Images spanning 130 years show non-effects of sea level rise
By Steve Goddard
Above, imaginary alarmist imagery: London Drowning from the BBC
One of my favorite CAGW climochondrias is worry about sea level. From Wikipedia:
Hypochondriasis (or hypochondria, often referred to as health phobia or health anxiety) refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured them that their concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease.
Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic NewsUpdated April 26, 2004Most scientists agree that global warming presents the greatest threat to the environment. There is little doubt that the Earth is heating up. From the melting of the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, to the loss of coral reefs as oceans become warmer, the effects of global warming are often clear. However, the biggest danger, many experts warn, is that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically.
The esteemed Dr. Hansen has made the threat clear :
a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark – and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh.
That sounds serious. New Year’s Eve in Manhattan could be rough if Times Square was underwater.
But I keep thinking that if sea level was rising significantly, some of the billions of people who live along the coasts might have noticed? My favorite snorkeling beach in California is The Cove in La Jolla. I first went there around 1960, when Raquel Welch (Tejada at the time) was named Homecoming Queen at La Jolla High School. I went snorkeling there again last summer. The beach is still there and hasn’t changed. Below is a photo of The Cove from 1871.
https://www.sandiegohistory.org/timeline/images/80-2860.jpg
And a recent photo :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/090207-LaJollaCove.jpg
And here is the animation with the two images matched to scale and overlaid:
(click on the image to see animation if is is not visible)
A lot of erosion has occurred over the last 130 years. In the blink animation above (click on the image to see animation) note that the rock under the three people standing on the right in the 1871 image is gone, and has formed a small island of boulders with three people sitting on it in the recent image. There is no evidence that sea level has risen.
A few Palm Trees have been planted, but the sea appears to be in exactly the same place it was 130 years ago. In fact the rocks on the upper right are higher above the water now than in the earlier picture (high tide.) There is no glacial rebound in San Diego, and the faults in the region are strike-slip (horizontal) faults. They don’t cause vertical movement. Prior to the March quake this year, the last large quake to hit the region was in 1862.
http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/FaultMaps/117-33.gif
The land in La Jolla hasn’t moved up or down in the last 130 years. Neither has the ocean. Where is this sea level catastrophe happening? On a sandbar? At current melt rates, it will take 300,000 years for Antarctica to melt.
Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured them that their concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease.
WUWT has hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. If any of you have personally seen sea level rise at your favorite beach over the last few decades, please speak up!
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Willis
Generally there is some averaging going on between land rising and falling, but people will always point to places where the land is falling as support for taxing CO2.
I’m not sure how raising taxes will change the motion of the earth’s crust, but apparently human sacrifice is an important part of human psyche.
So then, just where is the magic benchmark (fixed elevation point) against which all this is being compared to? The fact is, land surfaces (and the ocean beds) are in a constant state of flux where elevations are concerned. Build on a river delta, expect subsidence over time. Even buildings constructed on well compacted fill suffer from subsidence over time.
Much ado about damn little, if anything, it is. The world turns, and things change, as things always have changed. There is no way for humans to cause any significant modifications as to how the world changes, and it is a waste of resources to attempt to try and modify this.
Best save the resources so as to better cope with whatever changes nature has in store for us.
I get particularly annoyed with those who say things such as “It may not happen in my lifetime, but I am very concerned for people in the (distant) future.” Those “future” people will just have to figure out for themselves how to best deal with whatever comes along, as humans have always had to do.
Impoverishing the great majority now, with futile attempts, will cause those “future” (as well as the present) people far more grief than what nature dishes out as a matter of course.
A few questions…
According to data from GRACE satellites Greenland is losing ~180 cubic kilometres of ice per year. Where does this ice go? How much is lost from continental glaciers in total? How much from Antarctica? If it all ended up in the ocean how much would it make it rise if evenly distributed?
Their is evidence that the ocean is warming. Warmer water swells the ocean. How much per year across the last decade?
Man-made dams and lakes prevent water reaching the ocean. This lowers the mean ocean level. If all such were emptied into the ocean how much would it rise?
If you have an interest it is worth searching widely for the answers to the above. We can collectivley stick our heads in beach sand if we choose, but prepare to get wet.
@David Ball
That’s what you call an ad hominem; it’s a logical fallacy. Find an actual error in the paper if you’re going to claim it’s invalid.
@Roy
Given that sea level rise is occurring at ~ 3 mm/year and has averaged ~2 mm/year over the last century, how realistic is it to believe that this would be visible in any photograph? Would a change of 2 cm at that distance even show up in an image of this resolution?
