Told ya so. In I Feel a FAIL Coming On – Will Tuvalu Survive ‘Super moon’? Andi Cockroft pointed out that there was the usual media disaster hype, and the reality of what perigee moons actually do to affect tides, which isn’t much.
A “super-moon” will be a novelty for New Zealanders on Sunday, but for the 12,000 people of Tuvalu it is a foreboding practice for a future where rising seas make their homeland uninhabitable.
On Monday and Tuesday super-moon king tides will leave much of the capital atoll of Funafuti virtually below sea-level.
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/6858916/Super-moon-bad-news-for-Tuvalu
But the sea level/supermoon tide reality reported today sure didn’t match the hype earlier this week. In fact, it was a total predictive failure.
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10804057
FAIL with a cherry on it. .3 meter lower than tides in the spring that they weren’t hyping.
For why Tuvalu won’t succumb to sea level rise, read this: Floating Islands
And their own government doesn’t even believe the sea level alarm, because they are building new airports and resorts: Tuvalu and many other South Pacific Islands are not sinking, claims they are due to global warming driven sea level rise are opportunistic.
Follow the money. h/t to WUWT commenter “inversesquare“.
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Surely the term should be “gravitational squeeze” of the moon as the high tide on the far side of the Earth would be a “push” as opposed to the “pull” on the side nearest to the moon.
I intended to add that tide predictions are based on tidal mechanics. The final outcome depends on other factors also; the biggest effect is atmospheric pressure. A 1 millibar change results in approximately 1 cm change in sea level; lower pressure, higher sea level. Wind also has an effect, so a deep depression with winds in an unfavourable direction could have resulted in a tide which exceeded the prediction by at as much as 10-20 cm, possibly even more if a strong cyclone was passing. Add in surface temperature which can expand or contract the surface layer to further complicate matters, and wipe the smug grin off some faces.
No need for waders to check my letterbox today for 2 reasons. No abnormally high tide and it was a public holiday so no mail delieveries.
Just how many failures do we have to endure before they finally own up and tell us they were simply trying to pull the wool over our eyes? Fail, fail and fail again.
People only remember the initial hype: (“Jones found with underage girls”) and never the retraction (“Sorry, Jones not found with underage girls”) and as the media is overwhelmingly Left/Green oriented, you rarely see any sort of retraction at all.
The hype, or lie, whatever you want to call it, has done its work. Ask Alinsky.
It wasn’t too long ago that Oracles who were wrong suffered severe consequences. Especially if their predictions cost the King some embarrassment or treasure. Perhaps that risk should be re-instituted.
Yet STILL the BBC’s Richard Black is reporting on an upcoming climate conference which of course will discuss, amongst all the other scare stories, RISING SEA LEVELS….
Someone has to remove the moon alltogeteher to save us all from future peril scenarios.
It will also stop the earth from wobbling and werewolves and …
/also sarc
@ur momisugly Dennis Cox and @ur momisuglyNeil Jones – As I pointed out on the original thread. The Moon is at perigee once every 27.5 days and a full moon perigee occurs every 411 days. The effect these common, well known events have on tides on Earth is trivial.
Furthermore, it follows that several other of the 13 0r 14 full moons occurring during that 411 day period will be at a time when the moon is very close to perigee. Usually about 3 or 4 of them. So this “14% bigger than any other this year” is arrant nonsense. BTW the accepted difference in apparent size between the full moon at perigee and the full moon at apogee is 11.5%.
I can guess how they concocted the 14% figure but can’t figure out WHY.
“Total predictive failure”.
Could be the motto of the whole eco/green/save-the-XXXes movement(s). Starting with Rachel Carson (if not Parson Malthus). Nothing but doom ‘n’ gloom forecasts, unrelentingly.
And not a SINGLE hit in their favor.
(At least by now we don’t have to wait x decades to that to become obvious. Just 2 days.)
Like children telling tall tales about monsters under the bed to get attention! It’s a shame that big media organizations encourage this kind of childish scaremongering. There seem to be few adults in their audiences.
You don’t have to travel to balmy Polynesia to find sea level alarmists. The Washington State Department of Ecology solicits from the public photographs of water levels at the highest tides to be used, they say, in preparation for the impacts of climate change:
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/ipa_hightide_map.htm
The department certainly has all the data to necessary to support the analysis they think they need to do, but such an exercise is a good excuse for greenie beach excursions and it yields images useful in warmist propaganda. Doubtless, flocks of high school students herded by concerned educators descend on the beaches on the appropriate dates.
