Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A couple days ago, I was given a copy of a most interesting interchange from 2011 between Dr. Kevin Trenberth and a layman asking him a question. The sender of the question recently passed it on to me. I’ve redacted the email addresses and the name of the person asking the question, but otherwise it is totally unaltered.
From: “Kevin Trenberth” <trenbert@XXXXX.edu>
To: “Dr XXXX” <xxx@xxx.xxx>
Sent: January XX, 2011 X:XX PM
Subject: Re: warming
Dear Kevin,
Thank you for your prompt reply. I’m 62 and now semi-retired. I’d like to bring myself up to speed on global warming, which I read is one of the great catastrophes of our time. You describe rising sea levels as being the evidence for man caused global warming. It had been my understanding that sea levels have been rising steadily for thousands of years and now at a very slow rate. I know there’s been a huge increase in man’s CO2 in the heavy industrialisation since World War 2. How has this increase in man’s CO2 effected sea levels ?
The rates have not been steady and picked up markedly in the mid 20th century and even more since 1990 or so. CO2 has been increasing since 1750 although mainly since 1850.
That was Dr. Trenberth’s entire reply to the question.
Now, I found this interchange quite amazing. Here’s somebody asking for information, and Dr. Trenberth’s response about sea levels is … well … almost fact free.
First, he says that “the rates have not been steady and picked up markedly in the mid 20th century” … there are a couple of well-cited analyses of this question. One is by Jevrejeva et al., and the other by Church and White. Here’s what Jevrejeva et al. said about the rate of change of the global sea level (gsl)
Figure 1. Jevrejeva analysis of global sea level (“gsl”, upper panel), and rate of change of global sea level (“gsl rise, lower panel). Source
As you can see, the idea that the rate of sea level rise “picked up markedly in the mid 20th century” is totally contradicted by the Jevrejeva data.
How about Church and White (C/W)? Here’s their analysis of the situation:
Figure 2. C/W analysis of rate of change of global sea level. Source
Again there is little evidence that the rise “picked up markedly in the mid 20th century”. Instead, it continued to go up and down, even as far as zero.
How about the claim that in the 1990s there has been “even more” rise? Well, there’s nothing like that in the Jevrejeva data, but there is in the C/W data. I suspect that that’s what Trenberth is referring to. Why is there such a jump in the C/W analysis?
It’s because Church and White played fast and loose. They simply spliced the satellite-based sea level data onto the tidal stations data, ignoring the fact that the satellite rise is about 50% higher than the tidal station data. So they just hoisted up the tidal data by that amount, so it would kinda sorta match to the satellite data … and then smoothed the splice with a centered filter. Bad scientists … no cookies.
So yeah, when you go past the splice the rate of rise SEEMS to go up from about 2 mm/yr to 3 mm/yr … which is what Trenberth has reported as fact. But it’s not a fact at all, it’s just a splice.
But wait, it gets worse. In fact, far from increasing as Trenberth claimed, the satellite-measured sea level rise has actually been decreasing, as shown by Cazenave et al. …
Figure 3. ORIGINAL CAPTION: GMSL [global mean sea level] rate over five-year-long moving windows. a, Temporal evolution of the GMSL rate computed over five-year-long moving windows shifted by one year (start date: 1994). Source (paywalled)
I discussed the Cazenave et al. results shown in Figure 3 in a post called Sea Water Level, Fresh Water Tilted. Now Dr. Cazenave’s study was published in 2014, so Trenberth wouldn’t have known of that in 2011. However, I noted the decrease in the satellite data back in 2010 here, so it’s been visible in the raw data for some time. Here’s my graphic from that post:
Figure 4. Variations in the sea level as measured by the TOPEX/JASON satellites.
Since he’s setting himself up to answer questions about sea level, Dr. Trenberth certainly should have known of the decrease.
Here’s my point in all of this. A variety of people, even good honest scientists like Dr. Judith Curry, have been publishing a host of posts and studies claiming that the problem with climate science has something to do with bad communication. Dozens of theories have been advanced to try to explain why Americans are totally unconvinced by climate scientists, why we consistently rank climate as the least of our problems. Why, they ask, are climate scientists unable to get their message across to the American public?
