From this article in The Hindu: (h/t to WUWT reader Adam Gallon)
“In the 20th century, sea-level rise was recorded at an average of 17 centimetres. If the sea-level was significantly lower, clearly the same tsunami would have had a less devastating effect. Therefore, sea-level rise is a kind of multiplier of the kinds of threats and negative impacts that will take place anyway,”
It seems to me that clearly Dr. Pachauri can’t mentally manage the concept of scale. Here’s the NOAA wave height graphic that was flashed around the world on news media shortly after the Tsunami Warning was issued, while the tsunami was still traveling across the Pacific:
Source: NOAA Center for Tsunami Research and NOAA Scientific Visualization Lab
Note the inset I added, now here’s that inset area magnified with the color key added and the 17cm Pachauri mentions marked:
Hmmm, for the people of Japan in the hardest hit areas, I don’t think it would matter much. But let’s compare the numbers and find out.
We can describe it another way in the scale of familiar human experience. Wiki gives this 2006 value for the average height of the Japanese people, the left figure is male, the right is female:
| Japan | 1.715 m (5 ft 7 1⁄2 in) | 1.580 m (5 ft 2 in) |
Let’s look at some other things:
Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet (61cm)
Read more: Why Is the Bonsai Tree Passed Down Within the Family? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_6744566_bonsai-passed-down-within-family_.html#ixzz1HR1GULDU
From Wiki, the height of the sea wall at the Fukushima reactor site:
“The plant was protected by a sea wall and designed to withstand a tsunami of 5.7 [570cm] meters…”
The actual height of the Tsunami wave there:
…but the tsunami had a height of about 14 meters [1400 cm] and topped this sea wall
OK let’s make some scale imagery to help visualize these values:
Now let’s insert the image above into the image which shows the height of the Tsunami as reported at the Fukushima reactor complex:
Click the above image to present it at the actual 1 pixel = 1 centimeter scale on your monitor.
That 17 centimeters that Dr. Pachauri speaks of makes all the difference, doesn’t it?
Note to other bloggers: feel free to use these graphics under “fair use” terms, but please provide a link back to this article at:
UPDATE: I had noted the actual sea level trend near the north coast of Japan as measured by satellites, but figured I need not mention it since the story stood well enough on its own.
Commenter “Skip” however seemed to think otherwise, so I had to bring it up. See below:
Works out negative with the correction applied too: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib.jpg
Note the negative trend in sea level for Japan’s north coast, which makes Pachy’s 17cm worries totally pointless. Doesn’t he have Internet access?
UPDATE2: This report of sea level trends in Japan from the Japan Meteorological agency shows the current SL lower than in 1950 by about 20mm. That certainly doesn’t square with AGW theory well, and again makes Pachy’s 17cm value for the area pointless. See: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10897163/National-Report-of-Japan
h/t to WUWT reader “An Inquirer” for the report
Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet
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Thanks for this graphic, Anthony. It puts the ridiculous “17 cm” argument in perspective.
From skip on March 24, 2011 at 6:14 am:
You have an interesting definition of “substantially.” A minivan has rolled down a hillside. The vehicle is destroyed, all occupants are dead. You are pointing at a pebble and arguing that it caused substantially more destruction. Shall you now methodically investigate and locate one small dent on the sheet metal that can be attributed to that pebble, and cite that as proof that pebble caused substantially more destruction? Will removing that pebble make a substantial difference the next time a minivan rolls down that hillside?
Strangely enough, I have not detected the “shift” you refer to. The extra 17cm was mentioned as superfluous, then it was mentioned how it didn’t exist anyway. Whether the 17cm does or does not exist, it doesn’t matter either way. Why can you not grasp this, and have to resort to insults that will get you snipped? You resemble a protester shouting loud disruptive logic-free chants, pushing harder and harder against the crowd control barriers, until finally a police officer has to push you back. Then you get to try to impress your “main squeeze” with your commitment to “the cause” by citing how you “got beat up by the pigs.”
Here’s a tip. If you’re going to brag about your daring exploits against we evil anti-science deniers, don’t provide the link to these comments. This internet record is better than news footage at showing what really happened. 😉
“I am *not* claiming to fully understand the fluid dynamics of tsunamis. I was responding to *AW’s* argument in the original post that Pauchari was being silly *even if the 17 cm increase is assumed.* ”
And if you had confined your comments as such I wouldn’t have brought this up, but you didn’t.
