Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
You’ve heard of “Post Normal Science”? I investigate “Para Normal Science”. That’s the kind of science that is based on the willing suspension of belief in the physical laws of nature. Continuing my investigation of para normal science, I find a group that takes the long view of sea level rise. They don’t mess about with decadal scenarios. They disdain looking a mere century into the future. The press release is here, the paper’s paywalled, abstract here. The press release is titled:
Sea levels will continue to rise for 500 years
Figure from the press release issued by the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. Estimates prepared for the purposes of alarmism only, not warranteed for any other application. © 2011 by BeVeRyScArEd Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Neal’s Boring Institute.
My favorite part of the press release about the paywalled paper was this:
Actual measurements. Not fake, counterfeit, false, ersatz, phony, bogus, pseudo, or imitation measurements. Actual measurements.
Whenever they say something like “based on actual measurements”, I can’t help but be reminded of Hollywood’s “Based on a true story”, and how far the Hollywood version always is from the actual story warts and all …
In any case, no matter how they designed their climate supermodel, scenarios five centuries long? I’m sorry, but that’s a complete wank. No one will be alive to see even the 200 year mark. It will make no difference to our current choices. Indeed, it will likely be forgotten before the year is out. It is probably produced specifically with the aspiration of receiving the honor of being entombed in the fifth IPCC assessment report, a fitting burial place for such work. It may be based on a true story, but the facts have been changed to protect the innocent, so much so that any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
But most of all, it is an exercise in projecting a simple curve into the future, which is a newbie error I was warned against in high school. You can’t just extend a curve out for 500 years, that’s a pathetic joke even if you do call it a “IPCC scenario”. Oh, wait, that terminology is so yesterday. The new IPCC bureaucratic scientese term is “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenarios” … I kid you not.
But even if you call it a Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenario, still, five hundred years? Five centuries? Get real!
Para Normal Science at its finest.
w.
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How can a learned person expect that man can use fossile fuels at the present pace till 2100, let alone till 2500???
Heheh, I have the same problem when lecturers assert facts to be true unquestioningly. I study environmental science at uni. Luckily there aren’t many of these indulgent doomsday graphs.
when Willis says the “w” word you know it’s gotta be bad…..I sprayed green tea all over my screen.
Hairy palms anyone?
Considering your experiment with CO2 and its warming potential we can ignore the GHG bits of this ‘research’ guesswork.
Another way to circumvent nosey parkers like us? If FOIA still holds, and paywalls don’t stop reasonable inquirers who sense b***s***, then make the script incomprehensible except to fellow-
conspiratorscientists.In the UK at least, there is now a standard, called the “crystal mark“, which is about NOT using this kind of throw-dust-in-your-opponents-eyes use of language, but using “plain English”.
Where have we seen this before? h’mm…the term “Medieval Climate Anomaly” was surely invented precisely to deny or hide the existence of the perfectly sound and properly-evidence-backed scientific term, “Medieval Warm Period”.
See your 500 year prediction, and raise it 500 years courtesy of Australia’s eminent leading climate scientist (who lives by the sea), Prof. Tim Flannery:
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUO4Mq1w-Eo ]
My great great great great great great great great……..great…………great great great grandson will be living at Appartment 1033a, 37 Sun Street, North Mars Terraform Unit, Mars, in 500 years time according to my “predict the future” iphone app.
“…the facts have been changed to protect the innocent,”
Surely you meant “the facts have been changed to protect the guilty”
It reminds me of con commercials: “Real Money”! “No Tricks”.
Unbelievable (and sad).
In other news, No Tree Grows To The Sky!
Beanstalks, however …
Willis,
Sir,
You remind of a long deceased country man of yours, Mark Twain, and the way he took the piss out of people and society in a nice way. Your ideas about how our climate actually works is actually closer to the truth than most. Go forth and promulgate for those with new thought are rare.
Thanks Willis, your writing is always a pleasure to read. A lonely voice of reason amidst so much gobbledygook!
FWIW
“But to attempt to assess that future calls for extrapolation, which as the designer of the de Havilland Comet said after he found out why Comets were coming apart in the air, is the fertile mother of error”
Herschel Smith (1981). A history of aeronautical piston engines.
Have I got a model for you, sir!!
The assumptions behind it are simply that human activity by various means is the primary cause of ocean sea level changes after accounting for the general interglacial process of gradually melting icecaps.
The trouble is that it is hard to see how extra energy in the air from human effects on the composition of the atmosphere could have a significant effect on ocean temperatures and thus sea level changes for anything less than millennia given the thermal capacity of seawater as compared to that of air. That assumes that the energy in the air can get into the oceans in the first place which is not yet a proven fact given the cooling efficiency of increased evaporation from more energy in the air.
I know Willis thinks that such energy can warm the oceans but I have yet to see adequate proof of that.
Now we do know that during the late 20th century the ocean heat content did rise as the troposphere warmed a little but that was far too fast for it to have been a result of human action so where else could we look ?
Furthermore the rise seems to have stopped now whilst the sun is less active. Coincidence ?
I think not.
What we have here is relatively short term ocean heat content variability (and thus sea level changes) arising from natural solar causes and not human activity at all.
The best proposition I can think of is that the amount of solar energy getting into the oceans varies more than previously thought as a result of global cloudiness and albedo changes.
Svensmark attributes cloudiness changes to cosmic ray quantities.
I think it is the surface pressure distribution responding to solar induced changes in the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere as a result of different chemical responses at different levels in the atmosphere as I have explained elsewhere.