The fact is that you can’t realistically eyeball sea level rise. If it were that simple, why would we bother with actually measuring the change?
stevengoddard says:
May 1, 2010 at 9:27 pm
“Larry Fields
La Jolla is nowhere near Long Beach, and if there was subsidence – it would increase sea level rise, not decrease it.”
Even Wet Blanket Larry is entitled to an occasional senior moment. Great article, Steve.
“Sea levels are rising but at no where near the rate claimed by Gore. Instead, they’re rising at the same rate they’ve been rising since before the industrial revolution. And in the last few years, the rate of the rise has actually decreased.”
… okay, so unlike Mr. Gore and Dr. Hansen, you’re not blaming this on man’s actions; more specifically, on the commencement of his use of fossil fuels during the industrial revolution. Is that correct?
magicjava says:
May 2, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Thanks, Magicjava, sorry I misunderstood you. Contradictory claims are not uncommon in climate science …
Two points about that.
First, we only have satellite data since 1992. So it’s very hard to look back further, because the data isn’t very good.
Second, what you call the “buzzsaw effect” are the seasonal changes in the LOD which are driven by the seal level. As a result, they fit very well to the “buzzsaw effect” of the seasonal changes in sea level, which in part is why the correlation is so good. When the sea level goes up and down with the seasons, the LOD goes down and up in the same way and with the same timing. Given the theoretical physical connection between the two, this makes perfect sense. So I don’t think you can just “remove the buzzsaw effect” from one and not the other.
Ammonite says: [ … ]
May 2, 2010 at 5:16 pm
The obvious answer is that the ocean isn’t warming. In fact, the 3,351 ARGO buoy network indicates a slight deep sea cooling, which explains why there is no appreciable sea level rise.
Also, the Greenland ice cap contains almost 3,000,000 cubic kilometers of ice. A temporary loss of 180 cubic kilometers per year is such a trivial fraction of 3 million cu km that it is statistically irrelevant. [And remember, the Arctic is currently losing a small amount of ice, but the Antarctic is growing slightly. Thus, none of this is global. It is due to regional climate variability.]
And a 2009 study [Velicogna, et al.] published in Geophysical Research Letters estimates that between 2002 and 2009 the Greenland ice cap lost about 1,600 cubic kilometers of ice. That loss is equivalent to about 0.5 millimeter [0.02 inches] of global sea-level rise per year. So if the cycle does not revert to the mean, and the current ice loss continues unabated for the next century, the Greenland ice loss will raise sea levels by just two inches over the next hundred years. More info here.
Finally, regarding your concern that dams and lakes keep water from flowing to the oceans: they don’t.
speculativebs says:
May 2, 2010 at 5:17 pm
The fact is that you can’t realistically eyeball sea level rise. If it were that simple, why would we bother with actually measuring the change?
Isn’t that the basic point of Steve’s post? If 8 inches of sea level rise was barely discernible over the last century, why on earth would the prospect of a rise 12 inches over the next century justify all the hysterical hyperbole that has been spewed forth on this topic?
David Ball says:
May 2, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Dave Wendt:
May 2, 2010 at 12:19 pm: Response: Do not be troubled, Mr. Wendt. I get the chirping crickets more often than not.
Thanks for your comment. I hadn’t really intended for my comment to come off quite as whiny as it did. The size of my ego allows me to consider the relative silence my comments usually incur to be merely a sign of abject surrender on the part those who might challenge me. Actually by having the ability to post a comment at site like this, I have an opportunity to place my thoughts before an audience whose size dwarfs anything I’d ever hoped for. It would be foolish to get too out of sorts about the lack of response, when the opportunity itself is such a gift.
I hope your father fares well in his dealings with the courts, the methods and means used by the climate establishment to try to silence those that they feel threatened by, have always lead me to distrust them. Even if I was to find their science convincing, I don’t think I could associate myself with them.
@Dave
It’s an accelerating process. Current trends follow the upper bounds of IPCC projections, and the current increase is closer to 3.3 mm/year, well above the average for the past century. This is why the projected increase in sea level is closer to 0.1-0.7 meters rather than 8 inches.
If you throw a ball downwards at a rate of 0.02 m/s and it’s 2 meters off the ground, will it hit the ground in 100 seconds, or will it be considerably sooner? Approximating an accelerating process as if it’s linear over long time frames yields hopelessly unrealistic results.
Wow I find it amazing how in our modern era an with a web page can successfully warp disprove millions of scientist that have for the most part come to agree that the sea levels are rising due an increase in global temperature. I mean come on people global warming is a proven scientific theory. For anyone to pull a blind fold over there eyes and choose to ignore this fact, or argue the credibility of global warming is preposterous. You have just as good a chance of proving that gravity doesn’t exist as you do in disproving global warming.