“I am not claiming to understand the precise physics of tsunamis, just the obvious fact that if you multiply .17 meters times the area a tsunami with its abnormally long wavelength covers from say, the latitudes touching Morioka and Sendai (the rough shoreline of the main tsunami strike), you’re talking about literally tens of *billions* of kilo*tons* of additional seawater in 2011 relative to 1900, all other things being equal. It’s the *mass* of water that kills and destroys, not the height.”
So you don’t understand tsunami dynamics but you are willing to claim that the 17 cm change in sea height would lead to a more massive and thus more a energetic wave.
“By how much do you think? A meter? Two?”
My back of the envelope calculation say about 1 meter.
“How much relative to the additional volume of water striking a fixed land location if the ocean is, on average 17cm higher…”
There is no additional water. The 17 cm of sea level rise shifts where the shore line is, it does not make the wave larger, thus there is no additional volume. I do know that the loss of energy for an extra 1 meter of slope that the wave has to travel is trivial, but at least it exists while this mythical additional volume or mass doesn’t exist.
From David Jones on March 24, 2011 at 7:48 am:
We all should skip skip?
😉
Like a broken record, Skip’s record player is “stuck in a groove”.
His first comment starting with an insult to everyone here is a clue…
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 12:18 pm
“Mr. Watts:
…a silly response… and a testament to the gullibility of yourself and your readership.”
“Pillock’s” point presented, pulling the plug on this player is perfectly prudent.
Skip,
You just can’t grasp how Pauchari’s foolish supposition was also dishonest.
“If the sea-level was significantly lower, clearly the same tsunami would have had a less devastating effect”
His presumed 17 centimeters is not “significant” relative to a major tsunami.
His then speculative claim of less devastation without the presumed 17 centimeters is baseless gibberish pretending to be a plausible theory.
He has nothing but his conniving imagination.
His being “IPCC’s” Pachauri and making these ginned up claims in order to suggest the AGW warming planet is worsening tsunamis is seriously unethical.
It’s the kind of unethical and baseless claim spewed forth by many alarmists from their every imaginable observation.
Your verbose attempt to put lipstick on the Pauchari has only worsened this alarmist episode.
There are too many of you to respond to at once, and I do have a day job, but let’s try this one more time.
Pauchari speculated that the increased volume of water, assuming a 17 cm 20th century sea level rise, would increase–all other things being equal–the size of the tsunami striking Japan.
AW’s clever response? Go look at his graph: What’s an additional 17 cm when people, trees, and wave barriers are already shorter than a 14 meter tsunami? Gotcha, IPPC flunkie!
He completely ignored the issue of the potential addition of *billions* of kilotons water, and focused on additional *height*. He clearly thought, “It doesn’t matter if you’re drowning under 14 meters or 14.17 meters; you’re still drowning.”
We can argue until R Wakefield fesses up to you people about his multiple embarrassments over at ScienceBlogs about the substantive importance of the extra volume of water. I am not claiming to know. The point is that Pauchari’s speculation is not the straw man AW so clumsily made it out to be, and the fact that his argument was digested by this readership so unquestioningly (E,g., Smokey still being swooned by AW’s graph.) says more than a graduate textbook on oceanography ever could.
You folks are so easily swayed by anything that sounds anti-IPCC that you never even stopped to think.
REPLY: OK “Skip” enough with the condescending “you people” I expect better from a professor. Your expertise is in teaching criminal justice at a university, what makes you think you have any qualified insight on the specifics of oceanography? Your arguments have been picked apart by multiple people, and they simply don’t hold up. You seem incapable of getting the fact that the 17cm simply doesn’t matter for multiple reasons.
– Anthony
After looking at those University of Colorado sea level maps, I really want to know what is happening east of the Philippines. What is the cause of that dramatic localized sea level rise? While previously researching sea levels, I had read how the prevailing trade winds and currents will cause water to “pile up” at the western side of the Pacific Ocean along the tropics, resulting in higher sea levels there than on the eastern side. Is that what we are seeing, the water is piling up against the Philippines?
Paucharie’s argument is quite correct. 17 centimeters on top of 10 meters of tsunami wave will obviously add to the problem. By 1.7%. And of course the sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age. Long before the industrial age.
