You only have to look at the graph below showing sea level rise since 1880 to see that it has accelerated from about 1mm/year at the end of the 19th century to about 3mm/year at present.(from CSIRO).
If you take a closer look at recent sea level rise you’ll see that it has been very consistent, only deviating from the trend line by about 10mm at any time.
So if you were unscrupulous, and wanted to try to make it look like sea level rise had decelerated what could you do? You could split the series at a point where sea level was above the trend line and compare trends before and after. this is what Klaus-Eckart Puls did (green line added by me):
Of course, you could achieve the opposite effect by splitting at a point in time where sea level was below the trend line. Note that the trend for the first half, 3.5mm/year isn’t significantly different from the overall trend and that the latest measurement lies on the trend fitted to the first part of the data (the green line above).
Naturally, Andrew Bolt was taken in, claiming that sea level rise was slowing, oblivious to the fact that this contradicted his earlier claims that sea level had stopped rising.
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"SD’s claimed benchmark is not on a river far inland,"
Walk seven miles.
It's on a river.
Here's a bit more of what your man had to say which your articles didn't mention. Seems like he isn't too sure about anything:
"Such rates of Greenland ice loss were barely larger than the margin of error in their readings, making it difficult to discern any difference between a supposed loss curve on a graph from a straight line. At the current rate, it will cause sea levels to rise about 2.4 inches over the next century. And according to the authors: “At current melt rates, the Greenland ice sheet would take about 13,000 years to melt completely."
Tell me honestly Lotharsson, do you believe this stuff?
Yep, that's a circumstance where there is a feed back. Clever old man. Of course, if a multihull is that unstable in the first place it would be a bit silly to have it so poorly prepared for racing or other severe conditions.
Two points though...
1) You are still describing a situation that is analogous to climate change, and you have not been able to provide substantiation that your claim that climate processes are inherently negatively fed-back.
2) My reference to wave-piercing multihull designs at the Australian Maritime College relates to commercial vessels. The AMC bit should have been a bit of a clue. In such contexts the whole issue of stability (especially in wind) is secondary to other considerations, and in the end is a distraction from the fact that all I was trying to elicit from you was a way to check your understanding of riverine hydrology/hydrography. You've almost always employed distraction as a means to avoid my questions, and I would remind you that you have many hanging from the posts of February 2012, including why you think that it is legitimate to apply a linear regression to an oscillating phneomenon.
Erm, so where exactly are your details? You know, things like dates, times, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, catchment flow, comparison with engineering history and bar movements, regional oceanic current trends.
Heck, you haven't yet even provided any dates and levels for king tides at your river wall...
Huh? 22 February 2010:
Remeber that Drongo? Your words, not mine.
A "fall of around 30 cms [sic]"?
References?
1) It does matter if satellites don't move parallel to the Earth's surface.
2) A hundred thousand different levels, or a hundred million, there's a fancy thing called statistics that takes care of that.
3) Those "assumptions and adjustments" have shown a rise in sea level - even if they were inaccurate, it would be a consistent bias which would show no rise over time. But, strangely enough, there's a rise...
4) The thing is that satellite measurement agrees with independent "empirical measurement". You know, those things called tide gauges which are littered across the planet's coasts...
5) "...rocks in your head". I prefer to think of it as scientific understanding. Something that you have, time and again, demonstrated is alien to what passes as your take on complex matters.
1) It doesn't matter if satellites don’t move parallel to the Earth’s surface.
"Walk seven miles."
Not even BJ is as dumb as you Wow. He even agrees that it is ONE mile from the official river mouth at the Broadwater.
You don't pay attention, do you?
"Because that is what it is?"
When you feed it through multi-processes and still can't tell the signal from the noise, that's terrific data.
"PS What freezing with a vengeance?"
This is:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/snowNESDISnh.gif
Nope.
You have to justify your tune. That's what peer review is all about.
And as the other articles point out what you allege is "choosing their own tune" doesn't do much more than reconfirm earlier results and provide additional insight into regional patterns. In other words, the "new tune" is the same tune in higher fidelity.
Wrong again, IIRC. Some of the articles mentioned precisely those figures and pointed out that they were essentially the same as the earlier GRACE figures.
And you out-dumb everyone else here by claiming that the official river mouth is what matters with respect to sea level rise.
And the official mouth of the river is where the ocean is???
You need to go and do some physical geography lessons.
So "freezing with a vengeances" means winter snow cover?
That's almost as dumb as alleging the sea takes note of "the official river mouth" when it's rising. Not only is snow expected in winter, and not only is that a snapshot rather than a trend analysis, but worse still snow cover is not a good indicator of future ice loss trends if only because snow cover measures area without much regard for thickness which is far more of a factor for the ice trends.
It's amazing how gullible you are.
Hang on, though, where's the snow cover in Australia?
Glittery danglers isn't using a NON GLOBAL measure to determine GLOBAL TRENDS is it?
Surely it can't be THAT stupid?
(in case deniers don't get it: that was irony)
This was supposed to have been posted a couple of hours ago, but my laptop overheated. Others have since followed up, but nevertheless...
Countering your distraction yet again, the nearest entrance to the open ocean is 7 kilometres away. The "official river mouth" is a hair under 2 kilometres away.
Chevron Island is in a riverine environment, and not in a marine one.
Sea level is not measured (by professionals) in a river, especially one with a history of highly modified hydrology.
See! You guys must have amazing amounts of free time. I had a spare hour or so today and posted a couple of comments, since then I've done some yardwork and been out for dinner and yet you are all still at it. What gives? Do you not have anything else to do? :)
I really can't put in the time to follow the various arguments but here's a couple of off the cuff thoughts. Now remember, I have a very basic high school education which is largely forgotten, so using words like regression or second differential will cut no ice with me, you might as well have suggested I fly to the moon. That's not meant to be a smart arse reply, I'm just noting I'm well out of my depth in that sort of discussion. But it doesn't mean I can't see where an argument is going.
Lotharsson, you observe that "Several recent 20-yr trend rates have been the highest set on record (Fig 4 here), and (very roughly eyeball estimate only) about 1mm per year higher than the average of 20-year trends centered on 1940-1990, as you were asking."
Now, I am not sure exactly what this graph is portraying, but the obvious question is, why 20 years? Earlier you were quite dismissive of short term trends as being less than useful, yet here they are of value? Is anyone here able to whip up some graphs of this particular approach and show us how the trend rates look for say 10 year, 20 year, 30 year and 50 year windows? I'm not disagreeing with the claim, but the 20 year window is curious. How about 20 year windows starting at 1930? Just to see if those trends are actually there and not due to some cherry picking start dates and periods.
BJ, you state that 2-3mm of SLR per year is unlikely to have appreciable effects in the short term generally tho it may in extreme events. So, how long is 'long term'? There have been suggestions we are thinking about a century hence, so maybe 100 years is a good number?
Well, we've already had 140 years of SLR according to the graph Lotharsson linked to, which encompasses a substantial change in the rate of that rise. And we've had some 200mm overall in that time (rough estimate from that graph).
As you suggest the impact of SLR is more likely in the longer term, or by the agency of extreme events, shouldn't that 140 years of SLR provide a useful test for your claim? Imagine if someone had shown that graph in 1870, wouldn't that have sounded alarm bells?
But... what actually happened?
I am not aware of any physical real world data to support the claim. What effects has 140 years of SLR spanning 1870 to 2010 had on the Australian coastline, even disregarding SD's now infamous benchmark? What impact have extreme conditions had in that time? If you can point to such data, and that data shows a trend of increasingly noticeable effects due to SLR, then you might have a case.
You then say "there doesn’t need to be a large acceleration in the current rate of sea level rise for serious destruction of much coastal infrastructure within a century or so, as that rate is already above the Holocene mean." I agree that if the current steady rate of SLR continues, at some future point we can expect some impact. That is EXACTLY what I've been saying. My point is that so far, we've not seen any serious impact on coastal infrastructure and yet we have experienced a considerable above 'normal' acceleration already.
Further, most of the claims for an acceleration depend on a host of variables that you are just certain will increase that rate. But there is as yet no evidence for that in terms of actual effects. The trend is relatively stable at present. And at 3mm/yr for the next 100 years, we will see 30cm of rise, or about 12". One foot. I'm not expecting serious destruction from that, especially given there is a century of adaptation possible.
You also said "Calculate a second differential for the first graph. That’s the whole bloody point." Fair enough, you must think that means something. So explain it. As far as I can see from eyeballing it, it's pretty flat after 1930.
You further complain "You’re the one saying that there’s no acceleration, so you should be the one answering all of your questions. Or are you making claims about 'acceleration' without having actually done any work to support them?" Say what? The OP simply showed some graphs and made some claims. I am saying that as far as I can see they don't prove what is claimed. The OP didn't include a caveat that I'd need to go away and calculate a "second differential" to get it.
And Drongo, if you're going to bounce over to Moreton Bay and your other "detailed anecdotes", it would help if you actually detailed all parametres relevant to those sites, otherwise they are unsubstantiated heresay completely uninformed by relevant science.
Shorter Blot:
Moving on:
You're referring to a system that is effectively 'starting' from a 'standing start'. It takes time to move from the equlibrium position, and by extension into territory where negative impacts progressively manifest. But any acceleration - whether high, low or normal - will displace the new level from the previous equilibrium. If it happens faster than humans are able to adapt, then there is negative impact (to say nothing of the non-human biosphere...).
So, how quickly do you think that the city of New York can be moved from its current location? Or Shanghai? Or Bangladesh? Or the Netherlands? Or low-lying ocean islands, or indeed any of the countless millions of homes and communities that line the coasts of continents around the planet?
How quickly can the associated coastal ecosystems be relocated?
At what cost will all this need to be done?
Who pays?
Who compensates?
Who much can we melt the planet's ice over time without incalculable moral culpability?
Is it OK to warm the planet by 3-6 degrees Celsius (or more), and lock in the melting of Greenland and the Antarctic over several millenia, effectively raising the sea level another 7-67 metres, depending on the final maximum temperature increase?
You've already admitted that you don't understand the science, so why do you assume that all that will happen over the coming century is that the water will rise by a foot? Why do you persist in ignoring the science that shows that the rise by the end of the century will be at least twice as much, and quite possibly at least four times as much, as the current rate would produce? And why do you ignore the synergies with the increased frequency of extreme weather events, increased difficulty in responding due to decreasing accessibility of oil, and increased degradation of natural buffering systems?
That's the danger of using an eyechrometre. And of engaging in a subject in which you are clueless.
If you need it explained to you, I suggested that you determine the acceleration over time using the data depicted by the graph. Smoothing would be advisable, to reduce noise, and the end result would indicate whether there is a change in the rate of sea level rise, or whether the rate is 'just' relatively constant.
A clue though... physical processes such as this are very usually described by a sigmoid function - overwhelmingly so. This should give you an idea of what to expect from your homework. Note though that there is little difference in the final result... any rate of sea level rise over zero results in a rise, whether or not there is an acceleration in that rate.
I'm not going to do your work for you. My pedagogical approach is to encourage the learner to answer his/her own questions by doing the reading and the work as much as is possible. This fosters an appreciation for the backgroundknowledge involved, helps to promote understanding that 'sticks', helps to prepare a person for future self-directed learning (although that can often never be achieved), and appropriately places the onus of responsibility on the one who demands the answers.
And if you need advice:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/sea-level-rise-faster-than-proje…
> Now, I am not sure exactly what this graph is portraying, but the obvious question is, why 20 years?
It's a good question! You may have to read the underlying paper to find out. Usually journal articles will choose a period and justify it - e.g. by testing for statistical signficance on the data set they are analysing. In many (but not all) climatic data sets 17+ years will prove long enough but sometimes even longer is needed. They might also have chosen 20 years because this is long enough - in combination with the "one sigma error" they also plot - to be confident the trend estimate is reasonably good (e.g. not overly influenced by noise), but short enough to show changes in trend over time.
> How about 20 year windows starting at 1930?
Those are already on the graph in Figure 4. The data point at "1930" (for example) is the rate of the 20 year trend centered on 1930 (i.e. 1920-1940), so you're looking for the "1940" point on the curve if you want to see the trend calculated from the 20 year window starting at 1930. Shift along one year on the curve for the window starting at 1931, and repeat.
> My point is that so far, we’ve not seen any serious impact on coastal infrastructure and yet we have experienced a considerable above ‘normal’ acceleration already.
It's not the acceleration that hurts, but whether the level crosses a threshold for unwelcome impact.
If I drive my car into a brick wall at 40 km/h I may cause myself some short term pain (and a large repair bill). If I drive it into the same wall at 60 km/h I may do myself some longer term damage. At 80 km/h I may risk serious and permanent disability. The impacts are clearly non-linear. Going twice as fast is much more than twice as bad...going twice as fast again is much more than twice as bad again.
Sea level rise is likely to have similar impact. Once a particular environment experiences a certain level the impacts will rapidly become much harder/more expensive to deal with. Low-lying environments of high economic value will tend to be early sufferers.
And once again you betray your lack of even a basic understanding of the subject of sea level.
For one, your mark on the wall is measuring relative sealevel which is a combination of he change in elevation of he land as well as a change in the level of the water. If you used the same method in New York where the land is rising due to isostatic rebound it would appear that he rate of sea level rise is much less than the global value. Conversely, if you used this method in New Orleans it would appear that he sea was rising much faster because the land is subsiding. In order for your mark to be of any real use in measuring the rate of sea level rise alone you would need to know how much the elevation of the shore itself has changed and correct for that effect. As others have pointed out multiple times to you as well, using a mark on a riverine system that has been dredged or dammed will also have significant impacts on the water level, even if for rhe sake of argument you really were only 1 km from open ocean.
If you really were on the open ocean though, the surface is still not flat, even on a glassy calm day. Currents create persistent surface features (hills and valleys for lack of a more descriptive term) that can be up to a meter high. Long-term changes in the surface pressures and thermohaline circulations that drive these currents can shift the locations or alter the heights of these surface features. If your tide guage is on a coast near one of these hills and the current creating the hill weakens, the local sea level will drop while global sea level remains unchanged.
BJ:
Oh! Gee! Now you have wound up 'Bolt through the neck' yet again.
He probably thinks it's a misspelling of sigmund freud...
Lothe, learn to read. That’s ICE.
Where do you Doltoids think the mouth of the Brisbane R is?
Jumpinpin? South Passage? Caloundra?
More confirmation of accelerating [koff] SLR. Another dance with GRACE:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/recent-contributions-glaciers-and-…
BJ, you are the distraction specialist. Just a pity yours always seem to bite you on the bum.
And don’t tell me you haven’t studied the Ross-Lempriere controversy:
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/appendix.htm
And I have never used surges to claim SLR. Now you are plain telling porkies. Desperate stuff.
“It doesn’t matter if satellites don’t move parallel to the Earth’s surface.”
If you’re so easily duped as to believe remote systems fed through multiple corrections and assumptions can give a tiny signal that is distinct from noise then you haven’t got a sceptical scientist’s bone in your body.
But [to coin one of your favourite expressions] we already knew that, didn’t we?
"That’s ICE."
What's ice?
The river you're sitting by?
Oh and the mouth of the river isn't where you are. Sorry. Please check up on your local adult education centre and ask if they do physical geography.
Mike G, you must be another one of those amazing people who can push his bathwater up one end while he dries himself.
70 years, Mike, 70 years! If local SLs haven't risen but fallen somewhat in that time, you can sleep peacefully.
Also, read that link of mine above re the latest CU assessment. They are coming down all the time.
Could the real world be sinking in?
Could they finally be looking out the window as they type their assumptions into the machine?
Get with it, boy.
Wow, I try not to spell it out for you Doltoids. I like to give you the BotD for som intelligenge.
For you? I'll have to make an exception.
Sigmund Freud? I didn't see him in the comments list. He's probably just another warmist.
Bernard J, I am arguing that the graphs shown don't support the conclusions drawn, and suggesting that real world effects don't point to either a significant SLR or any impacts from same over 140 years. I've challenged you all to provide some actual real world evidence for anything happening.
So far, nothing.
This blog post began with the statement "You only have to look at the graph below showing sea level rise since 1880 to see that it has accelerated from about 1mm/year at the end of the 19th century to about 3mm/year at present." and expands with "If you take a closer look at recent sea level rise you’ll see that it has been very consistent, only deviating from the trend line by about 10mm at any time."
What I see is SLR accelerating early in the 20th Century, and returning to a relatively stable linear increase ever since. This is backed up by the second sentence above. So, no evidence of an increasing acceleration. And no real world effects to speak of.
You say "That’s the danger of using an eyechrometre." I say that using an eyechrometer is EXACTLY what the OP asked me to do. And so far, you've not convinced me that those graphs illustrate an increasing rate of SLR.
Lotharsson, this sounds like a copout and it probably is really. If I find the time, I'll try to look at that trend graph a bit more closely and see if I can wrap my head round it. But all you've really said is that they chose the 20 year window for a reason. I agree, but without some useful crosschecks I am not convinced it hasn't been done to exaggerate the effect.
Mike G, more arm waving. Perhaps what you say of New York and New orleans is true. Do you have some physical evidence from those coastlines of similar real world benchmarks as Spangled Drongo has produced? Something that shows how these varying effects have played out physically?
As for SD's 'riverine' system, well, I reckon that's a bit of a furphy. Where SD'd benchmark is, it is clearly affected by tides so sea level does play some part in determining tide heights. What is being argued is that somehow, all of those various things like damming and dredging have rather nicely offset SLR over 70 years to prevent an observable change. That's rather coincidental. Given it matches my own totally anecdotal non-scientific observations and everyone else's lack of physical evidence, I'm gonna go with Occam's Razor. SLR is not producing any noticeable real world effect on the Australian coastline.
Bolt for PM,
I would say good questionS (as in plural) not just one.
I also note that there are no straight answers just speculation about 'mights' and analogies.
Of course coastal infrastructure is vulnerable to the vagaries of the ocean. That is and always has been the case.
Splitting hairs about the location of tide gauges is not proving anything useful or practical.
No one disagrees that SL is in constant flux.
The real question is what have we learned from this obvious fact and how should we continue to adapt?
Instead here we have people arguing over the veracity of modelling and claiming they can predict dire consequences from same.
I know it will create further name calling, but Bolt's question is highly valid.
Where are the noticeable negative impacts and what is being done to sensibly and practically mitigate those impacts?
Hand wringing over statistics is not proving to be productive behaviour.
They're useful of course but how have they proved to be prophetic and a reliable basis to inform sensible policy?
And the globe cannot be warming if temperatures have declined in Folsom, New Mexico. Seriously, this is as embarrassing a public declaration of ignorance as it's possible to make. My house cannot be on fire if my bathroom is not burning?
Better do a statistics course along with the geography.
I'm sure this has been pointed out to you, but the world is actually significantly more complicated than your obtuse suburban talk-back radio "it's obvious" mentality allows.
This is why we developed a thing called 'science', in order to overcome the parochial, anecdotal, incidental, imbecilic... and mendacious.
Once again, Australia is not the world. If you look at more vulnerable areas of the world, like my neck of the woods in South Florida where we have 3+ million people living within 2m of sealevel we are already experiencing significant impacts.
We've experienced roughly 8 inches of SLR over the past century (4 inches in the past 30). As a result we have had to spend millions of dollars plugging canals built around the turn of the century because they are now causing saltwater intrusion into the freshwater wetlands. We have also had to abandon wells due to saltwater intrusion as the result of SLR and increased freshwater demand from the aquifer.
In Miami Beach every year during the perigean spring tides saltwater percolates up through the limestone and storm drains to flood the streets. Cars are flooded out and businesses are forced to barracade their doors with sandbags. Many streets are impassible. Similar events occur to the north in Ft. Lauderdale as well. And extra 8 inches of water in the streets is the difference in cars being a total loss or just having rusty brake rotors.
This year Sandy passed several hundred miles to the east of us right as the spring tides were occuring, giving us almost an extra foot of surge. As a result many bulkheads around Biscayne Bay were overtopped and failed. Most of these walls are built about 18 inches higher than the mean high water line with some walls dating to the mid 1920s or ealy 1930s so that extra 8 inches contributed by SLR made the difference between walls that would have had 6 inches of buffer even during a storm with a 1 foot surge at high tide and walls that were overtopped. Here in Ft. Lauderdale we lost a large section of our beachfront highway, A1A, and will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild it and the collapsed seawall as a result.
current troll collective: when will you actually find the wherewithal to post some comment with some actual substance in it?
"My point is that so far, we’ve not seen any serious impact on coastal infrastructure"
One reason for that is that you're sitting inland and looking at the river banks and thinking "This looks like the ocean".
PS Sandy.
Yes. All tide gauges measure relative sea level just like SD's mark on the wall. They all have to be corrected for changes in the elevation of the land by comparing to a common benchmark. See http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.shtml
'sfunny how the deniers are all "Oh, you see warming because you aren't correcting for the UHI" but if they think they have an answer they like, they won't think "Have I corrected for confounding factors".
It's why they are not doing science since they would need to be SKEPTICAL of their result and check to see if they are seeing something that is merely a phantom of their hope.
Bill & Wow,
I probably shouldn't bother with this but I can't resist:
'but the world is actually significantly more complicated than your obtuse suburban talk-back radio “it’s obvious” mentality allows.'
&
'when will you actually find the wherewithal to post some comment with some actual substance in it?'
&
PS Sandy.
You truly are champions at missing the point entirely.
In the wierdest and most furious manner you appear to have tacitly agreed with spangled and bolt.
And Wow, I really probably shouldn't wind you up but your rebuttal re the AUSTRALIAN focus from my posted links was truly hilarious.
Yes Wow, there was an Australian link but there were also links from accross the other side of the world and they were not parochially focused on Australia as you claimed...in fact only the one you highlighted was Australian focused.
Much of the information came from here:
http://www.climate4you.com/
and from this individual:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/BIBLIOGRAPHY%20OLE%20HUMLUM.pdf
I see that Lotharsson was the only one who at least took the time to read it.
Unfortunately (IMHO) Lotharsson was way more interested in nit picking out what he thought was wrong with it and making an attempt at 'shooting the messenger', rather than actually dealing with the message.
The question related to the actual data sets and methodology Lotharsson.
I understand that you see yourself as some type of master of blog tactics and that you have set yourself up as some type of judge and jury about which 'sources' you think are the only valid ones.
However,
Looking at Humlum's pedigree, I can't see anything basically wrong with his credentials.
Neither can I see anything sinister about the very clearly stated methodology.
He is essentially tracking real time data (from the same sources as most others use) and plotting them against the politically accepted extrapolated models that claim an alarming 'trend' that correlates directly with increases in ACO2.
He has also focused on SL and as far as I can see his methodology is clearly outlined so he hasn't attempted to do anything sinister and/or unscrupulous.
He is also not concluding that SL is decelerating. He rather concludes that the theorised and previously modelled trends have decelerated or perhaps are not playing out in emerging updated data sets.
He does clearly state there is an observed SLR, just not as alarming as previously hypothesised.
I did not claim I necessarily agreed or disagreed with any of this information.
My point was that this information is being statistically represented and that results and conclusions can alter depending on even simple things like changing datum start/end points.
Tim at the start of this post and then later Bolt also highlighted this fact.
Tim chose to call it 'unscrupulous' but I find that difficult to understand because the methodology was clearly outlined.
I find all the screeching about 'cherry picking' from both 'sides' of this argument rather amusing.
By their very nature, projective models need to pick snapshots in time and need to make assumptions about the strength of different variables and their influences on each other.
In fact, the whole point of them (IMHO) is to help us see what could potentially happen if we switch certain variables on and off in the projective models.
By the sheer number of them with many different results and conclusions, I find it hard to see why anyone would try to claim that only ONE source can possibly be correct and/or valid.
My question to you Lotharsson:
Can you please explain how this work is any less valid than the work you deem is superior?
I will grant that Humlum has chosen to use a less complicated approach, but I fail to see where it is statistically invalid.
I will also concede that extrapolating SL out to the end of the century on a short data set probably doesn't prove or disprove anything much at all.
However, this is not the only place we have seen this done I would suggest.
Some of the evidence you have posted has done something remarkably similar (not necessarily exactly the same) and IMHO has neither conclusively proved or disproved anything much in relation to ACO2 and SLR either.
"And the globe cannot be warming if temperatures have declined in Folsom, New Mexico."
How old are you bill? How long have you been experiencing temperature?
Ever noticed how SLs are roughly the same all over the world?
But temperatures vary by more than 100c world wide, every day?
But thanks bill, you've highlighted my point.
Bernard,
All we need from your mates' recorded history of SLR observations is: where they are, over what period and how much higher. Naturally,people won't have perfectly calibrated benchmarks but many councils required certain infrastructure like stormwater pipe outlets, sea walls etc to be built to the king tide datum of the day and it was common sense for anyone to build infrastructure to that datum even if council approval was not required so it is not all that difficult to observe if new king tides are exceeding the old levels or vice versa over a long period of time.
And while you're at it Bernie, what about your own obs?
You're not gonna tell me you didn't have the presence of mind or the interest to make any?
Forgive me for making assumptions Bernie but you, being decended from a long line of proud polder preservers whose lives have historically depended on them sticking their collective hand in it, have really let the side down by taking your eye off the ball, so to speak.
Do you really NOT have any long term SL obs??
Ever noticed how SLs are roughly the same all over the world?
No. That would be a strange thing to notice given that mean sea level differs by about 2m around the world. Again, your ignorance is showing.
" mean sea level differs by about 2m around the world."
Differs all of 2m hey Mike?
Is that with or without tides?
So Mikelove, how would that convert to an average percentage compared with temperature?
Wow, learn some facts for once in your life:
"North America’s northeastern coast has been battered by hurricanes and other major storms throughout history. A 1775 hurricane killed 4,000 people in Newfoundland; an 1873 monster left 600 dead in Nova Scotia; others pummeled Canada’s Maritime Provinces in 1866, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003.
Manhattan got pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693. They were followed by more behemoths in 1788, 1821, 1893, 1944, 1954 and 1992. Other “confluences of severe weather events” brought killer storms like the four-day Great Blizzard of 1888. The 1893 storm largely eradicated Hog Island, and the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit LI as a category 3 hurricane with wind gusts up to 180 mph.
Experts say such winds today would rip windows from skyscrapers and cause a deadly blizzard of flying glass, masonry, chairs, desks and other debris from high-rise offices and apartments. People would seek safety in subway tunnels, where they would drown as the tunnels flood.
