There’s a paper (Shepherd et al) on ice loss and sea level rise that has been making the rounds in media (such as this article in Science Recorder, claiming it validates global warming) that is causing some stir, mainly because it has a powerfully written press release combined with a volume of researchers (47 scientists), plus additional never before used together satellite data, because more data and more scientists is always better, right?
Here’s the press release where they claim to have “clear evidence”. A deconstruction follows using NASA JPL’s own internal program documents showing that the “certainty” claimed in Shepherd et al really falls apart for lack of a stable reference for the data.
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From the University of Leeds
Clearest evidence yet of polar ice losses
International satellite experts release definitive record of ice sheet changes
An international team of satellite experts has produced the most accurate assessment of ice losses from Antarctica and Greenland to date, ending 20-years of uncertainty.
In a landmark study, published on 30 November in the journal Science, the researchers show that melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has contributed 11.1 millimetres to global sea levels since 1992. This amounts to one fifth of all sea level rise over the survey period.
About two thirds of the ice loss was from Greenland, and the remainder was from Antarctica.
Although the ice sheet losses fall within the range reported by the IPCC in 2007, the spread of the IPCC estimate was so broad that it was not clear whether
Antarctica was growing or shrinking. The new estimates are a vast improvement (more than twice as accurate) thanks to the inclusion of more satellite data, and confirm that both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice.
The study also shows that the combined rate of ice sheet melting has increased over time and, altogether, Greenland and Antarctica are now losing more than three times as much ice (equivalent to 0.95 mm of sea level rise per year) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.27 mm of sea level rise per year). The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) is a collaboration between 47 researchers from 26 laboratories, and was supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Led by Professor Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds and Dr Erik Ivins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the study combines observations from 10 different satellite missions to develop the first consistent measurement of polar ice sheet changes.
The researchers were able to reconcile the differences between dozens of earlier ice sheet studies through careful use of matching time periods and survey areas, and by combining measurements collected by different types of satellites.
Professor Shepherd, who coordinated the study, said: “The success of this venture is due to the cooperation of the international scientific community, and due to the provision of precise satellite sensors by our space agencies. Without these efforts, we would not be in a position to tell people with confidence how the
Earth’s ice sheets have changed, and to end the uncertainty that has existed for many years.” The study also found differences in the pace of change at each pole.
Dr Ivins, who also coordinated the project, said: “The rate of ice loss from Greenland has increased almost five-fold since the mid-1990s. In contrast, while the regional changes in Antarctic ice over time are sometimes quite striking, the overall balance has remained fairly constant – at least within the certainty of the satellite measurements we have to hand.”
Commenting on the findings, Professor Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State University who was not involved in the study, said: “This project is a spectacular achievement. The data will support essential testing of predictive models, and will lead to a better understanding of how sea-level change may depend on the human decisions that influence global temperatures.”
‘A reconciled estimate of ice sheet mass balance’ by Prof Shepherd et al is published in Science on 30 November 2012, DOI: 10.1126/science.1228102.
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All well and good, and it looks like a home run for Professor Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds and Dr Erik Ivins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the team of 45 others if you just read the press release. But, let’s look a bit deeper, the paper abstract reads:
A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance
Abstract
We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth’s polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods—especially in Greenland and West Antarctica—and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by –142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, –65 ± 26, and –20 ± 14 gigatonnes year−1, respectively. Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter year−1 to the rate of global sea-level rise.
Note the key words here “satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets” along with the second named author “Dr Ivins, who also coordinated the project…at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory”
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Hold that thought about the key words, and now read this, excerpted from our previous report: Finally: JPL intends to get a GRASP on accurate sea level and ice measurements
New proposal from NASA JPL admits to “spurious” errors in current satellite based sea level and ice altimetry, calls for new space platform to fix the problem.
This recent internal PowerPoint presentation (obtained from an insider) from NASA JPL touts the new GRASP (Geodetic Reference Antenna in Space) satellite project. I’d say it is more than a bit of a bombshell because the whole purpose of this new mission is to “fix” other mission data that apparently never had a stable enough reference for the measurements being made. This promises to rewrite what we know about sea level rise and acceleration, ice extent and ice volume loss measured from space.