People want money and fame.
AW:
I am not complaining about the condescension shown to *me* on this blog.
My argument has not been “picked apart” by anyone, because my only argument is the quality of *your* argument.
Allow me to pose it differently:
I want to see someone finish a sentence that begins thus:
“Under the presumption of 17 cm sea level rise, the height in meters of people and flora potentially affected by a tsunami is relevant because . . . ”
REPLY: And again, you don’t get to choose how things are done here. People see your argument as pointless and I agree. The 17cm is inconsequential whether you look at height or mass in the scope of the size of the Tsunami, or as one commenter aptly put it: ” Pachauri is complaining that the rampaging elephant had just had lunch before he flattened your house. ” which is essentially your argument also. Plusthere’s evidences staring you directly in the face that Japan’s sea level in that area is actually lower than the worldwide average, so even if it WAS relevant, the effect would be less.
You lost, get over it, move on. – Anthony
*Pachauri is complaining that the rampaging elephant had just had lunch before he flattened your house. ” which is essentially your argument also.* –AW
Incorrect.
“Damage” in the case of a “flattened” house is a quantum. The analogy is inapplicable, because the “elephant” in this case is flattening *thousands* of houses–a number determined by its size and force. If that size and force are greater owing to sea level rise–a premise you granted in your cavalier dismissal of Pauchari–then that means a commensurate number of more flattened houses.
If you now wish to just [snip – final warning. ~dbs] that sea level rise increased the height of the recent tsunami, then just do that. I have no immediate way of knowing either way–although I am now interested. But if you are still insisting that the shortness of trees and Japanese people proves that an extra 17 cm of water on a tsunami is superfluous, I stand by my earlier assessment of the quality of your analysis and the discernment of your readership.
REPLY: OK “Skip” enough with the condescending “you people” I expect better from a professor. Your expertise is in teaching criminal justice at a university…
Defense attorneys come up with some pretty “off the wall” defense claims in defending criminals. Maybe “Skip’s” class is where they learn the crazy irrational ideas. If that’s the case, skip’s position makes sense now. Maybe he also has a flair for “community organizing” too. I see a certain mindset here… ?quantum?? Skip, do you do bowling?
Skip, you still don’t get it. In the past 18,000 years the sea level has risen about 120 meters (roughly 400 feet), which is vastly larger than the height of the Japanese tsunami. Yet even back then tectonic activity caused major earthquakes and tsunamis, and those tsunamis packed the same energy as those today, had the same wave heights, and traveled at the same speeds. If we could raise the sea level another 400 feet, earthquakes would still cause tsunamis and those tsunamis would pack the same energy and have the same wave heights. If changing sea level by 800 feet doesn’t affect the nature of the tsunamis, how does changing the sea level by 6 inches make a difference?
Also note that the Japanese would’ve elevated their roadways by six inches just by paving them twice – in 100 years.
@skip
do you understand scale in relation to its surrounding?
One cubic kilometer plus one kilometer times one kilometer times 17 cm (this assuming the sea level rise was 17 cm at that particular area, if you haven’t noticed it yet sea level rise is local phenomenon where the global average is only in the statistics) has to be put into relation where the surrounding land has experienced land rise (which is an ongoing process for a large part of the northern hemisphere due to the loss of all the ice since the last ice age.)
And to note another explanation of yours 17 cm truly is, yet again assuming the sea level rise at that particular area was 17 cm, a true 17 cm rise of actual added water and not due to the fact of the floor underneath rising 17 cm there by pushing the above pillar of water upwards, 17 cm.
Now tell us again the importance of your 17 cm rise?
Mike says:
March 23, 2011 at 1:31 pm
The wave speed is fixed. A loud sound does not travel faster than a quiet sound.
A surface wave is not analogous to a sound wave. I’m sorry you missed out on your childhood. Put a gallon of water in your sink and play with waves for a minute. Wave speed is related to height.
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“Guys, please . . . what is the average wave length of a tsunami? Its not a roller that hits land like something you surf on. Tsunamis can have wavelengths of 100s of km.”
