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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Michael Tobis says:
“Admittedly, if CO2 were the only important forcing…”
Now we’re on the same page. The problem with the alarmist crowd is that they hang their hats on CO2 being the primary cause of the runaway global warming conjecture.
If everyone was in agreement with you that the effect of CO2 is not the primary determinant of temperature, and that there are other factors that have a much greater impact, then the basis for taxing the air we breathe would be negated; the lucrative grants would be jeopardized, and we could move on to discussing the actual causes of climate variability.
But that will not happen, because taxing “carbon” is the primary goal of the CO2=CAGW scam. Money and politics have corrupted climate science, so a harmless and beneficial trace gas must be demonized. There is no alternative for those with their hands deep in the taxpayers’ pockets.
The folks at Wikipedia say –
“Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds.[8] Water vapor concentrations fluctuate regionally, but human activity does not significantly affect water vapor concentrations except at local scales, such as near irrigated fields. According to the Environmental Health Center of the National Safety Council, water vapor constitutes as much as 2% of the atmosphere.[31]”
“The Clausius-Clapeyron relation establishes that air can hold more water vapor per unit volume when it warms. This and other basic principles indicate that warming associated with increased concentrations of the other greenhouse gases also will increase the concentration of water vapor. Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas this results in further warming, a “positive feedback” that amplifies the original warming. This positive feedback does not result in runaway global warming because it is offset by other processes that induce negative feedbacks, which stabilizes average global temperatures.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
NOW… why isn’t the EPA going after the biggest game in the fish bowl? Why are they piddling around with the little fish when the BIG Game in the bowl is WATER VAPOR? Hummm… I think it has something to do with misguided loyalty, or money under the table (know what I mean?). Yhep! When the Supremes get the case on the EPA and the viscious attacts these crooks are making on a little thing like CO2, the TRUTH will then come out. The Boys & Girls on THE COURT will tell them where to go and what to fight. They will too! Just you wait.
I think we ought to tackle the BIGGEST Problem first. WATER VAPOR has got to go! Well, OK, we gotta’ bring it down in a BIG BIG way. So how do we do that? First we get that crazy artist fella that covers up everything –like Hoover Dam– with orange cloth to cover the oceans in white shiney, plastic coated silk to reflect all that heat back into space AND keep all that water vapor in. That’ll kill a couple birds with one stone, as they say. Then, of course, we blow all the dams and send all that restricted water to where it’s supposed to be, and not where we want it. And resevours, they gotta go. And waste water treatment plants, them too! Now, I know, that’s going to cause a lot of flooding and eventually things are going to get mighty dry and smelly, but let’s face it, that’s just the price you have to pay to fight this beast. Oh! And spagetti -no more noodle boiling, that’s gotta go too.
Ocean heat content has been falling since the sunspot number fell below the long term average in 2003.
This is not a coincidence.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 11, 2010 at 12:19 am
Oceanic Thermal Inertia, that’s a terrestrially significant shock absorber you identified there.
It would take an Extra-Terrestrial event to rapidly alter it.
By the way, how is NASA (or anybody else) doing with plans to divert a large impacting body?
Mean Sea Level rise rate has slowed to around 1.3mm/year since 2005
The Sun’s energy heats the oceans by penetrating many metres into it, not downwelling IR from the atmosphere, which can’t penetrate the surface much beyond it’s own wavelength, and simply causes evaporation at the surface.
The simplest and most likely correct explanation for the drop in ocean heat content is the reduction in solar energy entering the ocean since 2003.
John, a reference for belief being unscientific in nature and not just your “belief” that it is or drop it.
——————-
steven,
OK, dropping it with following observation.
There recently has been an age of reason for reason’s sake; however, it appears we are now starting into an age less so; rather one of ascendant belief in the name of reason itself. In other words, reason for belief’s sake. As a case in point, just look at the history of climate science for the last two decades.
John
I still don’t think there has been any appreciable rise in the last 2000 years. The Med is a good place to look, as it has no tides to complicate the issue, and plenty of known sea level locations (harbours) from over 2000 years ago.
Some ancient harbours, like Alexandria are below sea level, but then it was built on the sands of a river delta. Others, like Ephesus, are now 2km from the sea. Many, however, are exactly where they should be, in terms of sea levels.