What is most interesting, is the admissions of the current state of space based sea level altimetry in the science goals page of the presentation, as shown in the “Key science goals” slide:
The difference between tide gauge data and space based data is over 100% in the left graph, 1.5 mm/yr versus 3.2mm/yr. Of course those who claim that sea level rise is accelerating accept this data without question, but obviously one of the two data sets (or possibly both) is not representative of reality, and JPL’s GRASP team aims to fix this problem they have identified:
TRF errors readily manifest as spurious sea level rise accelerations
That’s a bucket of cold water reality into the face of the current view of sea level rise. It puts this well-known and often cited graph on Sea Level Rise from the University of Colorado (and the rate of 3.1 mm/yr) into question:
What’s a TRF error? That stands for Terrestrial Reference Frame, which is basically saying that errors in determining the benchmark are messing up the survey. In land based geodesy terms, say if somebody messed with the USGS benchmark elevation data from Mt. Diablo California on a regular basis, and the elevation of that benchmark kept changing in the data set, then all measurements referencing that benchmark would be off as well.
In the case of radio altimetry from space, such measurements are extremely dependent on errors related to how radio signals are propagated through the ionosphere. Things like Faraday rotation, refraction, and other propagation issues can skew the signal during transit, and if not properly corrected for, especially over the long-term, it can introduce a spurious signal in all sorts of data derived from it. In fact, the mission summary shows that it will affect satellite derived data for sea level, ice loss, and ice volume in GRACE gravity measurements:
That list of satellites, TOPEX, JASON 1-3, ICESAT1-2, and GRACE 1-2 pretty much represent all of the satellite data used in the new Shepard et al study released this week A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance.
In a nutshell, other JPL scientists (Yoaz Bar-Sever, R. Steven Nerem, and the GRASP Team) are saying we don’t have an accurate reference point for the satellites, and therefore the data from these previous satellite missions likely has TRF data uncertainties embedded. They say clearly in their PowerPoint presentation that:
The TRF underlies all Measurement of the Earth
And, most importantly, they call for a new space program, GRASP, to fix the problem.
Without that stable Terrestrial Reference Frame that puts the precision of the baseline satellite measurements well below the noise in the data, meaning all we have are broader uncertain measurements. That’s why the plan is to provide ground based points of reference, something our current satellite systems don’t have:
To help understand the items in the side panels:
GNSS = Global Navigation Satellite System – more here
SLR = Satellite Laser Ranging – more here
DORIS = Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite – more here
VLBI = Very Long Baseline Interferometry – more here
Taken together, these systems will improve the accuracy of the TRF, and thus the data. It’s rather amazing that the baseline accuracy didn’t come first, because this now puts all these other space based measurement systems into uncertainty until their TRF issues are resolved, and that’s an inconvenient truth.
We’ll never look at satellite based sea level data or GRACE ice volume data in quite the same way again until this is resolved.
See the JPL PowerPoint here: Poland 2012 – P09 Bar-Sever PR51 (PDF)
Summary:
1. JPL admits that satellite measurement of the Earth has issues because a stable Terrestrial Reference Frame was never established for any of the satellite programs. It’s like setting out to do a terrestrial survey without having an accurate benchmark first. This puts all subsequent data derived with the stable benchmark (the stable TRF) into question.
2. The lack of a stable TRF affects most if not all satellite programs used in this new Shepherd et al paper ‘A reconciled estimate of ice sheet mass balance‘ including ICESAT and GRACE, upon which the paper heavily relies.
3. In searching both the full paper (which I purchased from AAAS) and from the extensive supplementary materials and information (SM-SI available here: Shepherd.SM-SI.pdf ) for Shepherd et al, I find no mention of TRF or “Terrestrial Reference Frame” anywhere. It appears that all 47 authors are unaware of the TRF stability issue, or if they were aware, it was never brought to bear in peer review to test the veracity of the paper and its conclusions from the satellite data. Section 3 of the Shepard et al SM-SI deals with uncertainty, but also makes no mention of the TRF issue.
