming .. for example a distant mountainous region in asia because of melting ice there.
Here is a 2006 report for Pacific Island sea levels from the Australian National Tidal Facility from a University in South Australia.
A long report however interesting to note for Tuvalu. The US installed a tide gauge in Tuvalu which indicates a sea level increase between 1977 and 1999 of 0.92mm. This was not considered accurate and a ” Full Data set” instrument was installed in 1993 which indicates a sea level rise of more or less 5.7mm per year (Very convenient).
The report also mentions that data sets of more than 60 years must be obtained to get a full accurate semi conclusion.
Cyclones, El Nino’s, geographic events, all have an effect on their readouts.
Tide slosh from one end of the Pacific to the other is also mentioned.
Interesting graphs in there also. Most are annotated with a statement saying that short term readings are not a true indicator of overall trends
If you have an hour or so to go through no doubt more info will come to light which seems to indicate an each way bet on results.
Cherry Picking of the data from this report is helpful to both sides of the sea level argument.
Sorry forgot to not link report
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60033/IDO60033.2006.pdf
swampie (14:36:00) : Wow!!!
Lamont:
“probably very wrong to assume a linear reponse”
Yes.
I’m confused (nothing new in that).
Our new friend Mr David seems to have a special interest in Tuvalu (wherever that may be, I thought it was a brand of shampoo so it’s nice to know it’s a place). Some say Tuvalu is sinking, he tells us it is not (if I understand him correctly). Fair enough, I don’t know where it is let alone whether it is sinking or rising, so let’s assume it’s doing neither.
Some say sea levels generally are increasing by a smidgen, he says the increase is “running at +7mm/year taking into account land movements” (I thought there were no land movements, but there it is). So we’ll take the figure of 7mm a year.
I have just looked at my old school ruler. Old it might be but it still has those funny foreign measurements on it as well as good sturdy feet and inches. 7mm is less than the thickness of some of my toenails.
Does Tuvalu have tides? If so I’d guess there is a difference of many times 7mm between the lowest high tide and the highest high tide. If some residents live as little as a foot above the highest high tide surely it would take about 40 years before they feel the splash of seawater on the tufted Wilton carpet (I think that’s right, 7mm = 0.3 inches, 12 inches to the foot, so 1 foot = 12 x 0.3 = 40).
What’s the fuss?
David, I doubt that all is as you believe regarding Tuvalu:
http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/globalwatch/2008/080401_Tuvalu.shtml
The impacts of population pressure and huge direct external interventions seem much faster acting than sea level rise.
Gerard (22:40:23) :
Melting sea ice will not be a problem it will actually lower sea levels (try it yourself – put an ice cube in a glass of water mark the level then let it melt the water level will fall) I do not know if this is enough to compensate for land ice melting.
The “Eureka” Archimedes principle. Look at the title, it is talking of sea ice.
There is a small difference between sea water and sea ice in salinity, but probably not in the first year ice that might introduce a difference.
from
tty (10:15:43) :
Density of ice at zero centigrade 0.9167
Density of seawater (average) 1.03
So 200 km^3 ice makes 178 km^3 seawater
As ” a body displaces as much water as to compensate for the the weight” and the weight of the ice is 10% less than the weight of sea water, it would displace 10% less sea water. In melting there should be an excess of 10% to accommodate the volume of melted ice. ( icebergs are 90% below sea level, if their density were the same they would be at sea level). So it should be only 17.8km**3 that need to be accounted for a sea level rise.
You had this post a while ago on cold in Siberia.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/15/northeast-siberia-braces-for-extreme-cold-of-60c/
looks like it will be even colder.
“Oymyakon, Siberia, is bracing for temps as low as minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 degrees Celsius)”
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=oymyakon-the-coldest-town
Found this interesting article.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219180532.htm
“The scientists discovered a strong link between regional temperatures and the solar activity in the period 1250-1850, concluding that the sun was an important driver of preindustrial temperature changes in the Altai.”
“The observation that the reconstructed temperatures followed the solar forcing with a delay of 10 to 30 years is particularly interesting. ”
So we might have a few years to wait before we see the effect of current solar conditions. Problem is the politicians are making the policies now.
All this discussion on high tides and low tides. We get 7.4meters for the spring tides. Then add wave height which varies with the weather. My area of the coast can handle that with ease. I feel pretty sure that most coastal regions have taken these effects into account. 30 years of ocean warming easily accounts for the 3mm annual rise. That figure will change over the next predicted 30 year cooling cycle. We have a lot of coastal errosion around the UK. Parts of the UK are still rising from the last ice age. Other parts are tilting down. All part of the current global warming cycle known as an interglacial period. Interglacials account for only 20% of the global climate over the past 500 million years. We really should be looking at how to adapt to the next ice age. Evolution will sort it out in the long run.
I wonder if “David” is Jeff Id’s pet troll from “The Air Vent”?
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/global-warming-is-here-it-is-real-and-it-is-dangerous/
p.s. to my above, on whether when melting sea ice will release 10% excess in volume, or because of the change in temperature it will just fill up the volume it had displaced
ps.ps
I did an experiment. Added two soup spoons salt to a full glass of water and then three ice cubes. Wiped the overflow and waited for the cubes to melt. Level the same.
So it seems to me that melting ice sheets, i.e. sea ice, will not change the levels of the oceans.
This in principle should be true of the antarctic, because it is under water mostly.
A bit more info for david re tuvalu, other western Pacific islands…
The issue isn’t sea level, it’s land distribution and population. Quite frankly, there are very few jobs or services in these islands, and their societies have very specific cultural methods of land distribution and ownership under polynesian and melanesian laws.
The Cook Islands, for example, are mostly sea-level coral attolls with a couple of larger volcanic islands as the main population centres. The resident population is about 17,000, living through subsistence farming and tourism, while about 50,000 islanders live and work in New Zealand and Australia. The same general rule can be applied to Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu and other small island nations. In fact, one-third of New Zealand’s population lives outside the borders, mainly in Australia.
This has been so for much of the past 3 decades. It’s economic, not environmental.
UK winter weather not matching Met Office September 08 predictions for being “as mild or milder” than previous years. Thank goodness my log load will arrive today. It has been bitterly cold then last few days. Went for a walk on Boxing Day with the family up to a local hill fort. The only things enjoying that biting east wind were the sheep, but they the slight advantage of having a woolly coat on them!
Patrick Henry:-) Met Office didn’t see this one coming did they with only a weeks notice given?
I suspect Neils Axel Morner was right, there is no change in rate of sea-level rise unless you manipulate the data!
Happy New Year everyone, & put another nob of coal on the fire Mr Cratchet, brrrr!
Anna V:
It isn’t sea ice we’re talking about, it is g-l-a-c-i-e-r-s.
Melting sea Ice, including shelf ice have zero effect on sea-level, since it is already floating. As a matter of fact even the effect of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) melting is frequently overstated, since a lot of people don’t seem to realize that only the part of the ice above sea-level will affect ocean levels (and not all of that, because of the higher density of water).
Is it possible to imagine the temperature from satellite.Ice can change the level of sea.Its totally depends the melting of ice.
Adam Gallon,
I would surmise (without too much evidence) that it is the same David. The language he uses is very similar.
Words of advise Graeme, try to use up to date data when stating your case. The graph you used is most likely plucked from some denial site and is the cherry picked graph using the end point during the last strong La Nina. Next time try using up to date data from a reliable source, you obviously don’t do this and are content spewing out the usual garbage your ilk are inclined to do. This is the up to date graph from the same source as your outdated link http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.jpg
Notice anything (apart from the fact it now runs to October instead of February. See how the La Nina effect has now declined and the mean SL is now 1cm higher than your graph.
You mention in your posts a lot of pro AGW scientists nt reading their data ec. You have already shown that the only data you use are from the usual sites, conspiracy theorists etc. Try reading some real science, some recent peer reviewed papers perhaps, then you will see that AGW is real and happening.
To quote David “perhaps you might point me to just one scientific paper that you have published which corrects their work, or even just one scientific paper by an Australian Climate Sceptic on anthropogenic climate change in a peer reviewed journal in the last decade.
Lets change the request to “Point me to just one scientific paper ANYONE has published that corrects their work, or even just one published paper by ANY AGW sceptic in a peer reviewed Journal in the last decade”.
To add to the above post here is the recent graph with the seasonal signal removed, notice how it is still following the trend-line rise despite all the claims that sea level is static or even, as some posters have claimed, falling.
Ooops…the link http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg
tty (15:14:32) :
You hit the nail on its head!
My published letter to the editor of the International Herald Tribune made the same point:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/12/opinion/edletters.php
A self-inflicted problem
In “Climate change: With millions under threat, inaction is unethical” (Views, Sept. 10) the president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, contends that the Maldives are threatened by climate change, yet he fails to acknowledge that coral islands have survived during a rise in sea levels of 120 meters since the last ice age.
Under natural conditions, coral is perfectly able to grow upwards, keeping pace with any relative rise in sea levels.