These theories are all about how scientists are not explaining things in the right way, or about how “deniers” have a different mental makeup than the faithful, or how there is a lack of clarity in what the scientists are saying, or how the framing of the message was incorrect … but in nearly every case, the issue is cast as being one of poor communications.
(Let me say in passing that given that the climate alarmists have had the full and enthusiastic backing for several decades of the mainstream media, and of the governments, and of the schools and universities, and of the leaders of various professional societies, and of the jet-setting Hollywood stars, and have been funded to the tune of millions and millions of dollars to try to get their message across, including $300 million from Al Gore, and $74 million from Tom Steyer, and have had lots of advice from expensive media and communications consultants … well, after three decades of that immense pressure, “poor communications” seems the least likely explanation for their failure. But I digress.)
However, this exchange puts the lie to all of that. There is no lack of clarity in Trenberth’s statement that
The rates have not been steady and picked up markedly in the mid 20th century and even more since 1990 or so.
There’s no communication problem there, no murkiness, no poor framing. The problem is that Trenberth is spouting the same old alarmist nonsense about “accelerating sea level rise”, a claim that is demonstrably untrue. Sea level rise hasn’t accelerated. To the contrary, it has slowed down.
I don’t know why Trenberth made those crazy claims, whether he was honestly mistaken, or he knows but doesn’t care, or he actually doesn’t know what the sea level is doing, or he is just pushing an agenda. Be clear that I make no claims about his motives, his knowledge, or his mental state. I truly don’t know why he answered the way he did.
But what I do know is that after decades of being spoon-fed bovine waste products by climate scientists, who the whole while have been confidently assuring us that it’s ice cream … the American public has wised up.
It reminds me of the joke you’ve likely heard …
A kid says to his friend, “What’s that in your hand?”
His friend says “They’re smart pills! They make you smarter. You want one?”
“Sure”, says the kid, and he eats one and makes a terrible face. “These aren’t smart pills,” the kid says, “these are sheep droppings!”
“See?” his friend says. “You’re getting smarter already!”
So yes … thanks to repeated doses of Dr. Trenberth’s Smart Pills being prescribed by far too many climate scientists, the American people are getting smarter already.
My best to all,
w.
De Costumbre: If you disagree with what someone says, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU DISAGREE WITH. That way we can all be clear about exactly what you think is incorrect.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There should not even be a question about sea level rise. We should all know exactly what it is and we should all know exactly what is was in 2001 and 2012 and 1900.
There have been 500 tide gauges operating around the world for at least 100 years and dozens more going back to 1800. They are all supposed to be managed in one big database at PMSL.
In the last 10 years, more than 100 GPS stations have been co-located with these gauges providing local subsidence/uplift rates. Since 1993, at least 6 satellites have been put in orbit to measure it.
We have put at least $400 million of society’s resources into this over time and 100s of people are working on this as a profession.
Why is there not a simple to use public database that everyone can use that tells us definitely what happened in 1955. Nope. Not even close to being available.
This is what this science is about. It is not about data and providing data and proving a point.
It is only about continually repeating the gospel of global warming as Trenberth did in this email.
Where is the frackin’ climate data we all need. It’s not there. We have to use back door methods just to get raw data for everything.
The only explanation is that they want to keep people in the dark about the facts.
Bill Illis, Great point. The people declaring a crisis seem to be the people keeping the data in the dark, if not actually editing it.
Phil Jones said he’d rather destroy the data than give it up.
People just might find out he’s been lying with the data.
PMSL was basically sidelined by the IPCC because their data wasn’t scary enough. The IPCC chose satellites because they gave a higher rate and are, coincidentally, more easily subject to ‘adjustments’.
This is a bit of a nitpick, but it’s PSMSL: http://www.psmsl.org/
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL)
Whoops – in my defense I just copied Bill Illis. 🙁
Another nitpick is that PSMSL measures sea level at the coast. Satellites measure sea level over the whole ocean area and NOT at the coast. These are definitely not the same thing yet the disingenuous IPCC continues to splice the two series together rather than showing them separately.
The sea level data is there. Willis even links to the data in this post!
I didn’t say tide gauge data had disappeared. I pointed out that the IPCC ignores it to a large extent preferring the more malleable satellite data.
“Like”, as my elderly parents type in Facebook comments when they like something! 😉
One of the main problems of climate science is that it is a case of pick you research paper.
