Proving that nature can outdo anything humans have done, a new paper shows that sea-levels off Western Australia may have risen as high as 9 m above the current level during the last warm period over a hundred thousand years ago. The authors (O’Leary et al) conclude that seas were 3-4 m higher for most of the last warm period (known as the Eemian) but towards the end of the period a large sudden rise occurred. They suggest that an ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica or Greenland or both, causing a 5m rise (17 feet).
The point of the paper was this double spiked shape of the sea level rise during the last warm interglacial known as the Eemian.
The Age interviewed O’Leary who said “he was confident that the 17-foot jump happened in less than a thousand years – how much less, he cannot be sure.”
Figure 3 j Relative sea-level curve for Western Australia. A
geomorphically defined palaeoMSL datum of C2:5m 120 kyr ago (Fig. 1c) anchors a predicted relative sea-level curve at Red Bluff, which includes a GIA signal based on the test calculation (see Methods) plus the following ESL history: ESL jumps from 0 to 3.4m between 127.5 kyr and 127 kyr agoand remains at this level until 120 kyr ago; and 120 kyr ago, ESL jumps 6m over 1 kyr. Dashed green line is an inferred sea-level curve based on a minimum coral palaeodepth (solid bar above circle) of 0.4m below palaeoMSL. This palaeodepth calculation is applicable only to highest in situ corals, as corals of the same age found at lower elevations will have a known water depth of at least up to the height of the coral above it. Arrows indicate potential for greater palaeodepth range.
Note the graph runs “backwards” and the oldest dates are on the right. (Which annoys me since we read left to right, so dates ought to run left to right…).
In the last 130,000 years sea levels have ranged from 120m below the current level to 9 m higher. For thousands of years they’ve stayed higher than today’s level — long enough for whole coral reefs to form, die and be left high and dry. Those reefs are now long gone and fragmented. Meanwhile our sea-levels are rising at 2mm or even 3mm a year (but only if you believe the highly adjusted data) and we’re whipped into a panic.
Tipping Points in Ice Sheets?
Before we push the anxiety button on tipping points, we ought to remember that the Vostok Ice Cores tell us Antarctica was over 2 degrees warmer during the early Eemian, and Greenland was as much as 8 degrees warmer. And if seas were 3 -4 m higher before the ice sheet collapsed, that rather suggests we have a way to go before we reach that precarious state…
The late big rise apparently occurred at 118.1 ±1.4 thousand years ago. We don’t really know if that rise occurred in a decade or over 3,000 years. We do know that the cooling that came after that was bad news for the coral reef off Western Australia that was left high and dry after the water receded. Otherwise, corals, fish, and people around the world have somehow survived massive shifts in temperature and sea-level that had nothing to do with humankind.
Perhaps there are tipping points in Antarctic and Greenland shelves, and we would want to avoid triggering them (assuming we could). But things were also warmer 7,000 years ago in the Holocene and the large ice sheets appeared to have managed just fine. That’s another point suggesting we have some safety margin. Plus, there’s no reason to believe that 2 degrees of warming is coming anytime soon, because the amplified exaggerations of the climate models are known to be wrong.
Curtin University Press Release
“… after mapping and surveying the Last Interglacial fossil shorelines from Augusta to Exmouth, my team and I were able to show that these ancient shorelines outcropped at similar elevations along this entire length of coastline and therefore have not been affected by tectonic movement.”
Dr O’Leary said the team then applied an isostatic model correcting for crustal deformation caused by glacial meltwater loading of the Indian Ocean basin.
“This research shows that even a modest rise of a couple of degrees centigrade in global temperatures could result in a significant rise in global sea levels, and will also help improve our understanding of the sensitivity Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under higher global temperatures,” Dr O’Leary said.
This graph below captured my attention purely because of the large variations on display. It covers the last 180,000 years of sea level change at Red Bluff, WA. (From the supplementary file.) No there doesn’t appear to be a late Eemian surge visible here (I’m not sure why), and yes, this is from a model (so caveats apply). Red Bluff is at the North end of the map below.
Figure S2: Predicted relative sea-level (RSL) change (in meters) at Red Bluff, Western Australia (24.014S; 187 113.456E) due to GIA based on the two glacial cycle ice history and viscoelastic Earth model discussed in 188 the text and Methods Section.
This map shows the places they sampled along the West Australian coast.
The sites span nearly 2000 km of coastline on SW Western Australia
This paper spends a lot of time discussing GIA and using simulations, of which I remain somewhat skeptical, so I’ll refrain from drawing any conclusions other than the generic ones above: that we are not dangerously close to a tipping point, and that huge variations — far larger than we face today — have occurred before.
Ht to the Hockeyschtick
REFERENCE
Michael J. O’Leary*, Paul J. Hearty,William G. Thompson, Maureen E. Raymo, Jerry X. Mitrovica
and Jody M.Webster (2013) Ice sheet collapse following a prolonged period of stable sea level during the last interglacial, Nature Geoscience
This should get a ‘rise’ out of the True Believers…
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‘This should get a ‘rise’ out of the True Believers…’ not really!
‘for most of the last warm period (known as the Eemian) buty suggest that an ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica or Greenland or both’
well that’s no great surprise seen as I was warm period and things tend to melt when it’s warm!
‘towards the end of the period a large sudden rise occurred. The
Perhaps there are tipping points in Antarctic and Greenland shelves, and we would want to avoid triggering them (assuming we could)’
‘Meanwhile our sea-levels are rising at 2mm or even 3mm a year (but only if you believe the highly adjusted data) and we’re whipped into a panic.’ well most avalanches start with the first snowflake moving and then all hell breaks loose! Anyhow, the Co2 tipping point!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJFWaidKuoU
‘Before we push the anxiety button on tipping points, we ought to remember that the Vostok Ice Cores tell us Antarctica was over 2 degrees warmer during the early Eemian, and Greenland was as much as 8 degrees warmer. And if seas were 3 -4 m higher before the ice sheet collapsed, that rather suggests we have a way to go before we reach that precarious state…’and nobody of any note is saying otherwise!
‘Otherwise, corals, fish, and PEOPLE around the world have somehow survived massive shifts in temperature’, but the Neanderthals did not, perhaps our closest cousins!
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Still peddling the same old discredited Youtube videos, I see.
Well, good luck with that – maybe there’s a brain-damaged idiot out there somewhere who will believe it.
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‘Still peddling the same old discredited Youtube videos, I see.’
and you still can’t find any flaws with then! So what does that mean? 0/10 I’m afraid!
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Baldrick takes yet another day off school. !
Where’s the truancy officer when you need one.
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The Neanderthals extinction is not 100% certain. Some think there was inbreeding with Homo Sapiens. Reading some of the comments, I am leaning toward that theory.
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‘Reading some of the comments, I am leaning toward that theory’, well you would know all about your family history! So I can’t argue that point.
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Are you really so stupid as to think “comments on this blog” are including my own. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve seen many people as utterly stupid as you are–congratulations. Have a nice day–somewhere else. Please wish me the same. Please, please, please.
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Yes. Yes he is.
BlackTurdthe4th is still attempting to spam us with links to his channel in some vain attempt to achieve the highest view count of the year. He gets off on it.
Coming from the idiot that had a sook to the mods about personal attacks. Perhaps he should find a YouTube video that defines hypocrisy.
Now to throw! in some random! exclamation marks! in! inappropriate! places!
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“I don’t think I’ve seen many people as utterly stupid as you are”
Sheri…. meet BlackUdder4… now you have seen that people as dopey as him, do actually exist. !!
Once you watch even 10 seconds of any of his puerile, pathetic vids, you know them for what they are, JUNK !
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Actually, I have run across another troll who was equally egotistical and stupid. He was banned from my blog after several warnings. Some people simply cannot learn.
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‘ He was banned from my blog after several warnings. Some people simply cannot learn.’ because some simply cannot help themselves from informing people about the the valid facts!
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…from pushing their own agenda, usually because of some attention seeking disorder or desire to have the most views on YouTube.
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‘maybe there’s a brain-damaged idiot’ and that’s the group I put you in!
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Don’t get so angry! These people had nothing to do with your sexual dysfunction(s)
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For BA4, one look at Richard Alley on his video or seeing his view count increase will fix that right up.
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Careful, he’ll throw a tanty, just because we refuse to give his childish efforts a look.
Well sorry Baldrick, we are not your primary school teacher, we are not your mummy.
Maybe try your grandmother, I’ve been told that they are often quite sympathetic to ‘challenged’ children.
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I am not Baldrick, I’m BLACKADDER! As in I’m Spartacus. But Baldrick is now Sir Baldrick!
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Thanks Mod oggi
Take it the comment out, as I said it’s not suitable for general viewing.
But I just get so irate with the likes of Blackadderthe4th because of his constant links with You Tube.
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The alarmists are true believers that the earth should not change from what it was 20 minutes ago (or whatever geologically brief blink of time) forevermore amen. Then if it does change, the change must be due to the acts of man. To them, man is known to be evil and to cause all kinds of destruction so the must be true that man caused the change. Hence, we must be forced to repent and forsake our evil ways.
What is our evil? We have used our minds to discover actual knowledge and have use that knowledge to make our environment better for us. Yes, we have actually changed our environment quite selfishly to preserve and further our lives and its quality. In effect, we have eaten all the apples from the tree of knowledge and left none for them.
They fear and insist that we are in the process of being cast out of the Garden of Eden by mother earth. That is unless we give up using our power of reason and return to our former state of small hunting and gathering tribe and use only a subsistence level of natural resources while doing so. The gathering of sunlight and wind as “alternate” energy sources and giving up our primary sources of energy is only a small step in that direction.
By comparison, Chicken Little was a paragon of rationality and applied science. At least a real acorn hit her on her head and it did fall from above. This is vastly more evidence than the total compendium of evidence from the alarmist true believers. Their only evidence for their alarm that is things have changed over the last blink of time. From that they create their fear of a totally devastating change that is out of control unless we stop whatever it is that we are doing.
Actually, thing they fear is the future and they desperately want the future to stop. Especially they fear we who create the future so it matches our vision of what we want and need. So it is we who they feel the need to stop and ultimately destroy. By that destruction, they think they will have stopped the future and will no longer have to fear it.
Since it is we who create the future and not they, why have we allowed them to exist and to define our future?
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Maybe the misanthropogenic warners will tell us THE ATLANTEANS DID IT!!!!
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A previously unknown tectonic event in the vicinity of Western Australia was the most likely cause.
In the past 150 years, there have been two Category 7 ( on the Richter Scale) earthquakes in Western Australia, the most seismically active part of the continent.
My guess is every 5,000 years you get a monster in the Category 8 range and then a real whopper of +9.0 every 100,000 years and something capable of causing a vertical movement of 5-10 metres or even more.
Anyhow, that makes a lot more sense than blaming the relatively abrupt change of sea level on a collapsing ice sheet.
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Oh but the true believers think the land does not move. After all, as they stand there and look it is not moving. (Apparently, not many of them have lived in Southern California and experienced an earthquake.) However, as they look at the ocean, it moves in, out, up, and down. Therefore, it must be the ocean that changed and not the land.
Keep in mind, it took the alarmists over 500,000 years to learn the earth was not flat. Even now the so called climate modelers base their models on the assumption of a flat earth. It is very likely going to take the alarmists at least another 50,000 years to discover that land masses move up and down.
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Peter, another study suggested a 3m sudden influx at the Yucatan around the same time.
The part of WA close to shark bay is some of the oldest most stable land around.
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Most studies indicate the Eemian interglacial period was a couple of degrees warmer than today’s Holocene and sea levels were 3-5 metres higher at their peak. As the chart here shows, at the time of maximum glacial extent, sea levels were 80-120 metres lower than today and the last time this occurred was a mere 25,000 years ago.
We are in the Pleistocene Ice Age, which started 2.65 million years ago and where the norm is large continuous cycles of rapid and varying sea level change.
The alarmists would have us believe changing sea levels are totally abnormal and man made CO2 is their sole cause.
There are so many things we do not understand about changing sea levels and this example in WA is just one of them. For the cause to be an ice sheet collapse, then an abrupt change in sea level would have obviously been a worldwide event. If it was a WA tectonic event, then the abrupt change would be relatively local. Australia is well known for its tectonic stability and has few earthquakes compared with most parts of the world, but those which do occur are mainly located in WA.
For this paper to be correct in its conclusions, it should have listed at least five other places around the globe where a similar event occurred at the same time. The problem, of course, is that many coastal areas on other continents are located in areas of constant tectonic activity or of soft sediments.
I just believe a tectonic event is more likely than an ice sheet collapse – in any event, sea level change, like climate change, is a totally natural phenomenon. If the activities of man have impacted on either in the recent past, it has been negligible and certainly not quantifiable.
Natural climate cycles are the great heresy of the Global Warming Cult and the IPCC, as are any explanations for the very modest global increase in temperature over the past 150 years, which do not rely on man made CO2.
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Well, they are going to have to get used to the idea, aren’t they? Because they are not
going to go away. You may be interested in this paper by astrophysicist Nir Shaviv of
Jerusalem University which identifies a 144MY climate/ice age cycle.
It’s at his personal blog sciencebits.com as :
The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection
It puts something much bigger and vastly more powerful than our sun into the drivers’ seat
for the Earth’s climate control: the Home Galaxy.
CO2? What’s that got to do with it?
It would seem the current Quaternary Ice Age ( aka the Pleistocene Ice Age) may be caused
bythe present position of the Solar System: it’s bumping into the rear side of the Orion spur
… To be a bit more accurate, it’s in a cosmic ray rich area on the edge of the Orion Spur
known as Gould’s Bottle.
It’s going to last until the Solar System goes out the other side of the arm. That’s going to
take about 30MY … at least. So why should we care about a slight rise in CO2? What overall
effect can it possibly have when the Home Galaxy is actually in control, and not us?
It’s just ever so slightly humungously huger than we are. By many tens of thousands of light
years and Planet Earth is its private cloud chamber.
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Jo. If you and your ‘strine followers can leave eviscerating the zombie corpse of the ALP for a sec, your very own Professor Kevin Trenberth has once more shown his exceptional grasp of Mother Gaia’s little foibles here:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/18/un-ipccs-kevin-trenberth-downgrades-global-warming-to-just-a-hotspot-that-moves-unpredictably/
Might be worth a post all to itself?
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Sorry, I refuse to look at anything from Keven Trenberth unless you can point to ONE thing, anything at all, that he has interpreted correctly.
Everything he has done, radiant flux, clouds, Venus, paleoclimate, … you name it, it’s all bunk.
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Well yes, that was more or less my point. Most people would classify a particular climate phenomenon that appeared chaotically as a natural variation. Your Kev dons his tin-foil hat and goes looking for snakes in the long grass. You guys pay for Kevin’s little past-times.
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Yeah, pay for it more than once, as a matter of fact, since he is an IPCC author.
Those IPCC Assessment Reports will continue to be of little more value than photos of cesspools – with the reviewer system they have in place now for them (Susan Solomon, et al.)
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Kevin, go wash you mouth out, say a dozen Hail
Lewandoskys and stand in the corner for 30 seconds.
🙂
Trenberth is a New Zealander, not an Ozzy.
Dammit.
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10,000 apologies, I wouldn’t knowingly insult any Kiwi by mistaking him for an Aussie :-))
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If you don’t read what the climate change advocates are saying, how do you debunk it? Look at it as way to learn new methods of destroying science.
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I had never heard of “Climate Progress” before.
How on Earth do they get away with such NONSENSE!
Hot spot moves around and last January it was in Tasmania! I live in Tasmania, and last summer sure as Hell wasn’t hot. Yes there was a fire that was larger than life because the green mob objects to controlling the amount of fuel in the bush, but hot it was not.
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“How on Earth do they get away with such nonsense!”
Three ways:
Faithful believers
Larger numbers of people who are much lazier and easily swayed than we wish to believe
Humans love predictions of doom
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There’s an old betting scam, in which you send unsolicited betting tips to a large groups of punters.
The trick is, you send a different tip to each group.
The group which won, you divide them into smaller groups, and send each smaller group a different tip.
Repeat for 4 – 5 weeks, then the punchline:- you have a small group of people who have only ever seen winning tips from you. But they have to pay for next week’s tip.