Sandy was merely the latest “confluence” (tropical storm, northeaster and full-moon high tide) to blast the New York-New Jersey area. It was never a matter of if, but only of when, such a storm would hit."
You learn to write. The TITLE of the graph is "Snow Cover Analysis" and the link name begins with "snow". Since you deigned to provide the link on its own I presumed that its self-confessed subject was what you wanted to point out. (Silly of me, I know.)
So, now we know that you consider "freezing with a vengeance" to mean first year surface ice? That's only marginally less silly than considering it to be "snow cover". Most first year ice doesn't survive the melt season in most years - just like most snow cover doesn't. Why do you think we look at trends and not snapshots?
SLs are not roughly the same all over the world, you fool. Like so many of your suburban neighbours you're confusing the crude, truncated 'obvious' world that lives in your head with the rather more difficult and interesting beast that actually exists outside it.
Clearly, in a very real sense, you've never had much engagement with the latter.
And you're far too arrogant - and, underneath, far too insecure - to acknowledge this. Hence; Denial.
And, chameleon, you're just a bore. Which makes Spangly a tidal bore, I suppose.
Weak minds think alike. What does that remind you of?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/28/dana-nuccitellis-holiday-trick-fo…
Is this an argument from personal ignorance that I see?
You've asked a good question, but other people know the answer. If you actually care rather than are using it to posture you'll do the homework to find out. I've given you a bunch of clues of the sort of thing you should be looking for.
You're impressively determined to drive forwards by looking in the rear view mirror. Ever wondered why that is?
You only ever read the titles Lothe?
That explains a lot.
Bill, show us your data. Not you bile.
You're not giving Topex/Poseidon/Jason any chance.
And now any pretence has dropped away and Spangly is just spewing Watts-chum. Are you really so pathetic that you're going to try to cling to the nonsensical cosmic ray hypothesis? Or 'it's the sun'? Wrong. Again.
Or was this a disarmingly honest reference to your own weak intellect, in common with the rest of the dupes at WUWT, perhaps?
"Weak minds think alike. What does that remind you of?"
Bill, my best friend, and so reliable.
Spangly, you seem to be one of those remarkable ageing curmudgeons who repeatedly rejects all evidence provided to him until it becomes clear that the only response he will accept as proper is simply his own nonsensical beliefs mirrored back to him.
Dana will eat Rawls alive. I look forward to it. Not in your mind, of course, but, as we've already established, there isn't much link between your mind and external reality.
I am not a great fan of wuwt because it too goes overboard on accusations and emotive language as many of the commenters here. It is just from a different perspective.
However, that paricular link does demonstrate the shortcomings of a blind reliance on statistical representations of something as variable as climate.
To be so certain that one interpretation is the only possibly correct interpretation and that all policy must be based on that one interpretation has no basis in any historical precedent.
It's OK to be certain that particular interpretation shows that particular result but as Bolt has stated, you would also need real world significant evidence to validate that hypothesis.
Chameleon now playing 'the lone voice of disinterested reason above the fray' card. Yawn. Are you determined to inhabit every trolling cliche, or is your entity actually some tag-teaming sock-puppet collective?
You keep telling people who are clearly disagreeing that they agree.
Odd.
ROFL! What a spectacularly idiotic claim!
If the messenger is biased or promoting outright falsehoods, then dealing with the message necessitates pointing that out - and correcting for its flaws! It most certainly doesn't mean "gullibly swallow it and treat it as good information" - well, not to most of us, anyway.
And you, on the other hand, are not dealing with the message provided by all of the evidence given to you on these threads. Heck, you haven't dealt with the message that "climate4you" is more interested in misleading its readers by cherrypicking and unsubstantiated editorialising than in giving them the full picture.
Ever wondered why you're projecting that tactic on to other people?
Speaking of failing to deal with the message:
I know you can't - not even in sections where the "clearly stated methodology" is almost entirely unstated - but argument from personal ignorance is fallacious and unconvincing. And that's why I pointed out some of the distortion and cherrypicking tactics he uses.
One of your errors is to presume that methods may not be simultaneously "clearly outlined" and unscrupulous. And as you've admitted both explicitly and implicitly you aren't equipped with the skills necessary to detect when they are unscrupulous - once again in that quote - yet you insist certain analyses from certain sources are kosher.
Ever wondered why you're so adamantly making mutually inconsistent claims?
I already did that.
But since it didn't sink in the first time, here's another attempt. Ponder carefully. Twice over this ground is enough.
In some areas he chooses to show some data sets and not others, and - entirely coincidentally I'm sure - the ones that he leaves out make it much easier for readers to get a different message than his editorialising (albeit often subtle) implies.
He does analyses on top of some solid data sets in order to support his editorialising that (a) are not described in anywhere near sufficient detail to understand how they were done, (b) are not obviously appropriate ways to study the issue he's talking about and (c) are often vast simplifications compared to how the issues are studied in the scientific literature - and, coincidentally I'm sure - point to very different conclusions from more sophisticated and careful analyses.
Furthermore - coincidentally, I'm sure - he does not draw his readers' attention to those other analyses, does not compare his with the others, and certainly does not demonstrate why his are better than theirs.
In other cases he chooses a form of presentation that minimises the visual appearance to the naked eye of the very outcome of the (mainstream) analysis that is the issue. This is not the behaviour of someone who is interested in honestly presenting what the data says.
The whole thing is practically a master class in how to mislead the gullible with statistics and a few well chosen words. (And look, it works!)
Also, contrary to your claim, I haven't set myself up as authority on anything. I'm merely applying the first touches of standard scientific tests to claims made. I'm no scientist so anyone actually competent in the field could probably go a lot deeper. But from what I can detect, it's obvious that the claims would not survive peer review in any decent journal.
(Have you ever wondered, if he has such compelling evidence that the mainstream is quite far off reality, why he hasn't published in a good journal? It would be a huge career boost overnight to demonstrate that.)
Given you well-demonstrated inability to distinguish pseudo-scientific bullshit from careful analysis, I will take that claim with a huge dollop of salt.
Wrong again. At least you're consistent.
Bill,
I guess stating the bleeding obvious can be boring.
I think the fact that the climate is a variable and difficult beast is rather a bleeding obvious and hence boring statement as well.
You seem unwilling to realise that apart from your tendency to throw unsubstantiated personal insults that you have provided nothing that would actually disprove what either spangles or bolt or even my boring comments have outlined. Neither have they proved anything that other comments have claimed.
What is your point actually?
So we come full circle, and (coincidentally I'm sure), despite all of the evidence pointing out the falsehood, you re-assert that climate science is based on nothing more than a bit of statistical manipulation - and in doing so implies that you can distinguish scientific bullshit from gold despite extensive counter-evidence.
Truly, self-awareness is not one of your strong suits.
Now that we've seen your full repertoire of claims, will you feel satisfied enough to go make them somewhere else?
So Lotharsson,
did you happen to notice Humlum's credentials and published work?
Despite what you claim here, he is not a lightweight in the science world.
On what basis should I take your analysis over his?
I find it rather odd that you are so easily able to dismiss someone with this much experience.
Do you have better credentials?
I did not claim that this work was better or worse. I linked it because it showed how different results and conclusions can be statistically presented using the same data sets.
Tim also showed this.
While I agree that Humlum's approach is less complicated I do not agree he has presented anything in an invalid manner.
I also pointed out that extrapolating SLR from shoter data sets is unlikely to be of much use.
Humlum is not the only scientist who has chosen to do this however.
Oh goodness me Lotharsson,
seriously?
I have not claimed any such thing.
Some of my closest business associates and friends are scientists.
I do not disrepect scientists or science.
Can I respectfully suggest you go back and reread YA Rob's and David B's comments?
While their perspective is somewhat similar to yours they actually conceded that stats play a role in this discussion.
On the basis that I made easily verifiable claims about the shortcomings in his presentation - or on the basis that as far as I'm aware he hasn't managed to get any of them published in a peer reviewed journal which should be a big red flag of warning - or on the basis that his claims go against the conclusions from a mass of peer reviewed papers and he hasn't demonstrated why his analysis should be taken seriously, let alone seriously enough to discard all of that other work. In other words, the last point is not my analysis at all, it's the analysis of the entire field of climate science.
You should preferably take all three.
Certainly not.
But argument from authority is fallacious, unless it is the authority of evidence and logic. And if you really want an argument from authority, the overwhelming consensus reported by the IPCC is far far stronger. So...are you agreeing that the consensus position should be accepted now because you argue by authority?
Riiiiiiiiight.
You claimed they were "useful tools" which "help us understand the world around us", even though they reach different conclusions from more rigorous analysis. How can they be "useful tools" if they are not better than the alternative which they contradict?
Coherence is not your strong suit.
Riiiiiight. So the whole thing about them being "useful tools for understanding" was not relevant?
True, you certainly demonstrated that different results can be reached from the same data set - which no-one disputed anyway. I mean, that's obvious in the blog post, and in many others here.
But you refuse to go the next step. When two different conclusions are reached, how do you determine which one is more justified? And when I started to point out some signs that an amateur can use if they have nothing else to go on you object to their validity. When I point out that the professionals overwhelmingly disagree, you also object. It seems - like Spangled Drongo - the only analysis you won't find objectionable is the one you already agree with.
Why is no-one here surprised at that?
Your first handful of comments here did.
Self-awareness isn't your strong suit.
As has everyone here as far as I can see. That's never been the point of contention.
Comprehension isn't your strong suit either.
So...that thing you started out on this site with, what was it, something like "climate models at their core are fundamentally based on statistics, just like economic and population models are": you are finally repudiating that now after refusing for so long in the face of counter-evidence?
Maybe you could clarify where you think climate science uses something more than statistical manipulation etc.
"SLs are not roughly the same all over the world,"
Bill, according to the link you supplied [did you read it?] SLs vary +/- 24 cms world wide and when the trades vary, so do the SLs.
As I said: roughly the the same all over the world.
"Why do you think we look at trends and not snapshots?"
You don't look at either, Lothe, you just look at models.
Typical Drongo. Reflecting his own behaviour on others when it's pointed out that he's doing it.
I'm up for the game though. Which of my points and questions are distractions? If you list them we can analyse whether they really are distractions or not, and we can presume that any that you don't list are automatically substantive and require answers from you.
Oh, I have, and far beyond Daly's ridiculous blatherings. There is much that can be said about the errors in Daly's unsound notions, but here's a sampling...
Daly presumes that Captain Shortt (via his agent Mason) is less accurate in recording the wording on the datum plaque than was the yacht passenger named "Eight Bells", even though the Shortt rendering describes a nautical time format standard in the 19th century, and Eight Bells' wording does not. Further, Eight Bells' account is dated 3 years after Shortt's, and though the latter was already noting the degradation of the text, Daly presumes that Eight Bells more accurately records the time - although to fiddle his figures Daly immediately goes on to presume that Eight Bells misread the tide height stated on the plaque...
Daly is drawing long bows in order to allow his interpretation,and is discounting parsimony that rebuts his own interpretation.
Daly ignores the fact that tide gauges around the world, aside from Lempriere's mark, indicate sea level rise.
Further, Daly's insistence that the Lempriere mark is a mean sea level mark leads to the ridiculous situation that the land around Port Arthur would have had to drop by 30 cm - in addition to assuming that there has been no sea level rise in the whole time since Lempriere's carving of the mark, contrary to those uncooperative gauges around the world!
But not only that, Daly hypothesises that this subsidence occurred between 1 July 1841 (the date of the mark's carving) and the 20th century, because otherwise it would have been recorded by tide gauges - gauges which actually show sea level rise (shades of Ernst Beck...?). So these gauges would have been able to show sea level decreases (except Daly conveniently places this before the time of gauges) but they don't show sea level rise - notice any inconsistency...?
But it's worse than that. Much, much worse. Daly actually suggests that the subsidence occurred before 1888, using Shortt's account of less water over rocks latterly, and pictures that apparently show less water around Port Arthur. There are two serious problems with this theory - the first is that such subsidence in such a short time implies a major tectonic event that seems to be curiously absent from any records of the time, and the second is that shallower water over time implies that the land rose, which is in diametric opposition to Daly's claim that it sank 30 cm! Daly is confusing the idea of "sea level fall" with land subsidence - if the land had dropped as Daly imagines, it would have resulted in an apparent sea level rise, as would be required to drop this stubbornly high Lempriere mark down to mean sea level.
Daly's theory is self-contradictory.
Have you never thought it strange that Daly's version has never been published as a rebuttal to Hunter, Pugh, Coleman and Church? It's highly amusing though that Anthony Watts, Joanne Codling, Steve Goddard and 'Tallbloke', amongst others, gave Daly credence. To his credit, Steve McIntyre smelled the carcass of Daly's rat and kept it at arm's length.
One last comment about Daly though. Before the Hunter et al paper was released, he was all for the excellence of the Port Arthut site because:
Now why do you think Daly said that?
Moving on...
I never said that you "used surges to claim SLR". Desperate stuff.
However, you claimed that the tide at your river wall was influenced by the ocean surge (your words, remember), and that your 'mark' on the river wall reflected decreasing sea level over time (your ongoing claim). I simply rebutted your claim that "we aren’t talking about SURGES" .
You are the one telling lies. However, if you can show where I said that you "used surges to claim SLR" I'd be happy to see the link.
Now you're just being a fool, and demonstrating that you have no clue about satellite guidance and location technology, or about statistics.
But no-one here is surprised.
Lotharsson:
Snap!
chameleon --- I did not concede.
I asserted.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_Importance_of_statistics_in_physi…
“SLs are not roughly the same all over the world,”
Bill, looking further at those links of yours and considering your vacuous comment, here are some figures:
Average global temp, 16c. Average global temp range + 100c.= ~ 600%
Average global sea depth, 14,000'. Average global SL variation range, +/- 1'.[ie 2'] = 0.014%
How similar is that?
Paying attention, Mike?
However, it would be wise to (at least) read
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-mo…
in which the very first question is
What is the difference between a physics-based model and a statistical model?
and the answer reads in part
"Climate models are fundamentally physics-based, but some of the small scale physics is only known empirically (for instance, the increase of evaporation as the wind increases). Thus statistical fits to the observed data are included in the climate model formulation, but these are only used for process-level parameterisations, not for trends in time."
which means these are not statistical predictors (except for ENSO).
What total rubbish and nonsense Lotharsson,
I have not and did not say I disrespect scientists and/or science.
Neither did I claim that climate models have nothing to do with science.
If you were trying to insult me you have spectacularly suceeded.
I have academic quals in science and so does my husband!!
A large number of our friends and associates are also scientists in a varying number of fields including environmental sciences.
So despite your crude insults to the contrary I am more than capable of differentiating science from stat representations of scientific data.
What you have effectively done is 'cherry picked' sentences from my comments and analysed them out of context with the rest based on your very quick and totally unsubstantiated assumptions about me.
I would suggest that is rather unscrupulous of you Lotharsson and totally unscientific of you.
Far more unscrupulous than the claims that Tim made about the stat representation of climate data.
Of course argument from authority is fallacious.
Good grief!
Yet there you are partly (repeat partly) claiming there really is only ONE authority that we should take notice of and someone like Humlum, who has perfectly decent scientific qualifications and experience, should be dismissed.
Most of your comments here remind me of something to do with pots and kettles.
So yes your constant rudeness and goading has suceeded in being downright insulting.
If that was your aim.
Congratulations Lotharsson.
Cheers
Chameleon
I apologise David B,
You are correct, you asserted.
Ah, the carnival clown act continues with more wrongness.
I'm beginning to suspect you enjoy intellectual humiliation.
Thermal expansion coefficient of ocean is approximately 0.4267/K
from
http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_7/2_7_9.html
from which one is supposed to see that almost all the SLR over the instrumental period is from thermal expansion.
Comprehension fails you again.
I did not point out that you said you did, but that you did (and Wow pointed out the same back then).
Recall isn't your strong suit either.
What you said was - and I quote:
And a little later as you expounded on that claim you introduced the new term "stat model":
And you went on to elaborate on the term:
But wait, wait, I thought you just said you've never claimed that climate models have nothing to do with science. And yet here you are calling climate models "stat models" and then rhetorically questioning whether they are scientific?
Comprehension fail. That is not what I pointed out.
Not post-grad research, I would venture. If I am wrong I would suggest you ask for your money back.
I'd also point out that "academic quals in science" are no bulwark against making the most egregiously unscientific claims, as Joanne Nova and various emeritus professors have demonstrated over the last few years.
Logic fail - as previously pointed out. My analysis is not based on assumptions about you. It is based on the evidence you provide here. Provide different evidence and my analysis will change. You've been invited to in the past.
And feel free to show where I have reached a conclusion that is incorrect because it is based on an out-of-context quote.
Comprehension fail.
I did no such thing. Try reading it again SLOWLY. Hint: the word "if" has a specific connotation.
You really think so? But then you argue against your own claim, seemingly without realising it:
Comprehension AND logic fail.
I did not argue that Humlum as a person should be dismissed. I argued that his "climate4you" report was seriously misleading. If you - allegedly science-qualified - cannot understand this distinction, you are unequipped to be making the kinds of claims you are making.
From
http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/03/scientists-track-the-oceans-rise…
we have about 0.5 mm/yr of SLR due to thermal expansion since 1965. From
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
global temperatures rose 0,67 K which is 0.013958 K/yr.
So the actual thermal expansion is 35.82 mm/K.
Thanks for those links David B,
They have the common sense to point out the differences between what is known and what is the best guesses.
You might enjoy them too Lotharsson, it may help you to perhaps calm down a little.
:-)
chameleon --- You are welcome. I used this occasion as an opportunity to work out the approximate thermal expansion, 36 mm/K (since I always carry around far more decimal places than are significant). I wanted this is there are a few who were concerned about it. But compared to what is coming from melting ice it clearly is of minor significance.
Yes David B,
and as several of them point out, they need more data and a better understanding of glacial melt.
They also point out that it is not consistent.
“Which of my points and questions are distractions?”
How about big noting yourself with your multihull designer mates who served no purpose except to show you a bit about pos feedback?
It is interesting that you are selective in detailing Ross’ instructions because this is his account of his dealings with Lempriere and it was for a MEAN SL mark which is what has always been and still is used for obvious reasons:
"My principal object in visiting Port Arthur was to afford a comparison of our standard barometer with that which had been employed for several years by Mr. Lempriere, the Deputy Assistant Commissary General, in accordance with my instructions, and also to establish a permanent mark at the zero point, or general mean level of the sea as determined by the tidal observations which Mr. Lempriere had conducted with perseverance and exactness for some time: by which means any secular variation in the relative level of the land and sea, which is known to occur on some coasts, might at any future period be detected, and its amount determined.
The point chosen for this purpose was the perpendicular cliff of the small islet off Point Puer, which, being near to the tide register, rendered the operation more simple and exact. The Governor, whom I had accompanied on an official visit to the settlement, gave directions to afford Mr. Lempriere every assistance of labourers he required, to have the mark cut deeply in the rock in the exact spot which his tidal observations indicated as the mean level of the ocean."
The above plus the fact that this benchmark is ~35 cms above MSL strongly indicates a SL fall but even if we accept the weak CSIRO reasoning, nothing much is happening
“However, you claimed that the tide at your river wall was influenced by the ocean surge”
Don’t verbal me Bernie, this is what I said: “At my benchmark the ’74 flood was about 1.5 metres above the king tide mark and the current was still running UPSTREAM at its peak. IOW this rise was possibly all due to the cyclone and sea surge. Not the flood.”
In case you can’t understand English, that means that the 1.5 m increase ABOVE THE NORMAL KING TIDE was possibly all due to the cyclone and sea surge.
That is claiming the reverse of what you say.
“Now you’re just being a fool, and demonstrating that you have no clue about satellite guidance and location technology, or about statistics.”
So S/N doesn’t cut it with you Bern? Not if it agrees with your ideology, eh?
What science! What religion! But you probably sleep better without any conflict.
Is that why you have spent your well advanced life without making any observations of your own?
Your ancestors would be proud of you
Actually, it served a very specific purpose. My point was to inform you that I wanted to check your reputation amongst people who are professional boat designers and who understand hydrodynamics.
You failed to come up with the goods by the way, and your attempt at one-upmanship with your silliness about positive feedback blew up in your face.
Ba-bowww.
Drongo, go back and read my post again. The Lempreire mark cannot possibly be a mean sea level mark, for the multiple reasins I listed. Daly simply FUBARed in trying to mangle the evidence to fit his theory.
Also, Ross himself said:
Read the above quote from Ross carefully, several times if you have to, because it describes what eventuated - the mark was made at "‘height of water in tide gauge 6 ft. 1 in", exactly in accordance with Ross's description of the preferrable method of construction.
And just to repeat, in case you missed in the first and second times around, there is no way that the mark could measure mean sea level in 1841. The only way Daly managed to scam this was to claim that the land have subsided 30 cm after the mark was made - which inconveniently was contradicted by the fact of stories that water was shallower according to his 'evidence'..
http://keyportarthur.org.au/extras/1044/The%20sea%20level%20at%20PA%20f…
http://staff.acecrc.org.au/~johunter/ihr_paper.pdf
http://staff.acecrc.org.au/~johunter/bamos_pap.pdf
Face it Drongo, Daly was wrong about the Lempreire mark, and you are wrong about the mark - and about everything else that you claim that contradicts professional science.
Verballing you?!
Let's just rewind. You said:
I said:
How the fuck am I verballing you? You said that the rise at your mark was due to cyclone/surge. Then you said "In case you hadn’t noticed BJ, we aren’t talking about SURGES".
How exactly am I verballing you, when all I was doing was pointing out what you had said?
Doddering fool.
Ah, a spark flashes.
This has been one of my points all along - that meterological and oceanographic superimpositions (aside from riverine alterations and other factors) mask sea level manifestation at your river wall. I'm pleased to see that you now concede this: the next step is to admit that these confounders render useless your measurement of riverine king tide as a proxy for sea level.
You really are off your fucking rocker. It's exactly what I was saying.
Signal and noise?! You are all of the latter and none of the former.
As one who appreciates objectivity and testability, your absence of signal and excess of noise certainly does not cut it with me.
The rest of your screed is just blah, blah, blah.
At least you are consistent in that way...
Hi Tim.
This and the first of these three posts should be deleted. The second is properly formatted.
I'd have emailed you instead of posting this third time, but I'm having trouble accessing my usual account that I use for blog emails.
Actually, it served a very specific purpose. My point was to inform you that I wanted to check your reputation amongst people who are professional boat designers and who understand hydrodynamics.
You failed to come up with the goods by the way, and your attempt at one-upmanship with your silliness about positive feedback blew up in your face.
Ba-bowww.
Drongo, go back and read my post again. The Lempreire mark cannot possibly be a mean sea level mark, for the multiple reasins I listed. Daly simply FUBARed in trying to mangle the evidence to fit his theory.
Also, Ross himself said:
Read the above quote from Ross carefully, several times if you have to, because it describes what eventuated - the mark was made at "‘height of water in tide gauge 6 ft. 1 in", exactly in accordance with Ross's description of the preferrable method of construction.
And just to repeat, in case you missed in the first and second times around, there is no way that the mark could measure mean sea level in 1841. The only way Daly managed to scam this was to claim that the land have subsided 30 cm after the mark was made - which inconveniently was contradicted by the fact of stories that water was shallower according to his 'evidence'..
http://keyportarthur.org.au/extras/1044/The%20sea%20level%20at%20PA%20f…
http://staff.acecrc.org.au/~johunter/ihr_paper.pdf
http://staff.acecrc.org.au/~johunter/bamos_pap.pdf
Face it Drongo, Daly was wrong about the Lempreire mark, and you are wrong about the mark - and about everything else that you claim that contradicts professional science.
Verballing you?!
Let's just rewind. You said:
I said:
How the fuck am I verballing you? You said that the rise at your mark was due to cyclone/surge. Then you said "In case you hadn’t noticed BJ, we aren’t talking about SURGES".
How exactly am I verballing you, when all I was doing was pointing out what you had said?
Doddering fool.
Ah, a spark flashes.
This has been one of my points all along - that meterological and oceanographic superimpositions (aside from riverine alterations and other factors) mask sea level manifestation at your river wall. I'm pleased to see that you now concede this: the next step is to admit that these confounders render useless your measurement of riverine king tide as a proxy for sea level.
You really are off your fucking rocker. It's exactly what I was saying.
Signal and noise?! You are all of the latter and none of the former.
As one who appreciates objectivity and testability, your absence of signal and excess of noise certainly does not cut it with me.
The rest of your screed is just blah, blah, blah.
At least you are consistent in that way...
the differences between what is known and what is the best guesses
Yet another imbecile who has no understanding of science, which is about inference to the best explanation, which could be translated into imbecile-speak as "best guesses".
Ever noticed how SLs are roughly the same all over the world?
stupid dipshit thinks that because, whenever he's out in his boat, the water always comes up to the same level.
Ianam,
Did you actually look at the links?
I've been quite calm all along - except, perhaps, in your mind. Shame you have time to comment on this, but not address more substantial issues I've raise. But perhaps you just need a bit more information?
Here's some analysis which suggests that one should be very careful not to simply accept what Prof. Humlum claims about climate science without doing some careful and informed checking - the kind of informed analysis that the general public does not have the skills to perform, but the kind of thing I'd expect someone with academic science credentials to have a quick look for before they cited un-peer reviewed work.
Here's some analysis of a non-peer reviewed letter published in a newspaper that Humlum signed on to (and some of the claims look similar to some that you have made here). If the analysis is even half right it speaks to the poor quality of claims Humlum is prepared to lend his name to outside of the peer-reviewed journals - as does this analysis of his May 2011 newspaper article.
You could also analyse the comments on Humlum's August 2012 paper starting here which suggest the same thing. And the comments starting here about the Climate4You website.
If that's not enough, you could also consider the fairly straightforward critiques made by actual climate scientists here. That one claims that Humlum has relied a paper which rebuts his claim in its abstract without explaining why his results trump the one he cites; that another fairly basic critique (for a climate scientists) has been made to Humlum several times but he continues to ignore it; it links to still further examples alleging Humlum uses his figures to misrepresent; and points out Humlum repeatedly contradicting his own claims. And you could read the article itself which critiques a Humlum paper - and links to earlier examples of blatant distortion and misrepresentation by Humlum. Ironically, one of these calls Humlum out for doing the kind of unphysical forecast-via-extrapolation-from-statistical-curve-fit (complete with leaving out inconvenient portions of the underlying data series) that you have been suggesting is done all too often in climate science.
