Guest post by Steven Goddard
One of the most cited “proofs” of global warming is that sea level is rising, as can be seen in the graph below.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
This is a nonsensical argument, because sea level would be rising even if temperatures were going down, as they have been since 2002. The main reason why sea level rises is because the equilibrium between glacial ice and temperature is out of balance, and has been for the last 20,000 years.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
Note that from 15,000 years ago to 8,000 years ago, sea level rose about 14mm/year – which is more than four times faster than the current rise rate of 3.3mm/year, as reported by the University of Colorado. During the last ice age, sea level was so low that people were able to walk from Siberia to Alaska across the Bering Strait. One of the more stunning pieces of evidence of this is the remarkable similarity of appearance and culture between the indigenous peoples of Eastern Siberia and North America.
In 2002, the BBC reported that a submerged city was found off the coast of India, 36 meters below sea level. This was long before the Hummer or coal fired power plant was invented. It is quite likely that low lying coastal areas will continue to get submerged, just as they have been for the last 20,000 years. During the last ice age, thick glaciers covered all of Canada and several states in the US, as well as all of Northern Europe. As that ice melts, the water flows into the ocean and raises sea level.
http://uk.encarta.msn.com/media_461527006/ice_extent_during_the_last_ice_age.html
The IPCC has stated that sea level may rise two meters this century, which would be a rate of 22mm/year, nearly seven times faster than current rates. Do we see such an acceleration? The simple answer is no. There has been very little change in sea level rise rates over the last 100 years, certainly nothing close to the immediate 7X acceleration which would be required to hit 2 meters.
Sea level is rising, and the abuse of this information is one of the most flagrantly clueless mantras of the alarmist community.
Even if we returned to a green utopian age, sea level would continue to rise at about the same rate – just as has done since the last glacial maximum.
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Tom P: I suggest we stop feeding the troll. It is unfortunate that Watts chooses to give the troll top-level space on his blog, but that is Watts’ choice.
It is obvious that Goddard is deliberately choosing to blatantly cherry pick sentences and numbers from a New Jersey study, AVISO, and realclimate when any person with reasonable reading comprehension can go and read the New Jersey study to see that they estimate 1 mm/year global sea level rise (which, because of subsidence, yields 2 mm/year rise on the eastern seaboard), go to the AVISO website and see that their current best estimate is 3 mm/year linked to off the main page (rather than some historical image linked to from who knows where), or go to the RealClimate site to see that the whole point of the entry was “While we liked the paper very much, we also complained that Pfeffer and colleagues had created a bit of a straw man, by implying that it had been seriously proposed that Greenland’s near term contribution to sea level rise could be much larger than [2 meters]” and not in any way a suggestion that 2m to 5m is “the standard position in the AGW community”. (For those interested: I’d think the “standard AGW position” is closer to something like a likely range this century of 30 cm to 1 m, with 1 m to 2 m plausible but unlikely, and >2 m very unlikely)
So, Tom P, I suggest we leave this website of cherry picks, straw men, etc. Maybe one day they can actually host discussions on the many real, existing uncertainties that abound in the field of climate science without inventing fake ones out of whole cloth, but until that day we should realize that fixing everything that is wrong on the internet is impossible. http://xkcd.com/386/
(and obviously, from the mere fact that I’m posting this, I am having a hard time letting go of the idea that sufficient repetition of logic and reading comprehension lessons might possibly help some readers realize just how misleading Steven Goddard can be)
Hasitbeen4years, tell me what phase an oceanic oscillation is in and I will tell you, without looking at a graph, whether or not the seas in that ocean or rising, stalling, or falling. The Pacific is falling, especially along the US West Coast. The Atlantic is stalled in some places, falling in others, and rising in others (its such a big ocean and there are several sub-oscillations within it). Am I close?
Marcus and Tom P, you are making the same mistake made when quoting Arctic ice changes. The Arctic has many different areas that behave quite differently from each other. It is always best to use these individual areas when quoting ice depth, area, and extent, instead of bundling them. Your sea level rise data quote follows the same mistaken path. If you can tell me where sea level has fallen and where it has risen, you will have data worth debating in terms of causality.
Marcus
So you’re suggesting that in the next forty years or so we might be back at last to the sea level height during the MWP?
