Asian sea levels changed rapidly 6,000 years ago — natural sea level rise “unprecedented”

If you thought seas were constant 6,000 years ago…

Sea level, Beach, Western Australia, 2017.

Microatolls are apparently very accurate proxy for sea levels, giving a higher resolution estimate of sea levels. But the extra data suggests more natural oscillations in seas than the experts used to think. Six thousand years ago, near Indonesia, seas apparently rose and fell twice by as much as 60 centimeters in a 250 year period. A similar pattern happened 2,600km away in SE China. Seas were changing so fast researchers estimate the shift occurred at 13mm per year and  comment that these regional changes are “unprecedented in modern times.” (Or unrepeated, perhaps?) At the first peak 6,750 years ago, seas were 1m higher than today. The current rate of sea level change is 1mm a year in hundreds of tide gauges and 3mm in “adjusted” satellite data).

From the paper I gather that sea levels in this region change a lot even now. ENSO and the Indian Ocean dipole slop the oceans back and forward. Meltzner et al don’t know why the seas around asia changed so much in the holocene, nor do they know if this is a global phenomenon.  They talk about other studies on the Great Barrier Reef and …suggest that oscillations may be more common than previously appreciated,.. (but they don’t have the resolution yet to know. )

You and I might think this shows that the climate changes all by itself (and CO2 was irrelevant). You might also think that it shows climate models are incomplete because they have no idea what caused this.  But sieve your brain through the Global Worrier Cult and you will come to realize that a sea level event that we don’t understand, and can’t predict, means we should worry even more about CO2. Because why? Because, who knows, bad stuff might happen again. This is what Meltzner et al conclude. Perhaps it’s a “safe caveat” so Nature will still publish their inconvenient results, but they do go on in the paper a bit.

If they’d found no swings, presumably the press release would tell us how the modern 1mm a year rises are unprecedented. There is a relentless progression of papers showing past climate was wilder than we thought, and natural climate change is more important. Whatever they find, the press release message ends up being “panic more”. Trite.

— Jo

PS:  For perspective, sea levels around Australia in the Holocene peak 7,000 ya were 1 – 2m higher and have been falling since then. (But notice the resolution on those Australian graphs at that link are nowhere near as good as this new study). Further back in the past, sea levels were 9m higher around Kalbarri Western Australia circa 120,000 ya.

 Sea-level change in Southeast Asia 6,000 years ago has implications for today

[ScienceDaily] For the 100 million people who live within 3 feet of sea level in East and Southeast Asia, the news that sea level in their region fluctuated wildly more than 6,000 years ago is important, according to research published by a team of ocean scientists and statisticians, including Rutgers professors Benjamin Horton and Robert Kopp and Rutgers Ph.D. student Erica Ashe. That’s because those fluctuations occurred without the assistance of human-influenced climate change.

***

Mid holocene sea level estimated at three sites: (a) TBAT; (b) TKUB; and (c) Leizhou Peninsula17.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Horton, Kopp, Ashe, lead author Aron Meltzner and others report that the relative sea level around Belitung Island in Indonesia rose twice just under 2 feet in the period from 6,850 years ago to 6,500 years ago. That this oscillation took place without any human-assisted climate change suggests to Kopp, Horton and their co-authors that such a change in sea level could happen again now, on top of the rise in sea level that is already projected to result from climate change. This could be catastrophic for people living so close to the sea.

“This research is a very important piece of work that illustrates the potential rates of sea-level rise that can happen from natural variability alone,” says Horton, professor of marine and coastal sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “If a similar oscillation were to occur in East and Southeast Asia in the next two centuries, it could impact tens of millions of people and associated ecosystems.”

What this study shows is that we need to figure out what really drives climate change (like something on the Sun, perhaps?)

Meltzner, a senior research fellow at Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University, along with Horton, Kopp and their co-authors, used coral microatolls to understand when, and by how much, the sea level had risen and fallen near the Indonesian island of Belitung, which lies between Sumatra and Borneo. A microatoll is a circular coral colony, typically no more than about 20 feet across, in which the topmost coral is dead and the bottom part living and growing. By taking samples from microatolls in different places, scientists can date rises and falls of sea level.

The microatolls are what scientists call a “proxy” — a natural process that provides a reliable record of past events. “In any region, you try to find the proxy controlled by sea level,” Horton says. “In New Jersey, we have no corals, so we use salt marshes. In the tropics, corals are the go-to proxy.”

The scientists studied microatolls at two sites on opposite sides of the island. Meltzner says they didn’t expect the fluctuations they found because those changes in sea level contradicted what they knew about sea level in Southeast Asia. “Our conventional understanding of ocean circulation and ice-melting history told us that such fluctuations should not occur, so we were a bit mystified at the results from our first site,” Meltzner says. “But after finding a similar pattern at a second site 80 kilometers to the southeast, and ruling out other plausible explanations, it was clear that the coral growth patterns must reflect regional changes in sea level. There would be way too many coincidences otherwise.”

The paper comes out of a long-running research project aimed at understanding the physical processes involved in sea-level rise. Such understanding, Kopp says, is necessary to help scientists understand the present and likely future state of the ocean. “This is a basic science problem,” Kopp says. “It’s about understanding past changes. Understanding what drove those changes is what allows us to test the climate models we use to predict future changes.”

Press Release provided by Rutgers University. Original written by Ken Branson.

l Reference:

  1. Aron J. Meltzner, Adam D. Switzer, Benjamin P. Horton, Erica Ashe, Qiang Qiu, David F. Hill, Sarah L. Bradley, Robert E. Kopp, Emma M. Hill, Jędrzej M. Majewski, Danny H. Natawidjaja, Bambang W. Suwargadi. Half-metre sea-level fluctuations on centennial timescales from mid-Holocene corals of Southeast AsiaNature Communications, 2017; 8: 14387 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14387
9 out of 10 based on 61 ratings

134 comments to Asian sea levels changed rapidly 6,000 years ago — natural sea level rise “unprecedented”

  • #
    Ted O'Brien.

    Sea levels in Indonesia? What about land levels?

    It’s a particularly unstable part of the globe.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      The authors refer to changes in ‘relative sea-level’, and then include the obligatory mention of anthropogenic eustasy (as the means to justify their research grants, I imagine).

      When studying sequence stratigraphy, both at university, and later on in the oil industry, it was very clear to me that talk of relative sea level change was a concept which had the potential to be severely abused by unscrupulous researchers.

