Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on February 8, 2019 by curryja | 18 Comments
by Judith Curry
Some recent sea level rise publications, with implications for how we think about the worst case scenario for the 21st century.
Less than 3 months ago, I published my Special Report on Sea Level and Climate Change. I remarked on what a fast moving field this was, particularly with regards to the ice sheet dynamics. This past week has seen the publication of 3 new papers that substantially change our thinking on the worst case scenario for the 21st century.
The back story is given in two CarbonBrief articles:
- Sea level rise projections for 2100 nearly doubled
- Studies shed new light on Antarctica’s future contribution to sea level rise
See also this article in National Geographic
From the Carbon Brief:
In 2016, a paper by Deconto and Pollard grabbed headlines with the finding that Antarctic ice was at risk from “marine ice-cliff instability”, which would see towering cliffs of glacier ice collapse into the ocean under their own weight. The 2016 study generated a lot of media coverage, even making the frontpage of the New York Times. It became the most talked-about climate paper of that year.
The past few weeks have seen publication of a number of relevant papers, that point to a much lower sea level rise than predicted by DeConto and Pollard (2016).
Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice-cliff instability
Tamsin Edwards et al.
Abstract. “Predictions for sea-level rise this century due to melt from Antarctica range from zero to more than one metre. The highest predictions are driven by the controversial marine ice-cliff instability (MICI) hypothesis, which assumes that coastal ice cliffs can rapidly collapse after ice shelves disintegrate, as a result of surface and sub-shelf melting caused by global warming. But MICI has not been observed in the modern era and it remains unclear whether it is required to reproduce sea-level variations in the geological past. Here we quantify ice-sheet modelling uncertainties for the original MICI study and show that the probability distributions are skewed towards lower values (under very high greenhouse gas concentrations, the most likely value is 45 centimetres). However, MICI is not required to reproduce sea-level changes due to Antarctic ice loss in the mid-Pliocene epoch, the last interglacial period or 1992–2017; without it we find that the projections agree with previous studies (all 95th percentiles are less than 43 centimetres). We conclude that previous interpretations of these MICI projections over-estimate sea-level rise this century; because the MICI hypothesis is not well constrained, confidence in projections with MICI would require a greater range of observationally constrained models of ice-shelf vulnerability and ice-cliff collapse.”
Global environmental consequences of 21st century ice sheet melt
Nicholas Golledge et al.
Abstract. “Government policies currently commit us to surface warming of three to four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which will lead to enhanced ice-sheet melt. Ice-sheet discharge was not explicitly included in CMIP5, so effects on climate from this melt are not currently captured in the simulations most commonly used to inform governmental policy. Here we show, using simulations of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets constrained by satellite-based measurements of recent changes in ice mass, that increasing meltwater from Greenland will lead to substantial slowing of the Atlantic overturning circulation, and that meltwater from Antarctica will trap warm water below the sea surface, creating a positive feedback that increases Antarctic ice loss. In our simulations, future ice-sheet melt enhances global temperature variability and contributes up to 25 centimetres to sea level by 2100. However, uncertainties in the way in which future changes in ice dynamics are modelled remain, underlining the need for continued observations and comprehensive multi-model assessments.”
From Carbon Brief, quoting Golledge::
“AR5 gave mean contributions for 2081-2100 of 4 cm from Antarctica and 12 cm from Greenland. In our new study, we suggest 14 cm from Antarctica and 11 cm from Greenland at 2100, so an increase to the Antarctic term and just above the upper bound of the AR5 uncertainty range (-6 cm to 12 cm).”
Tamsin Edwards has a good blog post on these two papers:
“We found the Antarctic contribution to sea level this century is smaller than implied by DeConto and Pollard’s study. They had shown mean values ranging from 64 to 114cm, but our most likely value is only 45 cm. This is still definitely bad news, and we also couldn’t rule out values much higher than this. But we found the balance of probability leaned towards much lower numbers than before.”
“We found that including MICI is not necessary to explain the past, and therefore it might not be present in the future – at least, we don’t have much evidence to support it yet. Leaving it out gives much smaller sea level contributions: a most likely value of only 15 cm, one metre less than the highest projections of DeConto and Pollard, and a 5% probability of more than 39 cm.”
From the Carbon Brief article:
“The chart below shows the likelihood of Antarctica exceeding one metre of sea level rise in the new simulations. It includes three emissions scenarios: low (RCP2.6, grey), intermediate (RCP4.5, blue) and high (RCP8.5, red), with and without MICI. The lines show how the probability changes through time.”