If someone has to be blamed for the eventual demise of any of the Pacific or Indian Ocean coral islands, it is the inhabitants themselves. They are the ones who are destroying the natural coral habitat by creating roads and buildings, allowing bad fishing practices and many forms of pollution. With dead coral, these islands have no natural mechanism to keep them above water. The inconvenient truth is that these islands are not sustainable under permanent human inhabitation.
Link to USGS report:
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-final-report-all.pdf
Please read and comment…
Well,
No response from Ms Blowhard Eilperin – gee, what a surprise!
She’s lucky not to be living in Biblical times. Back then people like her got their tongues cut out for talking such smack.
You’d be lucky to find a person to bet on 1.5 inches in the next five years.
As I said, the bet I posted at the start of this post was sent to Gavin, Schellnhuber and Ramstorf. Not one of them stirred – not even a mouse.
It’s because they are all a bunch of panic-mongering blowhards!!
And anyone that takes them even a fraction serious is a complete idiot.
Regarding Ric Werme (19:33:16) :
Few things will earn a college paper demerits quicker than quoting Wikipedia. Especially in issues regarding Climate Change, Wikipedia is nortoriously unreliable.
Yes, as a shrewd politician, the Governor General of Tuvalu blamed developed countries for his country’s woes. But his blame on global warming has more scientific problems than Obama’s statement about droughts and hurricanes. Politicians will take advantage of impressions created by MSM because our populace is so ill-informed and lacks critical analytical skills.
One thing that might trip up both sides on the Tuvalu sea level issue: La Nina vs. El Nino. When prevailing winds push water away from Tuvalu, its sea levels will fall. When prevailing winds push water toward Tuvalu, its measured sea levels will rise.
david c,
Cavalier is what I’d call Gore’s, Eilperin’s and Ramstorf’s baseless and gross SLR exaggerations.
Not only are they NOT willing to stand behind their own claims, but THEY REFUSE TO BACK UP A EVEN A MERE FRACTION OF WHAT THEY CLAIM. That tells me that all global hot air is coming from their big mouths only, and nowhere else.
But hey, if I lost the bet the winner could use the money to support relocation efforts. WHY DON’T YOU BET ME? Here’s you chance to help.
I’m sure you will have no difficulties in finding people to join my side of the bet. The problem is on your side, where all the hot smelly air is.
crosspatch (22:08:00) :
“Because a volcanic atoll without continued volcanic activity that is only one meter above sea level will erode to under sea level in a relatively short period of time. In other words, it is doomed anyway and isn’t a sustainable place to live. That is why they should move.”
This not correct. The part of a coral atoll that sticks above the water is not made of coral or volcanics that erodes away over time but of coral sand and coral debris. The under water coral reef is constantly being attacked by wave action and certain coral fish that grind coral and spit it out as sand. During storms this coral debris/sand is washed onto the shore of the coral island. So the island is not eroding but continuously fed with new sediments that originates from the reef itself.
On newly formed coral islands bird droppings provide seeds and fertilizer causing the introduction of vegetation which helps the islands become more erosion resistant. Many (geologically) recent examples can be found on the Great Barrier Reef where sand cays (e.g. Green Island, Michaelmas and Upolu Cay) are becoming established islands. If one builds fixed infrastructures on those islands the natural build up of sand is no longer allowed and the natural process of progressive sand addition is halted. Sea level rise will eventually drown permanent structures on these islands. That’s why they are not sustainable in the long run.
“Mary Hinge (04:10:02) :
To add to the above post here is the recent graph with the seasonal signal removed, notice how it is still following the trend-line rise despite all the claims that sea level is static or even, as some posters have claimed, falling.”
Mary,
I want to make sure that I’m looking at the same data you are.
If I look at the graph at the link you posted, it appears to me that since 2006, there is, in fact, a decrease?…and if a rate line were plotted, it looks like the rate would be down, or negative.
That would be just the past 2yrs or so, which I believe is what I’ve read other’s state here, that the past 2yrs, levels have fallen.
Am I missing something?
JimB
Mary Hinge
You are being very offensive.
I will reciprocate by saying that in trying to make sense of the IPCC report and all the accompanying stuff, I have come to the conclusion that climate “science” should always carry quotations because it really is a parody of science as we were taught it and I personally formally practiced it for 35 years before retirement. Peer review for the AGW crowd is a club, backslapping and self congratulatory and with a good corner on the public moneys supply.
Here is a link that has many peer reviewed skeptic references:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8
Please do not talk of oil interests with respect to the link, because I will ask you how healthy is your grant money. The AGW money is billions distributed the world over; even if oil has given some millions they are peanuts to the money available to warmers.
Mary Hinge (04:03:02):
Since you seem to be up to date on the sea-level data, do you know why the season-corrected curve for 2008 contains some data-points that are not found in the raw data? Try comparing:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.txt
and
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.txt
Mary Hinge: Perhaps you could point us in the direction of some evidence that demonstrates that, in your words, “AGW is real”.
Graeme Rodaughan (12:26:12) Yes, the graph is the rate of increase, so the sea levels are rising more slowly, not as I said decreasing. This flys in the face of warming oceans and increased liquid water rates from melting.
Mary Hinge (04:03:02) Sorry to perturb your fantasy but I posted that topex graph, with no intent, rather it was the most recent I had on hand. It is facinating that once again data from the past has been changed. How do you folks keep up with it? The x-axis and y-axis are to scale here, and zero matches, but there is little resemblence of anything else on the two graphs with only ten months between:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2aevck.jpg
Mary Hinge (04:03:02)
‘Try reading some real science, some recent peer reviewed papers perhaps, then you will see that AGW is real and happening.’
‘peer reviewed’?
sort of how Wahl and Amman’s the new and improved “Hockey Stick” got peer reviewed? What a scam.
http://bishophill.squareespace.com/bolg/2008/8/11/casper-and-the-jesus-paper.html
And how this
‘Glenn McGregor: Data Archiving not required by the International Journal of Climatology
by Steve McIntyre on December 28th, 2008’
david (all): How about a little perspective in your thinking? Since the last ice age sea levels have risen over 9100cm, think this has had an effect on people? If 50 cm is unbearable how about a 91cm (36″) wave?
One interesting idea would be to hit at an assessment of what NASA would be doing with its resources in 2100 given its own analysis of its methods and the ‘complementary shifts’ ( in place of continental shifts). The photograph is worth a thought though…
Is there a different set than this that was revised?
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
Nothing changed as of this moment.
Yes, there was a decrease in rate… a major step at the beginning of this current decade, still 60,000 km square / year since 1979
Mary Hinge
Could you clarify the accuracy levels of the Jason sea level measurements? It might be helpful to all of us if you would give the published data and the ‘real world’ accuracy figures that those actually using the information will find.
tonyB
The problem is that nothing is happening “globally”. Some areas might be warming, some remaining fairly stagnant, others cooling. Creating an average or mean is really meaningless. It gives the false impression that something is happening globally when in reality some regions are causing the false mean to be higher. Of course we haven’t sampled every point on the planet, so a mean is going to be biased based on the areas which have been measured (and as we’ve seen, those measurements leave a lot to be desired).
Michael S (05:34:19) :
Link to USGS report:
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-final-report-all.pdf
Please read and comment…
During the last interglacial period (~120 thousand years ago) with similar carbon dioxide levels to pre-industrial values and Arctic summer temperatures up to 4° C warmer than today, sea level was 4-6 meters above present.
Well, although I haven’t read all 400+ pages….yet, I found it interesting that the USGS determined that both the sea level and Artic summer temperatures were higher in the past coupled with lower CO2 levels than now.
Hmmmmmmm…… CO2 does what?
sorry about the link
http://bishophill.square.com/blog/2008/8/11/casper-and-the-jesuspaper.html
how about this link
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/casper-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Mary Hinge
Whilst you are collecting the data showing the accuracy levels of the Jason data for sea levels, you might also like to collect data that is older than 1994. Sea levels are lower today than they were in the 11th century and many places are showing a decline over their long term recorded figures dating back 100 years or so-for example Newlyn in Cornwall and Helsinki in Finland-go to Proudman for some useful data.
TonyB
“During the last interglacial period (~120 thousand years ago) with similar carbon dioxide levels to pre-industrial values and Arctic summer temperatures up to 4° C warmer than today, sea level was 4-6 meters above present.”
Parts of the Arctic was a lot warmer than that during the last interglacial. In parts of Northern Siberia summer temperatures were >10 ° C warmer than today (see e. g. Velichko, A. A., Borisova, O. K. & Zelikson, E. M. 2008: Paradoxes of the Last Interglacial climate: reconstruction of the northern Eurasia climate based on palaeofloristic data. Boreas, Vol. 37, pp. 1–19. or Kienast, Frank, Tarasov, Pavel, Schirrmeister, Lutz, Grosse, Guido, Andreev, Andrei A., Continental climate in the East Siberian Arctic during the last interglacial: implications from palaeobotanical records, Global and Planetary Change (2007), doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.07.004).