Considering that four (4) waves are visible in one picture, I’m not buying into this extreme wavelength idea. Though I’m wary of mkelly’s short assumption of 1.4m as well.
mkelly says:
March 23, 2011 at 1:26 pm
“1400cm^3” and “1400*1400*1417”
Well you seem to have conveniently overlooked my previous contribution. I wonder why. If you recall, you claimed that there would be much more water *mass* causing much more damage. You advanced that as a positive claim, you didn’t merely say “Anthony was wrong” as you now try to tell us. In fact you said:
I pointed out that depending on the structure of the sea bottom, it could even be that the extra depth causes more energy to be reflected rather than absorbed by land, thus lessening the damage. Certainly extra water depth lessens tsunami wave height, but whether it overpowers the effect of the 17cm or just reduces it depends on detailed information we don’t have. That means that your claim is just that – a claim that might or might not be true. More importantly, since Pachauri clearly doesn’t have an atom of understanding of what he is talking about, ignoring this real physical principle and chucking worthless vague and untrue words like “kind of multiplier” around, he is misrepresenting the science. Given his position and the expectation of authority from his pronouncements, that is dereliction of duty.
Moderator/AW:
Please . . . I am willing to tone down the rhetoric (“you guys” . . . “4th grade math” . . .etc.) but can I at least use the word “deny” in a grammatically appropriate context?
I mean, come on.
REPLY: Your first post starts off by insulting me and continues to insult people, and you want special treatment? Sure, why not, you’ve earned yourself a troll bin chair – Anthony
*do you understand scale in relation to its surrounding?* –Troll
I am sorry, Dandy, but that you would use this argument shows you bought AW’s faulty analysis. To wit, the idea that people are small compared to 14 m, therefore an extra 17 cm doesn’t mean anything on a tsunami.
Reminder: AW *stipulated* the extra 17 cm when he dismissed Pauchari without even considering the possibility that increased volume/mass/force, not height, is/are the crucial factor(s) in the destructive force of a tsunami. Please refer to his graph. Nobody called him on it except me. When I asked which of the commentators here bought this argument (“look how small the 17cm wave increase is relative to the size of people and trees”) not *one* of you rushed to his defense. Not one. What do you think I should make of this?
AW, why not just do this: Admit it was a blunder. I’ve committed a few myself. (I even contradicted myself once in *this* discussion and no one caught it yet . . . but I’ll let you work for it and then I will fully fess up.)
The only way any of us can get better at anything is when we look at our mistakes and *learn*.
Repeat/summary: The relative height of people/trees is irrelevant in gauging the destructive force of a tsunami with an extra 17cm added–which addition AW *stipulated* in his smug dismissal of Pauchari. Yet he made a huge show of giving us the average height of Japanese men, women, the bonsai(sp?) tree, etc. It was a blunder, pure and simple. The inference he left all of you to make was, “Well, gee, what’s an extra 17 cm when you’re already 14 m underwater.”
Again, no one caught the nonsense but me. And now you’re fighting me to the death over it when all you have to do is acknowledge the error and move on!
REPLY: Are you Tim Flannery?
– Anthony
Skip, there is no extra 17 cm. The power in a surface wave is in reference to the normal water level, whatever that level happens to be. A one foot wave on a mountain lake, thousands of feet above sea level, is the same as a one foot wave in the Dead Sea, 1700 feet below sea level.
The main thing a 6″ increase in sea level could do is change the relative height of the shore versus the ocean by 6 inches, which is less than the height of a cinder block. If anything, claiming that this tiny difference in height makes a difference in survival also argues that everyone should drive a big SUV (because the extra 6 inches of ground clearance spells the difference between life and death in a tsunami caused by an earthquake caused by tectonic forces) and live in a bigger house with an extra row of cinderblocks in the foundation. It also argues that we should pave more, to raise road heights by six inches, giving people that extra margin of survival.
Of course houses, airports, surf shacks, and nuclear plants should also move inland and then beachward again, a few miles a day, as the tides come in and out.
Tsunamis of any height propagate as long gravity waves, whose phase speed c is governed by the square root of gh, where h is the depth of water. Their periods are on the order of tens of minutes, thus the wavelength is cT, where T is the period in seconds. Wave height comes into play only with great heights that produce steep faces and/or bores nearshore, which may induce secondary undulations such as those noted by Slacko. Once the bore advances upon dry land, the run-up elevation becomes the effective h. Such elevations are highly variable along a coast. There’s simply no single height or wavelength that can be ascribed to a particular tsunami event nearshore; it’s much more complicated than that.