“So, for example, under high emissions with MICI, the likelihood of more than one metre of sea level rise from Antarctica emerges above zero around the 2080s, and rapidly increases until it becomes a certainty (within the model) in the 2130s. Without MICI, there is no risk of one metre of sea level rise within this century, but it does emerge relatively early in the 22nd century.”
Only for the borderline impossible RCP8.5 scenario with MICI, is there about a 50% chance of exceeding 1 m sea level rise in the 21st century.
Solid Earth Change and the Evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Pippa Whitehouse et al.
Abstract. “Recent studies suggest that Antarctica has the potential to contribute up to ~15 m of sea-level rise over the next few centuries. The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is driven by a combination of climate forcing and non-climatic feedbacks. In this review we focus on feedbacks between the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the solid Earth, and the role of these feedbacks in shaping the response of the ice sheet to past and future climate changes. The growth and decay of the Antarctic Ice Sheet reshapes the solid Earth via isostasy and erosion. In turn, the shape of the bed exerts a fundamental control on ice dynamics as well as the position of the grounding line the location where ice starts to float. A complicating issue is the fact that Antarctica is situated on a region of the Earth that displays large spatial variations in rheological properties. These properties affect the timescale and strength of feedbacks between ice-sheet change and solid Earth deformation, and hence must be accounted for when considering the future evolution of the ice sheet.”
The punchline of this study (at least in terms of my own interest) is hidden in the main text, not really apparent from the abstract:
“It has been shown that GIA-related sea-level and solid Earth changes, including changes to the slope of the underlying bed, alter the stress field of the ice sheet in a way that acts to dampen and slow past and future ice-sheet growth and retreat in Antarctica. An important process that is also accounted for in these coupled models is the feedback between isostatically-driven ice surface elevation change and surface mass balance.”
“The Earth structure underneath the AIS is highly variable, and viscosities may be as low as 10** 18 Pa s beneath parts of West Antarctica, leading to substantial (i.e., metres to tens of metres of) viscoelastic uplift occurring on centennial or even decadal timescales, with consequent implications for ice sheet evolution.”
“For a moderate climate warming, uplift of the LVZ Earth model preserves much of West Antarctica as compared to the simulation with the HV Earthmodel. While, for the simulation where strong RCP 8.5 climate warming is applied and new rapid-retreat-promoting ice physics are added (hydrofracturing and cliff failure e.g. MICI), West Antarctica collapses early on regardless of the choice of Earth Model.”
JC reflections
My original motivation for assessing the RCP8.5 scenario was that all of the really catastrophic sea level rise scenarios for the 21st century seem to depend on rather extreme (if not impossible) levels of CO2 and radiative forcing. If you take away RCP8.5 scenarios, SLR is not so alarming, at least on the time scale of the 21st century.
Of the three papers, the Whitehouse one may be the most important (the other two seem part of the WAIS MICI whiplash phenomena – who knows what the next round of papers will show). However, Whitehouse et al. has gotten zero press attention. Perhaps because youou have to dig deep to figure out the broader climate implications of the paper. Hopefully my little blog post will draw some extra attention to the this paper.
After the extreme alarm associated with the 2016 DeConto and Pollard paper, we are seeing a whiplash back to more reasonable (and less alarming values) of 21st century sea level rise. DeConto presented a talk at AGU on the latest simulations, apparently they are also predicting lower sea level rise from MICI, but the paper is under review and they are not publicly commenting on it yet.
The rapidity of the ice sheet instability research reminds me of the heyday in 2006 of the hurricane and global warming research, with weekly whiplash between alarming papers and nothing-here-to-see papers. I assume that this research topic will generally converge to an agreed upon list of things we don’t know, so we can better constrain the worst case sea level rise scenario for the 21st century.
In any event, to me this seems like the most interesting, fast moving and important topic in climate research right now.
My search in the above for mention of tide gauges came up zero. I guess the linear trends those things produce and there are hundreds of them don’t mean anything.
Here’s a reworked James Delingpole quote:
Somewhere in an oceanographic science department at some cruddy university not far from you, a bunch of otherwise unemployable graduates are working on yet another paper demonstrating that sea level rise is a really serious problem which can only be solved if millions of dollars in funding grants are chucked at it. James Delingpole
I did not see where measuring sea level now or in the recent past was of concern to this topic. Everything seemed to be about studying ice behavior.
Tide gauges not needed.
John F. Hultquist February 9, 2019 at 9:39 pm
I did not see where measuring sea level now or in the recent past was of concern to this topic.