The climate scam is similar – but in the case of climate, they rely on people forgetting their past failures.
End of snow, anyone?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
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What the ? Figure S2 says “predicted” .. seriously !!!!!
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Trying to figure out how to “predict” the past, and came up with this statement..
“Giss predicts that the pre-1979 temperatures will continue to get colder.”
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Let’s see:
Arguments from personal incredulity, dismissals by ad hominem, strange claims of Gaianism/conspiracy, invocations of 5-10m land shifts against all available evidence, and unrelated comments about Atlantis.
But no examinations of the evidence, also here. Hm.
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It all looks better than your assessment if you had remembered to take your Thorazine.
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And followed by an abusive ad hominem, insulting someone to (fallaciously) attack their argument. Well done, Brian, well done, you have proven my point.
On a more serious note – Perhaps this paper is correct, perhaps it is not; many bits of research do fail to pan out. However, the authors have presented their evidence, and if you wish to disagree (and be taken seriously), you need to examine that evidence, and present some supporting your view. Insults simply aren’t evidence.
If you fail to argue from the evidence, if you argue just from your preconceptions while dismissing everything else, you will look like a fool. Which not an argumentum ad hominem – a dismissal of an argument based on insult – but rather a judgement based upon the arguments presented.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens.
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It’s the only thing you global warmers HAVE as evidence. As far as AGW goes, it’s all you ever will have.
Until you get sick of it and quit referring to all the “self-reviewed” “scientific” “literature” as “evidence.” AGW literature is all reviewed by the same people putting it out, it is meaningless.
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KR: I take it you agree with what I wrote then, since I did examine the evidence, didn’t use ad hom, didn’t invoke a land-shift, and make no Gaia claim.
So there may be a tipping point for ice sheets, but if there is, we are 3-4 m of rising seas away from it. At our present rate of increase (GRACE @1.7mm/yr) that’ll be 1500-2000 years?
We can put off the panic for a few more months?
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No,it’s a “tipping point.” It’s all going to happen at once. A couple of days, maybe.
Then the “doubters” are all going to be “sorry” etc. It’s going to take no less than a “catastrophe” to stop “doubters.”
It’s the same story will all the doomsdayers, throughout recorded history. The ancient Greeks were plagued with them, although we have a higher percentage of receptive audience today than the Greeks had – thanks to mass media.
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Given the rate of sea level rise (and its acceleration over the last few hundred years), we’re going to have roughly 0.5-1.5m of rise by 2100, perhaps three times that by 2200 if we continue our present emissions patterns. We’re already committed to over 2 degrees of warming (I believe we passed that at about 375ppm of CO2), barring drastic cuts in emissions.
We have evidence for sudden flooding in the past (Blanchon and Shaw 1995, hardly news), meaning it could happen again – although (personal opinion) that will likely take a century or two before sufficient melt-water accumulates to cause flushing of ice sheets, such as happened with previous Laurentide and Antarctic events. But we do have records of this occurring at least three times in the last 20ky, at rates of 40-60cm/decade.
Overall, the paleo evidence from the last inter-glacial strongly indicates an equilibrium limit of ~2.3m of sea level rise per 1C of warming (Levermann et al 2013), over perhaps 2000 years. The evidence doesn’t support a steady rise – there will be jumps, “tipping points”, even if not in the next few years.
Sea levels will go up with temperature, that much is guaranteed. And sometimes that will be a very fast process.
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Of course, you can avoid all this unpleasantness, simply by buying one of our Holy Carbon Tax Indulgences (CTI’s). Armed with your consecrated CTI you will be able to ward off sea level rise, furnaces, fire, and even smoke.
Get yours today. Just send all your money to:
The Gospel of Gullibility
C/- Your nearest UN Office.
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Actually a few concrete blocks fashioned into a sea wall would seem a much better investment
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Acceleration?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378383911001712
“The University of Colorado Sea Level satellite monitoring shows that the rate of rise of the sea level is not only well below the values computed in … and Rahmstorf (2007, 2010), but actually reducing rather than increasing”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028492/abstract
“The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003).”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JC005630/abstract
“The global mean sea level for the period January 1900 to December 2006 is estimated to rise at a rate of 1.56 ± 0.25 mm/yr which is reasonably consistent with earlier estimates, but we do not find significant acceleration.”
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
“Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations.”
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Heywood – That is quite a list of papers; all with some serious issues:
* “Short term comparisons” ending in a 2011 dip – conclusions that vanish with only two more years of data, a clear sign of cherry-picking,
* Use of only a few tidal gauges with limited spatial coverage (two papers), and
* The Houston and Dean paper that uses an inappropriate quadratic fit and cherry-picks 1930 from that.
I would suggest instead looking at a more realistic analysis of global data, such as Church et al 2011.
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From 1880 to 2009, the graph shows 250 mm of rise. Sure, I suppose there does exist a static that can show significance to the result (I mean, clever statistics can show anything), but I can’t really see why I should start running around screaming the floods are coming and coastal villages will be in ruins. (Using my handy-dandy metric to sae converter, I get 10 inches in 129 years. For those in the USA.)
Even without the “inappropriate quadratic fit” (could you explain why that was an inappropriate statistic and why starting at 1930 is cherry picking and starting at 1880 isn’t? I mean starting at 1880 and using a different static gave exactly the result wanted–which is what is constantly called cherry picking even thought that’s not an accurate term. Explain the statistic and the interval and why you aren’t just following data that leads to the conclusion you want.) it still doesn’t look scary. Less than 300mm in over a century.
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In short, a quadratic fit to sea level rise acceleration starting in 1930 is inappropriate because temperatures did not rise in a quadratic fashion over the 20th century, but rather in a sigmoid (S-shape) with a decline between ~1940 and 1975. If you try to evaluate data by fitting a function that doesn’t match that data, you are going to get incorrect results.
1930 is the absolute minima quadratic factor (incorrect fit) acceleration in the Houston/Dean analysis, which is perhaps why that is their reported value.
Actually looking at the relationship between temperatures and rise rates, for example as in Rahmstorf et al 2009, the predictions are for 1m or more rise by 2100.
25
I will study this further.
Is there ANYTHING any where in climate change science that does not result in a rise at the end of the graph that would have had me flunked out of any real science class? There is no way every single piece of data made from statistical, probability models can do that without fudge factors and data manipulation. It does not happen in the real world. Yet, somehow, no one seems bothered by what was taught as being falsification of data is now claimed to be the truth. It’s really very sad for science. Or what science has be deformed into.
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If all of the data shows the same thing – temperature reconstructions here and many more here, Arctic ice (Kinnard et al 2011), ocean pH, changes in vegetation, etc – Is it reasonable to suspect a long-lived massive conspiracy (which is what it would take) to distort data across multiple fields for more than a century?
Or perhaps more reasonable to consider that the world is actually behaving the way the data suggests?
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If 100 students in a class all turn in papers that produce exactly the same results when doing the statistical analysis and data choices, should I suspect cheating? If the results are “extremely similar” should I suspect cheating? What are the odds that 100 independent persons using various methods achieve the exact/extremely similar results? If we were measuring the effect of gravity on a hammer, that would be different. These are statistical probabilities–and I have to say, I would presume they copied each other’s papers and flunk them. 100 out of 100 is way too far off statistically when dealing with so many variables.
You called it a CONSPIRACY–your word, not mine. There is NO conspiracy, just as in the case of the students who cheat. They cheat because it is to their benefit, if they get away with it. It is NOT a conspiracy, just mutual benefit. Keep that conspiracy term out of this–it’s a straw man and you know it.
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Very well then, ‘mutual benefit’. Let’s compare those two hyptheses:
One: That the vast majority of scientists who have looked at climate over the last century are unethical enough to uniformly and consistently distort their data for personal benefit, across multiple fields, all in ways that produce a concordance of evidence supporting that distorted result – distortions on the 2 + 2 = ? level that are easily revealed on ‘skeptic’ blogs by people who have not spent decades looking at the data.
Two: That a majority of researchers across the world, from every political system and field of study possible, are ethically reporting what they see in the data – that physics, economics, and observations all support a strong human influence on climate.
Following Occams Razor, I’m going to go with the second one. Quite frankly, the first hypothesis requires entirely too much suspension of disbelief.
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Occam’s Razor is not a scientific principle, law or anything such.
Let’s try a different hypothesis: A scientist at NASA decided we were all going to die if we didn’t knock off the fossil fuel burning (this after studying Venus, of course), finds a friend in a highly connected political type person who recognizes the potential for a campaign against fossil fuels and the sweeping changes in society that would require, then decides that with enough hype and pictures of burning villages, he can garner a lot of followers and make a lot of money. Maybe even get a Nobel Peace prize. The politician has much money and much influence–he donates money to universities that agree with him. He pushes fellow politicians to help him spread the word. Most of the “science” is now in the form of movies, books and political rallies based on the idea of AGW. Activists get involved–who doesn’t love a good “we’re all going to die” story. Comments like “The oceans will boil” come out of the mouths of scientists. (Leading to the “Little Boy who cried wolf scenario and a real question about objectivity in climate science). Now, if a scientist wants a grant from the government, who decides if he gets it or not? You got it. Not much money for those who disagree. As the political heat is turned up, any one who disagrees is branded a “denier” and scorned. Now, who’s not going to get the money and probably no job? The astute observer will note that it was politics that lead science astray, not the scientists themselves. As for uniformly and consistently distort their data for personal benefit, check out the pyramid upon which research papers are built. No one does all the research–they look for research others have done and incorporate. So it follows that any distortion early on will be magnified greatly by now. Again, going back to 100 students who all build on the one paper written by the one student who could produce something that the teacher would accept–all the papers look alike because they all came from one source and one person. Show me a university free from political influence and whose scientists are completely independent of all other researchers. It does not exist. So they copy, they build upon, they find what they expect to find.
There are scientists who have spent decades on this (unlike Marcott, the new hockey-stick hero) who most certainly do disagree (even Cook et al agree 3% disagree and are worthy of publishing in the journals). Many worked on climate science and parted ways when the politics overwhelmed the science. Some were reviewers for the IPCC. So the assertion that skeptics lack the necessary training and degrees is entirely false. Which then makes one ask how much of the rest of the claims of climate change are false, doesn’t it?
This one sounds more probable than your two suggestions. I am going with #3.
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And… right back to the conspiracy theories, back to long and complex claims that the majority of scientists are either unethical profiteers or self-deluded fools. Bzzzzt!
John Tyndall (1863), Svante Arrhenius (1896), G.S. Callendar (1938), Gil Plass (1956) – were they all in on this money-making scheme, too? Aren’t there at least a few political systems that would find it profitable to disagree? Because they don’t…
Enough. Your posts have gone from a quite reasonable discussion of functional fitting, and straight into conspiratorial nonsense (see in particular points 1-4).
Adieu
28
You made an earlier statement I entirely disagreed with, and is worth pointing out:
There is a very very simple way that can happen without large scale “fudge factors and data manipulation”. The data could be correct, and AGW a reality.
29
Thank you for dismissing me from this thread. I can now get on to speaking with intelligent people who understand the meaning of the word “conspiracy” and have actual scientific data instead of drivel. Thank you. Thank you so much! I am freed!!!!!!!!!
101
Sheri, don’t feel bad. No one should feel bad that they disagree with the likes of KR. He’s the epitome of a warmist evangelist. He has command of all the papers that support his bias but fails miserably both in recognizing his bias and the science outside of what he preaches. That said, he’s among the few fairly reasonable warmists. His trolling is not usually as smarmy as Michael nor as thoughtless as Vince or blackudderly4th.
PS, I have to believe the warmist camps are really running scared. KR has never been as rude as in this thread.
80
Mark D. – I’ll note that folks are rarely so clear about their conspiracy theories.
Discussion in short from my point of view: Interesting paper, however I disagree with JoNova’s minimization of sea level rise rates and predicted temperatures and hence of any implications of the paper. And the first dozen comments on the thread completely lack a scientific basis – they are rather ad hominems, odd theories about massive land shifts, and lots of arguments from personal incredulity (a logical fallacy).
If folks want to be taken seriously, want criticisms of AGW to be be listened to, evidence is critical. Because, as I said earlier,
14
All right KR, I see your point of view. You do remember this is a blog?
Hmmm. That would be pretty damning to the warmist cause if you remove models from the list called evidence. Then I should ask if you have any evidence that Christopher Hitchens was correct?
But as long as you’ve brought up conspiracies, what do you think of Agenda 21? I see a lot of warmists resorting to wild claims of skeptical conspiracies but they shut right up when reminded of what is actually published by the UN and how it mixes right into the subject at hand. Perhaps you haven’t read it? Anyway, it isn’t a very good conspiracy when you can read it right on the web.
80
Agenda 21 conspiracies? Over a voluntary (and mostly ignored) set of guidelines for fair trade practices, debt reduction, sustainable energy, and urban development?
I consider those to be on the same level as theories about Reptoids or the Time Cube. Get a beer first…
As to Hitchens – you or I could make wild assorted claims without evidence from now until we passed out from sleep loss (possibly encouraged by a drink or three for imagination?). However, without any evidence, without facing the harsh critic that is reality, such claims are wholly empty phantasms.
Hypotheses and and claims about the climate must be consistent with the data – all of the data – to be taken seriously. Which is why cherry-picked statistically insignificant trends contrary to complete data aren’t supportable, and aren’t taken seriously.
—
Personal opinion re: models – Models are supportable, are arguable, if they can pass hold-out tests (develop them on a subset of data, see if they match the rest), or if they can go from initial conditions to a good approximation of observations (the case with most global circulation models in use). Then they can be claimed to match the development of observations.
But I _personally_ find paleo evidence and models matching them far more convincing – what has happened before can clearly happen again. Meaning sea levels 2.3m/degree higher, alligators in the Arctic, and even more horrible from my point of view, an impact on the availability of coffee. 🙂
12
Mark D: Actually, I was mostly serious about being happy to be dismissed from KR’s diatribe. I had been meaning to finish a piece for my own blog on conspiracy theory and climate science, and KR provided new insights into the warmist’s mindset. He’s actually doing me a favor.
Michael is annoying but at least for a time he tries to stick to evidence. BAT4th and Vince are just annoying–which pretty much all they have and I realize that. One deals with “trolls” in all of life–loud and insistent with no substance to their beliefs. It is indeed a sign of warmists becoming afraid of losing. Loud and angry are all they have left, to a large degree.
30
KR says:
Again, how can it be a conspiracy when it in fact is right out in the open? And again what do you think about Agenda 21 beyond the “mostly ignored” comment. Do you think it is a good idea to have international influence of this magnitude within US borders? What if Agenda 21 conflicts with the Constitution? C’mon KR what do you really think?
Then could you please look into the ICLEI and tell me how many US towns and cities are already implementing changes to local government policies and taking away input (democratic process) from the people that actually live there? KR, it isn’t a conspiracy damn it, they are in your back yard already. Their Mission:
Read that? a worldwide MOVEMENT of local GOVERNMENTS?
A bureaucrats bureaucracy free from the encumbrances of individual rights and freedoms, with a Charter that endorses “Earth Charter Principles” brought to us by the UN and a host of names that keep popping up in all matters Green (Maurice Strong, Rockefeller(s) etc.)
But it’s not a conspiracy is it. No sir.
21
Rarely is it worth going back this far in posts to make a point but here is another view for you KR: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100232949/wind-farms-are-a-breach-of-human-rights-says-un-no-really/
Relish the thought, KR?
00
The “serious issues” is that they don’t suit your argument huh, but feel free to cherry pick a single paper that does.
52
The serious issues are primarily that all of those papers use extremely limited regional data – and their conclusions are contradicted by the full set of information available.
26
I see KR is peddling mischief by saying:
I also see MV and Heywood have pointed out the defects to this ‘claim’, but let me add that while sea level has been rising gradually since the end of the LIA in about 1850 it is now DECELERATING and here is a list of papers showing that.
A prominent paper on the list is by Houston and Dean, two American professors who in 2010, found the gradual sea rise was now decelerating.
This study was supported by two Australian researchers. The first was by Dr Phil Watson, the principal Coastal Specialist at the NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water. Dr Watson studied the four longest sea level tidal gauges throughout Australia and New Zealand and also found decelerating sea rise.
