Guest post by Thomas Fuller
It is hard to understand many of those who are convinced that climate change will destroy civilization. Previous ideas about massive sea level rise or tipping points leading to unending temperature increases have been debunked. Conventional theory on climate change points to moderate temperature and sea level rises that can be dealt with using existing technology, although the sooner we start the easier it will be.
But for some, the need to believe (and to preach) about a coming catastrophe is so strong that they are willing to overturn their own theories to take temporary advantage of ephemeral observations that will support their apocalyptic vision of the future.
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment has been an operational satellite mission since 2002, measuring differences in the Earth’s gravity. Pictures of our planet using GRACE look more like a partially deflated soccer ball than the pristine globe we’re more accustomed to seeing.
As written in Wikipedia:
“GRACE is the first Earth-monitoring mission in the history of space flight whose key measurement is not derived from electromagnetic waves either reflected off, emitted by, or transmitted through Earth’s surface and/or atmosphere. Instead, the mission uses a microwave ranging system to accurately measure changes in the speed and distance between two identical spacecraft flying in a polar orbit about 220 kilometers (137 miles) apart, 500 kilometers (311 miles) above Earth. The ranging system is so sensitive it can detect separation changes as small as 10 microns—about one-tenth the width of a human hair over a distance of 220 kilometers.”
And according to some scientists working with GRACE measurements, Antarctica is losing ice. Not just the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, which has been predicted to melt and succumb to mechanical pressure since the 1930s, but also the vastly larger ice sheet covering East Antarctica.
And sure enough, the ‘apocaholics’ are all over this, using it to reinforce their unrelenting drumbeat of doom-laden predictions of disastrous sea level rises.
But this is actually quite strange. According to climate change theory, ice should be increasing in Antarctica–the (very slight) increase in temperatures and the natural increase in precipitation should result in more snow over Antarctica which gets compressed into higher levels of ice. The same phenomenon is both predicted and observed in Greenland, by the way.
Instead of using this as proof of global warming, these people should be either wondering about the measurements or re-examining their theories. Because this is observed data working against the principles of their theory… But they cannot pass up the chance for a quick and easy headline that reinforces the ‘all disaster, only disaster, 24 hours a day’ routine.
Certainly all measurements before GRACE showed increasing ice in Antarctica, as they do today.
My guess (I’m not a scientist and do not claim to know) is that there are still a few bugs to work out in how they are doing this. If you recall, when satellites first started being used to measure Earth temperatures, there were a few glitches caused by orbital decay and other mechanical problems.
Certainly their description of how they analyze the data provided by GRACE shows many an opportunity for error to creep in. They use a bit of guess work and inferences from computer models to create base levels for the land that rises and falls under the differing levels of ice. Which is what they have to do at the moment, until they get enough real base data. I’m certainly not blaming the scientists for any of this. They’re proceeding the way they have to proceed. My beef is with those who step in front of the scientists with their interpretations.
So the paper referred to by scare artists like Michael Tobis of Only In It For The Gold says the Eastern Antarctic has lost 57 billion tons a year–plus or minus 52 billion tons. Hmm. I think we need a few more orbits, myself. Having a margin of error as large as the original figure doesn’t inspire confidence.
But to hear some talk, it’s back to the Day After Tomorrow tidal waves drowning New York. You can always tell when they’re trying to scare you–they talk about firm figures for how much ice is melting, without the data needed to put it into perspective. 57 billion tons certainly sounds like a lot of ice. However, as a percentage of the total it is not even an asterisk. Antarctica has 150 million billion tons of ice…
Do you remember that iceberg that calved off Antarctica in March? (Calving is a perfectly normal event, and has nothing to do with climate change.) The one the size of Rhode Island? It was estimated at 860 billion tons.
“A 2008 study estimated that Antarctica loses about 1.6 trillion metric tons of ice each year, but gets nearly that much back as annual snowfall. The icy continent may suffer a net ice loss of about 100-200 billion metric tons per year, but Scambos said the exact figure remains uncertain.” (Live Science, Is Antarctica Falling Apart? March, 2010).