Title of this thread is: “Sea level rise whiplash”
“ . . . particularly with regards to the ice sheet dynamics“
John F. Hultquist –
“ . . . particularly with regards to the ice sheet dynamics“
As in “How many glaciologists can dance on the head of a pin” I suppose.
There is more to it than what these egg heads are on about, and it might be a good idea to point it out. Nobody has observed angels dancing on a pin head, nor has anyone observed sea level rise that is out of step with the over 200 years of tide gauge observations.
Are those Feminist Glaciologists, or Patriarchal Glaciologists.
Ice behavior affects sea levels.
The problem is not even Jason 3 is agreeing with them a fact you won’t hear a word about. It will be interesting to hear the spin in a couple of years as this all unfolds.
LdB
The problem is not even Jason 3 is agreeing with them a fact you won’t hear a word about …
It will be a year (tomorrow) since Colorado University updated their Sea Level Research Group page:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
University of Colorado.
Ice sheet melt and sea level rise are to be expected in interglacials. These changes do not in themselves imply human cause or the effectiveness of proposed climate action in their control or moderation. Some statistical relationship needs to be shown between the rate of emissions and the rate of SLR.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/14/cumulativeslr/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/05/attenuate-slr/
That’s right, ice sheet melt, and SLR expected during interglacials. And this interglacial is almost over.
So, let me ask a hypothetical question. Imagine that for the past 40 years, instead of being distracted by the false meme that global warming from CO2 will drive us to hot house earth, we had instead noticed that the slight warming of the past four decades, whether manmade or natural, is far too low to save us from the ice age just around the corner. Imagine that instead of all the time devoted to conjuring horrors from warming, we cataloged the true horrors of the coming modern stadial.
If it really were true that we could drive earth into a hot house condition without the need to rearrange the continents, would we hesitate for a moment? Wouldn’t we accept significant sea level rise in order to avoid our mass die-out from the famines that advancing ice sheets and crop failures would produce? No, we would not hesitate, we would be burning oil and gas at the wellhead, and setting fire to coal beds, struggling to raise CO2 levels.
Sorry to say, when that day does come, we won’t forestall it long and certainly will not prevent it. The effects of CO2, though real, are not significant compared with the effects on insolation due to Milankovitch cycles. We will have to adapt and migrate as we did last time the ice sheets advanced. The disruption to our technological society won’t be pretty, but I feel confident we will manage it.
Sea level rise at least will not be a concern.
Guess I’ve spent to much of my youth in the Low Country of South Carolina below the Fall Line to worry about sea level rise. Pretty much everything below it (map at: http://dnr.sc.gov/GIS/descfall500k.html) is nothing but paleo beach. You expect that what was sandy beach before might easily be sandy beach again. I’ve always had a problem with people that build their houses on a sandbar (e.g., the east coast barrier islands and most of southern Florida) and then expect the government to keep them from washing away.
How is the Antarctic supposed to melt when 97% of it never gets above 0 C even in the summer time?
Exactly. Other than thermo heat from below. It can never melt.
I hear it melts from sublimation. The pressure of 3 km of ice melts the stuff at the bottom.
There’s a heap of volcanoes under the ice too.
In any event, to me this seems like the least interesting, slowest moving and least important topic to be found in climate research right now. From our attic window we can see Sydney Harbour where the sea has risen 50-mm. at Fort Denison, since 1881 which is 138 years ago. Our house is 55-m. above sea level, so I reckon we have a good 1,400 years before we will need to buy a boat.
But can you prove that?
Sydney harbour may become a tropical hot spot, the seas rise and your house be attacked by migratory alligators.
Have you obtained a quote for alligator insurance?
I’m in Canberra. We are even higher above sea level. Not bothered at all with alligators – tame little creatures. Now if salt water crocodiles were to move into the neighborhood, that really would get my attention.
It’s not a gator it’s a crock.
You have a biting wit.
I don’t want to alarm you but the rate of rise could change, what will you do if your house is inundated in only 900 years? Have you thought about relocating to Denver?
Tommyboy February 9, 2019 at 9:21 pm
Pick the house up and move it inland. Or simple build a new one.
michael
Haven’t you heard? Building things doesn’t work. You can’t build new houses or border walls. It doesn’t work. Why? Because we say so, mister.
“‘Shut up’, he explained.”
— Ring Lardner
It’s a bit more than 50mm since 1881,
more like 65mm per century.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/12/sydney-sea-levels-rising-at-just-6-5cm-per-century-peak-panic-is-behind-us/
Average house life expectancy is less than 100 years so build it 1 brick higher off the ground next time 🙂
The conversion is 1000 mm = 1 Meter.