Of particular interest was his inclusion of Newcastle’s record. Newcastle’s record showed a high rise in the 1940s, which reduced to a basically flat sea level for the next 60years. This ‘‘flatness’’ can be confirmed by looking at the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base for Newcastle, which shows a decline from a high point in 2000.
Dr Watson thinks the initial increase at Newcastle was likely due to land subsidence because of underground mining. This movement of the land to produce a sea level rise is called Isostasy.
Professor Bob Carter in his 2008 study looked at the effect of Isostasy around Australia and concluded it was the dominant reason for varying sea level rise at different locations.
Another paper was written by A.A.Boretti, a coastal engineer. Unlike Houston, Dean and Watson who looked at actual sea data, Boretti studied the satellite data. Boretti also found that sea level rise was declining.
KR would fit in well at Deltoid where I had the misfortune to venture recently; the desperation there is obvious as the election looms and the possibility of Australia, as one of the leaders in accepting the miasmic AGW science, undergoing a change of direction, at least in part, about AGW appears inevitable.
Like Rudd the AGW fantasists become more arrogant, more vitriolic and simply lie more as the likelihood of their fantasy being officially disavowed becomes more real.
It will be so refreshing to see AGW disappear along with the pathology which supports it and real science can once again be discussed.
134
Your information is out of date, Cox.
CSIRO tell us it is clearly accelerating:
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
It turns out, your “deceleration” belief was based on a 7mm drop in sea levels caused by water retention on land during Australia’s big wets in 2010, 2011:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/how-australias-big-wet-befuddled-scientists-20130820-2s8k5.html
Watson’s limited use of tide gauges does not trump the use of more comprehensive satellite data. As for Boretti, who also calls himself “parker”, he is not a “coastal engineer”, and his paper has been rubbished by researchers who work in that area:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03783839/75#
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029801813001297
32
Yes, we have had all these things in the past–the distant past when we had absolutely nothing to do with it. If it happened naturally before, we could cut all CO2 emissions and still end up drowning in a sea level increase. Not a very convincing argument for humans needing to modify their behaviours. How about some empirical evidence that we now control the climate and maybe we will listen up. It needs to be evidence, not models.
80
Im sorry KR (not sure why we cant reply to you but meh…) the conspiracy theory argument/defence went out the window when the AGW community claimed 97% belief among scientists. If your argument is now the undisputed majority position with “settled science” and “international consensus” then you can no longer act as though your in a siege mentality defending yourself against a skeptical majority.
The conspiracy theory is no longer skeptics claiming governments are making it all up (not that it ever was on this site) it is now that if your consensus and 97% whatever…. is true, then the conspiracy must be among governments trying to avoid action and discredit the IPCC. What responsible government would look at all this overwhelming observational evidence supported by their hired science advisors (*cough* sorry that’s hard to type with a serious face) then ignore it and doom the planet to destruction ?
What would be the point of Tony Abbott being sold by British American Tobacco and BP on oil and smokes money, when he knows full well the planet will be a BBQ brick by Thursday week? Sounds a little counter productive doesn’t it?
So far from being in a situation where this overwhelming, counter supporting evidence is so out of the realms of dispute that skeptics must be making up things in order to counter it. Its the exact opposite. If the evidence is as convincing to scientists as you say then Governments would be racing and competing to have counter measures for it. Yet we see all over the world a strong move away from green politics and back to some bloody common sense on energy policy.
So if there is indeed a conspiracy theory, its not the one skeptics would want. Its not the Government concocting AGW to tax us and change our stupid old white guy technophobe unscientific ways, its actually governments ignoring hard science in order to take a few more years profit before we all die.
You do realise how completely idiotic your position is right ?
50
Joanne Nova – Overall, your opening post clearly discusses the O’Leary et al paper (although I did have to dig up the link for it, I didn’t see it in the opening post).
I would, however, disagree with your minimization of the issue. We are already committed to at least a 2C rise above pre-Industrial global temperatures by 2100 (barring drastic actions), that points to a 0.5-1.5m sea level rise by 2100 (and yes, 3.2mm/year at present with ongoing acceleration over the last 150 years) with continuing rises afterwards, reaching the 3-4m rise you consider a threshold by perhaps 2200. Equilibrium response (2000 years) to temperature rise appears to be ~2.3m/degree, with no guarantees whatsoever of a smooth rate.
Certainly the evidence shows some _very_ steep rise rates in the past. Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are not currently showing signs of that kind of instability, but based on the paleo evidence we should continue to watch for that kind of development on the timescale of a century or so.
Dismissing temperature and sea level rise data (as you do in the opening post), not to mention the paleo records of steep sea level rise events, is the equivalent of hiding your head in the sand. Reassuring, perhaps, but not realistic.
210
KR, as always, we get back to the models. We are only committed to a 2C rise if the models assumptions about relative humidity in the upper troposphere are right, and the evidence strongly suggests they are not (see the missing hotspot eh?). Nor do we understand the sinks and sources of CO2 properly either.
The models can’t predict the climate in the short term, medium term, or long term, and they don’t work on local, regional or global scales either.
Having said that, yes, I agree there are tipping points, and obviously we need to understand what sets them off. All the more reason to stop wasting money on windfarms, and pretending the results from failed models are useful. We could use the $ to set up some new institutions who can do some proper research — the dispassionate, popperian, skeptical kind.
102
The climate models seem OK to me.
McLean’s “coldest year since 1952”, on the other hand, turns out to have incredibly wrong – even more wrong than the utterly wrong models produced by Lindzen and Easterbrook, which have been proven completely wrong, thus hammering home the final nails in the coffin of your imaginary low sensitivity value of 1 degree.
712
They would to a Deltoid regular mired in the insults and drudge that passes for conversation there.
But let’s look at the history of the models and their manifest failures.
1 Models and hurricanes.
2 Models and THS. Spencer’s analysis is damning which explains the vitriol the deltoidians like whirlwind direct towards him.
3 Models and SSTs
4 Land surface and SSTs
5 Models and precipitation
6 Respected scientists from within AGW like von Storch and Curry now concede the models have got it wrong while lees respected scientists, as revealed by the emails, also concede this.
7 The work of Koutsoyiannis has shown the models fail the most basic test of reliability which is hind-casting.
8 The structure itself and soft-ware of the models can itself be a determining factor in their results.
AGW is a failed science, predicated on a mechanism, back-radiation, which patently cannot do the job it is supposed to do and described by a term, greenhouse, which is completely misleading.
AGW has been infiltrated by ideology and money and now has nothing to rely on except the ridiculous consensus a notion made even more absurd by Lewandowsky’s and Cook’s attempts to validate it, appeals to authorities and the infestation of former august scientific bodies such as NASA, the CSIRO and the BOM by true believers or career bureaucrats with a science background.
131
Nice summary there.
KK
30
This is non-science, and the rest of your fallacious beliefs follow on from it.
You seem to have been taken in by Roy Spencer, who ran a one-dimensional bunch of models from an unrealistic starting point. You would do better to rely on real scientists for this sort of information:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111019211836/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/ar4mods.jpg
Models looks fine to me, although of course our knowledge of climate change is based on observations, the models are just there to try to test ideas as to particular effects.
34
Come on Magot.
Tone it down a bit.
KK
30
CSIRO says the “present rate of increase” is 3.2mm.
Why are you saying 1.7mm? You need to be careful – some people here aren’t very sceptical and they will believe any old rubbish if it suits their narrative.
69
“1.7mm/yr” appears to be a short term (2005-2011) measure, not a long term or current value; see a NASA discussion of that short term variance, and the up to date satellite data with a 20-year average of ~3.2mm/year.
Once again, a statistically insignificant value from short subset of noisy data – while ignoring the larger scale picture and the majority of the data.
18
Yeah right KR, spot the AGW ‘effect”.
72
Grinsted et al 2008 (see Fig. 7), Rignot et al 2011, or perhaps Church et al 2006?
Or even just a simple Google Scholar search?
05
I come across your type constantly in the AGW ‘debate’ KR: obviously smart, well researched but with an absolute reluctance to see the alternative.
I’ll trump your papers with Church 2012.
Church is well in the ‘church’ of AGW and he finds no acceleration of sea level rise in the 20thC.
That is undisputed. What is interesting is the contortions Church undertakes to avoid the obvious conclusion that there is no AGW influence on sea level and that measurement of sea level rise filtered through the assumptions and expectations of AGW has been derelict.
Church considers disproportionate ice melt in the first 1/2 of the 20thC which presumably has stopped when the ice ran out.
Church considers volcanic activity being greater than supposed, again only presumably during the first 1/2 of the 20thC.
Church can only conclude:
In fact they haven’t been larger at all; and yet he persists with the mantra;
It takes a special sort of intellect to persist with something when there is no evidence. As a person who I consider has this talent KR could you please explain what personal motivation it is which drives you to continue to support AGW?
101
The Church 2012 paper you refer to is a process-model based estimate (with a rather thin discussion of Antarctic contributions, and arguable volcanic levels), Rahmstorf et al 2012, using a differ, discusses semi-empirical projections, indicating ~1m by 2100, while Pfeffer et al 2008 describe an extreme (and rather unlikely) possibility of 2m by 2100. I personally consider semi-empirical models likely to be more accurate, as predictions from poorly understood components (such as ice-sheet dynamics) are (IMO) better made from observations rather than process estimates.
Of additional interest regarding Church is Willis and Church 2012, where they themselves discuss the uncertainties in sea level rate estimates, _including in their own poorly constrained process-models_. We have a fairly good idea from paleo evidence of what the end-state equilibrium is (a couple of meters per degree C); the path to that state is not as clear.
But we do know that seas are rising, and that over the last 150 years that rate has only increased.
“…what personal motivation it is which drives you to continue to support AGW?”
The strength of the evidence, meaning _all_ of it, nothing more. I consider the basics of AGW as well established as evolution, with a similar concordance of multiple lines of evidence.
04
Cohenite would do well to reflect on “special types of intellect” after reading the following article:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/how-australias-big-wet-befuddled-scientists-20130820-2s8k5.html
The “1.7mm/year” you get by cherry-picking an end-date in 2011 for your trend calculation is put into perspective by the 10mm/year that occurred since then, and the discontinuity is fully explained.
It turns out that Anthony Cox has used some limited fact-snippets to suit his personal belief, instead of the more acceptable intellectual approach of using a complete appreciation of the facts to form that belief.
43
Thanks for replying KR.
Rahmstorf 2012 is really 2011 and it deals with methodology he has been using since at least his 2007 paper.
Rahmstorf was heavily critiqued for this paper; not for the semi-empirical approach which is quaint, consisting of a test to see if 1/2 of the data can predict the trend in the other 1/2 but because he used end point padding to make his projections.
As you know end-point padding is extrapolating from a trend which may exist at the end of the data but which is otherwise atypical.
And this is the point; you say that:
With all due respect that is ambivalent. Noone disagrees that sea level increased about 1850. But that rate of increase has not increased; I have linked to numerous studies showing that and presented the data.
What has happened is occasional accelerations and decelerations of sea level rise; the rate has neither been steady nor increased.
What Rahmstorf persists in doing is using a period of acceleration to extrapolate.
That is wrong. It ignores the true sea level rise trend and it ignores that in the latter half of the 20thC and 21stC there has been no correlation between sea level rise or CO2 levels; that’s the key point.
23
Sea levels are rising as per the satelite record at twice the rate of the 20th century average.
Long term trend: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-ts-18.gif
Satelite record: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
The key point being that this is consistent with AGW when taken into context with all of the other indicators and the science of what would occur in a world warming by AGW.
24
Bullshit.
It may or may not “consistent” with GW, but there is absolutely NOTHING about sea level rise or any of other “indicators” – or “science” – to suggest human causation.
It is also “consistent” with the decline in the number of pirates and the increase in the cost of postage stamps in the USA. So what?
32
Well Michael I put this graph up before:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/image42.png
It’s similar to your NOAA one. I’ve also linked to papers by Houston and Dean, Carter, Watson and Boretti. None find an acceleration in sea level rise. Houston and Dean say this:
I’ve just noticed that KR has said this about H&D’s use of a quadratic analysis:
The first thing to note about this is neither did CO2 increase in a quadratic fashion.
Secondly, a quadratic analysis is used for non-linear data; sea level has not risen linearly.
3rdly the date of 1930 was when some of the data sources began; not because it was a period of minimum acceleration.
H&D’s approach fits the sea level data; KR objects because the correlation with temperature is not perfect; nor is there a fit with CO2. In short we have an analysis which contradicts the AGW theory and KR is objecting because it doesn’t fit!
21
Maggott
During the last big melt, the sea rose at up to 13 mm per annum.
The current unadjusted rate of 0.9 mm pa is much less than previous maxima.
That’s Global Warming and that was 15,000 years before the Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza.
KK
31
cohenite – Some short responses, as I have limited time at the moment:
Rahmstorf et al 2011 is listed as _2012_ in some references, including the open link I posted, oddly enough – but I believe you are correct that it is indeed a 2011 publication.
—
As I stated above, semi-empirical methods as descriptive (not prescriptive) modelling have IMO a better shot at accuracy due to incorporating even poorly understood processes. Even so, they may be underestimates (Jevrejeva et al 2012). Hold-out testing is a standard method, and extrapolating ongoing trends a far more reasonable approach than assuming ongoing behaviors will suddenly stop. Rahmstorfs initial article (Rahmstorf 2007) has well over 900 citations – perhaps you could point me to one or two that are critical of the approach? It’s not the only approach, but it is certainly very well regarded in the literature.
—
Regarding Houston and Dean: while CO2 has in reality increased in a greater than exponential rate (albeit with a small exponent), faster than quadratic, it is not the only forcing (IPCC AR4), and the sum of forcings affecting temperature follow a roughly sigmoidal path over the 20th century (net forcings here, Fig 2b). ‘Single-cause’ statements like yours are therefore a strawman argument. Given non-quadratic forcings and temperatures, a quadratic fit to sea level is entirely inappropriate.
Even worse in regards to that paper, even if Houston and Dean had good reasons to select a quadratic fit (they don’t), what they reported is the minimum extrema of their results, using data they a priori limited their published data to a 1930 start point. To be blunt, they should have reported the range and likely value of their results, rather than the single point in their analysis with the lowest possible value. And if they found a minima in 1930, they should have extended their data and analysis past that point!
Sea rise acceleration over the last century is present, and is statistically significant (Church 2011). Your adherence to the refuted (discussion reply here) Houston and Dean ‘analysis’ (it’s difficult to think of any misanalysis that could give a lower number than they produced) is in my opinion a clear sign of confirmation bias on your part.
In short – the Houston and Dean paper is nonsense.
11
That’s unreasonable.
The Rhamstorf and Vemeer [RV] critique of H&D is replied to by H&D here.
There is a fundamental difference in methodology between RV and H&D. Basically RV analyse sea level rise on the basis of temperature while H&D look at on the basis of time.
What RV have done is select those warm periods to see if there a correlating sea rise. They have done the very thing you accuse H&D of; that is cherry-pick data to support their thesis.
Dean do not report the extreme minima of data, they report it all on the basis of their statistically justified time criteria.
As H&D explain RV select increasingly shorter data periods to prove their thesis of temperature based acceleration. This is a classic case of end-point fallacy similar to what the IPCC did with temperature with their infamous graph. This graph is rightly notorious because it is statistical sleight of hand as Glassman notes at figure 15.
The difference is, however, H&D don’t have a thesis; they merely selected data which was at least 60 years old for reasons they explain which is shorter data demonstrates extreme rates of either rise or fall in sea level.
So, I think your dismissal of H&D is ironic and your criticism should be directed at RV, citations not withstanding.
21
Houston and Dean did not even attempt to address their selection of 1930 as a starting point, nor primarily US tidal stations as a regional rather than global signal, and provided no data supporting their dismissal of Southern Hemisphere data. Nor did they address the short term and high variance of the 1993-2008 data.
