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/
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?