From Project Syndicate
COPENHAGEN – When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six meters (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.
Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 meters (80 feet), with a six-meter rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”
Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased . Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4 millimeters (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)
This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the United Nations climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30 centimeters (one foot). This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30 centimeters is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.
Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.
Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.
It is depressing to see a scientist – even a highly politicized one – calling for a latter-day Inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable.
But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past ten years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the Western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.
A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies – a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem.
Hansen is not alone in trying to blame others for his message’s becoming harder to sell. Canada’s top environmentalist, David Suzuki, stated earlier this year that politicians “complicit in climate change” should be thrown in jail. Campaigner Mark Lynas envisions Nuremberg-style “international criminal tribunals” against those who dare to challenge the climate dogma. Clearly, this column places me at risk of incarceration by Hansen & Co.
But the globe’s real problem is not a series of inconvenient facts. It is that we have blocked out sensible solutions through an alarmist panic, leading to bad policies.
Consider one of the most significant steps taken to respond to climate change. Adopted because of the climate panic, bio-fuels were supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. Hansen described them as part of a “brighter future for the planet.” But using bio-fuels to combat climate change must rate as one of the poorest global “solutions” to any great challenge in recent times.
Bio-fuels essentially take food from mouths and puts it into cars. The grain required to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol is enough to feed one African for a year. Thirty percent of this year’s corn production in the United States will be burned up on America’s highways. This has been possible only through subsidies that globally will total $15 billion this year alone.
Because increased demand for bio-fuels leads to cutting down carbon-rich forests, a 2008 Science study showed that the net effect of using them is not to cut CO2 emissions, but to double them. The rush towards bio-fuels has also strongly contributed to rising food prices, which have tipped another roughly 30 million people into starvation.
Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.
We have to stop being scared silly, stop pursuing stupid policies, and start investing in smart long-term R&D. Accusations of “crimes against humanity” must cease. Indeed, the real offense is the alarmism that closes minds to the best ways to respond to climate change.
One more time. I get the accuracy/precision argument. But I’m looking at the Wikipedia article on sea level rise (dangerous, I know) that says the Topex/Poseidon/Jason-1 altimeters have accuracies of 20-40mm, and a NASA JPL site on “Ocean Surface Topography From Space” (click on technology) that says ocean height measurements are “good to 4-5 centimeters” and that by “averaging the few-hundred thousand measurements collected by the satellite in the time it takes to cover the global oceans (10 days), global mean sea level can be determined with a precision of several millimeters.” That sounds to me like NASA is assuming their errors will average out, which isn’t precision we’re talking about.
Peter opened these comments with the classic alarmist two-step:
If there is a long-term trend of sea level rise however tiny, then you are not allowed to express public doubt about the notion that this (small) trend is consistent with a 30 meter rise. There was warming in the 20th century therefore, you may not openly doubt that it will be 6 degrees higher by the end of the 21st.
By the way, Peter can go. The rest of you are under arrest–nobody expects the Climate Inquisition!! (Apologies to Monty Python)
“Anyway, I’m happy that sea level is dropping. It seems like it should have been with Argo temp numbers the way they are.”
Basically, this just shows that sea level, sea temperature, and surface temperature data are all backing each other up. Some systems have more latent response than others, but at this point they are all moving in the same direction. One can argue that we don’t have enough data to call a change in trend from the predicted AGW trend, and I would buy that if the warmers were able to explain what we have seen in terms of natural variability. But it appears that they are completely unable to do this. Their best attempt was to try to explain the past decade of no warming using ENSO. But when we look at an ENSO adjusted chart for the last decade, the data is still virtually flat, as shown here:
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmidt-enso-adjustment-for.html
Sir,
“Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists”
is not an accurate statement. There are no thousands of UN scientist who have been forecasting sea level rises. This is confusing the total number of scientists who have been asked for an opinion on anyone matter with the number who has had an opinion on sea level rise. The true number is probably less than ten, and certainly less than a hundred.
