Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony has pointed out the further inanities of that well-known vanity press, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This time it is Michael Mann (of Hockeystick fame) and company claiming an increase in the rate of sea level rise (complete paper here, by Kemp et al., hereinafter Kemp 2011). A number of commenters have pointed out significant shortcomings in the paper. AMac has noted at ClimateAudit that Mann’s oft-noted mistake of the upside-down Tiljander series lives on in Kemp 2011, thus presumably saving the CO2 required to generate new and unique errors. Steve McIntyre has pointed out that, as is all too common with the mainstream AGW folks and particularly true of anything touched by Michael Mann, the information provided is far, far, far from enough to reproduce their results. Judith Curry is also hosting a discussion of the issues.
I was interested in a couple of problems that haven’t been touched on by other researchers. The first is that you can put together your whiz-bang model that uses a transfer function to relate the “formaminiferal assemblages” to “paleomarsh elevation” (PME) and then subtract the PME from measured sample altitudes to estimate sea levels, as they say they have done. But how do you then verify whether your magic math is any good? The paper claims that
Agreement of geological records with trends in regional and global tide-gauge data (Figs. 2B and 3) validates the salt-marsh proxy approach and justifies its application to older sediments. Despite differences in accumulation history and being more than 100 km apart, Sand Point and Tump Point recorded near identical RSL variations.
Hmmm, sez I … so I digitized the recent data in their Figure 2B. This was hard to do, because the authors have hidden part of the data in their graph through their use of solid blocks to indicate errors, rather than whiskers as are commonly used. This makes it hard to see what they actually found. However, their results can be determined by careful measurement and digitization. Figure 1 shows those results, along with observations from the two nearest long-term tidal gauges and the TOPEX satellite record for the area.
Figure 1. The sea-level results from Kemp 2011, along with the nearest long-term tide gauge records (Wilmington and Hampton Roads) and the TOPEX satellite sea level records for that area. Blue and orange transparent bands indicate the uncertainties in the Kemp 2011 results. Their uncertainties are shown for both the sea level and the year. SOURCES: Wilmington, Hampton Roads, TOPEX
My conclusions from this are a bit different from theirs.
The first conclusion is that as is not uncommon with sea level records, nearby tide gauges give very different changes in sea level. In this case, the Wilmington rise is 2.0 mm per year, while the Hampton Roads rise is more than twice that, 4.5 mm per year. In addition, the much shorter satellite records show only half a mm per year average rise for the last twenty years.
As a result, the claim that the “agreement” of the two Kemp 2011 reconstructions are “validated” by the tidal records is meaningless, because we don’t have observations accurate enough to validate anything. We don’t have good observations to compare with their results, so virtually any reconstruction could be claimed to be “validated” by the nearby tidal gauges. In addition, since the Tump Point sea level rise is nearly 50% larger than the Sand Point rise, how can the two be described as “near identical”?
As I mentioned above, there is a second issue with the paper that has received little attention. This is the nature of the area where the study was done. It is all flatland river delta, with rivers that have created low-lying sedimentary islands and constantly changing border islands, and swirling currents and variable conditions. Figure 2 shows what the turf looks like from the seaward side:
Figure 2. Location of the study areas (Tump Point and Sand Point, purple) for the Kemp 2011 sea level study. Location of the nearest long-term tidal gauges (Wilmington and Hampton Roads) are shown by yellow pushpins.
Why is this important? It is critical because these kinds of river mouth areas are never stable. Islands change, rivers cut new channels, currents shift their locations, sand bars are created and eaten away. Figure 3 shows the currents near Tump Point:
Figure 3. Eddying currents around Tump Point. Note how they are currently eroding the island, leading to channels eaten back into the land.
Now, given the obviously sedimentary nature of the Tump Point area, and the changing, swirling nature of the currents … what are the odds that the ocean conditions (average temperature, salinity, sedimentation rate, turbidity, etc.) are the same now at Tump Point as they were a thousand years ago?
And since the temperature and salinity and turbidity and mineral content a thousand years ago may very well have been significantly different from their current values, wouldn’t the “formaminiferal assemblages” have also been different then regardless of any changes in sea level?
