From NOAA Headquarters, laughable claims gift wrapped for the fall AGU conference.
They claim 8 inches to 6.6 feet (o.2 to 2 meters) over the next century….such wide variance doesn’t inspire much confidence, even though they claim “high confidence” in that spread. That’s a lot like saying that you have “high confidence that the winner of the latest NBA basketball game will score between 20 and 200 points”. I don’t think the bookies would be impressed with the skill. – Anthony
Experts available to discuss new paper detailing global sea level rise scenario
On December 6, NOAA will release a technical report that estimates global mean sea level rise over the next century based on a comprehensive synthesis of existing scientific literature. The report finds that there is very high confidence (greater than 90% chance) that global mean sea level will rise at least 8 inches (0.2 meters) and no more than 6.6 feet (2 meters) by 2100, depending upon uncertainties associated with ice sheet loss and ocean warming.
The actual amount of sea level change at any one region and location greatly varies in response to regional and local vertical land movement and ocean dynamics. The ranges of global mean sea level rise estimates detailed in this study will help decision makers prepare for and respond to a wide range of future sea level rise and coastal inundation.
Higher mean sea levels increase the frequency, magnitude, and duration of flooding associated with a given storm. Flooding has disproportionately high impacts in most coastal regions, particularly in flat, low-lying areas. In the U.S., over eight million people live in areas at risk to coastal flooding, and many of the nation’s assets related to military readiness, energy, commerce, and ecosystems are already located at or near the ocean.
The report provides a synthesis of the scientific literature on global sea level rise, and presents a set of four global mean scenarios to describe future conditions for the purpose of assessing potential vulnerabilities and impacts.It was authored by a panel of scientists from multiple federal agencies and academic institutions, and will be used to support the National Climate Assessment – a U.S. interagency report produced once every four years to summarize the science and impacts of climate change on the United States.
WHAT: Availability of scientists to discuss the findings of global sea level rise paper
WHO: Adam Parris, report lead author, NOAA; Virginia Burkett, Ph.D., report co-author, U.S. Geological Survey; and Radley Horton, Ph.D., report co-author, Columbia University and NASA
CONTACT: Brady Phillips, NOAA Office of Communications and External Affairs, 202-407-1298 or brady.phillips@noaa.gov
The technical report will be available online on Dec. 6 at http://www.cpo.noaa.gov/reports/sealevel
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels.
I predict that in any sports game, the team that scores the most points is likely going to win. I predict that in a NASCAR race, the driver that makes a right turn is going to lose the race. I predict that if take a shower I will get wet. And I predict that the sea level will rise anywhere from -100 feet to 100 feet in the next 1000 years.
Its easy to get caught up in the hype and completely misunderstand the time scales wrt human lifetimes Mosher. Are floods today worse because of the last 100 years sea level rise? Of course not. People are flooded because they inhabit flood prone areas, not because a place “became” a flood prone area while they were rocking on their rocking chair on the porch.
Would you build another Venice? Of course not but that has nothing to do with any possible sea level rise.
Given this prediction, one would feel safe suggesting a drop in sea level is well on the cards !!
I don’t get it. Those 8 million people have lived in that risk since the place was settled by Europeans. So big deal as Harry Truman said “if you can stand the heart, get out of the kitchen”. Another way of thinking about it is most the ±17 million citizens of the Netherlands live below sea level are they obsessing? This nothing but more foolish hype. Like most the celebrity BS that goes around amounting to zero.
This would be funny if it were not so sad.
Modeling the distant future based on very poor present knowledge produces future monstrosities.
Every time I hear these sorts of predictions I use my common sense and ask myself, “Have the IPCC’s ominous model based scenarios/predictions been on track to date?” Answer: No!
So why would I believe that any scientist or group of scientists would be able to determine future sea level rises? Only idiots would fall for this rubbish!
I defy anyone to get any science paper accepted (outside climate science ) with a ten fold range in outcome at the 90 percentile confidence. Just try I dare you. The damage to real science continues.
Suppose I told you that a wire had between 200 and 20,000 volts. Would you touch it?
They could have said between a rise of 2.9 m and a fall of 0.7m (99.9% conf) … still doesn’t cover Mr Gore though.
My prediction is it will drop by the end of the century.
So the ice core and deep sea core data show sudden jumps in temperature. The Greenland Ice coregraph shows peaks not plateaus for the warming spikes.
Everyone looks at the amount of ice in the Arctic. No one bothers to look at the real indicator the length of the melt season or the increase in fall snow cover in the northern hemisphere or the August 06, 2012, Endless Winter for Alaska’s Mountains This Year
Add in a quiet sun and the oceans going to the cooling mode I do not think sea level rise is in the cards.
NH solar energy overlay of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice core temperatures: http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/LI-Holocene.png
The paleo solar insolation is plotted from here
Forgot The paleo solar insolation data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/insolation/orbit91
Steven Mosher says:
December 5, 2012 at 5:10 pm
the uncertainty is what it is.
———————————–
The uncertainty at the upper end can be improved significantly by removing Rahmstorf’s papers from the ensemble.
Steven Mosher says:
>>
the uncertainty is what it is. Of course its wide since our knowledge is limited.
knowing that it could be as high as 6 feet would you plan to build valuable assets at a location that is one foot above sea level?
not if u had other choices. even the most uncertain knowledge can in practice be useful.
usefullness is the key. not the width of the estimate.
>>
Usefulness is indeed one way to assess such an estimation.