The only one of the five major issues raised by R&V that H&D seriously addressed in their reply was decadal variation. That isn’t much of a reply…
And again, the quadratic fit used by H&D is wholly inappropriate for their data, as is directly discussed at some length in Boon 2012:
and also:
Houston and Dean 2011 uses only a small subset of tidal data rather than global (overweighting Northern Hemisphere records), fits a quadratic function assuming linear acceleration to data with non-linear acceleration, and have selected 1930 – the absolute minima for a quadratic acceleration mis-fit to a sigmoidal dataset – as their reporting point. Recent acceleration rates are greater than the average value since 1930, at a statistically significant level, with much of the increase in the last 30 years – but again increasing in a non-linear and in fact nonmonotonic fashion over the 20th century. Observed accelerated ice-sheet losses over the past few decades and sea level budget support more recent acceleration as well (Cazenave et al 2010), with the physical indications pointing to even more acceleration in the future as mass balance becomes a larger fraction of rise.
H&D 2011 is a terrible paper, using analysis methods that just don’t match the data, and applied to a only small subset of available information – hence their conclusions are just not supported. The focus on this one paper, as opposed to the literature at large, is (IMO) nothing more than confirmation bias.
You are more than welcome to continue to promote this work over others – but don’t be surprised if you aren’t taken seriously as a result.
Adieu
01
Thank you KR, as usual a good drive by shooting.
H&D are talking about RV’s Figures 1 and 2:
And this:
Your 2 other complaints are use of regional and not global data and the inappropriateness of the quadratic method.
In respect of the former H&D says:
So your regional complaint is obviously not true.
In respect of the latter Boon 2012 indeed does confirm RV’s conclusion of recent acceleration because he does the very thing H&D accuse RV of doing, which is to select data consistent with the thesis. Boon 2012 applies a quadratic term to 43 years of data not the full data range. H&D say this about applying a quadratic term to shorter data periods:
In short the use of the quadratic term on shorter data periods accentuates the dominant accelerant or decelerant quality of the data. On longer data periods the quadratic shows the true nature of any acceleration or deceleration because decadal fluctuations are evened out.
RV and Boon 2012 have merely selected the method and data which confirms their thesis.
11
Interesting opening paragraphs in your Reef Drowning link.
Wait, what? Did I understand that correctly?
Is Blanchon et al actually implying here that the collapse of this eastern Canadian ice shelf actually triggered the formation of the global conveyor belt (MOC)?
So… the planet’s response to warming was to create the MOC which has the effect of sequestering both CO2 and heat into the deeper ocean, thus being a negative feedback on global warming.
Sounds like this planet has a thermostat. Thanks KR, you’re a wealth of knowledge! 😀
Still not sure how all this evidence of 40mm/year sea level rises in the past are anything more than a reminder that humans must adapt to large natural climate changes just as we always have done. If we adapted to natural changes of 6m in 100 years without modern technology we can easily adapt to a hypothetical “man-made” 40cm in a decade with modern technology.
Does the King Canute crowd actually deny this?
70
KR, you are cherry picking to support your confirmation bias. Further, that you present with such bias suggests you harbor conspiracy theories about Joanne and us poor lowly skeptics.
PS, If you fancy a duel of wits and logic between you and Lionell, I’ll put my money on Lionell and order up some popcorn and candy.
82
What’s “candy”? Some sort of american thing? What is it with these people and their avid consumption of american culture?
48
Because the internet doesn’t extend to the USA does it VW? No possibility that Americans contribute to this blog??
What is it with these people and their assumptions?
70
We have also had Russians on this blog (well, somebody from Uzbekistan) and possibly even a Laotian. I wonder if Vince knows where Uzbekistan and Laos are?
What is the population of Laos, Vince?
50
Vdub,
Mark D is from the USA so he talks like he is from the USA if you hang around long enough and get to know him a bit you will find he is not a bad guy so no need for the yank bashing.
Cheers
crakar24
50
Thanks for that Crackar. Lollies is what the Queen would say? I will remember that but all our US readers would have had no clue. If I said “wafer thin mints” would that have worked?
I think Vince would be surprised how many Yanks hang around here.
40
Wafer thin mints would have been acceptable
30
I should trust that you are capable of research? What a Dumbass.
Vince Tornado, there’s a big world out there, you should go find it.
70
Oh, come on. Fair go you people.
Poor old Vince is so used to only bombing sites where there are Australian readers. He can’t quite grasp yet that Joanne’s site has International commenters, so he just naturally assumes that all the people here are all Australians, because his thinking is that this is only a local and very tiny blog with a very tiny local readership.
(Do I really need to add the /sarc key)
Tony.
80
Vince is actually probably more confused that he lets on. I mean it’s summer time here in the USA and 95 degrees in the afternoon. I’m reading Safetyguy66 talking about ice on a windshield. Then there’s the time difference–answers to my posts generally come overnight, since I’m often awake when you’re asleep. The language is somewhat different, though my spelling of some words does match Australian spelling (my spell says no, but who listens to spell check?). I have had to look up slang terms more than once (Yes, there is a website for that!). Then there’s the differences in customs. Poor Vince’s head is probably spinning just from these differences alone, before he even gets to the pesky science part. 🙂
(Speaking of spell check, ever notice that “to the” and “tot he” are both passed by it, though not at all the same in meaning and not at all what one means!!)
40
Sheri
I’m glad somebody is looking after this site while we are asleep and also able to provide fresh input not tainted by local politics.
KK
20
Jo, there was an excellent series on ABC ( what a change) called “First Footprints” recently. Episode 3 was called “The Great Flood”, set 5,000 to 9000 years ago, and shows archaeological and anthropogenic evidence of a sea level rise of ‘a hundred metres or so’ in that period, to it’s present level today.
I believe it may still be on I-view otherwise it’s on You tube, but it may be worth another look.
80
Speaking of sea level rise, another item from late last year in Science Network WA suggested a 2cm rise in sea level was enough to inundate Kakadu’s wetlands with salt, destroying much of the ecology. Since it hasn’t happened this century, finally some research has shown that the current Green/warmist hype on rising seas is false, without them even realising it! Article is linked and copied here in ‘Kimberley Water Lilies’.
60
Tom, I didn’t see that series. Which part of Australia was it discussing? Was it evidence of a one-off flood or a real rise in sea-levels. If it was 100m of real rise it would have to be the rise from the last ice age, but most of that had happened long before 9000 years ago.
I wrote about an extraordinary 1500 year drought that may have wiped out or forced the migration of an entire culture of Aboriginal inhabitants in the Kimberley. The drought started about 7000 years ago. That would be the height of the holocene. New people brought new art into the area 4500 years ago. Don’t know how any of that fits in.
Thanks for the link on the Kakadu wetlands. That rather supports Nils-Axel Morners theory that there just hasn’t been that much of a rise. Though the NT land is shifting, presumably rising slowly. The most stable parts of the Australian continent appear to be WA and NSW with the plate tilting in the North and South somewhat.
121
It covered all areas of Australia where there was anthropological evidence such as Arnhem land, Kimberley, Pilbara, but especially the Great Australian Bight. I haven’t seen anything on ABC this good ever … some of the sites were really incredible, and only recent discoveries.
20
First Footprints are all still available on ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firstfootprints/
40
Hi Tom
The seas did rise but in the period mentioned there were only final oscillations of the big rise. From 9,000 years ago til today there have been oscillation of up to 8 m above present then 4 , then down to the final one of 1.2 metres.
Before the period mentioned seas rose almost 130 metres to present levels, overshot by the 8m mentioned above and then dropped back to current.
There would have been two big floods in the last 9,000 years, the 8m and the 4 m and the lesser 1.2 metre final drop.
KK
70
There have been some pretty catastrophic tidal waves, but no changes in sea level of anything like the scale you mention.
Creationists and other bible-literalists like to make up stuff like that.
32
Maggot
If you were smart enough you would allow that we all make errors of recall at times.
Obviously the reference to 100 metres must have been prior to 9,000 years ago when seas rose about 125 metres sometimes at a rate of 13 mm pa.
KK
20
“Before we push the anxiety button on tipping points,…”
That button has already been pushed, many times. Quite frantically.
80
See here – two starkly contrasting articles from two starkly contrasting individuals. One young. One much older. One a new researcher. One a seasoned Emeritus Professor toward the end of his career. One who studies paleo-reefs and the other who goes to Antarctica and even has some of it named after him.
Science 21 February 1997: Vol. 275 no. 5303 pp. 1077-1078
DOI: 10.1126/science.275.5303.1077
Rapid Sea-Level Rise Soon from West Antarctic Ice-Sheet Collapse? Bentley, C.
There has been recent concern over whether shrinkage of ice sheets in Antarctica caused by climate change could lead to rapid global sea-level rise. In his Perspective, Bentley discusses the processes at work in ice-sheet behavior and concludes that, in view of the evidence for ice-sheet stability, catastrophic changes are unlikely in the next century or two.
On the other hand we have the young, almost prepubescent looking Dr O’Leary of the Department of Environment and Agriculture (at Curtin University) who was recently recognised for his ‘inspirational’ ‘research into reef island formation and change, to better resolve how islands will respond to rising sea levels’.
‘He has communicated research about climate change and rising sea levels to public audiences across the globe, participating in public forums and providing expert evidence for climate change policies and reports’.
…and doubtless roped in outstanding funding and publicity too. My model projects a stellar career with 97% certainty.
120
NB. Mount Bentley and the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica are named after him.
50
I’m sure it’s a coincidence! 😉
10
Hey as one eyed skeptics with no interest in anything other than being paid off by big oil, should you have kept this information secret Jo ?
/sarcasm off
50
It can’t be an “ice shelf” as an ice shelf is floating, and its volumetic contribution to global sea-levels is already done. It would have to be a land-based ice-mass if we are considering a sudden melting or movement event to change sea-level.
There is, in geological mainstream thinking, a subject that is verbotem in virtually all aspects of sea-level: that the land, not the sea, can move rapidly. If the continents themselves may rapidly rise or sink by a few meters, it puts all the sea-level by ice sheet change out of its unique consideration.
I am a soft sediment,oil and gas geologist, so I am familiar with the conundrum we face in our daily tasks: accounting for repeated cycles of 1 – 20 m in the geological record within an environment that does NOT change. In Alberta, Canada, there is, for example, three or four cycles of the Cretaceous Viking and Cardium (100 and 88 million years ago, respectively), each one of which is a near mirror of the other. 1-3 m stratigraphic cycles are obvious in most formations regardless of how far back you go. The “sea level” was bouncing around throughout tropical times: even the Devonian, world-wide carbonate deposits show repeated erosional cycles when the top of the carbonates over thousands of square miles became exposed.
The “breathing” of the Earth has not been solved, indeed is not discussed because the fundamental and obvious solution – that the continents go up and down repeatedly, not the seas, has no known mechanism. Just as Wegener’s tectonic plate, i.e. continental drift theories, were dismissed into the 1960s by mainstream, academic scholars, so today the idea that the continents could be rising and falling regardless of glacial advances and retreats is dismissed.
The discussion of ice sheet failure is fixated on a unique reason for sea-level changes. We know that isostatic rebound occurs, and the mechanism is simple to understand. But if there is are times that the continents sink relative to the oceanic floor, then sea-level changes have a second – non-recognized – cause.
My geologic work with the subsurface geology of Western Canada (and lesser work in Western United States) convinces me that sea-levels rise and fall for more than just glacial development reasons. Even coalbed methane work shows repeated cycles of deepening and shallowing occur over millions of years without a change in climate or global positioning. Gradients steepen and then shallow repeatedly, and while the lessening may be considered a result of erosion on the steepened sections, the fact is that the rise and reduction is cyclic or at least semi-regularly episodic. Something else is going on other than glaciers waxing and waning.
240
Doug,
I don’t profess to understand this area, but didn’t India travel at a rate of 1km every 1,000 years until it hit Asia, and the Himalayas are still growing at 1 cm per year and apparently pushing parts of Asia eastward toward the Pacific Ocean.
This plate tectonic movement must have a huge influence on sea levels over the years. I mean India the continent traveled north some 6,000 km and nestled in the belly of Asia.
As Peter at Comment 4 above:
How much climate change money is being spent on this to investigate the possibility?
So 120,000 years ago, India would have traveled some 120 kilometers north. Amazing.
Can’t see how 390ppm of CO2 can affect sea level, when the sea floor could be shifting right, left, up and down. It would have to be huge ice shelves that collapse to cause this sort of rise in the oceans?
40
The tectonic plates are moving at 3 or more centimeters a year, something like that. The distance isn’t so important as, I suppose, the continued pressure on the edges where the plates dive beneath the continents. If the plate movement is not continuous, but episodic, you could get upward pressure pulses. That would get to my concern of continental masses rising and falling: a pressure event would push the continent up, a relaxation event would cause the continent to settle down, i.e. get lower. The first part causes the seas to regress , the second part causes the seas to trangress.
40
We may owe the second ‘Sapiens’ in Homo Sapiens Sapiens to wild weather in Olduvai Gorge (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-may-have-spurred-human-evolution&page=2). Judging by the news on the telly every day, we seem to badly need to get a lot smarter. More wild weather, please!
20
Jo, maybe the researchers should look closer to home. Isn’t most of Perth built on sand. The limestone at Kwinana which is/has been used for lime production is young. So is the limestone used to build older structures (a jail?)at Fremantle very young. You can find lots of fossils in the limestone. So Perth was once under the sea with outcrops of Coral reefs.
I understand that Perth is presently slightly sinking and that needs to offset some of the sea level rise. I understand in Bass straight that the sea level rise is negative partly due to the land rising. Maybe in a few thousand years there will again be a land bridge between Tasmania and Victoria.
60
Hi Cementafriend
I think the land bridges were due to sea levels being up to 130 metres lower during the last ice age that ended 20,000 years ago.
Who knows, when we are in the grip of the next ice age in 30,000 years, and New York is once again under 1500 metres of ice field, maybe we will be able to walk across to New Guinea again and Tassie.
KK
60
Let’s get this melting ice thing into perspective! Part 1
We are constantly bombarded by claims that we are in dire peril because the sea levels will rise catastrophically when the ice caps of the world melt soon because global warming will cause air temperatures to rise by half a degree C.
Let’s just examine a few facts to see what it would take to melt the ice caps/ice sheets.
For simplicity we will concentrate on the Antarctic ice sheet because it contains 90% of the world’s ice.
Its ice volume is 30 million cubic kilometres spread over 14 million square kilometres, it’s up to 4 kilometres thick and it holds 70 % of the world’s fresh water.
To melt ice we need to heat it, that is, we need to add heat energy to it.
If we are to heat it with warmer air the air needs to be at a higher temperature than the ice at the shared surface.
This is elementary high school physics – heat energy can only flow from a hot body to a cooler body.
Thus the ice at the surface must be raised by the air to zero degrees C for melting to even begin.
Over this ice sheet, the air temperatures range from –11C to –40C in summer and –28C to –57C in winter.
The air temperatures are always below the freezing point of ice. (check the data for yourself)
With those air temperatures being always so much lower than zero and lower than the ice temperature
(ice is typically –5C), no heat transfer to the ice can occur to raise its temperature to zero, therefore no melting can occur. For this reason, air temperatures would need to increase, not by half a degree or even two degrees as the IPCC predicts, but by tens of degrees for any melting to even begin. Since the Antarctic ice cap contains 90% of the world’s ice, any risk of ice cap melting or hazardous sea level rise is nonsense.
The alarmists – self appointed experts – need to brush up on their high school physics.
191
Okay, let’s check Casey Station.
Average highs for Jan/Dec are over +1.4 Celsius. To claim the AIS can’t melt is to claim no part of it can melt, but clearly at casey station it can, and that’s not even on the peninsula.
A loss of subsurface permafrost has been inferred from recorded subsidence in the dry valleys adjacent to Casey Station, despite the long term trend in air temperatures being downwards for that area. Quite possibly this ice is being melted on the handful of warm days that occur in summer and these summer days are getting warmer. Warmer summers but colder over the rest of the year – sounds strange but check for yourself.
Other interpretations of satellite measurements that claim the AIS is losing ice are that glaciers are still reaching the coast without melting but the start of the glaciers aren’t being topped up with snow at the same rate as previously, leading to net loss. That could be due to some change in wind patterns rather than temperature.
South of 75°S is not the only place where there is ice and warming isn’t the only way ice can be lost. I’m just saying I’ve seen conflicting information about this, and.. uh… the science isn’t settled.
30
Andrew, the daily highs can climb well above 0c and still not be able to melt ice. The over night below freezing cold will be retained by the ice could easily mitigate any prospect of melting during a brief daily high.