Quite simply the more the jetstreams wander about latitudinally (someone here called it ‘loopiness’) the greater is total global cloudiness and a quiet sun allows far more of such wandering about than does an active sun.
Unable to accept the inevitable long-term consequences of global warming, and ill-equipped to critique the science, Eschenbach resorts to mockery.
What kind of warning would be issued from 16th century America?
Perhaps the more feverish would been witch warnings.
But assuming it was from sane rational folk.
Probably it have to do the importance of building canals.
Concerns about coal reserves for heating, and timber for
ships. And probably something to do with Indians.
Anyone think million of people might live in and on the ocean within a couple
centuries?
Crazy idea? Yeah.
But flying across America on a plane would be pretty crazy
in the 16th Century.
richardjamestelford says:
October 20, 2011 at 2:22 am
Richard, you’re right. I am so upset by what might happen in half a millenium, I just can’t accept it, it’s ruining my life. I can’t face the thought that 500 years from now, we might have a meter of sea level rise. Or six meters. Or neither. Or we might have an ice age. The thought of any of those outcomes? I just can’t accept them, they’re just too awful to contemplate.
As a result, since I can’t prove it won’t happen in half a millennium, I can only mock those who not only know what tomorrow holds—they know what will happen so far into the future that no one now living will see it. Or be able to check it, but that’s just a coincidence …
Meanwhile, sea levels have stopped rising for the moment … go figure.
w.
Betcha all the climate zealots in the MWP were saying exactly the same thing. And in the Roman WP. And the Minoan WP. And …
In the previous thread mentioning this paper, Anthony shows the continuous sea-level rise since the last glacial maximum on this graph:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
There is one absolute fact that can be gleaned from it, and that is that sea-level has been rising throughout this Holocene interglacial, and actually a little before it, beginning just after that glaciation was at its peak.
The last time sea-level was NOT rising was in the run-up to the last glacial maximum, 24 to 21 kya (on that graph). A very sane hypothesis would state that if sea-level is NOT rising, it may very well mark the end of the Holocene, and the run-up towards another glaciation.
Now unless I am misunderstanding the Y-Axis on this graph from Grinsted, they are trying to say that if emissions are stabilized in 10 years, sea-level will stop rising. Therefore humans, in their opinion, would seem to have the power to completely stop our Holocene interglacial. Would someone please ask these folks or Mark Serreze at NSIDC if they actually believe sea-level should NOT be rising. Should it be going down? Should it be static?
If this isn’t a joke, then we are seeing the advancement of people not qualified to sweep sidewalks, let alone squander taxpayer money at National Institutes. I believe they are going to regret putting that green line on that graph. It deserves at least as much scorn as the straight handle of the hockey stick.
More expensive garbage from the size zero models prowling the Climate Catwalk.
I am a bit confused: from where it comes all that water? I remember when I was young, fifty years ago (half century), in Genoa (Genova-Italy), the water, at the harbor, was high as it is now. Same in Venice, where I go often, by personal experience and evidences looking at the basement of the buildings I know. I have a collection of old (XVI to XVIII Century) prints of Genoa, and I can recognize there, some of the buildings still in front of the harbor now. Looking at the boat in front of that building, I can guess that the water was one or two meter higher than today.
Now: Due to the Archimedes law, (that excludes Artic/wet Antartic Ice), I am not able to figure out from where 5 meter of additional water comes.
Furthermore, why do not guess that the water will be 2 meter low, making a forecast based on old prints of XVI Century?
I understand I miss something about the reason why “the water MUST grow”, but, sorry, I am old and I prefer to use my memory and old artifacts instead of satellites.
Thank you (sorry for my English, I am Italian, do not blame me!).
Sergio
Lennin, knew it, Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, Orwell knew it also in 1984! Control the language, you control the debate, control the debate you control the people!!! Dr James Hanson knows it also, control the past, you control the future (1984)! Greenhouse gas “pollution” has entered the vocabulary for the current “good”, until we change the language & take back control! Don’t let them do it, reclaim the dabte, reclaim our human “rights” to expore, discover, invent & design & finally make!!! Don’t let them tell us what we must do, don’t let them take control, it’s what lights their fire, so let us poor some CO2 & H2O on their flames!
“The red line can be considered to represent business as usual where greenhouse gas emission are increasing over time”. Then again it can “not” be considered to represent……..etc! Then again they don’t say it “must” be or “has” to be. BTW, if it represents something, it isn’t real, it’s a simulation, not of the treal world! Control that language people before they contro you.
On another note peeps, have any of you looked at UN Agenda 21 & seen what they have planned for the good ‘ol USA? Your finished, kaput, done for! They hate you guys, they’re obsessed with your systematic, piecemeal dismantling & disctruction!!! All because you like one nation under God, liberty & justice for all, & enshrine the free-enterprize capitalist system in your constitution!!! (Sure in ain’t perfect but it works). How weird is that? What kind of people hang posters on their bedroom walls of cold-blooded ruthless mass-murderers (why do they always come from upper/ middle-class well-educated & wealthy backgrounds) as iconic heroes for freedom & democracy for the “people”? Lenin & Che Gavara to name two, if you hung a picture of Adolf Hitler or any top Nazi on your wall they would nail you immediately & quite rightly, but not the former two ignobles!!! That’s disturbing IMHO! Oh well off for a well earned lie down in a darkened room ;-))
For someone ill-equipped to critique the science, Willis, you seem to do fairly well at it.
Just Sayin.
Paywalled; I like it!
You have to pay to get the full scoop on what’s gonna’ happen 500 years out.
Nice racket.I got to get some of that action.