You said;
(For those interested: I’d think the “standard AGW position” is closer to something like a likely range this century of 30 cm to 1 m, with 1 m to 2 m plausible but unlikely, and >2 m very unlikely)
You also quoted;
“…go to the AVISO website and see that their current best estimate is 3 mm/year linked to off the main page.”
It seems to me that perhaps James Hansen at Nasa and yourself are confusing imperial and metric once again? That’s 1 cm ( or 10mm) a year every year for the top end of this scenario, and up to 20mm a year for the ‘plausible’ scenario. Did you really mean to say this?
The reality from actual observations is very much lower than this-have you taken into account the (enormous) margin of error of Satellites, or perhaps you don’t examine the information contained in tide gauges?
Prof Morner is a good person to consult if you are a little unsure at to what sea levels are actually doing in the real world, as opposed to that in a computer room. Why don’t you visit your nearest stretch of coast and see what is happening there?
In our part of the world the sea level has been static overall for the hundred years that the records cover, which takes into account periodic rises and falls. Perhaps these don’t get captured within the time scales of the data you are looking at?
Tonyb
Steven Goddard (14:26:11) : The article uses graphs covering three time frames. 20,000 years, 100 years and 15 years. They all show that Hansen’s claims of 5mm by 2095 (55mm/year) are absurd, as is your claim that I am only considering “half a cycle.” This article is about the interglacial, which started 15,000 or so years ago. I have considered the entire period in some detail.
“Basic Geology” indeed. Shall I be clearer for you? A CYCLE is from BOTTOM to TOP and BACK to BOTTOM. And even then one cycle is not a reliable pattern. All you have considered in detail is your own navel. Let me ask you again, what school gave you a “BS” in Geology? I’m asking quite seriously.
Marcus,
I am hoping you aren’t as daft as you pretend. If you don’t like my article, then perhaps you shouldn’t waste your time here. Maybe you could contact Hansen about his 55mm/year instead of wasting my time arguing over 1mm.
The disagreement on RealClimate was about >2m per century. If you have ever spent any time discussing this issue with climate scientists like Gavin, you would know that 1-2meters is what they expect to see. You can contact IPCC lead author David Randall at randall@atmos.colostate.edu and find out for yourself.
How can scientists measure 2mm/year for the last 7,000 years along the entire east coast, and come to the conclusion that it corresponds to a global 1mm/year? It is the norm in the climate science world to throw in some gratuitous AGW interpretation about the raw data, to avoid censure from their peers. Do you think glacial rebound is having a strong effect in Florida? Do you think the Vikings did a lot of oil and gas pumping? The NJ measured data says 2mm/year for the last 7,000 years. Take it at face value.
I have been wondering for some time about the amount of water we use globally for irrigation, a lot of which is from aquifers that are not being replenished. This water must be in the atmosphere or oceans (including all bodies of water). Using water volumes from the UN FOA data from 2000, I would bet it is more now, some 2200-3800 KM^3 are used annually. Since satellite data are telling us it is not in the atmosphere, it must be on the earth. Dividing this by the planet’s water bodies’ surface area, this is enough to raise all water body levels by 8.3 mm/yr. Assuming that it falls equally on land and water it is still enough to add 5.9 mm/yr on the water bodies levels. So whether we think the ocean levels are rising by 2 or 4 mm/yr, we don’t need fantasies about glaciers and icecaps melting to explain the increase. I used the FOA mean, of 3000 KM^3 for these back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Steven,
Your refusal to countenance any correction for subsidence in the New Jersey data (what I presume is meant by a “theoretical analysis”) directly contradicts your earlier statement:
“BTW – the map you linked showed higher raise rates along the Gulf Coast, where the effect is due to subsidence caused by subsurface pumping.”
Why should subsidence be considered in Texas but not in New Jersey?
Ben Lawson,
You are obviously motivated by animosity. Why is that?
Steven Goddard doesn’t have to tell you squat, and if I were him, I certainly wouldn’t.
Why? Because it’s clear that any information he gives you will be thrown back at him in a hostile manner.
Rather than engaging in your ad hominem attacks, why don’t you try to answer the question asked way upthread: are you claiming that a rise in CO2 causes a rise in the sea level?