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      • #
        James Murphy

        I should add that the use of ‘relative sea level’ is not inherently bad, indeed, in proper context, it makes life easier in a lot of ways (daily tides are changes in relative sea level), but when the ‘relative’ aspect is left out, overlooked, or not understood, then that’s where the trouble can start.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Can someone enlighten me – I though the seas had natual high points ( like nodes ) and as such much like water sloshing around in a bath when you move, “high sea level” is relative to where youre sitting in the bath at the time….

          Jo – the font size is huge on this article for some reason…or is it just my browser?

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          • #
            Bulldust

            I can confirm that the font size is massive in IE and Firefox.

            —Your eyes are not lying. Sorry. Fixed! – Jo

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    • #
      diogenese2

      My first thought. Belitung Island is situated on the Sundaland Plate just north of the Sunda Strait associated with names like Krakatoa, Tambora and Toba. The papers reference to “Tectonic Stability” leads to a detailed, 10 year GPS study of the region which measures horizontal deformation not vertical.
      This the authors acknowledge;

      “The second type of vertical uncertainty is epistemic and affects the elevation of the entire RSL curve as a whole. These systematic vertical errors are not shown on any figures in this paper, but include uncertainty in the change in tidal range at each site; uncertainties in tectonic effects or compaction at each site; and uncertainty in the HLS elevation of living corals at each site, which is used as the reference elevation for past RSL15,47. These errors are difficult to quantify, but they are likely small. Tide modelling (Supplementary Fig. 2) and tectonic modelling (Supplementary Figs 3–4) suggest both of those effects are on the scale of centimetres, and neither compaction of the thin sediments underlying the fossil corals nor ponding of the living microatolls is likely to bias the RSL curve at a site by more than ∼0.1 m.”

      Only 10cm – perhaps so, but its a bit of a stretch to extrapolate this region to imply a global change.

      http://www.volcanolive.com/indonesia.html

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      • #
        diogenese2

        PS: apart from that it is a brilliant study, real science but really of no importance to the CAGW debate except to increase the uncertainty of the settled science!

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        • #

          Based on the press release I was going to rubbish it. But the paper was more impressive and detailed than I expected. Microatolls appear to be useful, and hopefully these studies can be done all over the tropics.

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  • #
    Ted O'Brien.

    “Unprecedented in modern times”. I had difficulty there too. But we have here experienced some not very precedented weather in the last couple of days, with temps in the mid 40s and on Sunday winds of 50km/h to gusts much higher.

    We also had some bushfires. It is worthy of notice that the Leadville fire, which was reported on Saturday night as covering an area of 1.999 hectares, is now at Monday 5 am reported as covering 42,455 hectares, or 425 square kilometres. Not in my lifetime has there been so extensive a fire of short duration in this area.

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    • #
      Dennis

      In recent years because of higher rainfall (and the dams filling despite predictions) and high levels of CO2 the bush has become overgrown in many places including vines strangling the trees. No doubt this added to a lack of controlled burning and clearing added to the fire situation.

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    • #
      ivan

      Ted, I am not at all surprised at the extent of the fires because for years the greens have been against the clearing and maintenance of the forests. So much so that land owners that try to clear their land are, in some cases, prosecuted.

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      • #
        Dennis

        A western NSW sheep-wheat farmer told me that he is only allowed to clear about one-third of dead timber from the ground on his property in any one year.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Its his land, he should be allowed to do what he wants!

          Unless they want to spend million sof bucks with satellite surveillance of every farm in NSW, I have no idea how they could catch him unless of course its all bluff….

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    • #
      Hivemind

      Temperatures in the mid-40s and 50KPH winds are hardly unprecedented. Think Canberra, 2013. I watched the flames racing up Mount Taylor. Hundreds of homes went up, and four died.

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      • #
        Annie

        Think Black Saturday in Victoria (2009). Days of heat well into the 40s. That year they followed a long dry period and our daughter said that the grass was crackling with the dryness and everything was a tinderbox waiting to burn. There has been a huge amount of growth again, except where the heat was so high that the ground was sterilised and the regeneration of trees couldn’t happen without artificial reseeding. This year the great fear was the high possibility of grass fires after the long wet winter and spring. Fingers crossed the rain we’ve had lately helps to reduce the risk but we’re not out of the woods yet. It doesn’t take many days of high heat to change things again.

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    So sea levels rose and fell at faster rates than the last 100 years over 6,500 years ago, but CO2 levels being higher now account for a slower rate, confused?

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    • #
      Horace Jason Oxboggle

      Don’t worry, Yonnie. The Climate Blitherati will be right on the task of refuting it ASAP!

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      • #
        Hivemind

        Don’t worry, if they can’t refute it, they will rewrite the evidence to comply with the narrative they need.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I love taking them to task and actually asking hard questions of them…..they hate it….shows up for the liars they are too….

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia.

      CO2 levels, from the graphs I have seen, were around 270 ppm and therefore could not drive eustatic sea level changes.

      31

    • #
      Harry Twinotter

      Yonniestone.

      The study was talking about regional sea level changes, not to mention they used tidal measurements. An example is the east coast of the USA, sea levels (measured by tidal gauges) are rising faster than the global average. That is the complicating factors with tidal gauges, they are affected by factors other than global sea level rise.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Harry even regional levels varied by 600 mm so why the panic over <1mm per year now?

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      • #
        Radical Rodent

        That is a good point, and does raise an interesting question: what metric should sea levels be measured against?

        The only measurement that is really relevant to us, and all other land-dwelling animals, has to be tide gauges, though there is the point that isostatic shift could be a greater influence than actual rising oceanic level (Florida is one good example, as it would appear that the entire peninsular is slowly sinking, as, or so I have read, is much of the eastern USA). Whatever it is, it is unlikely to have anything other than little impact upon most of us, our children, grandchildren or even our great-grandchildren, such that they cannot cope with it.

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        • #
          Harry Twinotter

          Radical Rodent.

          You are not taking gravitation changes into account. The sea level will fall in some places, and rise in others. Global sea level is an average, and it only increases when global warming and ice melt is the cause.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            “and ice melt is the cause.”

            Greenland is gaining surface mass rapidly , Antarctica is not losing mass.

            Or do you mean sea ice, twotter?

            “Global sea level is an average”

            And the level has shown no acceleration in something like 100+ years.

            There is no CO2 signal in the sea level data.

            There is no CO2 signal in the satellite data.

