Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I had to go to town yesterday, and so I was glad it was Friday, because it’s Science Friday on the local Public Broadcasting System station and I can listen on my truck radio. In general I enjoy Science Friday, because the host, Ira Flatow, has interesting people on the show and he usually asks interesting questions … except when it’s about climate change. In that case his scientific training goes out the window, and he merely parrots the alarmist line.
In any case I was listening to Science Friday yesterday, and Ira referred to some recent pictures of flooding in Miami, Florida, as evidence that climate change is real and is already affecting Florida. It was the radio so no pictures, but he was referring to photos like this that have been in the news …
He was talking with a young woman, a Chicana climate activist. He and the activist agreed that this was clear evidence of anthropogenic climate change. In response to his question, she said that she was definitely using the Miami flooding to drive home the message that people should be very afraid of human-caused climate change, and that we’re already seeing the effects. I was depressed thinking of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that such false claims would cause.
I fear that both of them have been taken in by what I call a “scientific urban legend”. It’s easy enough to do. It happened to me a lot a while back … not so much lately, my urban legend detector works pretty well these days.
In this case, the urban legend is the false claim that warming over the last century has accelerated the rate of sea level rise. There is no sign of this claimed acceleration.
From the beginning of the climate alarmism in the 1980s, the long-predicted acceleration in the rate of sea level rise has been … well … the kindest description might be “late to the party”, because the predicted acceleration still hasn’t arrived. James Hansen famously predicted back in 1988 that in forty years the West Side Highway in New York City would be underwater. From the 1988 levels, to swamp the West Side Highway would require about a 3 metre (10 foot) sea level rise.
We’re now 27 years into his prediction, two-thirds of the way there, and instead of two-thirds of three metres of sea level rise, the sea level rise in NYC since his prediction has been … wait for it …
Three inches. 7.5 cm.
And from this point to make his prediction come true, we’d need ~ 9.9 feet of sea level rise in 13 years … that’s three quarters of a foot (225 mm) each and every year for the next thirteen years. Never happen. His prediction, like the overwhelming majority of climate alarmist predictions, is total nonsense. Here’s the data, from the PSMSL.
Note the lack of any evidence of acceleration in the New York record … but we were talking Florida, not New York. Unfortunately, the Miami record is short, truncated, and intermittent. There are records from the thirties to the fifties, then a five-year gap, then the record stops abruptly in the eighties, with the last few years missing data. As a result, it’s useless for looking at acceleration of sea level rise. However, there are a couple of long-term stations in the vicinity. Here are the two longest continuous tide station records in Florida:
Key West Note the lack of any acceleration. Here are the 50-year trends for Key West, with the trend values located at the center of the 50-year interval.
Now, look at the error bars (vertical “whiskers” with horizontal lines top/bottom). If the error bars of two trends overlap, the difference between them is NOT statistically significant. And in this record, every single error bar overlaps every other single error bar … meaning there is NOT any acceleration of sea level rise over the period 1915-2015.
Next, the corresponding graphs for Pensacola, Florida, only slightly shorter:
Again we see the same thing. All of the error bars overlap. No acceleration.
Now, in case you mistakenly think this lack of acceleration of sea level rise is unique to Florida or New York, let me point you to and quote from an article in the Journal of Coastal Research. The authors sum up their study as follows (emphasis mine):
Conclusion:
Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y2 accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010). Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74uC.
It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.
Note that the “sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010)” are the standard alarmist predictions of sea level rise. The study says that not only is there no acceleration in the record, sea level rise has possibly slowed very slightly over the last eighty years … go figure.
So like I said, this is an opportunity for Dr. Flatow (he has a couple of honorary PhDs …) to abjure his mistaken ways. I’m posting this here, and I’m also sending a copy to him, as well as to other PBS addresses … we’ll see how it plays out. I’d be most happy if he were to post a reply here stating something like ‘If the data changes I change my mind … what do you do?’, but that may be too much to hope for.
All the best,
w.
AS USUAL: If you disagree with someone, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU OBJECT TO. This lets everyone know both who and what you find incorrect.
TIDAL DATA: PSMSL
FLORIDA DATA: NOAA Tides and Currents
Sometimes, I’ll also tune in to NPR broadcasts; gives me an excuse to yell at the radio.
Instead of calling NPR a bunch of lying propagandists, I just think of them as Government Radio.
If you Google thi title
“Why has an acceleration of sea level rise not been observed during the satellite era?”
You will find a presentation from 2010 and produced by Dr. R.S. Nerem of Colorado Universiy’s Sea Level Reasearch Group. That presentation although five tears old now remains correct that acceleration in the rate of sea level rise since satellite records began is negative.
CU’s website is easily found and contains a link to the data. It is a simple matter to copy out the text file and employ Microsoft Excel to calculate and verify that the rate of sea level rise since 1992 has indeed exhibited negative acceleration.
