Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A man who has a daughter is a pretty pathetic specimen, ruled by the vicissitudes of hormones and hairspray. So when my daughter told me this morning “Hey, Dad, I put the newspaper on your desk, you’re gonna like it a lot!”, I knew my blood pressure was in deep trouble.
When I finished my shower and got to my desk I saw that the very first story, above the fold, had the headline:
In 20 years, sea level off state to rise up to 1 foot
I figured that it was some rogue alarmist making the usual warnings of impending doom … but no, it was a report from the National Academy of Sciences.
Now, I’ve spent a good chunk of my life at sea, and living in California the sea level rise is of great interest to me, so I knew immediately that the report was unmitigated nonsense. To see why, first let me show you the actual sea level record from San Francisco:
Figure 1. 160 years of sea level observations in San Francisco, California. Source: PSMSL
San Francisco has one of the longest continuous sea level records in the US. As you can see, there’s nothing too remarkable about the record. It is worth noting, however, that over the last 160 years the sea level in San Francisco has gone up by about 8 inches (20 cm) … and there are 12 inches in a foot (30 cm). It is also worth noting that during the last couple of decades it has hardly risen at all.
So what does the National Academy of Sciences projection of a one foot rise by 2030 look like?
Well … it looks like this:
Figure 2. High end projection of the National Academy of Sciences for the 2030 sea level in San Francisco.
Now, people are always saying to me things like “Willis, why don’t you believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? After all, the National Academy of Sciences says it is real and about to happen.”
And indeed, there is a whole cottage industry these days dedicated to figuring out why the American public doesn’t believe what the climate scientists and people like the NAS folks are saying. Some people studying the question say it’s because the scientists aren’t getting the message across. Others say it’s because the public doesn’t understand science. Another group ascribes it to political affiliation. And there’s even a group that says it is a psychological pathology.
I hold a different view. I say that both I and a large sample of the American public doesn’t believe what the folks in the white lab coats at the National Academy of Science are saying because far too often it is a joke. Not only is it a joke, it’s a joke that doesn’t pass the laugh test. It is risible, unbelievable, way outside the boundaries of the historical record, beyond anything that common sense would say is possible, ludicrous, out of this world. I mean seriously, folks … is there anyone out there who actually believes that the sea level rise shown in Figure 2 will actually happen by 2030? Well, they believe it over at the National Academy of Sciences.
So the next time someone trots out the pathetic claim that catastrophic AGW must be real because the most prestigious and highly respected National Academy of Sciences says so … point them to this post.
The NAS press release, with a link to the actual paper, is here.
w.
PS—While this is a comedy, it is also a tragedy. It is a measure of how blinded and blinkered the climate science establishment has become. It is a tragedy because in an uncertain time, science should be our pole star, the one fixed thing in a spinning sky … but instead, it has become a joke, and that is a tragedy indeed.
Tad says:
June 24, 2012 at 9:09 am
Willis,
What does your daughter think will happen to sea level rise? Does she believe in CAGW?
—–
I suspect she’ll be spending many years enjoying the same beach her father has.
Science itself is indeed the chief casualty of the climate business. Few except the committed pay any attention to the Mandarins in the NAS and many societies who continue to beat the alarmist drum. They speak as ex cathedra as any Pope but lack either scientific or moral authority.
alex says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:58 pm
I not only read the press release, I read the relevant part of the paper. Let me point out the crucial line in your quotation above:
Since San Francisco, as well as nearly 90% of the California coast, is south of Cape Mendocino, for the overwhelming majority of the state the NAS is not predicting “FALLING sea-levels” as you claim. Why do you think my local newspaper had the headline it did? Maybe you should try reading what you are quoting before criticizing me …
w.
PS—No, the NAS doesn’t say that “EARTHQUAKES – not AGW! – the main cause for the possible sea level change in CA”. From the press release (emphasis mine):
and the paper itself says:
In other words they are saying that global warming will be the cause of their laughable prediction of 30 cm of rise by 2030 and 60 cm by 2050 south of Cape Mendocino, but that an earthquake could make it rise an additional meter or more.
To quote an acquaintance of mine … “May be read the press release” before making unsupportable claims …
David Cage says:
June 24, 2012 at 12:35 am
Folks, we have pretty good data out there in the world about the sea levels. To make it easy to find, I gave a link above to where it is located, at the Permanent Service for the Mean Sea Level.