Because for the foraminifera proxy to be valid over time, we have to be able to say that the only change that might affect the “foraminiferal assemblages” is the sea level … and given the geology of the study area, we can almost guarantee that is not true.
So those are my issues with the paper, that there are no accurate observations to compare with their reconstruction, and that important local marine variables undoubtedly have changed in the last thousand years. Of course, those are in addition to the problems discussed by others, involving the irreproducibility due to the lack of data and code … and the use of the Tiljander upside-down datasets … and the claim that we can tell the global sea level rise from a reconstruction in one solitary location … and the shabby pal-review by PNAS … and the use of the Mann 2008 temperature reconstruction … and …
In short, I fear all we have is another pathetic attempt by Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmstorf, and others to shore up their pathetic claims, even to the point of repeating their exact same previous pathetic mistakes … and folks wonder why we don’t trust mainstream AGW scientists?
Because they keep trying, over and over, to pass off this kind of high-school-level investigation as though it were real science.
My advice to the authors? Same advice my high school science teacher drilled into our heads, to show our work. PUBLISH YOUR CODE AND DATA, FOOLS! Have you been asleep for the last couple years? These days nobody will believe you unless your work is replicable, and you just look stupid for trying this same ‘I won’t mention the code and data, maybe nobody will notice’ trick again and again. You can do all the hand-waving you want about your “extended semiempirical modeling approach”, but until you publish the data and the code for that approach and for the other parts of your method, along with the observational data used to validate your approach, your credibility will be zero and folks will just point and laugh.
w.
Yep… as I suspected you need to insert the underline between zGeologic and
Mapsite=9AM for that second link to work:
http://gis.enr.state.nc.us/sid/bin/index.plx?client=xGeologic_Maps&site=9AM
Has somebody calculated and published the effect of land rise to global SLR after last glacial period. In my country, which was covered by ice during last glacial period, land rise has been about 9 mm/year for thousands of years.
“So those are my issues with the paper, that there are no accurate observations to compare with their reconstruction, and that important local marine variables undoubtedly have changed in the last thousand years.”
Neither of these complaints is critical. The model has been cross-validated, omitting a point from the dataset and estimating its environmental conditions from the remaining data. This procedure demonstrates that the model has statistical skill. Validation against instrumental records is desirable, but not essential.
Transfer functions make a number of assumption (see Birks et al 2010). That variables remain constant except for the variable of interest is not one of them, although other ecologically important variables changed substantially, any reconstruction is unlikely to be statistically significant (which can now be tested).
The most relevant assumption is assumption 5 from Birks et al 2010.
“5. Other environmental variables than the one(s) of interest (Xf) have had negligible influence on Yf
during the time window of interest, the joint distribution of these variables of interest in the past
was the same as today, or their effect on Yf did not lead to past changes in assemblage states resembling
shifts indicative in the modern environment of changes in the variable of interest”
I suspect their sea-level reconstruction is fairly robust.
Birks et al. 2010. Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantitative Climate Reconstructions Based
on Late-Quaternary Biological Proxies. The Open Ecology Journal, 3, 68-110
KR says:
“Smokey:
Perhaps you can point out studies showing 100x volcanoes as the USGS estimates on the sea floor? …Since CO2 emissions are going to be directly tied to the amount of magma released, your 100x increase in CO2 release requires 100x release of the estimated amount of magma. I would enjoy seeing the studies that support that…”
You set up that bad ol’ strawman and knocked him right down! Good for you, we always need strawman killers, otherwise there’d be strawmen everywhere.
However, I never commented on any of those things. What I said was this: “The fact is that no one really knows the total volcanic emissions of the planet.”
Some folks say volcano emissions are just a tiny fraction of total emissions, and other folks say volcano emissions exceed human emissions. Speaking for myself, I really don’t know.
If you can provide us with observations and measurements I would be interested. [But please, no learned opinions based on models. They’re no longer very convincing on their own. Too much grant money involved.]
Thousands of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves
The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.
The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 meters over the sea bed…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218
this was 4 years ago……….
Smokey
Well, you are the one who stated that “The fact is that no one really knows the total volcanic emissions of the planet.”.
Unless you have contrary data, the best estimates are just that, the best estimates, and you were simply raising a red herring in reply to my posting.