And I'm sure you could have found all this and more had you wanted to! Taken together these suggest that Humlum's credentials and achievements in geology have not translated to the field of climate science where his work is frequently shoddy (and others aren't always so charitable).
Of course, to figure out whether those writers or Humlum are decidedly more correct would take more of those skills that most of Humlum's intended non-scientific readership (including you based on the evidence here) don't have. But even without those skills some of those commenters occasionally give critiques that are verifiable even by scientifically unskilled people. If anyone is actually interested they will be able to find those critiques in minutes and see if they are valid.
(Anyone else wanna bet that chameleon won't make the effort?)
Area of the world's oceans: 361,000,000 sq klms
variation in height: +/- 24 centimeters
That makes a billiard table look very bumpy.
With something that finds equilibrium as agressively as water, if your local SL has not increased and even reduced in ~70 years, what are the chances of accelerating SLR anywhere?
SL variation of +/- 24 centimeters over the surface of the world's oceans is the equivalent of one twentieth of the thickness of a human hair over the length of a full size billiard table.
Now I just installed a full sized billiard table and running a steel straight edge over the 2" thick Italian slate produced bigger gaps than that.
So the ocean is considerably flatter than a billiard table.
Is that equilibrium or what?
And the ant can lift 50x its own weight but if you brought it up to the size of a human, it wouldn't be able to lift itself.
Your billiard table doesn't have a range of 24 cm in the height of its beize.
"I have academic quals in science…"
I.e. you went to school one day.
"PS Sandy.
You truly are champions at missing the point entirely."
You stated that no coastal effects were seen.
Sandy gives lie to that.
Apparently to you "reading" means "looking at the words".
I would suggest a course in reading COMPREHENSION.
So the flatness is due to the cloth is it Wow? Why don't you check my figures if you reckon I'm wrong.
And I probably am.
I think it's more like 1/100 th the thickness of a human hair.
One micron over the length of the table. +/- half a micron.
Wow?
Sandy was a hurricane and a localised weather event.
Of course it affected the coast during the storm surges.
Who said hurricanes and major storms don't have coastal effects?
What do you think Sandy was?
Storms, hurricanes, cyclones etc have always affected the coastline and regularly cause damage to coastal infrastructure.
If you believe Sandy was something other than a hurricane would you care to explain in what manner?
You silly person, water in the oceans never gets a chance to reach equilibrium, tell me why?
Are you aware that oceanic surfaces change in mean height as one sails away from the coast? In fact there is a hill of water in the North Atlantic with the highest level offset to the West. Once again, tell me why?
Ocean levels are also affected by differential gravitation due to density changes in the planets surface.
The bottom line in all this is that discussions of sea level rise over the last 200 years are almost moot compared to the rise we will see in the coming decades most of the cryosphere increases acceleration of melt. If you have not grasped that yet then you have not been paying attention to all the citations that have appeared here and elsewhere.
"With something that finds equilibrium as agressively as water"
It has to flow. The gradient of 2m over 1000km is quite low and water is not of zero viscosity and the water cannot reach light speed.
Therefore it takes water TIME to move to the equilibrium.
My goodness, the idiocy of deniers knows no end.
"Sandy was a hurricane and a localised weather event."
It pushed water up further inland because the ocean has risen.
Do you do idiocy for a job, or is this just a hobby of yours?
spangled drongo:
This one statement tell me that you are out of your depth (hint: what happens if you use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius?). To be consistent with the way you dealt with temperature, you should measure sea level as deviations from about a metre above low water mark and include minimum trough depth and maximum wave height.
What exactly do you mean by 'average global temperature range'?
chameleon:
Instead of arguing whether or not Humlum is a lightweight, if you were a scientist you would have noticed that Lotharsson gave some very specific criticisms of Humlum's work and you would be addressing these. Are they valid? If not, why not? I assume that you have ignored them so far because either you know they are valid or you are unable to assess them.
"You silly person, water in the oceans never gets a chance to reach equilibrium, tell me why?"
Lionel love, do you know how high that "hill of water" is?
Bill's link said the hills and the valleys reached a height and depth of +/- 24 cms but even if they were twice that it would still make the ocean many times flatter than the best competition billiard table you could buy.
When there is that sort of agressive seeking and finding of equilibrium you can be sure if your local sea or ocean hasn't risen in your lifetime, there is nothing happening.
Just look out the window, Lionel and stop believing the stuff you are being fed. It may not be true.
Wow still thinks he has time to push the bath water up one end while he dries himself.
Why do you think they are referred to as "Sea Levels" Wowsie?
Could it be because they are LEVEL?
And even if the hills were your claimed 2m [which they're not], they would be flatter than a billiard table.
And how long do you think it would take for those 24 cm "hills" to dissipate once the wind stopped blowing?
Just think, if the collective Doltoid equilibrium was anywhere near this effective, you might absorb some of this wisdom and we wouldn't have a problem.
The sea level height with respect to the geoid in the Pacific Warm Pool is over 100 meters; page 53 of
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&ved=0CE…
RS, go and check what the average ocean depth is.
"What exactly do you mean by ‘average global temperature range’?"
The coldest place on earth and the hottest place on earth in any given day. eg -50c at the winter pole to 50c in a summer desert. It is often a lot more than this.
"Lionel love, do you know how high that “hill of water” is?"
Yes.
That is why they posted the height of that hill of water.
Do you have any more questions that indicate just as clearly that you don't read a damn thing?
"Wow still thinks he has time to push the bath water up one end while he dries himself."
Nope.
And I'm a little disturbed to hear you imagining me getting out of my bath.
PS how fat is your arse when you can relate your bath to the ocean in size?
"Could it be because they are LEVEL?"
No.
David BB, have you been listening to Robyn [100m] Williams?
That link of yours is referring only to the geoid and has nothing to do with true sea level.
I have been saying on this thread all along how the earth is a pear-shaped-geoid-with-flat-spots which only underlines the difficulty in assessing SLs from a satellite.
Wowsie is still full of blindingly relevant facts as usual.
And his rebuttal is punishing.
"“Could it be because they are LEVEL?”
No." LOL!
What debating school did you go to Wowsie?
And Wowsie, I'm pleased to hear you do get out of your bath to dry yourself.
There's hope for you yet.
There's none for you, I'm afraid.
"That link of yours is referring only to the geoid and has nothing to do with true sea level."
So the level at which the sea is at has nothing to do with the true sea level???
"The geoid surface is irregular, unlike the reference ellipsoid which is a mathematical idealized representation of the physical Earth, but considerably smoother than Earth's physical surface. ... the geoid's total variation is less than 200 m (−106 to +85 m) compared to a perfect mathematical ellipsoid."
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid
which contains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geoid_height_red_blue_averagebw.png
and there we see that in the Pacific Warm Pool the geoid is elevated about 30 meters above the reference ellipsoid.
Sailing just north of the equator from Peru to Borneo is uphill almost the entire way. Fortunately the wind is from the stern.
It pushed water up further inland BECAUSE(?) the ocean has risen?
Further than what?
Can you supply the evidence that concludes that Wow?
That's the best you've got???
Richard S,
If I was trying to present Humlum's work as superior or better than others, you would have a point.
I wasn't.
There are plenty of similar rebuttals of the work that Lotharsson relies on for similar reasons.
My reason for posting Humlum's work was to point out that
data sets can be presented in many different but equally valid ways.
I absolutely agree there is 'cherry picking' and assumptions involved. By their very nature, especially the extrapolation work, it is a given.
They are all useful but I don't believe any of them are good enough to be used like some type of irrefutable crystal balls.
Their predictive capabilities are meant as a guide not as 'undeniable' prophecy.
Don't get me wrong. It is all very interesting and increasingly high tech. I think that is a good thing. But even the people who put them together always make sure they have caveats and disclaimers about their certainty (as they should).
However, IMHO they are being misused and possibly even outright abused by the surrounding
politics and media.
data sets can be presented in different ways that are equally valid.
Sorry about the way that posted. Samsung tablet fail!
Didn't let me edit.
That last sentence has inexplicably copied when I attempted to edit it.
So no peer reviewed evidence to support that BECAUSE Wow?
I am curious about your reason for claiming that water was pushed FURTHER(than what?) inland BECAUSE the sea has risen.
My understanding is that area of the coast has had far more damaging hurricanes than Sandy. I believe water has travelled inland before as well.
So it appears to be "yes, that is the best you've got".
Tell me, does the eglish language always present this opaque barrier to understanding for you?
Wow --- The eglish language is greek to me.
:-)
"My understanding "
Well that's the start of your problems right there.
"Sailing just north of the equator from Peru to Borneo is uphill almost the entire way. Fortunately the wind is from the stern."
Yes it is David but it only rises about a foot in that distance.
All caused by those trade winds you mention. And when they ease, the "hill" dissipates.
The SLs on this odd shaped world we inhabit are all equilibrated around the centre of gravity so boats do not "climb hills" in that respect.
I thought YOU would have known that.
So Wow?
No evidence?
I'm not sure why you think you have answered anything by saying 'is that the best you've got'.
It was you earlier complaining that others don't supply evidence to back up their comments wasn't it?
I guess Greek is fine. Maybe David B can translate it? :-)
You claim that the water was pushed FURTHER inland BECAUSE of higher SL during hurricane Sandy.
Where's the evidence.
It seems, according to you and Lotharsson that it can't just be anectdotal and/or personal non scientific obs. It will apparently need to be peer reviewed in an acceptable scientific journal.
So have you got that evidence Wow?
And maybe you might care to explain how the singular isolated weather event of hurricane Sandy negates 70 years of tide gaugue obs supplied by spangled and/or the 50 year obs supplied by Bolt?
You're falling foul of that "in my understanding" problem again, SD.
Anyways, you at least seem to have dropped that ridiculous "the sea is completely LEVEL" crap.
"So Wow?
No evidence?"
What do you need evidence for???
That water goes further inland when the sea level is risen???
spangled drongo --- Go back to a previous post of mine to understand that the correct figure is over 100 meters. That's over about 18,000 km so the grade is rather gentle. :-)
Glitter's ballsack here does't read posts, hence the complete ignorqance of anything said by anyone else other than sparkling dingleberry's ridiculous assertions.
And even those get short shrift by the dingleberry itself.
spangled drongo --- In my sailing days I had an occasion when it was all the diesel could do (no wind) to make a modicum of progress against a contrary tide in the San Juan Islands. Certainly was 'uphill'.
Wow,
you made the claim that this happened during Sandy and it is proof that spangled and bolt's tide gauge obs were misreprepresenting SL.
You seem quite adamant, so where is the evidence that you set so much store by?
How do you think Sandy negates spangled's obs of SL?
"you made the claim that this happened during Sandy "
What "this"?
Sandy is a convenient case to argue for increased impacts from SLR, however I would suggest there are other features that contributed. The facts are that there have been worse storms in the area, and Sandy is simply another extreme event of the kind which do occur from time to time.
Did SLR contribute? I guess it may have though I'd imagine it's hard to pin the details down. I am sure the bedwetters here would have plenty of pro-arguments. Wow though does not for he is clearly the least likely to offer thoughtful commentary.
This extract from a piece by Paul Driessen is interesting for the light it casts on other potential contributory factors. I make no claims for the correctness of this piece, nor do I know who Driessen is or if he is a knowledgeable commentator. I merely observe there is always more to the story than our alarmist friends would have us believe.
"Mr. Bloomberg’s Arverne by the Sea initiative transformed what he called a swath of vacant land into a vibrant and growing oceanfront community, with affordable homes starting at $559,000. (The land was vacant because a 1950 storm wiped it clean of structures.) The new homes were built on 167 acres of land raised five feet above the surrounding Far Rockaway area. Those Arverne homes mostly survived Sandy. But the high ground caused storm surges to rise higher and move faster elsewhere than they would have on Rockaway lowlands that are always hit head-on by northward moving storms.
If Sandy had been a category 3 hurricane like its 1938 ancestor, the devastation would have been of biblical proportions as winds, waves and surges slammed into expensive homes, businesses and high-rises, and roared up waterways rendered progressively narrower by hundreds of construction projects.
Lower Manhattan has doubled in width over the centuries. World Trade Center construction alone contributed 1.2 million cubic yards to build Battery Park City, narrowing the Hudson River by another 700 feet. The East River has likewise been hemmed in, while other water channels have been completely filled. Buildings, malls and raised roadways constructed on former potato fields, forests, grasslands and marshlands have further constricted passageways for storm surges and runoff.
As a result, storms like Sandy or the Long Island Express send monstrous volumes of water up ever more confined corridors. With nowhere else to go, the surges rise higher, travel faster and pack more power. It’s elementary physics which governors, mayors, planners and developers ignore at their peril.
No wonder, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo and other politicos prefer to talk about global warming, rising seas and worsening weather to deflect attention and blame from decisions that have put more people in the path of greater danger. Indeed, the very notion of packing more and more people into sustainable, energy-efficient coastal cities in the NY-NJ area is itself madness on steroids.
Worst of all, politicians are increasingly and intentionally obscuring and misrepresenting the nature, frequency and severity of storm, flood and surge risks, so that they can promote and permit more construction in high-risk areas, and secure more money and power. They insist that they can prevent or control climate change and sea level rise, by regulating CO2 emission while they ignore real, known dangers that have arisen before and will arise again, exacerbated by their politicized decisions."
That water travelled FURTHER inland BECAUSE the sea has risen.
ROFL!
I'll grant that to you on the stipulation that by "similar", you mean "they sounded plausible to me, but then again I have no skills at separating bulldust from gold".
The work I rely on has almost exclusively survived peer-review - in most cases both pre-publication and afterwards - and is generally humanity's best collective understanding. The work you rely upon is generally not peer-reviewed and claims that the best collective understanding suffers from serious errors - and yet fails even basic scientific quality checks that someone like me can apply.
Once again you demonstrate that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to science.
Well, that's a distortion on two levels.
1) Humlum's blog output goes beyond "presenting a data set" by doing analysis that conflicts with published analyses based on the same data set.
2) You clearly had more than just that reason, otherwise you wouldn't have complained about my dismissal of most of Humlum's claims. You can't have it both ways: if two scientific claims based on the same dataset, given the confidence intervals associated with both, are almost certainly mutually exclusive how do you go about convincing yourself they remain "equally valid"? This appears to be the crux of your entire schtick - "I say they're equally valid so on that basis you can't critique the one I choose to promote".
Hint: the fact that "data sets can be presented in different but equally valid ways" does NOT imply that "any way a data set is presented is equally valid to any other way". (That's one of the key reasons people do science - you know, that discipline that you claim to have academic qualifications in.)
And even if we stick with your stated reason you achieved precisely the opposite - although you still claim otherwise and haven't even attempted to rebut the critiques of Humlum's material. It's impressive how determined you are to keep your head in the sand.
Speaking of Humlum, I have a comment awaiting moderation due to the number of links that goes into more detail on his quality of work. It includes critiques from climate scientists and is even more devastating because they know a lot more about how to detect shoddy work than I do. I'm betting that you'll continue to insist that Humlum's material is "equally valid".
You claim to have academic science qualifications, and STILL don't grok that cherrypicking is decidedly NOT part of "their very nature", and that actual competent scientists have very good ways to test for and reject it?
Your misunderstanding of science provides no support for your claim that you really do have academic science qualifications.
Ah, what a lovely false dichotomy to hang your hat upon. There's no point pointing out that policy has to be based on our best understanding, caveats and all - which includes climate models - and that doing so does NOT mean one is treating climate science as a "crystal ball".
But it's even worse than that, as you provide your personal judgement that the outcomes of science are being misused by politicians and the media when you clearly have no way to judge the quality of any scientific claim. You vastly overestimate your own climate science competence.
Last comment was an answer to Wow's 'this' question.
"That water travelled FURTHER inland BECAUSE the sea has risen."
OK, so what's the problem here?
Do you think that this doesn't happen? Or that it doesn't happen if there's a hurricane?
"Sandy is a convenient case to argue for increased impacts from SLR"
Yup, because it is a case for it. It happened recently and therefore is conveniently fresh in the minds of people.
But you're going to ignore it because you don't like being wrong?
"however I would suggest there are other features that contributed"
Wow. That was a quick goal post move.
So sea level rise to you will never have any effect until it is the only thing that causes something.
Unlike your earlier whine about how you wanted an example of how Sea Level Rise caused problems. Nothing there about how it had to be the SOLE cause.
"They are all useful but I don’t believe any of them are good enough to be used like some type of irrefutable crystal balls."
Except you do exactly that by claiming that we should do nothing because it will all be better on its own (by using a laughable "model" as your crystal ball).
Wow,
put up or give up.
I can only 'assume' you don't have the evidence.
Your last question is complete nonsense.
No one has claimed that coastal storms DON'T drive water inland.
Maybe you may like to read bolt's post re Sandy?
"Wow,
put up or give up."
What?
You still haven't said in any coherent question what you want answered, merely fragments of sentences and demands with no content of what is being demanded.
Wow,
seriously?
You are literally arguing with yourself.
Where do you think I claimed nothing should be done and based it on a model?
Still patiently waiting for that peer reviewed evidence BTW :-)
Weid to have someone whine "put up or shut up" whilst avoiding actually putting a question down to be put up to.
From Peru to Indonesia is about 60 cm up in sea level, according to
http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g115/el_nino/2b.html
I take that to mean this develops during ENSO neutral conditions and disappears during El Nino. That is on top of the roughly 60 meter variation in sea level above the geoid around Indonesia.
"Where do you think I claimed ..."
You did that one before. Asked "where did I say..." then when shown where you said it, ignored it.
I know you claimed "do nothing" and based your assertion on no problem based on some blogroll "model" which consists mostly of "pick two points and fit a line to it saying what I want".
But apparently not even you listen to you.
"Still patiently waiting for that peer reviewed evidence BTW "
Well you have to ASK for peer reviewed evidence for a start.
But here's some peer reviewed evidence for you:
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/wilkins.pdf
Add "the time that peer-reviewed research and publication takes" to the list of things you don't understand about science.
I can only assume you are asking Wow for the evidence that Sandy drove water further inland than it otherwise would have due to SLR.
Wow may be scratching his head because he can't believe that you (and BFPM) are seriously asking a question that is particularly stupid.
Please explain how - in your mind - a storm acting with a higher sea level could possibly do anything BUT drive water further inland than with a lower sea level, all other things being equal. Your answer may refer to any and all of the well established physical and dynamic properties of liquids, even acting under the dynamics of a storm - said properties being very well established through a long history of peer review.
What do you think happens when a high pressure system is over the sea?
Does the sea ignore this pressure and remain level?
"I can only assume you are asking Wow for the evidence that Sandy drove water further inland than it otherwise would have due to SLR."
You can't assume anything with these idiot deniers.
They'll ask for one thing then when you give them it, they'll say that wasn't what they asked for.
This is why they only do half-formed sentences and over-use of the indirect reference to ensure they can claim that it must be something other than what you thought they asked for, yet at the same time, refuse point blank to actually clear up any query about the actual meaning of their demands.
DBB, yes, punching a tide is going uphill [imagine the Bay of Fundy], punching a wave is going uphill, heading into a "low" is going uphill, as is running down the trades. These ever-fluctuating influences affect the SLs on a temporary basis but your 100+ meter protrusion over 18,000 klms is just one of the non-spherical phenomena of the geoid and the sea and your boat is still level there. It still equilibrates about the CoG as your boat does when it is traversing it.
It is fascinating to contemplate those bumps and flat spots though. ☺
Chuckle:-) ;-)
Nucleic acids?
Good one Wow.
Highly relevant :-)
Lotharsson,
no prob with the theory.
Wow's claim re Sandy was quite specific. He clearly has no evidence of the sort he claimed spangled and bolt must have.
He claimed that 70 and/or 50 years of tide gaugue obs supplied were negated by the singular event of Sandy.
I also don't see where anyone has said that storms DON'T surge inland.
I'm pretty sure that the opposite to that was said.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand you refuse to answer the question, just as Wow pointed out.
The fact that we haven't yet got peer-reviewed evidence for a specific factor acting in a specific storm doesn't have the significance your dogged focus on it implies because we understand an awful lot about how water flows (for example).
So let me ask you again, since you have those academic science qualifications:
And re:
Comprehension Fail - and an almost complete inversion of the world. (How does one even "negate an observation"? How about trying to form a coherent claim when you feel the urge to make one?)
Of course, if Wow actually did what you think he did you'll be able to quote him claiming that, right? You know, "put up or give up"?
Comprehension fail.
No-one has claimed that anyone else claimed that. Try addressing the actual points people make. Hint: you need to understand some basic distinctions, like the distinction between "storms don't surge inland" and "storms don't surge more inland when sea level is higher".
"Chuckle:-) ;-)
Nucleic acids?
Good one Wow.
Highly relevant"
Well this is what you DEMANDED:
"Still patiently waiting for that peer reviewed evidence BTW"
And I gave you peer reviewed evidence.
About DNA, correct.
However, you never said what you wanted evidence FOR.
So I just picked the first paper from the Nature website.
If you want evidence for or about something, you had better ask for evidence for or about that thing.
"Wow’s claim re Sandy was quite specific. "
Yup, it was.
Sandy really DID exist.
It happened on the coast.
Water was thrown further inland because the sea levels have risen.
Hey, chuckles, here's another statement for you.
Waves at high tide roll further inland than waves at low tide.
Do you want peer reviewed papers on that too?
Lotharsson, would not the effects of the storm surge depend on many factors? For example, were another Sandy to happen at the time of lowest annual tide, at low tide, in 2013, would the surge push water as far inland as it did with Sandy?
For example, how high WAS the tide at the time of Sandy? Was that the highest tide on record for that region? Were there other factors that contributed to the effects of the surge?
"would not the effects of the storm surge depend on many factors?"
Yes.
Would not one of those factors be THE HEIGHT OF THE SEA LEVEL?
My point is that sea level in itself is not the sole determinant of the surge. Where is the physical evidence that Sandy was exacerbated by the current sea level? I'm not saying it didn't but I'd like to see your evidence.
Maybe Wow, but the actual tide height would be the major factor when it comes to sea level, surely?
Gods, you idiots.
Tell me, do you think that you can't reach any higher if you stand on tiptoes because how high you reach depents on many factors such as "have I lifted my arms up?"
Do you think your weight can't change by you overeating or going on a diet because weight gain or loss depends on may factors such as "have I been exercising?"
If Sandy occurred at low tide with sea levels higher because of melting glaciers increasing the volume of the oceans, it would still have been driving water in from a higher level than if the sea level were lower.
" but the actual tide height would be the major factor when it comes to sea level, surely?"
But having other effects doesn't make the effect of higher sea levels disappear, surely?
Tablets are more honest than the people using them.
chameleon said:
Yes, tablets do that when you get shit on them.
"My point is that sea level in itself is not the sole determinant of the surge."
No your question was whether sea level had any effect.
When shown it did, you now pretend that you wanted "was the major effect".
"Where is the physical evidence that Sandy was exacerbated by the current sea level?"
The physical evidence is that to have higher sea levels there has to be more water in the ocean.
As for seal level in the region, what do we know about the tide gauges there? I have no idea, but have the tide heights been affected by other physical processes? Eg land reclamation, sedimentation, changes in currents etc? The recorded heights may be caused by more than simply global SLR.
Looking here:
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/12.php
I see that tide gauges are well inside the harbour, so it is possible that other more local processes are contributing to tide heights.
More simply for Bolt-neck:
The evidence for sea levels being higher is that the level of the sea is higher.
"As for seal level in the region, what do we know about the tide gauges there?"
We know that the sea levels are higher.
" I have no idea, "
But you'll pretend that despite the sea levels being higher that you need to have evidence that higher seas will be further inland?
Wow, now you are just demonstrating your lack of thoughtfulness. I earlier asked for evidence of the effects of SLR. You've offered Sandy. I've suggested that from what little I know, there seem to be some questions over how much AGW derived SLR may have contributed. Where is your evidence, beyond your say so?
And to repeat, this is for Wow. Had Sandy occurred at low tide, would we have seen the surge travel as far? yes or no?
" I earlier asked for evidence of the effects of SLR."
And now you're asking for the effects must be mostly caused by SLR.
Or are you back to "it must have an effect"?
"Where is your evidence, beyond your say so?"
Where is the evidence beyond my say so that waves go further inland at high tide than low tide?
Yep, as everyone agrees. But only some here get confused by the concept of assessing the impact of a single factor even though others are also operating. Curiously it only seems to be people "skeptical" of the impact of sea level rise who are thus confused, yourself being one of them:
That's precisely why I stipulated in my question to chameleon all other factors being equal. Perhaps you could take a crack at answering it?
And then you might wonder why you and chameleon are demanding physical evidence for something that obviously (ahem) flows from our extensive understanding of how liquid water behaves. (The rest of us already have a good idea of why.)
Had Sandy occurred with Sea Level Decrease, would we have seen the surge travel less far?
Yes or no?
Weasel on Wow. "Where is the evidence beyond my say so that waves go further inland at high tide than low tide?" When you can't answer a simple question, it speaks volumes. I didn't say they do, it's simply the first question that pops into my mind when you claim Sea Level is a significant contributory factor.
Perhaps waves do not, perhaps they do, perhaps SLR had a substantial influence. I don't know. You claim it did. So, where is your evidence?
"“Where is the evidence beyond my say so that waves go further inland at high tide than low tide?” When you can’t answer a simple question, it speaks volumes"
You didn't answer.
Speaks volumes.
Are you, therefore, denying that waves travel further inland at high tide than they do at low tide?
Lotharsson, I am happy to admit Sandy was exacerbated by SLR if that is what happened. I am just asking for evidence, else all I have is your say so. I have no stake either way.
"when you claim Sea Level is a significant contributory factor. "
Where did I claim it a significant contributory factor?
Where did I give ANY indication of the relative magnitude of its contribution?
I merely claimed IT HAD CONTRIBUTED.
"Are you, therefore, denying that waves travel further inland at high tide than they do at low tide?"
No. But I do not know. Was the tide full high, and was it a record height for the region?
"I am just asking for evidence, else all I have is your say so."
Is this because you don't know how water moves?
So Wow, it could have had an effect, but just as likely insignificant?
spangled drongo --- You have missed the main point. The geoid is quite close to the equipotential surface for gravity. Just off Taiwan the sea level is over 100 meters above the geoid. Around Indonesia it is 50--60 meters above the geoid. Peru is about 0 meters above the geoid.
A highly accurate gravity direction indicator would show uphill travel going east.
"“Are you, therefore, denying that waves travel further inland at high tide than they do at low tide?”