How much has the land changed in its level? Who knows, the reports I have looked at contradict each other so much, they appear to be no better than guesswork.
.
Bart Verheggen says: September 11, 2010 at 1:45 am
Amidst the many non-sensical replies (future projections are all based on a model of some sort, so not trusting something because it’s based on a model is a non-sequitur) I spotted Mosher actually engaging the question in a meaningful way.
Mosher seems to argue to let those who will be affected take care of (and pay for) the problem. I think it’s more fair to let those who caused the problem take care of (and pay for) it;
Mosher’s argument seems based on somehow blaming those who live in threatened areas, whereas in most cases, they chose to live there unaware of the potential future risk (partly thanks to the great efforts of WUWT and other outlets like it). Moreover, building infrastructure is usually not an individual decision, but are affected by many stakeholders. To blame the person who lives there because that’s where the jobs are doesn’t seem quite right imo.
1. Provide data indicating how far a person must travel to get to work if sequestered 1 m higher than present abode.
2. Provide data on coastal property values and the income of those living there.
3. Provide data on the relative cost/return on building infrastructure situate in coastal areas relative to inland.
4. Provide data on alledged islanders ignorance of the effect of tsunamis, hurricanes, or other typical inclement oceanic effects.
5. Include in your thesis why Al Gore, who owns ocean front property is ignorant of the alledged catastrophic sea level increases.
When you’ve done that, I’m sure you will come to the conclusion that people will live in flood prone areas regardless of the potential for loss. People are moving back into New Orleans, next to the Mississippi in other areas near oxbows (former river channels), on a manmade island in Dubai, etc. I live in the center of tornado alley. How incredibly stupid is that? But I’m prepared for the possible event, insured, capable of hearing sirens, have a well stocked basement, purchased a $29 weather scanner (instead of a case of twinkies and a twelve pack of sugar), and can watch TV weather. I take responsibility for my DECISION TO LIVE WHERE I DO. If some idiot has his TV blaring rap on MTV so loud he/she gets a swirley, then so be it. If he/she lived through the tornado, later in life he/she would inevitably try to hug a polar bear (see thread on that). People had FIVE days leave New Orleans, and I have to pay to rebuild?
You are under the liberal illusion that people should not be held responsible for individual decisions, regardles of how asinine. Typical idealistic, government-required problem solving. I’m not responsible for every stupid decision people selfishly make. If they’re ignorant of facts, it’s because somewhere in life they made a personal decision to disregard attempts to educate. Maybe not knowingly, but a decision none the less.
And though most warmists probably are not willing to admit it, they have made the decision to believe and defend CAGW without taking the time to research the facts (which of course, does not apply to those who have a vested interest in promotion).
I’m with Mosh on this.
If you feel the government ever solves problems rationally, then petition them to enforce a ban on building at elevations within 1m of the ocean level. Otherwise leave me the heck out of it.
If you feel I’m being too harsh, you are correct. You just happened to present me with the opportunity to vent. Thank you. I feel much better.
/rant
You will never erase the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of New Orleans.
It is one of the most important port cities in the world as it empties America’s heartland, the “Breadbasket”.
It may have to be moved one day, but, for now, it is not going anywhere and is a great city.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Lief,
“But we do not know if there are such cycles. So what you are saying is: “assuming it is not so bad, we don’t need to worry”.
Show me where I said anything like that. As with the subject itself, you are making an inference about my comment with no evidence to back it up. You are the one who is presuming that there has been no rise and fall in sea levels over the last 6000 years, without any evidence to back up that claim. I am the one who is simply pointing out what ought to be obvious to anyone with the slightest scientific background – that without knowing the history of sea level change over the last 6000 years, it’s meaningless to compare the current rate of change with the “average” change by simply looking at starting and ending points. In effect, you are creating a “sea level hockey stick” by presuming an unchanging, flat rate of sea level rise over the last 6000 years, and then tacking on a sudden rate of rise, without having enough detailed data about the history of sea level to see if there’s anything uncommon about this rate of rise over that period of time. If you don’t know what constitutes the natural variations in sea level rise and fall, you can’t make an intelligent comment about whether the current rise is something unnatural or worrisome. I’m not saying “don’t worry, nothing to see here”, I’m merely pointing out that in the absence of more detailed knowledge about the pattern and cycles of sea level rise, you can’t say much of anything intelligent about the current rate of change, whether we should worry about it or not. Similar situation with climate temps.