How do we stop this? Look, I don’t have a degree in anything but I can clearly see that a majority of the GW scare is just that, a scare tactic. The truly sad thing is that its working! There’s a sort of mass hysteria going on right now, and ladies and gents its mob mentality in the entire world at the moment. Who do we call, how do we get the truth out? How do we put a stop to people who have so much publicity, and whose publicity is exactly the “big world changing story” that most news agencies covet?
Its not nearly as exciting to say, hey, were crappin where we eat, we should probably stop that. Its certainly not as exciting to say were experiencing a natural cycle in Earth’s temperature. Sorry folks, its hard to predict cause of an infinite number of variables but for the most part, if the sun isn’t kicking up a fuss, we should be seeing lowered temps and if a big volcano doesn’t erupt during this time we should get through it just like we always do. The truth is, no matter how fine your model is, it can only be made to be accurate in the past. That’s only because all the variables must be known for true accuracy.
Another big thing here is this.. we need to not create a new disaster scenario to replace the old one. It doesn’t help to spout the ice age commeth either. We can predict sure, and even be right a majority of the time but anyone who stands up and picks the worst possible scenario for any planetary event is probably a little too alarmist to be of actual help. Mankind’s one true fault seems to be believing they have more control over things than they actually do.. I believe that’s called hubris. But again I ask. How do we pull the world’s view back to center before a true man made catastrophe happens?
“It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past ten years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade.” That being true, I would think that it would at least warrant some skepticism in Mr. Lomborg’s mind as to just how valid the argument is that “As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase”. His belief in the UN IPCC seems odd – doesn’t he realize that its goals are primarily political in nature, not scientific?
Re: David Segesta (10:01:44) :
“Lomborg is an economist, not a scientist.”
I don’t know about ordinary graduate programs in economics, but in schools of agricultural and resource economics, there’s a healthy dose of scientific methodology courses or seminars that students take. Besides that, in my graduate program in resource economics, I had graduate level courses in the chemistry of water quality and environmental science. So don’t assume that an economist, and especially an environmental economist, cannot be a scientist too.
Sea levels appeared to have fluctuated considerably in the 1st millennium AD, although I’m finding it difficult to track down much documentation for this. In East Anglia in the UK, there is quite a bit of land on the coast which was underwater in Roman times but emerged gradually when sea levels fell. Over the centuries since, sea levels seem to have very slowly crept up again, but never to that previous high. Bearing in mind the last couple of thousand years, the current behaviour of the oceans doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. Sometimes sea levels go up a little, sometimes they go down.
So the sea has risen since its last low point, probably hasn’t reached its high point before the next ice age and will continue to rise.
That is not the only possible cause of the well-documented and IMO conclusive geomorphological evidence that sea levels were higher in previous inter-glacials than the current one.
It could be that there is a cooling trend in inter-glacials, ie each inter-glacial is cooler than the previous one. The ice core data supports this conclusion.
Of course this conclusion destroys any and all tipping point arguments.
And since no one seems to have pointed out the error in the first post, I will.
It’s incredibly disingenuous to use two years of data to claim that sea levels aren’t rising. The long term trend is quite clear. 2004 & 2005 were lower than 2006, for example. This is absurd.
Sea levels rises are primarily caused by thermal expansion of the oceans. There is no lag in this effect. It is immediate and there is no equivalent of weather noise.
Given sufficiently accurate measurements and assuming no net evaporation/inflowing, a sea level change from one day to the next is proof of the oceans warming or cooling over that day.
What is absurd, is you applying the weather noise argument to sea levels and demonstrating your complete ignorance of the basic physics involved.
Yorick’s comments on the Lake Superior Basin dropping one year due to global warming and then bouncing back due to greater winter precipitation is way off base (Weather overpowering global warming). I have been vacationing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for 30 years, since I was a kid. We camped and often visited the same lakes, streams and waterfalls year after year.