—
Back to the subject – Willis, I would have to say that Kemp et al have supplied enough information to replicate their work. They haven’t supplied their raw data, their Excel worksheets, their actual cores – that’s reanalysis, not replication. But they’ve certainly provided enough information for someone familiar with the techniques to reproduce their work as a check. And enough that, if you have criticisms of their methods, you could point out where they made mistakes, which you have not done; rather you’ve talked up the scale of the variables without addressing how Kemp et al addressed those variables.
Latitude says:
June 23, 2011 at 2:39 pm
“The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.”
The number of observed and estimated number of unobserved undersea volcanoes is interesting but irrelevant. There could be a hundred or a hundred million. The only that matters is whether or not the aggregate emissions of all of them are increasing or decreasing then that would raise the question of why. There’s no evidence that underwater vulcanism is on any upward or downward trend.
The only number trending upward is how many of them we’ve managed to count so far. Sort of like there’s an estimated to be 10-30 million different species of insects and we’ve actually counted only 1 million so far.
Smokey says:
June 23, 2011 at 11:43 am
“It is unknown why there are so many more submarine volcanoes than terrestrial volcanoes,”
Who are you quoting with that nonsense? The crust is much thinner on the ocean floor and there’s something called the “ring of fire” which are lines of active volcanoes that run around the bottom of the global ocean like the seams on a baseball. It’s totally well known why there are more undersea volcanoes both active and dead. There are more dead ones because they don’t get weathered down to nothing in a few million years like dead surface volcanoes.
KR says:
June 23, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Back to the subject – Willis…if you have criticisms of their methods, you could point out where they made mistakes, which you have not done; rather you’ve talked up the scale of the variables without addressing how Kemp et al addressed those variables.
———
I believe the point that Willis is making, which is supported by information provided by many commenters here, is that there is no means of precisely and accurately quantifying or historically verifying over a long period how sands and river courses have shifted, salinity has changed, or what the rate of subsidence is. No matter how Kemp et al. address these variables, they cannot be pinned down with enough precision to justify their claims that foramanifera proxies reflect minute sea-level rises.
And what about pollution issues? See:
Minilecture from http://www.foraminifera.eu written by Michael Hesemann as a digest of scientific papers Foraminiferal assemblages record anthropogenic pollution
“A major problem in coastal marine areas is man-made pollution. The main pollutants are chemical like heavy metals, organic sewage, nutrients, hydrocarbons and physical like thermal, paper pulp, plastic and oil. Subrecent fossil assemblages of foraminifera provide a record of past environments and are used as a record of anthropogenic pollution.”
foraminifera.eu/files/ForaminiferaRecordPollution.pdf
KR says:
June 23, 2011 at 2:48 pm
The first step in replication is to see if they have made any mistakes in their work. No sense trying to replicate it if they’ve made, for example, mathematical mistakes. They have not provided anywhere near enough information to do that.
Since we don’t have enough information to determine if their methods and data are correct, it is not science as I understand it. To be science, we have to be able to examine their work for errors. At present, we cannot do so.
But if you think it can be replicated (or even reanalyzed, the first step in replication), let’s start with this step that they describe as:
Report back to us with the details of their “transfer functions” and the archived “modern dataset of foraminifera”, and we’ll go forward from there.
w.
Dave Springer,
I am not an expert on volcanoes, Dave, nor that much interested in them. My comment was simply to point out that what people think they know about total planetary CO2 emissions from volcanoes is mostly guesswork. From the link I posted above:
So the theory of a thin mantle is at least questionable.
And KR takes this way beyond the scientific method, and into the realm of pseudo-science. He wants me to prove a negative: “Unless you have contrary data, the best estimates are just that, the best estimates, and you were simply raising a red herring in reply to my posting.”
What I stated was that ‘nobody knows’. There is insufficient data either way. But to be fair, I invited KR to produce measurements and observations showing the total amount of planetary volcano emissions, if he could. He couldn’t, so like a typical alarmist he attempted to put the burden back on the scientific skeptic. Memo to KR: skeptics have nothing to prove. Why that fact never sinks in, and why the alarmist crowd consistently ignores the scientific method, must have something to do with a person’s anti-science belief system.
