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.
themcnamarareport says:
June 24, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Hey, if you can look at Figure 2 and believe that it is possible, or if you think a complicated analysis is required to establish that there is no way that their claimed sea level rise will be reached, you need more help than I could possibly give you.
w.
Tom Curtis says:
June 24, 2012 at 11:05 pm
To keep you honest, he did report “up to a foot”, as you say he quoted a headline. I had no problem understanding that and what he meant by what “a” one foot projection would look like.
Your interpretation of “the (singular)” projection is an incorrect paraphrasing of what Willis did write. A correct paraphrase is that he portrayed *a* projection of the NAS. “Singular” is correct though, in that any value between and including the lower and upper bound are projections. If SL rises a foot the NAS would indeed take credit for a correct prediction. No one could place blame on the NAS if a one foot rise occured within the time limits.
Looks like you dislike only the upper bound being shown, and are picking nits to discredit Willis for that. Had Willis said “What does the NAS upper bound projection of a one foot rise…”, you would still have complained, though it would not have changed the argument.
As to your “follow up point”, sea level rise is most definitely is a very important element in coastal planning, since it has a direct relationship to “how frequently their lives and property will be threatened by high sea levels”. That Willis did not include every detail of the report does not mean he dishonestly ignored it. You’ve gone over the top on this one. I’d expect that if you talked very long and were under no restraint, you’d actually start frothing at the mouth and spitting four letter words.
Tom Curtis says:
June 24, 2012 at 11:05 pm
As I said above, for most kinds of studies your claim would be true. However, for a risk analysis it is not true in the slightest. Nobody cares how low a flood might be, only how high a flood might be. As you say, “that is not hard to understand”.
More to the point, Tom, you have provided nothing to suggest that their upper bound is reasonable, rational, or stands even the slightest chance of occurring.
Instead, you want to distract people’s attention from the ridiculous nature of the high estimate by busting me for not pointing out that the lower bound is reasonable and could certainly occur … which is true, but so what? So what if the lower bound of their risk estimate is reasonable? I never said it wasn’t, I just ignored it because it makes no difference at all.
Here’s an example. If you go to get an estimate for fixing your car and the mechanic says “it will cost you between ten dollars and ten thousand dollars to fix your gearshift lever”, are you going to congratulate him on the reasonable size of his low estimate, or are you going to be aghast and concerned about and focus on the size of the high estimate and ignore the low end estimate entirely?
Yeah, that’s what I thought …
As the newspaper story shows, what is important to people in a risk analysis is the high estimate, and reasonably so .. so that is what I discussed. I’m sorry you don’t like that, Tom, but what you like makes little difference in the real world. In the real world, the high estimate in some form (exceedance rates, 95% CI, or whatever you might choose) is what people need to use and must use for planning purposes, which is why the newspapers, the coastal communities, and I all focus on that. The low estimate is useless for planning purposes.
If you want to spend your time trying to convince folks that the low estimate is crucial and vital for planning purposes and simply must be discussed, go write a blog post about it and see how it flies. You don’t seem to be getting any traction here, so I’d suggest you try someplace else where the people are used to believing improbable things, maybe RealClimate or some place like that.
w.
PS-As a side note, the term would be “hard of understanding”, a parallel to “hard of hearing”, and not “hard at understanding” or “hard at hearing”. For example, by and large the readership here are not hard of understanding, because in general they work hard at understanding.
I just read an article at The Register:
Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/
“This is good news indeed, as some had thought that huge amounts of ice were melting from the region, which might mean accelerated rates of sea level rise in future. ”
Did this NAS report take this information into consideration? /rhetorical question
As if San Francisco hasn’t enough to worry about with erosion, silting up of the shipping route through the Golden Gate and earthquakes.
This NAS paper is what they’ve been waiting for:
“Governor’s Executive Order S-13-08, which was issued on November 14, 2008, included the following: I direct that, prior to release of the final Sea Level Rise Assessment Report from the NAS [National Academy of Sciences], all state agencies within my administration that are planning construction projects in areas vulnerable to future sea level rise shall, for the purposes of planning, consider a range of sea level rise scenarios for the years 2050 and 2100 in order to assess project vulnerability and, to the extent feasible, reduce expected risks and increase resiliency to sea level rise.”
http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20100911/14.%20SLR/1011_COPC_SLR_Interim_Guidance.pdf
I wonder who is set to benefit from the many millions to be spent on defence against the sea level bogeyman.
Richard Feynman wasn’t too impressed with the NAS and other elitist groups:
“I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and I had ultimately to resign because here was another organisation most of whose time was spent in choosing who would be illustrious enough to join……. Including such questions as we physicists have to stick together because there’s a very good chemist trying to get in and we haven’t got enough room for so and so. What’s the matter? The whole thing was rotten.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j9TmDi0vNY&feature=related
Willis Eschenbach says: June 24, 2012 at 12:56 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.”