In essence, what we have here is a new satellite using new tools to take measurements. The data recovered is analyzed using guesses and inferences. Their analysis is presented with a margin of error as large as the amount of ice they say is melting from Antarctica. The loss is is less than 1% of the normal annual melt.
Other measurements, consistent with climate theory, have consistently shown the Antarctic gaining, not losing ice.
So obviously we’re all going to drown, right? Well, when I tried to have a discussion with Michael Tobis in the comments section of his weblog, it didn’t go too well. I’ll let one of his allies offer the final word from those trying to scare us all:
“Tom Fuller seems to have missed the point I made yesterday.
Sea levels are going to go way, way, way, way, way up.
Got it now?”
Umm, no. I don’t
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Addendum by Anthony:
Meanwhile, GRACE data is coming under question, and a new technique yields different results:
The melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica is about twice as slow as previously thought. The study, conducted by TU Delft, SRON and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The scientists published their findings in the September issue of Nature Geoscience.
We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted.’ The average rise in sea levels as a result of the melting ice caps is also lower.
Source below, click on image for original story. Interestingly, the NASA JPL website does not have this announcement on the Global Climate Change section or any other portion of the website that I can find.
WUWT has covered the GRACE issue previously:
GRACE’s warts – new peer reviewed paper suggests errors and adjustments may be large
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Max Hugoson
September 6, 2010 at 10:33 am
Not to get personal or anything, but who did you work for?
“A computer manufacturing company walked into a bar.”
“He had a T&M company growing out of his forehead. The bartender asked him ‘What happened to you?’ The T&M company said, ‘I don’t know. It was just a pimple on my but last week.'”
Could it be that company?
Seems to me that the whole issue of observations is set in mud. IF you can’t trust the elevation from which you calculate the satellite’s height what have you got.
Since that is the case how does one interpret the data with an occasional check as to its veracity?
I’d like to see some concrete to establish a benchmark, but even that is impossible since the whole of the Earth is subject to plasticity. Has there been a suitable model generated to account for the Earth’s crust flexibility?
Temp today @ur momisugly Vostok, Minus 72 CELCIUS with a wind chill predicted for tonight of minus 93 C.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=-78.44999695,106.87000275
The most obvious problem with GRACE is that it depends upon a model of how fast the land underneath the ice is either rising or sinking. It seems unlikely that the entire continent of Antartica is rising or sinking at the same rate to further complicate the issue.
“So who cares if the sea levels raise”
Maybe people who live close to sea level?
A total disgrace!
When it comes to sea level rising, I would like to know what the government of the Netherlands thinks about all this. They have more cause than anyone to be directly concerned for the exact numbers…and strong practical incentives for not wanting to jump on an alarmist bandwagon.
Rustneversleeps,
apparently you missed the articles where Grace showed large losses of ice from western Antarctic. The numbers were large enough that they sent an onsite expedition to verify the numbers. It was found that the interpretation of the Grace observations missed by a rather large amount.
In other words, the interpretations of the Grace observations were wrong then and wrong now just as you are. Before you try to slam anyone again you may want to brush up your own ignorance!!
Not tomorrow, not this century, but sometime…
…we will be hit by an asteroid large enough to cause mass extinction.
I think is a great and extremely important research aid. If an amateur (like myself) can use its output
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NATA.htm (p.3 & p.8)
then it must be an irreplaceable tool to a professional scientist or researcher.
Actually, wsbriggs notices something of importance.
Green religion is exactly equivalent to the fairy tale of the Biblical Flood following the Mortal Sin.
Big Bang = Creation.
Civilization = Mortal Sin (eating a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, a transition from barbarism to decadence, according to Joseph Brodsky; he was joking, they took it at face value).
Wages of Sin = Death, Great Flood, Plague, Drought, Fiery Hell, add any disaster, salt, pepper, and garlic to your taste.
