UPDATE: The feckless gold digger weighs in here with a chorus of usual suspects. It is quite humorous to watch.
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
At the conclusion of the last ice age, there was a surplus of ice on many parts of the planet. Nature took care of most of that over the next few thousand years, melting most of it, and sometimes it got pretty dramatic. The resulting legends have become part of the mythology of many cultures, from Gilgamesh to Noah, as dramatic release of pent up ice and/or water flooded lands and drove people before it relentlessly.
Sea level rose 110 meters in 8,000 years. It’s risen a couple of meters in the 6,000 years since then. It is now rising at somewhere between 2 and 3 millimeters a year. (We think. It’s very tough to measure, because the earth is changing its levels and the sea gets pushed around by the wind, getting quite a bit higher in some places than others. And when the change is that small, it’s tough to be sure.)
It is the most effective way to get people’s attention about global warming, and it has been used, overused and abused since 1988. It’s one thing to worry about the cuddly cubs of polar bears, and we can watch with (very) detached sympathy as farmers struggle under drought, but show us a picture of a modern city with water above the window line and we will pay attention.
Wikipedia, which doesn’t always play fair when climate issues are discussed, has the chart everyone needs to see to provide perspective on sea level rise. Titled ‘Post Glacial Sea Level Rise, it shows a dramatic rise in sea levels that stopped dead 6,000 years ago and a very flat line since. You could balance a glass of water on the last 6,000 years of that graph.
This hasn’t stopped the marketing gurus from trying to play to our ancestral horror stories and modern fears of flooding. Because there’s still enough ice left in Antarctica and Greenland to cause dramatic sea level rises, all they have to do is say that global warming will melt that ice and we’re in trouble. And so they do.
Again, we are forced to separate the hype from the science. Remember that the IPCC projects sea level rise this century of 18-59 cm, unless dramatic loss of Greenland and/or Antarctic ice occurs. That’s from their AR4 report. They thus wash their hands and ask what is truth? From the minute that AR4 was published, a string of papers, conferences, publicity events (such as parliamentary cabinet meetings held underwater) have been screaming from the headlines and news reports, drumming into us the message that dramatic loss of Greenland and/or Antarctic ice will in fact occur.
But just as with other aspects of their publicity push, they have to contradict their own scientific findings and theories to make this case.
As the climate has warmed over the past 130 years or so, the margins at the ends of both Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice caps have melted a bit. Climate theory predicts that increased precipitation in the much larger middle of these ice caps will be in the form of snow, which will turn into ice and counterbalance some, most or all of the melt around the edges. It would take millenia to melt it all, and the IPCC thinks that even with the world continuing business as usual, that our emissions will peak around the end of this century, shortly after the population peaks. Emissions will then decline.
But, in a scenario that many will find sadly familiar, those with a political agenda have grabbed on to some straws, such as the GRACE studies we looked at yesterday, and are busy hyping possible mechanical changes to the ice sheets (which do happen) and are simultaneously trying to blame those mechanical changes on global warming. They hijacked the science and spun it. (It’s not the scientists–not in this case.)
The upshot is that spear carriers for the activist side of climate politics are still going on about dramatic sea level rise. They’ve responded grudgingly to criticism and are not as quick to say it will happen soon, but they’re afraid to acknowledge that what they fear would actually take millenia and would need continuous warming for the entire period for it to come to pass.
They can’t give up on the images that have the most visceral impact. They will dance around the details for days, using rhetorical tactics and resorting to whatever level of insults are necessary to change the subject–as I know from personal experience on dismal wailing sites such as Deltoid and Only In It For The Gold, which could make a fortune selling sackloth and ashes online.
The bulk of Greenland’s ice cap sits in a basin that the ice itself helped to create. It isn’t going anywhere. Nor is the vast majority of ice in Antarctica, although the thin peninsula that points to South America has been judged to be at grave risk in studies that date back to the 1930s–long before global warming was of much concern.
The need for exaggerated images such as those of flooded American cities has caused as much anti-scientific double talk as the Hockey Stick chart, which is really saying a lot. And with more of their symbols getting picked off one by one, thanks to the work of people like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, they are holding on to this one for dear life.