You could rant in a similar fashion about the very vulnerable 1.7 million people of the Tidewater, the Virginia coast, where I live.
And yeah Norfolk has the highest “sea level rise” on the East Coast [more aptly termed “land level sink” LOL].
But Norfolk also has the largest navy base in the world, and the greater Tidewater area in which Norfolk is the seat, also boasts the largest military concentration in the country outside of Northern Virginia / Washington DC.
Our ships dispatch to every crisis, including September 11, and our F-16s scrambled to protect the nations capital on that fateful day.
The Peninsula portion of my area has the second highest per capita concentration of engineers and scientists in the country, second only to Silicon valley.
There are good reasons all of this is here….
The largest natural deepwater harbor in the world which guards the entrance of one of the busiest and largest estuaries in the world, the Chesapeake Bay.
They have to come through us to get to DC, Philadelphia, Annapolis, and Baltimore.
Tidewater [or “Hampton Roads”] is THE most infrastructure-dependent major metropolitan statistical area in the country.
And we are woefully underfunded by our own state and the Federal Government in terms of transportation, infrastructure, and evacuation routes.
But like I said before, there is a reason all of this is here, geopolitically and geostrategically, and it ain’t going away any time soon.
Nor would you want it to.
Being in the top 2 or 3 MSA’s in the country in terms of national security also means that we are one of the most important to INTERNATIONAL security on the planet.
We keep the balance of peace. At least we try…
Do you think the American taxpayer should foot the bill?
You damn well better believe it!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks says:
September 11, 2010 at 10:39 am
You will never erase the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of New Orleans.
It is one of the most important port cities in the world as it empties America’s heartland, the “Breadbasket”.
The Port of New Orleans is strategic, not the city where located, below sea level. There are better places upstream where relocation would have been enormously simpler and cheaper. The river has already been constrained. If people want to relocate below sea level, don’t use tax dollars.
Do you think the American taxpayer should foot the bill?
You damn well better believe it!
Military funding is constitutional. Anything associated with Naval installations is fair game for federal dollars. However, military personnel who live offbase should have their own insurance. Again, that is a decision. If there are insufficient domiciles onbase, then perhaps pay should be supplemented with an amount to cover insurance, which I believe it is in some cases. And don’t tell me ,Chris, that they don’t get paid enough for insurance. I purposely included the twinkies and soda in my previous post. My wife and I made a decision when first married to live within a bare-bones budget. Deviations from that budget are required to be justified. We pay ourselves first. Unfortunately, insurance is a necessary evil. But over the years it has been made increasing obvious to us that we have lost the desire for triviality, and ar the better for it. Frugal prudence has resulted in current comfort. Again, we made the decision. 95% (or somewhere thereabouts, pre recession value) of the US population live paycheck to paycheck. In ALL cases, that is a decision. Regardless of income, there are means to get where you want to be financially if willing to make hard sacrifices and tough decisions. I rode a Honda 90 to work (10 miles) for 5 years, rain, sleet and snow (Colorado). Not because I needed the exercise, but because I was unwilling to purchase a car without cash. I know people who have never worked with flat screen tv and $400 cellphones. I have neither. Chris this tirade is not necessarily directed at you. I read in the Wichita eagle the the EPA is forcing Kansas to permit the CO2 monster. http://www.kansas.com or my post in Tips and notes.
I’m just pissed at excuses and ignorance today. I’d probably use a swear word if R. Gates spewed some of his garbage about now. ;~P
The IPCC projections of 2.3mm rise per year is based on one – yes ONE – tidal gauge (GLOSS 77) at Quarry Station in Hong Kong Harbor. Ironically, this one gauge is situated on geology that is subsiding at the rate of – you guessed it – 2.3 mm per year. The entire argument of rising sea levels is a total sham. This is Sea-Level-Gate.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:30 pm
conradg says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:14 pm
if there is a cyclical pattern of rising and falling in between two points used to take an “average”.
But we do not know if there are such cycles. So what you are saying is: “assuming it is not so bad, we don’t need to worry”. This does not seem a reasonable stance. We need to find out what the long-term behavior has been and will be, and not just assume something. I may be in a minority on this, but so be it.
Go back to the link/paragraph I posted about the welsh castle. Sea level has self-evidently fallen since the castle was constructed. So you do now know there are such cycles.