The standard alarmist talking point is that volcanoes emit almost no CO2, compared with human activities. But the plain fact is: we don’t know. The oceans are wide and deep.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 23, 2011 at 5:01 pm
“Report back to us with the details of their “transfer functions” and the archived “modern dataset of foraminifera”, and we’ll go forward from there.”
Once again, Willis, you have challenged a Warmista to do something that has a definite beginning, middle, and end and that can be checked throughout. Warmista cannot compute this kind of challenge. For Warmista, you must allow them to select an answer and then work backwards to the data, skipping steps as needed.
KR, stop trying to fool people. Replication implies reanalysis. If your analysis is not available or cannot be reconstructed then how do we know your rational reasons for your starting points? Why you would consider not publishing it is mind-boggling.
Willis
But if you think it can be replicated (or even reanalyzed, the first step in replication), let’s start with this step that they describe as:
“We developed transfer functions using a modern dataset of foraminifera (193 samples) from 10 salt marshes in North Carolina, USA (7).”
Report back to us with the details of their “transfer functions” and the archived “modern dataset of foraminifera”, and we’ll go forward from there.
The method necessary would be to take my own 190-200 samples of current foraminifera from various sites at known depths (top of the sediment layer, so recent), analyze the species ratios, and from that determine what species ratios occur at which depths. Those ratios are then your “transfer function” relating speciation to depth, which can be applied to your core samples. Really, it’s not an impenatrable method – that seemed fairly clear to me the first time I read it in their paper. Plenty of information to replicate the work.
If you want details of the species ratios at various depths according to their samples, I suggest you write to them and ask, rather than asserting that their data is worthless. Most scientists I know are more than willing to assist in replicating their work – it gets them citations, if nothing else. Of course, if they thought you were trying to catch them out with a ‘gotcha’, they might be less sympathetic…
DonS says:
June 23, 2011 at 11:21 am
Regardless of how much irrigation draws off it appears that land use changes can have a significant impact on aquifer recharge rate. I couldn’t find anything specific to North Carolina but Florida’s coastal aquifer is claimed to get a large recharge rate benefit from intact forest cover the deep roots of which keep infiltration channels open in the soil.
http://www.fppaea.org/current_issues.php?contentid=241
During the latter part of 19th century the amount of farmland in North Carolina quadrupled. Presumably all those tobacco farms used to be covered by trees like most everything else was east of the Mississippi prior to the agricultural/industrial explosion.
http://0.tqn.com/d/forestry/1/0/v/A/typindex.gif
Specifically the period 1850 to 1900 was when North Carolina’s tobacco industry was established.
Thanks for asking.
1DandyTroll says:
June 23, 2011 at 1:06 pm
When citing photos, please do not forget your experience of the landscape you photographed. Your experience gives you a definitive interpretation of the photo but someone who lacks your experience might not be able to make much of the photo.
Smokey – “skeptics have nothing to prove.”
In this case, Smokey, you are quite incorrect. There’s lots of data about the number of volcanoes, the amount of magma expressed through various cones and vents, and that sets limits on the CO2 expressed by volcanic activity – about 1% that of human CO2 output.
The burden of proof is on you to disprove the USGS, the various volcanic studies, etc. They’ve already established their case – you’re the one attempting to disprove it, and without evidence there’s no reason to believe you are right.
And that holds for any argument, not just volcanoes… if you want to disprove a hypothesis or theory that is currently accepted, that has a fair quantity of evidence for it, you have to produce evidence to the contrary. Assertions without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Smokey says:
June 23, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Neither am I. The ring of fire and the thin crust under the deep ocean trenches are quite literally 7th grade science. When you categorically claimed that no one knows why there are more underwater volcanoes than over land that’s so untrue and so basic that brings into question how much what you should have learned in junior high school earth science you actually retained or whether you ever passed the class in the first place.
Willis
“The first step in replication is to see if they have made any mistakes in their work. No sense trying to replicate it if they’ve made, for example, mathematical mistakes. They have not provided anywhere near enough information to do that.”
I’m quite curious as to which aspects of their math you found insufficiently described? I didn’t see any, but I’m more than willing to admit that I may have missed something. Given the data they stated they had collected, which mathematical treatment is unclear?