            There is no CO2 signal in any untampered data, anywhere.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            “and ice melt is the cause.”
            Why should anyone believe that? Attribution!
            Where is the data, where’s the reference Harry?

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          • #
            Radical Rodent

            Mr Twinotter: much of what you say makes little sense – how can gravitation changes have any effect that tidal gauges cannot register? What you seem to have missed is this: against what are you measuring sea levels, if you are not measuring them against land-based sites? Also, as Greenland and Antarctic ice is increasing in volume (check with NASA, if you do not believe me), where is this sea level rise from ice melt coming from?

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Yonniestone,
      Just as a reminder real sea-level rise has occurred before —
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

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  • #
    Gary H

    A bit of empirical evidence presented by National Geographic from Wales, some 6,000 years ago – British Storms Unbury an Ancient Welsh Forest

    Excerpts:

    Storms lashing the British coast last month revealed a strange new sight off the west coast of Wales, near the village of Borth: the stumps of hundreds of tree trunks, rising out of the sand, like broken teeth. [..]

    Composed mostly of oak and pine, the forest is believed to date from the Bronze Age. It was buried under a peat bog 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, then inundated by rising sea levels until this winter’s violent storms stripped away the covering of peat and sand. The high level of alkaline and lack of oxygen in the peat has preserved the wood in an almost pristine state.

    Well, sea level is lower today – or this would not be above sea level today.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      so-called ‘Doggerland’ in the English channel has been underwater for the last 8500-ish years, so who knows what sort of crimes against climate those mesolithic people got up to in order to cause such a destructive relative sea-level rise…

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      • #
        Roger

        They were burning wood to warm themselves, cook food and crack rocks. The carbon liberated from the burning caused the sea level to rise. /sarc

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  • #
    Neville

    Interesting Jo and here is a link to Catalyst from their ABC. This transcript or video tells an interesting story of Narrabeen man’s violent death in Sydney about 4,000 years ago. Here’s a comment about SLs at Sydney at that time and the link. Just more proof that SLs today are much lower than was the case after the Holocene climate optimum.

    http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2278381.htm

    “Dr Macdonald: The date came back at about 4000 years ago, which was quite spectacular we were very surprised.

    Narration: 4000 years ago when Narrabeen Man was wondering around this area the sea levels were up to 1.5 metres higher than they are today.

    Paul: So that spit would have been much narrower. The water levels in the Narrabeen lagoon would also have been higher and it would have acted like a saline estuary”.

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    “Unprecedented ” gets used too much me thinks!

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    • #
      el gordo

      Yes its the biggest fallacy, a throwaway word, and they imagine we have no come back.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I always ask over what time frame is it “unprecedented” . I fyou go back far enough, everything is precedented….

        But to be fair, we are asking the bastion of poorly eduicated and lazy MSM journos to actually think….that could be unprecedented…arf arf!!

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    • #
      Glen Michel

      “Catastrophic” as well. One might introduce the term hyperbole.( not pronounced hyperbowl)

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  • #
    doubtingdave

    So sea level changed by just over half a metre in 250 yrs , so what , for far to long we sceptics have been trying to counter global warming with scientific facts , its never been about science has it , although its important to keep pointing out the failings of the science of man made global warming , the debate has moved on way beyond that , its about politics freedom and ideology , and it always was , time to move on from the science , that was a battle we sceptics won long ago to no avail , now with Brexit and Trump we have a chance to take the fight to them , lets do it , and don’t hold back

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  • #
    Dennis

    An information board at the Crowdy Head Lighthouse mid north coast NSW, north east of Taree, near Harrington, explains that the sea level was much higher several thousand years ago and the headland was an island.

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  • #
    Ken Stewart

    This is not new. There is much evidence around Australia for the Holocene sea level highstand being 1-2 metres above current sea levels. There is also some evidence (just north of Brisbane) for sea level being 20-50cm higher just 500 to 700 years ago.

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  • #
    Pat

    Did they happen to mention the uncertainty? I’ll bet it’s measured in microns.

    20

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      A lake I could understand being able to measure level, but a constantly moving sea?

      Best effort on the day I’d have thought….with error +/- 25%

      10

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    The difference between high and low tides locally is as much as 1.2 metres or as little as 0 3 metres depending on the moon and possibly some contribution from the sun.

    So in one 7 hour period we can experience sea level rise, or fall, of 1.2 metres.

    Sometime ago there was a thread which focussed on sea level adjustments after the big melt ended about 7,000 years ago.

    Sea levels then were 6 to 7 metres higher than today and the fall oscillated down through tops of 6, 4 2 and 1.2 metres.

    Some perspective is needed in this matter.

    KK

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  • #
    doubtingdave

    KEITH, WIND YOUR NECK IN , ITS NOT A SCIENCE DEBATE IT NEVER WAS , I don’t give a toss what you know about science compared to me , when blogs like jo’s started all those years ago , we thought it was all about sticking to the scientific facts . but it never was , was it . it has always been about ideology has it not

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Thanks Dave, much appreciated.

      10

    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Dave I hope that I haven’t offended you in some way previously.

      My appreciation of this blog is that everyone brings something of their own special understanding to it and we all benefit.
      The only person I can recall giving a bit of stick to recently was Willard a couple of threads back.

      Unfortunately the stacking of that comment made the subject a bit hard to identify, but Willard is an interloper whose main intention in life seems to be upholding the “science” that battery storage is now so cheap and of such enormous capacity that we should be able to do away with coal fired power and dams next week.

      I totally agree with you that this is now a political issue but beyond that as a few have commented, it is about distortion of facts and creating an image of reality in the media that is deliberately deceptive and deliberately misleading.

      How do we, the taxpayers and voters, get to exercise an informed vote when we don’t have the facts because both parties profit from keeping us ill informed.

      Peace.

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      Dave I have to say that it IS about the science! Surely, science is the only weapon we have against ideology – wouldn’t you agree?
      GeoffW

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    What are you doubting Dave ?

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  • #
    doubtingdave

    Just an ordinary bloke trying to raise a family with out the bullshit , I think back to when we started this struggle for the truth , on all the early blogs , we were told stick to the science , but now we have gone way beyond science , its about ideology , and I have said many times on this blog that the left blame everything on the right and the right blame everything on the left without realising that the bird that controls both the wings is craping all over you ,

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  • #
    theRealUniverse

    According to Nils Axis-Morner , who I would actually trust on the subject, all rises are due to either post glaciation melting (still on going) or tectonic activity lowering or raising seabeds.