Whenever someone finds something wrong or doubtful with The Cause, an army of foot soldiers swings into gear to put out a paper which says all is A-OK.
I’m sure there is a paper out there which says seal level rise is accelerating, another decelerating, and another that it’s pretty constant. And you can always quote a greenpeace press release if you get really desperate, like the IPCC.
Trenberth’s travesty is that he is a victim of this ‘pick your paper’ nonsense.
But we need to see the recent papers showing acceleration. I have shown a few showing the opposite.
It is pick you paper based on pick you data.
I still feel the data is suspect; just because we collect data, it does not mean we are collecting it well. Surveys that more accurately reflect election results collect data better than those that fail at predicting election results.
Right now we have a lot of different kinds of data, some of it good, some bad, some in-between. All of it is massaged, spliced and cherry picked depending on the report. Then there is the approach to the data, different methodologies can interperet the data differently with different results and still be valid. In the end what we end up with is navel gazing on climate data. Which is fine, that is also part of the scientific process but not something anyone (politician or scientist) should be making great pronouncements, with great certainty, on global catastrophe.
“Trenberth’s travesty is that he is a victim of this ‘pick your paper’ nonsense.”
Trenberth is not a victim, he is a perpetrator of a crime against humanity.
If you think that the perpetrator is the victim you must be an American journalist or a left wing loony. (or in America today, a TYPICAL leftist.)
The term is progressive.
They exist on both sides of the isle.
No. Progressive and leftist are different names for the same basic ideology changed over time. (At least in the U.S.) They are only found on the Democrat side.
You are trying to equivocate this also with Republicans somehow. No Republicans I know of can be described as either leftist or progressive (as it is used in the U.S. politically).
In fact, now that I have reviewed your post and my reply I’m wondering where you get such silly ideas, or are you just being contrary or diversionary ?
For full disclosure, I am a Democrat, so none of that “you guys” BS please.
Big government, big spenders exist on both sides of aisle. Most “progressives” are from one party. But, you are right, I guess, if one thinks about Romney-care and GW Bush passing the Medicare Prescription benefit thingy. Both parties behave the same once they get in office with just a few areas where they differ. Try getting a military base closed in a democratic district or cutting weapons funding from their district.
The ability of the climate obsessed to set aside critical thinking in favor of believing in a climate crisis is impressive. That ability is only matched by the arrogance of climate crisis promoters in offering misleading information to the public.
The trend in sea-level rise since mid-20th century appears to be flat, at best. So, if true, then Trenberth screwed up, at best.
However, it’s hard for me to see how the large majority of climatologists are anything but good, honest scientists. Even if activists and opportunists in government and media were to selectively promote the minority work of the activists and frauds in science, that, to me, would be an example of where good scientists are failing to communicate.
So, other than the angry digression, good post.
Clearly, Trenberth lied. Either that or he is an incompetent fool, and I doubt that. It’s not difficult to make out why climate “scientists” like Trenberth lie. They do it because it is in their own best interest to. They are part of an industry based on the Big Lie, that our CO2 is harming the Earth, and that we are headed for some sort of climate catastrophe unless we stop using fossil fuels. Their entire careers are based on this lie.
Additionally, using a claimed marked increase in the rate of SLR as “evidence” that we are warming is logically flawed. Clearly, the warming, if there would show in the thermometers first. And there lies the rub. They can’t show it, because it has gone AWOL for the last 18 years. So, the way Trenberth and his ilk try to get around this inconvenient truth is to say, oh, but the warming has just gone deep into the oceans (where we can’t see it), and the “sudden” increase in SLR, melting icecaps, etc. are “proof” of that. But Trenberth himself must know that this is just another lie. It is simply a last-gasp effort to save their pseudo-scientific cargo cult climate industry.
Don’t discount Trenberth being an incompetent fool. I received a PhD and I’ve worked my entire 35 year career with and for PhDs in both academia and industry. And let me tell you, incompetent fools occupy all levels of position and title.
Couple ignorance with a fanatical desire to protect one’s paycheck and you have real trouble.
Yep. Being a good political operative (in any area) and dressing nice or being nice looking or (for a man) tall, all allow people to advance when they are not all that bright. Actually, being willing to cut corners in your research and ignore contradictory evidence and tell a good story helps you be able to publish a lot.
“They are part of an industry based on the Big Lie, that our CO2 is harming the Earth, and that we are headed for some sort of climate catastrophe unless we stop using fossil fuels.”