It’s true that last year, Lake Superior’s lake levels were down, but it was drought that caused this, not Global Warming. And it wasn’t winter precipitation that caused the lake level to rise as much of the snowfall in the area is due to evaporation off the lake. Because of this, it requires precipitation to come in from other areas, usually via the phenomenon called the Alberta Clipper. Bob Henson describes how Alberta Clippers tend to happen more often during La Nina years which leads to the precipitation that delivered more precipitation to Lake Superior this past year.
Source: http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/2000/02/15.html
” You’ll likely see more clippers than usual during La Nina years, like this one. That’s when the jet stream often dives south across the Great Lakes. This year, the Lakes were one of only a few spots in the nation where people actually saw a white Christmas, thanks to the Alberta Clippers.”
Lastly, most of the water in the region that is yanked for water supplies generally end up going right back into the watershed. The exception is that Duluth drains water from the Mississippi River basin and dumps that into Lake Superior and Chicago drains water from Lake Michigan and dumps that into the Mississippi River basin. These two transactions are considered a wash.
Good blogs to keep up with on Great Lakes weather and Lake Levels are Karl Bohnak’s as Chief Meterologist out of Marquette and Craig James from Grand Rapids.
Karl Bohnak: http://www.wluctv6.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=142343
Craig James: http://blogs.woodtv.com/category/wood-tv8-blogs/craig-james/
Dr Morner, Professor at the University of Stockholm and pre-eminent sea level specialist (I learnt about his work on this blog from Old Man Winter and Paminator) pointed out -quite correctly, I think – that the greatest rate of sea level rise rise that took place since the last Ice Age was about 1 meter/century. The number passes sanity check because warming at the end of the last Ice age started about 19,000 years ago and sea level rise was still going on about 7000 years ago. That means that the estimated total sea level rise of about 100 meters since the last Ice age took about 12,000 years to complete, or about 0.8meters/century on average. Even if you assume a factor of 2x uncertainty in the estimate and willing to discount Dr. Morner’s expertise, it is hard to accept Dr. Hansen’s 6m/century estimate as being even close to being credible.
“Sea levels rises are primarily caused by thermal expansion of the oceans. There is no lag in this effect. It is immediate and there is no equivalent of weather noise.”
Agreed. And this further puts the lie to the proposal that it is the deep oceans, below where we are measuring, that are heating up. The expansion factor doesn’t care where the heating is happening, if the net effect is that the ocean is warming, then the sea level will rise.
John B — “Yorick’s comments on the Lake Superior Basin dropping one year due to global warming and then bouncing back due to greater winter precipitation is way off base… “
It’s called “humour.”
Avfuktare Krypgrund
“Sir,
“Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists”
is not an accurate statement. There are no thousands of UN scientist”
But this is exactly what the AGW crowd does when it claims the multitude of scientists involved in the IPCC report agree with what it says.
MikeEE
Not only is the water dissapearing from the sea, it looks like it is going from wetlands too, if you believe the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7513638.stm
I would have thought that a more plausible explanation would either be land management or the natual layering of sediments building up appearing to make the land “drier”
On the subjects of “accuracy” and “precision”…..
Suppose you you have a piece of wood that is actually actually 4 feet long.
(Don’t ask how we know that, just accept for the moment that itis exactly 4 feet long.) [In every case “it” refers to the board.]
You pick up ruler A, measure it, and are informed that it is 4.00 feet long.
You pick up ruler B, measure it, and are informed that it is 4.001 feet long.
Ruler A is the more accurate, Ruler B is the more precise.
F. Y. I. : Roughly 97% of earth’s water is in the oceans; 2% is in icecaps and glaciers; and 1% is in lake, rivers, and swamps.
Most of you missed the point: we can measure sea level to a fraction of a millimeter in the same way as we can measure land temperature to a fraction of a degree. GISS data proves that. The sea level data just needs a little ‘adjustment’. Six meters over a century? Piece of cake.