4. The lack of a stable TRF puts all of the space based geodetic data into question, thus the conclusions of the Shepherd et al paper are essentially worthless at the moment, since there isn’t any good way to remove the TRF error from the data with post processing. If there were, the GRASP team at NASA JPL wouldn’t be calling for a new satellite platform and mission to solve the problem. Obviously, this isn’t an issue they take lightly.
In my opinion, the folks at NASA JPL really should get those two teams talking to one another to get a handle on their data before they make grand announcements saying :
An international team of satellite experts has produced the most accurate assessment of ice losses from Antarctica and Greenland to date, ending 20-years of uncertainty.
A good first step would be to get the GRASP mission funded and then go back and redo Shepherd et al to see if it holds up. Until then, it’s just noisy uncertain data.
UPDATE: Figure 4 in the Shepherd et al paper shows clearly how uncertain the GRACE and other data is. They used a brief bit of Laser Altimetry data, shown in green. Laser Altimetry is more accurate that the radar/microwave based data from the other satellite platforms, and is one of the keystones specified for the proposed GRASP mission to clean up the noisy radar/microwave based data.
Note that the Laser Altimetry data in green is essentially flat across the short period where it is included in all four panels, though there is a slight drop in Greenland, but the period is too short to be meaningful.
The uncertainty is quite clear in Table 1, which has error ranges larger than the data in some cases:
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Bill Innies says:
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http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.data/
What is interesting is the [shear] effort going into collecting this data by hundreds of organizations around the world and then making it virtually/completely impossible to be able to calculate a trend from it.
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The calculation is non trivial. There was a considerable amount of work went into Jevrejeva’s papers. Worth reading. http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=ftp%3A%2F%2Fsoest.hawaii.edu%2Fcoastal%2FClimate%2520Articles%2FJevrejeva_2008%2520Sea%2520level%2520acceleration%2520200yrs%2520ago.pdf&ei=2qS9UN_TLMKf0QWd4oGYDw&usg=AFQjCNGvmifObtaLVSM3_pS2tUdprOYgpg
It would be very informative to see this same analysis updated to take account of the last ten years.
When the satellite data is presented in an easy to read form by Colorado U. they automatically add their GAIA [sic] adjustment and no longer provide the data without the barometer adjustment.
Why the barometer adjustment? Pressure difference can only displace water from one place to another, not alter GMSL. The fact that we get this and only this prevents comparison and suggests there IS a difference (if not, why use it to calculate _global_ sea level). Any such difference MUST be a corruption since air pressure cannot create water !
This whole area is now corrupt science.
CostCo says:
December 3, 2012 at 2:15 pm
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” mpainter says: But you need to support your claim that the largest sea level changes occur in open ocean. How can that be?”
I’m not an expert on sea-level but I guess that the largest warming has happened over the open ocean and then the thermal expansion takes care of the rest.
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Cool. So a) it has little to do with melting ice sheets after all; b) since the main worry humans have about rising waters is coastal flooding we can be reassured by these readings showing the it just safely piles up in mid ocean where it is not a problem.
There is of course a simpler explanation to why you find sea levels rising anomalously everywhere except where they are constrained by other tangible data: the calibration of the satellite positions have systematic errors.
That much should be obvious to anyone with a basic training in scientific method.
trafamadore says: “The correlation of the gravimetry data with the altimetry and interferometry data was beautiful addition to the paper, and is hard to argue with. For example, in the West Antarctic data, the altimetry and interferometry data shows a loss, and so does the gravimetry data.”
Gravity data from GRACE does not show ice loss , it shows gravity changes. How anyone chooses to interpret that depends on models of how the underlying bedrock is moving. Earlier models were largely guesswork. More recent measurements from a small number of GPS monitors that are possible in some areas have massively changed the presumed ice change from ice loss to ice gain. It seems this paper is still using the older model , though I’m not going to pay $44 to read the results of research I’ve already paid for to check.
Equally the other techniques only measure the top of the ice they do not measure thickness, so they tell us even less than GRACE about ice mass.
