Below is a screencap of the “walkback” story headline in the LATimes posted late today.
This morning, about 5:30AM, I sent a short but succinct letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times (reproduced below) regarding the statements made yesterday by California Governor Jerry Brown saying that the LAX and SFO airports would “have to be moved” due to effects from posited sea level rise caused by melting of portions of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, some 200-800 years in the future. The claim by Governor Brown, was patently ridiculous and I wrote about it here: Governor ‘Moonbeam’ beclowns himself over sea level rise at LAX airport.
Brown’s statement on LAX and SFO airports really didn’t surprise me though, because at AGU 2013, I sat just a few feet away from him during a presentation by Dr. Richard Alley, who made some of the wildest claims on sea level rise I’ve ever seen. I took a photo then and wrote about the experience:
I wrote then:
I saw Penn State’s Richard Alley speak, and let me tell you, if you think Michael Mann is annoying, Alley’s certainly a close second. His presentation was simultaneously grating (he shouted a lot) and ridiculous, using bizarre metaphors like this one:
Worse, California governor Jerry Brown was in the audience and seemed to be quite taken with Alley’s brand of science and alarmism, particularly Alley’s depictions of San Francisco under water.
I shudder to think what sort of influence Alley’s rantings might have on the people of California via Brown.
Well, we found out yesterday.
Today, we get the walkback to sanity. The LATimes now says:
An aide to Jerry Brown confirmed Wednesday that the governor was wrong when he said global warming would eventually cause rising seawater to inundate Los Angeles International Airport.
…
But various sources say that the nation’s third-busiest airport — bordered by the Pacific Ocean — has elevations ranging from 108 feet to 126 feet and is protected by higher coastal bluffs on the west side.
“The governor misspoke about LAX,” said Evan Westrup, a spokesman for the Brown administration.
Environmental officials for Los Angeles World Airports, the operator of LAX, said the airport has an elevation of more than 120 feet. “A 4-foot rise in sea level,” they said, “should have minimal impact on airport operations.”
One of those “various sources” was me, not only from my blog post yesterday, but also from this letter I sent early this morning:
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Dear Editor,
A Times story on Governor Brown’s new budget had this title “Brown says rising sea levels could force costly move of LAX” with Brown citing two recent science papers on Antarctic melt saying “If that happens, the Los Angeles airport’s going to be underwater,”.
The science says otherwise. LAX airport elevation is 125 feet, the NOAA Los Angeles tide gauge rate of sea level rise 0.83 millimeter/year suggests that it will take over 40,000 years to reach the runways.
On the Amundsen Sea ice sheets in Antarctica melting, NASA in their press release on the paper said: “The region contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 4 feet (1.2 meters).” They offer a worst case scenario of the entire West Antarctic sheet melting, stating 16 feet (5 meters). Neither scenario affects LAX.
Governor Brown would better serve the public by checking facts before offering baseless alarm.
Anthony Watts
Chico, CA
NOT PART OF THE ARTICLE – REFERENCES FOR THE EDITOR:
NOAA Tide gauge: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9410660
Elevation of LAX runways: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLAX
NASA Press release on Antarctic Ice shelf melt http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/antarctic-ice-sheet-20140512/
======================================================
I didn’t get an acknowledgement from the editor, and given their “no denier” publication policy, I doubt my letter will run, even though it was entirely factual, because it made both the Governor and the LATimes look bad for not doing basic fact checking.
However, mid-day I did get a nice email from somebody on the other side of the climate debate, editor Douglas Fischer of the Daily Climate, thanking me for the “good catch” and telling me that I had the LA Times newsroom “scrambling…trying to explain how they let this slip through unchallenged”. He said they were going to put my story on the Daily Climate right next to the LATimes story, and they did (thanks Doug):
So, at least I have that satisfaction. I urge others to follow my lead: when ridiculous claims are made in the media, challenge them with supportable facts. You may not get an acknowledgment, but the desire to not look stupid is pretty strong, and will have an effect.
Thanks Anthony. It really does look like your original article and the letter to the editor was the main instigator in getting this myth corrected. Gov. Brown’s aids are obviously searching news reports and your original article makes it to the top of Google searches.
And letters to the editor correcting myths does work more often than we think. Not the kind a person is trying to get published in the newspaper, but the ones that are just meant to alert an editor about when his/her news-writers are getting facts wrong. Editors are more concerned about real facts that writers are, although circulation can override this if they are targeting left-wing readers like the LA Times and the Guardian is.
