Headlines across Australia yesterday told us the dire news that a new study finds that “Sea level rising faster in past 20 years than in entire 20th century“. A new paper by Watson et al is driving the headlines, but underneath this Nature paper is a swamp of adjustments, an error larger than the signal, and the result disagrees with many other studies and almost all the raw measurements. Paper after paper kept showing that sea levels rates had slowed (e.g Chen showed deceleration from 2004, Cazenave said in the last decade sea-levels had slowed 30% (but argued post hoc adjustments could solve that). Beenstock used 1000 tide gauges and found no acceleration of sea levels over the last 50 years. A different researcher — Phil Watson, found that Australian sea levels rose faster before World War II then slowed down.)
Firstly, hundreds of tide gauges show sea level rising at about a third of the rate than satellites do. Worse, the original satellite raw data showed the same slow rise, until it was suddenly adjusted. The real scandal is that the rapidly rising trend was largely created by adjustments in the first place. These latest corrections just adjust down part of the rate which had been created by adjusting up. On top of all that, the long paleo-history of sea levels done by people like Nils-Axel Mörner show that the current rise is not unusual or unprecedented at all. Could it get more pointless? It can: the acceleration Watson et al found is so small it’s less than the errors. (See the graph below).
The conclusion of the paper is that instead of the sea levels rising at 3.2mm/yr as per the official satellite data, the are rising at 2.3mm/yr + 0.043mm/yr2 of acceleration. Over a century that means the projected sea level rise is revised downwards from 320mm to 251mm. That means sea level rise on current trends has dropped off the bottom end of any UNIPCC projection for sea level rise (AR5 WG1 SPM) for the period 2081-2100, as against 1985-2005. The likely range is between 260 and 820mm under all scenarios. The projection (mid-point 400mm) range is based on succeeding in cutting global emissions to near zero before 2100.
Tide gauges don’t agree with the satellites on sea level. The 68 most stable NOAA tide gauges around the world show about 1mm a year rise. Beenstock use a thousand tide gauges around the world and found the same rise of about 1mm/year. Nils-Axel Mörner has studied arrays of gauges as well but also used the opposite approach and found practically the single most stable beach in Northern Europe. He analyzed long records on all the beaches around it to figure out which way the whole area was tilting — again he found the change of the most stable point is about 1mm/year.
We’re analysing the decimal points of the acceleration of a trend that was largely created by adjustments in the first place. Why bother? The raw satellite data showed almost no rise at all from 1992-2002, and was post hoc adjusted up from less than 1mm to 2.3mm/yr (Aviso, 2003). And the raw low rate was skewed high by the El Nino in 1997. These adjusted figures have been used to generate thousands of headlines about how sea levels are rising faster after 1992. (Anyone going to retract those headlines?) The European satellite data was also adjusted up. Nils-Axel Mörner has described the whole sordid process of sea level adjustments in detail. Knowing this puts the ABC version is a new light. Christopher Watson, lead author, “said the study suggested satellites marginally overestimated the rate of sea level rise in the first six years and that distorted the long-term picture.” He didn’t mention that it was the overestimate of the underestimate and all these numbers were subject to change, post hoc, ad hoc, as the wind blows…
Sea levels are always changing and past changes were often larger.
- Past changes were larger in the Maldives (Mörner, 2007); In Connecticut (van de Plassche, 2000),; SW Sweden – Kattegatt Sea region (Mörner, 1971, 1980); In the Kattegatt and the Baltic (Åse, 1970; Mörner, 1980, 1999; Ambrosiani, 1984; Hansen et al., 2012). Other sites (e.g. Pirazzoli, 1991). [See the link above for the full references].
- White et al showed seas around Australia were rising at about the same speed during the depression era as they are now.
The rate since 2002 is slowing despite the massive emissions of CO2: The new adjustments on adjustments bring the 1992 – 2012 rate down (did the ABC tell you that?). This changes the curve, and creates a weak acceleration that was not there before.This also creates new headlines of “acceleration”. At some point in the future, today’s measurements will be adjusted down to create more headlines of “acceleration”. Rinse Repeat Recycle.
If tide gauges were good enough to figure out the rate of acceleration from 1900 – 1992, why are they wrong as soon as the satellites start operating? Does anyone think we should compare highly adjustified satellite data to tide gauges if there are continuous tide gauge records over the same period? Its like a tree-ring spliced to a thermometer: Good PR, bad science.
The acceleration is so small it’s less than the errors. (Be afraid, it’s accelerating at 0.043 +/- 0.058 mm/yr2.) Normal scientists don’t get excited at this. They don’t issue press releases.
The Raw Satellite Data
Before adjustments:
Figure 5. Annual mean sea-level changes observed by TOPEX/POSEIDON in 2000, after technical “corrections” were applied (from Menard, 2000). A slow, long-term rising trend of 1.0 mm/year was identified, but this linear trend may have been largely an artefact of the naturally-occurring El Niño Southern Oscillation event in cycles 175-200.
After adjustments:
Figure 7. Sea-level changes after “calibration” in 2003. The satellite altimetry record from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellites, followed by the JASON satellites. As presented by Aviso (2003), the record suddenly has a new trend representing an inferred sea-level rise of 2.3 ±0.1 mm/year. This means that the original records presented in Figs. 5-6, which showed little or no sea-level rise, must have been tilted to show a rise of as much as 2.3 mm/year. We must now ask: what is the justification for this tilting of the record?
From the new Watson paper:
Watson et al 2015 | Figure 3 | Adjusted and unadjusted satellite altimeter GMSL time series (each arbitrarily oset and corrected for ocean-basin expansion). Adjusted series use GPS-based VLM estimates (where unavailable for a specific TG, GIACElastic VLM is substituted). GMSL (annual and semi-annual periodic terms removed) is shown as cycle-by-cycle estimates (thin grey line) and after filtering (60-day low-pass Butterworth filter, thick line). Linear and
linear-plus-quadratic fits are shown as continuous and dashed lines, respectively. The inset shows quadratic components (arbitrarily oset and symmetric about midpoint) highlighting that the adjusted acceleration is invariant to VLM treatment. Equivalent series derived from the CU data set are shown for comparison (thick dashed lines).
Reader Robbo wrote in to say he so was astonished at the ABC story, he read the paper, only to find a very different picture and problems he would fail a first year student for:
Then I carefully read the original paper, and they are completely different from the press release and the ABC version. The paper claims that the rise rate in the last 20 years is actually less than previously thought (that is not mentioned or is at best, carefully massaged by the authors’ press release and ABC piece). But it is true that the title and punchline of the Nature paper is about acceleration: sea level rise is accelerating, they say. And how much is it accelerating? Wait for it: it’s accelerating at 0.043 +/- 0.058 mm/yr2. That’s consistent with zero! I would fail a first year student claiming that 0.043 +/- 0.058 is a Nature-level result.
Finally, how do they get that acceleration result? They fit a second-order polynomial to the data (Fig 3) and take the coefficient of the t^2 term. Again, basic undergrad science, if the linear fit to the data is statistically acceptable, you take the linear fit (the lowest order polynomial that is statistically acceptable). You can always fit the same data with higher and higher order polynomials and get terms in t^2, t^3, t^4,….and of course when you extrapolate those terms to the future your fit goes wild but that is complete rubbish. In their case, all they should have said was that the linear fit is statistically equivalent to the quadratic fit (because a = consistent with 0), therefore we detect no acceleration, end of the paper.
But the ABC distills this uncertainty and the answer to hold back the seas is always the same:
“If we have major mitigation, then we can limit that rise to be somewhere between 30 and 60 centimetres during the 21st century,” [John Church] said.
He said that would require an urgent and significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a big shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The ABC would never let a mining analyst give his opinion on sea levels, but when a sea level expert tells us to use windmills to change the climate, and transform our nation energy system, that’s all OK. (Sell the ABC.)
h/t David, Robbo, Geoff, Willie, Tom, Bill, Lance, & John
UPDATE: Ruairi
Small changes in sea-level rise,
Should not come as any surprise,
But a reading adjusted,
Can’t really be trusted,
As it’s not what the reading implies.
REFERENCES
- Christopher S. Watson, Neil J. White, John A. Church, Matt A. King, Reed J. Burgette & Benoit Legresy (2015) Unabated global mean sea-level rise over the satellite altimeter era, Nature Climate Change | Letter, doi:10.1038/nclimate2635
- Michael Beenstock, Daniel Felsenstein,*Eyal Frank & Yaniv Reingewertz, (2014) Tide gauge location and the measurement of global sea level rise, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, May 2014
- Cazenave, A., Dieng, H., Meyssignac, B., von Schuckmann, K., Decharme. B., & Etienne Berthier (2014) The rate of sea-level rise, Nature Climate Change | Letter [Abstract] doi:10.1038/nclimate2159
- P. J. Watson (2011) Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia?. Journal of Coastal Research: Volume 27, Issue 2: pp. 368 – 377. doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1 [ PDF ]
The conclusion of the paper is that instead of the sea levels rising at 3.2mm/yr as per the official satellite data, the are rising at 2.3mm/yr + 0.043mm/yr2 of acceleration. Over a century that means the projected sea level rise is revised downwards from 320mm to 251mm. That means sea level rise on current trends has dropped off the bottom end of any UNIPCC projection for sea level rise (AR5 WG1 SPM) for the period 2081-2100, as against 1985-2005. The likely range is between 260 and 820mm under all scenarios. The projection (mid-point 400mm) range is based on succeeding in cutting global emissions to near zero before 2100.
330
Perhaps they’ll synthesize a jerk (mm/yr3) to pull the acceleration up a bit to meet IPCC expectations. Clearly a futile exercise.
62
They do no need to “synthesize a jerk“. Massive global warming, followed by massive sea level rise is a priori true. The lack of acceleration at the present time means that later the acceleration will be all the greater.
46
Methinks should have put a sarc alert. 🙂
I had in mind those, such as Stephan Lewandowsky, who think that the lack of evidence of catastrophic global warming is evidence that the future uncertain; or of those such as Kevin Trenberth who think that a lack of warming must be due to a lack of data. Whereas proper scientists would conclude a lack of evidence shows that their hypotheses were wrong, the supporters of climatology conclude that reality will catch up with their beliefs much quicker than they anticipated.
Maybe someone will “synthesize a jerk” and get a lead article in Nature for doing so. But the structure of that article is already there.
50
I look at these graphs, and all I can think of is Hockey Stick v2.0
52
I have long held to the simple truth that it is difficult to measure the water level in a bath to an accuracy of 1mm, especially if there is someone in it. Quite how anyone can so confidently measure sea-levels to 1mm suggests to me that they are not being totally honest; even measurements to within an inch should be treated with suspicion.
40
Talking of adjustments, and a bit off topic, but tonight I looked at my downloaded Central England Temperature record (CET) because according to a news item on the radio we have (of course) experienced the hottest April on record (we haven’t – at least in the UK).
I last downloaded the CET in December 2013, and today I downloaded it again.
There are differences which I find odd.
In the latest download, there can be seen a general rehashing of most temperatures since 1659, slightly upwards by hundredths of a degree.
For example, for 2003 the original average temperature for 12 months was 10.50 (this is on my 2013 download).
So that you can check this for yourselves, the individual months, January to December, were 4.5, 3.9, 7.5, 9.6, 12.1, 16.1, 17.6, 18.3, 14.3, 9.2, 8.1, and 4.8.