Temperatures in Greenland was about 5 ° C warmer than now (e. g. North Greenland Ice Core, Project members, 2004. High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period. Nature 431, 147–151, Bennike, O., Weidick, A., 2001. Late Quaternary history around Nioghalvfjerds-fjorden og Jøkelbugten, North-East Greenland. Boreas
30, 205–227.)
Also that 4-6 meter figure for sea level during the last interglacial is one of those things that are cited endlessly, but seems never to have been properly documented. I’ve tried to find a solid (“robust”?) study that establishes it, but apart from some decidedly dodgy papers from the 1960’s i’ve never found anything. In my opinion 2-3 meters is more likely. This is the figure you get from the Gawler Craton and the Coorong coastal plain in South Australia where you have both an exceptionally well-preserved interglacial coastline and an equally exceptional tectonic stability.
JimB (06:02:03) :
“
Yes, La Nina
anna v (06:20:45) :
Your opinion isn’t very healthy I’m afraid. Climate science uses good scientific principles, we have the evidence, the models, experiments from virtually all the scientific fields to back up the case for AGW. There are literally hundreds of peer reviewed papers showing it is happening. As can be seen by the poor response to my request for actual peer reviewed papers that disprove AGW there is very very little. Good science demands peer review, its why we don’t see to many papers on aligning of the planets changing the climate or Aliens changing Elvis into a grassy knoll. If you want fanciful papers stick to the blogosphere, you’ll probably find plenty there.
Why, are you embarrassed by it?
No problem, here it is http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
Sea levels seem to be much higher now than then.
Mary Hinge:
According to your own link, the rate of sea level rise is quickly decelerating, putting another nail in the coffin of the repeatedly falsified AGW/CO2 hypothesis.
Mary,
I’m sorry…not being a scientist, I don’t quite understand your answer to my question. It seems that you agree then, with the decline since 2006. But you’re answer for the decline in sea level is simply “La Nina”.
Could you help me understand how a La Nina, which I understand to be a Pacific event?…impacts global sea level?
Also,
“Your opinion isn’t very healthy I’m afraid. Climate science uses good scientific principles, we have the evidence, the models, experiments from virtually all the scientific fields to back up the case for AGW.”
I’m sorry, but here?…I simply cannot agree. The IPCC reports were not “peer reviewed” according to the accounts that I have read. Also, science, as I understand it, is a transparent process of proof and discover. If you really want to convince skeptics, get Hansen to release his methodology and data so people can see how the proxies have been created, how data has been changed, etc.
You simply cannot state that until another theory is proven, yours is correct.
You are attempting to rewrite the rules.
JimB
I wonder why a time span of 1992 to 2008 is considered to be indicative of rising seas due to global warming but a longer period is required for temperature rise to prove the same point.
The way some people think, the world is only 6000 years old (or dare I say less?). And these are the ones calling us flat earthers.
Before I can make some reasonable assumptions about sea level change, I would want multiple ocean temperature flips (which run between 15 to 40 years) compared to accurate sea level change. It seems to me that a plausible reason for sea level change is ocean temperatures, especially when multiple oscillations flip at the same time. However, I am not ready to come to that conclusion because I need more data than just 16 years worth (92 – 08).
Mary Hinge:
Your chanting of the mantra “Peer Review, Peer Review, Peer Review” does little to advance your claims or point of view among readers who have followed the farce of climate pseudoscience from Mann, Hansen, Jones, Briffa, Santer etc.
Here’s a little reading:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1963
Without transparency of data, methods, and providing for outside replication, those “Peer Reviewed” papers are nothing but windy opinions.
Mary Hinge
Thanks you very much for your reply. Sorry, I have seen this web site before and it didn’t impress me the first time round.
Please look at the countries with long tidal gauge records, plus go to the Dutch MWP records of sea levels, examine the British sea castles now stranded as levels dropped folowing their construction, plus look at the Proudman figures plus please go outside and observe the ocean heights. Also please tell everyone the accuracy of the Jason data-imagined and real.
Thanks.
TonyB
Mary Hinge
Your opinion isn’t very healthy I’m afraid. Climate science uses good scientific principles, we have the evidence, the models, experiments from virtually all the scientific fields to back up the case for AGW.
Mary, who is the “we” you are referring too? Who are you exactly? Is that your real name? Mine is.
And who are you to judge whether another person’s opinion is “healthy” or not?
Mary Hinge:
me: Please do not talk of oil interests with respect to the link
Mary Hinge: Why, are you embarrassed by it?
Then I have to ask about the health of your grant. The AGW money is billions distributed the world over; even if oil has given some millions they are peanuts to the money available to warmers.
As for me, I just have my frugal retirement pay.
As for the value of the peer review process in the climate clique, it has managed to feed us with fairy tales of the Chicken Little type.
Hello Mary Hinge
I think it is great that you are defending your corner here! We all need to be shaken from our comfort zones!
Here are the Proudman figures showing decadal change in sea levels for the last 100 years.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/3144596227_545227fbae_b.jpg
Do you want the Dutch Mwp sea level figures and the surveys into British sea castles as well? I could also send you photos of Brunels sea wall dating from 1850 that I look out onto from my house-the levels haven’t changed an inch in over 150 years.
Our organisation had to install a new tide gauge 200 yards from my house as the Newlyn gauges 50 miles away didn’t show the rises that the IPPC were telling us are happening. A recent sea level conference I attended are also still looking for the promised acceleration in levels. The British Environment agency has had to revise down its estimates for sea level rises to the end of the century to a few inches.
Looking forward to hearing of the accuracy of the satellite data you have been citing.
TonyB
Jumping in late . . .
Just for fun I thought I’d run the numbers as well. I’m coming up with 1.8 inches over 100 years, based on 40 cubic miles. 2.2 inches over 100 years, based on 48 cubic miles (the figure cited in the quote by Anthony).
Seems in line with most of the calculations, and hardly a crisis.
Comparing tides and waves to secular sea level rise is as sensible as comparing the seasonal cycle to the ice age cycles – no sense at all. That not one sceptic has stepped up to correct this missunderstanding is damming.
Comparing the current rise to that at the last interglacial is a smoke screen. It’s likes disputing the risks of smoking, using the example of skin cancer.
To trivalise the fate of a whole country – Tuvalu – shows a disregard for human rights. The existence of this and many nations are threatened by rising sea level – and their fate rests on a bet that the peer reviewed science is wrong – with all the risks lying with them.
Actually, the peer review process says that Tuvalu is in no immediate danger….
The following are three estimates of sea level changes for Tuvalu. The first is the satellite record showing that sea level has actually fallen four inches around Tuvalu since 1993 when the hundred-million dollar, international TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite project record began.
“Cabanes, C., Cazenave, A., and C. Le Provost, 2001. Sea level rise during the past 40 years determined from satellite and in situ observations.
Science, 294:840–842.”
Second comes from the modern instruments recording tide gauge data since 1978. There the record for Tuvalu shows ups and downs of many inches over periods of years. For example, the strong El Nino of 1997-98 caused the sea level surrounding Tuvalu to drop just over one foot. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is a natural — as opposed to man-made — feature of the Pacific Ocean, as areas of the Pacific periodically warm then cool every few years, causing significant sea level rises and falls every few years in step with the co-oscillations of the ocean and atmosphere.
The overall trend discerned from the tide gauge data, according to Wolfgang Scherer, Director of Australia`s National Tidal Facility, remains flat. “One definitive statement we can make,” states Scherer, “is that there is no indication based on observations that sea-level rise is accelerating.”
Finally, there is the estimate by scientists at the Centre Nationale d`Etudes Spatiales who also find that between 1955 and 1996 the sea level surrounding Tuvalu dropped four inches.
david: and we would love some documentation that Tuvalu is indeed in imminent danger of inundation.
And, you know, peer reviewed…..
Wallowa County
Running out of wood fuel. Oil stove broke this morning. Now using a Kerosene heater. Blizzard conditions with horizontal snow and 40 mph wind gusts. Would love to be on that island right now.
One aspect of this debate I’d like to see answered is what amount of water is lost from the oceans each year in evaporation. And how this might counteract the “inflows” into the oceans from rivers, rain and melting glaciers? Anyone help on this?
david (13:14:08) :
To trivalise the fate of a whole country – Tuvalu – shows a disregard for human rights.
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm. A rate of 2.5cm in 5 years would be huge and nearly double the current rate of rise.
David, FYI:
Tuvalu: The current population (estimated in 2005) is 11,636.
Vanuatu had a population of 205,754 (July 2005 estimate from the CIA World Factbook).
Where’s the other 199,782,610 people you say will be misplaced?
Concerning the seed companies research direction regarding global cooling: not a clue. I was reminded, however, about research at the University of Illinois (Go Illini!) which is trying to extend the cold tolerance of related grasses to the basic crop of the Midwestern economy, corn.
Apparently, the UofI wants to make sure the genetics of cold tolerance can be snipped and spliced into the corn genome, when the global warming starts freezing our crops. Here’s the announcement by the Uof I.
http://news.illinois.edu/news/08/0915coolgrass.html
David
To trivalise the fate of a whole country – Tuvalu – shows a disregard for human rights.