When journals like Nature ponder what they call an anti-scientific backlash and aim it at the conservatives in the United States, they really should preface their remarks with a frank examination of how science has been abused in both practice and communication, and analyse how those trumpeting the modern call of Doom have started this reaction.
As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming, I feel a bit left out. But I think Nature is just looking for an easy target and throwing mud at it, hoping some of it will stick. I will be on the other side of the fence come election time, but not because of that.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Global warming? It doesn’t exist, says Ryanair boss O’Leary
“Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of [snip]. But it’s amazing the way the whole [snip] eco-warriors and the media have changed. It used to be global warming, but now, when global temperatures haven’t risen in the past 12 years, they say ‘climate change’.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-it-doesnt-exist-says-ryanair-boss-oleary-2075420.html
[even if you are quoting someone verbatim, that kind of language is not welcome here. Please think before you post (jove~mod)]
It is the above graph that should stop any naive warmist in their tracks. Sea levels are flattening out and there is nothing to be concerned about.
Here is what one former IPCC expert reviewer has to say on the matter.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm
http://www.klimanotizen.de/MornerEng.pdf
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/MornerInterview.pdf
Here is a little bit of sea level rise hype for you…
Manhattan Underwater
Or, consider the series on Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s sea-level vs temperature model and the amazingly bogus results that follow from it.
I’m ticked off with Noah. If he would not have put those two polar bears onto his ark we would not have to worry about the polar bears today.
😉
Tom Fuller,
I am starting to see a pattern to your style. Again, as you of course are free to do so, you state your belief in ~AGW of (what you call) the moderate variety. You have done so rather consistency in your high frequency of posts to WUWT in the past weeks.
I agree somewhat with the above comment by Philip Thomas [September 10, 2010 at 6:08 am]:
You thinly clad your “belief” in some standard positions that you perceive are acceptable to many of the WUWT readers who are critical of the so-called accepted climate science. Then proceed to a sort of journalistic rallying of supporters to your belief.
My impression of your articles is that you are pressing advocacy for moderate AGW as an established fact. I think your middle-of-the-road position is journalistic leveraging for exposure. I am a capitalistic kind of guy and, therefore, sincerely with you good luck with that. But, it just appears to be primarily an advocacy tactic.
I enjoyed your first several posts here at WUWT, thanks for those.
John
Bart,
Is it not rather telling for an AGW promoter like yourself to be depending on wikipedia, which has even less credibility than the IPCC, as a reference to support your alarmist position?
I would suggest that if the past 100 years have seen accelrating increases in sea levels, someone has forgotten to tell the shorelines of the world.
The word ‘likely’ is not evidence. The word ‘likely’ and computer model output is not evidence.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JC005630.shtml
We’re all going to drown. Ahhhhhhhh!
The IPCC’s original expression of the 18 – 59 cm rise this century was 0.18 – 0.59 m. They learned pretty quickly that the public school-educated Americans that 59 cm is a bigger number than 0.59 m.
But the interesting thing about that is this: according to the work of Rhodes Fairbridge in the 1970s (and others) and his Holocene sea level reconstruction, the IPCC predicted rise would not even get the sea level up to the average sea level of the past 6,000 years. Whether it’s Fairbridge or Vostock, it is widely known that for most of the period from 4500 BCE to 1 AD, it was warmer and the sea level was upwards of 3 m higher than now. But I guess we can’t let facts get in the way of a good crisis.
Further to my last comment the last quote was from the IPCC
“No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected”
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/409.htm
Richard Sharpe says:
September 10, 2010 at 6:42 am
Flood legends and the effects of impressively large floods are found all over the planet and they do bear some similarities. In the past this has been used as evidence of the biblical account of Noah’s flood.
It is unlikely that the Bosporus alone would account for flood legends in South America and Australasia, flood-related creation myths in India and Africa or various other flood-related cultural mythologies in other parts of the world. The possibility of an earlier, world-wide set of catastrophic floods related to the end of an ice-age could account for these legends. The depth of these events in time isn’t a barrier to their being absorbed in to human culture and, in fact, in a pre-literate society where legends are passed orally, the likelihood is for such legends to persist in an immediate form far longer than they do in literate societies. They remain fresh and current as each generation learns the stories and passes them on.