Go figure the years !
300+ meters above sl in Atlanta in the US (second highest major city in elevation, only Denver is higher). I’m not too concerned about it, but I might be a little disappointed if NYC and San Fran doesn’t go under in my lifetime.
Whoa, easy jtom! If NYC and SF are flooded, think about who your new neighbors will be. Remember you can’t build a wall. Walls don’t work.
Going forward, the Dems are going to have difficulty explaining all the security fencing they have erected around their convention sites.
Salt Lake City (pop. of the metropolitan area = 1.1 million)?
@jtom
What about Phoenix, Tucson, Oklahoma City, El Paso, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Mesa? All of which are both higher than Atlanta, and greater in population.
“In any event, to me this seems like the least interesting, slowest moving and least important topic to be found in climate research right now.”
I agree. This, and ocean acidification/coral reef destruction.
Actually 140,000 years
“From our attic window we can see Sydney Harbour where the sea has risen 50-mm. at Fort Denison, since 1881 which is 138 years ago.”
Yikes! Prepare for a flood of refugees from Tasmania then because-
“One of the oldest tide gauge benchmarks in the world is at Port Arthur in south-east Tasmania. When combined with historical tide gauge data (found in the London and Australian archives) and recent sea level observations, it shows that relative sea level has risen by 13.5 cm from 1841 to 2000.”
https://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
Why oh why does the farce continue of referencing temperature rise to pre-industrial levels as though that was “utopia”? Why not accept that we are where we are today, and then talk about another 0.5-1.0 degrees C rise? Perhaps that doesn’t sound scary enough?
Why oh why does the farce continue of referencing temperature rise to pre-industrial levels as though that was “utopia”?
Largely because “we” have, probably unwisely, built an awful lot of infrastructure with what is likely to to turn out to be inadequate freeboard. Stuff built only a few tens of cm above high tide is at risk during storms. Sea Level Rise is far from the only problem. Soil compaction and cutoff of sediment flow by flood control/power generation dams are probably worse problems for low lying infrastructure. But SLR contributes and is going to be an issue for those who demand (impractical) simple answers to complex problems.
Storm surges can be in the tens of meters. Worrying about the additional amount created by sl rise is nonsense.
Then consider the time period. Any structure built just centimeters above high tide does not have a long life expectancy, even if you reversed the sign of sl rise. Buildings tend to get rebuilt in relatively short times on the coast, particularly at water’s edge.
I really don’t think the owner of any structure built a few centimeters above sea level should ever have the expectation of bringing the world economy to a grinding halt to save their investment.
Are we allowed to subtract 30mm of this predicted sea level rise from the 1000mm (1meter) doomsday scenario?
You do realize that they are arbitrarily adding 0.3mm per year to the reported sea level rise because the number “should have” been that much greater due to global isostatic changes to the volume of ocean basins.
This rise of 30mm per century isn’t happening gosh darn it! So we’ll make it happen anyway!
And on the brighter side, the chance of hitting the magic 1 meter mark by 2300 is baked in. GIA (Global Isostatic Adjustment) will make it happen, even if not a single acre of land is inundated by “rising” sea levels!
Yes and if they’re going to add in the GIA then they should also subtract out the calculated ice melt causing the GIA. At that point, it could occur to them that the jobs they do are completely worthless but, of course, the cognitive dissonance adjustment will not allow that to happen.
Meanwhile the sea level gauge at The Battery shows the rise rate remains unchanged for the past 160 years.
To a certain extent, these ice behavior studies are like the search for Element #43 – Technetium. So there was a blank space between Molybdenum and Ruthenium. Having an actual sample of #43 was a serious research topic, but its immediate importance to society was of little impact.
In that case, and the ice case, I think the science is important. Like Judith C., I found the Pippa Whitehouse et al., report quite interesting.
I disagree on the societal impact of Technicum, as I probably wouldn’t be alive to type this reply had I not undergone Tc-99m scan.
Alas our planet is overpopulated and the resources we have are being depleted and cannot support humanity. We all understand deforestation and it’s impact. That phenomenon is well researched and clearly understood.
There is also the explosion of plastics being found in the oceans and being eaten by marine life. Micro plastics are especially dangerous for marine life. Coral reefs that are also endangered by human activity. . This type of pollution is definitely caused by humans. Also smog and air pollution in China is pervasive in Beijing and also caused by human activity. These problems should be addressed as their results are clearly felt and not the only factors that affect our planet.
