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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“Now here’s a funny thing” – which maybe someone more expert than I can explain:
> With regard to satellite sea level altimetry, NOAA say
> they take a datum from tide gauges. Why would they do this, which
> presumably involves them in subjective selection of tide gauges –
> which are themselves subject to vagaries of detailed geometry,
> periodic replacement, man-made or natural changes in local hydraulics,
> reading irregularities, etc., etc. Why not take a datum from a
> selection of tectonically stable ground points under the satellite
> track; with comparative terrestrial tide measurements all reduced to the same datum?
Maybe I’d better explain my interest; I’m a Civil Engineer, who worked in Tidal Flood Defence for 20 years – hence my interest in sea level changes. I fear I’m not convinced by either “side” in the Climate Change debate, but as a layman note the Vostok Ice Core results (also various other ice and sediment cores), and in the absence of some pretty dramatic change in circumstances, would expect the cyclical pattern of climate change to continue in the future.
Regards to all, JohnH.
SeaLevelGate is in my opinion the largest gate of them all. It illustrates what has happened in many areas;
Those experts who is using measurements from the real world, is totally silenced by IPPC model day-dreamers. Dr. Moerner in this case.
It is truly a disgrase, and I am blaming people like Stoere, Brown, Obama, Merckel,Rudd etc etc for it.
Shame on them for letting the real scientist’s down.
Typo in 17. Change Caucas to Caspian Sea
Misspelled Spell check.
My bad
Paul
Roger Knights says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:33 pm
The coral that’s above-water came from coral sand and rubble that was pushed onto the island by storm surges
============================================
Roger, I live out in the Caribbean on a rock. My house is built 9 ft above MHT (mean high tide), on a solid ancient coral reef. Not sand and/or rubble. The highest point on our island is 17ft above MHT, and it is an old coral rock quarry. Also solid coral rock.
Our coral rock has been dated to around 100,000 years ago, the Sangamon interglacial, when sea levels were 300ft lower than they are now.
At the conclusion of the last ice age, there was a surplus of ice on many parts of the planet
and NO WHISKEY until the near Holocene!
Paul Pierett
September 10, 2010 at 6:12 am
If the past is any indication, then during the inconvenient Holocene climatic optimum, temps were 4 to 6 C higher then today and the sea was about 5 meters higher. BTW, notice the greenies are trying to make this period disappear … “Oh, it was not a global event.”
Tom, I think even your observation of the correlation of warming with industrialization is questionable. While the temp. rise fro ca 1975 to ca 2000 is probably real, the size of the increase as measured by surface instruments and then massaged and averaged is unquestionably overstated. It is very likely that the recent peak (1995-2006?) was actually lower than the the last peak (1934-1944). All we can be confident of is that we have just passed the approx. 30 year upside of a 60 year cycle, oscillating around a warming trend since the end of the LIA. and that long warming trend is the upside of a much longer cycle oscillating around a cooling trend since at least the Minoan Optimum. the current optimum seems cooler than the MWP, and both seem to lie on a pretty straight-line cooling trend with the Roman and Minoan optima being previous peaks. If there is an industrialization contribution it is small and maybe correlates because technological peaks coincide, unsurprisingly, with climate optima. I suspect that warming drove industrialization more than the other way around. Murray
Mr. Fuller,
This is not a negotiation, i.e. ‘if you let up on the CO2 thing, we will go easy on the sea-level thing’.
I, and I am sure many others, read this blog as a means to assist in finding the facts. It is not a club, an advocacy group or vested interest organisation. We are not in a position to negotiate collectively. I respect your opinions on the science and the politics, I may or may not share some of them but a middle of the road pitch (for that is what it comes across as) doesn’t assist in moving the debate forward IMHO.
Bart Verheggen:
I take the sea level rise prediction of one meter seriously. In fact, I think we should plan for a 1meter rise in the next 90 years. the question is: “what is the most cost effective and fair way of handling this risk.
1. do we tax everyone to prevent the damage down to those who live in costal areas?