Willis your Jimmy Hansen is a wimp. OZ’s ABC science expert (?) once told Andrew Bolt that 100 metres SLR was possible in 100 years. He has a lot of catching up to do since then of course. Fair dinkum where do they find these drongoes?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/100_metres_williams_is_already_four_metres_down_in_four_years
Hi Willis.
You might like to know you have been cited in this paper
http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_RC_2015_08_24_EN.pdf
Great paper! I haven’t read it all but the summary was brilliant.
In the CO2 section
Lets say the Ocean is rising at Miami and it is resulting in flooding. What proof has anyone presented that this is a result of the activities of our civilization? And, particularly, is there any new evidence to finally prove the often claimed but never proved connection between the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and the minor (if any) increase in atmospheric temperatures and any link of all this to any increase in sea levels. Since there is no significant melting of Antarctic polar ice, what meaningful sea level rise are we talking about? The compaction and resulting sinking of land masses is a more likely reason behind more coastal flooding than a rise in ocean levels. I am absolutely frustrated by the media’s constant jump from any reported climate change event to blaming it of our civilizations use of fossil fuels and the resulting minor increase in carbon dioxide.
As usual I learn a lot from the posts of WUWT and the meaningful flood of comments. Thanks to all.
+100…
I wish that Ira Flatow would make some kind of comment on this thread, as I’m sure he has seen it. Pro or con – the debate is not “settled science”: (Hello Ira Flatow, are you out there somewhere???).
We have seen credible evidence that much of the ongoing sea level rise may be due to such factors as the draining of the Caspian Sea, drawdown of groundwater tables the world over, and whatever mountain glacier melt is ongoing…in addition to any warming of the oceans…which must include the deep ocean/abyssal plains waters…which are only slightly above freezing all even in tropical regions.
A relatively small pond will cool sufficiently in winter to remain very cold at the bottom right through summer, due to thermal stratification and the colder dense water being trapped down there. Such a pond will continue to warm up all summer long.
I would hazard a guess that the deep oceans are likewise and in similar fashion still warming up from the cool-off they got not just during the LIA, but even still from during the tens of thousands of years long Pleistocene glacial epoch. And hence expanding slightly.
The thing that calls itself ‘Ira Flatow’ is lost in space.
Ha ha
Willis are the tides measured for mean or the high, high tide and low, low tide?
is there any relation between the high, high tide and low, low tide? could some increase or decrease actually just be the noise level in measurement?
They will tout a heavy rainstorm as clear evidence of AGW yet call 18+ years of a plateaued average global temperature cherry-picking. The only reason to take them seriously is they fuel political action — to our detriment.
Yup. I live (mostly) directly on the ocean in South Florida, and have no intention of selling soon.
Also, see essay PseudoPrecision in my most recent ebook for further info on this topic. Willis has it nailed.
Ira Flatow has no incentive to respond here. Some one a few days ago on these boards pointed out that the other side is winning the argument in all areas.
He doesn’t have and he’s not going to.
Thanks, Steve. Let me invite you to take a bit larger view, as follows.
Ira Flatow may or may not respond here. I would hope he would. In general I try to not hinder people with my thoughts regarding their possible future actions.
However, in a larger sense it doesn’t really matter. I’ve offered him a chance to take the honorable path by abjuring his credulous ways. He may do so without ever answering here or anywhere.
But my main intention has been met. He’s been put on notice that his claims are being tested rather than simply believed, and that the testing is public. Scientists don’t like being wrong, just like anyone. As a result I suspect that no matter what he does, the next time Miami is flooded he will remember what happened the last time he played the Miami card …
w.
PS—My general rule is that if the other side in a debate finds it necessary to declare vehemently that they are “winning the argument in all areas” … well, I’m sure you can figure out the rest of the rule.
He’s still looking for the data (models) that will support his views…then he will comment…
What is scary is that so many people believe him without actually checking / testing !!! It truly has become a religion (or cult )…
Please keep us informed with your great work Willis ..Thanx
Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it.
If you want to see some exaggeration re sea level rising, check out this report.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/effectsofsealevelriseforchristchurchcity.pdf
It would be laughable except the City Council of my city, Christchurch NZ, is using it to base “mitigations” for the next 100 years.
I kid you not, 18,000 properties are going to be inundated or otherwise affected within 100 years by a cool 1 metre of sea level rise.
With a council caveat on each properties title, there are doubts whether these properties will be insurable, a definite fear that these properties will become immediately worthless, and an assurance from the council that alterations or improvements to these properties will require what is known here as a “Resource Consent” . This means presumably that if you can show that your property can survive the expected inundations and you can convince the council that your property will remain functional etc you may be able to carry out some improvements. Only catch is the cost of the paper work. I spent over NZ$200,000 on a resource consent once and it still was refused.
This is an example of what the climate change scam can do to you!