I would like to point out the absurdity of the animation posted. The image first image of the cove that the current water level is being compare to is completely irrelevant to the issue of rising sea levels. The first image is so old that it is not even in color. The reason that this makes the image irrelevant to this argument is that global warming is a fairly recent issue. Though it is true that the earth has previously gone through cycles of warmer and colder global temperatures, this is the first time that it has been caused by humans. An yes the current increase in global temperature has been caused by humans, starting around the industrial revolution, and increasing since then as world population has exponentially exploded (World Population Chart). The global temperature link the world population is not increasing at a linear rate. The global temperature is increasing at an exponential rate and with this increase comes an increased rate of melting polar ice caps.
The polar ice caps are melting and thanks to science we know that nothing can disappear into nothingness. Therefore all of this melted ice has to go somewhere, and you guessed it the ocean! Wow what do you know there is a reason behind rising sea levels. As this image here show the polar ice caps have melted a lot in recent years (Melting Ice). The key word here being recent, which is what makes the animation at the top of this blog irrelevant.
speculativebs says:
May 2, 2010 at 5:17 pm: Response: I find it interesting that the screen name you used is denigrating to those who post on this site. But it is ok for you to engage in such activity, as your goal is to save the planet for our children and grandchildren. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
[quote Willis Eschenbach says:]
First, we only have satellite data since 1992. So it’s very hard to look back further, because the data isn’t very good.
Second, what you call the “buzzsaw effect” are the seasonal changes in the LOD which are driven by the seal level. As a result, they fit very well to the “buzzsaw effect” of the seasonal changes in sea level, which in part is why the correlation is so good. When the sea level goes up and down with the seasons, the LOD goes down and up in the same way and with the same timing. Given the theoretical physical connection between the two, this makes perfect sense. So I don’t think you can just “remove the buzzsaw effect” from one and not the other.
[/quote]
Thanks for the reply. How often does one get to talk about the Length Of Day Delta. 😉
On the first point, I’m not sure I’m following you. We have sea level data going back hundreds of years and LODD going back at least to the 1960s (that’s what I have on my computer). As far as I know, there’s no quality concerns with the data.
On the second point, I think you have to remove the annual signal from the LODD. Nearly all climate data has that signal and if you’re doing correlations than almost any data set correlates (or anti-corelates) with any other data set with that annual signal in it to some degree. I think this is _why_ you have so many contradictory claims about what’s causing the LODD.
If you take out that signal, you’re left with a much lower frequency wave that doesn’t match the sea level curve at all. Not even close. See:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NlR71q69vA/S2rvO2pv0PI/AAAAAAAAAQs/kHdGV5JcHkw/s1600/Norm2.png
So at the very least, even if we were to say that sea levels were causing that high frequency annual signal (and I’m not really convinced they are), there’s still something else causing that stronger lower frequency signal.
And because of that, you can’t use one signal to calculate the other.
[quote Willis Eschenbach says:]
First, we only have satellite data since 1992. So it’s very hard to look back further, because the data isn’t very good.
Second, what you call the “buzzsaw effect” are the seasonal changes in the LOD which are driven by the seal level. As a result, they fit very well to the “buzzsaw effect” of the seasonal changes in sea level, which in part is why the correlation is so good. When the sea level goes up and down with the seasons, the LOD goes down and up in the same way and with the same timing. Given the theoretical physical connection between the two, this makes perfect sense. So I don’t think you can just “remove the buzzsaw effect” from one and not the other.
[/quote]
Thanks for the reply. How often does one get to talk about the Length Of Day Delta. 😉
On the first point, I’m not sure I’m following you. We have sea level data going back hundreds of years and LODD going back at least to the 1960s (that’s what I have on my computer). As far as I know, there’s no quality concerns with the data.
On the second point, I think you have to remove the annual signal from the LODD. Nearly all climate data has that signal and if you’re doing correlations than almost any data set correlates (or anti-corelates) with any other data set with that annual signal in it to some degree. I think this is _why_ you have so many contradictory claims about what’s causing the LODD.
If you take out that signal, you’re left with a much lower frequency wave that doesn’t match the sea level curve at all. Not even close. See:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NlR71q69vA/S2rvO2pv0PI/AAAAAAAAAQs/kHdGV5JcHkw/s1600/Norm2.png
So at the very least, even if we were to say that sea levels were causing that high frequency annual signal (and I’m not really convinced they are), there’s still something else causing that stronger lower frequency signal.