Check how long it takes to form liquid on a block of ice that has come from a deep freezer. (wrap the sides and bottom with a few layers of towel.)
50
Observational evidence in my driveway and on the work sites I visit supports this notion Mark. I hopped in my car the other morning at around 0630, the sun was well up. The temperature on the car thermometer was reading 4c (no decimal places sorry) yet my windscreen has 2mm+ of ice on it. Additionally driving around a work site at around 1400 about 3 weeks ago, the outside temperature was 11c according to the car and yet the puddles in the shade still had a good 10mm of ice on them. The relationship between air temperature and ice melting even on a small scale is not as linear as X > 0c = melting.
I know they are pretty half assed examples but its the best Ive got lol :p
70
The ice in the shade was melting into puddles and you say that’s a counterexample???
00
You do know that ice forms on the top of puddles? That there can be liquid under the ice? That if you are claiming that air temperatures above 0c always melts ice, the ice on top the puddle will be the first to melt?
Or are you just swinging pedantic?
10
Are you seriously going to argue that heat will not be conducted down a thermal gradient?
Or are you just trolling?
00
Andrew says:
Sorry that I missed this reply till now.
To answer your question, no I’m not arguing that. Re-read what was posted above. If YOU think that a mass of ice in the millions of tons sitting in double digit negative temperatures for 16 hours is going to form puddles of any substantial amount:
During a few hours above freezing is denial of the thermal mass. It is the mass of air dwarfed by the mass of ice. You need to spend more time where there is that kind of cold to appreciate and understand.
01
Perhaps in the past there have been big increases in volcanic activity beneath the oceans and Antarctic ice sheet which have caused relatively sudden peripheral melting. The warming oceans would expand upwards slightly and the melting ice would raise sea level and thus accelerate the process. This could occur while the atmosphere, with it’s very low thermal mass, was actually cooling due to volcanic dust and SO4.
Continental Antarctica could stay at minus 40ºC without affecting the edge melting processes.
The Joules of heat required to melt an ice cap are enormous given the state change and coolth of the ice. One would need a staggering volume of air to provide this quantity of heat transfer.
Under normal circumstances air moves towards the S Pole at high altitude, cools and descends upon the Pole and then spreads out in a northerly spiral over the ice so it seems extremely unlikely that warm air would ever reach central Antarctica.
30
That is because you are conditioned to seeing time as being something that “flows” from left to right.
When we draw points on a graph, relative to a defined point of reference, the origin, what we are actually plotting is the magnitude of the variation from that origin.
If you take your origin as being 1900 years CE, then you can quite validly have the past on the left of the origin, and the future on the right, because you are actually showing negative and positive variations from that specific year.
But if you are plotting the magnitude variation relative to zero, as you do when you are plotting “years ago”, then you cannot have a negative magnitude, so you plot to the right.
I know scientists and engineers hate it, but it is often the presentation technique used by historians, especially when relating time to “Before Christian Era”, and logically it is correct.
80
I’m not sure why this paper wants to make a big thing about the 9 metre “surge” that occurred 120,000 years ago when the same thing happened at the end of the last melt about 8,000 years back.
This is not unexpected at the end of a big melt that has been in process for over 10,000 years and when a lot of ice is just waiting for that last little “hold’ to free it so it can move seawards.
The record of the last 8,000 years shows that the big lift of 8 metres initially, was followed by oscillations of 4 m and diminishing, to the last one, two or three thousand years ago which was a 1.2 metre drop to present levels.
The oceans have never been as stable as they are now.
KK
30
I agree Keith, they should have withheld publication because something bigger happened at another time point. It is clearly of no interest to anyone.
30
Again GEE I am not sure where your comment leads, there’s always something extra?
But.
The main good point about this paper is that it very specifically highlights the real reason for sea level rises, AND FALLS:
The orbital dynamics of the Solar System.
The cycle of freeze and ocean drop, then melt and ocean rise has been around for a long time and will continue, with or without man.
We are puny and insignificant.
KK
31
But we have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% so far, and we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
So we have created a man-made forcing which is currently dominating every other mechanism/cycle that we are aware of.
This is what the facts are telling us.
44
No they aren’t Maggot.
KK
31
It’s alright.
Everything is under control.
You can stop panicking.
Aug 8, 2013
“The Conservation Council of Western Australia has cautiously welcomed the release of an updated coastal planning policy by Planning Minister John Day.
The council’s Jamie Hanson says policy to address climate change is vital to avoid inappropriate developments in at-risk areas along the state’s coast.”
.
Phew. That was close.
50
New York was ok then, it should be ok now too.
28
Oh, hang on, sorry I was wrong.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130819102601.htm
03
No, your original comment was correct:
“New York was ok then, it should be ok now too.”
The article you refer to was written by Stephane Hallegatte, Senior Economist at the World Bank, based in Paris, France, and therefore obviously an expert in the hydrology, geology, and meteorology, pertaining to the Eastern American seaboard.
70
And by a few other co-authors, one of which was Colin Green from the Flood Hazard Research Centre.
Well done for targeting the man rather than the research.
05
Stephane Hallegatte is named as the Lead Author. Go and look at the report itself.
It is the lead author who determines how the report will be formatted, and what the central theme of the text will say. They also do much of the editing around the central theme.
The other co-authors named will provide most, if not all, of the supporting research, data, and graphics, with unnamed assisting-authors providing most of the text for the body of the report.
In the case of those reports where I have been involved, the text from co-authors, and assisting-authors, has been further edited to “better align with the purpose of the report”.
I therefore have to assume that the research is, at best suspect, and at worst, totally irrelevant, in any report that does not have a subject matter expert as the lead author.
When you have experience in working with uber-national organisations, you get to realise that they all work this way. It is a common pattern. And it is rubbish.
So I am not targeting the man (although his involvement is his choice), I am targeting the system that thinks it is OK to present lies as if they were facts, because of some higher purpose.
80
You forgot to actually tell us where the report went wrong.
05
It didn’t go wrong,
it was wrong right from the start
and
when its that way and it ends up like that obviously it didn’t change so it couldn’t have “gone wrong”.
It was always wong.
KK
40
Hey kids, just received another Galileo Movement video sticking it to Man Bear Pig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrQqvkF0IwU
Good stuff for the general populous 🙂
94
Wow. Two red thumbs. Obviously some Gore disciples lurking.
41
Yes I’m shattered ha ha, I predict given enough time and rope these Gaia disciples will look as much as a joke worldwide as they do here, just pick a cult of times past and there they’ll be.
Just a few friendly tips to ease the transition.
– Choose attire that reflects your ravings or sleepwear 24/7 to really stand out.
– Props are good, be creative, a globe of the world with flames drawn on or a toy polar bear with a noose around it’s neck.
– Shopping trolleys are useful but like normal people pick one that wheels straight or don’t just to wind yourself up even more.
– Make sure you know the warmist script when ranting in public, you don’t want to look stupid in front of any fellow nutjobs.
I have more so please cut and paste (or write down in crayon) these tips as more will follow in the future.
40
You are totally incorrect, Jo. You say of the GIS “we are not dangerously close to a tipping point” but the people of Nuuk, Greenland certainly are close to a tipping point.
There are tipping points in the Greenland Ice Sheet and I found one on Google Maps!
So there you go, proof that tipping points in the GIS are totally real. 😀
Sorry, couldn’t think of anything serious to say. There’s hardly any ice left to melt. Thermal expansion is the only way sea level will rise substantially from this point onwards.
In a century we had +0.7 degrees in corrected/manufactured/fake surface air temperature and what… about 150mm of sea level rise. So using an optimistic linear model of sea level rise, even based on unsubstantiated IPCC climate sensitivity figures, CSIRO sea level charts, and the myth of the 280ppm “stable preindustrial” level, when CO2 reaches 450ppm in ~2032AD we are looking at a possible
2.1[C/doubling] * lg(450/280)[doublings] * (150mm/0.7C) – 150mm
= 158mm extra sea level rise. The width of a compact disc between now and 2032.
Time for a surreality check with SkepticalScience. Even the alarmists predict only 38cm of sea level rise by 2050. By 2021 we will know a lot more about the climate and the sea level’s trajectory, this whole debate will be over, and we’ll know whether 38cm is realistic.
If over 50 years the sea level rises by the length of a school ruler and that’s too much for you, that’s just natural selection at work.
50
I’m suspecting that the sea level will actually reach its high point in 20-50 years then start back down again. The Chinese, or was it the Japanese, had some data that seemed to indicate a 300-400 year cycle. Can’t find it now though.
We do know the slow rise is starting to decelerate. Will be interesting to see if any of us are still around when anything other than a very, very slow increase actually happens.
31
Your vague story about a “cycle” in sea level isn’t supported by any known data, and your belief that sea level rise is decelerating is the opposite of what the facts are telling us.
33
Google “Sequence Stratigraphy” if you do not believe there are data supporting sea level cycles.
(Extra hint: change is the norm; stasis is the exception).
Best Regards,
Mark H.
10
Dave,
Check your figures. India has never moved as fast as you suggest.
00
Should the graph be older to the left or older to the right? The normal convention in palaeoclimatology, palaeoceanography, glaciology and geology is for older to be on the right and younger to be on the left. This applies to almost any variable you care to name including temperature, ice volume, ocean volume, sea level, stable isotopes, chemical properties, gas content etc etc etc. Get used to it as the standard is not going to change.
00
There is a limit to the ice available to cause a large sea level rise during the Eemian period around 120 to 130 thousand years ago.
It is not possible for all, or even most of the reported 9 m rise to have come from Greenland. It just does not contain enough ice. If the Greenland ice melted away to cause such a rise around say 125 thousand years ago then the logical implication is that there should be vey little ice remaining from the era preceding this. However it is clear that there are extensive areas of ice older than 125 thousand years at the base of the ice sheet. This can be seen from examination of published work in connection with the very deep GRIP, GISP2 and NGRIP ice cores, and the deep radar imaging that has been done.
The situation under West Antarctica is less clear, as there limited information on the presence or absence of old ice at the base of this portion if the Antarctic ice sheet. When more drilling information becomes available in this region it may be possible test the +9 m sea level claim.
30
IRRELEVANT PREMATURELY OLD GIT RAMBLING ALERT: NOTICE < READ TH FOLLOWING DRIVEL AT RISK OF DISATRACTION:
I also read that there is an entire, once humanly settled continent submerged in those waters, I think archaeologists call it sea-land (must be the OLD-Zealand). In fact this archaeology stuff came up couple of threads ago (apropos the pig) …I will have to do some of my own and dig up some old documents of mine.
00
Do not trust the raised beach data until rates of incremental uplift in region are accounted for (obviously, less than 1 cm/century can raise a beach deposit by a significant degree after 120 KY, or bury it if there is subsidence…so these data worthless without accounting for crustal movement, this is why I suspect Eem beaches are either very high Globally, else lost).
10
o/t political humour…
[NineMSN] Aussie doctors bring woman back from dead
According to anonymous sources, the same treatment has been requested for the ALP’s election campaign. Doctors say this will be a world first, as the device has never been tested on a cold-blooded brainless patient. Dr Hippo Crattic from the AMA says the proposed operation also needs to satisfy strict ethical guidelines. “We understand the benefit obtained by sending the patient’s blood into the machine but we have yet to determine if Australia will be harmed by sending the blood back again.”
80
Has anyone asked how much this “Guess” at history has cost?
00
How High Could the Tide Go?
Published: January 21, 2013 -NYT
“BREDASDORP, South Africa — A scruffy crew of scientists barreled down a dirt road, their two-car caravan kicking up dust.
After searching all day for ancient beaches miles inland from the modern shoreline, they were about to give up.
Suddenly, the lead car screeched to a halt. Paul J. Hearty, a geologist from North Carolina, leapt out and seized a white object on the side of the road: a fossilized seashell. He beamed. In minutes, the team had collected dozens more.
Using satellite gear, they determined they were seven miles inland and 64 feet above South Africa’s modern coastline.
The fossil record suggests that temperatures slightly warmer than today would not be enough to melt the ice caps entirely.
But an increase of even a few degrees Fahrenheit in the average global temperature does appear to cause severe damage.
From the last time that happened, about 120,000 years ago, scientists have found more than a thousand elevated fossil beaches around the world.”
“At every point, as our knowledge increases,” Dr. Raymo said, “we’ve always discovered that the climate system is more sensitive than we thought it could be, not less.”
.
To digress on the statement bolded directly above, with the imminent release of UN-IPCC AR5 only weeks away, will the UN-IPCC bring back the burning embers diagram which was removed from the AR4.
“The biggest value of resurrecting the diagram, which ranks dangers for each degree of temperature rise above the mean temperature in 1990, is that it provides a view of the trajectory of climate risks …”
.
( These links & info are attributed to commentator Teratornis replying to gpwayne 19 August 2013 8.35pm at the Guardian:
Climate contrarians may concede more than they bargained for when the next IPCC report is published– more links at comment)
20
I am a bit of a prospector and I watched a video (good ol VHS) many years back by a guy who is a very experienced prospector on the topic of how gold nuggets are formed. He went on a bit of an expedition in NSW and ended up finding a nice little water worn nugget high up on a hillside. His conclusion for how a nugget so obviously creek formed could have ended up on a hillside 100m above the creek was that it was proof of the great flood…. as in Noah…. we all have theories…
Also on the weekend watching a Frank Sinatra movie “The Man with the Golden Arm”(1955). In a conversation with a fellow patron of a bar early in the movie. The patron explains to Frank that his dog used to like to chase squirrels, but then added “there arnt many squirrels in the parks in Chicago now on account o da climate change” he then went on to describe how his dog waits in the park for the climate to change back….
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048347/
Yeah its such a new topic.
40
19 Aug: BBC: Matt McGrath: Climate leaks are ‘misleading’ says IPCC ahead of major report
Sensitive questions
According to the leak, they will put it down to natural meteorological variations and other factors which could include greater absorption of heat into the deep oceans – and the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than had previously been believed.
Many climate sceptics have argued that this is a key factor behind the temperature slowdown, and a good reason not to believe the more extreme predictions of those they dismiss as warmist conspirators.
But those involved with the IPCC say that even now, just a month away from publication you would be “foolish in the extreme” to take this latest leak as conclusive.
“It is guaranteed it will change,” said Jonathan Lynn, spokesman for the IPCC. “In September the scientists will go through the 15 page summary for policymakers, line by line.”…
“We’ve already given it to governments for their thoughts, and we’ve had 1,800 comments on that 15 page document,” he said…
The ongoing problems with leaks is one of the reasons behind the mutterings that this large scale, multi faceted report from the IPCC could be its last…
Lynn: “I think there will certainly be an IPCC in the future but there may not be these big block-buster events.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23755901
00
“We’ve already given it to governments for their thoughts, and we’ve had 1,800 comments on that 15 page document,”
Because as we all know the “thoughts of Governments” will have a far greater sway on the final published document than any foolish notions of scientific accuracy. I can see the spin doctors now, beavering away trying to squeeze the last few drops of tax payer blood from the myth before they have to move on to the next international fear campaign.
Nuclear Holocaust, done. Aids, done. Terrorism, done. Bird Flu, done. H1N1, done. Damn they must be running out of things to terrorize us with, but Im sure they will think of something.
30
Careful, Safetyguy66, KR, will be on the attack!
30
I think thats “on the defence” 🙂
40
It seems to me many of the “main players” are letting the back open slightly so they can make a dash for it the near future.
This article by Abrahams also mentions the future of the IPCC ( has it had it’s day?)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/19/global-waring-ipcc-ar5-report?CMP=twt_gu
Note : the last two paragraphs in particular.
20
no need to tell u how utterly one-sided this lengthy Tom’N’Ben article is! worth reading it all…
18 Aug: Age: Tom Arup/Ben Cubby: All the dirt on carbon
Both main parties agree we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But which approach is better
The political rhetoric has been colourful, to say the least, but the Coalition and Labor actually share a quiet consensus on climate change.
Both parties have committed to unconditionally cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. And both say they will increase the target to 15 or 25 per cent depending on international climate action…
“It’s really the next couple of years that are important,” says Oliver Yates, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an agency the Coalition has vowed to dismantle.
