From the Guardian, finally some refreshing honesty in Science:
Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels
Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown
The Maldives – poster child for bad science Photograph: Reuters
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.
At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study “strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results“. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.
Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.
Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: “It’s one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science.” He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study’s conclusion.
…
In a statement the authors of the paper said: “Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.
h/t Claude Harvey
@rbatemen:
“How odd. That’s the same thing they always say about bull markets (dot com, housing, etc.).”
Are you talking about scientific studies, when you say “they”? Or are you just trying to ridicule a valid statement with a logically fallacious comparison?
rc
I find Robert amusing.
A bit nonplussed by the withdrawal of this paper. As others have alluded to above, one suspects that this is a deliberate ploy prior to the publication of another, showing higher sea level rises.
@ur momisugly rootless cosmo. The amount of warming depends on where you cherry-pick your baseline start date, doesn’t it? Nil from the middle of the MWP, lots from the middle of the LIA…
@Jeef:
Of course, the suspicion of a conspiracy with sinister motives is always the first one, right?
“The amount of warming depends on where you cherry-pick your baseline start date, doesn’t it? Nil from the middle of the MWP, lots from the middle of the LIA…”
Since anthropogenic emissions have become significant after 1850 it is plausible, not cherry-picking to see whether the temperature has changed significantly during the same time period. It is always a matter of the question one asks.
Of course, when one want to see whether the observed warming is unprecedented compared to a longer time period one has to use data from the longer time period. Then one has to use other data, though, proxy-data, which have a higher uncertainty than the instrumental temperature record, which only reaches back up to about 1850 with about sufficient coverage of Earth’s surface to get an about representative picture for global climate.
How do you know the warming has been nil since “MWP”?
rc
Archonix (03:15:02) :
GaryPearse (02:16:53) :
Alexandria was burned by the romans and sacked several times before christianity arrived on the scene. The libel that christians burned the library there is just that – a libel. False. Misleading at best, given that at the time the library was claimed to have been burned, it was almost non-existent. In fact most of the library that survived the previous (pre-christian) sackings of Alexandria was distributed around the Roman empire and most of what survived ended up in Rome.
The belief that the world was flat was a minority view throughout christian times and well before. The myth that the church claimed the world was flat was put about less than 150 years ago by anti-catholics here in England and quickly soaked into the popular consciousness, but it was just a myth. The geocentric model of the universe adopted by the church and based on pre-christian beliefs, whilst incorrect in itself, was based on the assumption that the earth was a sphere. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.
——-
To add to what Archonix says (thanks!) the whole reason Galileo got into trouble was that he was challenging the Aristotelian model of the universe that had been adopted by the Church much earlier: in that model the earth is a sphere and the planets, sun, moon and stars rotate around it. The church used this model because it was the basic model adopted by the geographer-astronomer Ptolemy in the second century A.D. and his methods remained the most successful for making astronomical predictions which were needed to set the dates of church feasts and high religious days. Although the Church offered little support for science in general, it needed Aristotelian-Ptolemaic astronomy, and amongst the educated, at least, knowledge that the earth is a sphere was never lost from Aristotle’s time onward.
Archonix, I had always thought the flat-earth stuff was an American myth that puffed up Columbus’s achievements; interesting that it was anti-catholic propaganda. I find that whatever its origin, this belief that educated people thought the earth was flat is stronger in N. America.
““the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.”
“The National Hurricane Center predicts this hurricane will hit somewhere between Maine and Rio. With a 50% chance of rain and wind.”
Next
vigilantfish (12:07:53) :
I find that whatever its origin, this belief that educated people thought the earth was flat is stronger in N. America.
Many beliefs in wrong things are stronger in N. America…
Of course, the suspicion of a conspiracy with sinister motives is always the first one, right?
This from the side that seems to assume that all (any?) skeptics are ‘in the pay of big oil’?
Of course there’s value in showing a variety of baselines when showing recent climate trends. Personally, I distrust almost any single graph – I prefer to see both long and short-term graphs describing the same data before I think I have a good enough picture of what’s happening.
vigilantfish;
Archonix, I had always thought the flat-earth stuff was an American myth that puffed up Columbus’s achievements; interesting that it was anti-catholic propaganda>
I don’t recall the RC church promoting the notion of a flat earth. They didn’t make that claim, so Archonix has demolished a myth whose existance is a myth. The RC church did dispute Galileo’s assertion that the earth circled the sun, threatened him with ex-communication and torture if he did not recant and eventually sentenced him to death. His sentence was commuted to lifetime house arrest, and funding was provided to other scientists who “proved” that the other planets reverse course in their orbits for brief periods to explain Galileo’s observations, and claimed that this made more “sense” than the notion of the earth curcling the sun.