———————————–
Just the US and now Australia, but not China until 2030 (if they want to).
DOH!
Either it’s important or it’s not.
Politicians and NGOs act like CO2 reduction is not important, so we Americans just agree with Al Gore and the rest and treat CO2 like it’s not important.
And Antarctic ice is at a record high. The only scrap of observational data that they can cling to, is the decline in Arctic ice. But should this begin to recover over the next 5 or so years, what then?
That has already started. Question is, will it continue.
The reason AGW is no longer selling to the low information voter is that after Algore removed the previously accepted graph of northern hemisphere temperature, which included the LIA and the Meideval Warm, and inserted the hockey stick, the AGW industry panicked.
They started equating weather to climate. The Weather Channel. and the rest of the popular press started citing any hurricane, heat wave, tornado, etc, to climate change.
This worked right up until it didn’t.
Yesterday morning’s temperature at my thermometer in the south of the US was 28 degrees F,much lower than normal, hence, no global warming.
Pal review and climate Gruber) gate has made the serious readers skeptical of the AGW industry.
Funny isnt it how ‘skeptics should be locked up’ is seen as reasonable debate by some and now because someone disagrees with his rather ill advised post on the issue Siberian Husky thinks that ‘This community is always complaining that the scientists don’t engage with them enough’ / don’t take them seriously.’ and then goes on to say ‘loads of climate scientists will banging down your door to engage with you’. Really and you wonder why noone wants to engage with you!!! Really……Really! Theres your answer mate – when the faith is criticised the response gets nasty.
Trenbreths reply to the request may have taken up his time but the point is – why then be so dismissive and economical with the truth. There is an assumption by the CAGW believers that any questioning is aggressive and devious in intent and is not to be considered as relevant. They are convincing noone outside their own peer group and therefore argument is pointless as skepticism is seen as criminal.
The problem they have is they convinced a lot of people in the 90s (myself included) that there was something going seriously wrong with the climate. Unfortunately since the millennium there has been no warming trend to back it up when the predicted trend was truly frightening. Until there is som considerably more convincing decadal trends in their alarmist direction they are convincing fewer and fewer people that this is the thing they should be most concerned about. Lack of resources, overpopulation, contamination and pollution – those are far more pressing and the emphasis is on ever more expensive ‘proofs’ of Global warning!!!
IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY!!!!!!!…… rant over
Global warming worse that the crazy Muslims…What???
mikerestin,
Are you quoting someone here ? What is the point of :
[“Global warming worse that the crazy Muslims…What???”]
Do you have a concern or a question ?, a point ?, seizure ? Does it mean something ? Misplaced tweet ?
Trenberth sounds like a politician who will not concede the ideology that CO2 is the cause of all our problems.
Husky man. The problem is that Willis probably posts far too serious work for you to understand.Most of his posts are data based on peer reviewed articles as far as I can gather….
[Willis paraphrasing Curry]
Actually, I believe that the IPCC climate science elves (Trenberth being a Chief Elf) have done an excellent job in communicating their CAGW Hypothesis to the world.
Excellent because they have succeeded in convincing a lot of folks that CAGW is real, without having any compelling proof of the CAGW Hypothesis, that modern ‘climate disasters’ can be explained as “Climate Change” (formerly known as “Global Warming”), in turn caused by man-made CO2.
Their ‘proofs’ are always buried in the noise of “climate variability” and hand-waving. Trenberth knows this because he is considered one of the world’s best experts on “climate variability”:
There is a well-known saying that “If you believe that elves make the rain, every time it rains you will see proof of elves.”
So Trenberth and his fellow climate elves have been teaching us for decades (again, without compelling proof) that manmade CO2 causes catastrophes. The effect of this teaching has been that all climate disasters now automatically seem like “proof” of CAGW, for those who never question what the elves say. So when weather events are labeled “extreme” the reporters don’t have to say “due to man-made CO2”. That response is induced ‘automagically’ in our skulls, thanks to the communication skills of the climate elves.
That is why I believe that Trenberth et al. have been “communicating” (propagandizing) very well. So please don’t try to pass it off as bumbling or misspeaking (Curry’s ‘bad communication). It’s very intentional.