Using my pocket calculator, that averages as exactly 10.50 (the Met Office gives the answer to two decimal places in the CET).
All well and good – BUT – in the 2015 version of the CET, the average temperature has risen to 10.54, clearly incorrect since the temperatures for each month remain unchanged.
I haven’t looked further, but I have a general impression that the monthly temperatures remain the same, but the averages are wrong!
In summary, here we have a revision of the CET, with incorrectly calculated averages.
Has anyone else noticed this, and has anyone got an expalnation?
441
It occurs to me that a nice bit of fiddling by the unscrupulous is possible with the latest version of the CET (all units in Celsius).
For example, the 1994 average temperature was 10.24 in the 2013 version of the CET.
Now in 2015 it’s 10.29.
If one were to round off these figures to the nearest decimal place, in 1994 the temperature would be 10.2 (2013 CET), but in the 2015 version the 1994 temperature becomes 10.3. Bingo! A tenth of a degree increase in temperature.
Ditto the 1994 figures: the 2013 version gives a 10.52 average (rounded off to 10.5), but now it’s 10.55 (which rounds up to 10.6).
Please excuse my cynicism – how could I think such thoughts?
371
Carbon500,
Excellent observation. The warmists won’t approve though. Too many facts just clutter up their one-track minds.
Could it be because we’ve already seen that a change in instrumentation from glass thermometers to electronic thermisters has ‘affected’ the temperature readings world-wide? (upwards, of course)
Always think outside the box. Otherwise the box becomes a prison. 😉
Abe
221
Old Soviet joke …
Russian proverb
A good joke is 5% joke and 95% true.
391
Keep your copies safe. You never know when the data will disappear in some ‘computer glitch’ as so much other data already has.
Given all the rain we weren’t supposed to get, (h/t bemused), Store In A Cool, Dry Place.
Abe
161
Just-A-Guy: Thanks for your comments and those of ‘Truthseeker’.
‘Disappearing’ data is why I’ve kept paper copies of the CET, and I was clearly right to do so.
I’m slightly surprised that someone’s seen fit to give my first comment a ‘thumbs down’ – but of course, no reason has been given. Nothing new there, then!
For the benefit of that person, the figures I’ve quoted are exactly as on the CET. Anyone can get hold of a current copy from the Met Office (have you got yours?)and check what I’ve said. Man-made global warming or not, the averages have changed on this data set, and in the few examples I’ve looked at so far, the arithmetic is wrong. It’s as simple as that.
In this computer age, one has to ask how this can be? There may be a simple explanation, but this is supposed to be an official record going back to 1659 – and the average values have altered right back to 1659 (with one or two exceptions), although the figures for individual months are unchanged.
161
If the tide mark at Port Arthur, Tasmania is used as the datum there has been hardly any sea level rise since 1841.
174 years should give measurable results at even 1mm/yr.
Dr John Hunter would likely wish to explain the problem
301
We have the tidemark at Port Arthur as a reference, but I spent my schoolboy years on the NW coast of Tas. and took an interest in tides because Dad had a fishing boat moored in the river. I was back there sometime ago after a 40 year absence and frankly cannot see much difference, the high and low tides are about the same as they were; a little coastal erosion had occurred which is normal.
162
Both the CSIRO and ABC cite the Port Arthur mark as being struck at high tide, whereas Ross specifically called for it to be struck and the mean tide level.
Hey presto! An inbuilt, massive increase since 1841.
162
It is complete nonsense to claim that the Port Arthur mark was struck at the high tide level. High tide levels are far too variable. The mean tide level is much easier and even that takes some years of observations to establish.
None the less, that seems to be what Dr John Hunter thinks. He featured on an ABC program, Catalyst a few years ago. He claimed that on his analysis the sea level at Port Arthur had risen by 17cm since 1841, which fits a 1mm/year sea level rise perfectly. So even he should dismiss the current claims of 2-4mm/year sea level rise.
He also said that 17mm sea level rise would increase the number of coastal flooding events by nine times. As far a I can see that has not happened.
151
You mean those Maldive tree destroyers haven’t got around to destroying this sea level marker. Ssshhh!
71
There are billions of dollars of money out there aimed at finding “global warming”, “Catastrophic Climate Change” or whatever other alarmist term du jour they want to use. The problem is that with so many looking, the areas where they can paint something as being actual factual is diminishing rapidly. Or, to put it another way, even the number of things they can make up out of nothing is running low. When Chicken Little has done cried “The Sky is Falling!” for the ten thousandth time to no effect, people start getting a clue about what is really going on. There is also the old saying about going to the well too often …
262
I am not sure how to say this because I am dismayed at the speed with which laws and regulations are growing to take freedom and money from the taxpayers.
But when data and information and truth are deliberately destroyed, changed, corrupted, and worth much less to those that paid for them, I think it is a crime equal to counterfeiting our money.
I do believe it is time for an enforceable law that severely (prisons and huge fines)punishes those who degrade and destroy public data, information, and truth. This law should be used to find, arrest, and convict and to punish those who do these things with the same zeal we have for currency counterfeiters. And, this should include destruction/degradation/changing of government owned/taxpayer purchased documents & data, both printed and in electronic form.
411
And are IPCC personnel subject to any law? Or have been granted immunity under some UN article?
Cheers,
Dave B
90
David-of-Cooyal in Oz,
A couple or three months back pat posted an article where the UN were actually requesting immunity from criminal prosecution in any court. Should’ve bookmarked it. But . . .
if you do this search in google, you’ll get a slew of articles from 2012, and others, on this topic.
the UN has requested immunity from criminal prosecution
Just copy and paste the entire line into the search box. Enjoy. 🙂
Abe
80
Thanks Abe,
I’ll have alook, and hope they failed…
Cheers,
Dave B
50
Thanks again Abe.
I found the item you gave me, and 5 Google pages on found;
“IPCC Scientists Plead for Immunity from Criminal Prosecution”,
posted about 12months later. Within the article the word “demand” was used as a synonym for “plead”, which I thpught was a bit rich.
And the one you pointed me to used that fr… word that Jo doesn’t like. I was tempted to test her patience.
Cheers,
Dave B
110
One sector of the Pharma industry have similar legal protection …
90
Immunity from criminal prosecution?
Why would anyone ask for or demand that????
Oh that is a rhetorical question.
60
Found an archive story from WUWT 12/06/2012 U.N. Climate Organization Wants Immunities Against Charges of Conflict of Interest, Exceeding Mandate, Among Others.
Don’t know why you’d even consider such actions if you’re 97% certain of the outcome, oh well better to err on the side of citation….
40
Here is some text of the article mentioned by Just-A-Guy. This is a few years old but simply stunning in its implications…
https://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/un-climate-scientists-plead-for-immunity-from-criminal-prosecution/
N Climate Scientists Plead for Immunity from Criminal Prosecution
Climate researchers working for the United Nations have issued an astonishing plea for immunity from prosecution. Government-funded personnel sought the ruling on the eve of the latest round of international climate talks scheduled for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (June 20, 2012).
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) issued it’s formal request for immunity from prosecution to “protect” researchers who have provided “evidence” supportive of the man-made global warming scare story. The perplexing plea will likely reverberate throughout the general scientific community as further affirmation that many climate scientists were not conducting honest research after all. John Bolton, a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, questioned the motives, “The creeping expansion of claims for privileges and immunities protection for UN activities is symptomatic of a larger problem.”
SEE THE LINK FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE
40
Jo
Don’t be so ridiculous, the raw data always has to be adjusted, otherwise how can these poor, government funded, bureaucrats possibly justify their comfortable, well paid positions.
The raw data sucks, you should know that, so it has to be tortured/manipulated/homogenised to produce the desired result.
I want to assure you that satellites travelling in an elliptical, high orbit at a few tens of thousands of kilometres per hour in a decaying orbit (which constantly needs to be adjusted by retro rockets etc) can accurately measure sea level changes to one hundredth of a millimetre per day – trust me, it is true!!!
PS I also believe in the tooth fairy.
281
The usual justification for adding higher order terms to a linear regression is that the residuals of the linear equation show a distinctive pattern. That pattern is typically one where the residuals are of opposite sign on either side of the mean of independent variable. There are no metrics for the pattern. Experienced researchers know it when they see it. The validity of the equation with the added term(s) can be assessed with an F-test.
30
Jo was this paper done using the same satellite data that NASA acknowledges are not reliable.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/30/finally-jpl-intends-to-get-a-grasp-on-accurate-sea-level-and-ice-measurements/
Perhaps this need to go public.
81
TedM
And also Paul Homewoods assessment of Bruce Douglas study at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/16/is-sea-level-rise-accelerating/, where he says —
He then goes on to ask how accurate are these satellite measurements, or studies using only a small number of tidal gauges.
50
Small changes in sea-level rise,
Should not come as any surprise,
But a reading adjusted,
Can’t really be trusted,
As it’s not what the reading implies.
271
With trepidation in the presence of a master I offer the following humble effort
There was a scientist of climate
Who was thought a superior primate
But he fiddled his curve
Til it resembled a swerve
And was proved to be of science illiterate
80
A commendable effort Lightning Camel; keep practising! 😉
20
Brilliant yet again Ruairi 🙂
10
My avatar’s done a ‘funny’ again?!
10
Yep! And it’ll never rain again. I have no idea what that stuff that’s been coming down all night is, it could be hydrogenated dryness.
130
Methinks it’s that dreaded di-hydrogen oxide. Very dangerous, you can drown in the stuff.
40
I heard that some kids had ODed on the stuff. Not nice.
10
My first post here…. This article explains one source of inaccuracy in some US weather station data.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/archaic-weather-network-run-with-volunteers/
Carbon500 – I recall reading about new methods NOAA in the US is using to round monthly temperature data and it does result in a warming bias. I have just spent half an hour searching for a reference but could not find it.
51
David Maddison,
Could this be the article you’re referring to?
Mid-range, Average, and Hourly Estimates of Heating Degree Days: Implications for Weather Normalization of Energy Demand.
Abe
50
Thanks Abe. That’s not the specific reference that I had in mind but it does say basically the same thing. Thanks.
20
One day when BOM etc discover their folly, we’re likely to hear that excess CO2 has caused an unnatural stabilisation of climate, which is a bad thing, and that we need to reduce use of fossil fuels to return climate to its natural fluctuations.
231
None of the scientists involved with this “research” are fools, and therefore they know that the “forecasts” are based on adjusted data, and that the adjustments are carefully planned and also concealed wherever possible. Similarly, the ABC journalists know that the adjustments to the raw sea level rise data are larger than the resultant trend.
Both groups are employed under the Public Service Act (Cwlth 1999) where it states under the Code of Conduct at 13 (1) that “…all employees must behave honestly….” and at 13 (9) “….An APS employee must not provide false or misleading information……”. This binds APS employees, Agency Heads (14 (1)) and all statutory office holders (14(2)).
That should be enough to catch them.
221
Wouldn’t it be an interesting exercise to challenge climate change in a court of law.
I wonder if there is enough demonstrable harm with any particular group to start a class action.
I have benefit substantially from the scam so I am not one to complain. I simply get annoyed how the science of thermodynamics has been trashed.
102
Well, all Australian consumers of electricity are affected monetarily by this [snip]. That is a huge base upon which to start a class action.