It is a tragic example of a time in history when the facts threatened the power of the establishment and “scientists” produced what ever results they were asked to regardless of how illogical it was, that it contradicted considerable science that was done before, and those who stood up for the truth were threatened, villified, and discredited with falsehoods and contrived evidence.
Sorry for switching topics all of a sudden, for clarity first paragraph is about the dark ages and second paragraph is about present time.
rootless cosmopolitan (10:16:55) :
Yes, its a victory. They were afraid of SealevelGate.
Hehe.
But it will come anyway;
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
10cm +-10cm.
Dooomed.We are dooomed.
John: I congratulate the scientists involved for retracting a flawed study rather than trying to brazen it out or “move on” as has been the habit of others.
Admitting mistakes shows your integrity – which is why I’m so sceptical of climate “science”.
rootless cosmopolitan (11:35:08) :
@Jeef:
The amount of warming depends on where you cherry-pick your baseline start date, doesn’t it? Nil from the middle of the MWP, lots from the middle of the LIA…”
How do you know the warming has been nil since “MWP”?
Hey! I’ve seen 1million years BC and I can tell you it was a lot hotter back then! Any hotter and rachel welsh would be ….
But seriously, that’s a good point, proxy reconstruction has to be used together with historical accounts to give a broad picture. And having read the historical texts for other reasons, there’s not a lot of detail so the answer really is “who knows?”
davidmhoffer (12:43:56) :
David,
You missed an earlier posting in which Archonix was explaining that the myth that the RC Church taught that the earth was flat was a product of English (C of E ?, T.H. Huxley’s followers? both groups?) anti-Catholicism 150 years ago. Neither he nor I agreed with the myth – I was just unaware of its source.
What you say about Galileo is generally true, although the ‘scientists’ of that time (the term scientist was coined in 1832 by English philosopher William Whewell) were Aristotelian philosophers, and they had no need to ‘prove’ the epicyclic retrograde motion of the planets, because this model was generally accepted. But they were sure willing to argue about it with Galileo, and to condemn him to the Church because his sun-centred universe challenged their philosophy and therefore their livelihoods. I agree with you about the modern parallels in climate science.
Just another one of these little anomalies which – prior to it’s discovery – invariably worked in favour of the “we’re all gonna drown” crowd.
vigilantfish
You missed an earlier posting in which Archonix was explaining that the myth that the RC Church taught that the earth was flat was a product of English (C of E ?, T.H. Huxley’s followers? both groups?) anti-Catholicism 150 years ago>
Well then, I retract my accusation regarding the accusation.
“”” vigilantfish (13:52:00) :
davidmhoffer (12:43:56) :
David,
You missed an earlier posting in which Archonix was explaining that the myth that the RC Church taught that the earth was flat was a product of English (C of E ?, T.H. Huxley’s followers? both groups?) anti-Catholicism 150 years ago. Neither he nor I agreed with the myth – I was just unaware of its source.
What you say about Galileo is generally true, although the ’scientists’ of that time (the term scientist was coined in 1832 by English philosopher William Whewell) were Aristotelian philosophers, and they had no need to ‘prove’ the epicyclic retrograde motion of the planets, because this model was generally accepted. “””
Well when I was in “University”, I actually read a textbook all about those epicyclic orbits of the planets.
And even today, Astronomers talk about retrograde motion of the planets.
So I don’t see anything wrong with the ancient epicyclic model of the solar system. The numbers in that old textbook were pretty darn accurate.
Only if we insist that the sun is the center of the universe do those epicycles look strange; they aren’t, to observers here on earth.
Recipy (00:25:53) :
“The withdrawal actually strengthens the growing consensus in the sea level community that the IPCC projections were much too low.”
Oh really? So you believe the output from their expensive Playstation? Next time when it spew out another number, will you believe it more? Why?
“”” rootless cosmopolitan (11:35:08) :
@Jeef:
Of course, the suspicion of a conspiracy with sinister motives is always the first one, right?
“The amount of warming depends on where you cherry-pick your baseline start date, doesn’t it? Nil from the middle of the MWP, lots from the middle of the LIA…”
Since anthropogenic emissions have become significant after 1850 it is plausible, not cherry-picking to see whether the temperature has changed significantly during the same time period. It is always a matter of the question one asks.