Salvation = Just Give Us Money, We’ll Save You! (Church)
It’s equivalent to some minute details. Grand Priest Gore organizing the sale of indulgences (“carbon credits”). Pachauri looking like an Inquisitor from the Middle Ages who went bad in a broken freezer.
Christianity is a heresy of Judaism. Socialism is a heresy of Christianity. Green Religion is a heresy of the Socialism.
All these are manifestations of the same primitive delusion (projection of self on the blank screen of the unknown, according to Jack Vance): there are allegedly invisible forces around us that judge our behavior and decide our fate; most of us aren’t able to discern their will or predict their decisions but mullahs (scientists) are talking to them; they say that if we sacrifice more and more (pay through the nose and self-flagellate, burning a dozen of heretics now and then), these perpetually angry gods may spare us yet…
Anyway, it’s better to save a few by killing off millions than die altogether, right? It’s better to do something then to do nothing, perish or no perish, right? What are mere trillions of dollars compared to Eternal Damnation?
Are you a heretic? Your carbon footprint looks suspiciously like a print of a cloven foot! Hue and cry, sick him, tally-ho! Skin him alive, nail him to the cross, burn him alive!
Wizards and kings are bringing gifts to the Newborn Green Messiah while counting our gold… Carnifexes and extorters are sharpening their instruments, adjusting their data and smoothing their curves. Glenn Beck and Jeremiah Wright, you are history.
Paint yourself green before it’s too late.
Across the falling sky is the Toxic Rainbow of Diversity Consensus, and Nancy Pelosi’s toothy smile glimmers through it, like Cheshire Cat’s… Come, kneel, and pray, ye faithful!
kdk33 says:
“September 6, 2010 at 11:23 am
Not tomorrow, not this century, but sometime…
…we will be hit by an asteroid large enough to cause mass extinction”
-Except we have the technology to stop it-well maybe the Chinese or the Russians.
This reminds me of a MASH episode (credit imdb.com):
“M*A*S*H: Mail Call (#2.23)” (1974)
[Klinger reads Henry a letter from his mom that says his dad’s dying]
Henry Blake: The father dying, right?
Klinger: Yes, sir.
Henry Blake: [takes out a stack of papers and reads them] Father dying last year. Mother dying last year. Mother AND father dying. Mother, father, and older sister dying. Mother dying and older sister pregnant. Older sister dying and mother pregnant. Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying. Here’s an oldie but a goodie: Half of the family dying, other half pregnant.
[after Klinger tries once again to get out of the Army]
Henry Blake: Klinger, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Klinger: Yes, sir. I don’t deserve to be in the Army.
Michael J. Dunn says:
September 6, 2010 at 11:15 am
“When it comes to sea level rising, I would like to know what the government of the Netherlands thinks about all this.”
They are happy to tell you. For example:
http://www.safecoast.org/
Alexander Feht says…. (see above)
I appreciate the laugh. I prefer the term ‘priestcraft’ when describing the tut-tut remonstrations of ‘those who know more’ and who direct the flock what to think about what they see, or can’t see, or might see, eventually.
So Antarctic ice might melt to nothing in the next 370,000 years if there are no intervening ice ages and the melting some claim is happening now or melting and accumulation with melting now outpacing accumulation also happening now, as others would have it.
From this distance, it really does appear that some priests version of reality will have all accumulation, loss, melting and freezing be fashioned into proof that AGW is real, that it is primarily caused, detectably, by CO2 emitted by human industry and transportation. It is, frankly, unbelievable that all permutations can be true, let alone proven so. Why not rather write off Antarctica as ‘unknown’ and concentrate for publicity purposes on the Arctic where Greenland at least sticks to the “All is Going Wrong” line by continuing its millenia-long melt?