If so, please tell us how that works, and explain why we can’t accurately measure any putative sea level rise. You might also try to explain how tide gauges give accurate readings, while considering Bill Illis’ point about land changes. Explain how a tide gauge can tell the difference between a 0.4 mm sea level rise or fall, and land uplifting or subsidence.
Pamela,
You state “It is always best to use these individual areas when quoting ice depth, area, and extent, instead of bundling them. Your sea level rise data quote follows the same mistaken path.”
Not at all. The individual data sets are colour coded in http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
and the Science article plots the individual sites in figure S1 of the supplementary material: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/310/5752/1293/DC1/1
They all show consistent trends as was summarised in the text:
“This New Jersey curve is remarkably similar to sea-level records from Delaware and southern New England, with a eustatic rise of 1 mm/year over the past 5 ky once corrected for subsidence effects, virtually identical to that obtained from Caribbean reef localities accounting for subsidence.”
1mm/year is therefore a consistent figure for the historical sea level change.
I have to smile at that word “ad hominem”. I swear on my Mother’s Catholic Bible that I sang that phrase in every Latin Mass tune I learned in catechism. Or at least that is what my small child mind thought I heard when I was being taught by the black floaty people.
Now you be talkin Tom. So expand a bit. What were the various Atlantic oceanic oscillations doing during that time? Did they also correct for the known rise in sea level from the warm phases?
@Pamela Gray (08:59:23) :
“…Am I close?”
I can’t say, as I’m not sure what you mean by “oscillations.” The term is only used twice in that reference, and they are…
1. in reference to “…the impact of the El Niño Southern Oscillation on sea levels in the western Pacific.”
2. and that “…if sea levels were today what they were 6,000 years ago, the present site of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games would be underwater. Similar rapid oscillations in sea level took place elsewhere on the southeast Australian coast throughout the last 4000 years…”
You may well be able to guess better than I can, because I wouldn’t have been able to at all without the historical results presented in the “crib sheet” I gave.
My point is just that it seems meanigless to talk about a “mean sea level rise,” although it might be interesting to talk about a local rise, but it would be appropriate to know a lot more than just the atmospheric [CO2]. Just like with the “fiction” of global temperature or with ocean pH, the latter being highly variable with temp, location, depth, etc., sea level isn’t constant, so sea level isn’t something we can point to as an indicator of any recent drastic change. It just isn’t sensitive or precise enough, from what I’ve seen.
Tom P,
Subsidence along the Gulf Cast is due to water, oil and gas pumping.
Trying to claim a common mechanism and rate for 7,000 year old subsidence from New England to the Caribbean seems odd, to say the least.
See the following paper on causes of sea level changes. Now, before you say this is just noise and the paper mentions atmospheric warming, we have learned since 1999 that the PDO flips from cold to warm, and back again, causing quite a bit of that atmospheric warming and cooling then thought to be related to CO2. Each phase can be as short as 10 to 15 years, or as long as 30 to 60 years. The cold phase means that La Nina’s predominate. The warm phase means that El Nino’s predominate. To understand this data in relation to trends in sea level rise, fall, or static conditions, you must compare the oceanic oscillation period and sea level measurements in the same area. Why? Because different ocean oscillations oscillate in and out of unison. So a simple global statement of sea level rise is not very informative in regards to causality.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1999/fs175-99/
@Steven Goddard (09:50:41) :
“Do you think glacial rebound is having a strong effect in Florida?”
Well I live in Cent.Fl, and I can tell you my dramamine bill has gone through the roof since I moved here.
But seriously, I don’t know what, if any, effect it might have, but there is some plate movement in the Gulf. There was a pretty strong earthquake there not long ago,…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213221,00.html
…so there is movement. Whether FL will be elevated or not, I don’t know, but it seems that could be possible.
“It is the norm in the climate science world to throw in some gratuitous AGW interpretation about the raw data, to avoid censure from their peers.”em>
Welcome to the Climate Sauna, data masseuses always on duty. Come in calm, and leave anxious, but at least your job will be secure, …for now.
Pamela,
If you’re referring to decadal oscillations, these would not be in the data – the error bars in the Steven’s second plot look as though they’re at least one hundred years in duration.
The corrections certainly included changes in mass loading by both ice and water during the warming period. These were of course different for each location.
As you know what you’re looking for, you might want to read the original papers and draw your own conclusions.