Of course, when one want to see whether the observed warming is unprecedented compared to a longer time period one has to use data from the longer time period. Then one has to use other data, though, proxy-data, which have a higher uncertainty than the instrumental temperature record, which only reaches back up to about 1850 with about sufficient coverage of Earth’s surface to get an about representative picture for global climate.
How do you know the warming has been nil since “MWP”? “””
How do you know “anthropogenic emissions have become significant after 1850” ?
And significant compared to what ? Zero, Natural emissions, total atmospheric emissions content, whatever ??
In what way has this significance manifested itself ?
When one considers the increase in Anthropogenia after 1850; I can’t see that anthropogenic emissions are in any way out of line with the number of sources.
“”” latitude (12:23:29) :
““the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.” “””
Well you see the mean global temperature is proportional to the logarithm of the sea level rise. That increase from 7 cm to 82 cm is 3 1/2 doublings, and since the “sea level sensitivity” is 3 deg C per doubling, that means about 10 deg C rise by 2100, in line with IPCC predictions; excuse me, projections !
OT. Help! All you guys are very smart so I know someone will know the answer to this. I use IE8, have tried with Firefox and Chrome, but cannot get the Guardian website to load. Any Ideas? Thanks
Sioned L (16:19:07) :
OT. Help! All you guys are very smart so I know someone will know the answer to this. I use IE8, have tried with Firefox and Chrome, but cannot get the Guardian website to load. Any Ideas? Thanks>
Since you a) tried three different browsers and b) I assume those browsers are working fine on other sites then:
1) You may have a firewall on your computer that is blocking that site
2) Your computer may be on a local area network that has a firewall blocking that site
3) Your ISP might be blocking that site
Once you get through those there could be 30 or 40 other things to try.
While it’s likely that many of you won’t be around to see any predicted rise, the rewritten paper is ‘highly likely’ to estimate higher, not lower sea levels, given that the flaws resulted in an underestimate, not an overestimate.
It’s not news to anyone who keeps and eye on what’s going on in the literature. The flaws were recognised with comments on the internet some time ago.
That’s how science works!
It’s comments like the ones here that add to the probability of higher sea levels, because there seem to be quite a number of people who don’t realise the situation we’re facing and therefore will discourage and slow the action needed to mitigate.
Sou (22:00:56) : “That’s how science works!”
Yes, we see how the IPCC works science. Fight to the death to keep dubious multi proxy studies, never withdraw one of them, inflate like hell any potential maybe disaster, underestimate or ignore any “known” benfit of increased AGW, refuse to reveal the data behind your studies, use activist journals to distort the weak science further, and in generosity withdraw one paper, only because it does not show the SL rise desired. We do indeed see “how the science works”
Henry @ur momisugly Sou
We are heading for a period of global cooling, not global warming. As predicted it will start off with lots of more cloud cover (Svensmark theory) and as a result much more precipitation.
The problem will therefore not be the rising sea levels but the rising river levels. Are we sure the levees are going to hold when this massive amount of snow that we had everywhere in the NH is going to start melting again? + the additional rain due to global cooling….
@David A:
“Yes, we see how the IPCC works science. Fight to the death to keep dubious multi proxy studies”
“Dubious” because you claim so.
“never withdraw one of them”
And this, although you demand it. How could they dare.
“inflate like hell any potential maybe disaster”
So you claim.
“underestimate or ignore any “known” benfit of increased AGW”
So you claim.
“refuse to reveal the data behind your studies”
So you claim.
“use activist journals to distort the weak science further”
So you claim. And how would you know it’s weak science? What’s your criteria for this? Gut feeling?
“and in generosity withdraw one paper, only because it does not show the SL rise desired”
What are you smoking? IPCC doesn’t withdraw papers. Papers are being withdrawn by their authors, or by the scientific journals where the papers are being published. IPCC doesn’t publish papers. How could they withdraw any of them, then? Also, the reason for the withdrawal you claim here is just an equally baseless accusation, for which you don’t have any evidence. But I guess, as “climate skeptic” you are allowed to make assertions and accusations without any evidence.
Well, since “climate skeptics” make such a fuss about a few mistakes in the IPCC-report (how many have been discovered so far? Two? Three? A handful?), and of a handful non-peer-reviewed references (among hundreds papers from scientific journals for each chapter), and present these as “proof” that the IPCC-report as a whole and its core conclusions must be invalid, I expect they will hold up any “study” by “climate skeptics” to the same high standards in the future. Just kidding. I don’t expect this.
rc