So before uncapping your electronic pen and making yourself look foolish, RUN THE NUMBERS! The results from the San Francisco sea level measurements are in no way anomalous or significantly different from the other sea level measuring stations along the California coast. The long-term changes in sea level in the mouth of San Francisco bay doesn’t differ appreciably from other coastal stations. Here’s San Francisco compared to the two nearest open-ocean stations, for the period of overlap of the three records:
In other words, David, your claim is based solely on your imagination. Do your homework, folks, imagination is not a sufficient basis for scientific claims.
w.
PS—Plus, I’m a commercial fisherman and a sailor who has spent years at sea in these very waters … do you think I don’t know the tide, current, and sea level patterns here as well as you folks know the weather in your home towns?
David Archibald says:
June 24, 2012 at 1:48 am
Thanks, David. I love to see people take my words and run with them. I cast them on the electronic winds in the hope that people will plagiarize them.
w.
Mooloo says:
June 24, 2012 at 4:07 am
That one at least is feasible, the sea level has risen that fast or faster a number of times in the past.
w.
pokerguy says:
June 24, 2012 at 5:40 am
This from someone who ends a sentence with a comma??
Pokerguy, one thing I’ve learned in my years of writing for the web is that some folks will love my style and wordsmithing, and some folks will hate it. However, I get on the order of a million page views of my work per year, so I just ignore both ends of the spectrum.
w.
G. Karst says:
June 24, 2012 at 6:37 am
As I said, it’s a joke, and it is also a tragedy, so I can only agree with you.
w.
And it goes even further:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate1584.pdf
“Limiting warming to these levels with a probability larger than 50% produces 75–80 cm SLR above the year 2000 by 2100. This is 25 cm below a scenario with unmitigated emissions, but 15 cm above a hypothetical scenario reducing global emissions to zero by 2016.”
And what about the really longterm impacts beyond 2100? Read what the paper has to say about it.
theduke says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:09 am
Duke, my theory is that the only stupid questions are the ones you don’t ask …
In this case, no, the infilling would not change the local sea level. The mouth of the Bay at the Golden Gate is both wide and deep, so it would make no difference, the connection to the open ocean is too great.
w.
Mr. Clarke, being his usual CAGW apologist self, totally misses the fact that the issue is ALL ABOUT the headline…
I see. Interesting then that this piece is headlined NAS loses the plot. NOT Local newspaper loses the plot. which it ought to be, by that logic.
The newspaper headline was indeed inaccurate – hardly an remarkable occurance – but Willis’s animadversions are pretty much all directed at the NAS.
Robbie says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:21 am
Robbie, perhaps if you left the vitriol out of your missives you might be calm enough to actually make your point. It is totally unclear what it is in my analysis that you are objecting to.
w.
PS—Yes, I’m serious. Thanks for asking …
michael hart says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:50 am
True on all counts, and well said besides.
w.
Sort of refreshing, actually. Eyeballing the graph it looks to me as though the National Academy of Sciences is predicting an extremely steep rise within the next fifteen years. I like it when people predict stuff; that’s what it’s all about, since the science is settled, right?
Lets see how that turns out.
Phil Clarke says:
June 24, 2012 at 10:50 am
Gosh, Phil, you are right. I did miss that detail. So here is the revised graph:
Feel better now? Does that rise suddenly look feasible to you?
Do your homework before declaring victory, Phil, you’ll get a whole lot more traction if you do.
w.
Robbie says:
June 24, 2012 at 12:08 pm
No thanks, when I want to read fiction I prefer a good roman policier … they tend to contain many more facts than do predictions for the year 2100.
w.
Willis,
Last week this was in the news here in Seattle.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2018512589_danny24.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018496037_oysters22m.html
Willapa Bay oysters are risk from – take a deep breath – “ocean acidification”. I forward the following three questions to the reporter of the second article listed above.
1) Can the researchers studying the “acidification” issue distinguish between CO2 from deep ocean upwellings and that from the atmosphere?
2) Since increasing atmospheric CO2 is a global phenomenon, why is the pH change from it occurring faster in Washington than in Hawaii?
3) Is anyone taking regular pH measurements for Willapa Bay and if so, with what periodicity?
Personally, I think this article is much more interesting:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2018462034_apasthailandtoplessart.html?syndication=rss&prmid=obinsite
The Slicker Stick has arrived.
On page 9 of the paper is a graphic of the SLR hockey stick. I am calling it the Slicker Stick. Sea level rise is plotted from 1800 to 2000 which looks pretty linear. Then, just before the year 2000, they begin their projections named Empirical Projections and Model Projections. The model projections are much more conservative. I wonder how that happened.