No. But I do not know."
Then you are saying you don't know how fluids work.
I suggest getting a tray and filling it with water and splashing around.
See what happens when you put more or less water in the tray and splash around in it.
"but just as likely insignificant?"
Just as likely as what?
All you demanded was an effect.
You got one.
Then you started whining on about wanting a major effect.
BFPM, if you're asking about Sandy because you are seeking evidence of impacts due to sea level rise, why was the earlier comment about the expensive current (and even more expensive future) impacts in Florida insufficient?
And why must insignificant mean "no effect"?
If you aren't claiming that, then what was the point of "insignificant"? You wanted an effect. One was given.
We've now reached absolutely ludicrous outright denial. Either that, or BFPM has tied himself up in knots and doesn't know how it happened.
The running argument here appears to me to be
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/e…
Anthropogenic SLR is so far so little as to have contributed only slightly to Frankstorm's Sandy's impact in New Jersey and New York. An important contributiion was due to the state of the tide, which was a spring tide to boot.
Lotharsson it wasn't insuffiecient. And really I do apologise for not having the time to investigate. But i am not in the habit of accepting claims without seeing the evidence and asking questions about that evidence. A quick search showed me that the coast there is notorious for subsidence and sinkholes and has serious issues with aquifer depletion. Sea level has indeed risen quickly there according to the tide gauges, but again, I have no idea of the extent to which coastal geography is contributing. To blindly accept that AGW driven SLR is the sole or major cause would be to just accept what you (or Mike in fact) says. I don't do that.
I know. It's gabberflasting, isn't it.
"Anthropogenic SLR is so far so little as to have contributed only slightly to Frankstorm’s Sandy’s impact in New Jersey and New York."
Wasn't part of the demand that it be a significant change compared to the size of the change.
Mind you, a 40cm sea level rise times the 1000km range of the storm and a 40km fetch at 1kg/cc makes the change of mass of water fetched up by Sandy 10^10kg of water.
If you think that isn't significant, try lifting it.
"We’ve now reached absolutely ludicrous outright denial. Either that, or BFPM has tied himself up in knots and doesn’t know how it happened."
OK, so now I realise I am dealing complete clowns.
It's simple, let me use little words. Wow claims Sandy is an example of a real world effect of AGW driven SLR.
I asked for evidence.
None is provided.
I am insulted by claims that a higher sea level must mean waves go further inland.
I do not know. I can state what I think is obvious, but I may be wrong. So I am realistically cautious not to claim beyond my knowledge.
I ask a reasonable question. if sea level has an effect, then surely the actual sea level, or tide height, at the time is the main factor in that effect?
No-one wants to hazard a guess.
OK...
"But i am not in the habit of accepting claims without seeing the evidence and asking questions about that evidence."
Getting through the day must be hell for you.
Every day needing proof that the clock really IS telling you the correct time. Proof that the statement about the healthy breakfast is correct. That when you're told the boss wants to see you, demanding evidence in the peer reviewed literature that this is so.
Then proof that this "reality" really is there...
"Wow claims Sandy is an example of a real world effect of AGW driven SLR.
I asked for evidence.
None is provided."
Evidence of what?
That seawater from a higher level moves further inland????
Oh dear! The point I was making went completely over your head. No-one who has any understanding of measurement refers to a percent change using a scale with an arbitrary baseline. If you insist on referring to a percentage change in temperature, the only scale that makes sense is to use Kelvin, in which case we have an average temperature of 289K and a range from lowest to highest of 100K (using your figures), or about 35%.
Alternatively, we could treat sea level in the same way as you considered temperature and say that mean sea level is 5m (using an arbitrary base line, just as you used an arbitrary baseline for temperature) and a maximum range from lowest trough to highest peak of, say, 15m. This gives a percentage change in sea level of 300%.
You think this is stupid? It is exactly the same procedure as you used for temperature change. Now do you understand why you are not taken seriously?
And to blindly accept that unicorns shitting in the sea is the sole or major cause would be to just accept what someone said too.
In other words, all snark aside, I'm not seeing anyone who's saying what you claim has been said. Feel free to provide a quote if you can find one - and then we'll all spend a minute repudiating it if it makes you happier.
(And I'm still seeing you apparently ignore the earlier reported Florida impacts of SLR complete with some rough (and very significant) $ estimates. That should have been a strong pointer to very expensive future impacts across the globe, and very serious impacts in places that have a lot less money available to attempt to defend against it.)
"if sea level has an effect, then surely the actual sea level, or tide height, at the time is the main factor in that effect?"
Re read that again.
"If sea level has an effect, then the actual sea level has an effect."
See how ridiculous you are when the redundant clauses are peeled away?
You're asking for evidence that water at a higher level will move further inland.
Unless you don't know how liquids and solids behave and how you can tell the difference between "sea floor" and "landmass",
I shall stop there. Clearly it's pointless.
Wow, you have a special brand of stupidity. This one is a pearler:
"Every day needing proof that the clock really IS telling you the correct time."
Seriously, is English a second or third language for you? Good grief man, try thinking before you type.
"I shall stop there. Clearly it’s pointless."
Being pointless has not stopped you before.
Is the problem that people are calling you out on your pointless goalpost shifts and whiny demands about proof of how water flows and what "sea level rise" means?
"“Every day needing proof that the clock really IS telling you the correct time.”
Seriously, is English a second or third language for you"
No, that sentence is perfectly adequate English.
Where is the grammatical error in it?
Then get used to feeling insulted. Your "realisation" that you are dealing with complete clowns is misdirected. You are clearly the complete clown here.
Wait, wait, I can do this too!
[BoltForPM mode on]"I am insulted by the claim that tide height must be the main factor in whether waves go further inland!"[BoltForPM mode off].
Your belief about tide height is so obviously correct that no-one thinks questioning it is sane.
Your disbelief about sea level rise - which affects tide height, and therefore is based on THE SAME UNDERSTANDING as you have about tide height - is so obviously incorrect that your equivocation about it makes you look extremely foolish.
You can't coherently have that belief and that lack of belief at the same time. They are two mutually exclusive answers TO THE SAME QUESTION.
Even better, bolthead says they don't know if tides cause a difference!
Lotharsson: "In other words, all snark aside, I’m not seeing anyone who’s saying what you claim has been said. Feel free to provide a quote if you can find one – and then we’ll all spend a minute repudiating it if it makes you happier."
I asked for evidence of AGW driven accelerating SLR physically impacting a coastline. I specifically asked for a case where coastal geography was not a confounding factor.
In the case of Miami, it seems that sea level rise is having an effect, and it seems to be quite serious. That said, there ARE confounding factors, and it does appear that a steady rate of sea level rise would in itself have far reaching consequences.
On the whole, it seems to me that the coastline in that region is definitely being affected by SLR.
I would like to have more time to read more deeply, but I agree that SLR is impacting that coastline.
"I asked for evidence of AGW driven accelerating SLR physically impacting a coastline"
If that's what you want now, then the sea level having risen has caused the coastline to retreat inland.
Wow --- Anthropogenic SLR is 40 cm there? Have you a link to an appropriate research paper which establishes that?
OK, so you can't explain something simply. Let me ask again.
Was the predicted tide height at the time of the storm surge higher than at any previous time in the past 100 years? If not, then SLR is not necessarily the culprit.
For SLR to have been a contributor, the actual tide height needed to have been higher than it might otherwise have been.
Why is that an incorrect assumption?
"Was the predicted tide height at the time of the storm surge higher than at any previous time in the past 100 years?"
Irrelevant.
The only proof needed is that there is more seawater in the oceans at that time.
If there was, then sea level rise made the sea level higher than if it hadn't risen.
For proof of sea levels rising see above the line. There's a nice little graph.
"Wow — Anthropogenic SLR is 40 cm there? "
No, didn't claim that.
Wow, is that really what you want to say? I did suggest you think before typing...
"The only proof needed is that there is more seawater in the oceans at that time.
If there was, then sea level rise made the sea level higher than if it hadn’t risen.
For proof of sea levels rising see above the line. There’s a nice little graph."
"For SLR to have been a contributor, the actual tide height needed to have been higher than it might otherwise have been."
Incorrect.
If someone took performance enhancing drugs then their effect occurred WHETHER OR NOT they broke their personal best.
Your thoughts David Benson?
"If someone took performance enhancing drugs then their effect occurred WHETHER OR NOT they broke their personal best."
Indeed. But you are arguing that they did indeed achieve a PB AND their drugs helped.
"Wow, is that really what you want to say?"
Yes.
Unlike you, I type what I mean to say, not whatever bollocks is convenient at the time.
Are you having trouble working out that sea levels rising from glacier melt and thermal expansion causes there to be more ocean everywhere than if there had been no such increase in volume?
Is "increased volume" giving you problems?
"But you are arguing that they did indeed achieve a PB AND their drugs helped."
No I'm not.
Not even in the analogous.
I'm saying, as I've always said and you've always misrepresented, that the sea level rise caused the water to go further inland than it would have without it.
Wow digs on. Can he get any deeper? Who knows, my bet is yes. me, I gotta run away and do something else with my life for a while.
Toodle pip.
"I gotta run away and do something else with my life for a while."
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8
Unable to make a reply? Speaks volumes.
Yes, from
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=…
I make out about 40 cm.
And since I haven't the slightest (currently) about how to determine the additional storm surge effects from that I'll just state that
I stand corrected.
Chameleon: And Lotharsson pointed out that his method of presenting the results is not valid. Why do you consider Humlum's method of presentation to be valid? You need to go through Lotharsson's criticisms and refute each of them to justify your claim. Simply repeating the claim is not adequate.
This is not correct. WUWT and other denialist sites rarely present any statistical analysis beyond crude means and regressions. They are probably not even aware that cherry-picking the dates invalidates the statistics that they didn't bother doing.
"I make out about 40 cm."
I just glanced and copied. I didn't attribute the change to anything specific. No specific insight or claim, just that 40cm of rise (no cause given because I don't care: any and all is fine!) does X under conditions Y and Z.
Someone working in oceanography may be able to more correctly calculate the extra water washed ashore by Sandy if it had not risen, but I was purely illustrating.
Even if the change had been 1mm, that would still be ~10^7kg of water thrown ashore.
Wow --- Roger that.
Thank you.
No worries.
" "My reason for posting Humlum’s work was to point out that data sets can be presented in many different but equally valid ways. "
Chameleon: And Lotharsson pointed out that his method of presenting the results is not valid."
Indeed. To assess them as both equally valid, chammy here has to assess how valid a presentation of the facts as displayed by the data are for these approaches and show them basically equivalent.
If chammy cannot say how valid any of these approaches are, then the statement is solely one of ignorance: he doesn't know how valid any of the presentations are and is ASSUMING equal validity.
Given that "but equally valid ways" wasn't necessary and is, apparently, unknown by the commenter, it should have been left off: do not make claims you cannot know.
Wow, I have no idea how relevant this is, but iot'
s a look at the tide data for the site you referred to for mean sea level at The Battery. data seems only to go back to 1995 however, so it'd be interesting to see earlier numbers.
High tide (predicted) 29/30 October 2012:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/cgi-bin-mp/data_plot.cgi?mins=&datum=6…
High tide (predicted) 29/30 October 1995:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/cgi-bin-mp/data_plot.cgi?mins=&datum=6…
As best I can tell, the predicted heights for that particular tide is around 4.6 feet or so. I don't see any significantly higher sea level at the time of Sandy...
But that IS only over 17 years. And I may have got these plots hopelessly wrong.
Bolt for PM --- Use my previously posted link to The Battery data from NOAA which goes back to 1856. All the SLR since that time (and I claim from one hunded years earlier) is anthropogenic in origin.
Bolt for PM
What point are you trying to make? Comparing a day or two of tide predictions years apart tells you nothing. To make any sense of this at all you would have to know where these times were in the Spring/Neap and nodal cycles at least.
The graph pointed to by David Benson a few posts before is much more meaningful. The individual data points would be monthly averages (monthly averaging is an effective way of removing the tidal signal), and then the seasonal (annual + semi-annual) signal was removed, which makes it easier to see what is going on.
As you would expect, the trend is a bit higher than the global mean over this period because the land is falling in this area due to GIA (New York was on the forebulge in front of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last Ice Age).
Richard S,
Humlum has clearly outlined his methodology.
He plotted it against IPCC work.
At no point have I claimed it was better or worse.
That was not why I linked them.
Lotharsson clearly feels the need to attack the messenger and the message.
I guess if Humlum wants to argue with Lotharsson he would be more than capable of doing so.
He certainly doesn't need me to defend his work and I suspect that he is blissfully unaware that Lotharsson doesn't like it.
Most of Lotharsson's claims are attended by personal insults which I can't really be bothered with.
He claims he has irrefutable evidence that there is something wrong with Humlum in moderation.
Maybe the moderator at this site doesn't think it's a good idea to mount a personal attack on a credentialed scientist?
That sort of behaviour has a nasty habit of back firing.
Really? And (assuming for the sake of argument that's accurate) that's enough to make it "equally valid" to you?
Comprehension and Logic Fail.
My critique and Richard S's comment was NOT based on you claiming that and does not depend on you having claimed that. They were based on your repeated claim that it was an example of an "equally valid" "presentation of data".
Comprehension Fail.
"Irrefutable" != "even more devastating".
"Critique of specific works" != "something wrong with Humlum".
Do you deliberately choose to repeatedly miss the point, or do you genuinely not get it?
1) Comments with more than a couple of hyperlinks are automatically diverted to a moderation queue.
2) Credentialed scientists who make unsupported claims are the subject of any number of posts by the site owner.
3) STILL trying to bring "credentials" into the mix?! Aren't they irrelevant if Humlum's work stands on its own?
If you find critiques of your claims and logic insulting, you might want to consider changing them to something that is more defensible. That particular ball's in your court.
OK, since (a) Chameleon still cites Humlum's credentials as if that makes his work somehow "equally valid", and (b) it's holiday season and who knows how much time Tim has for moderating, let me post my earlier comment broken up into pieces so they'll post immediately.
Part 1 of 4 (if things go well).
Here’s some analysis which suggests that one should be very careful not to simply accept what Prof. Humlum claims about climate science without doing some careful and informed checking – the kind of informed analysis that the general public does not have the skills to perform, but the kind of thing I’d expect someone with academic science credentials to have a quick look for before they cited un-peer reviewed work.
Part 2 of 4.
Here’s some analysis of a non-peer reviewed letter published in a newspaper that Humlum signed on to (and some of the claims look similar to some that you have made here). If the analysis is even half right it speaks to the poor quality of claims Humlum is prepared to lend his name to outside of the peer-reviewed journals - as does this analysis of his May 2011 newspaper article.
Part 3 of 4.
You could also analyse the comments on Humlum’s August 2012 paper (starting here which suggest the same thing. And the comments starting here about the Climate4You website itself.
Part 4 of 4.
If that’s not enough, you could also consider the fairly straightforward critiques made by actual climate scientists here. That one claims that Humlum has relied a paper which rebuts his claim in its abstract without explaining why his results trump the one he cites; that another fairly basic critique (for a climate scientists) has been made to Humlum several times but he continues to ignore it; it links to still further examples alleging Humlum uses his figures to misrepresent; and points out Humlum repeatedly contradicting his own claims. And you could read the article itself which critiques a Humlum paper - and links to earlier examples of blatant distortion and misrepresentation by Humlum. Ironically, one of these calls Humlum out for doing the kind of unphysical forecast-via-extrapolation-from-statistical-curve-fit (complete with leaving out inconvenient portions of the underlying data series) that you have been suggesting is done all too often in climate science.
And I’m sure you could have found all this and more had you wanted to! Taken together these suggest that Humlum’s credentials and achievements in geology have not translated to the field of climate science where his work is frequently shoddy (and others aren’t always so charitable).
Of course, to figure out whether those writers or Humlum are decidedly more correct would take more of those skills that most of Humlum’s intended non-scientific readership (including you based on the evidence here) don’t have. But even without those skills some of those commenters occasionally give critiques that are verifiable even by scientifically unskilled people. If anyone is actually interested they will be able to find those critiques in minutes and see if they are valid.
(Anyone else wanna bet that chameleon won’t make the effort - and will continue to insist that Humlum's work is "equally valid"?)
Neil White, you ask: "What point are you trying to make? "
The point is simple but I believe I have made an elementary error regarding tide heights. So, let me explain my reasoning (bearing in mind I know nothing about tides or stats or hurricanes - all I am doing is asking questions about claims).
As I understand it, the SLR in those graphs is a mean sea level over time. That is, an average of sea levels, ie it isn't the highest tide, or the lowest tide. If we had a benchmark on the land, eg SD's Chevron Island thing, we could see the highest point reached by a tide and the lowest point. The average may or may not be in the middle because tides vary considerably.
Now, average sea level may have risen, but that doesn't necessarily mean that peak tide heights have risen the same. The average may have been affected by more frequent medium height tides, or less 'low' low tides. If the increase in average sea level is say 400mm, or about 16", that shouldn't mean that all high tides are 16" higher. Some may be, some may not be.
So, at the time of Sandy, what was the actual level of the sea by the absolute benchmark of the land it washes against? Not what was its average, but its actual height?
Now I showed some tide heights, but I suspect I am wrong there because on reflection, I will guess tide heights are measured against some relative sea level, not against the land. Otherwise we would see an increase in predicted tide heights over time. But if it were measured against land, and the high tide of October 29 2012 were less than other high tide heights, how could you argue sea level rise caused anything? Because it's the actual sea level relative to the land at the time of the surge, not the average on a graph.
Or am I just missing the point entirely?
BFPM, if you cycle down a hill, even if it's not the fastest you've ever cycled down that particular hill, did the hill increase your speed or not?
Bolt for PM
"As I understand it, the SLR in those graphs is a mean sea level over time. That is, an average of sea levels, ie it isn’t the highest tide, or the lowest tide."
Which graphs do you mean? The blue lines on the two graphs you linked to are of tidal predictions every few (15??) minutes based on the long-term tidal regime.The red '+' symbols on the 2012 graph are the actual sea-level heights measured at the tide gauge at similar frequency, and are relative to the tide gauge zero, which is fixed with respect to the land.
"The average may or may not be in the middle because tides vary considerably."
In the long term the average will be in the middle. The tides vary, but are a sum of sinusoids of different frequencies, phases and amplitudes. This is dictated by the astronomical (Sun and Moon) forcing and local (e.g coastline configuration) effects.
"Now, average sea level may have risen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that peak tide heights have risen the same."
In general the mean, low and high tides will all move together. There is a very small effect on the tidal range with changes in the mean water depth (e.g. from SLR), but that is negligible for this purpose.
"So, at the time of Sandy, what was the actual level of the sea by the absolute benchmark of the land it washes against? Not what was its average, but its actual height?"
As above, it is shown by the red '+' symbols on the 2012 graph that you linked to.
"Now I showed some tide heights, but I suspect I am wrong there because on reflection, I will guess tide heights are measured against some relative sea level, not against the land. Otherwise we would see an increase in predicted tide heights over time. But if it were measured against land, and the high tide of October 29 2012 were less than other high tide heights, how could you argue sea level rise caused anything? Because it’s the actual sea level relative to the land at the time of the surge, not the average on a graph."
This is very confusingly put. Tide heights are measured relatve to a local (fixed with respect to the land) benchmark. Where possible they are then corrected for vertical land movement (e.g. GIA) before being used in large scale regional and global analyses.
It is clear, even from analyses of 20th century tide gauge data, that extreme events of a given height are becoming more frequent due to the long-term increase in sea level. The contribution of this to the damage from Sandy was probably fairly minimal because the Sandy storm surge was such a whopper, but the effect is being seen in many places, and will get worse.
"Wow, I have no idea how relevant this is, but iot’"
Completely irrelevant.
Just because the glaciers have melted and put their water in the ocean doesn't mean that the tide will reduce to keep the sea level static.
So why, when you're demanding proof of SLR effects on the coast, you keep bringing up tides?
Sea level rise isn't tides.
If you had magically taken one in ten of every water molecule in the ocean away to the moon, would Sandy have flooded New York?
Neil White, you have confused me by suggesting tide heights are measured relative to a fixed benchmark on land. If that's so, then my point is valid. Wow, if my point is valid, then you are being remarkably dim.
The claim is that SLR has contributed to Sandy's effect. I asked for evidence. In return, it was claimed that because sea level is higher, then Sandy's surge was higher. This was echoed earlier by another commenter who claimed that the extra height of sea level was what caused the barriers to be overflown.
This means that the claim rests on the sea level at the time of the hurricane surge being higher than it would have been without AGW driven SLR.
But we cannot know this by referring to an average. We must compare actual tide heights for that time and place.
What would the actual tide height have been on 29 October 2012 without Sandy? Well, it was predicted to be about 4.7 feet. Is that higher than the same time in 1995? Apparently not. So, if the maximum sea level, that is high tide, for that point on the coast is largely the same at times 15 years apart, how can you say that SLR is shown by Sandy's effects?
Wow, you say:
"Completely irrelevant.
Just because the glaciers have melted and put their water in the ocean doesn’t mean that the tide will reduce to keep the sea level static.
So why, when you’re demanding proof of SLR effects on the coast, you keep bringing up tides?
Sea level rise isn’t tides."
How can you say that? It is the actual physical height of the sea level relative to the land at the time of the storm surge that counts. And THAT is tides. If Sandy struck at low tide, its effect would have been less. because sea level was lower. Isn't that the case?
"How can you say that?"
Because SLR isn't tides.
"Neil White, you have confused me by suggesting tide heights are measured relative to a fixed benchmark on land."
You have pretended confustion because you know you're only reading part of what he wrote.
" And THAT is tides"
How can you say that?
So when there were no permanent polar ice caps and the seas 20-100m higher, are you saying that the sea level at New York at high tide would be the same level then as now?
Wow, I seriously need you to explain to me why I am wrong. I am quite OK with being wrong, but I don't understand what you are saying.
'Sea level' is an average struck from data about the height of the sea relative to the land. That height changes due to tides. So tides appear to me to be a factor in determining 'sea level'.
Now, the sea level at any given time at The Battery will be different depending on the state of the tide. That is, the sea level relative to the land is determined by the state of the tide.
At hight tide, it may be 4.7 feet. At low tide it may be 2 feet. There is a difference. A storm surge will therefore be higher or lower depending on the state of the tide. Hence the fears expressed at the time that Sandy might have struck at high tide.
So. If the physical height of high tide at that time in October 2012 was the same as that in October 1995, how can you say that the sea level was higher and exacerbated Sandy's surge?
"So when there were no permanent polar ice caps and the seas 20-100m higher, are you saying that the sea level at New York at high tide would be the same level then as now?"
Don't be silly.
I showed you tide data for 1995 and 2012. they appear to be the same. That's the physical reality.
"Don’t be silly."
Does that mean you admit that SEA LEVEL CHANGES changes where the tide gets to?
Or are you merely wanting me not to point out how ridiculous you are?
"Wow, I seriously need you to explain to me why I am wrong."
That would require you LISTEN TO PEOPLE.
Except you don't.
Ever.
Now, the sea level at any given time at The Battery will be different depending on the sea level rise at that time.
I.e. in 1850 it would have been 40cm lower.
That means the sea level at any given time will be 40cm lower than it would have been if the sea hadn't risen 40cm.
Why do you keep banging on about the tide?
SLR isn't tide.
"Does that mean you admit that SEA LEVEL CHANGES changes where the tide gets to?"
I don't have to admit anything. That is exactly my claim. If sea level rises, then the level of the sea at any point in the tidal cycle might presumably be higher. And that is how a storm surge might be higher.
But IF the tide height is NOT higher, then we have to conclude that the sea level AT THE TIME IN QUESTION was not higher.
I am not making any statement at all, I am merely asking a question. And showing you data. If I am wrong I'm wrong. But I need someone smarter than you to explain why.
"I don’t have to admit anything."
You have to say what you mean, then.
"But IF the tide height is NOT higher"
THEN you have a different situation.
SLR doesn't cause tides and tides don't cause SLR.
If the tide is NOT higher, SLR still makes the sea level higher than if it didn't exist.
But IF there had been no hurricane...
But IF there had been an asteroid impact...
But IF you stopped fanying around with irrelevant things, you'd have your whines responded to.
However, the chances of you stopping fannying about are much much lower than an asteroid impact so fast that it travelled back in time to hit NY state when Sandy made landfall.
If the hurricane were weaker. If the hurricane were stronger. If if if if if.
NONE OF IT means that SLR had no effect on the result.
"SLR doesn’t cause tides and tides don’t cause SLR."
I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting tide height must reflect sea level.
If the tide is NOT higher, SLR still makes the sea level higher than if it didn’t exist.":
The AVERAGE sea level may be higher, but if the actual high tide is not higher then physically the sea at high tide must be the same height.
And that is my point. Sandy struck pretty near high tide. IF the high tide predicted for that time was largely the same as a typical high tide in 1970, then we can conclude that there was no discernible enhancement of the storm surge from SLR.
That is not to say there IS no SLR, but the question to hand is, did SLR contribute to sandy's storm surge.
"I am not suggesting that."
Yes you are by continuing to bollock on about tides when I'm explaining the effect of SLR.
Tides are not SLR.
I am suggesting sea level rise must reflect sea level.
Why do you keep banging on about tides?
Funny how you cannot answer a direct question without all the crap. I think I'll see what others have to say. Neil White seems to offer sensible comments, perhaps he can explain what mistake I am making.
You on the other hand...
"Sandy struck pretty near high tide."
Irrelevant to the effect of SLR on the damage Sandy did.
Funny how you cannot answer a direct question without all the crap.
SLR is not tides and tides are not SLR.
What is all this gobshite about tides?
SLR means the sea level is higher.
That is what "Rise" and "Sea Level" mean.
Sandy occurred when there was SLR increasing the level of the sea and that effect happens no matter WHAT the tides are, the strength of the storm, shape of the coast or the price of tomatoes are.
SLR means that there was a higher sea level than there would have been without it.
And I note that you still can't say what you meant by "Don't be silly".
Apparently you can claim what the hell you like and it's up to everyone else to
a) work out what the hell it is you claim
b) work out what the hell you don't understand
c) find papers written about anything you don't want to accept
"perhaps he can explain what mistake I am making. "
This would require you read what he says rather than just edited highlights of what you think he ought to have said, daft twat.
Bolt4
If you were a high jumper would jumping off a higher pad allow you to clear a higher bar, all other things being equal?
As for Sandy's link to AGW here is one paper that provides a link Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes.