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      One thing of interest is that if the region in the study was not being raised or lowered by geological adjustments then the coral under analysis should be at least 4 metres above current sea levels.

      Sea levels have fallen by 4 to 5 metres over the last 6,000 years.

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      • #
        Alan

        Think you’re mixing your feet and metre here KK. World wide evidence for a relative drop in sea levels of 1.5-2 metre in the last 5-6000 yrs

        10

        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Sorry Alan

          Either my memory is playing tricks on me or I have lost the plot.

          I remember from uni geology being told that oceans had dropped 1.2 metres in the last two to four thousand years.
          Some graphs I checked today confirm that.

          My recollection of higher seas back about 7,000 years was that they were up to a max of 7 metres higher than now but most graphs I see give a max of 2 metres for that period. Error bars suggest that they could go up to 3.5. metres which is still not what I had in mind.

          In my defense I can point to a fairly low resolution graph that suggests that in the last period after the big melt that ended about 7,000 years back, the oceans were up to 10 metres higher than now.

          see here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Sea_level_temp_140ky.gif

          The lower of these two graphs shows a very low detail depiction of sea levels. For the last few thousand years, about 7,000, it shows a rise to a peak of 10 metres above present and then a rapid fall to current levels. certainly not a detailed graph but it supports what I had thought I had seen before that seas were considerably higher than 2m above present in that period 7 kya.

          I hate to admit this but I should be a real scientist, not rely on memory and stick to quoting proper references.

          KK

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  • #
    poitsplace

    I never truly understood how falsifiability could be an issue in science…until I started looking into climate change. But not only do they have the issue, it’s blatant and out in the open with them literally saying that basically ANYTHING could happen because of climate change, including it getting colder.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Also of note is that the AGW crowd keep going on about it all being science, and that all this catastrophic climate stuff is due to a Greenhouse Effect or even an Enhance Greenhouse Effect (or some such similar blather.)

      Well I have nearly 100 supposedly scientific definitions of this effect from US agencies like EPA, NOAA, NASA, and many, many universities and climate gangs research groups. As this is all supposed to be science yet each definitive description is different from each other.
      As I said before — In science if an effect can not be accurately defined then it ain’t science.

      P.S.
      You could try it for yourself just search for ‘define greenhouse effect’ and see thousands of variations.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “them literally saying that basically ANYTHING could happen because of climate change,”

      And basically anything could happen if there was NO anthropogenic climate change. (which is what is implied when a climate seancist says “climate change™”)

      Any wether that they say supports “climate change™”… also supports “natural” climate change.

      That makes the “climate change™” suggestion, totally meaningless

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  • #
    King Geo

    Local tectonics impact on Relative SL e.g. subsidence at deltas results in local SL fall. Eustatic SL on the other-hand is affected by growth or reduction of ice on the Antarctic & Greenland Ice Sheets, with the former containing considerably more ice. Eustatic SL rise or fall impacts globally whereas Relative SL rise or fall, governed by tectonics, only impacts locally, ie in proximity to the tectonic overprint. Eustatic SL rise & fall during the Holocene Interglacial (last 11,700 yrs) has been mainly driven by Solar controlled Global Temp changes. There will be an opportunity to evaluate the Sun’s impact on Eustatic SL late next decade, ie when the next “Grand Minimum / LIA” kicks in (SL 26 onwards). The last two LIA’s persisted for 50-70yrs and no doubt would have initially reduced the rate of Eustatic SL rise and then resulted in Eustatic SL fall. Trump is in the process of “killing off” the “climate pseudoscientist brigade” in the USA, who have engaged in reinforcing the “IPCC’s AGW Religion” during the past few decades, however the good news is that a new breed of “real climate scientists” are likely to emerge when the imminent “Grand Minimum / LIA” kicks in late next decade.

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  • #
    pat

    David Rose/DM are not backing down. another must-read. drudgereport has it, so it’s gone way beyond viral already:

    12 Feb: UK Daily Mail: DAVID ROSE: How can we trust global warming scientists if they keep twisting the truth
    They were duped – and so were we. That was the conclusion of last week’s damning revelation that world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on climate change under the sway of unverified and questionable data.
    A landmark scientific paper –the one that caused a sensation by claiming there has been NO slowdown in global warming since 2000 – was critically flawed. And thanks to the bravery of a whistleblower, we now know that for a fact.
    The response has been extraordinary, with The Mail on Sunday’s disclosures reverberating around the world…
    It has even triggered an inquiry by Congress…

    No wonder, then, that our revelations were met with fury by green propagandists…
    It turns out that when NOAA compiled what is known as the ‘version 4’ dataset, it took reliable readings from buoys but then ‘adjusted’ them upwards – using readings from seawater intakes on ships that act as weather stations.
    They did this even though readings from the ships have long been known to be too hot.
    No one, to be clear, has ‘tampered’ with the figures. But according to Bates, the way those figures were chosen exaggerated global warming…
    And without this new dataset there would have been no Pausebuster paper. If, as previous sea water evidence has shown, there really has been a pause in global warming, then it calls into question the received wisdom about its true scale.
    Then there is the matter of timing…READ ALL

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    • #
      pat

      SHOULD HAVE EXCERPTED THE FOLLOWING FROM DAVID ROSE’S ARTICLE:

      “It is important to acknowledge the MoS (Mail on Sunday) did make one error: the caption on a graph, showing the difference between NOAA’s sea data records and the UK Met Office’s, did not make clear that they used different baselines. We corrected this immediately on our website”…

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  • #
    pat

    12 Feb: WashingtonFreeBeacon: Lachlan Markay: Federal Agency Eased Sanctions for Plagiarism, Data Fabrication in Taxpayer-Funded Research
    IG (Inspector General) reports from 2015-2016 identified at least 31 cases of plagiarism and data manipulation
    A federal agency that funds scientific research nixed punishments recommended by its own ethics watchdog for some academics who plagiarized and manipulated data in grant proposals and taxpayer-funded research, public records show.
    The inspector general for the National Science Foundation identified at least 23 instances of plagiarism in proposals, NSF-funded research, and agency publications in 2015 and 2016. It found at least eight instances of data manipulation and fabrication in those years. NSF officials disregarded recommended sanctions against some of the scientists and academics implicated in those findings. Though many were temporarily barred from receiving additional federal funding, nearly all will be eligible for taxpayer support and official roles in NSF-funded research in the future…