There is no “beautiful” addition. The fact the _relative_ changes by various methods show similar short to medium term variation is encouraging but does not address the fundamental calibration issues that undermine efforts to determine long term loss/gain of ice mass.
This paper is trying to confuse the two. To suggest short term correlations reduce the uncertainly when the underlying calibration problem remains unresolved.
Astounding. Really it is. They didn’t think about this before spending how many $Millions (or is it with a $B now?) on ‘noise makers’?
I’ve also got to wonder if the recent plunge in solar UV, change of the energy state if the upper atmosphere, and overall change in atmospheric height is going to play Hob with the radio data too…
So we have a huge pile of noisy satellite data, and a big pile of fudged and distorted land data (at least for temperatures). In short, we don’t have a clue what the real data are saying. Yet some folks think if they just average it all together then can get microscopic precision.
AGW is Garbage Science on a fat paycheck. Just garbage.
“P. Solar says: Gravity data from GRACE does not show ice loss , it shows gravity changes.”
Yes, and the very cool thing demonstrated in Shepherd et. al. is that a very snowy year on East Antarctic coast is visible in both gravity and altimetry measurements, as well as the precipitation model. The same signal is visible in these independent datasets, which increses the confidence in the results a great deal. If there was only GRACE or only altimetry, we could not be as confident about the result as we are now.
So, the acceleration of the Greenlandic mass-loss is a verified scientific fact, not empty speculation.
@-“In your zeal, you clearly don’t understand what is going on here. The error won’t be known until they can compare the data in hand to the stable baseline. – Anthony”
Wrong.
The exact value of the error may require further research, but the size, in terms of order of magnitude is inherently constrained. It isn’t credible to claim that it could be large enough to reverse the sign of the trends found.
More to the point, the alternative methodologies that do not rely on the TRF further constrain the error range. As another poster has pointed out by combining the results from different sources with independent error ranges a final result with a much smaller error range can be derived often by Baysian techniques, as Nate Silver did with the polling data.
Every month hundreds of pieces of research Are published into climate change. None contradict it. If they did they would be be trumpeted here very loudly, but 100% of the evidence supports AGW.
@-E.M.Smith
“In short, we don’t have a clue what the real data are saying. Yet some folks think if they just average it all together then can get microscopic precision. AGW is Garbage Science on a fat paycheck. Just garbage.”
‘Some folks’ are right, combining multiple data from different sources does minimise errors, but just as with lead, asbestos, CFCs, DDT and of course tobbaco the message that they do harm is unwelcome to those with a financial or ideological interest in the status quo of exploiting these products. As for the fat paycheck, less than one minute of exxon’s profit would pay for this research.
The enthusiasm that some show here to dismiss the data in its entirety when the error CAN be calculated and minimised is typical of those who are motivated to reject the science.
Here’s a not-very-recent paper on the TRF-errors and altimetry:
http://w3admin.ipgp.jussieu.fr/docs/recherche/planeto/Morel05.pdf
11mm in 2 decades. On average the south coast of Britain has been dipping by 10mm per decade since the last ice-age. Has this led to the destruction of civilisation, the end of humanity? The failure of economic systems?
@Mike Haseler:
Parts of California change elevation by FEET in minutes. The process is a bit shaky, but life goes on 😉
@Izen:
Averaging can remove random error but does nothing to remove systematic error. A bogus benchmark for your measurements is a systematic error.
Note, too, that I specifically said “microscopic precision”, i.e. an assertion about size of the error band (even if in a poetic form). I did not assert there was zero ability to improve resolution (for random error sources).
In short, the error band on the data is about as wide as the “warming” being found. It is a systematic error band. Averaging will not reduce it. The AGW conclusions are, thus, garbage. (Due to failure to understand the difference between systematic and random error, over averaging as an article of faith, splicing disjoint data sets, ignoring actual error bands, and confusing TEMPERATURE with HEAT in a calorimetry problem. Among other things…) Frankly, it doesn’t measure up to even High School Science standards of work quality (where, at least in my High School, one had to have a clear understanding of why temperature needed mass and specific heat values to calculate heat change… and why you could not average out systematic error.)