And draconian cut backs on the fossil fuels of natural gas and oil by 7+ Billion people will make each those things you list vastly worse, not better.
Of course, if your real goal is kill-off about 6+ Billion people and accept the inevitable environmental catastrophe that would result as simply collateral damage …
Dollars to donuts that now that Ms. Koren has finished lecturing us heathens, we’ll never hear from her again.
Why do you think our world is overpopulated? Is there insufficient space for homes? Is there insufficient O2 in the atmosphere? Is there not enough farmable land? Are you concerned there won’t be enough food to feed our current population after ICE powered tractors are banned? How much more corn could be available for human consumption if corn wasn’t used to make ethanol?
Which resources are in short supply? Which items can no longer be produced due to a shortage of resources? Which fossil fuels will be depleted by 2100? If burning fossil fuels threatens our existence why aren’t we building nuclear plants? Everyone agrees they don’t threaten all life on earth, right?
Once all nuclear and fossil fueled power plants are closed, how will we produce power to make new solar panels and wind turbines? Without fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, how will homes be heated during winter nights when the wind doesn’t blow (most nights)?
Will heating all of our homes at night with fire wood deplete our forests? If deforestation is well researched and clearly understood, what is the difference in CO2 uptake between a tropical rain forest and the various crops that replace it? I saw one report that said 27 acres are cut down every minute, another that said 90 acres are cut down per minute. What is the correct rate? What percent of rain forest removal is done in order to grow palm oil trees to produce bio fuel?
Every report I read concerning marine life eating micro plastics only speculated about potential harm. What actual harm has been documented?
What percent of coral reef declared dead has been documented to be recovered?
The Paris agreement allows China to increase CO2 emissions through the year 2030, so hasn’t that problem been addressed? If they choose to install coal plant stack scrubbers like the US uses, could their air be as clean as ours?
Iris, Please get back to me with your answers to my questions because I don’t know the subject as well as you do.
SR
Why feed the troll?
She doesn’t even vary the cut-and-paste.
Sorry, I didn’t recognize the handle. I thought maybe it was a young’n fresh out of a college indoctrination class.
SR
Ms Koren, have you applied for your elimination yet?
Yes, it is the leftists who are going all out Jim Jones, but they won’t even figuratively drink the cool aid. Those Dems in our congress who agree with AOC should pledge to walk everywhere they travel as one small step.
“Alas our planet is overpopulated and the resources we have are being depleted and cannot support humanity”
I think that statement shows “Progressive” racism- i.e. “Way too many of you third world people, just the right amount of me.”
so you just read Ehrlichs book did you?
all those claims from the late 60s early 70s ad nauseum
Im guessing your’e under 50 at least?
Iris, Iris, Iris
You still have some things to experience first hand.
The planet is not overpopulated. We are not running out of anything. We are not going to run out of anything for a long time and by then we will have changed what we need – we are clever that way.
The plastic problem is easily handled by recycling and waste management. More than 90% of the plastic in the oceans is from just ten places (rivers) all of which are in developing countries, because they are not wealthy enough to properly recycle garbage. Almost no plastic in the oceans comes from North America or Europe. That is very encouraging.
Coral islands (roofs that last) are growing in area and height, more than 90% of them. How does that work? Naturally.
The air quality in Beijing is quite good – I go there frequently so I know. In January it was very clear when there was no fog. Don’t believe everything you hear or see on TV. Using a video camera to take telephoto shots on foggy mornings is the “Beijing air” equivalent of a Greenpeace photo of power station cooling tower steam at sunset.
How can you seriously say that Beijing air quality is good? Yes, there are days when all industry is temporarily shutdown and transport restricted, or after weather events that clean the air, but it is not “good.”
http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/
Your post loses all credibility when you say Beijing air quality is good.
Sometimes it’s bearable.
Most times it a disaster.
“Alas our planet is overpopulated and the resources we have are being depleted”
I don’t know of any important resource that has been depleted yet, but Earth isn’t the only source of raw materials. The Solar System has all the resources humanity will need for many years into the future.
Of course, these resources are not available to us yet, but they are not needed yet, either, and there are many people actively working to develop the resourses out in space.
Humanity has to think Big. There is enough room and resources in the Solar System to accomodate everyone alive now and into the future.
Back on Earth: We are in good shape on Earth and will be for the longterm future as long as we don’t allow the totalitarians to run the show. Free Markets and Free Speech are the path to a bright future for Humanity.