If anyone wants to study this paper and make comments to me, please leave a message at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Cheers
Roger
Maybe we should introduce Ira Flatow to (the main data SLR collector) – Nils-Axel Mörner…
Thanks, Roger. Near as I can tell there are two long-term records in New Zealand, at Wellington (1945 – present) and Christchurch (1924-1988). Christchurch has a trend of 272 mm/century, with a 95%CI of 250 – 294 inches. Wellington has a trend of 257 mm/century with a 95%CI of 239 to 274 mm/century. Neither one shows any perceptible acceleration.
Given the lack of any significant historical acceleration despite a century of warming, the most probable future prediction is a quarter of a metre by 2115. I could see justification for doubling that to give a margin of safety, but only for critical structures. If someone on the beach wants to build 200mm up from the high tide mark, surely Darwin will take care of that.
The rest is just engineers doing a CYA thing.
w.
The irony is that the legislation that covers these assessments is quite sensible and says two things: the assessment has got to be based on the likely effects of climate change, and no CYA in the assessment (that comes later in the management phase but only if the assessment shows the effects are uncertain, unknown, or little understood, but potentially significantly adverse – a test unlikely to be passed in the case of coastal processes even on 100 year time frames because it is a slow progressive process).
The local engineers who did the assessment claimed RCP8.5 was “likely” (improperly invoking the CYA card) and made CYA assumptions throughout a model fitting exercise that double counted uncertainty and lacked empirical validation for critical elements.
In crude terms they managed to turn a coast line that on 100 year time frames is accretiing as fast as RCP6.0 is going up, into one that’s lapping all over the beach properties.
The general problem is that those that ply their trade as environmental consultants (in this case a firm called Tonkin and Taylor) don’t know much about risk management on long-term time frames, and don’t understand that risk is driven by uncertainty and therefore best estimates of the uncertainty is what is required of them (not some made up numbers based on CYA).
They will learn the hard way through the courts that if they are concerned about CYA their duty of care lies in an accurate assessment of the uncertainty, end of story, because there is as much cost to the community of over-egging the assessment as there is to underestimating it.
Roger:
I would think the City Council would be more concerned about the land moving again (as it did in the 2011 earthquake). Up to 40 centimeters in a few minutes is rather more dramatic than sea level’s slow rebound from the last glaciation.
http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Our-Science/Natural-Hazards/Recent-Events/Canterbury-quake/Hidden-fault
The journal Nature published this graph of sea level rise:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/carousel/nclimate2159-f1.jpg
The raw data is on the left bar graph. The adjusted “data” is the bar graph on the right.
University of Colorado shows that sea levels are not unusual. They certainly aren’t accelerating:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2014_rel4/sl_mei.png
In fact, the long term trend shows deceleration:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Sea_Level_Holgate.jpg
Next, decadal sea level changes:
dbstealey
As is very plain from your first graph, sea level measured by satellites closely follows ENSO because all the satellites measure is the giant pile of warm water in the Pacific blown westwards by the trade winds. Satellite altimetry is fraught with difficulties and the satellites do not measure what people are interested in which is relative sea level (sea level plus or minus vertical land movement) where they live. Relative sea level is easily and accurately measured by local tide gages.
Billy Liar,
I have no idea how that post ended up there. I was trying to reply to one of Simon’s comments, way upthread.
I agree that tide gauges provide the best SL data. It requires, at the least, maybe a couple hundred around the planet; more would be better. A thousand would be easy to do, and inexpensive compared with the AGW scare, costing $billions per year.
Some land is rising, some is subsiding, but with enough tide gauges average SL change would be pretty easy to determine accurately.
Won’t happen, though. The ones doling out the grants don’t want the public to see data like that.
Does anyone know why Sydney sea level rise is so much less? Fort Denison is in the middle of Sydney harbour, built on solid bedrock sandstone.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Rq7YE35Vcg/VDRH7LaTPrI/AAAAAAAAQYs/kKzpDr-FboE/s1600/680-140.png
Land is rising?
w.
Plausible. The Warragamba Dam was built about 65 km SW of Sydney CBD. It holds 2027 gigalitres of water when full. This is rather heavy! Completed 1960 and enlarged 2009. All this weight of water has undoubtedly depressed the earth in its vicinity, which means that areas surrounding the dam – likely out to 65 km or more, could be rising.
Incidentally, between 1998 and 2007 the catchment had very low rain fall and capacity was reduced to 32.5%. The NSW government then started the building of a desalination plant – CAGW alarmists said that the drought would continue!! It then started raining, and on March 2012 the dam overflowed. The desal plant operated for the first 2 years and in 2012 was shut down. Believed not to have operated since except for maintenance and testing purposes – to be started if dam levels reach 70% and then continued in operation till levels reach 80%. It uses reverse osmosis, powered by the Bungendore “Capital Wind Farm”. A reasonably sane use for the wind farm as the desal plant is not worried if the wind blows or not, it can take whatever power is being produced.
Sydney is actually sinking at -0.89 mms/year.
http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=2405
“Land is rising?”