To put the actual rise of sea levels in the perspective of history, take a look at mean sea levels since the last Ice Age. When the glaciers melted the seas rose relatively quickly 400 feet or so, then the rising slowed down, but still rising very slowly to this day.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
You can clearly see that the rising is not completely uniform, depends on location, and of course is also subject to random (and maybe some biased) errors of observation and natural variance.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Sea_Level.png
In modern times the trend seems to have increased during the past century, perhaps to some new ‘modern’ aegus, but clearly not locked to global warming (which has paused for the past decade or so)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_(US_EPA).png
So that’s MSL for us skeptics. All scientists must be skeptical everything, including our own cherished theories.
Look at the scales of the two curves you present. They are 2-3 orders of magnitude different on the vertical, and the entire time stretch in the latter isn’t the width of a single pixel in the former. The former represents averages over time intervals at least a century or two long, and is reconstructed from data taken at specific geographic sites (as indicated) and cannot account for many, many phenomena (like post-glacial uplift or subsidence) that the latter now tries to account for.
The two simply cannot be compared, in other words. The recent SLR isn’t large enough to register on the former curve as the width of a pixel up and over, indistinguishable from a straight line.
rgb
Yes, I agree that the entirety of SLR metrics (and data noise) cannot be adequately measured and interpreted in one scale.
That’s exactly why I “zoomed in”, with decreasing scale, to show what alarms the climate elves on the small scale, compared to a the largest scale, where the ‘alarming’ trend seems to be flat.
So, having said that, the climate trolls will now scream “Skeptics don’t believe the oceans are rising!”. Mark my words.
🙂
A) Your error bars in the early part are wide enough that the difference in slope of the earlier part with the latter part is not conclusive.
B) Even if you could attribute the rise to rising temperatures, how do you attribute it to CO2? It’s all cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.
The trend for the last 8 thousand years seems to be constant. Eyeballing the slope, looks like 1/2 mm per year:
http://i62.tinypic.com/24ez1oh.png
So I would use that slope as a lower bound on the modern trend estimate.
I agree, there is a some uncertainty on the recent measurements, but likely indicate a higher recent trend. Maybe 1mm or so per year. Still not as alarming as the climate change elves would like, though.
From your second graph, it sure looks like SLR is accelerating to me. Apparently many people on this blog don’t understand the difference between climate variability and climate change — climate change is the long-term (multiple decades) trend that underlies interannual and interdecadal climate variability. Sea levels aggregate these changes over periods of 20-40 years. It doesn’t suffice to just say “sea levels have been rising for thousands of years.” Explain why the rate of rise has increased since the mid-1800s, when humans started affecting the climate.
Please clarify which graph you think shows accelerating sea level rise?
I can see linear graphs that show rising sea levels but where is the one with increasing gradient?
And if you can calculate the gradients, old and new with error bars, then you would be able to prove it.
But I’ll take an eyeball if you can find a rising slope.
… and please Barry, pick a date. The IPCC want me to believe that humans have been “affecting the climate” since 1950, now you want to tell me that their statement is actually conservative by 100 years and that we humans , in fact, been “affecting the climate” with our “carbon pollution” since the mid 1800’s ?
…and you want to be taken seriously ?
How about this : (using your “logic”) I posit to you that humans, in fact accelerated us out of the last ice age by burning all those wood fires as our population exploded. The rate of SLR during that period certainly correlates with this hypothesis according to your last desperate sentence. Does it not ? And makes it just as likely using your, “Explain why the rate of rise has increased since the mid-1800s, when humans started affecting the climate.”, type [illogical] conclusion. ie. PPPFFFFFFFTTT, as an appropriate logical substitute.
“Now, I found this interchange quite amazing. Here’s somebody asking for information, and Dr. Trenberth’s response about sea levels is … well … almost fact free.”
That reminded me of a Richard Feynman quote. David L. Goodstein, a fellow Cal Tech faculty member, included it in the book, “Feynman’s Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun”,. In the introduction, Goodstein tells the story:
,’Fenman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, “Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.” Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But he came back a few days later to say, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don’t really understand it.” ‘
So, using the “Feynman Rule”, Trenberth really doesn’t understand why factual sea level rise hasn’t matched CAGW sea level l rise
The thing I like the most about your fine story is that a great thinker admitted he couldn’t do something. He showed some humility which I have observed exists in great scientists. Thanks for sharing. Each time I read something about Feynman, it restores my faith in science.