Steven says:
CO2 does cause warming.
Do N2, O2, and H2O not cause warming? What is the justification for attributing enormous effects to a very small amount of CO2?
Ralph says:
September 11, 2010 at 9:37 am
I still don’t think there has been any appreciable rise in the last 2000 years. The Med is a good place to look, as it has no tides to complicate the issue, and plenty of known sea level locations (harbours) from over 2000 years ago.
Some ancient harbours, like Alexandria are below sea level, but then it was built on the sands of a river delta. Others, like Ephesus, are now 2km from the sea. Many, however, are exactly where they should be, in terms of sea levels.
How much has the land changed in its level? Who knows, the reports I have looked at contradict each other so much, they appear to be no better than guesswork.
—…—…—…
Now, to show
(1) that Man (not just Mann and his biased cohorts!) does affect the local sea level environment, I need to remind ALL reader of Brownwood subdivision in Baytown TX, just off the Houston ship channel on the northside of Galveston Bay.
Industrial water demands for the refineries, plastics, and processing industries along the Houston Ship Channel, and commercial/residential/personal water withdrawal from nearby towns led to a ten-twelve foot drop in land elevation in the few years between 1950 and 1995. The sea level did NOT rise, the land dropped by almost 3.0 meters. Some similar drops are being found now in southern Taiwan as ground water is withdrawn for irrigation.
As a result the Brownwood subdivision of Baytown was flooded out several times by hurricanes – though the residents themselves were not at fault for being “moved” into a more dangerous position – and the town eventually forced to close the subdivision and move people to higher ground.
2) Now consider that this involved not 1.2 mm per year occurring over a 100+ year span, but 3000 .0 mm occurring over a 40 year span. And yet only a few families needed to be moved in one town – in a region very highly populated in the third most populous state in America. So, how dangerous is sea level rise? IF it is happening at all.
Relative sea level rise is more controlled by land motion (up and down) than by water level rise. And relative sea level rises are the only change that matters. Where land is rising/rebounding from ice age weight release or coral buildup, or where relative sea level is rising because of land subsidence, the small amount of supposed temperature-based increase (estimated at 1/3 of the net rise) and ice melt increase (the remaining increase) is not under man’s control. Publicity about it is completely under Mann’s control. Deliberately.
The “scientists” who use sea level rise to advertise and scare their funding sources for Gaia-based-semi-religious beliefs and for greater funding and political influence (Nobel Prize rewards and NASA grants and public recognition and Congressional publicity and trips to foreign conferences and incestuous peer reviews) deserve the curses they receive.
When we talk about greenhouse gases we need to keep a few things in mind, “How does a green house work?”
The warming hoax based on man-made global warming is based on Green house gases.
Greenhouses don’t warm them selves, it is always based on solar heat. So, the gases provide a climate lag buffer.
However, Ozone may be a greenhouse, global warming feature, much as hurricanes and tropical storms. If ozone can’t be produced during warm summers, the hole in the ozone is going to show up.
Vapor is already dropping in the upper atmosphere. That is two of the four EPA greenhouse gas pollutants.
We may find the earth as a whole must be warmed up and cooled down, not just the greenhouse gases.
Beale, “co2 causes warming” does not have the word enormous encompassed in it.
Z, I assume you checked to see if the land was rising before you assumed the sea level was falling.
rbateman said on Sea Level Rise: Hype and Reality
September 11, 2010 at 8:05 am
By the way, how is NASA (or anybody else) doing with plans to divert a large impacting body?
mulling…
The insurance rates for NOLA should be as high as building a mansion in the Bay of Fundy at low tide. Of course, they’d have to be pretty quick up there and could take a little more time ‘down there’ in that hole in the Mississippi Delta.
I see that another ‘alarming’ climate-related report from the Associated Press has just popped up on Google News saying that tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because their normal sea ice habitat has just been melted. It says such mass walrus migrations are unusual in the United States, but similar events have been observed twice before in 2007 and 2009.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jkeClh5thU2svqQ7A0w-J662aFRwD9I76L380
Sorry this is a bit late. I very much enjoyed John Reading’s contribution on 10th September. Could he (or anyone else) supply a reference or attribution to “The Fallacy of the Multitudes”? A Google search returns only two results including his own post.
Hamish