John Whitman says:
September 10, 2010 at 7:14 am
My impression of your articles is that you are pressing advocacy for moderate AGW as an established fact
========================================================
Of course it is John. This is the “new” AGW.
Since the doom and gloom one has worn thin, this is the morph….
Doesn’t really matter though. The majority of people are not listening to any of it….
The majority is tired of being blackmailed and held hostage by a minority….
“As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming, I feel a bit left out.”
lol, yup, and us ultra conservatives will take all the credit for debunking the myth!. 🙂
RE: Tom Carter says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:34 am
The Hockey Team captain Dr. Michael Mann worked first at UVa, and now at Penn State, and has never worked at the University of Pennsylvania. These two universities are sometimes mixed up, but the folks at U of P tend to be offended by any confusion. Unless the reference is to the quality of the football program, the folks at Penn State are pleased when put in the same category as U of P.
A superb Google ad on this post here – unfortunately I couldn’t open the web page. If enough women used this would it cause sea level rise?
Ads by Google
SHEWEE – urination funnel
Stand to wee! Avoid unhygienic WCs Essential Festival Item For Women
http://www.shewee.com
To T. Fuller
The critics was interesting for the first part and seemed credible, but then you turned it to the political arena – and the real motivation of the article came at the very bottom with the magical phrase ”I will be on the other side of the fence come election time.
Most of the article, you blamed one side of having a political agenda, but at the end you’re doing the exact same thing. I do aggree the political world are using/hyping the science for there agenda, but are’nt you doing the same thing ? Why is your saying be more credible or valuable then the other side if you tinted/painted them with your own political point of view ?
There junk, is not better/worst then what you just provide when tinted (if not painted) with a political agenda.
latitude says:
September 10, 2010 at 6:32 am
(It’s not the scientists–not in this case.)
===================================
Tom, the scientists are just as guilty.
Don’t make me have to drag out all those “what if” papers….
=========================================================
More than that.
Tom, if the scientists were not guilty, then where is the outrage of the scientists when an activist mis-uses, mis-quotes, take out-of-context, the scientists? They remain quizzically silent. This, too, is purposeful. I believe its called “plausible denialbility”. The scientists can, on one hand stay silent as the activist twists the words of the scientist to fit the alarmist view. If called on the misinformation, the scientist can conveniently state, “I never said that.” And, it would be true, but it should be noted, while many scientists are engaged in activism, I have yet to see one, clarify, or shout down the activists that twist their own words. In this case, the silence is an endorsement of the activist alarmists.
But, Tom, you knew that already. Don’t try to defend the indefensible. Its a Quixotic venture and not worthy of pursuit.
Mr. Fuller I have the “Crutape letters” prominently displayed in my library. Hoping one of my warmist acquaintances-like my retired college prof. neighbor sees it and lights
off like a roman candle. Even he is slowly coming around to the fact that things do not seem as dire as predicted.
I’m not a warmist,by any stretch, but I appreciate a clear thinking view from a reasonable position. Good post.
latitude says:
September 10, 2010 at 7:49 am
Of course it is John. This is the “new” AGW.
Since the doom and gloom one has worn thin, this is the morph….
Doesn’t really matter though. The majority of people are not listening to any of it….
The majority is tired of being blackmailed and held hostage by a minority….
————
latitude,
The repackaging of the failed CAGW approach to an ~AGW of the middle-of-the-road variety does appear to be an accelerating recent tactic of those still trying for achievement of some ulterior political/financial/religious purposes. That includes, apparently, some journalists.
The pages of WUWT appear to be getting fuller of such tactics recently. [!!! That pun WAS intended !!! ] : )
John
Tom appears to be quite reasonable to me. Are there really individuals who believe there is no contribution from man to co2 or that co2 is not a green house gas? I’m afraid if there are then you are out there all on your own because I can’t think of a single scientist that agrees with you. Why jump on him for stating the obvious? Man is in fact changing the environment. CO2 does cause warming. The argument is over how much. I personally believe it to be very little since the empirical evidence indicates a climate sensitivity of 1C. As far as sea levels go, I’ll get more concerned when the rate of rise changes to that above what it has been since 1880 and when the attribution of sea level rise takes into account all significant factors such as ground water depletion and deforestation. To the best of my knowledge the fastest rate of rise in the recent past was still around the 1950s. It would seem fairly reasonable to relax a bit until we at least pass that benchmark.