No, Willis, I have heard that land is actually subsiding by almost the same amount from recent measurements which means nothing happening but in Moreton Bay highest astronomical tides are lower today than they were 69 years ago by around 10 inches.
Australia is tectonically rather stable and Sydney might more closely reflect what’s actually happening with sea level compared with the measuring the middle of the ocean from 50 miles up in space where contemporaneous atmospheric pressure measurements for the inverse barometer correction are hard to come by (ie they need to be modelled and 1 hPa error in the model = 10 mm error in sea level).
The way the climate scam works in Florida is fairly transparent to the locals.
In 1980, as the town grew, South Beach built Alton Road, on the prosperous edge of town.
Alton Road was built to be a few inches UNDER sea level at king tide, and to be used at all other 99% of the times.
Then the climate scam started, and twice a year or so, at very high tide, like a strange procession of fireflies on the Discovery Channel,
at very high tide, “climate action” politicians, local, state and national, shoeless, gather by a lectern on inundated Alton Road, with full blast TV coverage, to show the ravaging effects of climate change.
Look at the calamitous pictures here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/11/miami-drowning-climate-change-deniers-sea-levels-rising
“The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers” they say.
See, otherwise Alton Road would raise itself out of the seas and walk, or the seas would retreat. If you are credulous enough and know that you “got the science.”
People on Alton Street know the scam better, and elect “climate change deniers”.
The local gauge shows that sea levels had risen by the same 3mm/year ever since measured.
The latest political pilgrimage to Alton Road ended in a farce, since cameras, and reporters arrived for the strange pilgrimage. And politicians, with powerful speeches blasting climate deniers.
But there was no flood, as the city had installed powerful drainage.
One can check on page 15 of the recent technical document
“Designing for High Tidal Tailwater”
http://tinyurl.com/ogjefu8
a photograph of the temporary, soon to be made permanent, pumps on Alton Road in South Beach dated October 2014, which took care of the high tide that month.
That made such a laughingstock of all the climate alarmist politicians and media gathered to show cast that Miami is swallowed by global warming,
made such fools of the climate scare scam promoters that ALL of them lost in the November 2014 elections all offices, starting with the governor, a few weeks later.
Even though Jeb Bush was not running, this showed to him and to Marco Rubio that being a climate apocalyptic is a losing proposition, these days.
That is what I referred to about Alton Road as a medieval religious climate pilgrimage site.
PS Notice also on page 6 the historic sea level rise, the one measured so far, of 0.5 ft/century, after half a century of massive emissions,
And the TEN TIMES BIGGER sea level rise which, in the view of idiotic climatologists, would start, like, next Tuesday when the laws of physics change.
PPS I spent last summer near the old port in Marseille, where secular city mayors, around 1880, forbade the religious pilgrimages to Notre-Dame de la Garde, the last sight of those who sailed from Marseille around the world.
http://www.notredamedelagarde.com/?lang=en
The US is a free country, and climate pilgrimages are allowed.
At one’s peril.
adrian….excellent post!….you are 100% correct
Willis,
My personal position on the subject of sea level change globally is that it is profoundly unscientific to use mm per year measures for a dynamic ocean, when we know almost nothing about the dynamics of the deeper 50 % of the ocean.
It is not for me to show the rate of change of anything in the deeper 50%
It is up to the proponents of measurements of sea level change to show if there is, or is not, a quantitative change in the deeper 50%.
It should be mentioned that global warming may increase the severity of flooding in two ways;
One is the increase in sea level which is discussed here, but the other is more heavy rain.
As most people know, tropical rain is often more intense than the rain in colder areas. The reason for this is that warm air can carry more water than cold air.
The water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by about 7% for every 1 °C rise in temperature.
Over the last century we have seen an increase of approximately 0.75 °C in average global temperatures. If some of this warming is caused by an increased level of greenhouse gases due to human emissions, then some of the heavy rain is also caused by human emissions.
/Jan
Then repeat the exercise conducted by Willis Eschenbach, above.
But, this time by looking at rainfall total averages.
You will find, similarly, that when you look at graphs of global rainfall averages you will find NO TREND.
Here in the UK we are constantly being told that we face heavier rainfall, induced by global warming.
The records disagree.
Not only is there no acceleration of rate of increase of rainfall – THERE IS NO INCREASE AT ALL.
This was discussed here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/09/uk-rainfall-2012-the-report-the-met-office-should-have-produced/
Interesting data frog, but the total averages of rainfall does not tell so much about the risk of flooding.
Flooding is caused by extreme precipitation events, not by averages.
The Epa data indicate an increase for the US:
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/heavy-precip.html
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 12:21 am
Thanks, Jan, but “EPA data” says no such thing, because the EPA doesn’t collect such data. They reference their graph to the NOAA Climate Extremes Index, but as far as I can see, that site doesn’t contain that information. Instead, it’s an index that for some foolish reason combines the following:
Perhaps you can give us a link to the underlying data, since “EPA data” about weather is an oxymoron and their link doesn’t work.
w.