Now as for tides, is it not obvious that a higher sea level will lead to higher tides, all other things being equal?
Try an experiment in your bath, that should help out although you will have to be creative in replicating the gravitational effect of the moon etc.
When a wave is propagated in a body of water do the water molecules move long distances in the direction of the wave?
And if other things aren't equal, you're not talking about the effect of SLR, you're talking about the effect of whatever else it is you're changing.
But the most recent dickhead doesn't want to talk about SLR but wants to talk about tides because therefore there's no SLR somehow.
I don't recall that being said about sea level rise, and you've spent a lot of time confusing how "sea level" in "sea level rise" is measured vs "water level at a given moment" so I suspect you haven't captured the nuance of what was said.
Try using different terms in your head for "how much water is in the ocean" which defines the average water level vs "how high is the water at NY at a specific time". You could call them "A" and "L".
Think of "A" as measuring the average water level over a long enough period to average out the effect of short term variations in water level - things like tides and waves and storm surges. Think of "L" as the sum of "A" and those short term variations - tides, waves, storm surges.If it helps call those variations - not the resulting water level, just how big the ups and downs are - as "V". In other words L = A + V. This makes it clear that the short term variations V are "riding on top of" the base level established by A.
When scientists say that SLR has occurred, they mean that A has increased. This increase generally doesn't directly affect V, but that means it does directly affect L because L = A + V. If the SLR hadn't occurred, then L would be lower by the amount of the SLR.
If that helps and you're still unclear, try going back and answer my question about cycling down a hill. Or Lionel's question about the high jumper. Perhaps because you've been confusing two different things with similar names, your logic has been incorrect. You're trying to infer some conclusion about the change in A over a long time period by looking at one or two values of L separated by a relatively short period. That's invalid on several counts. For example one or two values don't give you anywhere near enough data to separate out the A from the V.
"I don’t recall that being said about sea level rise, and you’ve spent a lot of time confusing how “sea level” in “sea level rise” is measured vs “water level at a given moment”"
Their M.O. is entirely that.
Make up shit about what others claim.
Deliberately confuse terms and go off on tangets to avoid clearly stating anything.
Pretend that because there's no clarity (because of their efforts) they can refuse to accept reality.
To try and hammer the point home:
Nope.
The predicted high tide at two different points in time when other factors that affect tides were not more or less exactly the same gives you no information about sea level rise. Neither does the actual high tide.
To see this, imagine that "V" (from my previous comment) is affected by three different factors. For example (and not claiming this is an accurate model), imagine V = F * G + H.
Now you've observed L at time t1 and at time t2 (and you've got predictions for L at those times). Can you derive an equation that shows you what A at t1 was compared to A at t2? No - you don't have enough data. V varies quite widely throughout the day and also quite a lot on different timescales (e.g. the lunar cycle) so a mere three factors (F, G, H) may not even be enough to describe it.
However continuing with this example, imagine for the sake of argument an oracle knew all things, and thus knew that:
At t1, F = 10, G = 20, H = 132
At t2, F = 12, G = 16, H = 105
And for the sake of argument, imagine that the predicted L for both t1 and t2 was exactly the same. What does that tell the oracle about A at t1 vs at t2? Despite L being the same, once it does the arithmetic A at t2 is 35 greater than at t1. But you're not the oracle and don't know F/G/H - and oracles tend not to tell. You concluded that A was much the same but the oracle points out that your conclusion is incorrect, therefore your methodology is faulty.
You can't use observations or predictions of L at two points in time to infer changes in A because that doesn't give enough information. (And even if you had measurements for those factors, given that all real world measurements involve uncertainty, you'd typically get better results measuring A than trying to measure the other factors and then inferring A from them.)
Now what is most likely correct - I haven't checked - is that any sea level rise at NY between 1970 and 2012 was much much less than the height of the storm surge itself. So while any SLR over that period MUST have contributed to the impact, it may not have contributed very much. But it also means that SLR has already contributed to every impactful storm landfall, and as it increases further impacts from future storms will get larger.
Lotharsson, I noted earlier that I may be mistaken about how tides are measured. I read your lengthy waffle above but it seems to me you are missing what I am saying.
I assumed that a high tide is measured against the land, so that a 4.7 foot high tide means that the sea level is 4.7 feet measured against a land based benchmark. Neil White though seems to be saying that my assumption was correct. I am still not arguing that it is, I do not know.
So, forgetting all matters pertaining to SLR, let's nail down what I am thinking and see how that works.
Question 1. Is the measured point that a tide reaches at high tide calculated with respect to a fixed benchmark on the land? Yes or no?
If the answer is yes, as Neil White seems to indicate above, then we can go on to question 2.
If a high tide in 1970 reaches 4.7 feet, that is the height relative to the land at that time.
Question 2: Would you agree then that if no other tide in 1970 reached 4.7 feet, then that tide represents the highest point the sea has reached at that coastline in 1970?
Tide height is measured relative to a fixed point on land but given in terms of distance above or below 'mean low tide'.
This standard (and old fashioned) method takes into account neither SLR nor geostacy.
Happy new year folks,
Lotharsson,
I have read your links. Mostly from sceptical science.
It is more of same and neither proves or disproves anything with any realistic certainty.
No offense, but it looks more like 'my daddy is bigger than your daddy'.
It is an argument about HOW different people with different perspectives have presented the data.
I note that Humlum agrees that he made an error in one data set that he later corrected. Also note that his critic still wasn't satisfied.
And despite the argument, Humlum does have peer reviewed publications.
The links you have supplied are from blog sites and are not peer reviewed publications.
The criticisms in some respects are valid, especially the over simplified extrapolations, which I had already highlighted didn't prove much of anything.
I also highlighted that Humlum is not the only scientist who has done this.
I note a similar extrapolative graph in those links that demonstrate yet another conclusion.
You don't seem to understand that I have no problem with that.
Bolt you stupid fucker, the status of the tide does not change the underlying sea level rise.
"It is more of same and neither proves or disproves anything with any realistic certainty."
You are not competent to make that call, chammy.
Indeed you're merely stating this and have no proof of that.
"No offense, but it looks more like ‘my daddy is bigger than your daddy’"
No, it's more "My car mechanic is a better bet to ask about YOUR CAR ENGINE than your decision to ask a hairdresser".
The reason I have no problem with it BTW is because it is really only time and updating with 'real' data that will be the final judge about who is 'right'.
You may have noticed that Humlum points this out on several occasions.
He doesn't claim that his work is the best way or the only way to present the data.
Goodness me Wow!
I hope you treat real people a little better in your real life?
And I hope you're not a complete cunt in real life, chammy.
"The reason I have no problem with it BTW is because it is"
denying the reality of the world to create an answer you like.
FTFY.
Hmmm?
I can only feel sorry for you Wow,
hurling insults and crude swearing probably doesn't win you many friends.
Cheer up Wow. It's a new year.
I hope you find it a happy one.
The world didn't end in 2012. Some things we worried about came to pass but equally or hopefully more so for many, most of our worries and fears were handled.
Let's hope on the life ledger, the balance tips to positive for as many as possible.
Aaaw.
Doesn't that make you nice.
Oh, no, it makes you a lying twat. Sorry. Easy mistake to make.
Or don't :-)
Happy new year nonetheless :-)
Nah, I'd prefer timewasting trolls shrivel up and die.
You know, throw out the trash rather than pretend to be nice to the scum of the planet.
Considering by your own definition, trolls are rude and dismissive.
I think you may have sentenced yourself to death Wow.
I harbour no personal ill will to you or anyone else for 2013.
I am not responsible for your attitude Wow, neither is anyone else who you hurl insults at.
Your attitude is your responsibilty and yours alone.
Cheers
Chameleon
This thread has turned to the right:
http://www.fotolia.com/id/41003550
Chuckle :-)
I agree David B.
Happy new year to you.
Some sea level rise consequences from Fairfax Climate Watch:
http://climatewatch.typepad.com/blog/2012/12/estimated-future-ice-loss-…
which uses conservative (in the engineering sense) estimates of future SLR.
The growth of sea level is actually not exponential but rather sigmoid, i.e., S-shaped. Otherwise, the article is well done.
Yes, it is! You finally realised your claims are cra ... oh, wait.
Called it!
It proves with realistic certainty that too much of what Humlum claims is bad science to trust anything he says that hasn't survived post-publication peer review. In other words your presumption or assertion of "equally valid" is demonstrably unjustified - even if my earlier critiques did not exist. It also suggests Humlum is not just incompetent but deliberately trying to produce work with a certain result no matter how shoddy his "argument" is as a result.
For anyone who hasn't read the links yet his use of "DIFF12" which removes linear trends in order to make claims about the trend is shatteringly incompetent - it's almost exactly what Carter, de Freitas and McLean did in their debacle of a paper a year or two ago, a paper that made many climate scientist's list of "Worst 5 papers of all time in Climate Science". That suggests he doesn't know what he's doing as a climate scientist, or he doesn't care.
Similarly his curve fitting exercise fits cycles to observed data and then roughly matches their periods to those of various solar system bodies and argues there may be a causal link. It's hokum, and there was another paper like that in the "Worst 5" lists too.
So firstly one gets the very strong impression you don't [want to] know good science from bad, even when it's pointed out to you. And secondly you STILL haven't rebutted any of the issues identified with Humlum's work which is necessary to argue that it illustrate "different but equally valid presentations". Humlum is almost a poster child for "different but NOT equally valid, although carefully designed to give that impression to the gullible non-scientific public".
So does McLean - see above! It was absolutely ripped to shreds after publication which is the part of peer review that carries the most weight. Having such a paper - as Humlum does - on your resume degrades your scientific reputation. It's not relevant to your argument.
(And most of Humlum's peer-reviewed papers don't appear to be in climate science. That may explain why he's so bad at it.)
But wait - you claim his non-peer reviewed stuff is "different but equally valid"! How can that be if you're going to worry about what is peer-reviewed and what is not? You can't have it both ways - do you subscribe to his reports being "equally valid" or dismiss them because they're not peer-reviewed?
True, but many of their criticisms either (a) rely on peer-reviewed publications or (b) point out easily verifiable errors and issues with Humlum's work. You don't seem to realise that critique is asymmetrical. It's much harder to establish a claim as substantiated (by surviving extensive post-publication peer review) than it is to point out where it goes wrong (although WUWT is a case study in how to make critiques that are wrong but mislead the gullible...) Some issues are so egregious or so obvious that they don't need to get through peer review for reasonable 3rd parties with a modicum of competence to see that they have validity. And some of the critiquing blog posts turn into peer-reviewed published rebuttals over time too.
And that's disingenuous bullshit on his part and on yours - but I'm not all surprised you promote it because that's pretty much your own modus operandi. "I wasn't making claims, honest, I was just presenting a different but equally valid view". Notice the embedded claim in that quote? You might pretend not to but everyone else sees it.
Bullshit.
Some claims are already clearly wrong, no matter how much you bury your head in the sand and call it night time. That includes practically every substantive claim you have made on this site from the very start.
(And scare-quoting 'real' gives your game away. That in itself is a judgement of "not equally valid", a judgement based on evidence to date that you are entirely incompetent to make.)
We have to make decisions based on what we know, confidence intervals and all. We have more than enough real data - no scare quotes - to see there is a major problem. You are playing the foolish "high proofer" game, and have been all along.
Logic Fail.
Dogs have four legs ... therefore by your 'logic' that cow over there is a dog.
I take this to mean that you are completely unable to support your claim that different ways of presenting the data, that lead to very different conclusions, are equally valid, but don't have the honesty to say so.
So you have no problem with people doing faulty analysis and using it to promulgate nonsense. Then why did you come here?
My apologies moderator,
Posted wrong name and address from a different computer for the comment below:
Richard S and Lotharsson,
I suggest you could send an email to Humlum and take him to task on his analysis.
I believe his contact details are on his website?
It appears from one of Lotharsson’s links that Humlum is happy enough to reply and correct if an error is spotted.
As far as I’m aware his work has been no more or no less criticised than others’.
His list of papers in peer reviewed journals would indicate to me that he is quite well respected in the science world.
Richard S seems convinced he is someone doing faulty analysis to promulgate nonsense?
What in particular would the ‘promulgated nonsense’ be Richard?
All of it?
Some of it?
I actually came here on a recommendation. I have since discovered from the same person that I misunderstood what I would find here.
But it’s OK. Richard.
It has been a bit of light entertainment in the holiday break.
I’m not planning to make it a regular habit.
So as I suggested, perhaps you need to take it up with Humlum?
David BB, I am still waiting for you to confirm that you understand that the "100 meter hill" of ocean caused by the distortion in the geoid still represents level sea and that the world's oceans are in fact flatter than a billiard table.
Nope. He's your problem because you cited him as an example of "different but equally valid". Do your own homework! You haven't done any to date - and it shows, badly.
(If he's so amenable, and if one of the articles I linked to and you said you read didn't point out that his "correction" to the serious error they pointed out was itself wrong, then surely you could write to him and get some better arguments from him, right?)
Your argument from personal ignorance is duly noted.
Your apparent ignorance that argument from personal ignorance is fallacious is also duly noted.
I'm sure Richard will answer, but sheesh - you really didn't comprehend most of the material at those links I provided, did you?
And I am sure you didn't understand what I was saying and felt the need to dub it waffle. Perhaps you could try again. (Then again, no-one else has had any success trying several different ways to explain the same thing to you either.)
Your moniker is aptly chosen - you have a conclusion you're sure if correct, you just don't quite know how to justify it with facts and logic yet but in the meantime you'll assert it over and over again whilst casting aspersions at the intellect and knowledge of those who are pointing out the failings in the various iterations of your argument.
No Lotharsson,
It is most definitely you who has the problem with Humlum.
I also found it strange that you thought I should say something about spangled earlier in this thread.
He wasn't being rude to me.
If you thought he was being rude to you, why would you need me to say something about it?
Spangly confirms that according to his lights not even 100m of SLR would not be an issue, as the ocean would still be flatter than his billiard table.
This kind of idiocy has form among deniers. Dishonesty? Stupidity? Both? Whatever the explanation, it's the level they have to sink to to make an argument...
Spangly confirms that according to his lights not even 100m of SLR would not be an issue, as the ocean would still be flatter than his billiard table.
Bah!
In fact, a rise of a mere 2m in SLR would only increase the average depth of the ocean by a trace amount - 0.053%. This is a number suspiciously similar to the trace CO2 concentration that also represents no threat whatsoever. Therefore no conceivable harm could result.
Next I'll point out that any conceivable number of people dying in any such imaginary inundation would only ever amount to to an insignificant trace when considered against the global population as a whole - ditto for any financial consequences. So, still nothing to worry about!
It's always important to stay aloof from the fray, keep an open mind*, and maintain the broader perspective in these matters...
*That squelchy, splatty sound you hear is only it falling out. Don't be alarmed - this happens all the time (and therefore it cannot be harmful!) and no-one notices any difference in my reasoning anyway...
I'll take that as yet another implicit admission that you cannot justify your claim that his work(s) are "equally valid" but are not honest enough to say so.
Lotharsson,
take it any way you like.
It is not my problem. I don't really particularly care what you think of Humlum or me or anyone else.
I know what Humlum does for a crust and he seems to be doing OK. I also don't believe he's all that concerned about your opinion of his work. But if you want to take him to task over it, you go for it. Good luck to you.
As I commented to Wow.
You alone are responsible for your attitude.
Actually, my question to the Denial footsoldiers here is 'why haven't you made it? Why aren't you on TV'.
I mean, Fox regularly airs views as valid and as well-informed as your own, from folks every bit as qualified to speak on matters climatalogical as you are.
And yet, here you are claiming that because the water always comes up to the pretty-well the same level on the side of your tinnie the oceans cannot be rising, or revealing that if only scientists would take heed of mark on a levee in just one south-Queensland river - I mean, how easy is that, people? - there'd be no need for any of this fancy-schmancy, and systematically-corrupted, satellite stuff - choice and Fox-worthy arguments all! - in relative obscurity!
Seriously; do you lack drive, or something? I thought you were all entrepreneurs?
Bill, I must say your Thickhead and Little Cuckoo impersonation is getting better anyway.
Where are you hiding DBB?
Bill has just shown he hasn't got a clue.
Have you?
You keep telling me what I think. Interesting...
Then again, you keep telling everyone here all sorts of things you can't substantiate.
Well done! You entirely missed my point. You're very good at it! I guess it's better to miss it than admit being unable to address it.
Here's the crux of the matter: almost without exception, pretty well every scientist who is prominent as a climate change denier is on the academic fringe. In my opinion this includes Humlum, whose publication record, at best, is less the mediocre considering how long he's been around.
You can blather all you like, Chameleon, but that's the long and short of it. And what really pisses me off, speaking as a scientist, is how much attention these mediocre scientists get on the right wing blogosphere; moreover, the fact that, for every article they publish somewhere, there are dozens of others that have very different conclusions.
On the latter basis, chamey, what special gift in science imbues you with the ability to separate the strength of the vast majority of studies, many by scientists with real pedigree, from a few from scientists on the academic fringe? You claim that you and your hubby husband possess a scientific background. In what fields exactly? I am a population ecologist, and I know when I am stepping outside of my own field and wrongfully trying to step into the fields of others. The overwhelming view amongst statured scientists in the relevant field is that humans are forcing climate. Yet what I see amongst a small coterie of deniers lacking any relevant expertise on Deltoid is an attempt - albeit failing miserably - to emphasize the findings of a small number of pseudos whilst dismissing a far greater body of work by others with much more pedigree.
On other threads the same ignorant posturing is evident. We have deniers like GSW, Duff and Karen continually failing to understand the concepts of scale and non-linear dynamics. They perpetually cite a few examples where some place on Earth is colder than normal or else where its recently snowed, as if determinism begins at t = 0. Of course its winter in the northern hemisphere! It snows! It still get cold! It may be cooler than normal in Brisbane! So the hell what?! I might just as well be saying that most of Europe has been bathed in near record warm temperatures for two weeks now (which is true) and that its expected to continue. The facts say this: warm weather records around the globe are being set at a ratio of 5:1 against cold weather records. This ratio has increased in a stepwise fashion over the past several decades. We can dispense with the puerility of talking about weather (a stochastic, non-linear process) with climatic trends (a much more linear deterministic linear process) if we go to the appropriate temporal scales. But these dolts aren't scientists and don't know the difference.
The there was briefly GSW plugging a paper recently out in PLoS One suggesting that many species in Arctic biomes - meaning only mammals in the study - will benefit from warming. So here we have several fallacies being expounded: first, GSW has done what deniers always do: when the evidence suggests the human fingerprint on a process is becoming indelible, then argue that this process will benefit nature, and, by association, humanity. This is what the deniers are beginning to do more and more these days. Their denial is switching from denying the human fingerprint on the warming to argue that we should keep the warming going because it will be good for us and for the natural world. Its pure folly, of course: a crap shoot.
The GSW-trumped PLoS paper focused on habitat generalists. But its been know for a long time that generalists across all trophic levels are far better adapted to rapid changes in local habitats. That's nothing new. In North America the felling and fragmentation of the great primeval deciduous forests benefitted many species of habitat generalists: raccoons, red foxes, striped skunks, coyotes, eastern cottontails, white-tailed deer, and birds such as common grackles, brown-headed cowbirds, American robins and cardinals. Many of these species thrive on forest edges. What were deleteriously affected were many of the habitat specialists: red wolves (now a race of the eastern wolf), elk, mountain lions, ivory-billed woodpeckers, carolina parakeets, Bachman's warblers, loggerhead shrikes, and many other species. Clear cutting vast swathes of the Amazon would undoubtedly benefit a small number of species, but adversely affect many more because habitat specialization is much more evident amongst tropical biota (they need to move around a lot less to find resources than their temperate counterparts and thus exhibit smaller geographic distributions).
The PLoS paper thus says nothing new. The real concern amongst Arctic wildlife, and especially migrant birds, is what effects the rapid warming will have on the specialists. Polar Bears, contrary to GSWs kindergarten-level comments, are specialists, as are several species of seals and the walrus. This year, for the 4th time in the last decade, walruses were forced to seek terrestrial habitats late in the season owing to the record loss of Arctic sea ice. During the exodus to land, many younger individuals were crushed to death under the mass of these enormous pinnipeds.Polar bears are in serious trouble if the Arctic ice disappears in summer, there are no two ways about it. They are not terrestrial habitat generalists like Arctic foxes and wolverines, and neither is their prey.
The last point is that the relationship between habitat loss and extinctions is not instantaneous. There are temporal lags that many take decades, or even centuries, to ripple through the system. The effects of habitat loss caused by forest destruction in Amazonia in the 1950s is probably still to be fully manifested on much of the regions biota, and may not be fully realized for another 100-200 years. Ditto for temperate ecosystems as a result of various anthropogenic processes. Climate change will be a major driver of extinctions. Attendant effects - such as acidification of the oceans, already as a result of the human combustion of fossil fuels - will also be an important contributor. Its just too bad that those trying to argue the net benefits of warming on the planet's ecosystems don't have a bloody clue about the field, for the most part. They rely on thin papers like the PLoS One article, or else comments from people like Judith Curry, who have no background in the field at all.
I'd argue, Jeff, that Denial has been a great opportunity, for scientists and media-hacks alike, for the truly mediocre - if not the outrightly dreadful (think Morano, Monckton, Delingpole) - to get the attention that they crave without having to go through the tedious process of building up evidence and being correct, and all that.
I mean, any movement that can make heroes out of, say, Joe Bastardi and Senator Inhofe, is clearly a form of intellectual sheltered-workshop. The irony is that these folks are hiding behind a form of the very 'political-correctness' they vociferously reject when it favour others; they stridently maintain that their absurd and unevidenced opinions are the equal of the merely competent and qualified.
"It is most definitely you who has the problem with Humlum."
And that problem is Humlum is wrong.
Or is it now that due to you PC brigade deniers insistence that we have to accept incorrect and wrong statements and proclamations?
It was bad enough when you PCBaggers insisted that we don't teach children to spell in case they get hurt when told they are wrong about something.
Now you're insisting we do the same mollycoddling to flipping ADULTS!
"It is not my problem."
And this is the denier trope in a nutshell.
AGW isn't going to hit them (they hope) in their lifetime.
It's not their problem.
However, changes are scary for the ill educated. It requires them to do something different.
Worse, this change requires that they admit that maybe their actions in hindsight were not the best thought out. And admitting even this smidgeon of blam is anathema to them.
It isn't their problem when it's AGW, but it IS their problem when it comes to doing something about it.
So they bitch and moan about how they did nothing wrong, were entirely right in their denial and were just being cautious (about their own current expenditure, not the future).
And deny, deny, deny.
"It’s always important to stay aloof from the fray, keep an open mind*, and maintain the broader perspective in these matters…"
Until, of course, they find themselves neck deep in the doo-doo.
You'll be deafend by the screams for government help then.
"So you have no problem with people doing faulty analysis and using it to promulgate nonsense. Then why did you come here?"
To promulgate nonsense doing faulty analysis of course.
Deniers want there to remain "unanswered questions" so that they can whine to government about how there's still uncertainty therefore they certainly shouldn't do anything about AGW.
It's amusing how chammy thinks that all papers are "equally valid" but wants proving that the AGW proofs are valid.
Chammy, here's a presentation that you would think equally valid:
The following example uses division by zero to "prove" that 2 = 1, but can be modified to prove that any number equals any other number.
1. Let a and b be equal non-zero quantities
a = b
2. Multiply through by a
a^2 = ab
3. Subtract b^2
a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2
4. Factor both sides
(a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b)
5. Divide out (a - b)
a + b = b
6. Observing that a = b
b + b = b
7. Combine like terms on the left
2b = b
8. Divide by the non-zero b
2 = 1
Q.E.D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_fallacy
It presents a proof that there is only one number: 1.
Pop along to a maths class and tell them this.
"Considering by your own definition, trolls are rude and dismissive."
WRONG!
Go on, show me where I defined trolls as rude and dismissive?
Can't can you.
You're "presenting an alternative presentation" here pretending that things are said that have not been said.
This is called "lying your arse off" and is why the entire human race will become more human when you've been shot dead and buried.
Bill, I totally agree. More than that, denial has also given many academics on the fringe the opportunity of becoming well-known as deniers in the public domain. Look at people like Ball, Carter, Plimer, Soon, Baliunas and others with pretty poor resumes when it comes to peer-reviewed papers and citations of their published work. Given the paucity of qualified scientists in the denial camp, they would otherwise be total unknowns in science. But being deniers enables them to step out of the shadows and gain attention.
Dear oh dear JH, you make me weep. When you consensual "scientists" DENY that a 100 m bump in the geoid is not part of the normal earth's surface and won't admit that it is part of the normal level ocean clearly indicates your dishonesty and lack of credibility.
And if you stopped bleating long enough about your critics cred to accept some fundamentals, you might improve your own:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature…
Drongo, you have homework.
I am sorry if you got that impression. I was responding to your comment "The reason I have no problem with it BTW is because it is really only time and updating with ‘real’ data that will be the final judge about who is ‘right’. " which I took to mean "I don't care who is talking nonsense and who is not, because in a hundred years we will know for sure" and using this as your excuse for not assessing the veracity of what anyone writes (provided, of course, that they have credentials that impress you and are arguing in the correct direction). It seems to me that you are struggling to avoid giving any serious thought to the criticisms that Lotharsson raised and the ones he linked to.
Spangly baby, you're the one that insists it's all a billiard table smooth lift floor that raises and lowers everywhere simultaneously, hence your chalk mark on a south Queensland river bank disproves global SLR.
Hence I hardly think you're in a position to accuse others of being dense.
Chameleon: you said of Humlum's Climate4you 'paper'
If it is so clear, perhaps you could tell me how he decided to put the breaks in the regression of temperature against time? What level of significance did he attribute to the final 'negative' section of the graph?
Richard S
Perhaps you could ask Humlum how he decided to do it that way rather than apparently just quoting something from the SS link ?
If you are asking me for my thoughts on the presentation and why I linked Humlum's work (and of course I could have just re used the work at the start of this thread, as BoltFPM did, or randomly picked from the tens of thousands of other publicly available work) then please let me know.
I would prefer to know which time series graphs you are specifically referring to and also which particular breaks.
If it helps at all, I have already stated that I don't think extrapolating SL out 100 years from a shorter data set actually proves or disproves anything much at all.
I also noted that Humlum is not the only scientists who has done this.
He used 3 years of the current available SL data (from exactly the same sources as the IPCC uses) plotted out the running average and then extrapolated it based on those averages.