Mr Husky’s link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier , is well worth reading, it confounds his position completely. BruceC has already evinced bemusement at, “Bruce”(lol), It is indicative of Mr Husky’s Hysterical frame of mind,
To be dismissive of anecdotal evidence, similar to Patrick I have lived in Portsmouth UK for the past 51 years, a port that has been in existence at least since the 4th century AD, and despite isostatic depression continuing from the end of the last glacial maximum, has shown minimal sea level rise, He uses anecdotal evidence from Kirabati, a pacific atoll that is far more greatly affected by: tectonic movement; erosion; and mantle Hotspots.
I will not give a lesson in volcanology explaining pacific island creation and subsequent atoll formation, “Google it”, any 10 year old can grasp the concepts.
The adage “Ignorance is bliss” appears to have been fully embraced by Mr Husky, I would add that stupidity is a by-product of willful ignorance, and ” a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” to have been fully proven by his comments.
The above could be levelled at the majority of the AGW scaremongers.
I apologise to any readers of my comment that although it may be grammatically correct, it is somewhat aphoristic.
Thanks to Willis and some of the commenters for very useful graphics.
The question about publicizing Trenberth’s private email is a serious one, but a related question I have is whether his email differs much from his writings and public statements. I’m not enough of a Trenberth aficionado to know.
In any case Trenberth gives a concise general description of sea level over a century and a half, and Willis has produced leading academic studies whose results are in conflict with Trenberth’s statement. There is no way to get around that.
If you write me a letter, is the letter mine or yours?
I say, if you write me and explicitly ask me not to publish it, I will respect that, but in the absence of any such request, it is my call to make.
+1
The satellites are 120 miles or so above the sea. There are these things called “waves.” The satellites do not produce valid data. They actually tried to calibrate the satellites by using tide gauges. TOPEX, GRACE, baloney…
AND one year never has the same wave pattern, nor swell pattern, as the next.
Storms always fiffer in location and in time in relation to the atmosp[heric bulge.
There is plate tectonic movements, and sometimes undersea earthquakes can cause significant displacement of the sea bed, and even move land masses. See the Wikipedia article on the 11th March 2011 Japanes Earthquake/Tsunami http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
“The earthquake moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 2.4 m (8 ft) east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in),
The margin of error of a satellite measurement to a fixed point on land, is greater than the claimed sea level rise.” ….
“Portions of northeastern Japan shifted by as much as 2.4 m (7.9 ft) closer to North America,[19][20] making some sections of Japan’s landmass wider than before…”…
.”On 6 April the Japanese coast guard said that the quake shifted the seabed near the epicenter 24 meters (79 ft) and elevated the seabed off the coast of Miyagi prefecture by 3 meters.[68] A report by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, published in Science on 2 December 2011, concluded that the seabed in the area between the epicenter and the Japan Trench moved 50 meters east-southeast and rose about 7 meters as a result of the quake. The report also stated that the quake had caused several major landslides on the seabed in the affected area.”….
“The tsunami broke icebergs off the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica, 13,000 kilometres (8,100 mi) away. The main iceberg measured 9.5 by 6.5 kilometres (5.9 mi × 4.0 mi) (approximately the area of Manhattan Island) and about 80 metres (260 ft) thick. A total of 125 square kilometres (48 sq mi; 31,000 acres) of ice broke away”
And of the Boxing Day 2004 Indonesian Earthquake/Tsunami, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami
“The megathrust earthquake was unusually large in geographical and geological extent. An estimated 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) of fault surface slipped (or ruptured) about 15 metres (50 ft) along the subduction zone where the Indian Plate slides (or subducts) under the overriding Burma Plate. The slip did not happen instantaneously but took place in two phases over a period of several minutes”:
I have seen some fantastic undersea photographs of ridges which have risen or fallen of these events. There are vertical cliff walls rising 50 or more feet high extending for hundreds and hundreds (possibly up to a thousand) miles.
How is all this land displacement calculated in the official assessment of sea level rises? I accept that the above are extreme examples, but each year such activity is going on but on a smaller scale. When one is talking of millimetre rises. all of this becomes important.
As usual, the scientists are not honest/accurate with the margin of error in their data sets.
The claim that we can measure sea level rises to the claimed accuracy is fancifull to say the least.