PS—Anyone who believes in or cites the EPA is simply not paying attention. They are one of the most science-free of all US government departments.
Do you seriously believe everything the EPA puts out? Someone needs to deconstruct that NOAA graph which is presented with no reference to the data upon which it is based. I’m sKeptical..
Jan, since you have not provided a single bit of actual data to back up your claim that “global warming may increase the severity of flooding”, you’re just waving your hands and trying to impress people.
Instead of just spinning empty theories, you might actually look at some data … like this study that shows no increase in extreme precipitation in the UK since 1931. Or this discussion of the reason that US rainfall records are discontinuous and show an incorrect increase. Or this study which says:
“The Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report (Trenberth et al., 2007), in the words of the authors, “indicates that the frequency of heavy precipitation events will very likely increase in China.”…Seeking to learn how this “indication” may or may not have developed throughout South China over the period 1961-2007, Gemmer et al. focused their attention on one of China’s largest river basins: the Zhujiang (Pearl River) basin…they accomplished by applying nonparametric trend tests to daily precipitation data from 192 weather stations…they write that “less than 9% of all stations in the Zhujiang River basin show significant trends in annual extreme precipitation events…noting also that “no spatial pattern can be detected for the stations with significant trends.”…”we can therefore conclude that no distinct regions in the Zhujiang River basin have experienced trends for annual indices.”” [Gemmer, Marco, Thomas Fischer, Tong Jiang, Buda Su, Lü Liu Liu, 2011: Journal of Climate]
I must say, Jan, I’ve had it up to here with your style of “global warming MAY increase the severity of __________ (insert favorite feared disaster here)” alarmism. Come back when you have some real data to discuss. Your fears are of no interest to me.
w.
Ha, ha, good observation, I am afraid that’s how I am, and that’s my style.
Thanks for the comment however; I will see if I am able to be more specific, I’ll honestly do my best.
You see, the problem is that the middle way is hard to defend and that is why the climate discussions are so polarized. We either hear that we stand before an apocalypse because of runaway effects if we don’t act immediately, or that the human emissions have no negative effects at all, ever; only huge positive ones which we allegedly know for certain.
I think the truth is somewhere between there and that there are some great uncertainties.
However we can also give some quite good predictions based on well established scientific facts. One of those facts is that warm air can carry more water than cold air. We can therefore expect more heavy rainfall in a warmer world and this will case more flooding.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 12:59 am
Ha, ha, still no data … ha, ha, that’s how he is, and that’s his style.
Further to my comments about the EPA, further investigations shows that they have reported TWICE the area affected when they say:
No, it doesn’t … it shows twice the percentage of the land area, but a 100% error is to be expected of the EPA.
Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t explain how they calculate the percentage of the land area affected when the number of stations is generally increasing over the period of record. A much more significant number would be the percentage of STATIONS showing increased 1-day rainfall events … but then that might not follow the party line.
w.
I really had a good humored laugh at you comment of my style Willy because I thought it was a good observation. I did not mean to impolitely laugh at you.
You may be right that the Epa has a weak fundament for the data shown on their website.
I see that IPPC’s AR5 report also say that there is low confidence in the trends in flooding on a global scale:
AR5 WG1 page 2-57
That means that my foundation for warning of more flooding solely rely on the fact that the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases with increased temperature. This should give more intense rain.
However, I have not found any reliable observational support so far.
/Jan
More fun. Jan, you didn’t come up with the data, so I researched it myself.
The extreme 1-day precip index results are here, under the filenames like dk-step4.01-01.results for January, dk-step4.02-02.results for February, and the like. There is also the data the EPA used for the index, which is dk-step4.01-12.results, ostensibly a January to December average.
Here’s the funny part … the average of the individual months of January to December looks nothing at all like the purported Jan-Dec average used by the EPA. Unlike the data used by the EPA, the average of individual months shows much larger areas affected by one-day rainfall extremes back in the 1910-1930 time period than in the current period.
Not only that, but the average of the individual months is 0.06 (6%), while the purported Jan-Dec figures used by EPA average 0.10 (10%).
In other words, the usual government cockup.
Go figure … seriously, Jan, go figure—GO FIGURE THE DATA YOURSELF BEFORE QUOTING IT! You can do this just as well as I can. Why should I need to go to the trouble to show your data is bogus? That just makes you look foolish.
RUN THE NUMBERS BEFORE UNCAPPING YOUR ELECTRONIC PENS, folks, that’s your job, not mine.
w.
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 1:53 am
Thanks, Jan.
Yep.
I’ve learned in climate that my logical guesses about how things might work are far too often wrong … that’s why I try to base my claims, not on logic, but on data.
Best regards,
w.
I think it takes more than a quick look at the data to determine whether it is bogus or not.
I have enough confidence in the scientific community to think that if the information shown on the Epa site had been totally bogus they would have been confronted by this by more than some bloggers.