    ***Publicly available versions of the IG reports are heavily redacted to remove information that might identify the researchers and projects at issue, preventing efforts to request comment from the subjects of the IG’s investigations…
    One researcher found to have plagiarized from five sources in an NSF grant proposal told investigators that she “was never instructed regarding use of quotation marks while a graduate student in the U.S.”
    http://freebeacon.com/issues/federal-agency-eased-sanctions-plagiarism-data-fabrication-taxpayer-funded-research/

    29 Jan: DailyCaller: Ethan Barton: Feds Give Billions To Research Based On ‘Falsified Or Fabricated Data’
    National Science Foundation officials award $7 billion in grants annually based on funding proposals the agency’s watchdog estimates have hundreds of examples of plagiarism and “falsified or fabricated data.”
    The federal science research agency awards 11,000 grants to 2,000 research institutions annually, but Allison Lerner, the agency’s inspector general, only oversees about 1 percent of those recipients…
    The watchdog estimated that around 1,200 proposals for funding could contain plagiarism and another 800 proposals or results include “falsified or fabricated data,” according the IG’s semiannual report…READ ALL
    http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/29/national-science-foundation-fabricated-data/

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    pat

    latest update for those following this potentially disastrous Californian story:

    12 Feb: KRCR TV: Josh Copitch: Evacuation orders for low levels of Oroville
    OROVILLE, Calif. – An immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered.
    A hazardous situation has developed with the Oroville Dam emergency spillway. Officials say that operation of the auxiliary spillway has lead to severe erosion that could lead to a failure of the structure.
    Failure of the emergency spillway structure will result in an uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville.
    In response to this developing situation, DWR is increasing water releases to 100,000 cubic feet per second. Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream has been ordered…
    COMMENT: If you live anywhere near the feather river get out now and charge your hotel room to Jerry Brown
    http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/butte/evacuation-orders-for-low-levels-of-oroville/330519833

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    Bulldust

    O/Topic… I normally don’t mind Ian Verrender’s analysis on the ABC as he usually sticks to economics and has a decent grasp on reality. Unfortunately he strayed into climate and renewables today and lost the plot completely:

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-13/ian-verrender-the-simple-truth-on-renewable-energy/8264296

    So much wrong in this piece it is hard to know where to start. I’d write to the ABC, but what’s the point? I did so some time ago when it was blatantly obvious their Fact Check was biased (Julie Bishop quote on debt and deficit handed down from Labor) and they simply come back with fallacious arguments to justify their position. The ABC is a lost cause.

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    Lionell Griffith

    Evidence mounts that the “modern” scientist know only a minute fraction of what they pretend to know. A proper inference from this discovery is that all current theories of human caused climate change resulting in sea level change is pure conjecture. At most, the conjectures have a very limited foundation in any real world evidence. They really don’t know what they are talking about.

    It is becoming more and more like that ancient parable of the six blind men encountering an elephant. Each attempts to describe what he encounters. Within a very limited context, each description may be accurate but none of them captures a description of the whole elephant.

    All that can be said is “this here and now” with extrapolation outside of the immediate context being a very error prone activity. If you can’t account for the last 10 million years or more, how can you account for the next 100 years? You can’t.

    All you can say is that things will be same or different in many specific ways. Oh perhaps you can suggest a probability of occurrence of some degree of change. However, even that is suspect considering multiple supposed 100 year floods or droughts happen in less than 100 years. Then, when honestly examined, the more distant past was way worse than our “panic, the sky is going to burn” present.

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    pat

    constant updates:

    12 Feb: Sacramento Bee: LIVE: BREAKING: Marysville, Yuba County evacuated as Oroville spillway collapse feared
    http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article132332499.html

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    Bass Strait and the English Channel were formed from dry land within the period of human settlements and even towns. And we’re supposed to be surprised that sea levels “oscillate”? Nature Communications need some better climate creationists.

    As for “took place without any human-assisted climate change” and “unprecedented”…maybe Nature Communications contributors have to utter such ritualistic phrases in order to thrive in the Age of Publish-or-Perish. The State Religion requires a certain degree of piety and a show of dogmatic orthodoxy from the State’s scholars before they can be allowed to perform this new-fangled observation thingy that leads so many into doubt and loss of faith.

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    tom0mason

    Surely as such a large mass of water sloshes from one part of the globe to another it should affect the pole’s and their movement.

    Given that polar motion and climate variability seem to be inextricably linked, scientists can look at historical records of the pole’s motion (which date back to well before the advent of GPS and the GRACE satellite) and see changes in Earth’s climate. If those changes are less dramatic than the ones we see today, Ivins says, then scientists could say that global warming has a controlling influence on Earth’s poles.

    From http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/nasa-earths-poles-are-tipping-thanks-to-climate-change/

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      tom0mason

      Oops …

      Should be —
      … poles and their movement.

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      tom0mason

      Also from the link

      “If you’re losing enough mass to change the orientation of the Earth—that’s a lot of mass,” says John Ries, Chen’s colleague at U.T. Austin. The team found that recent accelerated ice loss and associated sea level rise accounted for more than 90 percent of the latest polar shift.

      Of course the draining of the Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Aral Sea may also have the same effect!

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      JetSet

      How can they produce such tripe.

      All you need to do to confirm or reject the paper is to go the Danish Bureau of Meteorology, click through to the Greenland page you to find out what is actually happening.

      http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

      Since 1990, the bureau has maintained a surface mass balance of the island. The amount of ice increases from September, the end of what they call summer for nine months and then there is a smaller melt over the following summer. Since 1990 there has been a Mean GAIN of 300 gigatons per year, every year. The worst year was 2011-2012 where there was a nett gain of about zero. The loss of ice over that summer is probably the justification they’re using in this article.

      (Gt; 1 Gt is one billion tons and corresponds to 1 cubic kilometre of water)

      Since September 2016 the surface mass balance has grown by 500 gigatons, the highest since 1990. Whoop’s! That’s the highest EVAH!

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        tom0mason

        Exactly, hence my reference to Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Aral Sea loss. It’s in the right place for a similar effect and in the correct geographical direction.

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      JetSet

      Also: How are they going to explain which CO2 molecules caused the Poles to REVERSE, which is late coming!

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    Harry Twinotter

    “What this study shows is that we need to figure out what really drives climate change (like something on the Sun, perhaps?)”

    Speculation. Also an argument from ignorance. The article wasn’t talking about climate change, it was talking about regional sea level change.