And because of that, you can’t use one signal to calculate the other
speculativebs says:
May 2, 2010 at 7:06 pm
@Dave
It’s an accelerating process. Current trends follow the upper bounds of IPCC projections, and the current increase is closer to 3.3 mm/year, well above the average for the past century.
What would you suggest is going to provide this acceleration?
zfoxcis says:
May 2, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Well, I’m not really sure what is being said here, other than that WUWT, The Air Vent, Climate Audit, and similar sites are all obviously wrong.
How could this have happened, surely not by requesting proof, data to check, facts to verify? When all we needed to do was agree with Mann, Jones et al and become True Believers.
Are you on Monbiots list for AGW supporters?
When you can come up with actual facts, verifiable, and able to pass a true/false test, call back in. We’re always interested in actual science, not faith based assertions though, so I guess you won’t be back for a while.
RE: zfoxcis’s post
WOW! This is going to be great. Who’s makin’ popcorn?
Clive
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zfoxcis says:
May 2, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Wow I find it amazing how in our modern era an with a web page can successfully warp disprove millions of scientist that have for the most part come to agree that the sea levels are rising due an increase in global temperature. ….
_________________________________________________________________________
You were being sarcastic weren’t you? If not I suggest you start reading here: Popular Technology: 700 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming
Millions of scientists are willing to keep their mouths shut to keep their jobs is a more accurate description of the current situation. If you do not bow to the Global warming agenda and insert the required “prayer” your paper will not be published. Even World Market Media, a bunch of economists saw that: http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/801/section.aspx/527/hacked-emails-reveal-an-inconvienent-truth
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Willis Eschenbach says:
May 2, 2010 at 4:10 pm
stevengoddard says:
May 2, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Willis
” …..Presumably, however, if the land is sinking in one place it is rising in another, so you’d think they would somewhat average out.”
I would think it depends on how you choose your data sort of like the “adjusting” of the Darwin Temperature data depended on how it was “processed”
I think you meant low tides.
@David Ball
My screen name is self-mockery; too many people take themselves way too seriously. I’m not an expert, and unlike some, I won’t pretend to be.
Hi Smokey: May 2, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Once again, it is important for everyone to read around a topic for a while to determine where the weight of evidence lies. Ask the question “what would make scientists think the ocean is rising?” and search amongst the many papers out there. Just reading abstracts gives a reasonable indication.
From Wikipedia: Data results from year 2006 with undetected errors: The Argo Network has shown a continuous declining trend in ocean temperatures. The trend was overstated in media reports because of published data with undetected errors in year 2006. In March 2008, Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory did report that the Argo system show no ocean warming since it started in 2003. “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis has stated. A lot of media has reported the uncorrected data results and even though the revised corrected data appeared in 2008, many articles and arguments still use and promote the uncorrected data results from 2006. In an article from November 5, 2008, Josh Willis states that the world ocean actually has been warming since 2003 after removing Argo measurement errors from the data and adjusting the measured temperatures with a computer model his team developed.
Chen et al 2009 using GRACE satelite data estimate the recent total ice loss for Antarctica as a whole is estimated at 220 giga tonnes per year.
I wonder how much influence the sci-fi novel “The Drowned World” by J. G. Ballard (who was also the author of the semi-autobiographical novel “Empire of the Sun” that was made into the 1987 film of the same name by Stephen Spielberg) may have had over the development of the CAGW movement. First published in 1962 (before even the global cooling / new ice-age scare of the 1970s) it describes a world where global warming (due to increased radiation from an unstable sun rather than to an anthropogenic cause) has, over a period of 60-70 years, melted the polar ice and permafrost and turned much of the earth into lands of tropical lagoons with drowned and half-drowned cities. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drowned_World
Could there possibly be a copy on one of Dr Hansen’s shelves, I wonder.
speculativebs says:
May 2, 2010 at 10:42 pm: Response: I guess I need to work on my communication skills, cause I did not get self-deprecating from your screen name at all.
Actually, the picture of a flooded London at the beginning of the post is not impossibly alarmist, for one thing because it has happened before. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Thames_flood
In 1928 a combination of a number of adverse factors caused the Thames river to rise to the highest level ever recorded and overflow the London Embankments, causing flooding that drowned 14 people and made thousands homeless. Steps were subsequently taken to try to defend London against the danger of future flooding which culminated in the building of the Thames Barrier (to prevent tidal surges reaching the city) in the 1970s.
One of the problems that London is up against is the fact that it is built on clay, and because of this and also due to the tilting downwards of South East England where it is located, it is sinking at a rate of about 30 cm per century. Consequently, possible rises in sea level are a genuine concern for the future of the city.