You already did read fiction in the form of a headline in a newspaper that says : “In 20 years, sea level off state to rise up to 1 foot”.
Mr. Eschenbach thinks it’s fiction that continued increase in CO2 will cause the planet to warm and therefore the sea levels to rise. It’s all fiction, isn’t it?
Robbie says:
June 25, 2012 at 9:59 am
Please follow the story, Robbie. This article is not about CO2, increasing or otherwise. It’s not about the planet warming.
It’s about sea level. I think it is a huge fiction that the sea level will rise as is claimed by the NAS. If you restrict yourself to what we’re actually talking about, you can be part of the conversation rather than being just some random anonymous internet popup spouting off-the-wall ideas that have nothing to do with the topic of the post.
w.
A rise like that would be a real boon to navigation, if only it were true. But in reality, and as depicted by the Ft. Point gauge, the level is either not changing or even slightly lowering. I spent some time at some locations I’ve know since child hood (40+ years) and would have to say I think sea level is lowering, based on some subtle items like algae lines and beach profiles. People I know involved in dredging also agree with this assessment. That’s sort of sad since it means we will lose some ports due to the cost of dredging.
Willis,
The quality of the trolls on this thread seems much lower than usual. I hope that is no reflection of the trolling networks’ view of the impact of the article. I personally liked it.
Is there currently a shortage of quality trolls? At least they are worth feeding when available.
Garymount, the article in the Telegraph is a misrepresentation of the Journal article, in that it claims there where no prior empirical studies in the area (which is false), and that the article shows no ice melt in the Antarctic whereas it explicitly deals with just one ice shelf in the East Antarctic. The journal paper explicitly states that:
“Melt rates below the FIS may thus be consistent with steady state-mass balance estimates based on remote sensing [Rignot et al., 2008], indicating that the ice shelves along the coast of Dronning Maud Land are currently not subject to rapid mass loss.”
And yes, Rignot et al 2008 show minimal mass loss in that area, just as if found by Hatterman et al, 2012; and Rignot et al 2008 was used by the committee, and indeed Rignot consulted as well.
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl1212/2012GL051012/2012GL051012.pdf
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n2/abs/ngeo102.html
Wouldn’t landfill tend to settle?
Love the quote from wik, especially about Treasure Island:
San Francisco’s shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunneling through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.[60]
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
“Sea rise faster on East Coast than rest of globe”
http://news.yahoo.com/sea-rise-faster-east-coast-rest-globe-172002416.html
Tom Curtis says:
June 24, 2012 at 11:05 pm
—————————————————————
Tom, your entire complaint amounts to someone debunking a weathermean who says tomorrow the high will be from 20 F to 100 F. Any rational person would say the weatherman is a buffoon, who has no idea what tomorrow’s weather will be. Likewise, any rational person would say the NAS sea level rise projection is equivalant to saying, we do not know what the SL will do. Given the real observations of SL rise slowing, it is rational to discount their disater concerns, and only a fool would act on what aint happening.
How to make Money in Climate Science
1. find a major unanswered question.
3. question top scientists to see what they will accept as an answer
3. check pick data and methods to arrive at that answer
4. re-label this technique “training” – it makes it sound intelligent.
5. publish the result.
The results will seem correct to fellow scientists, especially those at the top, so they wont bother to check the math. Everyone will be impressed you have answered the hard question. More so because you will have proven their best guess correct. You will advance in your career in science. Fame and fortune will follow.
Willis Eschenbach says: June 25, 2012 at 10:22
“Please follow the story, Robbie. This article is not about CO2, increasing or otherwise. It’s not about the planet warming.
It’s about sea level. I think it is a huge fiction that the sea level will rise as is claimed by the NAS. If you restrict yourself to what we’re actually talking about, you can be part of the conversation rather than being just some random anonymous internet popup spouting off-the-wall ideas that have nothing to do with the topic of the post.”
It has everything to do with the topic of the post and no I am not doing these political wordgames with anybody here or anywhere.
What does it take for the sea level to rise? A cooling or a warming climate?
From the NAS site: “A warming climate causes sea level to rise primarily by warming the oceans — which causes the water to expand — and melting land ice, which transfers water to the ocean.”
You can also read it on page 1 and 2 in the report itself and on page 57 CO2 is even mentioned as a factor for the denudation of icesheets and thus contributing to sea level rise and a warming planet.
If you look at the actual sea level rise in 1980 for example it suddenly rose almost 15 cm above the 33 yr Gaussian av.