And there is no doubt Richard Alley contributed to Gov. Brown’s misunderstanding. Alley is appreciated by the warming set (like Brown) because he misrepresents every climate fact he can get his hands on but does it in a reassuring nerdy way. They like their myths and their reassurance. Alley’s temperature calibration of the Greenland ice cores, for example, has set-back our understanding of the northern hemisphere climate history going on 2 decades now, Younger Dryas included. .
On misspeaking:
Henry Kissinger told the story of his subordinate at the US State department quoted in the press as saying: “The Russian Foreign Minister is an A–hole.” Afterward the subordinate explained that his comment was taken out of context.
Nice pic of my favourite aircraft (A380) in my favourite airline (Emirates) at LAX. Glad that LAX won’t be drowned!
….and it would take 1,000 years to get the permits to relocate it within California anyway.
The Governor is obviously not a fool, so did he “misspeak” or deliberately falsify his statement?
What a lying jerk.
As an alarmist I’m very upset with this backpedaling. This is not in-line with our “lie and exaggerate” or “say anything” policies.
We know exactly how these wild alarmist claims “slipped through” at LAT: they didn’t *have* to slip. As their “denial free zone” policy amply demonstrates, catastrophic groupthink ensures that such claims not only aren’t fact checked at all, they are encouraged.
If Brown is really worried about AGW he should just shut down LAX and SFO and then he won’t have to worry about all the CO2 being spewed from those jets and airplanes owned by eco-luminaries like Richard Branson, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, et al.
izen says:
May 15, 2014 at 2:53 am
But it is always a mistake to get information from politicians or media which have vested interests in different directions. For the least biased assessment stick to the science.
http://www.usc.edu/org/seagrant/research/SeaLevelRise_docs/hires_pdfs/City%20of%20LA%20SLR%20Vulnerability%20Study%20FINAL%20Summary%20Report%20Online%20H
Thank you Captain Obvious, about the idea that it’s a mistake to get information from politicians and the media. The trouble is that those already committed to alarmist beliefs, such as yourself, will believe almost anything someone “in authority” tells them, without bothering to fact-check.
As far as sticking to science, we keep telling you to, but you refuse, and your link is an excellent example of Alarmist drivel.
The real question is where would you move it to and still have an airport in the LA area?
I would think the governor would consider the land needed and the damage done when you build a new airport. It’s already backed up to the San Diego Freeway.
I’m pretty sure there isn’t a reasonably flat piece of open real estate within 50 miles capable of supporting an international airport with its extra businesses.
Try and get that one past the eco money.
cn
Excellent job Anthony!! Many comments here suggest that it is not worthwhile to try and address these issues with the press. I disagree, It is very important to make every effort to document distortions like this one to create a record of the climate fear absurdities that have been printed in the press. This record and information will be of great value in the future.
Deadly sharp shooting Anthony, excellent.
Based on Governor Moonbeam’s recent proclamation regarding Global-Warming/Antarctica Ice/LAX-flooding, I invested considerable moolah in the de-mothballing of Pan American Clipper Flying Boats. Now via an aide, the good governor retracts his statement. I want my money back. Does anyone know a good lawyer who can help me sue?
Bonus points for anyone who can identify the oxymoron phrases in the above. Hint–there are two of them and they both contain the word “good”.
Andy: You didn’t say anything about SFO, whose runways are currently 9-13 feet above sea level according to this map. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SFO_map.png
The land under the runways at SFO has already been submerged by SLR, only in this case it happened at the end of the last ice age. That problem was solved by adaptation. With too little flat land near San Francisco for a large airport, SFO was constructed by filling in some of San Francisco Bay.
Here is the airport today.
https://maps.google.com/?ll=37.617835,-122.38143&spn=0.060644,0.054588&t=h&z=14
Here is SFO as it existed in 1943. The seaplane harbor appears to b the same in both views http://ucblibrary3.berkeley.edu:8085/AerialPhotos/airphotoddb/DDB2B-118.jpg
Here are the construction plans showing that even the 1943 airport was built mostly on land reclaimed from the bay:
http://livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu/lndp-content/uploads/2011/03/aerial.10004.jpg
If we could adapt in the 20th century, we can adapt in the 21st century.