KR says:
June 23, 2011 at 5:18 pm
What you are describing doesn’t answer the first question any scientist asks, which is whether there are any mathematical or logical or data-related or other errors in the work in question. Looking at your foraminifera might be interesting, but it doesn’t help in the slightest in assessing the validity of their claims. And since the truth of their claims cannot be assessed, it’s not science.
I have not asserted that their data is worthless. I have said it is unavailable. You need to up your reading intensity, you’re making things up to fill the gaps in your understanding.
Finally, it appears that you have bought into the pernicious idea that whether a scientist should reveal their data and methods depends on their assessment of the motives of the person asking … my friend, you really should google something like “scientific method”.
The scientific method REQUIRES, not suggest but requires, that a scientist make his data and methods available for public examination. If they fail to do that, there is no other way to determine if the scientist is just blowing smoke … as in this case. For all we know, they left out a minus sign somewhere and as a result their work is meaningless. But until they reveal what they did and exactly how they did it, there’s no way to determine that, so ’til then it’s just a nice fairy tale—fascinating, but ultimately untestable … and in that regard curiously like many so many other AGW claims.
w.
PS – If “most scientists you know” are interested in replication of their work, you must not know a lot of mainstream AGW scientists — far too many of them have the same response to the threat of replication as vampires do to garlic …
Good work, Willis. Among other issues pointed out by you and some commentators, there is also a tendency for these kinds of sediments to slump along little faults that may move the sediments down a few inches or feet. There are many good objections to the sweeping conclusions drawn in this paper.
Willis
“The scientific method REQUIRES, not suggest but requires, that a scientist make his data and methods available for public examination. If they fail to do that, there is no other way to determine if the scientist is just blowing smoke …”
I’ll ask again – have you requested that data from them? And which part of their math do you find incomprehensible? I certainly wouldn’t have put a 193 item table of raw data into my paper – page limits are tight enough! Especially with the “… chronologies were developed using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C (conventional, high-precision, and bomb-spike), a pollen chrono-horizon (increased Ambrosia at AD 1720± 20 y), 210Pb inventory, and a 137Cs spike (AD 1963). data included.
“looking at your foraminifera might be interesting, but it doesn’t help in the slightest in assessing the validity of their claims. And since the truth of their claims cannot be assessed, it’s not science.”
I described a method of replicating their work, clearly described in their paper. Granted, you (ahem) have to get your hands dirty. But that’s the way science works. Seriously, if you think their data is suspect, that their computations were bad, you should put the effort into seeing what the samples show yourself.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 23, 2011 at 9:16 am
Because I couldn’t find any fault in the connection between foraminifera species ratios and water depth. That’s good biology. That part appears to be well grounded and I have no reason to suspect they doctored the species counts in the core samples. The biological response to depth variation establishes a low pass filter that masks transients like floods and hurricanes and tides. The dating methods are not new and those along with depth establish a sedimentation rate record.
The only poor part of the paper I could find, and it’s a real doozy which is more suitable for an opinion piece written by Daily Kos scientific illiterate, is the gratuitous attempt to establish a linkage between decadally averaged salt marsh depth at a fixed location and anthropogenic CO2 emission. That was hasty, unsupported by any evidence, sophomoric, ideologically driven, and many more less flattering ways of describing it. If they’d have simply reported the biological and chemical findings from the core survey and kept their personal opinions about what caused the relative change in sea level to themselves it would have been a wonderful example of good science. But no… they had to go and spoil it by blaming the CO2 bogeyman.
From WE’s article: “AMac has noted at ClimateAudit that Mann’s oft-noted mistake of the upside-down Tiljander series lives on in Kemp 2011,”
Perry Hotter and the Deathly Shallows, Part 3?
Somehow, a puzzle in today’s USA Todays seems strangely appropriate.
If you solve it, you get a quote from Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries and a former banking accountant:
One question I have asked on several BLOGS concerning the rising sea level is does the earth changing size affect the estimates of rising water levels? I have yet to see an answer. Since the estimates are in the range of mm per year, could any shrinkage of the earth lead to increases in water level assuming the volume of the oceans are constant. Has this been accounted for in long range correlations?