10
The scares have become utterly disconnected. It was all clear once, a narrative. Man made CO2 as a greenhouse gas was producing rapid, runaway warming and we were heading to a tipping point where the warming would feed on itself and explode. Sea levels were rising 100 metres this century, countries were drowning, hurricanes were multiplying and more frequent and hotter bushfires were caused by Climate Change. Species were vanishing the Great Barrier Reef was doomed.
Now we only have natural variation to explain the failure of every single prediction. Record Antarctic sea ice is somehow explained by the non existent warming and they even throw in ozone levels. Sseas are rising slightly at best and the Polar bears hardly rate a mention but we should be very scared and push the RET higher and hand over taxation to the UN.
You get the impression that the scare is everything and the facts are now irrelevant and no one now says “The Science is in” because no one believes it. The Lomberg ban is no longer about “The Science” but about the scare. Warmists demand CO2 abatement and the end of fossil fuels now for no particular reason. The oceans are alkali.
Now the BOM is very relieved to announce the start of an unpredicted and unpredictable El Nino, obviously because it can mean the start of another job saving drought. Thanks God. The Greens have stopped governments from building any dams to capture all that rain, so we can enjoy the drought.
We seem to be heading into an era where data is being blatantly adjusted to satisfy the desperate demands of climate alarmists whose jobs depend on the scare. Forget multivariate least squares fits of complex polynomials and homogenization of raw data. Apart from CO2 itself, within the error bars, a horizontal straight line is as good a fit to most of these things. So absolutely nothing is happening folks. Sad for some and clearly we need three cheers for El Nino.
312
Indeed, the BOM seems to be depending on an El Nino, and a bad one at that.
The latest image going around is of a bushfire hazard warning style indicator with La Nina on the left (nice) and progressing through changes to El Nino (nasty) on the right. Yet another effort to provoke a fear response in the general population. A very tawdry piece of propaganda.
El Ninos have been happening since “forever”, let’s get past the rhetoric and fear-mongering and instead of wasting money on “green” “mitigation” of so-called global warming and climate change/variation/whatever and spend it on relieving the effects of drought and even flood mitigation for the inevitable return of flooding rains that will follow any drought. This is Australia after all, that’s how our climate works.
Just so sick and tired of the deception being practiced upon ordinary people. Frankly I feel it is criminal, even if that makes me sound like those who would like to jail “climate change deniers”.
181
Yes, El Nino, La Nina and now ‘Natural Variability’ are now the only major long term weather phenomena, at least in the Pacific, half the planet. These are events which are only classifiable by their symptoms as the causes are not understood.
So how can climatologists and their failed computer models claim to understand what drives the weather, the arctic ice caps, the storms when they cannot even explain the biggest known phenomena known, apart from the monsoons, summer and winter. Or is everything due to man made CO2? Because it is. So there. Taxes will fix the weather. 220,000 windmills to produce less than 1% of the electricity required. Clearly we need 22 million windmills.
As an anthropologist, the UN’s Ms Figueres knows nothing about the weather or science but proudly claims she will introduce a new world order on the communist China model. So this Climate Change department has become a sort of Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with any pretence of science gone.
You can tell when someone is in an unqualified, make believe, overpaid, meaningless job from the length of the title.
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ESUNFCCC
Utterly useless. Close the many fake UN departments for luxury world travel for retired politicians and their friends and family.
71
Around 1970 I read an article in the then very respected Scientific American.
It was an analysis by a fisheries expert into the collapse of the Peruvian Anchovies fishery, the biggest fishery in the world.
There was much calculation of tonnages caught, breeding stock remaining and etc involved in the article which clearly spelt out that the Anchovies fishery had collapsed due to gross over fishing.
But the Anchovy collapse article had a couple of very intriguing comments right at the finish which is why I remember it quite well and it was to the credit of the researcher that he included those remarks from the old native Peruvian fishermen.
The comment from the old Peruvian fishermen was along the lines of, the anchovies will be back next year because this sometimes happens, the anchovies disappear before Christmas so we call it an “El Nino”, meaning “boy child” in reference to the Christ child of Christmas.
Now the Peruvian anchovy fisheries did in fact come close to collapse some years ago but is now very closely controlled so this article in Judith Curry’s Climate etc was of very considerable interest as it should be for everybody in eastern Australia, most particularly to the BOM before they step in another load of El Nino predicting bull origin excreta.
__________________
ENSO and the anchovy
[quoted ]
The first to know of any developments in the dark deep ocean currents way off the Peruvian coast, signifying portentous shifts in the upwelling stemming from the Humboldt current from Antarctica, is Engraulis the anchovy. Long before any clanking fish-imitating Argo floats, before any TAU or TRITON moored bathyscaphes, or satellite imagery, still longer before any armchair climate punditry, the anchovies respond in real time to upwelling changes with variations in the first-feeding survival and size of their juvenile year classes and their spatial distributions. Thus it was inevitably the Peruvian fishermen, heirs of the ocean abundance provided by E. ringens, who were discoverers of what they called El Niño (“the boy” in Spanish), the periodic anomalous warming of the eastern Pacific surface waters. This event is accompanied by a crash in the anchoveta numbers and catches, and typically occurs in December-January, the time of the celebration by the Christian Church of Christmas, the incarnation of the Christ-child.
&
But El Niño has stubbornly resisted all entreaties to manifest itself like in the good old days of 1998 and even 2010. Now, again, the Nina3.4 index is rising into what on paper is El Niño territory so that those who feel the need, can proclaim that El Niño is here. But something is missing.
The problem is that the anchovy, the ENSO fish, does not seem to agree that El Niño is here. The latest on the Peruvian anchovy fishery can be found in the following article from the website “Undercurrent News” which gives up to the minute news on fisheries and fish markets around the world
[ more ]
_________________
I for one will back the judgement of the anchovies who have to find their own meals when it comes to predicting the onset of an El Nino, unlike the BOM prediction’s section whose meals come courtesy of the tax payer trough.
Just too add; I personally believe that some still unknown deep waters oceanic triggering events in the deep very cold waters of Antarctic Circumpolar Current change the flows of these waters around the narrow Drake passage between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula which normally diverts some of those cold waters northward along the western coast of the continent in the immense Humbolt current.
The Humbolt current being cold water is full of nutrients which are ideal for the breeding of the diatoms and ocean algae which make up the anchovies diet .
Some disturbance in this Humbolt current diversion or flow rates possibly occurring a year or more in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current before it manifests itself as the El Nino deflects it away and diminishes it’s flow rate so that when it is far north near Peru and as it turns westward to become the South Equatorial current it possibly acts as the initiator for an El Nino event.
131
‘We seem to be heading into an era where data is being blatantly adjusted to satisfy the desperate demands of climate alarmists whose jobs depend on the scare.’
Sadly true and aunty is happy to support their lies.
‘Researchers said the icy barrier being formed around the continent was due to windier conditions.
‘Scientist Tony Worby said those conditions, and consequent ice formations, were a side-effect of climate change.
“We do know that the strengthening winds around Antarctica are being driven by decreases in ozone and increases in greenhouse gasses,” he said.
“Both of those are a result of human activity.”
ABC
100
The use of press releases which grossly misrepresent actual findings has become common practice in environmental research. This is fraud and it is being used to scam millions of dollars in government funding. It is past time for this kind of abuse to be recognised for what it is, be properly investigated and the law applied. It is also past time for news journalists to start critically examining actual studies instead of just regurgitating press releases.
180
Of course this is just another propaganda puff piece, an LPU dressed up with some botox and a bit of lippy to trail its coat down the street to get the blood rushing in the lead up to Paris. Same as the El Nino drivel where suddenly the models stand up and shout WOLF, WOLF. Before that it was the antractic sea ice was over more area but thinner (according to the ‘latest’ ‘research’ etc) but now it seeems all the missing heat is hiding under the thinner or is that thicker ice and frustrating the researchers… ( maybe thats just the bait for the forthcoming excuse yeah it was all a horrible stuff up and the bloody ice stuffed up our research and, like, ‘distorted’ the data…
71
The rate of change is 0.043 +/- 0.058 mm/yr2 — what?
(imagine this as a vehicle speed trap of 43 mph +/- 58 mph!)
This measurement has so little merit as the precision and the error are close to the same order. For a good measure you need a error that’s about 1/10 of your instrument precision, preferably better.
For tidal measurement you are more concerned about the precision (exactly how repeatable) the measurement system is than its ultimate accuracy, as you are looking for a comparative measurement.
With errors this close to the measurement nothing meaningful can be resolved. No amount of adjustment, averaging, filtering, or homogenizing will help. It is a worthless figure!
Also what is the figures for ultimate accuracy of the measuring system, and exactly what is its repeatability over time? (er, check with the tide gauge in Hong Kong?)
Just in case you missed it above, read Nils-Axel Morner said in his interview about tide measurements and the authorized inaccuracy that is now inbuilt (by order of the IPCC).
91
You could be given a speeding ticket for parking or reversing in range of the detector.
80
Grant (NZ)
Yes, but only after your vehicle’s position has been statistically analyzed.
Ho-ho-ho, ha-ha! 🙂
30
That figure is not an instrumental one. It’s a statistical report of the rate of change ie Whether or not the rate of sea level rise is increasing. Although the central estimate is positive, the error bars are large enough such that there is insufficient evidence, based on this method, to declare that the rate of sea level rise has increased over the past 20 years.
180
Well done Tristan!
50
Well done Tristan?!?!?!?!?!
Times they are a change-ing!!!!
10
Well he seems to have said something which is logically correct (for once).
21
And on that cue … come on Tristan, wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone if your time to you is worth saving. Then you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a … sorry, apologies to Bob and yourself.
30
The authors themselves point it out: “the observed increase in the rate of rise over the short satellite record is not yet statistically significant.”
The headlines I’ve seen are your usual inaccurate examples of science reporting. Much like the headline of this blog post. The adjustments in the paper that prompted the post actually decrease the trend. Not really a good example of scandalously adjusting the situation to make it look worse.
The actual story: Based on this analysis, which proposes to correct certain calibration issues, SLR is 10-20% smaller during the past 20 years than previously estimated, and instead of a non-significant deceleration being present in the data, the central estimate is a non-significant acceleration.
411
Tristan — nice try, but that’s the fine detail that never gets a mention in the press. The adjustments decreased the trend, but created the headline “acceleration”. How many adjustments generate headlines that lower the panic? Go on, name them.
The scandal is that scientists with a trend so weak are not trying to correct the public perception. Apparently, the authors are happy with bad science reporting.
202
Have you talked to many scientists (in any field) about misrepresentation of their work in the press, and whether and how they’ve tried to redress the mistakes?
The state of science representation in the media is woeful. Climate Science is just about the most poorly represented of all, thanks to the politicised nature of it.
Depending on the news outlet, they’ll be inclined to take a relatively modest study and say either:
Climate Change is even worse than we thought!
or
Climate Change not as bad as predicted!
In reality, most papers iterate slightly on previous work, and you don’t know for quite a while after publication whether that iteration will be validated by further research. It’s very rare that a paper lives up to the headline.
Your own headline suggests that both the trend AND the acceleration are rising thanks to scandalous adjustments made by scientists, when in fact the adjustments lowered the trend and the acceleration remained insignificant. Lament the media hoopla if you will, but there’s no scientific scandal.