    Both the tidal records and the satellite records show global average sea level is rising now.

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      el gordo

      ‘…..global average sea level is rising now.’

      A very slight rise as we emerge from the LIA, its not unprecedented, nor is it caused by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.

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      tom0mason

      Harry Twinotter,

      Speculation says the person who believes in a theory which only has computer models as the supporting evidence for its existence. And it is only speculation that CO2 causes warming. There is no conclusive observation, no physical proof, just theory.

      Can you explain why in 600million years there is NO evidence of runaway global warming as your belief system asserts. Never in 600 million years with CO2 usually over 1,000ppm.
      I can! CO2 does not cause warming.

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        you don’t know what spectroscopy is do you?

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          tom0mason

          Spectroscopy?
          Please show the experimental proof where the CO2 in the air warms the atmosphere.

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              tom0mason

              I see you need a push on this.

              Explain how spectroscopy proves CO2 in the air warms the atmosphere.

              I don’t believe you can do it.

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                Ok… I’m not going to drop myself into your obvious gotchya trolling. But I will do so if you answer the question I asked first. Here is a collection of papers about the physical properties of CO2

                https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/

                Do you accept the results and conclusions of any of these? Do you understand them? If you don’t understand them or you think they are all made up then there is no point me answering your question.

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                tom0mason

                Except Gee Aye this bit of science calls your bluff. CO2 has little to nothing to do at ground level where we all live.

                https://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/stratosphere-radiation-by-species-1460.jpg

                and the original caption reads —

                Stratospheric cooling rates: The picture shows how water, cabon dioxide and ozone contribute to longwave cooling in the stratosphere. Colours from blue through red, yellow and to green show increasing cooling, grey areas show warming of the stratosphere. The tropopause is shown as dotted line (the troposphere below and the stratosphere above). For CO2 it is obvious that there is no cooling in the troposphere, but a strong cooling effect in the stratosphere. Ozone, on the other hand, cools the upper stratosphere but warms the lower stratosphere. Figure from: Clough and Iacono, JGR, 1995; adapted from the SPARC Website.

                Get the message? There is a hole in the solar radiation at ground level where CO2 might have been spectrographically active at ground level. So all your blather comes to nought in the real world.
                NOTE CO2’s ONLY EFFECT IS TO HELP COOL THE STRATOSPHERE! THERE IS NO CO2 MEDIATED WARMING.

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                Harry Twinotter

                Gee Aye.

                I know how you feel – when people start saying CO2 does not cause a greenhouse effect I just give up. They are so far down the anti-science rabbit hole there is no hope for them. It is the greenhouse effect that makes the earth livable, they ignore that.

                What out for this: They make a claim and you show them evidence they are wrong. They will then modify the claim and say it again and the cycle repeats. It is a tactic they use to endless deny the evidence, and to waste your time.

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                Tomo… you are rejecting a good number of experiments described papers on that list and routinely in labs every day by saying that CO2, at ground level, cannot capture and re-emit energy after a delay. I’d be interested in knowing why these experiments miss the fact that CO2 changes its properties near the surface of the Earth?

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                AndyG55

                “when people start saying CO2 does not cause a greenhouse effect I just give up.”

                We have all notice you give up once the FACTS comes to the fore.

                Feel free to link ANY paper that shows CO₂ causes warming in a convective atmosphere…… or not.

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                AndyG55

                “They are so far down the anti-science rabbit hole there is no hope for them”

                Yes, you are, on some sort of mushroom that gives you unsupportable belief in a baseless religion.

                You have NEVER produced one single bit of evidence about anything, Twotter.. that is your defining trait.

                You don’t really think that the atmosphere behaves like a glass jar, do you ?? REALLY ???

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                AndyG55

                “after a delay.” WOW, gee may finally be waking up..

                Now do some research Gee.

                Its out there, been on the forum many times

                A glass jar is NOT a convective atmosphere, and anyone who thinks it will act like one is a non-thinking, anti-science twerp.

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                tom0mason

                “Tomo… you are rejecting a good number of experiments described papers on that list and routinely in labs every day by saying that CO2, at ground level, cannot capture and re-emit energy after a delay. I’d be interested in knowing why these experiments miss the fact that CO2 changes its properties near the surface of the Earth?”

                No I am pointing out 2 things
                1. There is next to no available IR frequency to activate CO2 from the sun arriving at the lower atmospheric levels — as shown by science (inspect the diagram in that link).

                2. As you say “…routinely in labs every day by saying that CO2, at ground level…”
                IN THE LAB that is not global! That is not out in the sunlit atmosphere! That is a specific place and time with infrared radiation at one, very narrow band of particular frequencies, artificially exciting CO2. If the experimenters step outside and try to get sunlight to perform the same experiment, grabbing a photon of a particular IR frequency to holding it briefly, then they would fail. That frequency is virtually unavailable in sunlight at ground level! Exactly what that link says.

                Stated simply, the total amount of energy is always conserved (energy is neither created nor destroyed) . The so called GHG effect is the trapping/absorbing of outgoing infrared (IR) radiation by various greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. These molecules then either thermalize the energy by turning it into kinetic energy and dissipating the energy (precisely the same amount) by bumping into other atoms and molecules, *or* re-radiating the energy, after a delay of micro or milliseconds, in any direction to be absorbed by other molecules (not necessarily CO2 as there is so little of it in the air).
                Note during these processes no extra energy can be created, and the amount of energy entering the CO2 molecule is precisely the same as leaves it — this is all known scientifically.

                And BYW if those particular IR frequencies (allowing for spectrum broadening) were available, CO2 is an extremely Weak GHG operating as it does at the low energy end of the spectrum, and also with CO2, it has no Permanent Dipole configuration to its molecule.
                I’ll leave you to fish the science of that statement for yourself.

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                you and Andy seem to be all over the place so it is totally appropriate to gish gallop back with this reference

                https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810016493.pdf

                how does it relate to CO2? I’m sure you have your theories and I’m also sure they are not backed up by any published data or observations. So… go forth and insult without fear of moderation

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                tom0mason

                Sorry for the delay I’m straying to put something together that does not go straight to moderation.
                _________________
                Please be aware that your linked paper is all well and good but is the calculated response (today we would say modeled) based on the measurements of their day.

                Please understand that the overall response given is not for any particular place but a aggregation over the globe.
                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                Stratospheric cooling observed here —
                https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/

                Mlynczak is the associate principal investigator for the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air hundreds of km above our planet’s surface.