“If we have uncertainty, it increases the cost of all projects because all lenders have to account for higher risks. . . . Efficiency increases with certainty.”…
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/all-the-dirt-on-carbon-20130818-2s55c.html
20
Tony Abbott I think last week said that their funding cap on their direct action plan is firm, even if it does not meet the 5% target. So Labors is more likely to produce the target and likely to go far beyond it even without doing extra.
04
So what benefit will the ALPs plan have? Deg C.
20
It reduces CO2 emissions by 160 million tonnes (if I remember correctly). It is unfortunate that you have such a problem understanding what are the goals and what is actually going on here. If you knwo how to control the climate then please share. The rest of us are just trying to prevent the contin uing imbalance and destabilisation of the atmosphere
05
So how much will this reduction of 160 million tonnes affect global temperatures. Degrees celsius please.
Well, you support a policy that costs trillions of dollars to mitigate warming. I would say the policy is seeking to attempt to control the climate, don’t you agree? Obviously, being a supporter of said policy, one would assume that you already think you know how to control the climate.
What is causing the imbalance and destabilisation? Warming yes??
The whole point of the ETS and RETs is to reduce CO2, yes? Why are we reducing CO2? To mitigate further warming.
So my question is a valid one. How much global warming will be mitigated via Australia’s policies?
30
Your question is fallacious. Every individual contribution is tiny, but the collective effect is what is required. We can only have policies that apply locally, other countries will need to ignore their own “do nothing” dimwits and implement similar policies, locally.
Norway has had a carbon tax for 20 years, and they’ve been planning for a carbon free economy all this time, leaving them as one of the world’s strongest and least indebted economies.
34
So what is Australia’s ‘tiny’ contribution? Degrees celsius.
Your diatribe about Norway is a strawman.
20
Exactly margot. Heywood is unable to understand that we do not control the climate, all we control is CO2 emissions. Emissions that are rising to levels unseen for over a million years and causing changes in the climate that are largely bad for us. We need to mitigate the damage our children will have to contend with by reducing emissions as much as possible.
Why? Them and many other countries are doing fantastic things. The more that do that the more the impetus for others until a critical mass is reached. They will be more prepared and ready to deal with and profit from a renewable future.
“In the latest example of the widening gap in climate change policies between the USA and Europe, the Government of Norway last week announced the world’s largest new tax on carbon emissions, stating in explicit terms its desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate against global warming — just two weeks after the US House of Representatives passed legislation which, to the extreme opposite, explicitly bans the regulation of greenhouse gas.
On October 8, the Government of Norway announced that it would nearly double the carbon tax rate for its offshore oil and gas production in 2013, setting one of the highest carbon tax rates in the world. The announcement is part of a comprehensive “Climate Agreement” provision within the national budget plan for 2013. The budget will:
increase funding for climate research
increase funding for sustainable technology development
increase energy use requirements in building regulations
increase funding for public transport
increase funding to prevent deforestation
increase funding to assist developing countries to exploit renewable sources “instead of using fossil energy sources”
prioritize public transport, including increased funding for footpaths and cycle paths
increase CO2 taxes for passenger vehicles, along with incentives for public transport, in order to “reduce private automobile use””
http://planetsave.com/2012/10/17/climate-change-policy-gap-between-usa-and-europe-widens-as-norway-announces-worlds-largest-carbon-tax/
23
Margot, you are priceless.
Norway gets virtually all of its electricity from hydroelectric sources, so “planning a carbon free economy” isn’t exactly the world’s greatest challenge for them.
Norway has a carbon tax alright. And carbon emissions have gone up 15% since it was introduced in 1991. So that worked out just dandy. Oh, and Norway exempts most of its manufacturing industries from paying it so they can remain competitive. I wonder if that could possibly have anything with their “strong economy”.
And they are not in the EU – I wonder if that has turned out to be an economically sound decision? Let’s see most EU countries bankrupt, Norway strong economy. Probably just coincidence.
Naturally, the fact that Norway just happens to be one of world’s the largest producers and exporters of oil and gas (derdy fossil fuels to you, Margot), couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their “strong economy”. After all, everybody knows fossil fuels only survive because of the “trillions” governments pay to subsidise them – just ask either of our Michael trolls.
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Margot, you sure know how to pick a poster child country.
30
Listen AAD and his new side kick
MaggotMargot,I’ll keep it simple and type it r e a l s l o w so you can understand.
No shit. WHY do we need to control them? Answer – to mitigate against future warming.
The ETS and RETs are designed to reduce CO2 emissions by ‘160 million tonnes’ (your figure stated above).
So, if we reduce emissions by this much, there will be a benefit yes? Warming will be mitigated to a degree yes? Is that not trying to change the climate?
So STOP EVADING THE QUESTION, and tell us how much warming will be mitigated by Australia reducing emissions by 160 million tonnes by 2100?
The Australian government has a policy to reduce these emissions for a reason, and yet, have never quantified the benefit to the climate, apart from specifying reduction in emissions.
It was a strawman because Norway has absolutely nothing to do with Australia’s ETS and RETs. Margot took off on a tangent when all I am asking for, is a figure in degrees celsius, for what our contribution to warming mitigation would be.
41
Not sure if you are having trouble reading or understanding. Like I said, the whole point is in reducing emissions. The whole point is the 160 million tonnes of CO2. Why? Because temps are rising, because sea levels are rising, because the Arctic, glaciers, greenland and Antarctica are melting, because heat records broken are beating cold records 3 to 1 during the day and 5 to 1 at night, because extreme precipitation events are up 7% per degree, because extreme weather like droughts and floods are occuring more often and at record levels, because ocean warming and acidification are putting our ocean health under strength.
You still don’t get it, do you. If you have a crystal ball or a climate control machine then please share, those of us based in reality do not know how fast and how bad it can get and since the predicted consequences are already occurring we want to mitigate how bad they will get.
“The world experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes during the 2001-2010 decade, which was the warmest since the start of modern measurements in 1850 and continued an extended period of pronounced global warming.
Precipitation and floods: The 2001-2010 decade was the second wettest since 1901. Globally, 2010 was the wettest year since the start of instrumental records.
Most parts of the globe had above-normal precipitation during the decade. The eastern USA, northern and eastern Canada, and many parts of Europe and central Asia were particularly wet.
According to the WMO survey, floods were the most frequently experienced extreme events over the course of the decade. Eastern Europe was particularly affected in 2001 and 2005, India in 2005, Africa in 2008, Asia (notably Pakistan, where 2 000 people died and 20 million were affected) in 2010, and Australia, also in 2010.”
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html
02
So if a collective solution is not possible, we can give up.
30
I’m not sure why my comment is at #32.1.1.1.6. It is a reply to Margot.
10
Michael: If you don’t know how fast or how bad it will get, then you really do not know much about CO2 and the forcings that make it a threat. Certainly not enough to take drastic action. IF it’s practical and economically feasible, CO2 output will be reduced. If not, then whatever happens, happens. Until you have much more proof and a much clearer understanding, it’s just Chicken Little reacting to something falling on her head.
20
So what you are saying, is that we are goind to spend trillions of dollars to reduce emissions, but we have absolutely no idea whether it would have ANY affect at all?
Your right. I don’t get it. Seems stupid to me.
Sad though when you are faced with a question you don’t like, you revert back to the pre-prepared responses from your activist script.
30
F*&^K ME i have met some stupid people in my time but this lot take the cake.
Let me quote MTR
But yet if you ask MTR if we reduce our emissions by half what he demands how much will the temps stop rising, how much ice will stop melting, how many records will not be broken, how many floods will not happen and how much warming and acidification with be forestalled……………….he will not know.
Logic dictates that if MTR does not know what changes will occur with a known reduction in emissions then he has no idea what changes are occuring with an already known level of emissions.
Suffice to say MTR is nothing more than a preacher of religion and like all preachers if you look beyond the wafer thin bravado you find he is nothing but an empty shell say for opinions and biases.
Has there ever been a more pathetic warmbot to visit this site? I think not.
50
I see Michael the Realist, who believes an alkaline is just a “really, really weak acid”, slipped in some more of his ill-informed crap while I was writing the above post.
Well Michael, Norway can do what it likes with tax on its offshore oil and gas production without adversely affecting anybody, since the Norwegian government OWNS the offshore oil and gas production.
In other words it produces the stuff, taxes itself on the stuff, pays itself the tax on the stuff, sells the stuff, pockets the profits from selling the stuff, ends up with EXACTLY the same amount of money as it did BEFORE the tax, then puts out a press release claiming it’s actually done something meaningful, for consumption by useful fools like you and Margot.
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If there was a prize for being easily duped, you and Margot would have to flip for it.
40
Memory vault, please explain the actual chemical difference precisely between an acid and an alkaline.
So sad that you cannot see the tightrope that Norway is walking across. Like most places they have a fine line between there economic realities and their response to climate change. So even though it is a large fossil fuel exporter, they are making that fossil fuel more expensive for their customers and for their population and using the proceeds to prepare for a renewable future when they will not have that fossil fuel to fall back on. Precisely what we should and have started to do but will go back 20 years and go in the opposite trend to the rest of the globe is Abbott gets in.
14
Michael :Bases are the chemical opposite of acids. Acids are defined as compounds that donate a hydrogen ion (H+) to another compound (called a base). Traditionally, an acid (from the Latin acidus or acere meaning sour) was any chemical compound that, when dissolved in water, gives a solution with a hydrogen ion activity greater than in pure water, i.e. a pH less than 7.0. Correspondingly, a base was any compound that, when dissolved in water, gives a solution with a hydrogen ion activity lower than that of pure water, i.e. a pH higher than 7.0 at standard conditions.
A soluble base is also called an alkali. A reaction between an acid and a base is called neutralization and this neutralization results in production of water and a salt. Volatile liquids (acids) when mixed with specific substances turn into salts. These substances form a concrete base and hence the name base was derived. Acids in general are H+ donors and Bases are H+ acceptors.
(from http://www.diffen.com/difference/Acid_vs_Base)
You can also check: http://www.acidbase.org/?show=sb&action=explode&id=15&sid=14
(Don’t mean to jump in for Memory Vault whom I’m sure had an answer)
20
.
Thanks Sheri – I had gone to bed – but in all honesty i wasn’t going to bother anyway. The bottom line is that if the knucklehead even has to ask, he proves my point.
To the knucklehead:
Do you understand what Sheri has written, or do you need even more guidance? Do you understand the abbreviation pH actually stands for “potential Hydrogen”?
Do you understand that if you take a litre of acid and mix it with a thousand litres of water, it will STILL be an acid? That if you take a litre of alkaline solution and mix it with a a thousand litres of water, it will STILL be an alkaline?
Now pay close attention, knucklehead, because we are now going into the realms of first year high school chemistry, so it will be difficult for you.
If you mix EXACTLY the right amount of an acid at a certain pH content, with EXACTLY the right amount of an alkaline at a certain pH content, you will end up with a salt, plus water, plus maybe some CO2. It WON’T be “acidic” and it WON’T be “alkaline”.
However, if I have more alkaline solution than I need to use up all the acid, then the resultant mixture will have the salt, the water, and will STILL be alkaline. It won’t be “more acidic” meaning it now can donate hydrogen ions to a chemical reaction. In chemistry, this is called a “buffered solution”. Which is precisely what the ocean is, a “buffered alkaline solution”.
The only way you can turn a “buffered alkaline solution” acidic, is to add enough acid to use up all the buffering alkaline, and then some. And how much is that?
Well, knucklehead, let’s have a bonfire. Let’s dig up all the known deposits of coal in the world, and make a pile out in the Simpson desert. Let’s add all the known deposits of oil and gas as well. Finally, let’s chop down every tree and shrub in the world, and throw them on top. Okay, now let’s burn the lot.
Guess what, knucklehead, the oceans could absorb the resultant CO2 EIGHTY times over, and STILL it would be a buffered alkaline solution. It would STILL be a hydrogen receptor (alkaline), it STILL would not be a hydrogen donor (acid), not even a little bit.
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So grow up, grab a brain, and understand that the term “ocean acidification” is a term primarily used by idiots keen to display their ignorance to the rest of the world.
And no, I don’t care if they are “climate scientists” with PhD’s. They are still idiots displaying their ignorance.
41
You do really live in some kind of bubble hermetically sealed from reality, don’t you?
Norway does not “set” the price of its oil, it is sold on the open market. Internationally oil is bought and sold in much the same way as shares are on the stock market. Google “Brent Sea crude oil spot price” for some examples of these markets.
Whatever price Norway gets for its oil, it then assumes a certain percentage is a “carbon tax”, and the rest is “gross profit”. It makes not one whit of difference to the customers, and all the money ends up in the Norwegian government’s coffers anyway.
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You really are really, really naive, aren’t you?
20
Thanks Sheri
So basically it is dependent on hydrogen activity with the base set at pure water. So if you make something less alkaline, it is basically the same as heading towards acidity or becoming more acidic.
thanks you, that was the point I was trying to make. But I am sure sure
05
Amazing!
After reading that you could not grasp that if something becomes less alkaline it is …. well . . .less alkaline but not necessarily at all acidic.
The discussion of buffering went right over your head didn’t it?
Talk about pig ignorance (apologies to the pigs).
40
Oops I meant the change over point set at pure water. Writing on the run, never a good idea. Ignore the last hanging bit. So it is all to do with hydrogen ion activity, it is not like they are different elements or compounds.
04
Michael, you never answered my question from before.
The salts of weak acids, are what in aqueous solution?
The carbonate/bicarbonate equilibrium, is a what in water?
30
Michael is now going to ASTONISH EVERYONE and explain to all and sundry, why the oceans are alkaline in the first place
30
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I really do not believe it. You’re in a mental institution and you’ve broken into the nurses station to do a bit of unsupervised blogging, right?
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Micheal, an alkaline (a proton receiver), can NEVER become an acid (a proton donor). It can become salt plus neutral water if you add the right amount of acid. It is now salty water. It is no longer an alkaline. It is water. If I then add more acid, I am turning neutral salty water into a dilute acid. The same thing would be accomplished by adding acid to neutral water, plus a pinch of salt. I don’t need to start with an alkaline.
To say something is becoming “more acidic” means that it has an increased capacity to donate protons. An alkaline, being a proton receiver, CANNOT become “more acidic”, it can only become “less alkaline”, either by diluting it with water, or neutralising it with an acid.
Only an acid can become “more acidic” – you could heat it, for instance, and flume off some water content. That would leave you with a more concentrated acid – a more “acidic” acid, if you like.
30
Michael: Your statement “So if you make something less alkaline, it is basically the same as heading towards acidity or becoming more acidic.” is ambiguous. If you are doing a simple dilution, then no, it is not becoming more acidic. If you are adding an acid to the alkali, then you will move toward ph7 and if you add enough acid to cross to less that ph7, you will hit acidic. So it depends on what “make something less alkaline” is describing.
20
There is nothing ambiguous about it Sheri. He STILL did not make the alkaline “more acidic”. He turned it into salt plus water. At that point it is water. Pure and simple. It is no longer an alkaline. For the purpose of considering what happens next, it is irrelevant that his neutral, salty water was once an alkaline. The alkaline-acid thing is over. Ended. Without the alkaline ever becoming “more acidic”.
If he now adds acid to the neutral, salty water he created, he is making a dilute acid with some salt in it. The more acid he adds, the more acidic his mixture will become.
20
Memory Vault: Perhaps I should have stated that he makes the solution more acidic. Is that better? He does not change the alkali or the acid, just the solution.
20
Ok, just a question. If you keep adding an acid to an alkaline, and by the definition this is called neutralisation, so effectively is that saying that they cancel each other out? If you continue to add acid do you eventually pass the point of neutralisation and the whole solution starts becoming acidic?
04
From: http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/chemistry/chapter6section6.rhtml
“When a strong acid and a strong base solution are mixed, a neutralization reaction occurs, and the products do not have characteristics of either acids or bases. Instead, a neutral salt and water are formed.”
At the point you reach neutralization, you have water and salt. Adding acid to water and the neutral salt will form a buffering solution. A buffer solution is one which resists changes in pH when small quantities of an acid or an alkali are added to it.”
An acidic buffer solution is simply one which has a pH less than 7. Acidic buffer solutions are commonly made from a weak acid and one of its salts – often a sodium salt.
Now, the solution may resist a change in pH. If you dump enough acid, then the pH will decrease. However, you now have a solution with an acid and a salt, not just an acid.