Hell, if I had to put this paper into a ‘worse than’ or ‘not as bad as’ we thought box, I’d put it in the latter.
47
Amazing the media
I’m an average DAVE
Yet all day I read & watch the media continually spreading the WORD
Yesterday:
“Sea level rising faster in past 20 years than in entire 20th century, study finds”
Now the land is rising where sea level is constant
eg The Isle of the Dead
Yet this mark is still visable on majority of high tides?
Average people call BS when they get told Tasmania is rising above sea level rate
Yet the bombardment is continual
Do you think the Australian public is sick of it?
YES
YES
YES
They show pictures like this on the ABC
Bayside picnic area, Assateague, Maryland falls into rising ocean?
It’s not even in Australia, show some local examples that prove we’re being drowned by the MM every year.
Yet, dare to ask anyone on CAGW, they rip it you for being a DENIIEER
More & more people have just switched off totally
Just call it BS for what it is
121
Yes, that’s correct Tristan. The scientific result of the paper is “instead of a non-significant deceleration being present in the data, the central estimate is a non-significant acceleration.”
Hardly worth of a press release, but being honest scientists, that’s exactly what Watson & Church told the ABC, the Guardian and The Conversation.
Oh no, wait…
This is how the result war reported for example in the Guardian:
…it accelerated by between 0.041 and 0.058 mm/year^2 [SIC!]. This brings the records into line with the modelling of the UN’s climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“We see acceleration, and what I find striking about that is the fact that it’s consistent with the projections of sea level rise published by the IPCC,” said Watson. “Sea level rise is getting faster. We know it’s been getting faster over the last two decades than its been over the 20th century and its getting faster again.”
…and similar statements in the other mainstream media (“accelerating faster!”) with pictures of flooded towns and streets.
Those are quotations by Watson. He cannot even blame the journalist.
If you cannot see the dishonesty there, there’s no point explaining it any further.
92
So, it’s a reasonable assumption (because physics) that SLR is accelerating. Hence the ‘we know’ comments.
His quotation is ‘We see acceleration’, which is literally true, but I would have added ‘although at this point it is possible though unlikely to be a quirk of the data – we need another 5 or so years to be confident of that’.
23
I have yet to see… and I would love someone to link me to it please…
Where is the verification that the instruments being used, both satellite and terrestrial are accurate to fractions of a mm?
All the information I have been able to find about the satellites right up to a few years ago says they are accurate to cm not .x mm.
So how is any of the information claiming accuracy to .x mm possibly credible?
130
Such a verification isn’t necessary, thanks to the law of large numbers. As the sample size increases the average of any normally distributed errors decreases, which allows for tightly constrained means without precise instrumentation.
216
Tristan,
The law of large numbers doesn’t apply to this situation. Extra credit if you can figure out for yourself why. Happy to explain if you’d like.
Abe
131
The law of large numbers applies in any situation in which the errors are normally distributed (aka random). Measurement error stemming from imprecision/rounding falls under this category.
313
Tristan,
Please read that wiki article again to see where you’ve made your mistake.
Last chance. 😉
Abe
111
I’m confident in my explanations. Feel free to give your commentary.
113
Tristan,
The use of the Law Of Large Numbers is constrained by the following caveat:
Comprehension of the expected value is the first crucial point.
In simple terms, each value to be averaged, in our case a sea-level measurement, must be a discrete value. This means that the value must be a precise number, not an estimated number as we see from going to the link for discrete random variable in the above wiki quote.
Each time a reading is taken, there is a margin of error that derives from the accuracy of the measuring instrument. This is not a discrete value.
Just to clarify even further, a die has six sides. Each time the die is thrown, one, and only one of those sides will face upwards. There is no value in between. For every measurement taken for sea-level, the value observed is, by it’s very nature, an estimate and therefore not discrete.
And to compound the dificulty, there will always be a value in between any two measurements. The only way this could ever be applied to sea-level would be to measure every water molecule on the sea’s surface to the accuracy of a planck-length. A physical impossibility due to instrumentation but especially due to the uncertainty principle.
There just is no way to get a discrete value in the measurement of sea-level. The laws of physics don’t allow for it.
Without discrete values, the Law of Large Numbers does not apply. It’s use for this purpose is more than just a joke.
Grasping at straws where no straws are present.
Abe
40
You go from:
“the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value”
then somehow skip the first line on the wiki which says:
“In probability theory, the expected value of a random variable is intuitively the long-run average value of repetitions of the experiment it represents. ”
to
“the expected value of a discrete random variable is”
and then pretend that EVs can only be applied to discrete random variables and not random variables generally.
03
Tristan,
I see that rational discussion with you is verbotten.
You accuse me of skipping the first line (which is totally unnecessary to the point I made because the line I did quoted is there to more clearly define what was said in the first) but then you leave out the key words in the second line.
[More practically,]“the expected value of a discrete random variable is”
More practically comes to delimit and constrain what was stated in the first line and is therefore completely unnecessary.
Don’t accuse me of cherry picking when I didn’t, and then go ahead and cherry-pick yourself there-by blatantly destorting the meaning of the statement I quoted.
Yout hen build on that false accusation to accuse me of pretending that what is quoted from the article comes from my imagination. i.e. that I’m making things up.
There is no pretending here. The article defines what a discrete random variable is. This definition is accurate and sourced. Without this specific type of variable, the one defined in the article, there is no valid reason to use he Law of Large Numbers.
Read ’em and weep.
Or learn to read.
Abe
30
The paragraph in full:
“More practically, the expected value of a discrete random variable is the probability-weighted average of all possible values. In other words, each possible value the random variable can assume is multiplied by its probability of occurring, and the resulting products are summed to produce the expected value. The same works for continuous random variables, except the sum is replaced by an integral and the probabilities by probability densities. The formal definition subsumes both of these and also works for distributions which are neither discrete nor continuous: the expected value of a random variable is the integral of the random variable with respect to its probability measure.”
The page continues to discuss computing EV for both discrete and continuous random variables.
13
Tristan,
I’m sure you’ve heard of The Queen’s Gambit. Although it wasn’t my original intent to play it quite this way, your reply fits in perfectly.
Yes. I’m aware of the fact that the law of large numbers can be applied to non-discrete random variables. I don’t have access to the Nature article to verify if indeed they’ve used the formula using an integral rather than the sum as stated in the wiki, and that’s why I left that part out.
My bad. Take the pawn.
As it turns out though your reply shows me, and every one else here, that you’re perfectly capable of discerning when a statement is ‘cherry picked’, when the logic is flawed, and how to express the error in clear language.
Why is this of any consequence, you might ask? Others?
It’s simple really.
In the Facebook thread, we were having a conversation in parallel to this one. (Just open each thread in seperate folders and review the timestamps)
In the Facebook thread, you were confronted with a contradiction in your argument. Yet, when asked to explain that contradiction, you avoided responding to the question, insulted the people you were conversing with, (by way of ridicule and inuendo), and ‘peppered’ your comments with slogans, (anti-vaxers, d—–s, etc).
All of those things that you claim that we should avoid doing on Weekend Unthreaded.
So. Now that I’ve shown once again, with your help and your words, how your argument is flawed (i.e. contractory), I’m gonna go ahead and allow myself to comment on you personally.
You s–k at debating. Your skills, which you obviously have, are used to deceive, divert, and distract. You d–y when your wrong, you ignore other peoples observations, and you twist their words to suit your ego.
And yet you’re not banned. Fancy that.
Abe
01
Tristan,
While we wait for your answer to the above post, I’ll just take the time to point out one other thing.
Tidal guages measure tides. More accurately, they measure the change in sea-level over the full range of the tidal cycle. But there’s also Vertical Land Movement to take into account. In the abstract and in figure 1 of that article, they state:
Note the repeated emphasis in the Watson, et. al. paper on the use of estimates.
Why are non-linear VLM guages removed? Why is it assumed, a priori, that VLM must be linear?
Estimation teqniques invariably remove outliers as part of the procedure. The removal of non-linear VLM also removes outliers by definition.
My question to you is why has has Watson, et. al. removed all the outliers by, among other means, the ‘cherry picking’ of tidal guages? Use some, not others?
Of course every one here already knows you won’t address this post directly, but then . . .
. . . you are Tristan.
Abe
21
I don’t know. Not my area.
Well, it was nice talking to you. Good day, sir. 🙂
02
Tristan,
Better late than never.
Huh? 😮
You’re the one who brought up the Law of Large Numbers. If you brought it up, you must know what it means and where it applies. You even fell into the trap and pointed out how the law can apply to continous as well as discrete random variables. Now you claim this is not your area?
Well. Allow me to show you your ‘fail’. Once again.
In simple terms, when the values of a measurement have too many ‘outliers’, (values far from the mean), the distribution of these measurements is said to be ‘non-normal’. A non-normal probability distribution is not amenable to application of The Law Of Large Numbers.
This is why these measurements are adjusted/homogenized/cherry-picked. By removing the outliers, the true probability distribution which is by nature non-normal, is forced into a normal probability distribution.
Weather data, (temperature, rain-fall, sea-level, cloud cover, etc. etc.) is non-normal by it’s very nature. The scientific method does not allow for the fiddling of data.
You’re avoidance of the facts is obvious.
That you think you can get away with it is embarassing.
That you’re not ashamed to continue on this path is disgraceful.
Abe
30
As pointed out below, the error (SE or SD or something fancier) decreases with sampling but, precision of the mean should never be more than the SD (significant digits this time) possible from the instrumentation. So fractions of a mm etc should not appear as a result of large numbers. Tristan – do you think this is incorrect?
72
Yep, I consider that incorrect. A low number of significant digits in the tool just gives you rounding error. If you’re making thousands (or millions) of obs, that rounding error is going to become very small.
28
We might be talking about two different things and this is where things become awkward when reviewing papers and such. If we make millions of measurements of two things that are actually 1.00011 and 1.00009 units using an instrument that can only read to 1.0001 we might be get a significant difference in the means. We can’t though use the mean to say that one is 1.00009 and the other 1.00011. We can give a mean +/- error for each and then state that they are significantly different but we will not be able to give a more precise answer than the instrument allows.
btw… where is your rounding error coming from?
50
We can give a mean +/- error for each and then state that they are significantly different (agreed)but we will not be able to give a more precise answer than the instrument allows (disagreed).
If the instrumentation only measures whole numbers, we are not bound to reporting means in whole numbers only.
Example of rounding error:
You have the ‘true’ value on the left and the observed value on the right, with a tool that can only measure whole numbers
34.15912 34
17.87521 18
27.13373 27
23.44506 23
16.09303 16
If you were to generate a million such numbers, take their mean, and also take the mean of the rounded numbers, they’d be very close. It’d be expressed something like 23.74+/-0.09, and that would be mathematically appropriate, despite the fact that it’s 2 significant figures more precise than the precision of the instrument. It’s reasonably easy to demonstrate this with a spreadsheet and an RNG generator, I encourage anyone with doubts to do so.
15
A different thing
50
Tristan.
Have you ever studied the Cauchy distribution?
10
Reading about it isn’t jogging any memories. I never did spectroscopy.
11
Thanks Gee Aye that’s been my contention all along.
Its just not possible to claim that margin of error.
30
.043 mm is about the thickness of a human hair.
Go stand on the sea shore and look at the waves and the tides and tell me that it’s not a joke.