It is a valid statistical exercise, but as Humlum himself notes it would of course have to be updated with further 'real time' data to test whether the observed trend is a realistic observation.
Despite the accusations otherwise, I am not attempting to deny anything at all or attempting to frighten anyone with the use of the word 'real'.
I have to confess I have never before heard any scientist or mathematician or satistician claim that the use of the term 'real' or 'real time data' is a scare tactic.
Lotharsson has gob smacked me with that one.
Today I am preparing to return to the 'real' world after a very pleasant holiday break (I know, I apologise, I used that scare tactic again :-) )
Consequently, I will not have much time to amuse myself by visiting this blog site.
I find myself agreeing with David B that this thread has turned right anyway.
I must say before I get back to reality (again!) that I think Wow is an absolute gem. No wonder he is protected by the moderator :-)
He can put several posts together that all argue with himself and which hurl insults like a gattling gun. It is absolutely priceless and ironic reading.
I have grown fond of Lotarsson as well.
He likes to read something extra between the lines from fairly basic statements and then base his rebuttals on claiming that others have some type of issue with understanding logic and or science. He even throws in cows and dogs to prove his point (which I guess has a little more class than Wow's attempts with nucleic acids and messing with numbers :-) )
The other thing I find very endearing about Lotharsson is he is very predictable about telling people who he wants to argue with what they SHOULD be doing when they argue with him. If they don't comply, he then does it himself.
It's very funny reading what Lotharsson claims I SHOULD have said or which tactic I SHOULD have employed based on the world according to Lotharsson :-)
But anyway folks, thanks for the holiday entertainment but I regret to inform you that I will no longer have the time to play with you.
It has been fun.
Happy 2013 :-)
I think Pratchett's theory regarding multiple exclamation marks and sanity applies equally to smilies.
Please don't hesitate not to come back! :-)
See, I may be being rude, and Chammy may be being smug, facetious, manipulative, and goading :-) - on top of the underlying denseness :-), but as long as we're putting lots of these things in : -), it's all fine...
So Bern, you finally came up with a retro reply with some outside assistance?
If you refuse to understand how multihull instability is the result of pos feedback there’s not much I can do for you. Seeing as how you insist on these distractions you better go and discuss it with you mates.
Likewise with the Ross/Lempriere mark. We are familiar with CSIRO and BoM “adjustments” and in which direction they always travel but as I said earlier rather than dance around your silly maypole let’s just give CSIRO the BotD and go with 13 cms SLR over 171 years. We should be thankful that they only claimed that much.
“How the fuck am I verballing you?”
I have never mentioned surges in relation to calculating or assessing king tide heights or SLR. In fact I have gone to great lengths to show the exact opposite that my obs were based only on periods free of surge and flood.
You absolutely verballed me! And your verballing is the reverse of what I say. If you can’t understand that then you do have rocks in your head.
And the rest of your comment is just more hand waving.
BTW BJ, do you have an opinion on whether the geoid irregularities are SLR as David BB has claimed or part of the level ocean?
spangled drongo --- You misunderstand. Start with some basics:
http://kartoweb.itc.nl/geometrics/reference%20surfaces/refsurf.html
then move on to wind and currents.
Sea surface height above geoid:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/data/products/sea-surface-height-produ…
You cited it as "equally valid". And the fact that a criticism is "quoting someone else" has nothing to do with validity, just like your claim that it is "equally valid" has nothing to do with validity.
You're really not very good at this "logic" and "evidence" thing.
That's very revealing. In order to demonstrate "different presentations of data" can be "equally valid" you say you could have randomly picked? Wow! So...in your head, apparently, the mere existence of a claim makes it "equally valid"?
So what you're saying is that Humlum's sea level extrapolation method IS NOT EQUALLY VALID with the more rigourous scientific methods used in mainstream climate science?
Tell me, when you argue against yourself, which side usually wins?
But it's not intended to be viewed as merely a "statistical exercise", as anyone who passed High School English can see. How many readers do you think turn up at his site to learn a little statistics? And it beautifully illustrates my initial point about Humlum's work - he misleads his viewers by engaging in these kinds of "exercises" when he knows - or ought to know - full well that much better methods for projection exist.
Comprehension Fail #NNN. I said nothing of the sort.
Are you seriously alleging that you don't know what 'scare quotes' mean when used in written English? If so, you really ought to stop using them until you do.
You project like a lighthouse.
Ah, so you actually understood the point that analogy illustrated - but weren't honest enough to withdraw your false claim? Noted.
Second time lucky. Anyone betting on a return? (I am, but I hope to be wrong.)
Lotharsson January 1st:
"And scare-quoting ‘real’ gives your game away."
So Lotharsson, I am happy for you to say that's not what you meant, but Lotharsson; that is most certainly what you wrote.
Just so Lotharsson can feel justified re his predictions, I decided to also point out that I forgot the other Lotharsson trait I have become fond of and may miss.
I forgot to mention Loth appears to believe he has the authority to mark other people's comments as a pass or fail as if he is playing school teacher or lecturer. (Maybe he is?)
It's been a little while since I finished university Loth and I have discovered that people in the 'real' world are not really that concerned about a fail from a teacher or a lecturer. Most of them are far more concerned about doing something that is useful and practical and that creates them an income and a decent standard of living for their families. That's why they got an education in the first place.
Many of them run their own businesses and are not even answerable to a boss! (let alone a teacher or lecturer.)
They are perfectly capable of judging for themselves and taking responsibility for their mistakes as well as their successes without the need of a pass or fail mark from some self appointed someone else.
Bog-standard Jo Nova-ite conspiracy theorist defames nation's premier scientific institutions on the basis of his dinghy expertise in single Gold Coast rivulet. Film at 11...
Chammy, now, don't be gauche. Sod off and stay sodded off. Ta.
I am asking you because you said that the methods seemed to be well-described. As it stands, the piece would be unpublishable in any reputable science journal.
The graphs on pp 20 and 21 of the link you provided. He draws three regression lines on each graph, corresponding to sections labelled 'negative', 'positive' and 'negative' but I can find no explanation of how he determined the bounds of each section.
Given the variability of the data, it is not a reasonable procedure to use (I'm not sure what you mean by 'valid'). Did he present the confidence limits to the regression? Did he allow for autocorrelation in the data? It is you who is saying his methods are suitable. It is up to you to justify the claim, not up to me to try to find something that almost certainly does not exist.
David BB, I didn't ask you to to supply another thumbnail [dipped in tar] sketch of the surface of the earth compared to a reference point as used by satellites. I asked you, in effect, when you put to sea and it is calm and at rest, do you consider it is LEVEL or do you consider you are going up or down hill as per the surface of the geoid?
IOW, NOT LEVEL?
As long as you or anyone else here doesn't seem to be able to comprehend this simple question your collective chances of ever getting to first base on the SLR question are very slim.
Undulating is the new level! You're funny, Spangly...
Did the conversation go off course when the acronym SLR was introduced, when it is in fact MSLR?
Bill, at least that's an answer. Tick one up for bill.
Bill = NOT LEVEL.
"Finally"?
I posted my reply before 4:00 pm on 30 December 2012, a few hours after your post that appears immediately before mine. My post was held up in moderation for a day or so, but it's been sitting there the whole time.
And there was no "outside assistance" - the work is all mine.
Idiot old man, I am not saying that "multihull instability" is not the result of "positive feedback". I said that it needn't be a result of positive feedback, and where it is it's a more appropriate metaphor than a monohull for the manner in which climate changes - the latter point which you have assiduously avoided, by the way...
And can we stop playing with your multihull/monohull sideshow distraction? The point of all this is that your river wall tide heights are not appropriate to be used as proxies for sea level rise, and you persistently refuse to address the many substantive points that I and others have many in refutation of your claim.
Meaningless drivel.
I showed you how John Daly was SCREAMINGLY wrong about sea level, and you've avoided all response because you know that I sank his boat and yours. Daly FUBARed big time, and I have yet to see you respond to my demonstration of this.
I am also waiting to hear why you don't agree with the only comment of Daly's that I think is valid - that:
If your hero John Daly wouldn't measure sea level in an estuary, why do you persist in claiming that it's possible?
How many times must a person rub your nose in your shit before you realise that it came from your own arse?
You said on 22 February 2010:
1) You were talking about the "king tide" height.
2) You said that the "flood" height in 1974 was 1.5 metres above the "king tide" mark.
3) You said that "externals" increase highest astronomical tides.
4) Further to point 3, you said that "this rise was possibly all due to the cyclone and sea surge. Not the flood."
5) Your exclusion of the flood as a reason for the 1.5 metre height over the mark on your river wall thus attributes all of that height to "the cyclone and sea surge."
In other words you directly contradict your claim that:
because on 22 February 2010 you are specifically laying responsibility for the river height on the sea surge.
However, if you stick by your latest comment that:
then how do you explain that your comment about the '74 king tide height explicitly notes both flood and surge, even though you attribute all the effect to surge because your reasoning was that flood had no impact because:
I'm not verballing you - you are verballing you.
So, once more form the top:
1) Do you understand that the damming of the Nerang River will have affected over time the height of tides at your river wall?
2) Do you understand that the alteration of the river characteristics of the Nerang River via bank engineering, canal development, terrestrial drainage networks, and similar will have affected over time the height of tides at your river wall?
3) Do you understand that the alteration of the estuarine environment through dredging, sand bank shifting, mouth modification and similar will have affected over time the height of tides at your river wall?
4) Do you understand that the local meteorology, and most specifically barometric pressure, will have affected over time the height of tides at your river wall?
5) Do you understand that the prevailing strength and direction of regional ocean currents will have affected over time the height of tides at your river wall?
6) Do you understand how the very location of your river wall mark, located as it is in the Nerang River, will have been compromised by its distance from and its shielding from the open ocean, and that in concert with the aforementioned points your river wall mark is compromised in determining anything remotely resembling a proxy for sea level, and especially for sea level rise?
7) Do you understand that John Daly's hypothesis (that land movement accounts for the fact that Lempreire's mark is nowhere near his contemporary mean sea level) is contradicted by the "evidence" that Daly offers as proof?
8) Do you understand that following on from Daly's nonsensical reasoning, Watts, Codling, Goddard, Tallbloke and the rest based on specious evidence their comments that there's been no sea level rise?
9) Do you understand that for the last three years you have been assiduously and desperately avoiding all refutations, rebuttals, and sundry contradictions of your fallacious claims and your pseudoscience, and that such is evident to everyone reading bar those denialists with ideological aversions to the consensus that physics, climatology and oceanography have it correct?
10) Do you understand that no matter how much you wish that the truth were otherwise, It's still warming, the sea is still rising, and that if we don't act immediately and urgently to mitigate these impact we will be leaving a profoundly, seriously negative legacy for future generations?
AD you are right but as I have said often up thread, the average person doesn't witness MSL, it is usually only the highest tide that can be casually observed for effect and as these haven't increased in my NOTW [but have actually been reducing] for the last ~ 70 years, there is nothing happening with SLR, acceleratingly or otherwise.
When I put to sea it was in a 10 meter sailboat; it wasn't calm and I was constantly going up and down.
I suppose that has little to do with interpreting the graph at the start of this long thread. I have already explained how to correctly analyze the data. I believe it has been correctly noted that around 1900 CE SLR was about 1 mm/yr and is now about 3 mm/yr.
That value will certainly continue to increase. I have previously posted on some of the consequences for this century, using a conservative assumption; conservative in the engineering sense.
But on the fine point about the geoid, no, even if it were calm and waveless the plumb bob would (almost) never point straight towards the center of the globe. One would need an extremely sensitive instrument to detect that.
That is indeed what I wrote. The fact that you reiterate your miscomprehension (even after it has been pointed out to you) doesn't make your miscomprehension accurate.
So, as I asked before: do you know what a scare quote implies? In other words, do you understand the difference in meaning between real data and 'real' data? If that's too challenging, perhaps you could explain why you chose to use the unnecessary quotes just like scare quotes are used.
...but that doesn't mean they are competent at it, as you amply illustrate - and as readers here can judge for themselves.
"Up or down hill" as referenced against what?
The geoid by definition is the surface which is "level" at each point as measured by the gravity vector at each point. As the first link pointed out:
"defames nation’s premier scientific institutions"
Yeah, what's the world coming to, eh?
Some typical SLR adjustments for dribbling bill. Just look at the graphs:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/sea_lev…
"“Up or down hill” as referenced against what?"
You can use a plumb bob or a spirit level, Lothe.
Or even a clear plastic tube with water in it.
Or a theodolite. Or a dumpy level.
Whatever turns you on.
Anthony David - a discussion at Deltoid go off course? Surely you jest?
So, Spangly, if we allow you to redefine seriously undulating as 'level' - bearing in mind I don't think anyone's even mentioned the 8km equatorial ocean bulge yet! - does that mean that you'll then insist that those undulations are 'locked in' (this being your conception of 'level'), and SLR must, to be real, then lift all boats equally from that point, so to speak?
That's, um, absurd.
Ironically, then we'd be back to insisting - as so many of your fellow-travellers do - that if the temperature hasn't risen in, say, Des Moines, Iowa, or Dunedin, NZ, then there is no global warming...
And, if you're not - well, what is your point, exactly? 'Captious' is the word that comes to mind.
(I wish I could remember where I saw a video that highlighted that one of the reasons we know about Greenland's contribution to SLR is that the oceans are rising most strongly as a result at specific points well away from Greenland itself, and not in its immediate vicinity. Fascinatingly counter-intuitive! Anyone remember it?)
Spangled Drongo
"Just look at the graphs:"
You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now, aren't you! This even includes the (in)famous tilted graph and his hand-drawn graph and other garbage about the Maldives which are passed off as "science" to the gullible. What a hoot!
And hosted by such a reliable source too!
Having said that might I try to bring a bit of clarity to this "discussion" about geoids, slopes etc. The geoid is, in effect the shape of the Earth in a gravitational sense - that is, it is the equipotential surface of the Earth's gravity field that most nearly matches the mean sea surface over the oceans (it is also defined over land and is an important reference surface over land too). So, while it departs from the ellipsoid that it is referenced to by up to about +/- 100 metres, it is, in effect a 'level surface' for all normal purposes.
Gosh, I seem to be supporting Spangled Drongo! But I'll fix that now!
If you look at the fourth graph down at: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html
you get an idea of how variable sea level is over the globe. Note the very low trend in the bit of ocean near Spangled Drongo's river site. The movies further down the page also illustrate this.
Don't take any notice of Morner on satellite altimetry (or anything else for that matter).
Bill
Have a look at:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/24-2_tamisiea.html
There is a youtube video of Jerry Mitrovica talking about this stuff, which is what you might be thinking of (sorry, I don't have the link to hand). Jerry Mitrovica is the other author of the paper linked to above.
That volume of The Oceanography Magazine is a special issue on sea level, and has a number of articles which may be of interest to some who are commenting here. All are freely downloadable.
Scare quotes?
Seriously?
Last time I checked they were called 'quotation marks' which can also be used thus:
" "
They're usually used to separate or highlight a particular word or to 'quote' what someone said or point out that word is meant to be 'removed' in meaning from another word or to 'highlight' a title plus a few other uses.
I seriously did not know that they could be used to 'scare' anyone!
I guess I could have bothered to figure out how to use the 'bold' at this blog but in some cases that could arguably look even 'scarier' :-)
In this instance it meant 'real' data as opposed to 'projected' or 'predicted'.
Does that help clear up the misunderstanding Lotharsson?
I certainly did not intend to indicate that 'real' or, if you prefer, "real" was meant to be scary or 'scare quoted' (whatever that actually means)
And I'm now wondering what that has to do with anything anyway.
But I will 'predict' that you will no doubt let me know.
And they can be used to indicate a quotation, although double quotes are far more common, but you weren't using them that way.
Single quotes can also be used to highlight terms that are being defined or which have a special definition that the reader needs their attention drawn to - which again doesn't correspond with your usage.
Rather than Google you would much rather persist in bayoneting that strawman! (Hint: scaring someone is not the purpose of scare quotes.)
Fair enough. You really should stop using them when they can be interpreted as scare quotes then. It doesn't come across as meaning what you intended.
In that case, we already have plenty of real data that indicate some of the causes of sea level rise are fairly well understood, and accordingly there's going to be more and more as the climate warms further. What we don't know is how strongly some other influences will contribute - IIRC the real data from the last few decades have been contributing more than has been anticipated by the physical models.
Humlum's statistical extrapolation is (in comparison) a methodology with no physical basis, and (without having time to check) I suspect he is projecting substantially less sea level rise than the methodologies that rely on physics do. His extrapolation is thus very unlikely to be confirmed in future as a good long term predictor. Ignoring what we actually know from physics - indeed, going against it - is almost always folly.
Sea level rise is just one aspect of the symptoms of anthropogenic climate change; there are a vast number of others. This makes we wonder why Chameleon and SD appear set on flogging this one and only horse. What about ther myriad other effects? On food webs and ecosystems? On the natural economy? There's ample empirical evidence already showing that the rather modest level of warming so far is already having effects on nature, and that these effectgs whgen synergized with other anthropogenic stressors should be of profound concern to society.
By the way, I checked up Ole Humlum on the Web of Science and his resume is exactly as I predicted: mediocre. 49 publications since 1982, with an h-factor of 18 and only 800-odd citations. He also attended an alternate climate change denial meeting at Copenhagen in 2009, which was apparently organized by some lunatics on the far right. The usual clowns were all there. It never fails to amaze me how so-called serious climate-chnage sceptics tend to hang out with the most sordid of company....
Ummm Jeff?
Did you happen to notice the title and content of this particular post?
And Lotharsson,
of course I was using them that way.
I had no idea that they were used to 'scare'.
"So, while it departs from the ellipsoid that it is referenced to by up to about +/- 100 metres, it is, in effect a ‘level surface’ for all normal purposes"
Neil White, thanks for that bit of common sense.
And that 4th graph down is what I have been trying to tell you-all about for days.
THAT is the only fluctuating surface level of the sea!
Over the world's oceans it is less than the equivalent 0.01 of a human hair [ 1 micron] over the length of a billiard table.
IOW it is ~ one hundred times flatter than a billiard table which shows to go just how flat and agressively in equilibrium our world's oceans really are.
So that if local SLs have not risen but actually reduced in Moreton Bay over ~ 70 years, there cannot be SLR in the rest of the world, accelerating or otherwise.
QED
"Of course" is of course obvious to you in your mind, but not to most of your readers!
If you're trying to scare quote the word "scare" you're half way there. However you need to find a claim or attribute that someone else asserts is valid, not one they disavow.
QER - Quite Easily Refuted.
Your analogy is irrelevant to your claim. It doesn't matter how relatively flat sea levels are over the entire surface whether you express it as a fraction or a percentage. What matters is the range of sea levels trends over the globe.
Speaking of which:
And, as always, it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Near Indonesia that graph shows somewhere around a 10mm per year sea level rise trend over almost two decades, and in some other parts of the globe it's about -3mm/year.
13mm per year divergence * 18 years = 234mm relative change between two points on the globe in less than two decades.
Your observations of "no rise" at one point on the globe, assuming for the sake of argument that they are accurate, are (based on the graph you now approvingly cite) entirely consistent with 10mm per year rise elsewhere, never mind an average rise across the globe with some parts rising more than others (and some falling a little).
And yet you still insist that cannot happen.
"““Up or down hill” as referenced against what?”
You can use a plumb bob or a spirit level, Lothe."
A plumb bob won't tell you up or down hill, spankers.
"AD you are right but as I have said often up thread, the average person doesn’t witness MSL"
The average person doesn't witness the sphericity of the earth either.
Are you a FLAT EARTHER????
"Richard S
Perhaps you could ask Humlum how he decided to do it that way"
So you don' t know, despite you claiming it clearly descrived, how Humlum did this.
How, then, do you know they are "equally valid" as you claim?
Is it because you are equally clueless about what all science papers claim?
Seems to be.
Suyre Chameleon, I did. And of course, SLR is one concern amongst many with respect to AGW: or do you deny this? What is your view on the field of AGW? Or won't you stick your neck out beyond SLR? What I don't get is how you and a few others can cite single papers by authors with no direct expertise in marine geophysics (Humlum) and then speak as if this these single studies are defining when there are many others by much more qualified researchers with quite different conclusions.
Moreover, what I find amusing is that dolts like SD appear to write as if nobody else on the planet (besides a few people here on Deltoid) are researching SLR, and that his view is the final word. Its the same story with deniers on blogs: few if any are qualified scientists, few if any have any relevant expertise in fields they comment on as if tghey are experts, and, most importantly, their views conflict with the views of the vast majority of scientists working in the field. Now I don't wish to be harsh, but if you and SD are such esteemed experts on this issue, why aren't you both writing up articles in the relevant jounrals? The worst offender of course is Jonas, consigned to his own half-baked insanity thread, where he constantly writes as if he knows more than Trenberth, Mann, Hansen, Jones and dozens of others of scientists who have spent decades inb the field of climate science. His sum contribution to the peer-reviewed literature is nil. Same goes fro Drongo and yourself, as far as I know. So what gives you the authority to validate the findings of a suspect paper by a denier on the academic fringe (Humlum) versus a much larger volume of data on SLR pointing to quite different causation and outcomes?
Type in the words 'Rising sea level' and ' climate change' into the Web of Science search engine and you get 3319 hits with more than 11000 citations in 2012 alone. That's a helluva lot of literature to read through before one like Spangled Drongo can dismiss the issue as being of non-concern or non-importance. Here's one just published in December that supports the IPCC models:
New estimates of secular sea level rise from tide gauge data and GIA modelling
Author(s): Spada, G (Spada, Giorgio)1; Galassi, G (Galassi, Gaia)1
Source: GEOPHYSICAL JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL Volume: 191 Issue: 3 Pages: 1067-1094 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2012.05663.x Published: DEC 2012
Times Cited: 0 (from Web of Science)
Cited References: 111 [ view related records ] Citation Map
Abstract: During the last three decades, at least 30 independent estimates of the secular global mean sea level rise (GMSLR) have been published, based on sufficiently long tide gauge (TG) records. Despite its apparent simplicity, the problem of GMSLR is fraught with a number of difficulties, which make it one of the most challenging questions of climate change science. Not surprisingly, published estimates show considerable scatter, with rates ranging between 1 and 2 mm yr-1 for observations on the century timescale. In previous work, the importance of Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) upon the assessment of the GMSLR has been clearly demonstrated. In particular, starting from the 1980s, GIA models have been routinely employed to decontaminate TG observations from the effects of melting of the late-Pleistocene ice sheets, to fully highlight the sea level variations driven by climate change. However, uncertainties associated with the Earths rheological profile and the time history of the past continental ice sheets can propagate into the GIA corrections. After revisiting previous work and estimates, we suggest a significant modification of the criteria for the selection of the TGs which are most suitable for the robust assessment of the secular GMSLR. In particular, we seek a set of TGs for which GIA corrections are essentially independent of the parametrization of the rheological profile of the Earths mantle and of the detailed time chronology of surface loading. This insensitivity is established by considering predictions based upon three GIA models widely employed in the recent literature (namely, ICE3G, ICE5G and the one developed at the Research School of Earth Sciences of the National Australian University). Applying this approach and selection criteria previously proposed in the literature, we identify a set of 22 sufficiently evenly distributed TGs. By simple statistical methods, these records yield a preferred, GIA-independent GMSLR estimate since 1880, namely 1.5 +/- 0.1 mm yr-1 (rms = 0.4 mm yr-1, wrms = 0.3 mm yr-1). This value is consistent with various previous estimates based on secular TG observations and with that proposed, for the 20th century, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (1.7 +/- 0.5 mm yr-1).
Note the final sentence. Digest it.
There are tons of other studies supporting this one. My point is that its ridiculous for the Dunning-Kruger mob to argue forcefully on a blog of all places that SLR as a result of AGW is not happening or that it is trivial. I have yet to see SD and you adding to the theoretical or empircial literature in this area. Why not? I write as someone quite qualified in my area of research (population ecology) who takes the prevailing views in climate science very seriously. I recently attended the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society and the issue of climate change was a major theme. Nowhere was there denial of the human fingerprint or on the potential consequences of inaction. Amongst the scientists there, the human fingerprint is taken as given, based on the proxy evdience and support for the bulk of our colleagues in climate science.
Spagled Drongo, explain please:
Why is mean sea level along the Indian coast higher in
the Bay of Bengal than in the Arabian Sea?
Abstract.
Levelling observations conducted during the Great Trigonometrical
Survey of India (1858{1909) and subsequent observations showed that
mean sea level along the coast of India is higher in the Bay of Bengal than
in the Arabian Sea, the diference in sea level between Vishakhapatnam and
Mumbai (Bombay) being about 30 cm.
http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/2264/19/1/Geophys_Res_Lett_28_563.pdf
Why is mean sea level along the Indian coast higher in
the Bay of Bengal than in the Arabian Sea?
Spangled Drongo
"So that if local SLs have not risen but actually reduced in Moreton Bay over ~ 70 years, there cannot be SLR in the rest of the world, accelerating or otherwise."
What on earth are you talking about? This is nonsense. Why can't there be SLR in the rest of the world? Did you understand the graph I linked to?
Let's suppose for the monent that the SL in Moreton Bay has been flat for 70 years. Why does this constrain the rest of the world. Why is Moreton Bay (or, more to the point, a location 7 kilometres up the creek from a river entrance) the golden point to measure global sea level? What about all the other points around the world where there is a clear long-term trend in SL? Why don't they count?
" Why can’t there be SLR in the rest of the world? Did you understand the graph I linked to?"
Because otherwise sparkly dangles here wouldn't have a reason to have faith in the denailist worldview.
More lies from chameleon. He/she/it lies that he/she/it does not know the meaning of "scare quotes":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
Of courses that is exactly what he/she/it was doing. To deny that is just one gigantic lie. Of course that is par for the course for AGW deniers since the only way they can deny reality is by lying about it. There is a lot of it around with SD, BFPM and the shamefulone.
Hey, go easy Ian Forrester. Now that Drongo's lunacy has fully revealed itself chameleon is probably in a fight to the death with his/her/its' inner hypocrite.
I can just see the facepalm ... "Why on earth did the old ninny go and say that ?? ... now I'll have to support him because I've argued that all viewpoints are equally valid ... wait ... I know ... I won't comment on his stupidity just like I haven't all thread ... phew, almost forgot the first rule of Denier Club ... *NEVER* call out the dickheads in Denier Club ... but, will the folk here notice? ... damn, I can't decide what to do..."