Steven,
You state:
“Trying to claim a common mechanism and rate for 7,000 year old subsidence from New England to the Caribbean seems odd, to say the least.”
It would be odd if I had. But as you well know I mentioned neither a common mechanism nor a rate, and you are being less than honest in suggesting I did. In fact the Science article indicates that subsidence in the Carribbean is much lower than that along the Eastern seaboard.
Subsidence is occurring around the coasts for various reasons now and in the past. Are you suggesting we ignore this subsidence when we calculate sea-level changes?
Decadal oscillations are actually a misnomer in way, as they lead people to surmise that oceanic warm and cool oscillations occur in ten-year cycles, kind of like the Sun and its aproximately 11 year cycle from minimum trough to minimum trough. The AMO’s “multidecadal” term is also misleading to the general readership. This oscillation is noisy, with short as well as long somewhat random cycles and with several co-occurring oscillations, as it is such a big pond. A better term would be “Atlantic multi-oscillating multi-gyres cycles”. Any sea level rise or fall must have the nearby oceanic oscillation affect on the top surface of the ocean calculated out of the measurement to determine if sea level is rising or falling due to some other non-natural cycle. That measurement must also include removing the seawater and freshwater melt at the end of a naturally occurring cold trend.
Smokey: My comments here are directly on topic. I view Steven Goddard’s post as either incomplete or misleading and my criticism is made solely on that basis. Presented as “Basic Geology”, this makes his still-vague credentials highly relevant.
Your presumptions about my motivation and suggestion that I instead address an incidental matter are misdirection. Tom P. and Marcus are handling the current rising sea level component of this discussion quite well.
@ur momisugly Philip_B (21:30:06) :
As one ocean gets larger through sea floor spreading, another gets smaller through subduction. If this weren’t true, the area of continents would shrink over geological timescales and they don’t. Sea floor spreading per se has no longer term effect on sea levels and any shorter term effect could be in either direction, ie to raise or lower sea levels.”
No, that’s not what I am talking about.
I understand that the surface area of the earth is fixed, so as new ocean floor is produced other ocean floor is consumed via subduction. But the part the controls the sea level is how ‘hot’ is that ocean floor. Warm things are less dense, regardless of the material (with water being one of a few exceptions) and the earth’s crust is no different. When there are high rates of sea floor spreading, and thus high rates of new sea floor production, we have a greater area of the sea floor which is warmer, and less dense, and therefore “floating” higher in the earth’s matle. As this sea floor is “floating higher” it pushes the water higher with it and this, higher sea levels.
Check out the topography of the Atlantic. We talk often of “Mid oceanic ridges” and the reason the ridge exists is due to the less dense ocean floor that was just produced at the ridge axis. As you move further from the axis of spreading, the ocean floor cools, becomes more dense, and sinks lower in the mantle.
Google Isostasy.
@Steven Goddard (10:37:46) :
“Trying to claim a common mechanism and rate for 7,000 year old subsidence from New England to the Caribbean seems odd, to say the least”
Sediment loading and thermal adjustment of the oceanic crust?
The temperature at the depths is so cold that water there actually expands a bit, just like water right before it freezes, capturing the expansion and making it visible to the naked eye in the ice cube. The water layer nearer the top expands because it is getting warmer, or contracts because it is getting colder. It’s the top layer that changes the sea level.
Ben Lawson:
Misdirection? Nope. That ‘incidental’ matter is in fact the entire basis for the AGW hypothesis, which claims that a rise in CO2 will lead to runaway global warming. It is not incidental, but rather, the CO2 question is central to the entire
global warmingclimate debate.If, as the empirical evidence suggests, a rise in a minor trace gas has no measurable effect on the planet’s temperature, then it should normally merit no more than a minor footnote in an obscure journal.
Instead, the CO2 question has devolved into arguing over literally $Trillions in tax increases to fight a harmless, non-threatening event. So I ask the central question once more: is a rise in CO2 causing the supposed rise in the sea level?
Ben Lawson,
Dr. Hansen is considered very highly credentialed, and he claims 55mm/year average through the remainder of the century. Do you accept his analysis? You certainly do not have the credentials to question the world’s most respected climatologist. In fact no one does. We have to take his word as unquestioned fact. That is what democracy and free speech is all about.
So you choose to quibble with me over 1cm instead. I am not impressed.