The incredible resolution available electronically has kidded us that the last 6 digits are meaningful.
140
Well that settles it, this must be the Hairbinger of catastrophic sea level rise we were warned about, oh the humanity!
60
Why not give the whole statement by Cazenave, rather than just the bit that suits the narrative?
We find that when correcting for interannual variability, the past decade’s slowdown of the global mean sea level disappears
45
Yet another adjustment.
71
Yes, OK, fair point. I completely forgot I had posted on that Cazenave study. I’ve changed the text and added a bracket and a link to my post on it. Actually I wrote a good post then. Thanks:
Cazenave said in the last decade sea-levels had slowed 30% (but argued post hoc adjustments could solve that).
82
You really hate the notion of controlling for variables don’t you :p
19
Tristan I really appreciate your responses. Ive learned a bit already about how these results are achieved.
But what your responses mostly do (in my mind) is prove Jo’s original point that the vast majority of significant results in SL measurement seem to be generated in the office, not in ocean.
I cant get my head away from the notion that if the data requires that much correction for “variables” many of which such as silt levels from rivers that have annual variations themselves, the end results are all but meaningless. They are even more meaningless when they are reduced to the thickness of a human hair, then used to scare people with.
Its just bad science, promoted by incoherent messages with a fall back position of “trust us you need to be terrified about that extra half a millimetre of water”. Its no wonder scepticism seems to be increasing, even though I don’t credit most people with the ability to ask these questions let alone seek answers.
Again cheers for the debate.
101
Safetyguy, no worries.
I don’t concur with Jo regarding adjustments being the primary source of measured SLR though. The data are here and a discussion of the data is here. If you have technical questions, there are people there legitimately qualified to answer them (I’m not!).
I’d be careful about calling something bad science – it’s very easy to assume that other people don’t know what they’re doing, but in reality, if you engage with the people whose job it is to study this stuff, you’ll be impressed by their technical competency. It is really, really hard to say something they haven’t considered themselves. Most of the derision you see here and elsewhere is completely unfounded, and regularly such commentators have neither read, nor understood the papers in question, nor do they have a grasp of standard statistical practice – practice they don’t seem object to in any other field of study, I might add!
20
Which variables, of course must always support the idea that sea level is rising at an ever increasing and ever more alarming rate. Is that not an accurate statement?
And all this hand wringing is over a couple of silly millimeters that are lost in the noise of the tide going in and out, back and forth, day in and day out, forever. And worse, even if we stop all human caused CO2 emissions it won’t make a detectable difference.
Isn’t it about time to stop this quibbling about adjustments and admit two things?
1. Humans aren’t causing anything.
2. Sea level variation is a normal thing that happens over centuries or millennia and not even Tristan can change that fact.
40
Well, no. As the paper in question clearly demonstrates: They control for new variable (in this case, instrumental drift), and SLR revised downwards. As far as I can tell, this is a ‘good news’ paper, rather than a ‘sky is falling’ paper. But that doesn’t really fit the alarmism narrative.
11
You miss the essential point, Tristan. No matter what they control or adjust for, it makes no useful difference to anyone. Revise up or down it’s still a silly millimeter or two over a timespan of years and it’s not going to be noticed by anyone.
There are much more useful jobs to do. Let’s tackle real problems.
60
I guess in a sense you’re lucky that you probably won’t live to see how wrong you’ll be.
16
Instead of going back and forth this way, why don’t you tell us what convinces you that human activity has anything to do with sea level change, no matter how great or small it will be at any time in the future.?
30
Ok.
What can you tell me about past changes in sea level – what was responsible?
02
I’m not claiming anything about sea level change.
You make the claim that human activity is causing it, not me. So I ask you to support your claim and what do you do? You dodge the question.
I think you’ve been busted, Tristan.
Once again,
20
“Revise up or down it’s still a silly millimeter or two over a timespan of years and it’s not going to be noticed by anyone.”
That’s something I consider a claim.
In order to reconcile our different positions, I’m starting with a less controversial question: What influenced SLR before humans came along?
If you don’t want to engage this way, that’s totally fine.
02
OK then. Sea level rise and fall is a natural phenomenon caused by, among possibly other things, movement of the Earth’s crust. I’m sure you must be aware of that possibility. I’ll also admit that large changes in the amount of water contained in the form of surface ice, whether floating or on land, could cause a measurable rise or fall.
I will not buy into a theory that is based on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warming the planet. And my opinion will stay that way until someone, you for instance, since I asked you, can show actual empirical evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere can do what you claim it can.
You’ve been commenting a long time now and I have yet to see you present anything to back up the global warming claim that you so obviously believe. The time for quibbling is over. It’s time to state your case as I asked you to do.
20
And that silly millimeter or two still isn’t going to be noticed. In 100 years so much could change that dire predictions made today are a joke.
20
You’re right that plate tectonics can change sea levels, although it happens on geological time scales. It’s basically impossible to observe on decadal series.
You’re also right that loss or formation of continental ice can impact on sea levels. This can and has happened on much shorter timescales.
Sea ice won’t do it. If ice is floating, and you melt it, water level won’t change (technically, it can change a tiny amount, but it’s dwarfed by other sources of variability).
The important variable you missed is thermal expansion/contraction, particularly of the upper ocean layers.
On very short timescales of a couple years or less, rainfall patterns can also influence sea level, seen most recently in 2011, where the SLR graph shows a sort of pot-hole, where massive amounts of rain were dumped on Aus and South America, which took about a year or so to return to the ocean.
So between the combination of thermal impacts and continental ice impacts, when the earth system gets colder, sea level drops, and when it gets warmer, sea level rises.
Are we in agreement so far?
02
Roy Hogue
As I am sure you are fully aware large geological effects can happen over short time spans (e.g. volcano Parícutin in Mexico ), and at other times very over large areas e.g near continent-wide earthquakes, however the aggregated geological movement happens over much, much longer periods.
To say that geological effects today are not affecting sea-level is to argue from ignorance. I don’t know, you do not know, scientist simply do not know as the seabed is as close to mystery scientifically as make little odds. To say otherwise is simply BS.
In my humble opinion what is needed is less empty hypothesizing and more measured scientific investigating of the real physical evidence.
00
So it boils down to recycling the missing heat argument one more time then?
Unfortunately that missing heat can’t be found. Or to be more accurate — and fair to you — hasn’t been found yet but there’s some nonzero probability that it may someday be found hiding somewhere. But you need to find it before you can argue that it’s grounds for policy making.
Argo buoys and every other attempt have all failed so far. And given the failure to come up with empirical evidence, the missing heat is still just so much conjecture. And frankly it’s not worth discussing unless you’ve some new evidence we haven’t seen before.
We are in agreement about theory but not about the facts as you so obviously imply them. You’re right about surface ice, it would have to be on land. My mistake — shouldn’t try to comment when pressed for time.
So now what is your point? If the Earth is not in thermal equilibrium, radiating away as much heat as it receives then its temperature must either rise or fall depending on the sign of the imbalance. That’s basic college thermodynamics and one need not have degrees in physics or anything else in order to understand it. Everyone who contributes on Jo Nova understands that principle. And so far there is no evidence of the rise in temperature predicted by the proponents of climate change, AKA global warming. In fact, current evidence suggests but does not prove that Earth is getting colder.
There are many things to be investigated, Tristan. But many things are meaningless about the current climate change alarm. One of them is this idea that an average temperature means something because it clearly doesn’t. A temperature reading means something only at the location and time it was measured. You need some realistic way of integrating (as in calculus) temps at specific points over the whole globe and years of time before it can tell you anything. Some places will be hotter on some given day and others colder. Is the area under the curve increasing, decreasing or staying constant? You don’t have that.
Another meaningless idea is the missing heat… …unless you have found it.
Sea level change is not of much use either because at best it is just a symptom, not a cause. And there’s no evidence of the warming needed to make sea level change anything but natural variation. It may be interesting but not worthwhile in the context of climate change.
I could go on but I and others have said these things over and over already.
00
Tom,
Was your comment intended for me or Tristan? You addressed me but the content seems more appropriate for Tristan.
I intentionally left out any mention of ocean thermal expansion and contraction. That’s for Tristan to argue if he wants to.
00
One more point. I remember my geology courses. And I read what others post here on Jo Nova, including geologists. And from the geological evidence, what sea level was over the past seems to be a very much a local thing. That it changes is no surprise to anyone. That evidence suggests the change was sudden and large in some places is a little more surprising but not alarming.
Sea level is not a constant like pi or e. And like the weather, we must take it as we find it or suffer from our failure to cope.
00
Er, how?
00
Tristan, you said it, not me. That makes it your argument. Not mine.
It’s well known that sea surface temperature can change. But you have no link between these changes which have been going on since the beginning of oceans and CO2. You imply “missing heat” but you have none to show. And I dare you to come up with a link between CO2 and temperature.
00
It’s even worse than we thought press presents the Larsen C shelf may colapse*
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/27879460/breakup-fears-for-massive-antarctic-ice-shelf-study/
At The West.
* In the next century, or maybe not.
60
Isn’t sea level the wrong measure altogether?
Shouldn’t the measure be the total volume of water in the oceans? And if it is ml then it is really scary number when you report changes.
60
.
Grant [ NZ ] @ #20
Well actually you are a few years behind here as that is exactly the type of adjustment that is being carried out by the official Colorado University Sea Level Research Group.
[ If you want to find any seriously corrupted scientific data in these times turn first to the University climate related research groups and your will find your totally corrupted data along with the corrupting scientists without much further looking ]
The amount of adjustement is an added non existent 0.3 mms per year, every year to account for the supposed theoretical increase in the volume of the world’s oceans due to isostatic rebound of the global land surfaces and therefore an increase in ocean volumes from the removal of the weight due to the melting of the great ice sheets of the last major ice age which ended some 12,000 odd years ago.
So after a decade we have an extra non existent 3mms increase in global sea levels according to the Colorado University’s official sea level data.
After a hundred years we have an extra 30 mms of non existent and theoretical increase in global sea levels.
The theory being that sea level would be that much higher if the ocean basins weren’t expanding in volume.
Also justified by claiming they are measuring sea levels relative to the exact centre of the planet.
Nothing whatsoever to do with the real actual sea levels that all the world’s ocean littoral dwelling peoples deal with on an real time every day basis.
Yeh! I find it just as stupid and utterly imbecilic as I think you might also do.
But hey, thats “climate science” in all it’s “
scientific”glory”.But here is the CU Sea Level Groups own web site with the Isostatic rebound waffle and the scientific imbeciles who dream up these sorts of things to justify their own personal beliefs and ideology [ and long snouted deep troughing ] about mankind’s supposed devastation of the climate due to his burning fossil fuels and releasing all that CO2 aka “carbon ” for the ignorant. That same CO2 which was taken from the atmosphere by plants sometime before about 130 million years ago and got changed into that nasty black stuff called coal that today supplies close to 60% of the worlds electrical power which sustains and fuels our entire industrial civilisation.
And note below in the last couple of lines that it has everything to do with climate modelling.
Nothing like helping to keep your mates in business at the funding trough and the hell with the real, non academic world that other people such as tax payers have to live and work in.
CU Sea Level Group
What is glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), and why do you correct for it?