The projections are the blade of the stick.
I would post the graph as a jpeg, but I don’t know how to get graphics into the comments.
Source; LATimes, Feb 12, 1970: “Earth’s Resources Are Great–but There IS an End to Them”
Some [political] excerpts from ‘Resources and Man:’
It is essential, therefore, that we carefully assess and continually reassess these limits, and that we take steps to assure that future generations, as well as people now living, will have the resources necessary for a satisfying life. These resources, moreover, must be so distributed as to exclude catastrophe as a factor in limiting population density.
Page 2
What can we in North America do to aid our own underprivileged, to meet the population increases that will yet precede real population control, and to help the rest of the world?
Page 3
Man’s own best interests plead for a more generous attitude toward the rest of nature and for less materialistic measures of well-being and success–especially in the developed countries. Such changes in attitude would make it easier to bring about dynamically balanced relations between the need for materials and the quantity available on the one hand and the quality of life and quantity of consumers on the other.
Page 3
If present world food production could be evenly rationed, there would be enough to satisfy both energy (calories) and protein requirements for everyone–although with drastic reductions for the now affluent.
Page 4
To summarize this study, Chapters 1 and 2 of our book post the problem: since resources are finite, then as population increases, the ratio of resources to man must eventually fall to an unacceptable level. This is the crux of the Malthusian dilemma, often evaded but never invalidated. Chapter 3 considers the possibility of a final evasion of this dilemma by population control.
Page 8
The inescapable central conclusion is that both population control and better resource management are mandatory and should be effected with as little delay as possible.
Page 8
We recommend below, therefore, some of the steps that should be taken by the United States to enhance the prospects of an ample world for all.
Page 9
This is clearly a job for the Department of Agriculture with the collaboration of the State Department; but continuation of the good works of the Rockefeller Foundation should be encouraged.
Page 17
The Slicker Stick has arrived.
On page nine of the paper is a nice graphic plotting sea level rise from 1800 to 2000. Around 2000, the projections begin.Ttwo types of projections are shown, Empirical Projections and Model Projections. The model projections are much more conservative. How did that happen?
The projections form the blade of the hockey stick, and the data before 2000 forms the shaft. I am naming this SLR hockey stick the Slicker Stick.
I would post a jpeg of the graph, but don’t know how to get graphics into the comments.
Thanks for this post. I went over to the NAS website to read it there and saw the slants in the text and omitted period of flatness. That helps me a lot to see NAS as the NPR of science–always operating with a bias no matter what the facts are saying and posting opinions for the sake of community representation and expression of organizational bias. This post helps me with the context of NAS and another biased public orgs, always after more funding and without regard to the damage done to the truth in their wake. It is the golden age of group think and biased manipulation of public resources.
The report is a typical climate ‘hit piece” designed to give plenty of CYA when the low end comes out true, while generating fodder for frightening headlines with the crazy high end numbers. 4 cm to 20 cm by 2030? It is a bad joke, and pure idiocy. More to the point, the really frightening numbers (2050, and especially 2100) remain safely outside the time range where any of the authors will suffer consequences for their crazy ‘predictions’.
Since according to the NAS, 85% of their funding comes from Congress, this might be a good time to help (a tiny bit!) close the Federal budget deficit: stop funding all climate related work at NAS. Such a simple process (we just will not pay for climate related funding at NAS) that immediately solves the problem of having fools like Ralph Cicerone in control of NAS.
Gosh, Phil, you are right. I did miss that detail. So here is the revised graph:
Not really, the caption still refers to ‘one foot’. And the land around San Francisco is descending by about 1mm / year,or 3 cm over the time interval which should also surely be noted, and you’ve only plotted the high end of the 4-30cm range, not the range itself, hardly scientific. The maximum figure just means that they rule out a rise above that value, not that they predict that 30cm will definitely occur …..
OK, I admit it. I’m a extreme prescriptivist (grammar Nazi), but your sentence, “I say that both I and a large sample of the American public doesn’t believe what the folks in the white lab coats at the National Academy of Science are saying because far too often it is a joke,” is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. It should read, ” I say that both I and a large sample of the American public do not (or don’t) believe….” A pleural subject cries for a pleural verb.
Other than that, an excellent post.
Cordially,
Michael Daly
If the sea level rose by, oh, say, 50 feet, flooding Seattle, SF, LA, SD, Miyami, DC, and NY, maybe Portland… i.e. wiping out the USA’s cultural waste-lands, what’s the down-side?