Stephen Rasey says: December 3, 2012 at 1:14 pm
“From the 23 stable sites selected by Douglas in 1997 …
….I participated in a lengthy discussion about whether those stations in Douglas were in fact stable. I have reason to doubt their stability…”
I think you may very likely be correct – but the gauges may be the most accurate data we have, if one reads the details of the problems of satellite calibrations… amazing work they do.. having to cobble together data from four different systems. And it sounds to me like GRACE may be a bit of a dud, noting they failed to tune antennas to the spacecraft …..
But in the end using the Douglas 1997 ref gauges gives us 1.4 mm a year, substantially less than the satellites give us …. and correct me if I’m wrong, but surely the tidal guage data is most relevant to us? Eg if the sea was rising at 3 mm per year but all the land in the world was rising at 4 mm per year …. well, there is not a problem, is there?
Note this 1.4 mm/year above includes an allowance of 0.3 mm per year made for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA which is a gradual enlargement of the ocean basins in response to the retreat of the great glaciers some 12,000 years ago). So really actual is back to 1.2 mm/year…..
On that topic – intriguing work by Gomez etal (supervisor is Jerry Mitrovica) shows that sea level rise is in response to polar ice melt is not uniform. (modelled, but compelling…)
The loss of gravitational effect of ice loss at the poles will mean sea levels at the poles retreat markedly with ice melt (hey, self limiting effect on ice caps of warmer seas!) and the greatest rise is at the equator, the worst effect being west Atlantic – NY)…
Amazing stuff … and I wonder at the impact of Gomez’s work on the above mentioned tide gauge data? 13 of the Douglas sites are Atlantic, equatorial region …. I’m thinking that may mean 1.1 mm/year of sea rise at these equatorial regions may well imply there is far less ice loss than calculated …
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/mar/16mar2011a4.html
Re gravitational effects of ice caps: In a video (very pro CAGW) Mitrovica said if you were standing at the waterline of Greenland, and could instantly melt its ice, the sea at your feet would FALL 100 metres due to the lost gravitational effect ….. the water would pool closer to the equator.
http://youtu.be/RhdY-ZezK7w
Jerry Mitrovica – Professor of Geophysics at Harvard University in the USA.
@- E.M.Smith
I do know that averaging will not reduce systemic errors, which is why I never mentioned averaging in my post. That seems to be a wrong assumption on your part.
I still regard rejecting as you do all the research in the last sixty decades on AGW as motivated by issues other than scientific insight. The comment it is a means of getting a fat paycheck perhaps is projection and reveals a fear that dealing with the thermodynamic consequences of rising CO2 might impact the fat paycheck the fossil fuel industry gets.
CostCo:
I have been following this thread with interest, and I notice that until recently you were ‘defending the fort’ alone, but the ‘usual suspects’ (izen, trafamadore, etc.) have started to come to your aid. This is not surprising because, at first, it seemed you knew something about the subject and could defend the paper by Shepherd et al. from criticism, but your defences have been so pathetic that you clearly need help.
Several clear criticisms have been made and they fall into two categories;
1. The satellite system does not have adequate accuracy
and
2. The satellite system is a flawed method that cannot have adequate accuracy.
Your responses have amounted to arm-waving assertions or completely ignoring a stated criticism. Before addressing specific points as illustration of your failure to address the issues, I point out that your arm-waving has become like the flailing of a demented Dervish. For example, your post at December 3, 2012 at 2:21 pm says in total
The paper is “a landmark Science-paper”?! Really?
The paper reports that additional work costing a fortune failed to provide the measurement improvement it was intended to obtain so the paper calls for another fortune to be spent on giving them another attempt at the improvement.
The paper is not a “landmark”: it is a report of an expensive failure.
Importantly, the failure was ‘dressed up’ as being a move forward in a press release coincident with the Doha COP. Correlation does not prove causation but in some cases it can be very indicative.
And people with a track-record of failure do not constitute “most of the best research teams in the world”. They represent failures.