I do not see anything wrong with what Dennis Cox had to say, looking at this…
http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/motion/tides1.htm
Thanks Ed Mertin,
I should part out that I didn’t make that statement about the highest tides of the year being on the darkest nights based on reading any specific blog, or paper. But simply from the personal perspective of one who lived with the tides for years in a little fishing town on the Willapa Bay in southwestern Washington.
A common local saying there is “When the tide goes out, the table’s set.” The Willapa Bay is Large, and shallow. And those who want to dig for clams, or work their Oyster beds, who don’t pay attention to the tides can run aground, and get stranded for long hours at a time. And since the weather can quickly turn choppy and dangerous while you are stuck on a sand bar out in the middle of the bay, tidal mistakes can get you killed.
I find it telling that none of the media reports included the fact that the perigree moon has occured at least once a year, every year. No, they wanted to pump this up as something unique and potentially disastrous to sow fear and try and link any disasters with AGW. This was never anything more than fear-mongering and propaganda.
“””””
me to re-examine why there are tides at all Dennis.
MostlyHarmless says:
May 7, 2012 at 12:51 am
George E. Smith says:
May 6, 2012 at 10:48 pm
“No way Jose, the new moon and full moon tides are the same on average. There are two tidaal bulges; one on each side of the earth, and it diesn’t matter which side the sun and moon are on, given that you have a certain sun distance and a certain moon distance for the two cases of full moon and new moon.”
Not well thought out, neither was Dennis’ comment. The Earth has a natural oceanic bulge centred on the equator, The Moon and Sun tidal bulges are superimposed on this, but at different angles to the plane of the equator. “””””
Actually quite thoroughly thought out; but reduced to a simple geometry problem of a symmetrical earth, to simply adress the issue of whether the side the moon is on matters. (it doesn’t) Your more elaborate real earth case seems to have forgotten that the earth is not even symmetrical in shape, so the reality is even more complicated than you suggest; not to mention that the non uniform arrangement of the land masses messes it up even more.
Reduce it to the simplest geometrical symmetry, and then explain why it matters which side the moon is on, when aligned.
George E. Smith says:
It matters because when the moon is at perigee and at the same time is aligned between the sun, and the Earth, the gravitational pull that creates the tides is maximized. You can get all anal about demanding a better, more scientific explanation than that if you like. It’s not clear what your definition of "well thought out" is. But when you’ve lived a fisherman’s lifestyle that’s been intimately connected with the rising and falling of the tides for a few years, (and a couple of thousand tides) the simple subjective observation that the highest tides happen on the darkest nights becomes an observation based on years of direct experience.
This ‘super moon’ aligns very close to the ecliptic; there’s an annular solar eclipse at the next new moon. That has to add a little to the tide height compared to the typical full moon perigee.
Also, due to the rotation of the Earth the tidal bulge is east of the point where the moon is directly overhead. To the observer the bulge occurs after the moon has crossed the meridian.
Tuvalu is still there.
In looking into tides I came across abit of info that I once knew but had forgotten. Just as there are tidesw in the ocean, there are tides in the atmosphere. As the air is pulled toward the Moon (or the Sun) they can actually cause a “breeze” of about 0.05 mph. So, I think all these stories about the “Super Moon” submerging Tulavu were caused by the “Super Moon” itself. It must have pulled the oxygen out of all those newsrooms.
I’m Irish, born in July under the moon, and DEFINITELY got swept away Saturday night. What a fun event!
When the sun and moon are directly across the earth from each other to make the king tides in the ocean they also combine the tidal effects in the atmosphere, as the declinational angle at culmination shifts through the 18.6 year Mn cycle, there results in a gradual shift in the time of year that the moon and sun are both closest to the ecliptic plane at the same time. The atmospheric tidal effect of this both on the ecliptic plane produces the blocking highs that drift through the seasons due to the progression of declinational angle extent and the procession of the lunar nodes on a ~9 year pattern. If you look at the past occurrence of these patterns and use them as an analog for forecasting the pattern of blocking highs, past and present you will find the Russian heat waves and the Pakistani floods are predictable to with in a couple days.
From looking at the entire pattern you could forecast the occurrence of almost all blocking highs (which the standard numerical models cannot do yet, as the info is not included in the model, WUWT?
“”””” Dennis Cox says:
May 7, 2012 at 1:32 pm
George E. Smith says:
“Reduce it to the simplest geometrical symmetry, and then explain why it matters which side the moon is on, when aligned.”