                “Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator. “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.”

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                and here
                See http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png
                and
                Actual measurement made out in the real world.
                https://geosciencebigpicture.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/downwelling-ground-up.jpg

                What happens when you stand on the ground and point a spectrometer up? Interesting things.
                In the CO2 bands around wave number 667 a spectrometer pointed up from the ground sees radiation at very near surface temperature. In the cases above that near surface temperature was about 245 K in Barrow and 300 K at Nauru. The spectra are very different in form as a result of different humidities in the atmospheric window and ozone bands to the right. In the cold, dry air at Barrow the instrument reads near zero except for the ozone bands. Those photons are running away straight to space and there is nothing to see. In the warm, moist air of Nauru the window is very “dirty” and noisy due to scatter and radiation by water.

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                Line-by-line calculation of atmospheric fluxes and cooling rates 2.
                Application to carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, nitrous oxide and the halocarbons
                S. A. Clough and M. J. Iacono
                Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
                JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 100, NO. D8, PAGES 16,519-16,535, AUGUST 20, 1995

                Abstract. A line-by-line model (LBLRTM) has been applied to the calculation of clear-sky longwave fluxes and cooling rates for atmospheres including CO2, 03, CH4, N20, CC14, CFC-11, CFC-12, and CFC-22 in addition to water vapor. The present paper continues the approach developed in an earlier article in which the radiative properties of atmospheres with water vapor alone were reported. Tropospheric water vapor continues to be of principal importance for the longwave region due to the spectral extent of its absorbing properties, while the absorption bands of other trace species have influence over limited spectral domains. The principal effects of adding carbon dioxide are to reduce the role of the water vapor in the lower troposphere and to provide 72% of the 13.0 K d ^-1 cooling rate at the stratopause. In general, the introduction of uniformly mixed trace species into atmospheres with significant amounts of water vapor has the effect of reducing the cooling associated with water vapor, providing an apparent net atmospheric heating. The radiative consequences of doubling carbon dioxide from the present level are consistent with these results. For the midlatitude summer atmosphere the heating associated with ozone that occurs from 500 to 20 mbar reaches a maximum of 0.25 K d ^-1 at 50 mbar and partially offsets the cooling of 1.0 K d ^-1 contributed by H20 and CO2 at this level. In the stratosphere the 704 cm ^-1 band of ozone, not included in many radiation models, contributes 25% of the ozone cooling rate. Radiative effects associated with anticipated 10-year constituent profile changes, 1990-2000, are presented from both a spectral and spectrally integrated perspective. The effect of the trace gases has been studied for three atmospheres: tropical, midlatitude summer, and midlatitude winter.
                Using these results and making a reasonable approximation for the polar regions, we obtain a value for the longwave flux at the top of the atmosphere of 265.5 W m^-2, in close agreement with the clear-sky Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) observations. This agreement provides strong support for the present approach as a reference method for the study of radiative effects resulting from changes in the distributions of trace species on global radiative forcing. Many of the results from the spectral calculations reported here are archived at the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center for use by the community.

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CUuRsl8ZNQE/VBS9-IblVLI/AAAAAAAAGZ4/cEO5gMFAdWA/s1600/LW-Spectral-Cooling3.jpg

                This has an update and expansion on S. A. Clough and M. J. Iacono work by http://www.science-skeptical.de/blog/der-anthropogene-treibhauseffekt-in-der-mittleren-atmosphaere/0012580/ (put it through a translation software)

                __________
                Good luck with that.

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                tom0mason

                Seems my reply is in moderation…

                Your comment is awaiting moderation.
                February 17, 2017 at 12:18 pm

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            tom0mason

            Harry Twinotter.

            “They make a claim and you show them evidence they are wrong. They will then modify the claim and say it again and the cycle repeats. It is a tactic they use to endless deny the evidence, and to waste your time.”
            I hope you are not implying that is what I have done here. If it is then YOU are wrong yet again. Obviously Harry you do not even understand what the question and my reply is about.

            For you education Harry — The idea of a ‘greenhouse gas’ is poorly named. It gives the gullible the idea that where we live has an atmosphere like glass covering a glasshouse. It does not and the analogy is entirely specious. There is no roof on our ‘greenhouse’. The atmosphere is far, far more dynamic than any glasshouse could allow.
            Water is the main thermally and kinetically infrared active gas. CO2 at ground level is NOT a infrared active gas as shown by the link above.

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          tom0mason

          Gee Aye,

          With reference to your spurious argument about spectroscopy, how the CO2 in the air warms the atmosphere.

          Or can you not do it? ( I’m calling your bluff!)

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        Harry Twinotter

        tomomason.

        I usual do not respond to your posts. Too much falsehood, too much misrepresentation, I know you have no intention of holding an honest discussion.

        But this I can respond to this one around 30 seconds:

        “Can you explain why in 600million years there is NO evidence of runaway global warming as your belief system asserts.”

        My “belief” system eh? I don’t recall ever saying anything about “runaway global warming”. I cannot recall any credible climate scientists who says such a thing (I do not know what it even means, really. The earth will stabilize at a new level depending on the CO2 concentration).

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          tom0mason

          You don’t believe in runaway global warming?
          Oh Harry you are a disappointment.
          I always thought you were a UN-IPCC true believer!

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            tom0mason

            To quote Hansen —

            The Earth’s climate becomes more sensitive as it becomes very cold, when an amplifying feedback, the surface albedo, can cause a runaway snowball Earth, with ice and snow forming all the way to the equator.
            If the planet gets too warm, the water vapor feedback can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. The ocean boils into the atmosphere and life is extinguished.
            The Earth has fell off the wagon several times in the cold direction, ice and snow reaching all the way to the equator. Earth can escape from snowball conditions because weathering slows down, and CO2 accumulates in the air until there is enough to melt the ice and snow rapidly, as the feedbacks work in the opposite direction. The last snowball Earth occurred about 640 million years ago.
            Now the danger that we face is the Venus syndrome. There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome. Venus will never have oceans again. Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2.

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              tom0mason

              For evidence of all the other 100s of times this anti-science scaremonger has utter such nonsense just search —
              ‘Hansen says “runaway” global warming’

              You might get lucky and get the then chief scaremonger of the UN-IPCC gravy train, the railwayman Pachauri putting his spin on the ‘runaway global warming’ in so many press releases.