Please note that the paper has 47 co-authors; n.b. not ‘signatories’ but co-authors. People who do good work like to take the credit and they don’t seek co-authors. People who are publishing because they have to report what they have done seek co-authors because they want to share the blame. Hence, good papers never have dozens of co-authors.
You say you think the paper is “science”. I agree in that any report of a failure is information which is useful to science, but the nature of the Shepherd et al. paper and its press release are pure PR and not “science”.
Which returns us to the two categories of criticism.
The paper reports that the satellite system does not have adequate accuracy. As oeman50 succinctly stated at December 3, 2012 at 9:33 am
Of course, the answer to his question is, you can’t.
And the satellite system is a flawed method that cannot have adequate accuracy. The above article highlights the problem of TRF errors which remain unresolved and so prevent the system having adequate accuracy. Of course, in theory it may be possible to solve the TRF problem within the lifetime of the satellite system, but Billy Liar raised an even more fundamental problem in his post at December 3, 2012 at 2:13 pm where he asked and correctly stated
Of course, nobody knows how to obtain an answer to his question and, therefore, his correct statement means it will not be possible within the lifetime of the existing satellite system for the method to provide the required accuracy except by adopting an unjustifiable assumption that average barometric pressure remains constant.
In conclusion, the paper by Shepherd et al. is more climastrology junk and, CostCo, your attempts to defend it are the total failure which attempts to defend such junk always are.
Richard
Chad Jessup says:
December 3, 2012 at 8:36 pm
I am not surprised the Greenland ice sheet has decreased lately, because a few years ago, before finding Anthony’s informative blog, I stumbled across a website that detailed the temperature of the Gulf Stream (which flows to Greenland), and it showed that its SST has been increasing…..Shouldn’t there also be a SST site for the warm waters flowing north along the eastern Asian continent?
_____________________________________–
Yes it is called the NAO or North Atlantic Oscillation.
My quickest to find link is Vukcevic since he has done a lot of work with the available data.
Richard S Courtney does an excellent job of summarizing but I have one quibble. The paper is not climastrologic junk. Every Inquiry has value.
“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”.
Thomas A. Edison
richardscourtney says: “The paper is not a “landmark”: it is a report of an expensive failure.”
I have this feeling you could be neck deep in water and you would say, “See, you guys are all wrong, my head is quite dry!” You know, you _could_ follow Anthony’s example, and make reasoned comments. Which I believe the CostCo and the “normal suspects” have tried to do.
You say that oeman50 succinctly stated, “When I saw the errors: “….–142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, –65 ± 26, and –20 ± 14 gigatonnes year−1….” it blew my mind. How do you draw meaningful conclusions when the errors are that large?”
Well, let’s see. If those are 1 sigma std errors, in Greenland the ice loss has a 2/3 chance of being between about -100 and -200 Gt/y and a 1/20 chance of being between about -50 and -250. That’s something I didnt know before. The important thing is that it is probably not zero, that would be about 1/100 chance.
For the Antarctic data, the -65 and the -20 are significantly different from 0, eye balling it at less than 1/20 and less than 1/8 chances, respectively. The only figure that is not really different from zero is the +14, a sad thing for people who would like to see the Antarctic cooling.
So it may be expensive. But a failure? No.
“richardscourtney says: The paper is “a landmark Science-paper”?! Really?”
Absolutely, as it showed definitely that the three satellite-based techniques measure the same thing.
“The paper reports that additional work costing a fortune failed to provide the measurement improvement it was intended to obtain so the paper calls for another fortune to be spent on giving them another attempt at the improvement. The paper is not a “landmark”: it is a report of an expensive failure. ”
Nope. It verified that the three techniques measure the same thing and reduced the errors. With current and planned satellites the accuracy can be increased much further in the future. Before this it was not even known whether Antarctica was in balance or not!
“Hence, good papers never have dozens of co-authors.”
That’s not true either as much of top science today is necessarily done in large research groups. See CERN, The Human Genome Project etc.
Questions related to sea-level retrieval from altimetry are not relevant here and the TRF-uncertainty is an order of magnitude too small to really matter in ice sheet observations.