Thermalization of the energy in absorbed photons is not accounted for in the Kiel & Trenberth charts. The physics of thermalization is part of the explaination of why CO2 change has no significant effect on climate.
Right. This discussion is not honorable. Trenberth is no devil but an honorable person.
I agree with you that your discussion with Socrates is not honorable.
Willis, I’d be careful stating as fact that this was in fact a verbatim response from Trenberth. Are you basing that completely on your assessment of the trustworthiness of your source? If so I’d characterize it as a claimed or reported response from him.
Just sayin.
Obviously Trenberth must see the finger-nail-width rise in sea levels as proof of CAGW. He just thought it would come from the the Mann-Made Heat making the Arctic ice free by now. But now he knows it is proof that the “missing heat” is hiding in the oceans. As water heats, it expands. As the oceans expand, the sea level rises, hence proof of Mann-Made-Something-Or-Other!
(Now where’d I put that sarc tag….)
Siberian Husky,
Your mendacious attempt to represent Trenberth’s deceitful retort as a gracious gift of his time is petulant.
You have no idea what Trenberth committed to the reply or what his attitude was.
Just as you have no idea how historic sea level rise is inconsistent with AGW or how nothing about sea level validates anything about AGW.
Your behavior is what AGW is limited to and it ain’t science.
Are you sure, Willis that you understand what “rate of change” means? As long as it is positive the SL doesn’t decrease.
Measurements and a reference.
Can you expand on your challenge to Willis? He does request precise quotes when people question what he says.
It’ll save time if you can clarify your question.
Good lord. Are you sure you want to play dumb word games? I assure you, Willis correctly referred to the rate of change in sea level rise. The rate of change in a rate of change, not just rate of change of sea level.
For example, his text under figure 1:
You must not read WUWT regularly. Just about ever time Willis posts some genius gives this game a try and gets stomped. It gets old, really.
Not very self aware are you Mr. Sniper. The point of the post if you had read it, was to offer an explanation as to why the public is not buying into CAGW as expected. Hint – it’s because they lie and exaggerate, and people don’t like being lied to
=1
A point that seems to be being ignored; Sure, our best guess is that CO2 probably increased some between 1750 and 1850. Maybe 11, 12 ppm over those hundred years? That’s not noise, but as far as climate effects it might as well be, obviously.
Good post Willis. Your point that it not a communications problem, it is a false message problem, is well taken. Essay Pseudo Precision in Blowing Smoke tackles sea level rise. Even the Caveneze paper is junk science, bad statistics supposedly indicating something physically impossible, additional rainfall retention in the AmZon and Congo basins. The fact is that the annual instrument drift spec of Jason 2 is plus minus 1mm. As RgB points out about, it all within the error bars
We have to understand Trenberth is not actually talking about the oceans that exist in reality. He is talking about the ocean and sea level that exist on his computer programmed planet earth. On his model planet earth by 2014 there is no pause, oceans have rose to flood coastal cities, and there is no longer any ice at the North Pole. And all the polar bears are dead.
Why stop in 2010? The last available sea level data from satellite show no slowdown.
See: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
The rate is still 3.2 mm/year as it has been in all the satellite record from 1992.
Church and White 2011 reports 2.8 +/- 0.8 mm/year from gauges and 3.2 mm/year from satellite.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10712-011-9119-1
/Jan
Why stop at Church and White 2011?
Thank you Jimbo
I did not stop at Church and White 2011. The first link show data up to July 2014. One can see a dip in 2012, but that has been catched up later. Your paywalled link seems to stop in 2012 and has therefore not taken in account the catching up after 2012.
I mentioned Church and White because they have an overlapping time series based on gauges and their measured rate is whidthin the error level of the satellite data.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen,
The Univ of Colorado says they constantly revise their estimates as new data, corrections and models arrive. We will have to wait and see over the next few years. 3 or 4 years is noisy and prone to adjustments. See above. Does it not surprise you there has been NO acceleration in the rate of sea level rise after
– the hottest decade on the record
– glaciers melting left right and centre
– missing heat, thermal expansion and so on…….?
I found this at the Univ. of Colorado which further complicates things. Sea level rise is a complicated beast to pin down. I prefer longer time spans to show clearer signals. The media likes headlines so this to and fro will not end between sceptics and warmists.