They have some sort of right to live on the water’s edge? If so, who gave them that right? They can move further back or elevate their houses IF the sea levels rise, of which you have not provided a skerrick of evidence for beyond arm waving.
Do you think we should be responsible for other’s actions or inaction?
So, then, David… you would like me to bail out the people of Tuvalu. I have a feeling that the entire country could be sold for a sum that would allow every person on the islands to move to west Texas. That way the new owners can take care of the tourists and make more money. I have a feeling that you couldn’t drag most of those people away from their homes.
David, please don’t tell me how I must spend my money. If you are so concerned, why not offer to take in one or two of those climate refugees??
That way you can spend your own money instead of mine.
Thanks for your attention,
Mike Bryant
PS If you and enough of your concerned friends would open your doors there would be no problem!
Tuvalu is also, as has been pointed out, volcanic in origin. When the volcanic activity quit, the islands started subsiding into the crust.
However, coral reef growth more than compensates for the subsidence AND any sea level rise.
Sea levels rose much more rapidly after the last ice age, but corals were able to keep pace.
Are reefs in danger from global warming? Possibly, but unlikely. SST increased more after the ice age ages, than they are now. In fact, as NASA’s ARGO shows, there has been no increase in SST since 2003.
Also, reefs flourished in geological times, when temperatures were much warmer.
Lastly, any immediate dangers to the reefs will be from the islanders themselves; from bottom fishing and pollution run off from the islands.
anna v (12:26:00)
Peer review reminds me of Chicago politics.
Mary Hinge
What, no comment on how Caspar Amman and Eugene Wahl got their paper “published”?
or how Lonnie Thomson didn’t archive his ice core data so now he findings can not be duplicated?
Look at Wall Street and computer models and tell again how good computers are when they are build around the assumption “we are to big to fail” or trust me, Mr. Madoff, I know what I’m doing.
I think we need new rules with government grants and something like SEC to enforce them. You break the rules no future government grants.
Let the sunshine In.
Why yes, I think you all should chip in to buy me a snow blower. After all, with all this global warming coming down hard enough to pass through my screened in porch and stick to the exterior wall, somebody should pay for this!!!! And I am only 4’11” and leave very little footprint behind. So it’s somebody else’s fault goddammit and to trivialize my suffering is just beyond the pale. You skeptical people you.
david (some place above)
“Comparing tides and waves to secular sea level rise is as sensible as comparing the seasonal cycle to the ice age cycles – no sense at all. That not one sceptic has stepped up to correct this missunderstanding is damming.”
Damming?
Beavers? Civil Engineering?
If you are discussing the effects of some sort of ‘event’ on the ability of humans to adapt and adjust to it – Ice ages, wind generated waves, daily tides – what is there to correct?
I think you read too much Journalese. All effect and impression, little meaningful content.
“Comparing the current rise to that at the last interglacial is a smoke screen. It’s likes disputing the risks of smoking, using the example of skin cancer.”
That’s a joke, right? You are really not a natural believer – just putting forward a concept that escaped the satirical script writing course?
“To trivalise the fate of a whole country – Tuvalu – shows a disregard for human rights. The existence of this and many nations are threatened by rising sea level – and their fate rests on a bet that the peer reviewed science is wrong – with all the risks lying with them.”
But what about the rights of small chunks of mineral that find themselves exposed to the air for a few hundred years every few millenia? Why should they have to suffer the presence of humanity? ‘Discovering’ the islands’ limited support systems and deciding to hand around rather than complete a voyage of adaptation seems to me to be the ultimate disregard of mineral rights.
To then claim to be threatened because choosing to live on a sea level mineral outcrop in the middle of nowhere is, shall we say, less than ultimately satisfying, seems like a cry too far. Why not adapt with the money offered by the ‘International Community’?
What’s that? You think you ‘have their ear’ and could get more.
Maybe so. Ask david – he seems like the sort of chap that would listen. Amybe even sell his life’s assets to help out.
The way I see it is that, living in Europe, MY rights for free land based travel between what we now call ‘Mainland Europe’ and the area known as Great Britain has been eliminated by either or both of an Ice age or a loss of tropical weather. Why should I have to travel to a zoo (or Africa) just to see animals that used to live in the area? What happened to my right to walk across land from one part of the continent to the other?
Come to think of it, why are parts of the island I live on now to be found thousands of miles away so that is would cost me a lot of time and cash to visit them? Where can I get compensation for several million years of tectonic plate movements?
david, when you wrote:
“… and their fate rests on a bet that the peer reviewed science is wrong – with all the risks lying with them.”
I’m sure you felt that it would resonate with thoughtful people of a scientific inclination. But can you not see how incredibly arrogant the statement is in terms of the relationship between ‘humanity’ and ‘nature’? Do you really believe what you wrote?
david (13:14:08) :
Did you read what I wrote about coral islands? They are not sustainable(!!!) for permanent inhabitation since their survival depends on natural build up of coral debris/sand deposited on a reef substrate. Buildings and roads will eventually submerge since humans don’t allow the natural processes of sedimentation to take place.
Besides, the inhabitants (fishing) and the tourists are destroying the reefs so that the natural upward growth of corals (a process that normally could easily keep pace with natural or indirect human induced sea level rise) is less viable.
The primitive inhabitants hundreds of years ago moved along with the natural build up of the island since their houses were just huts which they could rebuild after each storm or flood or they moved temporarily to other islands less affected by the latest floods. And they left the corals in better shape too.
Does anyone know why Cryosphere has shifted method to show snowcover just when snowcover was very big?
They did so between 24 dec and 25 dec.
Now comparison with older snowcovers looks as though snow today is less abundant….
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=12&fd=24&fy=2008&sm=12&sd=25&sy=2008
Mary Hinge
You write:
“There are literally hundreds of peer reviewed papers showing it is happening. ”
All your “peer reviewed” papers that uses GISS data you must count as useless.
Giss data them selves uses methods and results not peer reviewet, not even made puplic. Therefore all your papers building their conclusions using temperature data from GISS are useless.
This “scientific” approach of GISS leads to their extremely bad reputation, and is an embarresment for NASA. NASA name will have a sad sound in many years after this scandal.
Reason to demand full glasnost from GISS NOW!!! :
Mary, The warming trend in the 20´th century was around 0,6 K.
Around 0,3K of this warming took place after second world war.
The adjustmenst made puplic for USA in around 2005 showed that 0,25 degrees K was indeed adjustments.
When such a HUGE part of the whole global warming appears to be human made corrections, it is a SCANDAL that we are not allowed to validate how such big adjustments occurs.
Many uses the rising temperatures after second world war to argument against the sun as the driver of temperature.
The central argument is: The GISS temperature curve rises more than sun activity.
So we are all supposed to dismiss solar theory because it does not match HUMAN CORRECTIONS.
No, Mary, there are NO excuse for hiding such central material from the puplic 28 years after GLASNOST came around in soviet. THIS STINKS, and i thinkits on time you wake up Mary.
David,
not sure where you are getting your ludicrous sea level numbers. The IPCC has been referencing about 3mm/yr since about 1993 and about 1.5mm previous.
Here is that satellite record that appears to be accepted by the IPCC and modellers:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
You should go to their detailed pages and take a look at how much the level can vary sesson to season and year to year. You might get a hint about 7mm and other ludicrous ideas. You might also see that for the last couple of years the 3mm rate has not held up.
You really need to get a life.
By the way, I am starting an insurance fund for when our sun expands and engulfs the earth or goes nova. Would you please contribute? This WILL HAPPEN and we need to start planning NOW!!!! It WILL affect everyone on the earth at that time!!!
Smokey, look at the most recent graph before putting up a smikey screen! The University of Colorado is the most up to date at present…just checkthe end date points. The reason for the very recent decrease (now of course increasing) in sea level is the recent strong La Nina.
Don’t worry, you are not alone! There HAD been a decline due to the recent La Nina. This caused massive cooling along the equatorial Pacific. The sheer size of the Pacific (covering nearly a half of the Earth’s surface) means that any cooling will show a reduction in Global Sea Level. The changes intemperature during a La Nina are nicely shown here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml Notice how the cooling starts at NINA 1 and spreads through to NINO 4. A good lay mans explanation of a La Nina is here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/lanina.shtml
“Your opinion isn’t very healthy I’m afraid. Climate science uses good scientific principles, we have the evidence, the models, experiments from virtually all the scientific fields to back up the case for AGW.”
As you are not a scientist I can understand your misunderstanding of the scientific process. You have to undertand the complexity of AGW and the particularly wide range of scientific disciplines that come under this umbrella term. It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made. As with any study the more you know the more questions you have and the more you need to know. Sceptics have the easy job, they can just nit pick, argue complete nonsense or deliberately mislead to fulfil whatever agenda they are on. You can see above the complete lack of peer reviewed work on this subject, read the majority of posts and you see that the sceptic prefers using sarcasm to real science.
I’m afraid I am not rewriting the rules but still making sure people understand that real science is based on the peer review system for very good reasons, it helps keep poor science out. It is not perfect but has served us well for a very long time.