Edward de Bono referred to this tendency as “The intelligence trap,” in his book, I Am Right, You Are Wrong. Here’s a google-search URL that leads to fuller discussions of the topic.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=“The+intelligence+trap”+%22edward+de+Bono%22&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&spell=1
izen says:
December 4, 2012 at 3:19 am
@- E.M.Smith
….I still regard rejecting as you do all the research in the last sixty decades on AGW as motivated by issues other than scientific insight. The comment is a means of getting a fat paycheck perhaps is projection and reveals a fear that dealing with the thermodynamic consequences of rising CO2 might impact the fat paycheck the fossil fuel industry gets.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The man’s semi-retired as I am so no fat pay checks for us from Big Oil or any other corporation for that matter. Same goes for Anthony Watts and many others who comment here.
The only fear is fear of dunderhead politicians and activists hellbent on completely killing off the USA, the EU, Australia and Canada and a large portion of the world population while they are at it.
The FACTS say that Global Governance is the actual motive with the World Bank handling the finances and economics (see SAPs for the Banks method of dictating to governments ) not the “thermodynamic consequences of rising CO2”
While the World Bank is screaming at the top of its lungs about the fairy tale of a 4 degree warming in their report Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided and Sound Bites from World Bank President Kim: “A 4-degree warmer world can, and must be, avoided” play in all the media. We only have to look at the actual reality around us to see the direction politicians are taking us.
The US Trade Deficit took a major nose dive when Globalist Pascal Lamy’s beloved World TRADE Organization came into being in 1995.
That Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011
World Resources Institute identifies 1200 coal plants in planning across 59 countries, with about three-quarters in China and India
So how are these countries paying for these coal plants?
By the World Bank lending money for building coal fired plants. The amount lent soared 40-fold over the last five years from 100 million in 2005 to $4270 million in 2010.
SO where does the money lent come from? The United States has subscribed $31.96 billion giving it the largest single vote (16.52%) of any member country. Also in the USA Coal’s not dying — it’s just getting shipped abroad. along with out tax dollars and our jobs.
The results of this shift in manufacturing from clean air regulating countries like the USA to third world countries can be seen in the pie chart Record high for global carbon emissions – China is the leader WUWT link
The devastation to the environment that you Faux Activists cry crocodile tears about has been devastating.
photo 1 Lasengmiao Power Plant
photo 2 A man collects dead fish in Donghu lake, where officials say an estimated 30,000kg of fish have been killed
photo 3 cyclists in China wearing masks
photo 4 Beijing pollution
You Don’t Realize How Bad Pollution In China Is Until You Compare It To The US
It is using first world tax payer wealth to bootstrap third world countries into corporate slavery in MHO. A method used so corporations do not have to pay the tax payer does. It is an old and on going method used to fatten the bottom line. Santa’s Workshop: Inside China’s Slave Labour Toy Factories
Good Grief Democrat Dick Durbin, the Senate Majority leader stated outright “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The Dog and Pony show about CAGW is to provide an excuse to the masses as to why the politicians are telling their citizens – bend over the banks and corporations want to rape you again. We know it is going to hurt but “It is for the CHILDREN” “It is for the ENVIRONMENT” When Obama has the Champion Job exporter Jeffrey Immelt CEO of GE (yes the GE that pays no corporate taxes) as his Jobs Council czar you do not know whether to laugh or cry.
Oh, and no one is bothering to pay attention to this graph which says all the models AND conjectures behind the models is crap.
So don’t you DARE imply we are corporate stooges when it is the CAGW scientist/activists who are the actual traitors to the environment and the human race! It is called projection and activists do it regularly hoping the masses will not see THEY are the traitors and the ones engaging in the actions they project on skeptics.
Greenland is losing mass 5 times faster than only 20 years ago. This we know.
[you need to put in something that shows “we know” because without it this is a content free post. Such posts are often seen as trolling and nobody, not even you, likes that, or did you leave the /sarc off?. . . mod]
CostCo says – “….there are zero tide-gauges in the open ocean, where incidentally much of the largest sea-level changes have happened.”