/Jan
Just to be clear about what my last answer were pointing to, I quote it here
More specifically I have two objections to this.
Firstly I think it is too much to ask ordinary commenters here to run the numbers for themselves. There would not be many comments here if everyone had to follow that.
The second objection is that it usually takes more than a quick running in a layman’s homemade computer program to debunk a scientific article. I see that you do that here, Willis, and you have also in several occasions pointed to serious weaknesses in these articles. While I think you do a good job, I do not think that any of us is in the position to do general quality reviews of scientific articles before we quote them.
That does not mean that we should use all information we find uncritically, but I think a good general rule is to try to use stuff were people can be held accountable. The best source of this is actually peer reviewed articles published in scientific journals. The journals risks their reputation and the scientists risk their career if they publish bad science.
A second best source is the information found on federal government’s sites like the EPA.
As the concrete discussion here shows, the EPA may have a weak fundament in this case, but as a general rule I think they are quite reliable.
The reason for the reliability is that the sites are read by many people and that the government institutions are held accountable for the content. If the content on these sites contradicted the general consensus among university professors and other independent scientists, there would be a highly visible protest. The protests we hear now comes mostly from laymen.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 4:54 am
Jan, all I did was to determine that their yearly average file is NOT the average of their monthly files. if you think you are unqualified to do averages, I’ll take your word for it. As to the other commenters … not so much.
Again, speak for yourself. The analyses I do are not rocket science, as they say, and many, many people here have the ability to do them.
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA … Jan, the idea that either the scientists or the journals “risk their reputation” if the publish bad science is hilarious. Look at the tons of peer reviewed garbage that I’ve exposed on this site. Look at the dang “Hockeystick”—that’s as skeevy a document as you can find, and Michael Mann and Nature didn’t take any hit at all to their reputations from that.
The EPA reliable? BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA , stop, you’re killing me … they are easily the LEAST reliable of all of the government agencies.
Dear heavens, the head of the EPA has been caught colluding with the “green” groups in the “sue-and-settle” scam, she used secret email accounts to do her slimy business, their data on PM2.5 is simply made up, they just tried (and may succeed) in claiming that they have authority over all water in the US including the puddles in your driveway, their mercury rules are a scientific joke … and you think they are reliable?
Really?? Where have you been the last three decades? Wake up and smell the coffee! The EPA is doing what all good bureaucrats do, trying to increase their power by regulating more and more things. History has shown they will tell any convenient lie to do so, AS IN THIS CASE, where they have wildly exaggerated the 1-day rainfall data to deceive the public … and if you are any example, sadly, they appear to be succeeding..
Jan, while your naiveté is charming, your faith in both US EPA bureaucracy and the “scientific” journals is hilariously misplaced.
w.
I do not agree on this.
I think mercury and PM are considerable health hazards, and that is not something only a claim from EPA.
Similar institutions in EU and other countries assess these risks in the same way.
PM shortens the life of millions of people and mercury damage people’s brain.
Just take one extreme example of the unfair burden of this pollution: The Inuits living in Greenland are heavily disturbed by mercury pollution.
They live close to the nature, and they are so few that their contribution to pollution is negligible, but they eat animals which are contaminated by pollution which mostly originates from coal fired power plants.
I think both the Inuits and Americans deserve cleaner environment. It is enough wealth around to pay for that.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 10:14 am Edit
Can mercury and PM2.5 cause health problems.
Assuredly … but that’s not what I said.
I said that the EPA gives out bogus data. For example, the EPA actually tested PM2.5 on living human subject … which leaves only two choices. Either it doesn’t do as much damage as they claim, or they are risking human lives in a horrendous fashion. Not sure which one is worse.
As to their mercury rules, buried deep in the mercury rule is the estimated savings of the rule. It is estimated, by them, not by me, that their mercury rule will save between $9,000 and $20,000 per year in avoided health costs. Note that this is not per person. It’s FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY. It is flat out ILLEGAL for them to make a rule with the costs exceeding the benefits, and the costs in this case will be billions … but thanks to credulous folks like yourself, they’ll likely get away with it.
So yes, the EPA mercury rules are a joke, but the joke is on us—they plan to shut down coal plants to save twenty grand a year …
However, you are free to continue along in your fantasy world where the EPA has your best interest at heart … just don’t expect anyone sensible to agree with you, and you’ll do well.
Or, you could wake up and smell the coffee …
w.
Well, other nations have similar regulations
The emission standards for EU can be found here:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32010L0075
I strongly doubt that the small amounts you mention is meant to cover all the costs of mercury pollution in the US society.
As a comparison, the costs of mercury pollution in EU are calculated to 10 billion per year here:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/presscenter/pressreleases/20130107
Cost estimates in the similar range for US can be found here. http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/050228.asp
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen October 4, 2015 at 1:55 pm
Are you really that unable to read? I said, and I quote (as you did not, which is most tiresome)
Is that unclear? It is the amount that the new regulations are supposed to save us, duh, as you would know if you had QUOTED THE EXACT WORDS YOU OBJECT TO. But noooo, you’re the mighty Jan Andersen, you don’t need to quote anything, you’re determined to expose your intellectual laziness to us all.