Now 20cm will require very little action whereas 2m will require significant action and infrastructure changes in a large part of the inhabited world. So on a practical scale that makes it USELESS.
However, such an estimate will be echoed by MSM as “New study form NOAA confirms sea levels will rise _by_as_much_as_ 2 metres by the end of the century, ratcheting up the pressure on delegates in Doha to commit to urgent measures to limit CO2 emissions.”
So in terms of ending democracy and national sovereignty and destroying our economy it is USEFUL.
Whether it is useful or not, just depends on what your objectives are.
NOAA (quietly) issued a report this summer that concluded the average sea level rise during the satellite era (the last 20 years) was 1.3mm/year. If this rate were maintained for until 2100, there would be 115mm (4.5 inches) of further rise. But now another NOAA group concludes that the chance of the average rate for the rest of the century being less than twice the recent rate is less than 5%!
Gail Combes: says “Everyone looks at the amount of ice in the Arctic. No one bothers to look at the real indicator the length of the melt season” http://i45.tinypic.com/27yr1wy.png
Glad you thought the graph was useful. Just to be clear, that graph was itself derived from Arctic sea ice extent data. The key point is that it used ALL the data (to filter out the “weather” variations) not just one day per year as is currently the fashion for alarmists.
Hey, look. They’re being honest. They don’t have much idea what will happen with sea level because they don’t have much idea what will happen with climate in general. If sea level follows 20th century trends, it will rise maybe 8 to 12 inches. If the polar areas warm dramatically (why would they do that if they didn’t in the last century?) then it will rise more. I personally think that six feet is a preposterous number and way outside the 90% range. But if I were planning an infrastructure project with a hundred year lifetime and the cost of planning for a six foot rise weren’t too high, I’d probably plan to handle it. On the other hand, being conservative, I’d also allow for the possibility that sea levels might drop a foot or two. It’s not like there’s enough science in today’s “climate science” to do much actual engineering. In the absence of reliable data and useful models, you make guesses.
TimTheToolMan says:
December 5, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Would you build another Venice? Of course not but that has nothing to do with any possible sea level rise.
====================
If you did build another Venice, you would possibly refrain from pumping huge amounts of ground water out from under it. BTW, something similar happened in the early 20th century with Terminal Island in Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor. They pumped a lot of oil out from under it and it promptly sank resulting in the need for good sized infrastructure protecting berms along the shipping channels that encircle it.
An that’s their 90% confidence level. That still leaves a comfortable 10% for it to be substantially less than 20 cm without them being technically “wrong”.
I suppose if they were to go for the usual 95% confidence level they would have had to say “between 1cm and 10m”.
That would be even more “useful” ™ since MSM could say NOAA predicted sea level will rise _by_as_much_as_ ten metres . OMG !!!!
Another way to present the same information about their state of knowledge is to say they are 90% certain that they can’t tell us whether sea levels will be problem or not.
I look forward to future studies explaining all the other things they don’t know anything about.
Since when did 90% become “very high confidence”? And for such a wide interval! I guess the problem is that if they were to give a 99.5% interval, they would have to include quite a drop in sea level at the lower end…
Comprehensive synthesis, comprehensive synthesis. What a strange way to describe their process. Comprehensive is that everything is going to be used in the synthesis but if any of the parts of the comprehensive parts is already the truth they would just use that part, no need to synthesize. So by deduction, none of the parts are the truth so NOAA is to synthesize the truth from all of these non-truths. Ok, I think I’m getting it now. Kinda like Merlin who was also very good at this sort of synthesis, like changing pieces of lead to gold (or all of the subjects thought he could). ☺
If you are going to make an issue about the range of the projections then it would seem sensible for you to have included the part of the report where they explain the reason for the range.
The lowest sea level change scenario (8 inch rise) is based on historic rates of observed sea level change. This scenario should be considered where there is a high tolerance for risk (e.g. projects with a short lifespan or flexibility to adapt within the near-term)
The intermediate-low scenario (1.6 feet) is based on projected ocean warming
The intermediate-high scenario (3.9 feet) is based on projected ocean warming and recent ice sheet loss
The highest sea level change scenario (6.6 foot rise) reflects ocean warming and the maximum plausible contribution of ice sheet loss and glacial melting. This highest scenario should be considered in situations where there is little tolerance for risk.
So a mass equivalent to a new 2m column of water across the oceans leaves land areas (less ongoing thermal expansion). Wouldn’t the land tend to go boingggg upwards as the load comes off and wouldn’t ocean floors feel the urge to lower? (Pardon my geological street-speak, innit).
Where is the nett new energy coming from to change the state of that amount of ice just as the sun is throttling back? Silly me. It’s from that big CO2 skyborne back-radiation battery, which has never been detected, measured, nor proven to produce sufficient secondary warming to sustain any IPCC temperature scenario.
You couldn’t make it up. No, wait …
Lots of armchair “climate scientists” on this site lol
[Reply: So? Lots of PhD’s, too. — mod.]
Such a big range (0.2 to 2.0 meters) and they will still miss it. My prediction is -1.0 to 0.0 meters.
The report finds that there is very high confidence (greater than 90% chance) that global mean sea level will rise at least 8 inches (0.2 meters)
95% probability (of not occurring by chance) is the normal scientific minimum criteria for a significant (non chance) result. So this says to a scientist that the evidence is insufficient to say sea levels will rise by 8 inches.
90% sounds like a high number to a non-scientist, but to a scientist 90% confidence is a laughably low number.