Chris W,
Right on. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Jonas thread, where the denier nitwits there pat each other on the back endlessly even when they are making wholly fallacious arguments. I cringe every time I read PentaxZ's rubbish over there - his inability to understand the process and importance of spatial and temporal scales in understanding time-series data sets is truly staggering. Certainly he expects near instantaneous responses in cause-and-effect (C02-temperature) relationships generated over immense geographical scales, whilst ignoring lags, short-term feedback effects and other vital areas. I have seen the same thing done by naysayers in predicting extinction rates on the basis of habitat loss. These idiots think that the loss of habitat area y must, by definition, lead to the extinction of species a-x in that habitat instantaneously, without reconciling population relaxation times and temporal lags. Populations of species are probably still being lost in North America as a result of habitat destruction more than a century ago. It can take this long for changes to fully manifest themselves on components within the system. Drongo and Chameleon here are also mangling science in defense of - well - a defenseless position with regards to SLR.
Neil White, the 4th graph in your link does indeed show SL variation of +/- ~ 30 cms over the surface of the earth.
Fully accept that. [John L take note]
I'll say this again for those a little slow:
These variations in SL are, as you know, the results of constant winds and/or currents but even at twice those heights they only represent the equivalent of a micron of variation in the surface of a billiard table.
IOW ~ one hundred times more perfectly flat than the best competition billiard table money can buy.
If the world's oceans are as aggressive as this at seeking and finding equilibrium, then ANY LOCALLY OBSERVED SLs, regardless of where they may be on the surface of the earth, that fail to rise over a ~70 year period, show that SLR is not happening.
"These variations in SL are, as you know, the results of constant winds and/or currents but even at twice those heights they only represent the equivalent of a micron of variation in the surface of a billiard table"
What a ridiculous corollary. I'd love to see you try and get that through peer-review. It would be bounced so fast that you wouldn't know what hit you. Read the link I posted above, Drongo. Kind of spoils your party.
Ummm Jeff?
This was your question:
'This makes we wonder why Chameleon and SD appear set on flogging this one and only horse. What about ther myriad other effects? '
I was just trying to anwer your question. There was no 'or' involved:
'Or won’t you stick your neck out beyond SLR? '
Also?
Am I to assume that you have a better right to publish than Humlum and also that you have published more than 49 with a superior h factor and more citations since 1982?
I googled 'Jeff Harvey' and didn't find any publications by anyone of that name.
But perhaps you have published under a different name?
Spangled Drongo
"If the world’s oceans are as aggressive as this at seeking and finding equilibrium, then ANY LOCALLY OBSERVED SLs, regardless of where they may be on the surface of the earth, that fail to rise over a ~70 year period, show that SLR is not happening."
Now tell us what locally oberved SLs that do rise over a period of 70 years tell us.
Drongo.
You have more homework.
Or is it all too hard for you now?
And do you still stand by Daly?
"Am I to assume that you have a better right to publish than Humlum "
Completely irrelevant.
Humlum's work is substandard and this specific one just plain wrong.
Good grief, your incomprehension in service of your pre-existing conclusions is astounding. As I already pointed out, the 4th graph shows trends, not differences. You can't conclude "it's 30cm higher in one place than another" from that graph.
...a notion with which you are utterly deluding yourself, as I pointed out above. Small percentage variations on a very large base do NOT imply small absolute variations, no matter how fondly you embrace the idea.
If the GST rate was only 0.01% instead of 10% you would conclude that no GST could ever be levied - and the corporate accountant and the Tax Office would both disabuse you very quickly if you bought a million dollars worth of horse shit and refused to pay the $100 of tax.
And while I'm here your question relies on incorrect assumptions. In science no-one has a right to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
So...you're also incompetent at Googling, and at basic scientific article finding. Heck, the very first hit when you Google - with quotes - "Jeff Harvey" and "scientist" is a Wiki page about him, and the second hit takes you to his page at his institution. That page has a "Selected Publications" list.
It staggers me that you can think yourself competent to assess scientific claims when you can't even manage this basic search.
Meanwhile, you continue to fail to justify your claim that Humlum's work is "equally valid" - note the use of scare quotes to express both sarcasm and incredulity at your claim - and you once again failed to stick the flounce on your way out. Perhaps we can hope for third time lucky?
Oops, left out the term 'bibliography' in my description of the Google search. Without it Jeff's page at his institution is only the third hit - very hard to find, eh?
Damn, Lotharsson, you beat me to it. I used google scholar and got 15,000 hits; guess google is beyond chamleleon's capabilities.
And for spangles
"Tide gauges measure sea level with respect to a tide -
gauge datum that is only useful locally and not suitable for global studies. An
attempt to measure the relative height between local tide - gauge datums does not
provide an effective global solution to this problem, though it may be useful for
some regional studies."
Geoffrey Blewitt
Understanding Sea Level Rise and Variability
http://geodesy.unr.edu/publications/Blewitt_Chapter09.pdf
In other words, Moreton Bay is not the globe.
Thanks Lotharsson,
will attempt to look him up after work.
"Now tell us what locally oberved SLs that do rise over a period of 70 years tell us."
Neil White, a very good point. Do you have any?
And BJ, when you want to deal seriously with SLR instead of huffing, puffing, handwaving, distracting and denying, I'm happy to talk to you. If not, find somone else.
Producing your own obs and answering my last question would be a start.
Drongo.
I am dealing seriously with sea level rise, and particularly with your inability to comprehend that your own observations and favoured sources are completely unreliable.
Exacty how am I distracting? I keep referring to inescapably important factors that you have failed to take into consideration, and that you refuse to acknowledge - these factors are directly pertinent to the validity (or rather the lack thereof) of your claim, so my focus on these points is anything but a distraction.
I am not distracting - you are, and you have been distracting from your errors for three years.
And I am not the one who is denying the integral contributions of the factors that I list in determining what the level of water is in a river.
I am not denying - you are, and you have been denying for three years that my points are pertinent and that your claims are bogus.
Why should I produce my own observations? There's a wealth of appropriately collected and analysed scientifc-quality data out there, and anyway when I mentioned my own acquaintances' observations of record overtoppings you disparaged them in favour of your own.
And why should I answer a question that is tangential at best to the bases of my challenge of your pseudoscience?
A question that, incidentally, and like so much else you produce, is nothing but a distraction.
Which brings me back to the fact that there is more homework waiting for your attention.
Bernard, the only way you have dealt with this problem to date is through years of deliberate obscurantism and obfuscation but in spire of your incredibly negative attitude there are some here who seem interested enough to discuss the real world situation.
Now do you at least admit that:
“So, while it departs from the ellipsoid that it is referenced to by up to about +/- 100 metres, it is, in effect a ‘level surface’ for all normal purposes”
Spangled Drongo is still pretending that the "4th graph" he approvingly cited doesn't refute his oft-made claim that sea levels can't be rising because of his "obs" and hoping that no-one else will notice.
Yes, sorry Lothe, I mistakenly assumed the 4th graph was the 4th ellipsoid graph which is the one that I meant, showing a +/- 30 cms as I mentioned. Not the +/- 15 mm/y.
So...you're citing the analysis of the data that shows sea surface height, but rejecting the analysis of the data that shows sea surface level rise, because as that movie of sea level height points out:
And that plot clearly shows global average sea level rise.
You do realise your two stances are mutually exclusive, right? Which one will you reject?
Spangled Drongo
NW: “Now tell us what locally oberved SLs that do rise over a period of 70 years tell us.”
SD: "Neil White, a very good point. Do you have any?"
Yes, there are lots of them. That's where the estimates of GMSL rise (such as the one at the very start of this thread) come from. Now answer the question.
As far as I can tell, in Drongo World, if we took 50 tide gauge records, each 70 years long (say over 1940-2010), and 49 of them showed trends of 1.5 to 2.5 mm/year over the seventy years. but the one in a river near Drongo's place showed a trend of 0.0 mm/year over the same period, then Drongo would reject the other 49 and accept the one that says 0. Is that correct?
Chameleon,
FYI
I have 121 publication on the WoS since 1993 and 2786 citations (460 in 2012). That's more than half of the citations that Ole Humlum has in his entire scientific career (which in terms of publishing began in 1982). And many of my colleagues are way ahead of me....
As I said, he's a mediocre scientist in my view who, like many bother mediocre scientists, gets undue attention for being a climate change denier.
Neil White, it is not rising along the east coast of Australia as well as in many other parts of the world.
Why is it rising in only some parts of the world when the oceans are flatter than a billiard table?
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/are-sea-levels-rising-nils-axel-morner…
Morner is a deceptive hack as has been amply documented in the past, and Joanne Nova routinely and egregiously misinterprets scientific data but only so that it supports her pre-existing conclusions as I can attest to from personal experience. If you're trying to substantiate your case (for once) by referral to quality data with a sufficient sample size you'll need to do better than either of those sources. Or at the very least show why they are correct and (say) the sources Neil White points to are badly mistaken. Given your history of almost complete error I don't like your chances.
Speaking of robust data, the actual 4th graph in Neil White's link uses the same underlying data that you agree with when you cited the animation that shows that sea level differences aren't too great. That graph and data say otherwise.
Doesn't the cognitive dissonance ever become disturbing to you?
Neil White, you say:
"As far as I can tell, in Drongo World, if we took 50 tide gauge records, each 70 years long (say over 1940-2010), and 49 of them showed trends of 1.5 to 2.5 mm/year over the seventy years. but the one in a river near Drongo’s place showed a trend of 0.0 mm/year over the same period, then Drongo would reject the other 49 and accept the one that says 0. Is that correct?"
That isn't what SD is saying at all. he is asking a simple question. I assume, knowing nothing much about sea levels and tides, that there is a simple answer. I know I haven't followed this thread in detail and perhaps it already has been answered..
SD is saying, if 49 records show a rise but one does not AND if the sea tends to aggressively seek equilibrium, then why does one not? One could assume some local influence, but surely over time the broader trend must overtake the local variables. The fact that one tide gauge does not reflect the other 49 poses a question.
The answer must be simple. What is it?
You could have fooled me!
OK, to be as fair as possible to SD he's actually saying that all the measurements he didn't personally take, and which show sea level rise which is inconvenient to his position, are flawed. And his personal observations, they are are accurate.
The following simple answer has been given: "perhaps because the one he is pointing to is 7km up a river in an environment that has experienced several confounding factors".
If he were to start talking about some high quality sea level observations, that would be a different question. But since he rejects those other observations, he's not asking that one.
Also, he has fooled himself that "aggressively seeking equilibrium" means "must all experience essentially the same sea level changes", despite me pointing out that this is a fallacious (and innumerate) argument.
Isostasy is a principle taught in first year earth science. It addresses the bouyancy of continents with respect to the underlying mantle. I don't have a textbook that it explains it, Can anyone help out here?
My lecturer did a great job, reinforced with some simple mass balance calculations, to explain why continents rebound in response to erosion. A rapid version of erosion is glacial ice loss, say at the end of an Ice Age stage. Later I learnt that the story is complicated by the underlying mantle also adjusting its mass in response. The upshot of it is that a point on the surface of the earth is rarely fixed over time which complicates (sea level) measurements.
"Neil White, it is not rising along the east coast of Australia as well as in many other parts of the world."
and you have measured the entire east coast of Australia, glittery bollocks?
"SD is saying, if 49 records show a rise but one does not AND if the sea tends to aggressively seek equilibrium, then why does one not"
Because the sea level at that location isn't the sea level but the level of the river.
Duh.
Oh the irony...
Still, Drongo, if such isthe case you should be up to your river wall mark in examples. Please supply a few.
And please explain why you refuse to address the multiple substantive points I make, each one which demolishes on its own your entire case.
The answer is simple, and it has been pointed out by others above. Drongo's mark is:
1) in a river 7km away from the nearest mouth to the open ocean
2) affected by significant damming histories
3) affected by a history of significant alterations of river hydrology, including bank engineering, drainage alterations, canal developments, et cetera
4) affected by a history of estuarine dredging, sand bank shifting, mouth reconfigurations, et cetera
5) not tied to any compensation for barometric or other meteorological conditions, including flooding
6) not tied to any compensation for regional currents or other oceanographic conditions.
These points along are each sufficient to explain why Drongo's mark does not reflect the "broader trend".
The distraction of water finding its "equilibrium" is spurious, because there are many factors that can affect this parameter too, that do not invalidate the scientific observations of global sea level rise.
Way back in the early days of this discussion I mentioned eustatic movement but it's unlikely to contribute more than a minor proportion of any change. However it's interesting to see the phenomenon raised again, because it is an important - and in fact, essential - part of John Daly's attempt to contradict the fact of sea level rise, and I have yet to see Drongo acknowledge that Daly screwed up about this.
If only Drongo or any of his supporters here would actually address any and all of these matters...
But of course they won't, because it's a meme dear to their hearts. It's extraordinary though that they cleave to it so vigorously - even children grow up and admit to themselves that Santa doesn't exist when the evidence indicates otherwise, but here are a bunch of denialists who have been repeatedy presented overwhelming reasons why Drongo's flight of fancy is foundering, and all they are able to do it to carefully turn their noses away from it like a banker stepping over a dead junkie in the street.
Anthony David
Not so much a text book more 'Popular Science' but of value to those who obviously know little about Earth's process is Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.
Any good general book on the Earth's systems will have much of value and a broader view such as Earth's Climate: Past and Future. Bill Ruddiman's 'Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate' is also worth a look.
Comprehensive texts on oceanography will also help by providing essential background information which undermines all these denier wilfully ignorant arguing points with Oceanography (ISE): An Invitation to Marine Science.
Each of these I have copies of, and have studied, but of course as we know one can lead an ass to, the rising, water but cannot ever make them drink, and hold it.
The big thing of course is to get these wilfully ignorant to not only read but to follow up on cited sources in the texts suggested. This is probably an alien concept to those not exposed to the rigours of study in university level education. I have followed such citations and learned much. Problem is it is so complex and nuanced that posting in blogs such as this is not the easiest of methods by which to distil such knowledge. Thus the supply of recommends and citations is probably the best shorthand for the necessary learning methodology.
Spangled Drongo:
"Neil White, it is not rising along the east coast of Australia as well as in many other parts of the world."
And it is rising even faster in many other parts of the world, such that the global mean trend from satellite altimeters over the last 19 years is > 3 mm/year. Estimates from tide gauges for the same period are similar. I don't understand why this is difficult for you to understand. If you want a global mean you have to look at all measurements over the globe, not just pick one area that tells you what you want to hear! Perhaps you should look at those plots again, espeicially the fourth figure down.
"Why is it rising in only some parts of the world when the oceans are flatter than a billiard table?"
As has been pointed out to you, the billiard table comparison is not appropriate. There are a lot of reasons why the rate of sea level rise varies. For example, the very high trends in the western tropical pacific over the last two decades are related to the PDO.There was a paper on this in GRL by Zhang and Church last year.
"http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/are-sea-levels-rising-nils-axel-morner…"
This is the same self-referential garbage that you linked to the other day. Find some real science by real scientists. This might appeal to you: after Morner's rubbish paper on the Maldives got published some years ago, Sallie Baliunas (an astronomer who used to be Willie Soon's offsider, but has gone quiet lately) put something out about Morner's claimed drop in sea level around the Maldives being due to the Maldives being near that big depression in the geoid in the Indian Ocean. Hilarious! This was on some CEI sponsored web site.
Bernard J and Lotharsson, you say that SD's point of measurement is in a river some distance from the sea. I agree with that and I can see the case for the confounding factors. But I asked about that earlier. You are making claims that invalidate SD's reference point but they ARE just that, claims. I doubt you have any actual evidence of the effects of those factors for this particular location.
For this to be so, those factors have to just happen to have constrained sea level rise to show no effect at that location. Regardless of the exact location, it IS tidal. And thus must be affected by SLR. You argue for that by claiming confounding factors that have prevented that effect. So isn't it a bit of a reach to claim those factors have so nicely offset SLR over 70 years?
Neil White, it is also falling in some parts of the world. The Billiard Table Principle is arguably a lot more dependable than RSSs when it comes to SLs.
As I have mentioned, we can have MSL rise but high tide level fall which is SLR but still confirms my obs.
And to repeat myself for those too obtuse to want to know, my Chevron Island benchmark is just one of many benchmarks I have around Moreton Bay that all agree [as do local tide gauges] and two of which are considerably older. ~ 70 years.
But what continues to surprise me is: why haven't you self professed scientific observers got any observations of your own?
It is akin to talking to people in a different language.
This is an interesting paper on the tides in SD's area.
http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/361940/Mirf_Tida…
“Why is it rising in only some parts of the world when the oceans are flatter than a billiard table?”
Why is it impossible for that to happen?
"Neil White, it is also falling in some parts of the world."
And on average it is rising.
Do you have ANY IDEA what "average" means, spangles?
"As I have mentioned, we can have MSL rise"
We do have MSL rise. And that rise is called SLR.
"but high tide level fall which is SLR but still confirms my obs."
WRONG.
High tide causes the sea level where the tide is high to be rising, but that isn't SLR.
You stupid boy
Fuck it.
Spangled pasties, what term to YOU want for the rise in MSL to be?
We'll use that BTL.
When MSL rises, what should it be called so that you can stop fucking about with half-arsed bollocks because you're a simpleton and can't (and won't) understand a fucking thing?
Spangles isn't arguing with the notion of average, Wow. he's asking why, if the sea is aggressively level, some places might show a decline, or a much slower rise than others, over time.
Here we go - the historic association between our current CO2 concentration - 400ppm - and equilibrium sea-level is 9m above present. Perhaps a little less in Spangly's Rivulet.
Of course, the concentration won't stay there.
I'm going to give the Deniers fair warning; if - as is highly likely - you don't actually manage to read the article, you're going to say a lot of stupid things. Well, a lot more stupid things. I predict that even with this advance warning you will be unable to stop yourselves...
His point re tides is interesting too. 70 years is not a long time. Is it possible that while MSL has risen, actual highest high water for his location has not increased by much if at all due to the local confounding factors?
SD's benchmarks do not take into account MSL for his location, after all. He is only looking at daily extremes.
Isn't he just? And this followed by an oxymoronic question!
And the answer to said question is 'for all the reasons we have indicated and linked to'. Of course, you have to have some ability to absorb counter-information to learn anything from it.
"Spangles isn’t arguing with the notion of average"
Yes he is when he asks "How can it go down in some places and up in others?" and follows it up with "SLR can't be going up because it's not going up everywhere".
"he’s asking why, if the sea is aggressively level"
The sea isn't aggressively level.
"He is only looking at daily extremes."
Then he's not only not reading SEA LEVEL he's not reading RIVER level either.
And his data quality control is nonexistent.
For all the whinging about how badly sited the stephenson screens are, not one of you fuckwits have complained about the complete lack of data quality control of spangled droplets' data.
Comprehension fail Wow. The sea may not be aggressively level, but that is what SD is suggesting unless I misunderstand him. He is saying that it IS aggressively level. That claim is either right or wrong, but that's his basis for his argument.
He then goes on to claim that if it IS level, then if in one place sea level is NOT rising as per some real world benchmarks, then it must not be rising elsewhere. That's nothing to do with averages. He is effectively claiming that the tide gauge data must be incorrect.
Wow, there has never been a question about whether his data is quality controlled or not. It hasn't been. As far as I am concerned, he could have made it all up. What SD is saying is that his own personal observations over time are that the sea level (and here I think he means max high water) has not increased. I echoed that from my own personal experience.
And since you KNOW the data is of questionable quality, why do you think he's got anything worthwhile to say on the subject?
He HAS NO DATA to back his assertion up with.
"The sea may not be aggressively level, but that is what SD is suggesting "
And since the "if" clause is false, the statement has no response.
Do you know what "if" means?
BFPM - all you're doing is reiterating the ridiculousness of Spangly's position.
'Since I choose to disregard even substantial variations and arbitrarily redefine the whole as "aggressively level" I can then aggressively assert that because I've obviated variation by fiat there also cannot be any variation in the rate of change of SL, therefore despite the clear evidence of SLR overall I've done away with the whole concept of average and am now aggressively claiming, in common with some of my denser cohorts with regard to temperature, that any value below the (rejected!) median is clear proof that no median rise is occurring! I'll then aggressively demand that all responses to me must be twisted to fit this aggressively ridiculous framework.'
Talk about 6 impossible things before breakfast!
Or, put simply, Spangly doesn't understand the concept of average. He's not alone on your side of the debate - in fact, in a very real sense for the majority this is the debate!
"if the sea is aggresively level"
It isn't aggresively level.
Therefore the remainder of the scenario is no different from "if unicorns exist, where are they now?".
Spangled Drongo
"Neil White, it is also falling in some parts of the world."
That's right - it falls in some places, is near zero in others, and rises in yet others and the global-average trend in SL is greater than zero, as shown by two independent systems. I'm glad that we've got that through to you at last!
This global-mean rise can be thought of as the change in ocean volume. This change in ocean volume is consistent with the sum of contributions to ocean volume from ocean thermal expansion, ice melt and exchanges with dams and groundwater.
"The Billiard Table Principle is arguably a lot more dependable than RSSs when it comes to SLs."
The billard table principle is a load of bollocks and has no relevance here. ALSO, you're getting confused between the small large-scale slopes in the geoid (which is, effectively, a map of the MEAN sea surface over some period - typically from 20+ years of satellite altimeter data, and some other data as well), and the variability and change in SLs about that mean as measured by tide gauge and satellite data. The billiard table principle tells us exactly nothing about sea level, so is not more reliable than anything.
And all this stuff in your head about the sea aggressively seeking flatness is wrong too. The atmosphere/ocean/earth system is a dynamic system which is in an ongoing balance, and this can lead to sea levels (and surface atmospheric pressures) being a long way from 'level'.
What's you problem with satellite altimeters, apart from the fact that they tell you things you don't want to hear?
"But what continues to surprise me is: why haven’t you self professed scientific observers got any observations of your own?"
We've got lots of observations - e.g. the ones used to produce the plot at the head of this post. When are you going to give us some concrete information about yours? While we're on the subject of observations, can you provide some concrete evidence (rather than hearsay) to backup you claim that tidal ranges can noticeably decrease while SL rises?
"It is akin to talking to people in a different language."
Agreed!
10 people have an income of $50K each.
2 years later four of them have an income of $60K, 2 now earn $55K, 2 still earn the original $50K, and two have made Tony Abbott happy by using their 'choice' to 'flexibly' earn $45K each.
Now, as amazing as it seems, in Spanglys' world-view not only has the average income (an arcane concept that he rejects) not increased across the 10, the total amount of money flowing to them in wages also has not increased, either!
Even more amazingly, he can find people here willing to support him. And, more incredibly still, some of these manage to scoff at the logical credentials of others in the process!
Was happy at Jen's but dared to come here and claim my sea level obs based on carefull scrutiny of tide marks inland as well as long shore are everybody's valid ref for SL even SLR.
By tide marks, I mean everything from recent high tide wet lines, tide zone mussels, both fringe and pile clusters top to botom, also low boundary life stuck to exposed wave cut rock shelf and reef ends.
The sheltered inlet with no major stream is the easiest to monitor against long lasting features, otherwise sea channels between continental shelf based islands and the major coastline, typical round Tasmania, north and south.
In defense of SD, it takes a lot of patience to get some Q'landers south of the Tweed
Bill, that analogy is nothing like what SD is saying.
As an interested layperson, I thought SD's observation raised a fair point. If SLR over say 100 years is on average something like 200mm, you'd expect to see some effect from it. Most likely, higher high tides in particular. In physical terms, you'd see water reaching a higher level than it has done in the past. That's the impact we could expect, and it's what all the fuss is about.
SD notes that by his own obs, that hasn't happened. I back this up, not with good quality controlled data, but simple real world observations. Because if there is no physical real world impact, then what does it matter what the graphs show?
Now, SD's claim of a level sea surface etc I won't go into, I have no idea whether that makes sense or not. But I AM curious about why my local sea front appears to be no different now to how it was 100 years ago if SLR is occurring and it is accelerating. Do I just happen to live somewhere that is not experiencing that degree of SLR, or is something else at play?
SD's comment re MSL and high water makes sense too, but it's just a thought, it's not a claim backed by evidence. Is it possible for MSL to vary over a short term, say 50 years, but for max high water or even mean high water not to vary as much?
I noted something similar re the claims about Sandy. When it was claimed Sandy's effect was exacerbated by SLR, I wondered how you'd tell that. Just to say that SLR since say 1960 is 150mm doesn't mean, to my mind, that Sandy had that much extra sea level to play with.
I think you'd need to know how much different the sea level was for that particular tide in 1960 versus that tide in 2012. What I found was that it's hard to make that assessment. I also couldn't find that exact data. So, I used predicted tide heights for the periods that I could find. And here's what I came up with. Yes, it's a bit of a diversion from topic, but I still found it interesting.
First, tide heights at The Battery New York are calculated with reference to what is known as Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). This is the datum point used with reference to the official Benchmark, and I’ll assume the Benchmark is on the land (well, it is in fact).
MLLW is the average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch. The National Tidal Datum Epoch is the period over which a mean is set. The two most recent are the modern one which was set in the period 1983-2001 and the superceded one which covered 1960-1978.
For the prediction or measurement of tides, we use MLLW as the zero point, so in the data, it appears as zero. However, for the 1960-1978 period it was set at 936mm above the Benchmark and for the period 1983-2001 it was 1002mm. You can see therefore that in terms of these means, there is an increase of some 66mm. Anyways, without going into too much detail, what I did was to find the various tidal datums and adjusted for the MLLW figure. That is, Mean High Water today is 1443mm. Adding on the MLLW value of 1002mm gives us an actual value of 2445mm above the Benchmark (land). Does that make sense?
So, what are our figures?
We can use Mean Higher High Water, Mean High Water and Mean Low Water.
MHHW 2496 2543
MHW 2393 2445
MLW 1003 1065
Figures in absolute millimetres above the benchmark, 60-78 first and 83-01 second.
In this case, the tide of the day at the time of landfall was the High Water one, not the Higher High Water one. What was that predicted to be? 1444mm. Add our adjustment, and we get 2446mm.
You will see that is 53mm higher than the 1960-1978 mean, but bang on the money for the 1983-2001 mean. So, right there, we could argue for around 53mm of effect from SLR. However, the 2393mm number is a mean, and we can assume some tides were higher than that in that period (1960-78), so our number MAY be less than 53mm. Also, the land there is subsiding and I have no idea if that’s been adjusted for in the Benchmark values. I’ll assume it has been, but maybe not. So, our SLR effect seems to be somewhere between 0mm and 55mm. Let’s settle on that 53mm number.