Another positive for the future I should mention is that it appears that when a nation reaches a certain level of affluence, the population increase stops in that group of people and starts to decline, such as in Japan. So we may not be looking at runaway population growth on Earth. Population growth may acutally limit itself if we can raise everyone to that level of affluence. And that is certainly doable if we can keep the authoritarians from destroying the economies of the world with their insane CO2 fight.
Regardless of anything else, which countries have the cleasest environment and least population growth? Industrialized countries, due to wealth created by the burning of fossil fuels. We can now afford to clean up after ourselves, and no longer need large families to ensure our wellbeing.
You should be advocating for the development of third-world countries, and money being spent to avoid theoretical problems occuring a century from now should be used to fight the real environmental problems we face today.
Ms Koren ,
I am delighted to see that this site is making inroads into the society of those seriously concerned about the environment but perhaps over- exposed to the alarmist pronouncements in the media .
Hopefully a more optimistic picture of the future will gradually be disclosed to you and your friends from the comments, past , present and future of the commenters here with a wide range of relevant knowledge on climate history , meteorology , physical geography, etc
The world is not going to end in 12 years time despite what the Democrat leaders assert.
For opening your Irises Ms Koren-
https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf
Not a single thing in your list is actually true.
1) The planet is nowhere close to being over populated and the only resource that is being depleted (fossil fuels) will last for hundreds of years, plenty of time to perfect the various alternatives.
Deforestation is a problem of poverty, a problem that your ilk insist on exacerbating.
It is not well researched, rather it is the subject of emotional rants with little factual basis.
There is no explosion of plastic in the oceans.
Micro plastics are not dangerous for sea life, they just pass through the gut and get pooped out.
Coral reefs are doing quite fine and always have been.
Is smog somehow different from air pollution? If not, why the redundancy? Did you think you were being clever?
Regardless, smog is a problem with a well known solution. If China chooses to apply this solution, the problem will be gone in a decade or so.
I mostly agree with you, but the palm oil plantations leading to deforestation are intended to serve Western customers, e.g. biodiesel for Europe. Such environmental destruction carried out in the name of environmentalism is an anathema. Conservation of rain forests and endangered animals is made difficult by population pressures.
Further, big cities in general are overpopulated and becoming worse so for a variety of reasons. I don’t think that is a good trend. But I certainly agree that China can clean up its act if it so chooses and it has made some improvements.
Further, big cities in general are overpopulated
===?????
What is the correct population for big cities? Where is the cut-off point where a big city becomes overpopulated? Why is this a cut-off point?
The biggest cities are currently about the same population as the population of Australia. Does this make Australia over-populated?
I don’t have those answers precisely, I’m just looking at it from a crowding standpoint. It is of course subjective, but when driving time rises to about 10 minutes/mile, that is too crowded. In the Bay area for example, some people have to commute to work at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning to maintain their sanity.
It is also of course tolerated to a different degree by different people. Asians might not object to living in crowded conditions because they don’t know any better. As a country, Australia is not over-populated but you certainly understand concentration and the detrimental impacts it can make.
As a general principle, it would be rare for citizens of a small town to tolerate its inhabitants shitting on the sidewalks of its central business district, but that is a quite common occurrence in SF, LA, etc.
I live in Colorado and it is my opinion that the quality of life here was better when there were fewer Californians.
Where is it shown that our planet is overpopulated, and that resources “cannot support humanity”?! This is hyperbole at best, and outright quackery at worse.
This first sentence from the Golledge paper Abstract cracks me up,
“Government policies currently commit us to surface warming of three to four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which will lead to enhanced ice-sheet melt. “
Government policies…. LOL.
Did they check that with Nature? Or just a computer model that is already falsified?
That kind of rhetoric that simply “Government policy can turn the climate Control Knob” level of ignorant thinking that will be roundly laughed at once the the Climate Fever breaks and sanity returns.
I like that rhetoric.
My twisted mind reads it like a promise. That would be great, but i´ts just governments promise.
Even their bible, the IPCC doesn’t claim that we are going to see 4 to 5C of warming by 2100.
The multiple levels of dumb that is that first sentence of a “science” manuscript Abstract is simply amazing.
– 1st level of dumb: editorial garbage — where they use this language of “policies currently commit us to surface warming…” I thought it was the planet’s climate? Unless by “us” they mean the continuing man-made synthetic warming in the surface record datasets.
– 2nd level of dumb: Technically wrong — even the IPCC AR5 admits such a level of warming is not likely or committed unless the very unlikely, high-emission pathway of the RCP8.5 scenario occurs.