2. Do we apply the cost at the source of the problem and act locally.
The decision to live, work, and build in areas that will be damaged by a meter rise is a choice. People choose to live in houses on slits in malibu, often as their second or third residence. People choose to return an build in hurricane impact zones, below sea level in some cases. Governments choose to allow building in risky areas. On the cost side of things, in 1991 the EPA estimated that for the US a one meters sea rise could be addressed with about 400Billion, through a mixture of retreating, building dikes and other measures. 400 Billion over 90 years is a pretty cost effective solution. The cost of living in danger zones is currently subsidized by government policy. It would seem that the wise thing to do is to put the cost where the problem is. Why allow building in areas our best science tells us will be under water? why impose a tax on a farmer in Iowa to pay for the protection of hollywood actor’s homes in Malibu? Why rebuild cities that probablity tells us will be swamped someday by a CAT 5 hurricane? Why try to prevent a sea rise that it is cheaper to handle through mitigation? the community of folks who believe in global action have had their chance. It’s time to allow the discussion of local action. If sea level rise is an issue for some people in the US, then those people engaging in risky behavior should bear the cost, not people in developing countries who will need to burn more fossil fuels to attain our standard of living and not those people who choose to live in places that will not be effected. When the cost to solve a problem is levied where it belongs, you will see that people act rationally.
Fuller: 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.
Hmmm, lemme see: at a rate of 2.5 mm/year, it would rise 15 meters in 6000 years, so the current rate of rise is 15/2=7.5 times as high as during those 6000 years. This seems a pretty large increase, wouldn’t you say?
steven says:
September 10, 2010 at 11:25 am
—————
Steven,
Thanks for your comments. Tom Fuller does know how to raise some intellectual discourse.
This discourse is not about terminology or semantics. If it is belief discussed then it is not science discussed. Tom and you did use the word belief, therefore, what are we to think?
The possibilities of the climate system resulting from a so-called GHE are not fully listed by you. You say it (so-called GHE) causes none, some or a lot of warming. But it can also potentially cause all of them at the same time but in different regions and/or altitudes.
I leave it at that for now, though I was sorely tempted to ask why you so assuredly eliminated the possibility that the so-called GHE (when acting in coordination with all the other earth system processes) causes none, some or a lot of cooling. It is one idea to postulate that the so-called GHE cannot directly, inherently, by itself, cause cooling. But, quite a different idea is to postulate that it (so-called GHE) could assist cooling when all other processes in the earth system are considered. Intriguing ideas they are. But, ahhh, in another post.
John
LOL If I keep this up, I’m going to have to quit my job.
Obviously I can’t do both!
“when sea levels were 300ft lower than they are now.”
When sea levels were 300ft higher than they are now.”
Mr. Fuller,
In my post above, I forgot to mention that I actually have read all your recent posts here. You may have others lined up which I look forward to. Will one be about Big Carbon together with utopians, environmental charities, government science grants, expanding bureaucracies and post-normal science?
If not, a hint for your consideration: Capitalists chase money, scientists chase recognition, religion chases adherents, politicians chase voters.
Thanks Tom for another interesting, well written guest post.
I suspect that at the end of the day, when the real science makes it to the fore and all of the hyperbole has been set aside that we will be very close to the same end point in this journey. Yeah, we probably caused the earth to warm a little at the same time that it was in a natural upswing, but there was never any reason for anyone to get their knickers in a knot.
Hopefully the real outcome will be that many more people will warier of those who would use “science” to further their political agenda. And if those who are finally publicly shown as the worst of those offenders get a public butt kicking, that would be a good thing, too.
Keep up the good work.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:23 pm
At 2 to 3 inches of rise in the last 50 years, I am quite sure we can outrun that resulting tsunami.
Steven mosher says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:22 pm
When the cost to solve a problem is levied where it belongs, you will see that people act rationally.
The decision to live, work, and build in areas that will be damaged by a meter rise is a choice
=======================================================
Thank you for clearing that up.
I suppose all of the people living on Caribbean islands should start packing now………
A meter in the next 90 years.
So you’re saying 39 inches in the next 90 years.
That’s about 4 inches a year. I guess starting from today, right?