[quoted ]
In order to answer these questions, we have to account for the fact that the ocean is actually getting bigger due to GIA at the same time as the water volume is expanding. This means that if we measure a change in GMSL of 3 mm/yr, the volume change is actually closer to 3.3 mm/yr because of GIA. Removing known components of sea level change, such as GIA or the solid earth and ocean tides, reveals the remaining signals contained in the altimetry measurement. These can include water volume changes, steric effects, and the interannual variability caused by events such as the ENSO. We apply a correction for GIA because we want our sea level time series to reflect purely oceanographic phenomena. In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes. This is what is needed for comparisons to global climate models, for example, and other oceanographic datasets.
[/]
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I guess Colorado seems like a logical location for “the official Colorado University Sea Level Research Group”. It would be immune from the worst effects of Sea Level Rise.
I wonder how many people in Colorado have seen the sea.
10
Fair enough..
But why not look at the actual facts as well..accelerating at 0.043 +/- 0.058 mm/yr2.
You seriously think this is real science and we should keep spending billions..to “fight” this sort of “rise”.?????
And.we were promised the previous data was robust..
Beyond parody..as usual..
121
Drapetomania
Yes well, but…
Such real science isn’t necessary, thanks to the law of very large numbers. Just more $€billion£¥ have to be
wastedspent on the UN-IPCC promulgated CO2 = AGW assertion.The justification is as the statistical manipulation size increases the costs expand to meet the demand, whilst at the same time, using ever cheaper and less precise instrumentation requires even more statistical manipulation, etc, etc,…. It’s all perfectly logical — no really!
In fact if enough $€money£¥ (bitcoins?) is handed-over no expensive instruments are required at all!
🙂
51
Ho Hum!!!!!!!!!!!
This is all so predictable. Time to try & scare the #### out of everyone.
Big meeting in Paris this year and suddenly a spate of tall stories about ice in Antarctica melting again, the dreaded el nino {which has defied the warmists last two predictions. watch it we’ll tax you] is definitely here this year.
Any guesses as to what the next catastrophe will be. The waiting for it to suddenly all become a reality is killing me.
111
The next “catastrophe” might be a real one as solar output may currently be diminishing and we could be heading for an episode of global cooling. So time to start burning coal like crazy to generate life-giving CO2 to keep us warm.
91
If certain correlations keep happening, solar effects may be “worse than we thought™”
™ UN-IPCC
51
NASA: GPS Data Show How Nepal Quake Disturbed Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
40
The problem is, we have conclusive evidence CO2 does not produce Global Warming.
121
In fear and trepidation the Klimatariat and their running dogs roll out the old propaganda and polish it up.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/13/thinning-antarctic-ice-shelf-could-contribute-to-sea-level-rise-says-study
51
Looking at the “ice shelf” in the diagram in that article, it is floating on the surface of the sea, not based on terra firma. So, if it is floating it can break off and melt to its hearts content and it will make no difference to sea levels! I also note no mention of sea floor volcanic activity contributing to claimed sea temperature rises.
50
Exactly, what does a few decades of sea level change conclusions harvested from a cacaphony of noisey data mean out of changes that have been going on for hundreds of millions of years?
This is like picking fly droppings out of beach sand.
110
The ABC would never let a mining analyst give his opinion on sea levels, but when a sea level expert tells us to use windmills to change the climate, and transform our nation energy system, that’s all OK. (Sell the ABC.)
Don’t forget the pushbikes.
The pushbike’s ability to halt catastrophic doomsday sea-level rise can never be under-estimated.
100
Quadrant magasine has an exceptionally good article regarding the ABC. Completely out of control.
50
ABC is out of control, the attitude of many presenters is appalling, their failure to behave in accordance with the ABC Charter, that ABC management does nothing to bring them into line and the ABC Board does nothing too. The ABC Act requires governments not to interfere in ABC operations and this is no doubt what the employees rely on, and that their Labor appointed directors will not rock the boat, will ignore representations from the minister knowing that when their appointment time is up they will not be re-appointed.
And the government would get no support from the hostile Senate if they tried to change the Act.
50
Dennis
Don’t bet on nothing with the future of the ABC’
The new UK government is apparently toying with the idea of making the a refusal to pay the BBC’s license fee [ 145 pounds per year YIKES ! ] a non criminal offence.
So suddenly survival and all men and women an deck immediately for an all out lobbying effort is the BBC’s immediate concern as the size and depth of the trough could become just a shadow of what it currently is.
If the BBC is effectively privatised, those who want it can pay for it, then there will be some pretty deep ramifications in store for the closely allied ABC’s future as well which will get a lot of handclapping and barracking from the side lines for any Australian pollies willing to severely trim the ABC’s openly blatant leftist political and climate bigotry.
British Government Goes To War With Biased BBC
–
60
Yes, but out of whose control ?
The power of “meeja” propaganda keeps the ABC exactly where its’ journo staff want it to be. The slightest interference with “editorial control” will unleash such a din one will want efficient earmuffs for a decade
I’ve asked this question before – why does a majority of the populace believe what the meeja tell them ? This is such a persistent characteristic of human culture
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because most people simply cannot believe that they can be lied to so often and so convincingly
40
Are you claiming that climate change comes in cycles? [wink]
20
And if you don’t want to get your feet wet, what do you do?
Do these doomsayers think, that if even a fraction of these projected sea level rises happened we’d sit there till the water was over our head?
Please.
It’s not as if these “massive” sea level rises are happening tomorrow or for that matter, anytime soon.
If at all.
You do what humans do best.
We adapt!
It’s the simple single reason why we’re still here.
40
handjive –
speaking of ABC.
i’ve spent the morning listening to podcasts of the most overt NWO/ABC Radio National/CAGW drivel from last nite’s programming, & then collecting/connecting links & bombarding jo’s previous thread
– Maurice Newman, you are not allowed to say words like “order” “world” and “new” –
with a ton of stuff (sorry jo). take a look if you are interested.
yet ABC Lateline the night before entirely/purposefully? ignored Maurice Newman’s Figueres’ quotes and behaved in the most infantile manner, with Elvis, Beyonce remarks etc!
is ABC part of the CAGW problem? no prizes for answering correctly.
71
I think so Pat, but it would be interesting to find the links. I reckon they’d be well hidden.
Cheers,
Dave B
30
How are the raw satellite measurements taken? Radar?
10
Dave in the states
The ‘official’ figures are collated at University of Colorado. There’s a series of links there for how they try and iron-out of the inherent variation in the instruments.
Look out for the (GIA) adjustment, Glacial Isostatic Adjustment. Since the end of the ice age, ocean basins have gradually been getting larger (as ocean bottoms are sinking). Thus, a greater volume of sea can be contained without any increase in sea level. (For more on this, see here ).
The GIA tries to reflect this fact, essentially by estimating what sea level rise would be, if the ocean bottoms were not sinking. So far, so good.
The trouble is that the old tidal gauge measurements did not allow for GIA, as they simply measured what was happening at the surface. That is why it is utterly dishonest to splice the tide gauge and satellite trends together,and claim that sea level rise is accelerating. Information ( From)
This GIA is 0.3mm/year.
20
Hopefully this link will tell you more than you ever wish to know about this theory and how they’ve estimated it.
If the link doesn’t work search for —
Global glacial isostatic adjustment and modern instrumental records of relative sea level history
WR Peltier – International Geophysics, 2001 – Elsevier
20
Watched a short Video about ‘Sea Level’which states at the end that they can only measure ‘Sea Level’ to the nearest Metre.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q65O3qA0-n4
Your thoughts?
10
A 1 meter tolerance may be about right in terms of a raw measurement, but I’m taking the article’s word for it. The final result is inferred based on calculations rather than an exact physical measurement from the Colorado University description. All kinds of room for errors or “adjustments”. A fraction of a millimeter would certainly be within the margin for error.
20
Thank you that was very helpful. I know a thing or two about radar so my BS alarm was sounding off when it came to fractions of a millimeter accuracy.
Strictly speaking they are not using radar, which is a radio measurement of distance and bearing. A radar altimeter is at best accurate to a tolerance of about 60 cm for distance. The SAR (synthetic-aperture radar) I am familiar with is accurate to about 15 cm. A distance measurement would be useless for sea level anyway because of isostatic and other factors.
According to the link they are measuring gravity instead (and I don’t know a typical tolerance for accuracy in that case). From there it appears to be extremely complex mathematics.
I wonder how exactly they measure gravity?
30
But, but, but…
You forgetting the much heralded law of huge bloody numbers as mentioned above.
You see if the satellite give a blurred or erroneous (i.e. not the expected output) then you just keep sampling and averaging till you get the statistical answer you need. It’s called gaming the statistics or some-such.
So your blurred radar signal is improved by just resampling your data billions of time (or more) and it just improves, no matter how bad the precision or accuracy of the tool used.
It can even work with eye-sight. Got bad eyes? Just keep looking (your brain is sampling the visual scene) and clear up the scene. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed, thus quite suddenly your eye-sight will improve. Good eh?
And for my next trick I’ll show some bankers that if the average value of some structured asset-backed security are sampled and resampled many times (sliced up into very small “tranches” then reaggregate them, do this lots of times, then sell them as high *average* value certificates) then the average value of the certificates always stays constant, let’s call them Collateralized Debt Obligation or CDOs. Everyone makes money no matter how bad the debt as the average value is all that matters! Isn’t it logical — what could possibly go wrong?
70
And that involved huge numbers (measured in dollars) didn’t it.
Tristan seems to be confusing taking many measurements of one item to taking one measurement of many variable items. The first way improves accuracy – as in the carpenter’s rule, measure twice, cut once – while the second becomes a matter of statistics, or possibly economics.
50
Graeme No.3
Precisely! Thank-you for pointing out what I would call the obvious.
Are there any biases?
For any bias will push the measurements precision away from a normal distribution. That is, can this aging satellite measurement system be proven to measure with imprecision/inaccuracy artifacts distributed about a normal — even with auto-calibrating instruments can it be done?
Also of note is that satellite measurement data are periodically ‘calibrated'(adjusted) against a group of tidal gauges (including Hong Kong) and a theoretical amount of GIA — there are many confounding factors, and the opportunity for biases at almost every step.
So lets take a million measurements with time varying (possibly biased) adjustments and try and convince everyone we ‘know’, to the mm, what the sea-level is.
How about getting some perspective here?
With the CDO collapse some people were stuffed full of hubris to believe that they understood how a market worked. They did not and we all paid for that mistake.
30
Glacier melt contribution to sea level rise was higher in the first half of the 20th century than the 2nd half, contradicting the perception that CO2 is primarily responsible for glacier/ice sheet melting and sea level rise.
—–
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/8/659/2014/tc-8-659-2014.pdf
The data set contains the glacier length records for 471 [global] glaciers and it covers the period 1535–2011. There are glacier length records from all continents and at almost all latitudes. For the observed glaciers, the 20th century retreat was strongest in the first half of the 20th century.…. [T]he retreat is strongest in the period 1921–1960 rather than in the last period 1961–2000, with a median retreat rate of 12.5 m yr in 1921–1960 and 7.4 m yr in the period 1961–2000.[Glaciers melted 69% more rapidly from 1921-1960 than from 1961-2000.]