– 3rd level of dumb: Logically flawed — they have clearly assumed as true the result they set-out to investigate by writing that policy-driven warming “will lead to enhanced ice-sheet melt.”
– 4th level of dumb: Tees-up politics and advocacy “all the way down” — Starting one’s abstract out with a nod to “government policy” (thus the politics of CC) clearly indicates that Golledge, et al., know they are not targeting their paper or it conclusions for other scientists, but rather for science illiterate activists, green agenda politicians, and the ignorant media types who will cherry pick what they say to build an alarmist message. In other words, scientists who pick-up this paper and see that as the first sentence of the Abstract should immediately recognize the rest of the manuscript is going to be biased garbage and not worth their reading time.
Conclusion:
Such a first sentence of an abstract is clearly a Hail-Mary desperation for more grant money. Golledge and his band of Klimate Kooks have ingested neurotoxic levels of Klimate Koolaide and are beyond help, and they are a prime example of why Dr Lindzen’s call for a 90% funding cut to climate research is necessary.
You don’t understand, there are things that are being kept hidden from the public.
First, much of the “new” water will flow to the equator bulge (like calories to my belt). This is where the sea level rise is to occur due to centrifugal force. It will inundate all of the alarmist’s vacation homes.
Think it through. The increased mass at the equator will change the length of the day. Numerous religious organizations will have challenges of faith due to the lengthening or shortening of the day. They will no longer know which day is the Sabbath, when they are pound on your door early in the morning or ring church bells and call the faithful to pray. You must prevent this Apocalypse, in the mean time I am going to get another Strongbow cider.
michael
Ah do I need a tag?
.
❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶
❶①❶①
❶①❶① . . . The Science and Mathematics . . .
❶①❶①
❶①❶① . . . . of Earth’s Temperatures . . . .
❶①❶①
❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶①❶
.
PART 2 has just been published.
==============================
In Part 2 of this article, I will show some graphs which show how accurate my temperature model of the Earth is.
I will then reveal the secret of why my temperature model of the Earth is so accurate, but also very simple.
The reason is, that I have separated the temperature estimates from the actual latitude of a country, and based the temperature estimates on the “effective” latitude.
See the article for a practical example, and a detailed graphical explanation.
General information about the series of articles.
================================================
Imagine a temperature model of the Earth, that can explain:
– 94% of the variation in the average temperature, of every country on Earth
– 90% of the variation in the temperature of the coldest month, of every country on Earth
– about 59% of the variation in the temperature of the hottest month, of every country on Earth
That would have to be a big, complex temperature model, wouldn’t it?
What if I told you, that the temperature model of the Earth was based on only 4 factors:
– the average latitude of the country
– the average longitude of the country
– the average elevation of the country
– the area of the country
Would you believe me?
I am sure that many people will expect my temperature model of the Earth to be very inaccurate.
You are welcome to have a look at the results of my temperature model of the Earth.
Part 1
======
https://agree-to-disagree.com/the-science-and-mathematics-of-earths-temperatures-part-1
Part 2
======
https://agree-to-disagree.com/the-science-and-mathematics-of-earths-temperatures-part-2
Usual techniques. Reality does not support previous alarmists pipedreams. Make the threat/tipping point/unprecedented apocalypse even bigger and shift it further out. The beat goes on.
I found this source:
http://www.sealevel.info/
Check out individual port cities, Honolulu, Hawaii for instance
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Honolulu
and you’ll see there has been no acceleration in sea rise trend for a century or more.
The name of the game is still energy, lots and lots of it. Make the world overall rich in both energy and real wealth, and when problems come along then we can deal with them.
So to have ample energy that takes us back to what to do about CO2.
It is the Club that the Green Warmers will continue to use against us, in their quest to take over the World. Because that is what it is all about. Prove CO2 is not only a good gas, its essential for all life on Earth. And as to the element “Carbon” its the number one as far as life is concerned, its n everything, not just ” Dirty” coal. Remember diamonds, the girls best friend, it too comes from Carbon.
So concentrate on CO2, not Carbon, as the “Warmers” want us to think of. Prove to the general public that its a good and much needed substance , and the whole rotten “House of ” cards” will finally collapse.
MJE
the claim that cold ice melt water will keep warm water below it?
whaaaat?
the gollege bit
[ that meltwater from Antarctica will trap warm water below the sea surface, creating a positive feedback that increases Antarctic ice loss.]