Dear dear Frank, please don’t confuse data with peer reviewed papers. Your whole argument is frankly a shambles. Temperature data from any source is scrutinised and any errors should be corrected. I’m assuming you are referring to the October GISS records from Siberia which were corrected very quickly. If you think that all temperature data is useless because of this mistake then you have no right to discuss this subject further. All scientific data gathering, from any field will always contain errors at some point. It’s the human/mechanical/software factor….its life. Thats why in an ideal world you have multiple data sources.
Mary Hinge:
I’m afraid I am not rewriting the rules but still making sure people understand that real science is based on the peer review system for very good reasons, it helps keep poor science out. It is not perfect but has served us well for a very long time.
Unfortunately Mary, AGW is actually not real science, but pseudo-science, which the peer review system simply self-reinforces. Yes indeed, there is a great deal of money, as well as careers at stake in keeping the AGW bandwagon rolling along.
Mary Hinge:
ah, I get it now. If it disproves some facet of AGW, its la Nina.
How elegant. How simple. How incorrect.
Sea levels have been flat, or falling, since late 2005, according to the U of C.
la Nina has not been around for over 3 years, Mary. But, according to Argo, sea temps have flat for that much, and longer.
Do you think the lack of thermal expansion has anything to do with the flattening ocean rise?
So Mary Hinge, not a word on how the CC Paper got “peer reviewed”? Why not?
‘ Meanwhile the second, longer paper (“the CC paper”) had started its long road to publication at the journal Climatic Change. This article purported to be a replication of the hockey stick and confirmation of its scientific correctness. However, in a surprising turn of events, the journal’s editor, prominent global warming catastrophist Steven Schneider, mischievously asked none other than Steve McIntyre to be one of the paper’s anonymous peer reviewers. ‘
‘McIntyre’s first action as a peer reviewer was therefore to request from Wahl and Amman the verification statistics for their replication of the stick. Confirmation that the R2 was close to zero would strike a serious blow at Wahl and Amman’s work.
Wahl and Amman’s response was to refuse any access to the verification numbers, a clear flouting of the journal’s rules.’
http://bishophill.squarespase.com/blog/2008/8/11/casper-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Peer review process was and still a scandal.
I did it again. sorry about the link.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Mary Hinges,
I have just started reading this site. In general I find the discussion scientifically motivated and fair-minded. If it has a certain flavor, at least everyone is polite. Almost everyone.
From you:
“As you are not a scientist I can understand your misunderstanding of the scientific process. You have to undertand the complexity of AGW and the particularly wide range of scientific disciplines that come under this umbrella term. It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made. As with any study the more you know the more questions you have and the more you need to know. Sceptics have the easy job, they can just nit pick, argue complete nonsense or deliberately mislead to fulfil whatever agenda they are on. You can see above the complete lack of peer reviewed work on this subject, read the majority of posts and you see that the sceptic prefers using sarcasm to real science.”
When I lived in Madison, there was a newspaper editorial written by a psychology professor concerning the then relatively new “science” of recovered memories. The message to the skeptics was basically leave us alone and don’t criticize us for 10 years because we are a new science. Your comments reminded me of that editorial. Or, shorter version, what you are saying is “…sit down and listen to your betters.”
And as for this.
“If you think that all temperature data is useless because of this mistake then you have no right to discuss this subject further.”
This sums up the problem with the AGW crowd. You have to understand that you do not get to decide who has rights. Science is about questioning and skepticism. If you can’t take the questions, you don’t have the stuff. Let’s discuss the science and leave alone the question of who has rights.
To Karl Heuer:
What I calculated was not the increase in global ocean water volume by 5cm rise, but the _additional_ increase that comes with the earth’s “oblateness” (is that the right word for it?).
It means that the volume rise will actually be greater than what you calculated (quote:)
“4*pi*6378.137*6378.137(surface area)*.00005(5cm) = 25560.39 km^3”
Consider the that there will be additional square kilometers resulting from the 5cm increase:
4*pi*(6378.137 PLUS 5cm)*(6378.137 PLUS 5cm)
There is now an additional 5.67 square km of ocean surface. Then I took the average and multiplied it with .00005(5cm) to get to the additional volume.
Very well said Mark. How many people ended up in prison or worse because of the relatively young science of “recovered memories”? When any relatively young science, that has lots of equipment and money at its disposal, begins to tell any free American that he or she does not have the RIGHT to discuss any subject further, we have an extremely serious problem. The science must be the servant of the people, not vice versa.
No matter how stupid you think I am, I deserve an answer to my questions. I am a taxpayer and I am part of the working class that paid for all that equipment at your disposal. Give me answers. Give me the data and the methods of the climate studies. Don’t adjust, homogenize and massage the data until I know why you are doing it and if it makes any sense. I deserve and yes I have the RIGHT to receive full disclosure of anything and everything I ask for.
The climate scientists who do not want to comply can only keep up this charade for so long… I am tired of begging for crumbs of the cake, it is time for the taxpayer to eat steak.
Mary Hinge (04:03:02) :
Graeme posted the chart with “Inverse barometer not applied” and “Seasonal signals removed.” The current version of that chart is at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.jpg.
I haven’t quite figured out which inverse barometer plot I prefer. I think I understand what they’re trying to do – higher air pressure pushes down on the sea level, but winds, viscosity, and momentum may muddy the adjustment.
Curiously, it looks like the data and smoothed curve are quite different over the last couple of years. Sigh, is this another change the data without telling anyone situation? http://sealevel.colorado.edu/documents.php describes the older graph, 2008_rel4 isn’t documented.
To tty:
My calculation was only little physics exercise to show that even if all coastlines were made of perfectly vertical cliffs, there would actually be more water volume needed for every additional cm rise of global sea level.
But why not go ahead and make a wild guess about the total coastline & its average angle. Considering there is so much more ocean out there, I would be surprised if it would be very significant for slowing global rise for a certain constant influx of cubic km’s or miles of water.
Let’s estimate total coastline at 200,000 km. Let’s say all this coastline would get inundated 2 km inland for a 5 cm rise of global sea level. Let’s say the incline is linear:
200,000 * (2/2) * 0.00005
Al this added ocean surface would only get you an additional 10 cubic kilometers.
I admit, that’s way more than the earth oblateness adds, but still insignificant if you compare it to the 200km^3 that you calculated for a yearly 0.05 cm rise (0.49mm).
To Mark_0454 (18:13:36) :
Well-stated, sir. The level of commentary on this blog is refreshingly elevated, mostly.
For the benefit of the Americans reading here (I‘m from Missouri), I must point out that a person identified as Mary Hinge is either a rude fabrication, or a most unfortunate victim of parental name-choosing. “Mary Hinge” is one of the ugly stepsisters in the dyslexic comedy routine “The Story of Rindercella”. Rindercella’s other sister is named “Betty Swollocks.” Mary Hinge is off-color UK vulgarism for a more hirsute female escutcheon.
Ms. Hinge, if this is your name, I extend my sympathy.
Steve Keohane (09:01:00) :
No, the graph must be the sea leavl, not rate of change. The Y axis is labeled “δ MSL (mm)” (Will that delta work?) meaning the “change in sea level relative some benchmark level.” In millimeters. The black line is described as 3.3 +/- 0.4 mm/yr. Not mm/year^2 as it would be looking at the rate of change of a rate.
Note the black line goes from aout -20 mm to +20 between 1995 and 2007. That’s a 40 mm change in 12 years, 40/12 == 3.3 mm/year. The whole line is about 2 inches in 16 years, fairly significant, but not to IPCC or Hanson levels. A foot a century, less than 0.5 m/century – if the rate before the pre-PDO flip continued.
Which is a perfect entry point for me to quote from the Frank Tipler (the distinguished mathematical physicist at Tulane University) letter being quoted around the web today:
Dr Tipler ends with a quotation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his famous farewell address as president:
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.“
WARMING, OR HOT AIR?
Pamela Gray (11:55:32) :
That period is just the record from the Topex/Poseidon and Jason satellites.
I think it’s easier to pick the signal from sea level rise than it is to measure global temps.
Mary Hinge:
So La Nina is, in effect, an overall cooling of the worlds oceans, rather than just a SST anomaly which displaces the warmer water elsewhere?
If it were the latter then the total volume of water wouldn’t change and so neither would the sea level.
Also, if this were the case, where did all the heat go?
Similarly, with El Nino events, where does all the extra heat come from?
Re Mary Hinge (15:44:58)
The October debacle is far from the only thing wrong with GISStemp. Read here for example:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2033
It describes the positively insane algorithm used by GISStemp to join different scribal versions of a record which practically guarantees serious distortion of the temperature record before the join.
Having read most of this post I can only conclude that empirical data of over 100 years (tide gauges) cannot match the arrogance of these so called scientist from this young science. They prefer, with the help of the right algorisms, and a blind eye, turning fact into fiction. It helps, presumably, to avoid redundancy.
Why don’t you actually provide some real arguments instead of using the usual denier trick of trying to convince everyone, even yourself, that it is not real science. the same tricks are used by Evolution denialists now and whgere used by the sceptics of plate tectonics.