—–
http://www.psmsl.org/products/reconstructions/2008GL033611.pdf
The fastest sea level rise, estimated from the time variable trend with decadal variability removed, during the past 300 years was observed between 1920– 1950 with maximum of 2.5 mm/yr. [E]stimates of the melting glacier contribution to sea level is 4.5 cm for the period 1900 – 2000 with the largest input of 2.5 cm during 1910 – 1950 [Oerlemans et al., 2007]
[Melting glaciers contributed to 88% more to sea level rise between 1910 and 1950 (.63 cm per decade) than for the rest of the 20th century (.33 cm per decade)].
—–
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028492/abstract
Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. 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://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
A substantial, but not continuous recession of mountain glaciers has taken place almost everywhere since the latter half of the nineteenth century (Grove, 1988).The rate of recession appears to have been generally largest between about 1920 and 1960.
—-
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1
[T]here was a warm period in the Arctic and Greenland in the 1920s and 1930s at a time when anthropogenic global warming was relatively small. This promoted glacier mass loss at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere at a greater rate than the global mean. Length records included in L indicate a greater rate of glacier retreat in the first than in the second half of the twentieth century in Greenland.
[Graph from the paper (Figure A) showing much larger glacier melt rate contributions to sea level rise in the 1920s to 1940s compared to the present:]
http://journals.ametsoc.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/ams/journals/content/clim/2013/15200442-26.13/jcli-d-12-00319.1/20130821/images/large/jcli-d-12-00319.1-f2.jpeg
60
I checked sea level rise around NZ at the PSMSL web site a couple of months ago.
From 1910 to date, the rate of rise was + 1.7mm per year.
From 1955 to date, there has been a deceleration around our shores over the last 60 years, with the rate of rise being between 0.5 and 1.0mm per year. Or: 0.5mm < rate-of-rise < 1mm per year.
50
The satellites used to be the source for fact.
I wondered how long it could last, because “they” own the satellites too.
I have as yet only glanced at this article. But, I ask, is this the left wing media’s response to Maurice Newman’s article last week?
The news story doesn’t seem to fit the published “science”.
So, would an investigation find that the ABC has acted improperly?
This one should be passed to Tony Abbott. Maybe it’s time for him to declare his promise to be nice to the ABC void.
31
A blast from the past:
” Here in Australia on the East Coast we have rock shelves which geologists knew were created by seas that were up to 1.2 metres higher about 3,000 years ago.
The Many instances of higher seas shown in Nils Axel Morner’s graph 2 of the Maldives situation confirms what local geologists knew in the early 1960s
Looking at the accurate work Of Prof Morner it doesn’t take much skill to work out that oceans have been dropping for the last 2,000 years and have in fact fallen by 1.2 metres in that time.
So much for rampant sea level rise.
Here in Newcastle we have local university “Klimate Cadets” from the local University Climate Control Department making hay while the sun shines in the local Newspaper.
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2656717/forum-to-discuss-newcastle-sea-level-threat/?cs=4173
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2656425/opinion-who-pays-for-sea-level-rise/?cs=308
I seem to share the views of GeorgeJ”
KK
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/modern-seas-unprecedented-an-insult-to-geology-and-sea-level-research/#comment-1605706
50
The geological coastline in Perth has oscillated between Rottnest island some 10kms offshore now and the darling fault which is 20 kms inland in the last 50,000 years. We can easily observe sea level change by looking at incisions of the paleo swan river that is currently some 5 to 15 metres higher than the present day sea level in the Fremantle area. Judging by what these incisions cut into it is obvious that this must have happened in the last 5,000 to 10,000 years so almost certainly during the time when the first pyramids were build. In fact rockingham a major suburb just south of Perth did not exists until only recently when it was formed in the last 5,000 years ago and continue to form now. The successive shorelines can be seen on digital elevation grid and satellite data. When you look at abandoned storm incisions at cottesloe beach this shows a recent sea level that was some 1 to 2 metres higher than today.
The Perth basin is continuously subsiding and there is no way that observational evidence would suggest that has been an uplift in Perth area. So in summary I agree with your comments that most likely we are under the sea level fall conditions.
My apologies to all not familiar with Perth locations and not providing a better location descriptions.
80
Hi Dariusz,
Interesting comments about Perth – Google Earth depths suggest that most of the promontory out to Rottnest would have been exposed a few thousand years ago, all but a section that may have still been 4 metres deep.
My main point in the above posts was that Geologically we can look at records of an over run of about 7 metres (above current sea level) at the end of the big melt (about 7,000 years back) and progressively smaller fluctuations of 4 and 2 metres to the current Zero + or – 40 mm.
The point should be obvious, that the 40 or 50 mm in the above graphs is basically irrelevant in the overall picture.
Why are “scientists” and the ABC getting exercised about 40 mm sea level rise over 20 years when this is 2mm per year as against the 13 mm per year and more that occurred in the big melt 15,000 years back when our ancestors were burning wood and whatever like mad to try and get warm?
KK
30
Geological Reality
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/australian-sea-levels-have-been-falling-for-7000-years/#comment-1133940
20
Connor never has a poblem getting space on ABC:
13 May: ABC: John Connor: Budget 2015: An assault on Australia’s climate programs
Last night’s budget ignores the global reality that climate change is happening and other countries are moving to address it. It’s a liability for our future.
AS THE TREASURER was finalising his Budget speech yesterday, the World Bank released a report on Decarbonising Development: Three Steps to a Zero Carbon Future (pdf) and our Bureau of Meteorology announced that El Nino was back — a big problem for Australia as global warming puts our already extreme weather on steroids.
These are hardly ‘radical’ organisations. Yet the Treasurer’s speech made no mention of policies to modernise and decarbonise our economy…
As UNFCCC head Christiana Figueres reminded Lateline on Friday night, this is the minimum of the 5 to 25 per cent reduction range both parties have supported in the past. Stronger reductions were supposed to follow if the world was acting, which by all accounts ***it more than is…
The benefits of our fossil fuel past are fast turning into the liabilities of the zero carbon future.
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2015/05/13/4234917.htm
***Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved.
PDF: 180 pages: World Bank: Decarbonizing Development
EMBARGOED: NOT FOR PUBLICATION, BROADCAST, OR TRANSMISSION UNTIL MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015 AT 4:00 PM EDT (8:00 PM GMT)
Three Steps to a Zero-Carbon Future
by Marianne Fay, Stephane Hallegatte, Adrien Vogt-Schilb, Julie Rozenberg, Ulf Narloch & Tom Kerr
***Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved.
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Climate/dd/decarbonizing-development-report.pdf
NWO? nah.
31
It always boils down to funding doesn’t it. Keep that gravy train rolling………
30
NOTE WHO IS CONSIDERED THE “ENVIRONMENT SECTOR”!
13 May: ABC: Sara Phillips: Budget 2015: How the environment sector saw it
The environment rated barely a mention in last night’s budget. This is not surprising for a government which has lowered the priority of environmental issues during its term of office…
There were none of the sweeping cuts to environmental programs that featured in Joe Hockey’s first, signature budget…
Some highlights for the environment from the budget papers are:
* $4 million to establish Bjorn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre on climate change. The Danish academic is well known for his laissez-faire approach to climate change but plans to establish a research centre for him at the University of WA have been stymied after the university’s staff revolted.
* $26.8 million over the next four years to enable the return of radioactive waste from the United Kingdom.
* $6.1 million over the next two years to continue the Climate Change Authority from within the existing Department of Environment budget. Beyond 31 December 2016 it is unclear what its fate will be…
* $100 million over the next four years for the Great Barrier Reef Trust. This is the body with the task of keeping the Reef off the World Heritage In Danger list.
* No new funds for clean coal National Low Emissions Coal Initiative.
* The Government will abolish the CSIRO Environment Strategic Advisory Committee. This committee gave longer-term strategic direction on research priorities to CSIRO.
* The size of the Green Army program will be reduced by $73.2 million over four years, with the savings going to pay for the dole…
Labor environment spokesperson Mark Butler
“This is not a Budget about Australia’s future”…
Greens environment spokesperson Larissa Waters
“This budget ignores climate change and almost completely ignores the environment”…
Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy
WWF-Australia conservation director Gilly Llewellyn…
Environment Victoria campaigns director Nick Roberts…
Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) acting chief executive Paul Fennelly
“In a year of fiscal consolidation, the 2015-16 Federal Budget has again highlighted the importance of a growing oil and gas industry to the economic wellbeing of all Australians.”
ONE COMMENT by SCIENTIST: Why am I not surprised that APPEA acting CEO Paul Fennelly thinks that continuing to support such an industry and use of fossil fuels is to the benefit of all Australians. Maybe he forgets about the on-going and increasing effects that this use is having that is costing society greatly.
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2015/05/13/4234727.htm
12 May: SBS: AAP: Lomborg’s centre still getting govt cash
It might not have a home any more but skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank is still getting $4 million from the Abbott government…
Education Minister Christopher Pyne has said he’s sure he can find another university willing to host the centre and help fund it.
The budget papers say the centre will bring together leading economists and other experts to advise on cost-benefit solutions to national, regional and global challenges.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/05/12/lomborgs-centre-still-getting-govt-cash
21
and ‘$118.4 million will be spent to keep the penguins company.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3078373/40million-fight-keyboard-terrorists-social-media-26million-buy-Britain-s-nuclear-waste-100-000-travelling-children-reveal-quirky-cuts-costs-buried-Federal-Budget.html#ixzz3ZzfEAs00
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
10
Ullo ullo ullo, look at this:
Don’t tell me someone’s had a word in someone else’s shell like and told them it doesn’t work.
This was set up by Labor in 2008.
Link to Low Emission Technologies for Fossil Fuels
Wonder how much has been sunk into this white elephant?
Tony.
60
13 May: Crikey: Giles Parkinson: Budget losers: climate agencies up in smoke
Like true conservatives, the Coalition’s leadership team thinks the best environmental strategy is to defund every climate science body but boost spending for a bunch of people to pick up litter.
Just a few months ago, the newly constituted and Republican-dominated US Senate was asked to vote on a motion that “human activity significantly contributes to climate change”.
They voted against it…
In Australia’s ruling Coalition, that view is noisily shared by Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s closest advisers, such as Maurice “it’s all a UN plot” Newman and Dick “I’m not a climate sceptic, I just don’t accept the science” Warburton, and of course some rogue members of Parliament such as Barnaby “it’s cold down here” Joyce…
The budget papers confirm that spending for the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Change Authority will be halted in fiscal 2016/17. Perversely, the CCA gains an extra year, presumably to conduct the nth review of the renewable energy target that the Coalition promised just a month ago it wouldn’t do. That uncertainty will continue to undermine investment in large-scale renewables in Australia.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency — which funds emerging technologies such as wave energy, solar and storage, and off-grid systems — will also be absorbed back into the department and defunded.
Climate research is cut again, with the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility added to the list of climate and clean energy agencies to be wound up in 2017…
The Green Army gets a $179 million kick along to pick up litter and do other worthy things that a conservative regards as environmental. That is $73 million less than had been planned, so that the government can spend an extra $100 million on the reef and “boosting water quality”…
The National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility is added to the list of climate and clean energy agencies to be wound up in 2017
The biggest gripe of environmental groups was the retention of the fuel tax credit scheme, which they say amounts to a $7 billion per year federal government subsidy for diesel consumption…
“Even Abbott Government climate contrarian poster-boy Bjorn Lomborg has called to end fossil fuel handouts,” said Environment Victoria’s Mark Wakeham.