1. Define “open ocean”. I was sailing approximately 30 miles off the northern NJ coast on autopilot right at sunset when I quickly had to turn it off and manually steer hard to avoid hitting a……tide gauge.
2. Are you suggesting that dramatic sea-level changes are generally localized in the open ocean based on suggested CAGW (not considering moon phase, rogue waves/storms, Bay of Fundy events, etc)?
If so then we can agree that icemelt from Greenland or Antactica is not a problem for coastal areas but only the open ocean and therefore requires no action by coastal residents.
CostCo says:
December 4, 2012 at 1:04 am
>>
“P. Solar says: Gravity data from GRACE does not show ice loss , it shows gravity changes.”
Yes, and the very cool thing demonstrated in Shepherd et. al. is that a very snowy year on East Antarctic coast is visible in both gravity and altimetry measurements, as well as the precipitation model. The same signal is visible in these independent datasets, which increses the confidence in the results a great deal. If there was only GRACE or only altimetry, we could not be as confident about the result as we are now.
So, the acceleration of the Greenlandic mass-loss is a verified scientific fact, not empty speculation.
>>
Why do you pretend to reply to my comment without replying ?
You take one sentence out of my comment out of context and ignore the whole point I made. We’re not discussing “one snowy year” , we’re concerned with long term drift and calibration.
The fact that such a short term signal can be seen in various records IN NO WAY increases the confidence we can have in the individual drifts in calibration of any of the missions.
This repeats the basic deception of Sherpherd et al . Not only are you ignoring the point I made whilst pretending to reply to my post, you are propagating the deception by suggesting “the cool thing” in Shepherd et al increases the confidence we can have in the result.
The result of this paper was not the detection of your “one snowy year”, it was the alleged long term changes in ice thickness. That is totally dependant on long term stability of the satellite calibrations and models of the underlying movements in the bedrock.
The fact that you try to completely ignore my point and reply by pointing to the very short term variations I said were not relevant, shows you understand this clearly and are trying, like the paper, to deceive the reader.
Thank you for making your position clear.
Gail Combes says: The FACTS say that Global Governance is the actual motive with the World Bank handling the finances and economics (see SAPs for the Banks method of dictating to governments ) not the “thermodynamic consequences of rising CO2″
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When I read that the World Bank was to be entrusted with managing the ‘green fund’ and that before they’ve even agreed to have one, they want to claim U.N. diplomatic immunity from prosecution, it all suddenly started to make sense.
The generation of ‘useful idiots’ currently out to save the planet have, for the most part been duped.
If our grand children despise us it will not be for wrecking the climate, it will be for condemning the into economic slavery.
“P. Solar says: The fact that such a short term signal can be seen in various records IN NO WAY increases the confidence we can have in the individual drifts in calibration of any of the missions.”
Sorry, what “drifts” are you talking about exactly?
Rob Dawg:
At December 4, 2012 at 4:59 am you say to me in your reply to my post at December 4, 2012 at 3:40 am
Yes, I agree.
In my post you are answering I said
But that does not stop the work reported by Shepherd et al. from being the expensive failure which it is.
And the responses to my post from CostCo and trafamadore show just how bad a piece of junk the paper is: if they had worthy defences of the work reported by Shepherd et al. then they would have provided them.
Richard
Satellite trends versus tide gaude trends:
The “explaination” of higher satellite trends with trade winds leading to higher sea level rises in open sea is not valid.
For an increase, there have to be ADDITIONAL trade winds to form that deviation. and those ADDITIONAL trade winds would have had to be sustained for many years and just have started in the year when the satellite record started.
But thats not all, additional trade winds would have to blow from coast to open sea anywhere in the world and not from east to west.
It is much more safe to assume, that satellite trends are inflated and tide gauge data are correct.
“richardscourtney says: if they had worthy defences of the work reported by Shepherd et al. then they would have provided them.”
Heh heh. There are tons of worthy evidence provided in the paper itself, the supplementary material and the references. You folks have not even provided proper critique so far.