And yes, it is that small an amount.
SOURCE: Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 20 Number 2
So I don’t care in the slightest if you “strongly doubt” it or not. Your doubts are meaningless in the face of facts. You’re just expressing your divine right to remain ignorant and to shower us with your foolish ideas. DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE MAKING MORE STUPID CLAIMS, you are embarrassing yourself.
w.
Hm, I see you have written an article about Mercury here a whole ago,
The EPA’S Mercury madness
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/31/the-epas-mercurial-madness/
I think this article is very misleading.
The problem is that mercury pollution is all about primary versus secondary sources. The primary sources is the ones that move the mercury from deep deposits to the surface. The sources for this is volcanos and mines, including coal mines and coal burning.
After the mercury emitted from the primary sources has fallen to the ground, it can be re-emitted several times by secondary sources such as forest-fires, dust storms and evaporation from oceans.
http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context
Your article does not separate the two and is therefore very misleading.
/Jan
Willis says:
Willis, I am afraid you have misunderstood the table
They say:
This is only a small subset of all negative effects of Mercury exposure to the public.
Firstly, they only take the monetized value of lost IQ, not all the other documented effect of mercury pollution, such as Impairment of speech, hearing and walking, premature death et cetera.
Secondly, they only take the exposure of Metylmercury from Self-Caught Fish Consumption among Recreational Anglers.
People are also exposed to mercury through commercially caught fish as well as other nutrients and breathing.
Another important point is that these numbers are for the implementation year only:
The cost savings of avoided IQ in the first year are negligible since the IQ loss mainly affects the small children. It will take a generation to see the full savings.
/Jan
Willis Say:
The numbers are small because they have only calculated the monetary effects for a subset of the damages caused by Mercury. Other benefits, which are listed but not quantified are:
These environmental gains are undoubtedly important and is wrong to disregard this just because it is not monetized. By disregarding them, we say that they are worthless and that is wrong.
Some effect may even be impossible to monetize. What is for example the cost saving for the US from reducing the Mercury pollution in the fish eaten by the Inutis in Greenland?
Well, anyway, the Supreme Court has spoken and the consequence will probably be that EPA make an effort to quantify and monetize these benefits.
As I see it this is an unnecessary delay since the already quantified benefits of PM and SOx reduction shows that the benefits by far outweigh the costs. The delay throws away both human lives and money.
/Jan
Jan writes
You need to think that thought right through, Jan. The only way heavier rainfall can occur is if at other times there is less rainfall otherwise the net effect is more energy being transferred higher in the troposphere via the latent heat of vapourisation. That would be a negative feedback and cause cooling at the surface.
So now…why will a warmer atmosphere result in less rain at times? Is that an obvious result too?
Jan… the warmists always focus only on the possible negative. What about the benefits that some areas will receive with a much needed increase in rainfall if indeed human emissions lead to more rain. If you look at the planet, it has become 11% greener over the past 30 years. Crop yields have increased enormously as well. A greening planet is a good thing… or do you prefer a brown, parched one?
While there just may be some negatives somewhere if rainfall has increased, the benefits so far seem to far out-weigh the possible negatives.
And Jan might also remember that much flooding occurs (or is noticed!) where humans have built in the wrong places without proper regard for likely consequences.
Like, ummm, the flood plains of rivers. It happens in the UK and makes the inevitable floods even worse than they would have been. When the houses get flooded and possibly uninsurable, more than one person of global warming-strength stupidity is going to ignore the real reason why it happened.
Jan, I am afraid that you have misplaced your confidence in the scientific community.
Another HISTORICAL FACT (ie data driven) is that more extreme weather occurs when the overall climate is colder as the power for extreme weather comes from the difference in temperatures between the Tropics and the Poles, not from the overall temperature itself.
“I have enough confidence in the scientific community to think that if the information shown on the Epa site had been totally bogus they would have been confronted by this by more than some bloggers.”
Jan, as a lawyer who has worked with and cross examined many expert witnesses in thirty years, who has seen the political bias and corruption of government bureaucrats, I’m always amazed at the naïveté of such a belief, that the government will always be truthful. I hope you don’t think of yourself as a critical thinker, because you are not. And for you to say that the truth must be somewhere in the middle in science is equally naive and not critical thinking. It’s a self serving attempt to sound reasonable. In the process Willis is showing how unreasonable your thinking can be. You think you would have been reasonable taking the middle position in the historic scientific debate of whether the earth is round or flat? You want to have one foot on both sides of the crevice as the earth opens up. Good luck with that.
Think.
Jan says:
“…mercury damage(s) people’s brain.”