You project that 30 cm onto the 33 year Gaussian Average as an average value and that’s wrong and misleading. A warmer ocean will produce higher peaks in the future (just like in 1980) and in that case a 30 cm sudden rise for a year or two is not really that unrealistic.
Step away from the paper and nobody gets hurt Willis. As for your daughter, there is nothing that can be done. My wife and I childproofed our house but our daughters still get in.
Robbie says:
June 26, 2012 at 5:58 am
Thanks, Robbie. If that is the case, and we know that the CO2 has been rising rapidly since 1950 and the temperatures rising 1975-1998 … then where is your claimed corresponding increase in the rate of sea level rise? Surely, if it existed we would see it in the San Francisco record, but we don’t. In fact, we don’t see the long-predicted and greatly feared acceleration in the sea level rise in any tidal records.
Now, you are free to believe that the sea level will suddenly go vertical from CO2 or the dreaded Thermageddon … me, I take the historical record as my guide.
Here’s my challenge to you, Robbie. Temperatures rose rapidly from ~ 1910-1945, fell from 1945-1975 and rose again equally rapidly from 1975-1998 … perhaps you can point out to the assembled masses the corresponding rises and falls you claim we should find in the San Francisco sea level record? Because gosh, somehow it seems that despite your fervent belief, the sea level never got your memo about how it was supposed to go up and down with the changing air temperature …
w.
Here’s another risk assessment that might cost $200 million. Of course this will be wasted if the sea level goes up 5 metres.
http://www.richmondreview.com/news/140012603.html
Willis Eschenbach says: June 26, 2012 at 10:26 am
Sigh! And again Mr. Eschenbach makes a mistake.
You cannot compare global temperature trends with just one local sea level trend.
How about:
Temperatures rose rapidly from ~ 1910-1945, fell from 1945-1975 and rose again equally rapidly from 1975-1998 … perhaps you can point out to the assembled masses the corresponding rises and falls you claim we should find in the GLOBAL sea level record?
Apologies for an exact copy of your quotation with only one word changed (‘San Francisco’ becoming ‘GLOBAL’).
You won’t find it in the Global sea level record, because that record is not a global one, but a combined one of different geologically stable tide gauges with just one trend: Going up. There were no ARGO buoys or satellites in your mentioned time periods. Satellite altimetry, TOPEX/Poseidon, started in 1992.
If you would read my comments properly you would also notice that I gave you a link to Huntington Beach showing no real trend at all.
Read the report and you will find out that the rise will be between 4-30 cm for San Francisco and not just 30 cm, but it could peak at 30 cm. Just as it peaked almost 15 cm above average in 1980. Is it really that difficult for you to grasp?
Robbie says:
June 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
“geologically stable tide gauges”
Are fiction.
Robbie says:
June 26, 2012 at 11:51 am
Quoted from your last comment:
“Temperatures rose rapidly from ~ 1910-1945, fell from 1945-1975 and rose again equally rapidly from 1975-1998 … perhaps you can point out to the assembled masses the corresponding rises and falls you claim we should find in the GLOBAL sea level record?”
=================
Does this suggest that there is a natural 30 year (+-) oscillation in the temperature and it has no effect on rising sea levels? I would perhaps consider that there is a difference between one thing rising (sea level) and another thing lowering (land mass) unless of course the coin has two tales.
Great observation on the natural 30/60 (+-) year temp cycles and the fact that it has little to do with any perceived long term change in sea level. I’m glad I revisited this thread. Thank you.
Oh silly me, – I do now, at long last realize why sea levels are steadily rising. It has absolutely nothing to do with any assumed undulations in the sea-floor. – Nor has it got anything to do with
sediments building up down there on the bottom.
I can see it clearly now. It has got everything to do with us humans and the top of the waves. —-
Once upon a time before we had any sea-level data to speak of, there was only a few wooden ships crossing the “Seven Seas” – And look what has happened. – Trade has increased beyond anybody’s wildest imagination. Ships have got more plentiful and much bigger than they used to be. Iron and steel ships have replaced the old and much lighter Wooden” ones, and that’s the reason.
So there you have it! – More, bigger and heavier ships = larger displacement and higher sea-levels.
Well now that I have solved that one – I’ll have a cup of tea.
Glenn says: June 26, 2012 at 1:22 pm
““geologically stable tide gauges”
Are fiction.”
These words are not mine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png
Read the summary.
Mr. Eschenbach:
You can also read on page 14 the following quotation: “Finally, future emissions of greenhouse
gasses and other factors that drive changes in the climate system depend on a collection of
human decisions at local, regional, national, and international levels, as well as potential but
unknown technological developments.”