Frankly, priests, the claims are unbelievable, literally. My main objection is that it has confirmed by land thermometers that the temperature of the bulk of the continent has been going down for at least 50 years. It is not a surprise that ice and snow accumulate when the temperature over such a vast area drops, on average, every year. The much quoted article about a warming Antarctic in last years Science (about ‘not bucking the trend’) is nothing less than silly, projecting over cooling land areas, as it does, temperatures from the coasts. An article like that would not have made it into my high school newspaper. Shame on Science! Shame!
How can these decreased temperatures be argued into ‘increased precipitation from increased evaporation? Look at the ARGO sea temps from around the Antarctic? How can there be increased evaporation from cooling seas – and in the same time period as the GRACE measurements? Increased wind from the decreasing temps maybe? Interpret the mathematical entrails cast upon the screen by GRACE and tell us what it means O priests of climate!
A ‘grace’ is an undeserved bounty. I am wondering for whom.
John F Hultquist
That safecoast view of Holland shows it looking in 2050 remarkably similar to that of the 12th century. Sea levels generally have a little way to go before reaching those heights again.
Tonyb
Max Hugoson says:
September 6, 2010 at 10:33 am
Is it me? Is it because of my years of working with instrumentation, and measurements in the industrial realm?
You know what that very linear movement of the sea level looks like.
INSTRUMENT DRIFT…
Hummmm…
Signed, party pooper fuddy duddy.
Max
I have recommended this document in comments here several times in the past
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_handbook_v1-4_no_rev.pdf
It is the data products handbook for the Jason-2 satellite system, the latest and greatest of the our measurement systems for determining MSL. It’s worth studying for the large amount of basic information on the multitude of elements involved in attempting to derive what the global mean sea level is, but for the purposes of the discussion of the burgeoning rise in sea level the most pertinent section is 2.3.1 Accuracy of Sea Level Measurements. In particular this sentence ” The sea surface height shall be provided with a globally averaged RMS accuracy of 3.4 cm(1 sigma), or better, assuming 1 second averages.”
A number of points to consider regarding that sentence
1) Lay a +/- 3.4 cm error bar across that frequently published graph of rising MSL in the satellite era and it covers the whole graph quite nicely.
2) The 3.4 cm accuracy is a pre launch specification that is still TBD.
3) As I mentioned the Jason-2 is the latest and greatest iteration in our efforts, which has significant improvements relative to Jason-1, which was itself an almost order of magnitude improvement over the older TOPEX/Poseidon sats.
Also, if you peruse the Table at pg 17/67 of the PDF, you’ll see a line for significant wave height which suggests that the system is unable to read the surface to better than 0.4 METERS when waves are present, which makes the bold claims of achievable accuracy seem more than a bit suspect.
Even I occasionally fall into the trap of granting excess credibility to satellite data, but we would all be well advised to remind ourselves on a regular basis that, although these products of our incredible human ingenuity are published and quoted with amazing levels of precision, they are vastly complex systems which even if they could be operated at levels of physical perfection never achieved in any much less complex human mechanism, would still not be able to provide accuracy anywhere near that precision suggested in the presented data.
I’ll let one of his allies offer the final word from those trying to scare us all:
“Tom Fuller seems to have missed the point I made yesterday.
Sea levels are going to go way, way, way, way, way up…”
Well, they *are* — as long as you define a “way” as a “millimeter”…
The problem with gravimetric measurements of ice thickness is the uncertainty in the isostatic adjustments. In Greenland and West Antarctica there are at least some actual data, since there are icefree areas where you can measure the actual up or down movement of the bedrock. There is a lot of uncertainty all the same since the isostatic adjustment can change rather strongly over short distances.
In East Antarctica it is much worse since there is no icefree areas at all for several million square kilometers. So the isostatic adjustment is modelled. The important input data for such modelling are:
1. the size of the icesheet at the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago
2. the timing and speed of the changes in ice cover since then
3. the viscosity of the earths mantle beneath the icecap
1. we know reasonably well
2. is practically unknown
3. is only known with a very large margin of uncertainty
In principle it is possible to actually measure the isostatic changes from the gravimetric data if you can simultaneously measure the absolute altitude of the icecap to within a few centimeters and keep doing these measurements in parallell for a few decades. Then – and only then – will we know the changes of the East Antarctic Icecap with the kind of precision already being claimed today.