Excellent work, Anthony! You beat ’em at their own game, i.e. the failing “Reality Drop” project of the Climate Reality Project: http://realitydrop.org/
Chris Marlow, I am not a scientist but I’m trying. You seem to be saying there will be no sea level rise because as the above sea level ice moves into the ocean, new volumes of ice are being added back on top of the ice, creating an equilibrium. Maybe I misunderstood you. If not, the issue then becomes that aren’t we talking about the ice that has been accumulating for thousands of years. There would be no equilibrium exchange as that goes into the water.
Also, I think all the focus here on sea level rise has become a red herring to the real point of the subject two studies everyone is referring to. The elephant in the room is that the ocean is getting warmer and that is what is destabilizing the glacier/ice sheet anchoring that reaches down into the ocean.
Apologies for where I may have misunderstood anyone.
The “Teflon effect” is in play here. Often commonly used in reference to President Reagan when a fiasco during his administration did not “stick” to him personally. Many politicians are treated this way (Brown, the Clintons, Sharpton), folks such as Paul Ehrlich, Charles – Prince of Wales, R. K. Pachauri, David Viner (no snow guy), and others. The “Teflon effect” operates in the opposite manner from the Streisand effect. After tonight’s evening news cycle Moonbeam’s mis-statement will be gone like yesterday’s tide on Dockweiler Beach.
Maybe most folks won’t see Brown’s hyperbolic statement as news simply because we are accustomed to all of our politicians using hyperbole. The discussion should get back to the discussion of climate change in Antarctica.
Outstanding work Anthony!!!!!
Now if we could just get similar acknowledgements about other false statements related to global warming/climate change from politicians and scientists, then support for the theory would collapse.
Unfortunately, they have turned the alarmist dial up a notch in tandem with the presidents political plans to get his climate change agenda/regulations done before his term runs out.
Regardless, this was one for truth, justice and the American way!
matayaya says:
May 15, 2014 at 1:18 pm
The discussion should get back to the discussion of climate change in Antarctica.
I agree. It’s really getting colder down there and there’s much more ice, isn’t there?
That was an excellent letter you sent, and I’m glad to hear it had the reaction it did. Scrambling indeed. I think there’s going to be a whole lot more of that in the coming months and years as everyone, MSM included, try to disassociate themselves from the whole CAGW mess.
Jimbo says: May 15, 2014 at 3:49 am
More looming problems for California reported yesterday.
BBC – 14 May 2014
Water extraction for human use boosts California quakes
Extracting water for human activities is increasing the number of small earthquakes being triggered in California.
A new study suggests that the heavy use of ground water for pumping and irrigation is causing mountains to lift and valleys to subside………
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27393811
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This goes against everything I have ever read on the effects of ground water removal.
In the Brownwood case (community near Baytown Tx) the removal caused the land to sink about 20 feet thus becoming part of the ground beneath Galveston Bay. The remains of the houses can still be seen.
In the Panex case the INJECTION of waste water (with plutonium and other heavy metals) caused minor earthquakes. A test of the concept of using water to control earthquakes showed that injecting water lubricated the rock causing quakes while removing water froze the rocks in place stopping quakes (temporarily)
A test on a portion of the San Andreas midway between SF and LA that experiences lots of small quakes was done confirming the effect. A proposal was made to use this effect to have minor quakes on the dangerous portions of San Andreas but it died when the blame for triggering the BIG ONE was considered.
I realize the BBC has a problem with Science but something just does not ring true about this Nature article.
The damage has been done, nobody sees the retraction, it’s on page 17 not on the evening newas. Now everybody in California will be running around like Chicken Little.
The journalists at Scientific American apparently have the same level of anxiety as Governor Moonbeam. Yesterday and today they posted articles on social media (Facebook, etc.) about the calamitous rise in sealevel resulting from the projected retreat of the Amundsen ice sheet. I dared to counter their distortions in the comments and found myself unfriended, deleted, and banned. I was reminded of that scene in “Planet of the Apes” where the elders held their ears so they would not suffer the pain of an opposing perspective.
Presumably the data on that will come out–it hasn’t so far, AFAIK. It must be pretty skimpy. Who was regularly measuring the deep-water temperatures in that area in the past?
I wonder if the ice-erosion could be due to the currents just moving faster. Who has or could have measured that?
And in the press on the other side of the Atlantic, the main headline in (Murdoch-owned) The Times, in London, is a rather surprising “Scientists in cover-up of damaging climate view”. It goes on to describe how research which cast doubt on the severity of global warming was deliberately suppressed.
I’m sure many contributors to this web-site would agree, but it’s unusual to see such a headline in a mainstream newspaper.