A few years ago National Geographic published an article on a science article by my son. Despite having his full article on a non-controversial subject, they muddled important points. He could have easily corrected them in ten minutes had he been given the opportunity.
My son has on numerous occasions been deeply disappointed by the reliability of articles in top journals in his field. While not working in the main disciplines that climate scientists follow, his experience is will quite likely apply to many peer reviewed climate articles. This is why I will keep quoting the Mathematician, George Polya, who wrote: “in theoretical matters, the best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.” The history of scientific endeavor has proved him correct, time and again. However, history and criticism of alarmist views are branded as “denialist” and summarily discarded.
Sorry, a grammatical error slipped though. It should read:
his experience will quite likely apply to many peer reviewed climate articles
Yawn…..
The betting odds should be about eleventy gazillion to one in favor of the “nothing-here-to-see papers”.
The recent rate of sea level rise was established at the end of the Holocene Neoglaciation…
Apart from a quasi-periodic ~60-yr fluctuation, there has been no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise…
For sea level to rise by 1 meter over the 21st century, the rate would have to accelerate to twice that of the Holocene Transgression…
That ain’t gonna happen, there’s not enough ice…
All of the sea level rise since 1800 is insignificant compared to the rest of the Holocene.
Regarding Marine Ice Cliff Instability, there are no examples of this anywhere on Earth. Nor are there any examples from past interglacial periods. MICI is an assumption based on the inability to explain past higher Quaternary sea levels.
Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland has been cited by some as an example of MICI. It isn’t. Nor is it is not an MICI analogy for Antarctica. It’s not even an analogy for any other glaciers in Greenland. Jakobshavn Glacier exhibits unique behavior due to local physical geography.
The abrupt change in trend shown on the first graph is quite interesting (a reverse hockey stick). CO2 emissions would have continually risen though that period, so what natural effect reversed or diminished in importance around that time?
It was the end of the Little Ice Age and Neoglaciation, a period of generally advancing glaciers from the Holocene Climatic Optimum through the LIA.
Yes, I should have asked about the cause of that.
Thanks for this, Dave. I always appreciate your views.
When I was in graduate school in the mid1970s it was a sort of high water mark for enrollment in the earth sciences, especially geophysics. We had something like 140 graduate students. Some number of these people were mediocre and worse, but most were quite bright and extremely interesting to talk to. However, their views of almost everything weren’t informed by experience or wide reading, but instead were the result of bias toward their particular interests and research. So much of climate change fear and worry seems the product of exactly this narrow thinking.
That’s why the rate of “endorsement of the consensus” varies directly with the volume of papers written on anthropogenic climate change. The same holds true of voluminous abiotic oil and UFO authors… The more they write about the subject, the more likely they are to believe in it.
Dave: “Nor is it is not an MICI analogy…”
Nit picking aside, thanks again for adding a welcome and revealing geological perspective to the discussion.
I hate typos…
David Middleton: Thank you for the reminder of how terrible the future looked from 2006, as two bad hurricane seasons got Al Gore et al frothing at the mouth that we could see global warming out the window. They demanded the IPCC investigate and tell ’em what they wanted to hear (We’re doomed, and USA caused it). My recollection (well, fevered imagination) is that IPCC wanted to oblige, but 2007 was quiet … then 2008 was quiet … by 2009, IPCC gave out the awful, awful truth- we’re not doomed yet. Dammit.
In the good ol’ days, cities were regularly destroyed and new ones built on the rubble. They always moved upward. Maybe a nice N-war….
That sounds like Dr. Strangelove.
When I lived in the Pacific northwest, where landslides are common, a nearby neighborhood began sliding downhill. One homeowner called a house moving outfit who moved his home to a new location before the wave of sliding earth reached his property line. Now landslides are absolute sprinters when compared to sea level rise. Why is something that happens over centuries or millennia an immediate concern? We have to decommission and rebuild practically everything over such timescales.
“AR5 gave mean contributions for 2081-2100 of 4 cm from Antarctica and 12 cm from Greenland. In our new study, we suggest 14 cm from Antarctica and 11 cm from Greenland at 2100, so an increase to the Antarctic term and just above the upper bound of the AR5 uncertainty range (-6 cm to 12 cm).”
So AR5s guesstimate was completely inside their uncertainty range (which is already probably an imaginary figure). And the New and Improved guesstimate is less than an inch outside the top of that range.
I’m scared, not about the phantom menace, but about the state of science.
As a side note on sea level, David Dilley has predicted that “there would be no sea level rise after 2018” so that is this year. Interesting prediction. We’ll have to check back in next year on that one and see how he does.