Thomas Fuller
You are aware of the many intrinsic problems of satellites aren’t you which I will need convincing have been resolved? This is nowhere better exemplified than those recording sea levels.
Our global sea level data is drawn from three very incomplete N European tidal station records dating to the mid 1700’s, all from the same ocean basin. AR4 chapter 5 omits to mention about the paucity of global records and makes an estimate of historic levels before stitching the satellite records on to the old tidal records. At the back of the chapter they mention about the inconsistencies in the satellite record which, at up to 5cm, is many times greater than the measurement they are taking.
I’m sure someone at some point has done an article here on the nonsenses of the sea level record which has (even) more flaws in it than the global surface temperature record.
Moving away from your satellite references, in the great scheme of things historic sea level estimates are probably just about as bad as historic SST’s, which are an astonishing attempt to turn lead into gold by using a tiny number of data points to try to create a meaningful global record.
If you’re interested I’ll dig out the references-I’m away from my main computer at present.
Tonyb
From: RW on September 6, 2010 at 9:55 am
Well it is true at some point the temperatures will be so high the CO2 will disassociate into separate carbon and oxygen atoms, without the CO2 causing global warming the temperature increases will stop.
Thus (C)AGW is a self-correcting problem so it’s nothing to really worry about.
☺
the Eastern Antarctic has lost 57 billion tons a year–plus or minus 52 billion tons. Hmm. I think we need a few more orbits, myself. Having a margin of error as large as the original figure doesn’t inspire confidence.
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and not one single person missed it – damn!
Steven quietly hits it on the head and sadly is not heard:
steven says:
September 6, 2010 at 11:08 am
The most obvious problem with GRACE is that it depends upon a model of how fast the land underneath the ice is either rising or sinking. It seems unlikely that the entire continent of Antartica is rising or sinking at the same rate to further complicate the issue.
This is exactly what Wu et al. are trying to address. The discrepancy between the currently assumed ice loss and their findings is not definitive but it is interesting. The jury on GRACE data analysis is not out.
Commenting on the paper, David H. Bromwich & Julien P. Nicolas observe that:
‘[T]he contribution from glacial isostatic adjustment is more difficult to evaluate because the Earth’s mantle is viscoelastic and therefore responds to changes in surface loading with a long delay. Indeed, the variations of the mass and extent of the ice sheets since the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago, continue to affect present-day changes in bedrock elevation. Assessments of the glacial isostatic adjustment typically rely on deglaciation models—which simulate the evolution of the ice sheets since the Last Glacial Maximum—together with assumptions about the viscosity profile of the mantle. Much is still unknown regarding the history of the ice sheets, and even less is known about the behaviour of the mantle in response to loading and unloading.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n9/full/ngeo946.html
Now we have this:
rustneversleeps says:
September 6, 2010 at 9:41 am
[…] GRACE results do not undermine climate models which eventually call for a loss of ice from East Antarctica. They do somewhat challenge the current models regarding dynamical ice sheet response to small warming. This is nothing to feel reassured about.
Which means:
GRACE results show ice loss trend. GRACE results are based on estimates of GIA (glacial isostatic adjustment). These have been questioned. The revision proposed is that estimates of ice loss might be too high. Perhaps quite a lot too high. But GRACE results still show ice loss trend.
But perhaps only half as much as we thought.
Tonyb, I’m always interested, but don’t go to too much extra trouble. Thanks, if and when.
I’d like to re-emphasize two points, if I may. First, I have no beef with what the scientists are doing. I think it’s worthwhile, I think it should be published, and I think that they understand that this will be an iterative process. Second, the real question is, if Antarctica actually is losing ice, what does that mean for climate change theory, which predicts it should be gaining ice through the first few decades of this century?