IMAO, any sea level rise is just due to population growth. More people, pressing down on the land, causes the oceans to rise.
Tilo Reber: “Agreed [that “[s]ea levels rises are primarily caused by thermal expansion of the oceans” for changes in two years].”
Isn’t there a possibility that very short time fluctuation in sea level is caused by changes in water vapor content of the atmosphere. The change in sea level within can vary between, say, 0 and 10 mm mm over 2 years. See Holgates data:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/02/09/shocking-facts-about-sea-level-rise/
The difference 10 mm, how much rain is that? Locally one or a few hours of precipitation? How large are fluctuations in the atmospheres relative humidity (e.g. in the solar cycle)?
–
Btw, I agree we don’t have a deep ocean heat problem, but I’m not sure it’s proven by a few years immediate sea level changes… I guess sea level changes from temperature change may take a few years to become larger than sea level changes from fluctuations in atmospheric water vapor, but I’m no scientist in this field and an oceanograph should comment this.
Of course over one or a few decades the sea level rise has to be caused by thermal expansion.
Magnus:
“Isn’t there a possibility that very short time fluctuation in sea level is caused by changes in water vapor content of the atmosphere.”
Hmm- a three year fluctuation in water vapor content of the atmosphere? What would cause such a fluctuation?
Since the temperature trend has been down over the last few years, I would think that the atmosphere would hold less water, not more.
Since the temperature trend has been down over the last few years, I would think that the atmosphere would hold less water, not more.
At all but lowest altitudes, that is true. At low altitude there has been an increse, but that’s come in the form of cloud cover which has increased albedo. This is the negative feedback that Spencer speaks of.
“Isn’t there a possibility that very short time fluctuation in sea level is caused by changes in water vapor content of the atmosphere?”
Answer: Absolutely, positively, unambiguously NO!
How much more warming would that much more water vapor in the atmosphere cause? Some, if it were a gas. Cooling, if it were high clouds. Little, if it rained out over land (or Lake Superior) and hasn’t returned to the ocean.
So, the following year (2003) the satellite data was corrected by adding a 2.3 mm/year increase to the essentially flat raw data. Dr. Morner was, to say the least, apoplectic.
AAAARGH!
I had heard about Axe’s complaints, but I put them on the back burner–on account of the satellite record!
I want to see the raw data!
Ron McCarley (13:41:29) : That sounds to me like NASA is assuming their errors will average out, which isn’t precision we’re talking about.
They are but the situation is far more complicated than the wiki article suggests. It’s possible whoever wrote the wiki article was in the dark about the process. The link I provided is probably the best account of what’s actually involved. Many measurements are taken from various sources to arrive at an altitude measurement (actually an estimate).
One last time then I’ll drop it, Hopefully, it isn’t even more confusing.
The altitude accuracy refers to the absolute (or ‘true’) altitude value. The number should be expressed as a confidence interval which, in this case, is around +/- 25mm. All that can be said about the ‘true’ altitude is that it lies somewhere within that interval.
We also know that when we produce the estimate, we get the same number: approximately +/- 4mm (I think that was the number). That is the measurement precision. There is an uncertainty in how close the measurement is to the ‘true’ altitude value but if we could nail it down so that it is also the ‘true’ value, we would always be within 4mm of it. Even if we never nail it down, the answer we get doesn’t vary by more than the precision.
When you take the difference between measurements made by the same instrument, the delta value has the same precision as the measurement itself (times 2). The accuracy of the delta is also equal to the precision (times 2).
Let’s take your 2+2=5 example. Suppose every time we calculate it we get values ranging from 4.998-5.002? That’s a precision of +/- 0.002 whatevers but the accuracy is perhaps +/- 2 whatevers. Now suppose I take measurements on two different days with day one giving measurements 4.998-5.002 and day two giving 5.998-6.002. I know that the difference is 1 +/- 0.004. I know it to this level despite having an accuracy uncertainty that is orders of magnitude larger. See?