I look at the supposedly endangered coral atolls and say to myself ( since no one else listens) “Didn’t the coral grow under the water ” ?
“Wasn’t sea level therefore higher in the fairly recent past ” ?
The whole darn thing is a bad joke.
A lie told to scare school children.
That the author is going to vote wrong for the wrong reasons is not very interesting to me, but since he mentions it, it does indicate an unwillingness to de-couple himself from bad ideas.
Free your mind dude, your behind will follow.
Sea Level rise is a non-issue.
John Whitman and Latitude,
First, thanks for the criticism and your honest replies. I would like to be clear that I don’t have any underlying agenda in my guest posts here. I’m not trying to convince either you or unaware newcomers to the site of my opinions, or that what I think it actually what Anthony or you think. In fact, that’s why I try and go out of my way to write about the differences in our opinions.
We are sort of in the situation described as ‘the enemy of my enemy can be my friend.’ Although I must say I greatly appreciate the civility and open-mindedness I find here, as opposed to when I comment in warmist blogs.
I also think it’s somewhat important that I mention occasionally that I am a liberal Democrat because it’s easy for some in the media to pretend this is strictly a Rep/Dem political catfight, which does the climate debate a disservice.
I am fighting with you against the misrepresentation of the results of climate science, because I think the hyperbole makes it less likely that we will do what we need to do once the results are in.
And I don’t think all the results are in yet. My best understanding (and I am not a scientist, remember) is that it is clear that the planet has warmed during the same time frame that we industrialized the planet and that there is a clear mechanism available to explain some of that warming–the CO2 we have emitted.
I think it would be foolish not to examine this to find out if it is just coincidental correlation or, as I suspect, that CO2 causes some part of that warming.
I don’t think we’re very far along in that process, and I confess I don’t see how we will accurately separate the contribution from CO2 from other influences, including the natural variability of climate and other things humans do to change this climate.
I think the rush to blame CO2 for all our weather woes is completely political and horribly damaging to good faith efforts to construct two very necessary things:
A research plan that will result in accurate attribution of factors influencing our climate.
And an agreement that would include people like you on what best to do next.
I do not seek to convince you here. What I am trying to do here at WUWT is to fight the same people you are fighting. Allies with different goals at the end of the day–that’s how I perceive you.
I hope that as long as I am honest about it, that we can continue to communicate.
Thomas Fuller …. after your absurd post about ‘climate change being a non-forever problem’, you lost a lot of credibility and you haven’t done yourself any favours here again. What is going on here ? WUWT has turned into some kind of self-indulgent psuedo-philosophical wasteland ! What is this post about .. that activists are erroneously hyping sea level rise ? And you feel upset ? What are you trying to say here ???
You pull some chart off Wikipedia and use this as a basis for your own ‘philosophising’ ? Take your first sentence …”At the conclusion of the last ice age, there was a surplus of ice on many parts of the planet” What the hell is a ‘surplus of ice’ ? Whats does that mean ? Surplus to what ? Since when do you get to dictate what is too much or too little ?
And it doesn’t get much better What kind of science would use the words ‘many parts of the planet’ , ‘It’s very tough to measure’, ‘You could balance a glass of water on the last 6,000 years of that graph’, ‘ice caps have melted a bit’ …. etc etc etc bla bla bla.
Please stop. If you’re going to use this site for your own random ramblings, a lot of people are going to get turned off.
——————
steven,
Evoking belief systems is what got us to the CAGW scenario. To invoke, as Tom Fuller does, the same belief systems for an ~AGW middle-of-the-road position is just more of the same erroneous tactics.
Of course man, or polar bears, or squirrels (don’t forget the squirrels) will affect the earth. Duh.
The science process, if finally free of all belief systems (including middle-of-the-roader journalists), will have theories and data consistent with climate reality, regardless of beliefs. Let’s really see what the scientists who become finally unfettered say. I am tired of the belief thing in climate discussion.
John
WillR says: September 10, 2010 at 6:01 am
… seriously — keep up the good work. You do know I was kidding — don’t you?
Hard to tell these days without a [sarc] statement. I have seen more over the top statements than yours and they were serious.