It matters because when the moon is at perigee and at the same time is aligned between the sun, and the Earth, the gravitational pull that creates the tides is maximized. You can get all anal about demanding a better, more scientific explanation than that if you like. It’s not clear what your definition of “well thought out” is. But when you’ve lived a fisherman’s lifestyle that’s been intimately connected with the rising and falling of the tides for a few years, (and a couple of thousand tides) the simple subjective observation that the highest tides happen on the darkest nights becomes an observation based on years of direct experience. “””””
Well Dennis, being as you are an experienced fisherman; I’m going to bow to your assertion that the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun is maximised when the sun and the moon are on the same side of the earth, and since the moon is closer to the earth than the sun is, that would put the moon between the earth and the sun, so they are both pulling on the oceans in concert.
For most locations on planet earth, that would also make it daylight rather than the darkest of nights.
So if your fishing lifestyle observations are correct, that would imply that on the darkest of nights, with the sun and the moon both being on the opposite side of the earth, then they both must be PUSHING the oceean away under your boat rather than PULLING on the ocean.
Sorry Dennis, you can’t have both the sun and the moon pulling in concert on the ocean closest to them, and have it be the darkest of nights; it has to be daylight; maybe its the brightest of days, with both the sun and the moon illuminating the earth over that maxi tide.
George, please click onto the link that I provided.
The key to tides is the varying strength of the Moon’s gravitational pull on different parts of the globe. The Moon pulls most on the water nearest to it,creating a high tide bulge of water. On the opposite side of the planet,about 7,926 miles (1,2760 km) away,the Moon’s pull is much weaker and the water is left to form another high tide bulge. Low tides are found halfway between the highs. The rotating Earth carries us through these regions of high and low water.
When the Moon,Earth,and Sun fall in a straight line, which we call syzygy (siz-eh-gee),we notice the greatest difference between high and low tide water levels. These spring tides occur twice each month,during the full and new Moon. If the Moon is at perigee,the closest it approaches Earth in its orbit, the tides are especially high and low.
Mr Smith there are two high tides, and two low tides every day.
“””””
Ed Mertin says:
May 7, 2012 at 11:08 pm
George, please click onto the link that I provided.
The key to tides is the varying strength of the Moon’s gravitational pull on different parts of the globe. The Moon pulls most on the water nearest to it,creating a high tide bulge of water. On the opposite side of the planet,about 7,926 miles (1,2760 km) away,the Moon’s pull is much weaker and the water is left to form another high tide bulge. Low tides are found halfway between the highs. The rotating Earth carries us through these regions of high and low water.
When the Moon,Earth,and Sun fall in a straight line, which we call syzygy (siz-eh-gee),we notice the greatest difference between high and low tide water levels. These spring tides occur twice each month,during the full and new Moon. If the Moon is at perigee,the closest it approaches Earth in its orbit, the tides are especially high and low.
Dennis Cox says:
May 8, 2012 at 5:58 am
Mr Smith there are two high tides, and two low tides every day. “””””
To Ed and Dennis,
If you have been working and earning a living for more than 52 continuous years as a working Physicist; then you probably know much more about Physics, and the Physics of Orbital Mechanics, and of Tides, than I do.
If you look back over this thread, you will see that it was Dennis who said that the sun and the moon have to be ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE EARTH for the highest tides; thereby indicating that the tidal bulge on THE OPPOSITE SIDE of the earth, which is in the DARKEST NIGHT condition is somehow a bigger bulge, than the one on THE SAME SIDE of the earth as the sun and moon, which is in the BRIGHTEST DAYLIGHT condition.
So he’s the one claiming from his fishing experience that the two tidal bulges are different heights, and the one on the dark side is somehow the highest.
I SIMPLIFIED the problem to a clean symmetrical geometry of a uniform oblate spheroidal earth, and eliminated the complexities of the continental locations and all the other factors that do in fact make th complete tidal picture more complex, so that it was a simple (idealized) three body orbital mechanics problem , and I don’t know how many times I actually did the math for students that shows that first order, the two bulges are the same on both sides of the earth, and it is irrelevent which side the sun or the moon is on, they each (alone) would produce two equal tidal bulges on opposite sides of the earth, so it only matters that sun earth and moon be colinear to get the highest tide (ON BOTH SIDES OF THE EARTH SIMULTANEOUSLY).
So SEM works equally as well as SME, or EMS, or MES to produce the highest tides.
Two of those cases are daylight tides, and two are nightime tides, and daytime is not the darkest night. I suppose a total eclipse of the sun, would produce the darkest night on the opposite side, depending on planetary and stellar configurations; perhaps seen in North Korea.
But as I said; maybe you chaps have been at it longer than I.