Talking about GLOBAL sealevel rise when assessing the impact at a certain location (Tuvalu for example) is pointless considering that the TOPEX/Poseidon measurements have revealed that there is a nonuniform geographical distribution of sea level change, with some regions exhibiting trends about 10 times the global mean. Some places even experience a eustatic sea level drop: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib.pdf
“As you are not a scientist I can understand your misunderstanding of the scientific process. You have to undertand the complexity of AGW and the particularly wide range of scientific disciplines that come under this umbrella term.
I’ve been reading here for quite some time, as well as several other sites, and have worked in technology for 40yrs. I understand the breadth.
“It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made. As with any study the more you know the more questions you have and the more you need to know. ”
Are you attempting to address my point regarding scientific PROCESS with this statement? No matter how “new” a science may be, it’s processes and experiments at any given time must still must be transparent. Why shouldn’t this basic law apply to what Hansen, Gavin, et al, have done?
“Sceptics have the easy job, they can just nit pick, argue complete nonsense or deliberately mislead to fulfil whatever agenda they are on. You can see above the complete lack of peer reviewed work on this subject, read the majority of posts and you see that the sceptic prefers using sarcasm to real science.”
Again…I think you ARE attempting to rewrite rules. No one has to prove that something else IS the cause, just to prove that some particular thing IS NOT the cause. That’s not how science works, according to every other discipline.
When a group of people say “I’ve discovered how X works”, they provide the “means” of their discovery so that other people can replicate their work and say “Yes…we did it here, too, and you’re RIGHT”, or they say “We ATTEMPTED to do that here, and it DID NOT work, so we think you’re wrong”.
In order to do that, people need to have access to the data and the methods. That HAS to happen before you can make any claims at all regarding peer review.
“I’m afraid I am not rewriting the rules but still making sure people understand that real science is based on the peer review system for very good reasons, it helps keep poor science out. It is not perfect but has served us well for a very long time.”
You still have not addressed the issues brought up before. Why do you keep dodging this in conversation? Everyone here understands that “real science” is based on the peer review system. That’s exactly what people here are asking for.
You’re sounding more and more like Will, a.k.a. Whack-A-Mole.
JimB
@Mary Hinge
You write:
“I’m assuming you are referring to the October GISS records from Siberia which were corrected very quickly. If you think that all temperature data is useless because of this mistake then you have no right to discuss this subject further.”
My god, Mary. How can you be a part of so many debates and not know that the data “adjustments” are COUNTLESS ??
(and even though statistically impossible, every time we see strong adjustment, the adjustments brings data nearer in line with typical AGW argument)
And then you dare speak of my “right to discuss this subject” ?!!
Who are you? What are you? Very unpleasant !
If you don’t like to debate where people don’t always have your opinions, you are free to stay away from real debates like WUWT. You have the nerve to come here and play judge? Sad to see.
I don’t know, but it could (!?) sound as though you are not familiar with for example:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/30/ushcn_corrections.gif
It shows NOAA corrections of 0,55 F, mostly after second world war.
So most of the global warming after second world war is indeed corrections. Corrections that seems not to fit with for example solar activity.
Therefore all further conclusions , peer reviewet papers ets depend on the 100% correctness of the results and methods to create these huge changes in data.
But for some reason, Mary, you defend that nobody should see how this was carried out? The world must not be allowed to validate??
Why is that so important for you?
Your argument seems to be only somthing like: “this is data and not research paper”. Is that rhetoric good enough for you? Do you think anyone else than hardcore AGW people will except those words as a real sound argument?
Do you think anyone will say: ‘Ahh, Mary called it “data” so no reason to validate how on earth they got those vital changes’?
Well if you think so Mary, you will be surpriced.
NASA/NOAA/GISS themselves has created the suspicious light upon them. They cant blame anyone else for their strange behaviour.
An interesting take on sea level rise by Nils-Axel Morner, sea level geologist (it isn’t happening, notably in the maldives)
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Mary Hinge:
So, if La Nina is an overall cooling of the world’s oceans, where does all that heat go to? And where does the heat come from to replace the lost heat at the end of the La Nina? And by what mechanism(s)?
And, if El Nino is an overall warming of the world’s oceans, the same questions apply in reverse – where does the extra heat come from? Where does it go? By what mechanism(s)?
Kinda goes against the theory that the heat is hiding somewhere, just waiting to come back with a venegance, doesn’t it?
Just like disregarding valid science simply because it isn’t peer-reviewed, or because the author is rumored to have links to the oil industry.
“Science is about VALID questioning and sceptism. Disregarding whole data sets because of occasional human error is no reason to throw them out, especially when they follow the same trends/data lines as other data sets measuring the same thing.”
Sorry, Mary, but once again, you won’t entertain what others consider to be valid questions. You want to define what’s valid, and what isn’t, what’s germain to the discussion, and what isn’t.
Doesn’t work that way. As soon as you say “X is happening because of Y”, you must be willing to defend that. And if you’re not, then you have no right to make the claim to begin with.
JimB
The only denialists are the AGW’s who insist weather trends are climate, that earth’s climate is supposed to be static, and have some childhood complex that they are the cause of whatever they fanatasize is wrong in the world. At best climate science is an infant, and without unadjusted empirical data for at least 150 years, pretty clueless. I think anything less than 150 years is too strongly affected by the multi-decadal weather cycles to seperate out climate from weather. It is obvious just the el Nino and la Nina patterns’ effect is about .1 deg/decade absolute, which is greater than the ‘climate’ anomaly. I am not refering to just temperature, rather all the parameters that affect weather/climate. Since no one knows what all the parameters are yet, the science does not exist yet, so climate science is not.
Mary Hinge (03:10:12) :
Bruce Cobb (17:02:46) :
Unfortunately Mary, AGW is actually not real science, but pseudo-science
Why don’t you actually provide some real arguments instead of using the usual denier trick of trying to convince everyone, even yourself, that it is not real science. the same tricks are used by Evolution denialists now and whgere used by the sceptics of plate tectonics.
Actually, Mary, you have it backwards, as usual. It is the AGWers, including yourself who use every trick in the book EXCEPT to discuss the science. This is because they don’t actually have anything, except idiotic computer models which ASSUME C02 is a major climate driver and that man’s measely contribution of 3% of the total C02 is enough to have an impact on climate that we need to be alarmed about. For the climate hysterics, GIGO is their friend.
It was AGW ideology which came up with and then allowed the infamous “hockey stick” graph to become accepted as “science”, and trumpeted by the IPCC as the smoking gun for manmade global warming. It took skeptics to debunk it.
Mary Hinge: your:
The data shows sea levels rising sharply now the La Nina effect is subsiding (ENSO is now neutral with slight cooling). FACT.
Fact. The sea level as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005. Did the previous la Nina last for over 3 years?
“My god, Mary. How can you be a part of so many debates and not know that the data “adjustments” are COUNTLESS ??
(and even though statistically impossible, every time we see strong adjustment, the adjustments brings data nearer in line with typical AGW argument)”
She does know. If she read nothing else but WUWT, she’d still know…which leads to the logical conclusion that she’s just trolling.
Good job though, Mary… folks here keep rising to your bait, including me, for a time.
It’s obvious you have no desire for open debate…but you sure do seem to enjoy the attention.
Good luck…you’ll soon need a new cause, I fear.
JimB
correction:
The sea level as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005.
Should be:
The sea level trend as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005.
MARY HINGE
WHY NOT ACCEPT MY BET OFFERED AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS BLOG?
AT WHAT SEA LEVEL RISE OVER THE NEXT 5 OR 10 YEARS WOULD YOU ACCEPT THE BET? OR AT WHICH SUM OF MONEY?
Remember, Al Gore suggested 20 feet – soon!
Prof. Stefan Ramstorf of the Postdamer Institute projects 1.4 meters by 2100.
(That’s 7+cm every five years.
If you aren’t sure enough about your science to make a small bet, then you at least ought not act like such a stubborn old cow in this forum.
Anyone who refuses to accept my bet at a fraction of the SLR made by your idols really ought to put a sock in it.
As I said, I have yet to find a single alarmist who is ready to put his/her own money down on his/her own predictions. Not a single one.
NADA!
As long as I don’t see any money on the table, the discussion is over.
“Math is hard!” –Barbie
I seem to remember learning in school that the ocean was very deep. Any drop in sea level due to a temp decrease would have to operate over the entire volume of the ocean, from the surface to miles deep. I guess that Mary somehow has figured out that the La Nina surface temp decreases went miles deep. Either that, or the first few feet of the ocean contracted by a huge amount.
Maybe Mary is saying that a relatively limited area of the Pacific, just a few meters deep, contracted so much that it dropped the Indian, South Pacific, North Pacific, Arctic, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic, Mediterainain, and Caribbean, North Atlantic Oceans.
Or perhaps she believes that the whole ocean oscillates in temperature rapidly. Maybe she thinks that whe the sun comes out from behind a cloud, the whole Earth gets sunny at that moment, or when there is a cold day in Camden, New Jersey for example, the whole planet gets cold… I don’t know. Maybe Mary could explain how a sea surface level change occupying maybe 20ft of the surface sitting on miles of water over about a quarter of the Area of the Pacific Ocean could lower sea levels?