20
MTR,
You left out one question, “Are we adding acid to the ocean?” The answer of course is no, there is a whole range of processes going on before we get to “add acid” armed with your new found knowledge of PH perhaps you could now focus your attention on “the other” processes?
30
Michael , just so that we can talk a common language , I will mention that there is no such thing as an alkaline. Alkaline is an adjective.
The word you are looking for is an alkali.
30
Thanks Sheri
Yes I know that I am simplifying things, but the above are just word games and word games do not prove anything. If you are making the ocean less alkaline then the ph is falling, so whether you say it is less alkaline or becoming acidic the effect is the same, and the effect is what is important and is not changed by word games.
By the way, it was not my language.
“This pH is probably lower than has been experienced for hundreds of millennia and, critically, at a rate of change probably 100 times greater than at any time over this period.”
http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2005/ocean-acidification/
http://pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification
http://pmel.noaa.gov/co2/file/Hawaii+Carbon+Dioxide+Time-Series
“The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists”
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324&org=NSF
“Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Is increased CO2 to blame for this increased acidity?”
http://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/carbon/7a.html
03
Woops, read the above as from Michael the Realist. Since I was asked to change my name to avoid a conflict I have been moving around to a lot of computers and not all of them have updated to the new name yet, and I did not notice. Sorry admin.
[Is this evidence that Michael is more than one person?] ED
03
Lots of projections , “conceivably” s ; “coulds”; “mights” there . Is that all that you can produce?
Here again is your statement?
“Ocean pH is dropping, and has reduced quite a lot over the last 50 years”. What is “quite a lot”?
Can you produce the data that you used to arrive at that conclusion? Just a simple summary table will do.
00
See again Doney et al 2009, in particular Fig. 1 showing >50 years of CO2, with ~20 years of pCO2 (dissolved), and pH. And understand that the chemistry means a direct relationship between pCO2 and pH – that relationship continues back through pre-Industrial times.
There’s little I can say if you aren’t willing to read references.
00
There is not 50 years of pH data in anything that you have referenced, and the pH of sea water still seems to be slightly over 8. Where is the justification for your statement that “Ocean pH is dropping, and has reduced quite a lot over the last 50 years”.?
00
My apologies on the 50 year number, I was incorrect – while surface pH could argue for an earlier inflection, it looks like the strong signal shows up, globally and over depth, about 30 years ago.
Using as a reference the World Ocean Database, there are a set of depth-sorted pH graphs shown here, saving me the trouble of reformatting the data.
The data shows that over the last 50 years, surface pH has stopped changing (warming water no longer outgassing CO2 due to the rising partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere). Many of the layers show a significant bump around 1980, with decreasing pH at 100m and below, with deeper waters showing greater acidification (or decreasing pH, for those who like to play word games). At 300m, as they note, pH has changed from 8.1 to 7.7 since the 60’s – a 150% increase in H+.
00
Michael the Realist????
Try to learn some chemistry before you start arguing about it.
KR August 24, 2013 at 6:58 am
I had a look at your links. Here are some quotes from there.
Such a reduction in calcification resulting from anthropogenic CO2 emissions HAS NOT BEEN OBSERVED, OR QUANTIFIED in the field yet.
The POTENTIAL for marine organisms to adapt to increasing CO2 and broader implications for ocean ecosystems are NOT WELL KNOWN; both are high priori- ties for future research. Although ocean pH has varied in the geological past, paleo-events MAY be only imperfect analogs to current conditions.
By 2100, ecosystems will be exposed to atmospheric CO2 levels substantially higher than in the past 650,000 years (HOW DO THEY KNOW?)
Surface ocean pH today is already 0.1 unit lower than pre-industrial values (HOW DO THEY KNOW? DID NEWTON USE A pH METER in 1689?)
the POTENTIAL for marine organisms to adapt to increasing CO2 and broader implications for ocean ecosystems are NOT WELL KNOWN
Although ocean pH has varied in the geological past, paleo-events MAY be only IMPERFECT analogs to current conditions.
This is speculation based on the assumptions
1. CO2 will continue rising (Why? do they think the IPCC is a complete failure, or that there will not be any technical advances in the next 50 years?).
2. Temperatures will rise because of that (no solid proof has been offered of that in the last 100 years and do consider the state of the Sun)).
3. When the oceans get warmer they will continue to absorb CO2 at the same rate (laughably stupid)
4. Animal life which has lived through many cycles of temperature AND CO2 won’t be able to adapt (laughably stupid)
5. Whatever happened in the past can be ignored because this time it is different (laughably stupid).
Michael & KR, I you implore,
don’t be stupid anymore,
but if the effort is to great
just shut up at any rate
11
Oops–left out buffering. I see others have noted that can also be done. So, Michael, we have to know what you are doing to “make something less alkaline” before an accurate answer can be given. Right now, your comment is too ambiguous.
30
Sheri,
To your comment to me one above:
To be honest I’m done with him.
Even the cows now understand, but The Surrealist never will.
30
I understand.
30
Hi Sheri
Please see the above comment.
03
Excuse me, MTR. “Acidification” of the ocean is NOT a difference in language–it is a LIE. When people LIE, we tend to distrust them and assume they have hidden agendas that make the lying necessary. Best case scenario, they are just plain stupid. If the TRUTH were reported, saying the pH of the ocean has slightly decreased would not have the same effect as the LIE about acidification. People hear “acid” and think car battery, sulpheric acid, burns. They see fish dying due to acid. And its a LIE, LIE, LIE. So what you are doing is pushing a lie as the truth. You become the liar (or you are just that stupid–I’ll let you choose).
Since before the Last Glacial Maximum, the pH of the ocean has gone from approximately 8.3 to 8.03 in 20,000 plus years (I am not extremely familiar with the actual time intervals involved in paleo time tables, so please, let me know if I am off in my timetable). During that period, CO2 increased 8 fold (from 50 to 400). What that means is the buffering system in the ocean is WORKING and that all those scary lies told by the media and people who don’t actually do their homework are just that–LIES. Note: Use the paper I did because it’s an interesting proxy. However, if you use actual research and not the news, you get much better information. Things like “faster than expected”, “faster than today “, etc are NOT science–they are news headlines. Your own reference shows the buffering is working (Carlton article).
(http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~dmcgee/Carbon/Syllabus_files/Hemming%20%26%20Hönisch%202007.pdf)
IF we ran real life the way we run climate change science, if anyone’s temperature was over 98.8 or below 98.4, we would rush them to the hospital and perform hundreds of tests, tell they are going to die soon because that much of a variation from average is obviously fatal, and pretty much terrify 90% of the population for nothing. Which is what climate change “science” is doing.
41
Firstly the ph response is logarithmic, so the change is 30%. You are playing the small number game, not scientific. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence of sea life already being affected.
“One affected species, foraminifera, a sand grain-sized plankton, is responsible for the sequestration of 25 to 50 percent of the carbon the oceans absorb and thus plays a major role in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations at much lower levels than they would be otherwise. Now scientists have learned that foraminifera (forams) shells are much thinner in oceans made more acidic by the enormous volumes of CO2 released in the burning of fossil fuels.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/03/climate-change-acid-oceans-altering-marine-life/
“the decline of coral reefs and the connections with rising levels of carbon dioxide.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/climate-change/jan-june13/pledge_06-04.html
“Until recently, we really didn’t think that having fewer carbonate ions would affect sea creatures for a century or more. Unfortunately, we were wrong.
Late in 2012, it was reported that one particular sea creature was actually having its shell dissolved by the increasing acidity of the ocean. It’s the pteropod — a free-swimming sea snail that moves about thanks to wings like a butterfly. It lives for two years or longer and grows to have a shell about 1 centimetre in diameter.
Down in the Antarctic, it is the main sea creature that makes calcium carbonate. In fact, over the whole planet, these sea butterflies account for some 12 per cent of the entire flux of carbonate on our whole planet.”
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/12/11/3650065.htm
12
From the NOAA site on oceans and pH:
Many natural processes affect acidity levels in the environment—examples include photosynthesis and respiration—so the acidity may vary by an order of magnitude or more (or in pH units, by 1 or more) as a result of natural biological, physical, and geological processes on a variety of different spatial and temporal scales.
Considering you continue to LIE about the ocean being acidic, I see no reason to be particular about logarithmic, geometric or linear change. ALL of the acidification is a lie so I really did not care about scales. It’s enough I waste time typing to a liar.
So a change of less than .5 can be natural, especially over 20,000 years (the simple fact that NOAA uses the LIE about ocean acidification is evidence that climate science is NOT about the truth). At pH 8.03, it alkaline–NOT ACIDIC. What part of OVER 7 ph is NEVER, EVER, EVER acidic. The term is a LIE and you continue to use it.
A small sea creature CANNOT EVER lose its shell to acidity in an alkaline solution. You are calling CHEMISTRY a lie and insisting that pH 8 is somehow now an acid. IT IS NOT, STUPID, AND IT NEVER WILL BE. You are rewriting basic chemistry.
Again, if you actually used research and not news headlines, you might actually stop with the LIES and learn something.
Since you are obviously incapable of understanding even the most simple of science functions like base and acid, it is pointless to continue this. A conversation with the wall would be more useful. Some people are just hopelessly stupid and you can’t fix stupid. Have a nice fantasy life and watch out–NOAA says milk, coffee, and soda are more acidic than the ocean. Not to mention vinegar and lemon juice. We’re all going to die, die, die…………
31
For those readers not as braindead as Michael: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/discoverclimate/NOAA_Activity%207_Why-Should-I-Care.pdf
This is a sales pitch by an allegedly scientific organization. It is EXACTLY how Amway (multilevel marketing group) sold its soap. The person selling would dip litmus paper in water and then put it on a bar of soap or soap powder. If it turned color A, which Amway’s soap did, it was a “good” soap. If it turned color B, it was a “bad” soap. The selling was completely clueless as to what the paper did, only that we had “good” colors and “bad” colors. Interestingly enough, this individual was old enough to have used lye soap. When asked what color that would turn the paper, they had no idea.
Promoting ignorance as science is the reason skeptics don’t believe in the climate change mantra. You are selling smoke and mirrors, carnival tricks and “how to sell soap by Amway” and calling it “science”. No one should ever listen to these marketing speeches, anymore than buying soap because litmus paper turned a “good” color.
21
So sad you still think word games is science. Apart from the fact that I never said it would become acid, the main point it that it reduces ph towards an acid. Fairly irrelevant in the actual consequences involved.
It doesn’t lose its shell, it has more problems creating a shell. You should read the science.
“However, the absorption of this CO2 has affected ocean chemistry and has caused the oceans (which are on average slightly alkaline) to become more acidic. The average pH of oceanic surface waters has been lowered by 0.1 units since the pre-industrial period. This represents a 30% increase in hydrogen ion activity. Hydrogen ions attack carbonate ions which are the building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures. This loss of carbonate ions produce lower saturation levels for the carbonate minerals, aragonite and calcite, which are used in many shells and skeletons. Carbonate ion concentrations are now lower than at any other time during the last 800 000 years.”
http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13951.aspx
Its a shame when people cannot admit when they are wrong.
04
More from the actual science as requested.
“Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Is increased CO2 to blame for this increased acidity?”
http://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/carbon/7a.html
“Marine life that depends on calcium carbonate can no longer form shells or, in the case of coral reefs, skeletons. Such marine life are found in waters that are more basic with a higher pH rather than a lower pH, which is more acidic.
Porites reefs, say scientists Peter Edmunds and Robert Carpenter of California State University at Northridge, are among the most sensitive of all corals.”
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122642
“Ocean acidification, a consequence of rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions, is poised to change marine ecosystems profoundly by increasing dissolved CO2 and decreasing ocean pH, carbonate ion concentration, and calcium carbonate mineral saturation state worldwide. These conditions hinder growth of calcium carbonate shells and skeletons by many marine plants and animals. ”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/2/024007/fulltext/
04
Michael The Acid, You are hilarious. IF you are of science (you said the word about 1000000 times) you’d immediately concede this use of “acid” “acidify” “acidification” in the context of ocean water is wrong. Instead you stand up and type 1000000 words to defend what is scientifically indefensible.
It is your side of warmists that is playing word games. They use acid because it has propaganda value. They wouldn’t use “neutralize” because it sounds too benign. Plain and simple fraud and you persist in supporting it. This whole series could have been answered with you admitting that you don’t know why the consensus scientists chose these words but instead you prop up the fraud.
Good for you Michael the Fraud, your children and grandchildren will be dismayed.
42
I would like to point out that while I have moved on from word games and posted articles on the science and of detrimental effects already occurring, you guys have presented nothing but excuses about word use. Again, and as usual, arguments lacking in any substance.
21
Michael, you are projecting again.
This argument I’ve made is as valid as any of yours. It isn’t a word game and it points to your willingness to use inaccurate language and an unwillingness to agree on something as obvious and simple as this. You are a fraud, a shill, a cheat, a political hack and a warmist propaganda mouthpiece. It would be difficult to imagine any rational human being believing a single word you say.
I bet you feel good about all that. What will your children do with you.
12
A long exchange here, just some notes:
Ocean pH is dropping, and has reduced quite a lot over the last 50 years, whether or not you play semantic games with the definitions of alkalinity/acidity. H3O* has increased due to CO2 concentrations ~30% since the Industrial Revolution, 8% in the last 20 years alone, and is predicted to reach 150% by 2100.
That pH change increases the solubility of calcite and aragonite (more so with aragonite, as it is a more soluble form), making calcium carbonate shells harder to form, and more likely to dissolve at any depth. This means that a lower pH ocean will have a detrimental effect on corals (aragonite) and other sea life, which can already be seen in eroded pteropod shells.
CO2 has been high in the past, pH of the oceans has changed too – but current changes are at a much higher rate, 100x faster CO2 change than the interglacial cycle, and far far faster than the carbonate buffer system that has limited historic excursions.
Semantic games – such as employed here – don’t affect ocean chemistry, they don’t cancel out changes in pH or carbonate solubility.
31
“Ocean pH is dropping, and has reduced quite a lot over the last 50 years, . . .”
That is the available data I presume. rather scant isn’t it?
11
A broad base of literature can be found here (11k results in both history and projections), available data to 2007 summarized here, the Hawaii HOT program has some detailed info on the last 20 years. There is a good overview in Doney et al 2009.
There is copious data on pH.
21
ERU prices heading for a fall on supply boost: analysts
LONDON, Aug 19 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The price of EU-eligible Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) is likely to fall by up to 50 percent once the EU Commission finishes determining which ones are eligible for use in its carbon market, analysts said Monday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2524230
European forests head towards carbon saturation point – study
OSLO, Aug 18 (Reuters) – The ability of Europe’s aging forests to absorb carbon dioxide is heading towards saturation point, threatening one of the continent’s main defences against global warming, a study showed on Sunday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2524489?&ref=searchlist
20
It just shows how fragile the major parameters that our lives are dependent on are. It also shows that there are tipping points and considering the strain already on the West Antarctica ice sheet this is a real worry. Also considering that the poles are heating at twice the rate of the global average a couple of degrees globally could easily push the poles or Greenland into very dangerous territory in a short space of time. 3 mm per year is probably very fast on geologic time scales of how these things normally happen.
This should be a warning bell to us all
“The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C, establishing central West Antarctica as one of the fastest-warming regions globally. We confirm previous reports of West Antarctic warming, in annual average and in austral spring and winter, but find substantially larger temperature increases.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1671.html
” The temperature record from Byrd Station, a scientific outpost in the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), demonstrates a marked increase of 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius) in average annual temperature since 1958—that is, three times faster than the average temperature rise around the globe.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/osu-ssr122012.php
07
That’s strange, your stable mate KR cited proxy evidence of rates exceeding 36mm/year during the end of the last ice age less than 20,000 years ago. So actually, based on very recent geological events, the currently exaggerated claim of 3.2mm/y is quite small compared to natural variation.
Warming may have multiple causes. Since the earth’s climate naturally operates in cycles there is no good reason for assuming warming will continue linearly and uninterrupted for another 40 years. That’s unless you have already assumed, for the 100th time and without any empirical evidence, that CO2 creates a strong (>1.2°C/doubling) net effect on climate.