AW:
A number of your comments above suggest you know who I am–a nobody. I am not a socialist who hates free markets. I do not want one world government. I am not a misanthrope who despises prosperity and progress. I am just a devoted father of newborn twins who cares about the future of the world they inherit. Hence my interest in this issue.
And will offer this compliment, Mr. Watts; Despite my vigorous repudiation of your comments on Pauchari I do humbly appreciate your discretion in not revealing who I am to this forum. I am not in this for notoriety.
While I am exactly as Irish as Mr. Flannery, but I am not the man.
REPLY: OK now you are talking semi-realistically. Here’s my honest answer. The 17cm makes no difference, and someday you may come to understand why. – Anthony
If you are stipulating the 17 cm then it of necessity *must* make some difference in the destructive force of the tsunami, which you showed no evidence of grasping when you initially mocked Pauchari. This is my key point.
Look at your contributors’ comments. They all are rushing to argue against the 17cm increase because, in many cases, they recognize its threat if conceded. (Believe me its a fascinating and complex discussion in itself but its not germane to my critique.) Your criticism of Pauchari was premised on his silliness *even conceding* the 17 cm increase in the height of the wave. Nobody spotted/acknowledged the problem except me.
I’ll purge the word “gullibility” from my presentation but I find it very . . . concerning . . . that it was so glibly lauded by your readership when you first posted it.
REPLY: It still doesn’t matter, it’s like comparing gnats to gigatons. – Anthony
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 4:12 pm
“A greater volume of water will hit any given land location *more* so if sea level is higher. Massively more so. … Do you deny that?
The key point here is that AW is trying to argue that 17 cm is not a whole lot relative to the height of a Japanese person or a water barrier, when the issue is the increased *volume* and thus mass of water … that 17 cm times the crucial area of the tsunami–which can have a wavelength of up to 500 km.”
Yes, I deny that!
There is no greater volume in the wave. The earthquake imparts a given amount of energy to the water, regardless of sea level. That energy is transmitted by the waves, which slow down in shallow water as the wavelength is coverted to height increase. A wave will travel the same distance inland from the shoreline (for a given groundslope of course) regardless of sea level. Thus, if the tide rises 17cm, the wave will ingress to a limit 17cm higher in altitude than if the tide had not risen. That is Anthony’s point about the Bonsai tree. The wave is not higher, nor more voluminous, because its energy is the same regardless of sea level.
Put a book under your monitor. Now your monitor is bigger?
No, you only raised the desk level. It’s amazing you don’t get this.
*The wave is not higher, nor more voluminous, because its energy is the same regardless of sea level.*
But, its impact on land will be greater if its 17 cm higher–which AW stipulated in his dismissal of Pauchari (this is key!)–than *it would have been* without sea level rise. Pauchari never made the straw man argument–nor am I–that sea level rise makes waves “bigger” in absolute terms. They would be higher *relative to the land they strike*, and thus imbued with greater destructive force as per the massive increase in the amount of water that is mathematically required when you multiply the additional height by the size of the wave.
Please understand what I am saying here.
REPLY: OK let me try to explain this in criminal justice terms which you might understand.
Let’s say you live in a state where you can have up to 17 oz of drugs for *personal use* without any penalty. You like that, and get yourself a legal baggie.
You decide you like it a lot and stock up, you fill your garage from floor to ceiling with drugs. You have 10,000 ounces of drugs in that garage.
A nosy neighbor calls the cops, the cops come in and bust you and your 10 kilo-ounce stash.
They log 10,017 ounces of drugs into evidence. The first 17oz baggie you got, plus the 10,000 ounces in the garage.
At the trial, your lawyer claims that 17oz bag was for personal use, and should be excluded. The defense laughs and agrees, saying: “OK, but you’ll stipulate to the 10,000 ounces?” You say sure, all I care about is the 17oz bag.
In the context of scale for the evidence for the crime, the 17 ounces make no difference whatsoever, it’s a throwaway. You’re still busted by the sheer magnitude of the other evidence. That’s the point. The Tsunami was so large, whether the was or wasn’t a 17cm effect, it makes no significant difference whatsoever given the magnitude of the wave.
Now before you write anything again, you should view this image. – Anthony