For the record, I am not actually expecting an answer. Warmies never answer direct questions that should have simple answers. They refer to their faith, and thump their IPCC, like W. J. Bryant in “Inherit the Wind” thumps his Bible, and explain knowingly that they “just know” that we are wrong, if they answer at all.
Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process. Grants are sent forward after a gate keeping meeting. During the gate keeping meeting, the ones with power get their grants forwarded on as long as they vote to forward the other researchers’ grants (they all sit on these committees together). And if you don’t play this game, you can kiss your grant goodby. I know of two very expensive multi-site grant proposals that did not have the necessary clinical trial studies that would have demonstrated that the data collection techniques were not doable. Yet both study proposals sailed through review. Why? Because the other peer reviewers on the panel wanted their grant proposals to go forward and needed the votes (they don’t vote on their own proposals and must depend on others in the room to vote for them).
The paper submission and peer review process is very much the same game. If someone else is working in the same area as you are and they are on the review committee for the journal (we will call X) you have submitted to, you have precious little chance of getting your paper published in that journal, so you have to keep searching for a journal that wants to compete with “X”. My paper had to go that route. The initial peer review was a scathing negative review from the editor of the journal we submitted to who just happened to be studying the same phenomena I was. We then had to determine which journal was usually trying to compete with journal X. Their review was delightful and our paper was published. The other journal (X) eventually published the paper from the editor who was working on the same thing. Poor thing. We got ours out first. Made him mad too.
Unfortunately my own camp played the game too. Even to the point of trying to fudge the data. Since the original data was collected and before we submitted for publication, a new piece of equipment was able to produce a much sharper signal that made for a prettier picture and gee, we should use the picture of that signal instead of the one I actually used. I was able to stop that switch from happening so my published paper has accurate data, but at the cost of my job as a researcher at that facility. That was not the only thing that I objected to. The list goes on. I was so incensed with the entire experience that I took my original raw data with me when I left, fearing that it would be used inappropriately. I still have it.
Having had this experience, I can well imagine the type of thing that goes on with climate studies. If you are not playing the game in town, there will not be a place at the table for you. End of story. This is made exponentially worse by game players who have turned to the media and politics to keep the gravy train going.
So my dear Mary Hinge, you are unhinged if you think the ivory tower is clean and white. It is anything but that. It is as down and dirty as Illinois’ pay to play politics. And likely as dirty as many other such motivated groups.
Good job though, Mary… folks here keep rising to your bait, including me, for a time.
Yes, it seems almost irresistible. But what I do in the case of such trolls is to first prove to my satisfaction that they are trolls – for example, they will get something completely wrong, won’t admit or discuss it, resort to logical or factual fallacies [such as those favorites based upon demonization of “Big Oil”, “Peer Review = Given Truth”, etc., etc.], etc. – then simply not even read most of what they write from then on. Because, true to troll-form, all they do is repeat the same tactics and perhaps add some more – the ultimate of which is the good old “you can’t make me respond on a rational level” tactic.
I’ve seen trollish behavior way too often to feel any real responsibility to read everything they say – btw, another one of our intellectual values which trolls play upon to keep themselves in the spotlight and which simultaneously tends to drive the reader crazy – because of the obdurate stupidity involved in troll posts.
But I do read the rebuttals to the trolls, because there is often a lot of very good info and rational thought put into these responses.
So a genuine “thank you” to all who respond to the trolls with rational/scientific thinking. It certainly won’t affect the trolls, but it really educates me. And I suppose someone has to do it, lest the trolls then try to claim victory, you know, because “no one there could even muster a response to my killer-arguments!” – when the arguments and trolls would actually have simply been intentionally ignored, once having been defined at the outset as solely trollish behaviors in their essential nature, and thus rightfully ignorable.
But I do read the rebuttals to the trolls, because there is often a lot of very good info and rational thought put into these responses.
See Pamela Gray’s 11:03:16 response above, for example. QED, and a faint-praise “thank you” to the troll, Mary Hinge, also.
Pamela
You are quite right of course, but the game is selected for you in the first place with climate change matters.
I attend the occasional UK sea level conference (which is why I was hoping Mary Hinge would tell everyone how accurate satellites aren’t) and there is a pecking order on this subject which in the UK’s case is;
The Ipcc
Eu Govt
British Govt
Defra
UK Govt agencies- such as the Environment agency
The various levels of councils-county, district, parish and so on down to individual organisations such as schools.
The IPCC have stated what the sea level rises will be, so all policy is predicated on that estimate right through the chain.
As an example, one of the conferences I recently attended was hosted by an international firm of consultants spreading exactly the same doom that Mary was and recommending expensive sea defences.
As it happened I had downloaded the Proudman figures for our area and knew the history anyway (no sea level movement in our area for 150 years) so I challenged the consultant discreetly at lunch time who openly admitted the figures they were using were nonsense, but those were the ones they were told to use by their client-one of the uk agencies. As a representative from the agency was there I mentioned to him the figures were nonsense to which he cheerfully agreed, but pointed out it was the figures they were told to use by Defra. As the (unpaid) Defra representative I knew that Defra had instructed ME that the levels being used were the ‘correct’ ones even though I had challenged them in writing as to the science behind it.
So if you don’t play the game you won’t get the business or the grant or the job.
Someone else here mentioned that the public have an attention span of rwo weeks. This can also be applied to various agencies- unless past reports have been digitised they won’t be used, either because they arent in an easy to use format for computer modelling, or because they have been physically permanently archived-there is very little room for paper records. So any report more than a few years old is likely to be unavailable.
The system is madness and self perpetuating but a lot of people are making a good living out of it.
TonyB
@Mary Hinge
Mary Hinge (04:03:02) :
Graeme Rodaughan (13:45:42) :
Especially given that sea level rise appears to be flatlining or even decelerating. http://i39.tinypic.com/2u4q13o.jpg
Words of advise Graeme, try to use up to date data when stating your case.
WRT Mary’s Graphs and Ric Werme’s ref “Ric Werme (18:56:34) :” contribution. The graphs seem to describe an absolute rise over a “0” point defined around 1998 to 2000 (depends on graph). The key point is that in all the linked graphs the growth rate flatlines from approx 2006.
WRT using up to date data – that’s a fair point.
The graph you used is most likely plucked from some denial site and is the cherry picked graph using the end point during the last strong La Nina.
Speculation?
Next time try using up to date data from a reliable source, you obviously don’t do this and are content spewing out the usual garbage your ilk are inclined to do.
Spewing, Garbage, Ilk – (G wag’s finger). Now now Mary – keep it clean. Does the use of Ad Hom attacks, add any credibility to your position, or intellectual rigour to your argument? You really only bring yourself into disrepute by using such language.
This is the up to date graph from the same source as your outdated link http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.jpg
Notice anything (apart from the fact it now runs to October instead of February. See how the La Nina effect has now declined and the mean SL is now 1cm higher than your graph.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg – Shows a peak in 2006 followed by a drop.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.jpg – Basically a flatline from the beginning of 2006.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.jpg – Drop off from mid 2006.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg – Flatline from 2007 – then dropping.
Summary – Looks like the sea level as topped out from 2006 – that’s now 3 years without significant growth. Each year of delayed growth in sea levels means that the sea level increase must accelerate to catch up with IPCC predictions, and the predictions of AGW Advocates such as James Hansen.
You mention in your posts a lot of pro AGW scientists nt reading their data ec. You have already shown that the only data you use are from the usual sites, conspiracy theorists etc. Try reading some real science, some recent peer reviewed papers perhaps, then you will see that AGW is real and happening.
The problem that I have with the data, and especially the land based temperature measurements is the apparent lack of rigour, and transparency WRT the data handling and methods of interpretation of that data. If a scientist want’s to be taken seriously – that could do the work and ensure that their data and methods are clearly expressed and publically available.
What’s so hard about that. And where is the clear description of the GISS data, both raw, and finished and with all interpretive methods clearly expressed?
To quote David “perhaps you might point me to just one scientific paper that you have published which corrects their work, or even just one scientific paper by an Australian Climate Sceptic on anthropogenic climate change in a peer reviewed journal in the last decade.
Lets change the request to “Point me to just one scientific paper ANYONE has published that corrects their work, or even just one published paper by ANY AGW sceptic in a peer reviewed Journal in the last decade”.
Just One? – Try this from the Journal of Geophysical Research http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf which raises issues with the data used to measure land based temperature.
Apologies to Steve Keohane (07:57:08) : – It looks like your original post was the correct one – The graphs are of Mean Sea Level and seem to be a measurement of sea level difference vs some benchmark (not clearly defined on the website).
In reference to the Green Riviera opening photo the following:
Joseph D’Aleo has made a report about two Greenland Radar Stations which are buried by snow. The rate of growth of the Greenland Icecap by snowfall more than compensates for the ice loss during summer melting.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-dew-line-radars-in-greenland-once.html
Download the PDF via this link.