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          tom0mason

          I agree no credible scientist talks about “runaway global warming”, just James E. Hansen et al, and all the want-to-feel-important goons at the UN-IPCC.

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          AndyG55

          There is absolutely NO CO₂ warming signal in either of the satellite records.

          The ONLY warming has come from El Nino effects, which have absolutely nothing to do with CO₂.

          You are welcome to post a link to paper that shows that CO₂ causes warming in a convective atmosphere.

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          AndyG55

          “I know you have no intention of holding an honest discussion.”

          Probably one of the most hypocritical things you could ever say, Twotter.

          Look in the mirror next time you say that, and try not to smirk at yourself.

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          AndyG55

          “The earth will stabilize at a new level depending on the CO2 concentration”

          The Earth’s [climate] stability or otherwise has absolutely NOTHING to do with the level of atmospheric CO₂, EXCEPT if it drops too low for plant life to exist.

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          AndyG55

          “I do not know what it even means, really.”

          That seems to apply to basically every topic you ever try to talk about, twotter.

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          el gordo

          ‘The earth will stabilize at a new level depending on the CO2 concentration).’

          Incorrect, as the Holocene draws to a close the only benefit will be in the agriculture sector, which means we should be encouraging more CO2 concentrations.

          Have you considered the possibility that we might both be wrong?

          Its a ‘sensitivity’ issue.

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      tom0mason

      Harry Twinotter
      Keep believing in the speculative idea(religion) of CO2 cause warming and affects the rate of change in the climate.

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      AndyG55

      The tidal record shows absolutely no acceleration.

      The satellite records show that “adjustments” started happening around 2000-2003.

      https://s19.postimg.org/p42wgwtir/comparison.jpg

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    pat

    Ross – yes, there’s more than a whiff of Wivenhoe about it, from what I’ve read in recent days.

    more snow melt, more rain on the way:

    KRCR Livestream – Oroville, California
    https://livestream.com/KRCR/events/3724366?t=1486950431517

    lots of background:

    11 Feb: Sacramento Bee: As emergency spillway flows, state says repairs to crippled Oroville Dam could run $200 million
    By Dale Kasler and Peter Hecht
    Unable to release enough water from the dam’s 3,000-foot main spillway, which split open Tuesday and continues to erode, the California Department of Water Resources announced that stormwaters reached the top of the dam at around 8 a.m Saturday and began flowing over the concrete lip of the adjacent emergency spillway onto a wooded ravine below…

    But the crisis at Lake Oroville won’t abate any time soon. Northern California is on pace for its wettest winter ever, and Croyle said an estimated 2.8 million acre-feet of snow blankets the Sierra above the dam. Depending on how quickly that melts, it will put additional strain on Oroville Dam in the months to come…
    About twice as much water was released from the dam during the major storms in 1997, which produced considerable flooding in Yuba and Sutter counties after several levees broke. Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent upgrading levees and other flood control facilities in the region…

    The dam was built by Brown’s father, Gov. Pat Brown, and was paid for by regional water agencies, such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which are members of the State Water Project.
    The cost-sharing for repairs between the water agencies and the state has yet to be determined, Carlson said. Croyle, though, raised the prospect of getting federal dollars to help with fixes…
    When all is said and done, Croyle said, he anticipates the lower half of the main spillway will be ruined as the forceful releases, required for flood control at the dam, continue to gnaw at the concrete and underlying soil and rock. “In my opinion, it’s toast all the way to the bottom,” he said…
    http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article132154774.html#1

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    Bruce

    As always, an informative and honest pleasure, thank you Jo.

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    pat

    13 Feb: Bolt Blog: Wrong. Wind farms were indeed to blame
    MULTIPLE LINKS INCL:
    UPDATE
    Judith Sloan takes on the “don’t blame wind” spin of the ABC’s Insiders yesterday:
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/wrong-wind-farms-were-indeed-to-blame/news-story/02db2a231b3eb230313c7ab26b9f4599

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    pat

    o/t but too outrageous not to post immediately:

    11 Feb: Washington Examiner: Al Weaver: Democrats call for Australian Prime Minister to address Congress
    Two House Democrats are calling for House Speaker Paul Ryan to extend an invitation to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to address a joint session of Congress to reinforce the long-standing relationship between the U.S. and Australia.
    Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Elliot Engel, D-N.Y., sent a letter to Ryan on Saturday with the request, which comes soon after President Trump’s contentious phone call with Turnbull, according to reports…
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-call-for-australian-prime-minister-to-address-congress/article/2614593

    Sky/AAP, like the Examiner, has not a hint what incredibly bad partisan politics this is:

    13 Feb: Sky New: AAP: Turnbull could visit US in next two months
    It comes as a US campaign builds for Mr Turnbull to address a joint meeting of US Congress, a rare honour bestowed on world leaders including Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Pope Francis.
    In the aftermath of Mr Turnbull’s volatile phone call with US President Donald Trump, two senior Democrats believe an invite would reinforce America’s ‘long-standing, close relationship’ with Australia…
    Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee from New York and Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee from Washington, have penned a letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan urging Mr Turnbull be sent the invitation.’An invitation to the prime minister, in consultation with the executive branch, to visit and address Congress would be very well received,’ Representatives Engel and Smith wrote…
    http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/international/2017/02/13/turnbull-urged-to-address-us-congress.html

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    Geoffrey Williams

    This is an interesting study and result. As a layperson I say well done and trust in your results. But I feel that the sea level rise results found and described as ‘catastrophic for these people’ are an exaggeration and merely added for the purpose of pandering to climate alarmism funding.
    GeoffW

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    A possible rise of just a metre 6000 years ago is only interesting because it may indicate we are in a natural process of sea-height variation of 150m.

    Looking at archeological data from the Nevada deserts show that the Grand Canyon was affected by a sea rise of up to 150m, about 46,000-50,000 years ago, when the Laurentian Glacier melted. Now, any change in the sea level that affected North America should have worldwide repercussions (the oceans are all linked), but the causes of these changes can have far greater affects on the affected landmass. As a result of this sea level rise, the Shasta land sloth flourished for about 20,000 years.

    Then the climate cooled, the LG advanced, and the sea level dropped up to 150m. The drier, colder climate killed off the sloth, but further south the climate change offered the glyptodon a habitat it enjoyed for a long time . All indicators are that the planet is headed for a rise in sea level as it warms, but this rise will probably be interrupted by a short ice age again. But the rise is coming, no matter what we do.

    We just don’t know enough to determine when.

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