Newly elected Greens leader Richard Di Natale described the 2015 budget as a “visionless, small-minded document”…
John Connor, the CEO of the Climate Institute, went further…
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/05/13/budget-losers-climate-agencies-up-in-smoke/
11
Abstract from a new paper accepted by Geological Society of America on Coral Atoll survival by a growth response:
50
The only way to kill atolls is to drop sea level and expose it, not trying to drown it. Killing through drowning a living atoll that habitually outpace seal level rise is near imposibble . This was even noticed by Darwin when geological knowledge was still rudimentary with extinct volcanoes having kms of coral with top flourishing in the photic zone despite rapid subsidence after volcanic activity long ceased.
70
Dariusz
Yep, in 1954 the American Government exploded a big H-bomb on Bikini Atoll. At 15 megatons, the blast vaporized 3 islands but 61 years later the coral keeps growing back — unlike the humans that have suffered badly from the effects of that bomb.
Who said coral was fragile?
60
Hi Jo, Facebook just blocked from putting this post on my page, seems you have upset the trolls!
41
Stopped again, with this message: The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs
Please remove this link to continue.
If you think you’re seeing this by mistake, please let us know.
70
Yes unsafe to the perpetrator of climate lies, you must be right over a certain target Tom. 🙂
71
Tom Harley,
I would go ahead and let them know as they’ve suggested you to do. s3.Amazonaws.com is nothing more than cloud storage for data, in this case, sea level graphs. s3 is short for simple storage service.
Read about it here: Amazon S3.
Maybe provide them a link in your notification.
BTW. Whether this is intentional or oversight on their part, there’s no reason not to pursue, persist, and even pester until they rectify the problem from their end or provide you with an alternative solution to ‘remove the link’. Removing the link should be an unacceptable outcome.
And that’s my two cents.
Abe
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Interesting, an hour ago I received a message on screen that JoNova was, I forget the wording, unavailable.
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Interesting, an hour ago I received a message on screen that JoNova was, I forget the wording, unavailable.
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“climate-conscious” students!!! do you have to be an idiot to get a job in the MSM?
11 May: Bellingham Herald: Ralph Schwartz: Western Washington University president responds to ***climate-conscious students who would strip GOP Sen. Ericksen’s degree
In a statement to The Bellingham Herald sent late Friday, May 8 (after this blogger’s weekend had begun), WWU President Bruce Shepard effectively tried to pre-empt any attempt by the student group, led by Chiara D’Angelo, Evelyn Kennedy and Emily Krieger, to ask the administration to strip Ericksen’s 1995 master’s degree in political science and environmental policy. The students’ rationale, outlined in an undated letter to Shepard; LeaAnn Martin, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and the WWU board of trustees, was that Ericksen’s actions in the state Legislature, particularly in the arena of climate change, “stand against the ideals of Western Washington University students and threaten future generations.”
Ericksen is opposed to Gov. Jay Inslee’s low-carbon fuel standard and, along with other Senate Republicans, introduced legislation this year to serve as an alternative to Inslee’s carbon cap-and-trade proposal for the state. Ericksen and Co.’s package includes encouraging nuclear energy and offering more flexibility to electric utilities that must meet alternative energy targets.
While Ericksen has said human beings “may” be contributing to climate change, he has cited fringe science that tries to refute the scientific consensus that global temperatures are getting warmer, and the burning of fossil fuels is the cause…
Here’s Shepard’s statement in full:
“We appreciate the good work of Senator Doug Ericksen on behalf of Western Washington University. Senator Ericksen, a Western alumnus, has proven to be a friend to Western and a strong advocate. It is a special obligation of a university community to provide a venue for civil and thoughtful discussion about the important issues that confront us and to do so in an atmosphere of respect for different viewpoints. The strength of our democracy is that all citizens, including students and leaders like Senator Ericksen, have the freedom of expression to take positions with diverse viewpoints. Consequently, any notion that we might seek to penalize a graduate for the positions they express shows a disturbing misunderstanding of the intellectual freedoms any university worthy of the name must stand for. And, protect.”…
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/11/4288744/wwu-president-responds-to-climate.html
earlier:
7 May: Bellingham Herald: Ralph Schwartz: Concerned about climate change, WWU students seek to revoke ‘climate agnostic’ Ericksen’s degree
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/07/4282892_concerned-about-climate-change.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
BELLINGHAM — This isn’t an election year for state Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, but challengers do seek to wrest something from him — not his elected office but rather one of his college degrees.
A group of students with ties to Huxley College held a meeting at 5:30 p.m. today, Thursday, May 7, on campus, to start what promises to be an uphill — if not Quixotic — battle to convince university administration to strip Ericksen of his diploma.
Representatives of the group who sat down for an interview — Chiara D’Angelo, Evelyn Kennedy and Emily Krieger — understand that an action that serious typically requires a serious breach of the university’s trust, say proof of plagiarism or some other form of academic cheating…
The group’s plan has generated buzz on campus, the three women said. They expect Thursday evening’s meeting to be well attended…
The students refer to Ericksen as a “climate denier” on their Facebook page. He told this blogger a couple years back he was a “climate agnostic,” which may be more accurate. While he stripped the words “climate change” from the 2013 Climate Legislative and Executive workgroup bill, he at least conceded the possibility of human-caused climate change in 2015 legislation that would give utilities more flexibility in meeting state-mandated alternative energy goals…
By next week, the group will be seeking petition signatures to have Ericksen’s degree expunged…
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/07/4282892_concerned-about-climate-change.html?rh=1
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Persona non grata
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Forgive my ignorance people, is there a gauge that measures land uplift at the same location as your average tide gauge? If so does anyone even look at it?.
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Very amusing, but on a more serious note, scientist at Macquarie Island used paleo evidence to sort the wheat from the chaff.
http://eprints.utas.edu.au/14429/
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Measuring an absolute or eustatic sea variations are attempted by a branch of geology called the “sequence stratigraphy”. This however is proved to be near impossible as absolute stable areas really do not exist hence after many years the relative sea level is a more appropriate term that is now used. All my professional live i constructed and continue to construct such curves as they help in predicting geological history and depositional patterns that include positions of paleocoast lines and rock or facies assemblages. Exxon invented this methodology in 1977 and declared that such curves were global. Despite the initial industry scepticism about the globality of sea level variations this is now excepted although only a few know how to use this method successfully.
Tides gauges can measure both uplift and subsidence but these are local observations and vary quite considerably. Satellite data provides global coverage but despite my considerable knowledge in constructing sea level curves the precise measurements down to mm sound fantastic and unreal to me. I presume that these values are measured in relation to a fix point of a known subsidence. This in theory is possible like measuring the sea level variation in relation to a stable and geologically inactive Archean granitic terrain like the yilgarn block just west of Perth. If you measure sea level and compare it to a coastal plain then almost always you get a reading of sea level increase. However this value is only apparent as it also measures the subsidence of the land.
Probably a more appropriate measure is the rate of change measured on a global scale through satellites. If rate of change is constant then it is safe to assume that the sea level is the same. With the lack of unsubsiding beacons one has to devise a mathematical formula to get this rates converted to absolute values. If my reasoning is correct than mm values are basically someone,s mathematical trickery.
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Thanks Dariusz, your reply was enlightening.
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Dariusz and CeeTee
You may be interested in these. From an offline discussion.
My opinion is that with all the radiation energy and matter that comes to the planet in various forms, there must be growth and or energy storage unless it leaves again somehow.
“Hence, based on both space geodetic observations
and gravimetric data, we conclude that the Earth has been expanding at a
rate of about 0.2 mm/yr over recent decades.”
http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/3820/1/4951-8292-2-PB.pdf
Geoff Sherrington linked to this one.
“no statistically significant
present expansion rate is detected by our study within the
current measurement uncertainty of 0.2 mm yr−1.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL047450/pdf
Both seem to have the figure 0.2 MM per year but do scientists often lean on uncertainty? The sea level rise paper this is about seems to have stretched past uncertainty.
Lance Pidgeon.
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chocolate time.
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Explanation of the bullshit:
The sea level can not mount if the ice melt, because if it disappears the sea level can only go down.
The sea level can rise if there is a large island at the bottom of the Atlantic or Pacific training.
The sea level may go down if there is an underwater opening, fault in which enters the water.
Out of these exceptions there are tides, upwelling, and raz-de-tides (tsunamis) triggered momentarily.
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As an Avionics engineer who’s studied EE we are made aware very early on,
of the need to be careful about precision and accuracy when making measurements and the elimination or reduction of “errors” is always an important task in the life of an engineer.
During my career I have worked on GPS systems for various defense companies and I still get a kick out of GPS due to its ability to measure fast moving objects with a high degree of accuracy.
Fortunately SLRs (Satellite Laser Ranging) have replaced GPS for obtaining really precise measurement of static objects, but even this method is prone to errors due to physical perturbations, interesting that TOPEX (decommissioned ) Jason I and II both use SLR and GPS technology for their measurements.
So, when reading Jo’s article I was intrigued at the numbers being quoted, especially for precision, but as was commented earlier this was a statistical recovery of the signal and not a direct “instrument” based measurement.
With all that said, what I find very disturbing is the fact that this paper was even submitted for review, and it seems to me that the money wasted in its production could have been used for more practical and useful research.
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I was surprised this paper was actually accepted in Nature.
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But the sea levels were supposed to be rising by many feet by now. The abdominal showman said it would be so. Who to believe?
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Well, it hasn’t stopped Tim Flannery from buying waterfront property…
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Yeti are very popular in Australia. They can even take the heat.
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Without Pteranodon what will the Yeti eat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grChjPls1v8
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I watched this ‘sea level’ report on SBS, and it included warnings of a new ‘EL Nino’ event that would entail a six month drought. We are currently in a world-wide Five Year Solar induced orbital Dry Period(X Factor?)It’s time ENSO was finally put out of it’s misery!
Back when there were scientists,Mean Sea Level (MSL)was calculated according to factors such as the Lunar Metonic Cycle (18.61 Years.)
“While to find Mean Sea Level might appear to be merely a matter of ascertaining the median between high and low water, it turns out that such is not so. The method employed by scientists requires the recording of water levels every hour, over the full 18.61 Yr metonic cycle of the Moon’s nodes, then striking the average.” [Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes (1990)]
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I thought the accuracy of the ocean height from the Open Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite was “a few cm”, so how do they find significance at 43 microns?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Surface_Topography_Mission
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Thank you Jo, for another accurate and honest article. I will be sending some financial support, as soon as I can pay for my newly tiled bathroom, that went way over time and price quote.
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“Funding Climate research ? Our priorities are ALL wrong”
The funding that is currently being expended on CAGW research is obscene, especially when there more important areas of research that are in need of funding.
These include and are not limited to:-
children’s cancer
Spinal injuries
Antibiotics
Migraine
Mental disabilities
.
.
.
The list is long and there are many more besides.
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The last ice age melted in pulses, it would seem from recent archaeological discoveries drowning a civilisation that was global and somewhat advanced.
Underwater cities etc etc. This point in time even if warming occurred melting all ice on earth we would have centuries to adapt, this catastrophic stuff is a total load of carp.
Some studies have shown that the fall into an ice age can be precipitous, have these scientists no understanding of history or the cyclic nature of earths climate. It is impossible for man to cause catastrophic warming, and, it is not possible for us to stop the next descent into an ice age.
These people have no shame.
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