It’s great to have a “visual” of what really is happening.
Mary Hinge (15:33:26) :
…
It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made.
What, like a child in a kindergarten?
When then, will Climate Science be mature enough to be used in Public Policy?
Ron de Haan (15:15:07) :
I read that at Icecap, on the ice build up on Greenland.
I calculate, based on 2.16 million sq km of Greenland, and 5 cm of accumulation per year, that 108 cubic km of ice is added to Greenland every year.
Pamela Gray (11:03:16) :
Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.
I was working with particle high energy physics. Most of my working years were at a time where grants were given to agencies and not researchers, the agency then distributed the money to institutes and projects. Lobbying took place at that time, mainly with politicians to get a large enough pie for the institute. There was no pretense of checking peer review etc. Just a general push to get as much as one could. Knowing MPs ( in my country) could help, to gauge the level of political.
As a result the politics of high energy physics were confined on the committees that decided what experiment was going to run, who was going to head a large collaboration and stuff like that. The process you describe of back scratching was there, but at a polite and on level with scientific integrity. Scientific reputation played a great role, Nobel prizes were important in weighting decisions. I suppose the integrity was necessary because you could not fool colleagues the way you can fool politicians and the public.
When the grant system came in , with the EU and the way grants are given, at first we thought it was an improvement, not to have to find handles on politicians to get money but fight for it with proposals and justifications. I now think that it is the downfall of science, because of what you describe.
I think the scientific community should seriously go back to the old system of financing research: universities and institutes to get adequate grants. There may be infighting, but it will not create a global community of “scientific fools”, because each institute will be independent in its decisions.
Graeme (15:50:49) Easy answer for your last question, G; when it can survive audit. Say, something like a legislative post audit to see if the money spent accomplished its purpose.
There is a great reckoning ahead. The exaggerators and demonizers of CO2 are bankrupt.
=========================================
Pamela Gray, anna v,
Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.
You have both have described what I suspected must be happening. I was wondering what the mechanics must be that can drive statistics / conclusions that seems to support a particular viewpoint, yet if anyone else looks at the data, other, simpler explanations are all too obvious. The IPCC summaries are a great example. Take a lot of information and research, and come to conclusions that are not supported by the papers cited, many times over strenuous objections by the scientists themselves! It’s like being in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. If someone is not inclined to read all the underlying research, it’s easy to take the summaries at face value, but as the facts come to light, it makes you wonder, who are these people, and what do they really want? What is the motivation for such biased interpretation? How can some scientists use blatantly faulty statistical methods and still get “peer reviewed” with nary a question asked? I’ll bet there are thousands of examples of bad data and pay to play science leading to prescribed conclusions and damaging public policy. We really can’t expect the average politician to sort out science, they are not equipped, to say the least. They must be given real facts and evidence, which is clearly not the case. And the problem goes well beyond climate science, into health care, transportation, the military, you name it.
I think this would be a great subject for a new blog called “Broken Science”, “The End of Science”, or some other (your suggestion here) name. Here researchers could post their experiences with the political aspects of the process, cite examples of false conclusions knowingly submitted, and suggest methods of how to fix the research financing and control system to prevent such biases (and probably a whole lot of bad data) from cluttering and ultimately destroying the knowledge base. Discussions of the political processes involved in essentially managing conclusions for political purposes could come to light.
In the world of climate science, more of a double blind approach would help, having “modelers” write their code, then have another independent panel run the simulations and test results against reality would be another suggestion. Since model parameters are so well known by observation ahead of time, this should have no impact on the quality of the model output (!). Obviously having data and methods available with all published papers would allow replication / verification by independent parties. Anyone so sure of their conclusions would welcome independent verification since it serves to bolster their viewpoint. er, uh, hmmm. Well, you see my point.
Climate science is due for a very thorough independent audit by independent statisticians and scientists from other fields. With public policy in the works around the globe based on a CO2 / temperature link that is so obviously strong in one direction (temperature drives CO2), and yet so utterly weak in the other (CO2 drives temperature), this science needs to get “unbroken” as soon as possible. A simple method would be to start the audit with the IPCC itself, i.e, are the main conclusions supported by the references cited, are the policies at the IPCC conducive to independent conclusions? Then audit the temperature record and other key databases, then audit the papers most often cited, or most heavily weighted in the conclusions, then work your way down from there. To fund such an audit, I would propose a temporary shift away from further climate research (but not data collection) while the audit is underway. Not a suspension, but a significant reduction to help shift resources to a group of independent auditors. Once a clean bill of health is established (not bloody likely), pour on money for research that can be carried out using an independent, scientific approach, WITH quality control.
Any thoughts on such a “broken science” blog?
Michael S.
kim (05:03:38) :
Ooohhh, I think I like that for a title for the new blog I mentioned… “The Great Reckoning”… Any other suggestions?
Michael – I think you have the right ideas re a “broken science” blog but the tricky bit is how to apply them in the “real” world. All necessary change starts with oneself. I called my own project “RECLAIMING Climate Science” as I strongly believe in positive attitudes while starting from the real data and the real situation, however bad they may be. I started off knowing very little but just hanging on in there because I smelled a rat and in my world, integrity is important, and persistence achieves a lot. Call in at our forum.
TonyB (12:25 on 30/12): I attend the occasional UK sea level conference (which is why I was hoping Mary Hinge would tell everyone how accurate satellites aren’t) and there is a pecking order on this subject which in the UK’s case is:
The IPCC
EU Govt
British Govt
Defra
UK Govt agencies
This points to IPCC being the cornerstone, the key to unravel. And within IPCC, one finds pointers to the editing work done by just ONE scientist, Ben Santer, to vanish all the other 52 scientists’ conclusions that said they did not find any certainty of serious manmade climate effects, and to insert material which said they did.
An important bit of investigative work and publicity to be done here./viewforum.php?f=22″>our forum. There are others like Roger Pielke.
happy new year to all from a regulare lurker.
“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.“
This is an interesting quote, however this scenario will never happen. The genie has been loosed from the bottle. What I believe WILL happen… Those countries that deindustrialize will become the slaves of those who do not. The most industrialized countries, with the added benefit of capitalism, won WWII.
Perhaps we should all bone up on Chinese.
“A “scientist” in NZ recently claimed that Koala bears may be endangered in NZ because ecalyptus trees will be harmed by increasing CO2 – thus, the bears will be killed on the ground when they leave one (dead) tree to get the next (dying ?) tree as they escape starvation. Well, http://www.co2science.com has 4 research articles alone that sow ecalyptus trees growing as much as 26% FASTER with increasing CO2.”
The so called scientist should realize that Koala Bears don’t live in NZ, at least not outside of a zoo. The Koala, which is not a bear as pointed out in a previous post, is indeed a marsupial which lives in Australia. I just got back from Aus and NZ, saw a few Koalas in Aus. They may be in some danger, but not due to GW, more due to other human activities like farming and residential housing projects which disrupt the forests that they need to live in. Its just more convenient to blame every problem on GW.
Maurice Strong and some other green leaders WANT the de-industrialization to occur, that’s why they fight ANY new technology to bring cheap and efficient energy to the masses. They know wind and solar are neither efficient nor cheap, so they let those pass.
There’s an interesting pdf (the link is on the page) on Greenland’s history during the last interglacial (Eemian):
http://www.agu.org/pubs/sample_articles/cr/2001JB001731/index.html
Their studies suggest Greenland’s icecap was less than half the volume then as today.
Pierre (and anyone else interested in a bet)-
I’m sorry my comment is being posted late, maybe I can put up a pointer at a more recent post as well. I’m very interested in betting over climate change and have arranged a bet with David Evans, who is now somewhat well known among the skeptics.
I would be interested in a fair bet over sea level rise, just as David and I negotiated a fair bet over temperature. Unfortunately, I don’t think the bet Pierre suggested is a fair one, and I believe the information he posted about Gore’s and Rahmstorf’s opinions on sea level rise in the next 100 years is inaccurate. I put the reasons and my suggestion for a fair bet at my own blog, here:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/01/sea-level-rise-id-love-to-bet-over-it.html
The summary is that skeptics who think temperatures haven’t risen over the last 11 years should believe that future sea level changes should be random, while I think the rise will continue at its current pace. Let’s bet at halfway in between the two positions.
I suggest we bet at Longbets.org to deal with trust issues, with all monies given to the charity chosen by the winner.
I look forward to hearing from you.
My own email to Juliet Eilperin:
Dear Ms. Eilperin,
I’m responding to someone who claims he challenged you to a bet over sea level rise. He inaccurately described Gore’s and Rahmstorf’s position on sea level rise and actually wanted to bet over a point that was within Rahmstorf’s predicted range of outcomes.
It’s not your job as a journalist to take sides anyway, but feel free to refer him or anyone to my response on a fair bet over sea level rise here:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/01/sea-level-rise-id-love-to-bet-over-it.html
Or a variety of bets I’m willing to make over climate change here:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_backseatdriving_archive.html#111700433898143899
Cheers,
Brian Schmidt