When I need a comedy straight man, I know where to look…
Do not expect any response from Ira Flatow; below is a letter I sent to my local PBS radio station in June 2012, which went unanswered:
Your fund raising letter arrived today. I am happy to gift KQED $250, but there is a condition attached:
“Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” On Forum last December 7, to quash a caller, Michael Krasny and Ira Flatow both stated categorically of the Climategate emails: “they’ve been disproven.”
I believe that statement is false, and believe both Krasny and Flatow knew, or ought to have known, that it is false.
I emailed Krasny, Flatow and the PBS Ombudsman about this matter (copy is attached). As none responded, I conclude that KQED stands behind their words.
Thus my gift KQED is conditioned on either of two events:
(1) Krasny or Flatow cite reputable evidence showing the Climategate emails are fake, or
(2) acknowledge on-air their misspeaking and apologize for any misunderstandings created.
“KQED is entitled to their own opinions, but KQED is not entitled to their own facts.” Should neither (1) or (2) occur, when time comes for KQED’s broadcast license to be renewed, I shall report an “unfair/biased broadcast,” a breach of the public trust, to the FCC as an informal objection to license renewal.
Sincerely,
[NeedleFactory]
Jevrejava is definitely playing in the alarmist camp but is actually doing some very detail science despite that. Enquiring minds need to read the papers in detail, not just scim the misleading abstracts and titles.
figure 8 excerpt from Jevrejeva 2014: “Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807”
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/504181/
0.001 mm/yr2 is 0.1 mm/y faster per century .
She carefully avoids pointing this out in the abstract and conclusions sections but buries it in the detail of the paper, preferring to fit a quadratic to both the early steady downward trend 1800:1850 and essentially linear increase since 1860 and report solely this acceleration in the abstract and conclusion.
Well, we would not want to kill the gold cow now, would we ?
Despite the misleading presentation this is a detailed and thorough paper.
Isn’t it odd that the error bars of both reconstructions do not overlap for significant periods. Someone must have underestimated error or they’re working on a different planet.
I just have a question about sea level rise. There are many reports of the erosion of the coast, and that sea level rise is increasing the erosion. But I cannot find the opposite, that the erosion is causing some sea level rise. There must be huge masses of sediments going into oceans every year. This must give a natural increase of sea level, It is strange that it is so difficult to find out how much.
It is certainly true that erosion is a force that raises sea levels. However, on a geologic time scale that leveling is balanced by the buckling of colliding tectonic plates, which continues to create new mountains.
The Himalayas for instance, are still getting higher, and that effect causes sea levels to drop.
If the solid part of the earth were perfectly even in elevation, our planet would be a WaterWorld.
Willis, You might want to read Chapter 13 of the IPCC AR5 if you haven’t already. Other than paying some homage to climate models that are at best unreliable and more likely completely broken, I think you’ll find it interesting and not terribly objectionable. And it is divine scripture to acolytes of the Church of Climate Change such as NPR and Ira Flatow. It’s take on sea level rise from 1900 to 2015 per figure 13.27 — about 20cm (8 inches). Combining that with your photo, one concludes that Miami was built somewhere around mean higher high water. Probably not all that great an idea. (A dredge and some judicious remediation could probably fix the specific problem in the photo for a century or three if anyone cares enough to spend money rather than whining). BTW even if sea level rise is not that big a deal, humanity genuinely is building way to much stuff with very low (often negative) freeboard compared to the highest likely tidal+wind+storm levels. And that’s before counting in subsidence due to isostacy, sediment compaction, and pumping fluids out from under infrastructure.
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf
“NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency’s team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday” September 1999
Metric to English conversions (and vice versa) can vex even the smart guys. Unit conversion, although simple in concept, was one of the most common sources of error in student work when I was teaching College Algebra.
That is after the Hubble needed adaptive optics for the same reason. They have learnt how to repeat their mistakes.
That may be an urban legend. I read and offical explanation that someone had misplaced the measuring rod. Could be and excuse, thoght it looked pretty detailed and choherent.
The other explanation is that they were so used to making mirrors for spy satellites that they made the usual diameter. The slightly shorter focal lenght was close to what is needed to looking at the planet , not the infinity of deep space.
Like all Warmistas, Ira Flatow is both a professional liar as well as a coward. As well, he is no scientist; he just plays one on what I now call “National Government Radio” (although I still listen to it).
National Progressive Radio
But wait, there’s more:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/5e92d30f16ca4e5a86f70cab104909d0.htm
“Date:
August 27, 2015
Source:
AP / Powered by NewsLook.com
Summary:
NASA has released new images showing global sea level rise. The agency’s scientists say sea levels have risen four inches in the last two decades. (Aug. 27) Video provided by AP”
Just listen to the last few seconds of that video, “…the amount of warming we cause and the amount of CO2 we release.” So, we are causing warming somehow AND we are releasing CO2. They leave it up to the viewer to link CO2 to warming since they know that the link has not been scientifically proven.