There’s no way to discern a strong CO2 feedback from paleo data because the proxies are too imprecise and there’s no period where CO2 significantly increased before a temperature rise. In the modern context there’s also no empirical evidence for strong CO2 forcing. The IPCC argument from modelling is bunk, and models which assume zero sensitivity to CO2 can reconstruct and hindcast the 20th century temperature changes just fine by using natural factors that the IPCC ignored. What few observational tests there are have shown that the Earth’s response to any warming is to cool and not to amplify the warming, that’s what was found by Lindzen and Choi 2011 from CERES satellite data and that was the opposite of all 12 IPCC climate models.
We’re still waiting for the scientific paper which measures a strong climate net warming effect from CO2 in reality and none has ever appeared.
As for what genuine skeptics think, just ask the guy who wrote the book on Rational Optimism.
30
Well as is said above, if you have a collapse of several large ice sheets you would get a sudden upsurge in sea level. But as for a steady rise, and obviously since the sea level rate rise p year has already doubled over the last 100 years and considering the escalating deterioration of the Arctic, Greenland, glaciers and West antarctica, this rise in rate is likely to continue.
You do not know your history of the Earth if you think its natural response is to cool, it has been much warmer than today many times in the past, if anything, on geological time scales(over 4 billion years), the current period is cooler than normal.
So a strong response to any forcings is very apparent in the history of the planet, it takes very little to swing it one way or the other.
06
.
So, as far as sea level goes, we are not talking about temperature, but tidal waves.
And as far as temperature goes, Michael of the acidic alkaline, since you admit it has been both warmer and cooler in the past than it is now, which was better for virtually all life on the planet, including humans – warmer, or cooler?
30
Well my main concern is for humanity and to me the global temperature of about 20 years ago was the best. Obviously that is the temperature that most of our infrastructure and 7 billion humans has been based upon. Any significant change either way is going to have massive implications for the habitability of the planet for 7 billion humans and their current geographical locations, farming practices, increasing extreme weather and the like. You don’t really get it, do you. It is not a question of what the planet has done in the past or the future, IT IS A PLANET, it will adjust, species will go extinct, some species will adapt, new ones will arrive, the issue is the habitability of the planet for us, our children and our grandchildren. Have you answered my question about what is the exact chemical difference between an acid and an alkaline?
05
There we have it folks . The Climate Optimum occurred at the moment of MTR ‘s birth.
Yes , the sun really does shine out of this MTR prat’s r-sole.
30
Two of us answered your question.
It’s nice you think the temperature 20 years ago was best. We should all give up our oil and gas so you can the temperature you want. But wait, what if that temperature was not what others want? Too bad, we should all sacrifice for you? I don’t think so.
Europe has buildings hundreds of years old that are still used. There’s no worry that today’s buildings are no going to serve us.
I agree with the statement that this is a planet and it will survive. Now, the question is: Are WE the driving force for climate (as AGW says) or is nature? We can only save ourselves if WE control the climate. Seems unlikely, no matter what the IPCC says.
20
Even if you believe that number of thermometers placed on Antarctica to be robust (I don’t), it’s going to melt how soon?
20
The problem Mark is the collapse of ice sheets, that can happen very quickly and can lead to a sudden influx into the sea level.
05
The arctic ice shelf – it is floating so if it melted (as it probably did during the Holocene Optimum) it wouldn’t raise the sea level at all.
The antarctic ice shelf – again floating (and expanding).
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets? (much of) The Greenland one has lasted at least 800,000 years through periods such as the Eemian (roughly 10,500 years with temperatures 2-3 ℃ (and 8 ℃ in Greenland) above present. It then survived thousands of years of the Holocene Optimum with a temperature 2 ℃ above present and likely to be higher than that locally.
The Antarctic shelf is usually thought to have formed in the late Eocene (1000-1100 ppm CO2 and 1 ℃ warmer than present) or in the early Oligocene (550 ppm CO2 and 3-3.5 ℃ warmer than present). If the former, it survived 2.5 million years of the latter. It is not unreasonable to assume that this lead to a reduction in its area, but not that it disappeared. It then survived for over 20 million years in the Miocene with temperatures similar or warmer than present. In the last 500,000 years of the Pleistocene it survived periods of 10,500 years with temperatures 2-3 ℃ (and 8 ℃ in Greenland) above present (Eemian) and in the Mindel-Riss (interglacial period between 424,000 and 374,000 years ago) (a.k.a. Hoxnian) it survived fifty thousands of years of warm weather. The Holocene Optimum with temperature 2 ℃ above present and the Roman and Medieval warm periods of hundreds of years were mere brief intervals with little discernible effect.
So how long is this tipping point you talk about? 50,000 years? A million years? Neither caries that sense of breathless (and thoughtless) urgency you like to project.
20
The Antarctic ice is on land and so is Greenland, if any ice goes it will add to sea levels. This does not count the expanding ocean due to thermal expansion and the melting glaciers.
The further back you go the more meaningless it becomes as other geological time factors come into play. The sun itself as a main sequence star is getting hotter over time, so it would have needed more CO2 for the same temps. Continental shifts, ocean current changes, greater geological instability like volcanos and others, vastly different atmospheric composition, planets orbital allignment, gravitational effects from a moon that is moving away so would have been much closer etc.
But lets just go back to the nearest period we know about at 400 ppm. This is about 4 million years ago in the Pilocene. Man did not exist, temperatures were about 4 degrees hotter, sea levels ranged between 5 and 40 m higher, coral reefs suffered an extinction event (there goes major changes to our fish supply), intense el ninos and lots more.
http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/what-does-400-ppm-look-like/”
02
If there was an extinction level event with coral, why do we still have coral?
30
The temperature in the Pliocene fluctuated quite considerably, in fact at 4 million years ago it was slightly cooler than present. Yes, the early Pliocene was warmer, and the Antarctic ice shelf DIDN’T melt away over millions of years.
Now back to what I wrote and you didn’t read…In the last 500,000 years of the Pleistocene (both the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves) survived periods of 10,500 years with temperatures 2-3 ℃ (and 8 ℃ in Greenland) above present (Eemian) and in the Mindel-Riss (interglacial period between 424,000 and 374,000 years ago) (a.k.a. Hoxnian) they survived fifty thousands of years of warm weather.
The Holocene Optimum had a temperature 2 ℃ above present (as confirmed by stomatal density measurements as used to get temperatures in the Pliocene) and lasted thousands of years. The Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves DIDN’T melt.
So why are they suddenly going to melt IF CO2 controls the temperature (available proof zilch) and IF the Earth’s temperature rises in the near future (available proof zilch)?
And what the hell does the Keeling curve got to do with your puerile argument?
20
It is important to realize that in the Eemian warm period, the earth’s orbit was far more elliptical than it is now. The difference between minimum and maximum insolation then was 250 W/m2, whereas now it is about 90 W/m2.
That could give dramatically different climatic conditions, rendering direct comparisons particularly problematic.
30
Any comparisons with now and the distant past are problematical to say the least. You have a sun getting hotter with age, a moon that is moving away from us, different atmospheric compositions, different continent placements, different geological activity, different orbital placements etc etc. Comparisons like this can be useful to help us understand sensitivity and what could happen and the consequences of certain things happeining but to try to use them to say we cannot and are not changing the climate now is ridiculous.
Also ridiculous is to make statements that the planet thrived so whats the problem type statements. Sure the planet has been surviving and thriving and evolving for 4 billion years, ever since it was swirling ball of gas and will do so long after we are gone, it is the habitability of the planet for 7 billion plus humans in their current geographical configuration that is of upmost importance. Often forgotten in discussions of this type.
07
Considering the orbital parameters some more: 118,000 years ago is almost exactly 4.5 precession cycles ago, as a precession cycle is 26,000 years. Whereas now the perihelion (farthest point) is at the beginning of July, so at the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere summer, and the aphelion (closest point) is at the beginning of January, these would have been almost exactly opposite 118,000 years ago.
Taking into account the change in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit as well, we get:
At present:
At the beginning of the NH summer, the solar flux density is (1365 – 45) = 1320 W/m2
At the beginning of the NH winter, the solar flux density is (1365 + 45) = 1410 W/m2
118,000 years ago:
At the beginning of the NH summer, the solar flux density was (1365 + 125) = 1490 W/m2
At the beginning of the NH winter, the solar flux density was (1365 – 125) = 1240 W/m2
These differences of 170 W/m2 at the solstices, even if divided by 4, absolutely dwarf any enhanced greenhouse effect. Greenland’s winters should have been much colder and the summers much warmer. The colder winters could have yielded less snowfall, and the hotter summers more melt. Of course, all sorts of weather patterns could have been very different as well.
31
Maybe you should stop considering, you will tie yourself in knots. There are many different orbital cycles all at different time scales, including axial precession, axial tilt, orbital eccentricity and more. Add to that the suns changing solar power, moons changing gravitational effects, geological upheavals like volcanos, changing ocean currents and moving continents as well as atmospheric compsition. Basicalll your comment is nonsense and not comaprable with anything. Do you have an actual scientific source for your numbers?
We can measure what is happening now, we can take actual observations of what is occurring, and we can determine the strength of the natural and anthropogenic forcings on the climate system and with the current state of our knowledge the current increase in temps cannot be explained without the forcing from additional fossilised CO2.
04
Michael the Believer in Acidic Alkalines,
Do you ever actually stop, engage your brain (or what passes for one), and read what you actually write before you hit the “Post Comment” button?
Basically your first paragraph above spells out that there are so many factors involved in climate change that it is virtually impossible to consider them all without – to quote you – “tying yourself in knots”.
you then go on immediately to state emphatically that, nonetheless, ALL these unknowable unknowns have been incorporated in our “current state of knowledge”, and “current increase in temps cannot be explained without the forcing from additional fossilised CO2”.
.
Perhaps you would like to rebut me by providing a link to the General Circulation Model (GCM) which, to quote you, accounts for:
and arrives at the conclusion that nonetheless “current increase in temps cannot be explained without the forcing from additional fossilised CO2”.
Off you go son. I’m going to bed now, but I look forward to your answer in the morning.
31
Yep. Why? because we do not need to concern ourselves with processes on geological time scales of thousands to millions of years when trying to determine what is happening to the climate on the order of decades to a hundred years. We can focus on the short term forcings to the climate system, such as ENSO, PDO, AMO, Measurable solar changes, Volcanos etc. This is why a discussion of what happened tens of thousands to millions of years ago to try to make any determination of our current situation is ridiculous, you exponentially increase the amount of uncertainties and the margins of error.
05
You mean that natural variation is in fact much greater than might be inferred from a study of recent times?
Who told you that?
I think that someone has been having you on.
41
Really? We just look at the fact that it’s getting warmer (or was), slap in some fudge factors, after studying runaway greenhouse warming on Venus, and declare we are killing ourselves by living in heated buildings, driving cars and building cities? Wow–your leaps in extrapolation are incredible. Even the most hardcore climate advocate rarely boldly proclaims they don’t care in the least about the past–actually most care very much about the past and incorporate it into the models. You’re going to need new models–or whatever it is you use for those bold extrapolations. The main core climate change guys actually incorporated the past into theirs.
31
Dingbat, you have no evidence that any climate “change” that persisted more than a couple of decades was the result of something other than orbital variation.
Not volcanism, not solar cycles, not cosmic, nothing. The geological record of the Earth is the astronomical record of the orbit, so why should you think anything would happen differently now.
You are one of the half-edumacated who became the prime patsies for the IPCC and all of their trolls.
HA HA HA you gullible jerk you probably lost all your money in solar panel stocks and carbon scams already
41
There is really no way to respond to such unmitigated rubbish. Please provide your science that orbital variation is the cause of the rise in temperatures in the last 100 years. Should be able to prove with maths and measurements surely. You guys jump onto a bandwagon and then just make stuff up as you go and call it science. Holy cow, what rubbish.
They all have an influence on the planet and much more.
04
Michael – Your response is absolutely incoherent. I was making the point that there were significant differences between the Eemian and the present (with numbers to back it up), and your response is to say that, no you can’t compare them, because they’re so different. Huh?
I discussed the effects of orbital eccentricity and axial precession, and you tell me that I’m wrong, because I must consider factors such as orbital eccentricity and axial precession. Huh?
You also seem to have no concept of either the relative magnitude of certain effects, of their time scale, or of the quality of our knowledge of them. We understand orbital mechanics very well, which lets us both predict things well – we can predict very accurately the sunrise and sunset times at any given location far into the future – and to calculate very precisely a long history of these events. We cannot do anything like that for weather or climate.
So the history of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit is very well understood. It’s easy to look up on the web. A graph of the history of this eccentricity can be found here:
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/eccentricity_graph.html
Presently, the earth’s eccentricity is 0.0167. The graph shows that there was a peak in eccentricity about 120,000 years ago, at a value of about 0.043 – almost 3 times the eccentricity at present.
At present, with an average orbital radius of 1.496 x 10^8 km and an average TOA insolation of 1365 W/m^2, with an eccentricity of 0.0167, the perihelion has a distance of 1.471 x 10^8 km and so an insolation of 1412 W/m^2. The aphelion has a distance of 1.521 x 10^8 km and so an insolation of 1321 W/m^2. This gives an overall difference of 91 W/m^2.
In the Eemian, with an eccentricity of 0.043, the perihelion had a distance of 1.432 x 10^8 km and so an insolation of 1494 W/m^2. The aphelion had a distance of 1.560 x 10^8 km and so an insolation of 1252 W/m^2. This gives an overall difference of 242 W/m^2.
These figures that I re-derived here agree with what I have seen before to within round-off errors from the number of digits kept, etc. The point is, these differences are huge, and much bigger than any other differences.
No one thinks that in 100,000 years, the brightness of the sun, the distance of the moon, or even the position of the continents has changed significantly enough to have anything like this effect. There is nothing in the geological record that shows a very significant volcanic eruption in that period (as there was about 75,000 years ago).
Similarly, there is nothing new in the modern age that could provide an effect anywhere near this big. The change in “radiative forcing” due to the increased CO2 concentration over the last two centuries is usually estimated at about 1.7 W/m^2. Even if you believe in massive “positive feedbacks”, you do not get past 5 W/m^2. So the idea that because a sea level surge occurred 118,000 years ago, we are in danger of it now due to increased CO2, is incredibly dubious.
Oh, and your precious models that cannot find another reason for a fraction of a degree increase in recent times tend to get the solar forcing totally wrong. I was stunned to find out when I delved into a couple of the models several years back that they did not use the known variation in TOA insolation over the year due to orbital eccentricity; instead they just used the average all the time. Before that, I had no idea they were that bad.
80
So on the one hand you don’t trust actual instrumental measurements and our understanding of science and physics to understand what is going on now but we know with precision what happened and why to the planet, climate and weather 100,000 years ago. Seriously, you guys will say anything no matter how silly to prove your confirmation bias.
Get real…
14
Get a fu**ing life. You comment on threads that are days old on a skeptical blog where nobody gives a flying fu** what your opinion is.
Do you have a wife? She must be extremely frustrated given that you are on your computer all the time playing activist tosser.
What a loser.
30
Well you are still reading it. What does that say about you?
01
Listen to Michael dissemble, obfuscate & hide behind complexity, while curt breaks it down, quantifies and qualifies , to make sense of it. Who is the seeker after truth ?
30
July 2010 is when the Chicago Climate Exchange was in the news. They had been acquired and shut down due to “inactivity in US carbon markets.” Apparently is was owned by the same outfit that started the EU market until the purchase and closure.
00
I would like to propose that at the point someone illustrates complete inability to understand the real world (like the third time they try to say something a not-very-bright 7th grade science student would know), stop responding. I know I tend to go on arguing with trolls, but I realize that there are trolls that are just not capable of lending anything to the discussion, except maybe showing how very stupid they are. I have answered trolls because I realize their “job’ is to come in an stir things up (SkS forums show that reportedly) but there’s nothing one can do if the troll is utterly clueless and spouts nonsense. Henceforth, we know at least three trolls who are incapable of thought and should be ignored as much as possible.
Everyone is free to do as they wish–this is just a suggestion. I never really know what’s best–to answer and show how stupid these people are or just to ignore them. Sometimes it’s best to ignore, sometimes not. Personally, I’m done with the three from this thread. It’s an utter waste of time.
11