I’ve been living on this same rock my whole life, nothing has happened so far,
but you’re saying 4 inches a year.
I should be able to notice that, you think?
Or is this going to be something like Gore’s movie and I’ll wake up in the middle of the night treading water?
(does anyone fall for this [snip] any more)
Bart Verheggen says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:26 am
Tom,
Perhaps also good to mention the wiki graph current sea level rise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
A wiki graph. lol…
In the 20th century sea level has risen faster than in the few thousands of years before, and it has slightly increased over the course of the 2oth century.
On the basis of what exactly do you dismiss the multiple recent studies that point to likely rates of sea level rise of one meter (+/- 0.5 or so) up to 2100 (and continuing thereafter btw)?
Why dismiss it? Why not just watch? A one metre rise means 1cm per year rise. That means, by Christmas the sea level will have risen by 2.5 mm.
Since we can measure 2.2mm (the currently alleged annual sealevel rise) with no problems what-so-ever, we should be able to measure 2.5mm even more easily. Report back at Christmas with before and after figures.
We’ll wait.
“4 inches in 10 years”
Mosh, I just went down and put a mark on the water line.
I’ll let you know in 10 years if it’s gone up 4 inches.
Tom, I am intrigued by your phrase:
“As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming…”
It seems that voters and politicians of a left-leaning persuasion like to make a link between their party politics and Global Warming/Climate Change, or at least to talk about Global Warming/Climate Change as a belief system. For example, Julia Gillard, new prime minister of Australia, in her speech on assuming office a couple of months ago, said:
“I believe in Climate Change.”
Surely this is the crux of the issue, that (Anthropogenic) Global Warming/Climate Change has become a widely followed political belief system, like others that have come and gone before. This belief system now has its own momentum, even though politicians have recently become very cautious in the light of changing public opinion.
Only time will tell if the parties of the left are able to sidestep to a more “moderate” or “luke-warmist” position. This is hard for them, as (a) without alarmism, the AGW movement has little or no political traction, and (b) they will surely alienate the eco-warriors and other “useful idiots” (Lenin’s words, not mine) of the far left. The problem is more severe in the USA, because of the entrenched two party political system (no minor parties).
All the best.
As a liberal Democrat who believes in moderate global warming, I feel a bit left out.
Why? You’ve had your global warming. Now the Earth will cool. Once it has finished cooling, it’ll warm again – so you’ll get a second bit of the cherry. Can you wait 30 years? (OK the Russian reckon 50, but let’s be optimisitic here…)
Enneagram says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:08 pm
At the conclusion of the last ice age, there was a surplus of ice on many parts of the planet
and NO WHISKEY until the near Holocene!
“And it’s a travesty…”
Leif are you saying you believe that part of that SLR is because of humans, if so how much, you’ve only got 150 years to play with since say the end of LIA.
I’m reminded that on the east coast of Australia the sea level was 1.5 metres higher 4000 years ago, so what caused that rise?
steven says:
September 10, 2010 at 8:20 am
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.
Oh there we go – argumentum ad populum.
“…….the climate has warmed over the past 130 years or so……”
Thomas Fuller.
The most recent overall warming trend has been more like 400 years http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/2000-years-of-global-temperature.jpg , only 20 years (1980 – 2000) of which has occurred concurrently with rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Fuller: 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.
Hmmm, lemme see: at a rate of 2.5 mm/year, it would rise 15 meters in 6000 years, so the current rate of rise is 15/2=7.5 times as high as during those 6000 years. This seems a pretty large increase, wouldn’t you say?
It’s even worse than that. Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlech_Castle we get the words “Harlech is also notable for an unusual feature: the “way from the sea”. Edward’s forces were often in danger from land-based attack, but he enjoyed total supremacy on water. Many of his castles included sally ports which allowed resupply from the sea, but Harlech’s is far more elaborate. Here, a fortified stairway hugs the rock and runs almost 200 feet (61 m) down to the foot of the cliffs, where (at the time of construction) the sea reached. Today, the sea has retreated several miles,”
So something is wrong somewhere. I’d blame the castle personally…