This means that Hurricane Sandy may have had up to 53mm of extra sea level with which to work compared to if it had struck in 1960.
What do you think? This by the way isn't meant to prove or disprove something, it's just my own curiosity. And wondering if my train of thought makes sense?
Bolt for PM --- Not bad, although I think your values are considerably inflated. Note that about 1/2 of that extra is due to local land subsidence.
"Bill, that analogy is nothing like what SD is saying."
Indeed, what SD is saying is analogous to "If unicorns exist, where are they hiding?".
"As an interested layperson, I thought SD’s observation raised a fair point."
You're interested in things that don't happen???
"If SLR over say 100 years is on average something like 200mm, you’d expect to see some effect from it."
And we do.
Sandy.
We also see, for example, that the mean sea level has risen 200mm.
No, you've got it entirely backwards!
Refusing to accept unjustified claims IS NOT making a claim about those unjustified claims. This is a very similar concept to the (often poorly understood) fact that a jury refusing to find an accused guilty IS NOT claiming that the accused is innocent. (The accused may well have done it but there may be insufficiently good evidence to demonstrate it beyond a reasonable doubt.)
Your argument, if accepted, leads one to have to accept any all claims, even those that contradict a mass of evidence that refutes them, until those specific claims are demonstrated to be dodgy "beyond a reasonable doubt". That is foolishness (although it may explain how Spangled Drongo manages to make two simultaneous claims that contradict each other, and doesn't withdraw either of them even when it is pointed out).
To put it another way, science is inherently skeptical - and your stance is inherently gullible. Being actually skeptical - not the faux skepticality that is the stock in trade of SD's sources like Watts Up With That and Jo Nova and is heavily based on the application of scientific incompetence - is a process of taking ALL the evidence and inferring the best explanation for it.
Let's unpack SD's set of claims and see how well he does on that front.
0. SD claims (implicitly) to have made accurate observations of river levels at Nerang over 70 years or so.
1. SD claims (explicitly) that these river level observations ARE accurate sea level observations for the sea near the river level observation point.
2. SD claims that because the ocean is quite flat from a large scale perspective, that small scale sea level variations simply cannot exist.
3. Accordingly SD claims that his "sea level" (yes, chameleon, THOSE are scare quotes) observations are ALSO accurate sea level observations for the entire globe.
For (0), I don't see anyone here bothering to comment on it because the claims aren't considered relevant to the topic at hand.
For (1) there is considerable justifiable scientific skepticism, precisely because scientists know there are a number of factors that affect river levels besides sea levels at the river mouth. In other words, there is other evidence on this point, and the best inference from all the evidence is "river levels 7km from the mouth don't provide a good quality measure of sea level at the river mouth". Even worse is the fact that the OTHER strong inference is "if you want to get a good quality measure of sea level this can be done by measuring the level of the sea, not the level of a nearby river".
For (2) we don't even need scientific skepticism. As demonstrated above SD's argument is innumerate - it relies on not understanding basic arithmetic! It is also self-refuting because (as demonstrated above) in order to make it he has to rely on scientific data showing the instantaneous variations in sea level across the globe, but the VERY SAME DATA SET shows that some places are experiencing sea level rise at the same time as some are not. He can't legitimately rely on it AND dismiss it at the same time.
But if you apply scientific skepticism it gets worse, because one can clearly see that SD is blatantly cherry-picking the very small set of data he likes ("Nerang river levels!" And a couple more sites!) and trying to argue from that as if the rest does not exist. That is simply NOT inferring the best explanation from all the evidence. That is called cherry-picking.
For (3) we only need logic applied to SD's failure to establish (1) and (2). Or we can apply scientific skepticism by looking at ALL the data, including the mass of data that SD desperately wants to ignore. When you do that the overwhelmingly strong conclusion is that yes - global average sea levels ARE rising and have been for quite some time.
"The billiard table principle tells us exactly nothing about sea level, so is not more reliable than anything."
Neil White, what the BTP tells us emphatically is that SL equilibrium is so aggressive that it is only upset for relatively short periods by forces such as trade winds and currents and only as long as those forces continue to apply.
Even with those forces being applied the world's oceans are still flatter than a billiard table which means that SLR will show itself all over the world if it is truly happening.
For example, the City of the Gold Coast and the bayside suburbs of Brisbane have enormous ocean, broadwater, bayside, estuarine, tidal river, tidal canal etc sea frontage yet those cities' coastal scientists, when asked directly, cannot pinpoint anywhere that SLR is happening.
And in my obs, if anything, it is reducing.
Have you realised yet that this is an argument from personal ignorance which is a well known fallacy?
You keep pretending that you ONLY have your own local observations, despite other impacts having been pointed out to you already (e.g. Miami).
If you actually wanted to find out what the impacts to date have been you could go looking for work that describes it. I get the strong impression that you are far more interested in reiterating your pre-existing point of view than finding out whether it is anywhere near the best inference from ALL the evidence.
Give up Wowsie, your logic is lousy.
Sandy wrecked the east coast with the 8" [???] SLR, not the 14.25' of king tide and storm surge.
It was SLR wot done it!
And true to form Spangled Drongo ignores all of the points that refute the conclusions he seeks to draw from his "billiard table principle" by re-asserting it. I reckon we'll see another dozen re-assertions on this thread yet.
I suspect he has a read-only brain, as no new facts ever seem to penetrate it.
"It was SLR wot done it!"
Ah, you don't understand a damn thing, therefore you make up shit that's wrong so you can claim someone else said it.
It's been gone over many times before, but you never listen do you.
Never learn, either.
Sandy did more damage because of the SLR.
Indeed, 2012 has been the most damaging year for the USA.
SLR increases the damage done by storms.
A fact you refuse to acknowledge because it is devastating to your faith in denial.
"Neil White, what the BTP tells us emphatically is that SL equilibrium is so aggressive"
BTP is invalid. And that tells us emphatically that SL equilibrium is not aggressive and that you are an ignorant moron who merely repeats the same lies time and time again.
PS Bolt-head, apparently YOU ARE WRONG AGAIN about glittery bollocks' claims.
That's been three times so far you've claimed "comprehension fail" on another for "misreading" SD's insane postings where it's turned out COMPREHENSION FAIL on YOU.
God, you're a moron every bit as dense as spanky here.
"cannot pinpoint anywhere that SLR is happening."
The sea level rises every time the tide comes in, dingo.
And after all the explanation to date, that is an inordinately stupid point of view to cling to. By definition if local sea levels have risen by 150mm then Sandy has 150mm more to play with than it would have had if the sea level had not risen.
Think of it as Neil puts it - sea level rise is the equivalent of having more water in the sea. 150mm more in the case you are talking about. That 150mm of extra water doesn't magically disappear or go somewhere else for the weekend when a large storm shows up.
Yearly Data Reports - Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/abslmp/reports_yearly.shtml
From latest report, page 30:
Location Installation Date Sea Level Trend
(mm/yr)
Cocos Islands Sep 1992 8.1
Groote Eylandt Sep 1993 9.0
Darwin May 1990 8.6
Broome Nov 1991 9.1
Hillarys Nov 1991 9.1
Esperance Mar 1992 6.0
Thevenard Mar 1992 4.5
Port Stanvac* Jun 1992 4.7
Portland Jul 1991 3.2
Lorne Jan 1993 2.7
Stony Point Jan 1993 2.6
Burnie Sep 1992 3.1
Spring Bay May 1991 3.5
Port Kembla Jul 1991 3.2
Rosslyn Bay Jun 1992 3.8
Cape Ferguson Sep 1991 4.8
BFPM, you are as dense as Spangly:
Florida, Sandy, high tides on the Pacific islands, whatever; the point is that if we separated the component you refuse to accept emotionally and just treat the tide values as numbers you wouldn't - well, Spangly might - deny that the numbers are increasing, and that while you can finagle and nitpick the real-world impact at the moment we are now locked in to SLR for centuries.
When those numbers get high enough no amount of local variation is going to overwhelm the trend sufficiently to convince anyone - except, again, the Spanglys of this world, for whom the term 'denier' was made - that we don't have a serious problem.
This is so obvious that one is constantly left wondering if one is confronting bad logic or bad faith. Both, probably.
David Benson. "Not bad, although I think your values are considerably inflated. Note that about 1/2 of that extra is due to local land subsidence."
I used the values from the tide data at that NOAA site. I assumed they might already factor out land subsidence when setting the baseline for each tidal epoch. For example, the 936mm for MLLW was changed to 1002mm in the current epoch. Do you think that's a raw unadjusted value?
If though we could assume that around 50% of the values has been contributed by way of subsidence, does that suggest something like 25mm of SLR in the past 50 years that contributed to sandy's impact?
Note I am NOT saying there was only 25mm of SLR when the data seems to indicate around 150mm rise in MSL, I was only trying to figure out how much the actual tide of the time might have been affected by SLR.
Bill, there is nothing I am trying to refuse 'emotionally'. I was simply saying that my own personal highly anecdotal untested uncontrolled vague observations appear to indicate that possibly the sea level at my local beach maybe hasn't changed in the past 100 years.
So, I wonder why that is. And it ties in with what someone, SD in this case, has actually physically recorded at a real world location.
And I think to myself, that's curious.
David Benson, I've read that report before. I thought those values were the raw unadjusted data? The following tables show the various factors to be adjusted in, that is the vertical movement of the station and barometric effects. So the raw figure for say Cocos Island (8mm/yr) is adjusted back to 3.4mm/yr in table 5. Am I misreading that?
Note too that these are very short term measures and as they note,
"It is important to emphasise that as the ABSLMP sea level records increase in length, the sea level trend estimates will continue to stabilise and become more indicative of longerterm changes. Caution must be exercised in interpreting the ‘short-term’ relative sea level trends (Table 2) as they are based on short records in climate terms and are still undergoing large year-to-year changes. "
David BB, when you look at the gauges,
Not much accelerating SLR here:
Townsville http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/637.php
Yamba http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/310.php
Thevenard http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/386.php
Newcastle http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/837.php
Burnie http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/683.php
Sydney http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/196.php
Take a bow, Wow. No dog could spew, vomit like yew.
" we are now locked in to SLR for centuries."
And bill, guess what all the world's predictions of doom had in common?
Bolt for PM --- I think you are on top of it.
The NOAA site for The Battery tide gauge had rather smaller numbers than you used which is why I suggested a smaller figure. Since there is no indication from NOAA that the data has been adjusted for subsidence I assume that it has not been; that might be wrong.
Well, in practically every case, no matter how well-founded the predictions and even in cases where subsequent events confirmed the predictions to be accurate, the "doom" predictors were derided by people operating from much less well-founded bases as being full of it.
I take it that's what you meant. Maybe there is some self-awareness creeping in.
Eh, Spangly? In your mind, that's an argument, is it?
What, like the Aztecs who claimed that the coming of the Conquistadors was going to be a disaster? (Not to mention all those tribes whose names we don't even know!) The Jews, Trade Unionists, Social-Democrats and Communists who thought Nazism was going to be a catastrophe? Ditto the Poles and the Russians who fretted as the Wehrmacht rolled in? The residents of Hiroshima who looked up at the sky on August 6th, 1945 and thought 'I've got a bad feeling about this...'?
Alarmists, eh?
Again, we see the gap between the 'gut', talk-back radio, smug suburban 'reality' in Spangly's head, and the world itself.
Deny it as you will, we are now locked into SLR for centuries - it is the rate that will determine the seriousness of the impact; only the foolish insist that rate will be manageable 'because catastrophes cannot happen because [smug]',and only the most extreme fools deny the laws of physics and mathematics in order to deny the rise itself.
spangled drongo --- A prediction of doom for Nineveh:
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2009/05/28/nahum2c-nineveh-and-tho…
Spangled Drongo
"Neil White, what the BTP tells us emphatically is that SL equilibrium is so aggressive that it is only upset for relatively short periods by forces such as trade winds and currents and only as long as those forces continue to apply."
Please explain the BTP. It sound like a load of bollocks to me, but please explain it and how it supports your statements about sea level aggressively seeking equilibrium.
I mean actually explain it, not just make a series of assertions!
On a related subject, tell us more about you observations of SL at your site. There was, apparently a very high level ~70 years ago. You claim that it has never been higher since. How do you know this? Have you checked the SL at every high tide (twice a day, no matter what time of day or night) for the last 70 years, or what? How do you know some rogue high tide didn't sneak through while you were off ocean racing or on holiday or something?
As I understand it the main tidal component in your area is M2 (lunar semi-diurnal) with a period of 12 hours and 24 minutes. Is that correct?
I see that the stupid sack of dishonest shit, chameleon, not only couldn't stick the flounce but has become a fucking regular troll. And you neurotics continue to while away your lives debating these specimens of intellectual and moral putrefaction. It's a sign of depression, y'know.
" No dog could spew, vomit like yew."
From you, that's practically a professional opinion.
I guess you couldn't actually respond to the point made, so you just went apeshit.
A tiny mind is still a terrible thing to waste, glittery bunghole. Learn how to do the best with the little you have.
"I was simply saying that my own personal highly anecdotal untested uncontrolled vague observations appear to indicate that possibly the sea level at my local beach maybe hasn’t changed in the past 100 years."
So you're admitting you are making shit up. And admitting you haven't looked. And admitting you have no clue what you're doing.
But you still want people to waste their time when you can't be arsed to do anything other than repeat the tired old crap that "it isn't happening".
What a waste of spunk you are.
Neil White, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about the BTP. What is it you don't get about the sea being flatter than a BT if there are no forces acting upon it but even when they do and the hills and valleys are at their max of around half a meter, it is still a hundred times flatter than a BT.
That's some equilibrium!
If enough ice was melteing say, at both poles to raise SLs 6 inches world wide, how long do you think it would take for that SLR to be observed all around the world in light of that vigorous equilibrium seeking and finding?
I'll give you a hint Neilly love.
It'd be somewhat less than 70years
"But you still want people to waste their time"
I don't want YOU to do anything in particular, Lousy Wowsie.
I don't mind if you even drop dead.
"I don’t want YOU to do anything in particular"
You don't want anyone to do anything about AGW.
Because you're a fucking psychopath.
"What is it you don’t get about the sea being flatter than a BT if there are no forces acting upon"
Since forces ALWAYS act upon the sea, it never is flatter than a billiard table.
PS you don't get 30 ft waves on a billiard table.
There's only ONE nutcase here Wow.
Nope, there are an abundance of nutcases, Bot.
You.
Spanker dingo.
Joan.
Pantie-Z.
Olap Dog.
No Lousy, it's entirely up to you.
No pressure.
"but even when they do and the hills and valleys are at their max of around half a meter, it is still a hundred times flatter than a BT."
The rilles on a billiard table are less than 2mm even on a badly rucked cloth.
Waves on the sea are far far larger than 2mm even on a completely calm day.
So you really have nothing at all, spanging donkeys?
Lets sum up.
Bot keeps telling people off for comprehension failure when they don't agree with Bot's misinterpretation of spankers' insane postings.
spanking donkeys thinks that billiard tables have 2m rilles on them and that this proves that the sea is flat because billiard tables are flat.
I think I have an idea.
BFPM is the sole member of the "men who spank donkeys" group.
Joan has the Scandanavian Troll Collective, Spanky here has "men who spank donkeys". Pretty similar to "men who stare at goats" but with less thinking.
"PS you don’t get 30 ft waves on a billiard table."
And they don't stay up one end when the wind stops blowing either.
Not like your bath water.
They don't exist AT ALL on a billiard table.
That is why your billiard table analogy doesn't work.
PS tides do.
PPS at least I bathe.
You think that a good stink keeps the demons of ill-health at bay, just like the Good Book said in the 18th Century.
It's more than "a case for the confounding factors" - it's the unavoidability of the confounding factors.
Eh?! You must be joking!
As others have said it's Drongo's responsibility to demonstrate that the manifold confounding phenomena are not acting on his river wall - after all, he's the one who is using his anecdotal observations to contradict professional scientists.
1) Barometric pressure significantly alters tidal heights. Inescapable fact. Drongo has shown no record of barometric pressure at the times of his "king tides", let alone any indication that he had compensated for the effect of barometric pressure on tidal maxima.
2) Flooding affects tidal heights in rivers. Inescapable fact. Drongo's argument was that the flooding that occurred during at least one one of his "king tides" had no effect.
3) Alterations of a river's hydrology through bank engineering, canal development, drainage construction and so on have effects on its flow, and thus on its height. Inescapable fact.
4) At the other end, alterations of a river's mouth, and/or of its estuarine profile, have effects on its flow, and thus of its height. Inescapable fact.
5) The same is the case with regional ocean currents.
6) Oh, and remember way back in 2010 when Drongo confused the concept of highest astronomical tides with kings tides? (Ah, those were the days... actually, they're still the days...) One of the variables mentioned then was that the moon's apsides have a bearing on the tide heights from year to year. I tried to get that idea to take root in Drongo's mind, too, but it proved to be a barren bed for such germination.
7) And it's on the record that the Nerang has a progressive history of damming.
All of these factors (and more) have a critical influence on riverine/estuarine height. You can doubt as much as you like that I don't have "any actual evidence of the effects of those factors for this particular location", but the matter does not require that I "have evidence" - parsimony and the very ubiquity of the laws of physics say that these phenomena occur in this instance just as they would elsewhere, and the whole point of this three year discussion is to elicite from Drongo the reasons why he assumes that none of them affect his anecdotal observations.
Drongo has made countless faux pas of basic science and statistics in this epic adherence to a fantasy meme. I mentioned many recently, but one other that is worth raising was his referral to a linear trendline applied to an oscillating phenomenon. I'll leave it to your to track the original posts it you feel so inclined, but the basic point is demonstrated here in the graph demolishing Drongo's red herring. I'd still like to have a detailed reply from Drongo on this matter...
Drongo is not only not claiming "no effect", he is claiming (based on riverine observations) that there is a decrease in sea level. My argument is that the confounders are not acting to neutralise sea level, but that if Drongo's observations are reliable then these confounders are resulting in this net decrease.
Once again, for the slow of learning, Drongo has shown no accounting for these inherently present factors.
See above.
But please explain why it is not "a bit rich" to expect that none of these confounders are integral in Drongo's observations.
And it's curious to see that the period in question has now stretched to "~70 years". When this all started Drongo's claim only referenced the period back to the 1960s. Are you and Drongo collaborating to extend the length of his observations? If so, why should I not be as insistent on seeing the colour of his record keeping as Drongo was about seeing the tail end of the south-eastern Queensland tide gauge data that I showed to him?
1) Drongo is arguing that the average sea level is declining. For evidence consider the stunt that he tried to pass with the regression through the ARGO data linked at my comment about putting trendlines through oscillating data. Oh, and his statement that "... in my obs, if anything, it is reducing".
2) The "sea" is not aggressively level. Watch the waves. Watch a tide. Watch two ocean currents meet. There are multiple forces continuously acting on the oceans to ensure that they are never "level".
3) Drongo's been given reasons for disparities in local sea level trend compared with global sea level trend. He's simply been ignoring for three years the many confounders of sea level dynamics. It seems that you have boarded his boat...
Absolutely. See the list above, and frequently posted previously.
Measuring sea level rise in a river is no different to sticking a thermometer in your arse to measure Drongo's fever.
Uncontrolled personal experience recounted without evidence by lay people with a demonstrated ideological aversion to the science hardly constitutes anything remotely resembling reliability. All the more so when none of the countering science put forward has been addressed, let alone refuted.
As an ideologically-biased lay person who's happy to accept claims by someone who "could have made it all up", you seem unable to understand that Drongo has no point at all.
In other words you back it up with nothing more than hearsay. I could just as validly say that you engage in transvestitism, and claim my own "simple real world observations", but I suspect that you'd demand more evidence than just my word for it...
Believe me, it does not.
And it's telling that you "have no idea".
Such data could also show that sea level has risen by a metre, or dropped by a metre.
Within the parameters set by your statement, that is.
But that's the thing - Drongo has proffered not a decimal point of physical evidence.
Which is the sorry end to this sad tale of denialist writhing.
However, having had the chance to put a torpedo through Drongo's hero John Daly it hasn't been all wasted. And it's probably a good refresher for some people with respect to the complexities of sea level rise.
If only the trolls would permit understanding to enter their skulls.
More science just in to vanquish Drongo and Chameleon to the dunce class where they well and truly belong:
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/mb_sea_level_rise.html
http://noc.ac.uk/news/new-study-documents-natural-relationship-between-…
Note: the study is going into a top journal (PNAS), and not one of the rags or blogs in which the denal crap usually ends up...
Note: Be fully prepared for the denier pundits and general assortment of Dunning-Kruger acolytes withy no scientific background whatsoever to dismiss the findings of this study. Its par for the course. Jonas has mastered tha art. The strategy: Don't do any science yourself, but feel free to smear, impugn, denigrate et al. scientists and their research if it doesn't fit in with your own pre-determined world view. The more esteemed the scientist is, and the more their views differ with the deniers, the more they must be smeared.
"As far as I am concerned, he could have made it all up. What SD is saying is that his own personal observations over time are that the sea level"
Point of fact here.
a) Since even Bot here thinks that it could be all made up, why not wait until spanky here proves it isn't all made up. THAT INCLUDES YOU BOT.
b) Bot says "as far as I'm concerned, he could be making it up" BUT THEN acts as if it wasn't.
Bot, you fuckwit, if spankers here has made it up, then his observations are MADE UP. Talking about it is no different than talking about the breeding patterns of unicorns in a dragon-rich ecology.
But no, you're here solely to waste time and poison the threads to drive the sane away from reading anything that could be deleterious to the fossil fuel industry.
"I could just as validly say that you engage in transvestitism, and claim my own “simple real world observations”, but I suspect that you’d demand more evidence than just my word for it…"
No, I think that theory is just fine.
I can totally buy the idea that Bot is a cross dresser.
You may be making it all up, but your statement says that Bot IS a cross-dresser, therefore we should accept that claim.
Bernard
"Alterations of a river’s hydrology through bank engineering, canal development, drainage construction and so on have effects on its flow, and thus on its height. Inescapable fact."
From the abstract of the paper I posted last night:
"Gold Coast Seaway and Jumpinpin Bar are two tidal inlets that connect the Pacific Ocean to the extensive Gold Coast estuarine system. While the Gold Coast Seaway has been stabilized in the mid-1980s by two rock walls, Jumpinpin Bar has remained a highly dynamic tidal inlet."
http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/361940/Mirf_Tida…
This paper seems to indicate that the changes *have* had an effect in the area of SD anecdotes.
Dumbo likes to ignore reality, doesn't he?
Calcutta http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/369.php
Manila, S. Harbor http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/145.php
I think it is that, as the oceans are very wide, there's no such thing as local variations in sea level rise. Or something like that.
I watched an episode of Africa: David Attenborough's new BBC1 series the other evening and one sequence was of a Drongo fooling a family of meerkats. One smart bird that Drongo, shame about the critter that appears here.
Worth a watch is that programme if you can get it, astonishing find of 'fossil water' in a large water system under the Namib reached by long descent down ropes.
Spangled Drongo
"Neil White, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about the BTP."
I'd never heard of the BTP before you plucked it out of the air the other day. Please expalin it.
Neil,
I think SD is on about his billiard table principle but he failed to carry out one of the basic rules of technical writing which is to immediately follow with the acronym later used unsupported as in this, 'billiard table principle (BTP)'.
Of course SD has probably never had to write so precisely before.
BTP itself fails, here is why.
Scale! Humans and the same scale to the nap of a billiard table vis a vis the size of your typical ocean would belong to the 'where the fuck are we tribe'. Rugby players will know about this from the song 'The Wild West Show', the tribe lost and jumping up and down in long grass shouting 'WTFAW! WTFAW!'
Lionel, I think that the verse about the winky-wanky bird is more appropriate, SD being the bird and BFPM keeps throwing sand in his eye.
Neil White, when the various canal developments around Runaway Bay, Biggera Waters etc were built as far back as nearly 50 years ago, the local council required them to put in retaining walls to the then king tide datum. This makes observations quite easy. These estates are very close to the Seaway yet they do not show SLR at king tides.
A mate of mine has had a slipway-boat building business in this area since 1957. When you are trying to slip and launch boats you have to work tides and look for the last inch of high water sometimes, to be successful. He has several slipways and would like nothing better than some SLR.
He is still waiting for it to happen.
So why do all these people and benchmarks agree if we are having SLR?
"These estates are very close to the Seaway yet they do not show SLR at king tides."
Being 7km inland, why would they?
PS your observations are countered by tens of thousands of other locations showing very differently.
Short of it is: you're wrong.
The thing is, ARE they wrong? The point I made earlier is a simple one. Regardless of what the data shows about trends in MSL, it is actual on the ground effects that count. So when concern is expressed about sea level rise, it's not about the graphs per se, it is about what will happen on the ground.
SLR can be expected to cause more frequent flooding from extreme events at a minimum, but as the rise continues we can expect to see generally higher water levels and that MUST result in visible effects, even to the average Joe. So, has it?
All I've observed is that, from a real world perspective, I haven't noticed anything substantially different at my coastal location. Sure that's just anecdotal and I don't dispute that. Nor do I dispute the tide gauge data. But it is real world effects that count.
So, just to bring that point home, rather than disputing SD's obs, can you offer a single example of a real effect of rising sea levels on Australia's east coast? I'm not saying there are none, but if over 100 years we have seen what is it, 200mm of rise, there MUST be some examples to choose from.
I'm challenging you to actually put up.
"The thing is, ARE they wrong? "
Who?
Oh, you mean spanky's dataset.
Yes.
Absolutely 100% wrong.
"it is actual on the ground effects that count"
land that was within 100mm of sea level are now under water.
So here's a test: we can all use our intelligence to decide whether we prefer,
- Spangle's made-up single-site observations
- CSIRO's comprehensive collection of observations: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_data_cmar_alt.html
Nobody could possibly fail this test, surely?
I prefer
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_21st.html
as offering a comprehensive view. Read the caveats as well as viewing the graphics.
For the benefit of the Doltoids here who can't read a map, Runaway Bay and Biggera Waters are right on the Broadwater, ~ one nm from the Seaway just behind Wavebreak Island where the cruiseship terminal is planned.
These represent about another dozen or so personal observations that falsify SLR.
Have you found any observations of your own yet?
And do try not to get your observations confused with your obfuscations.
"Have you found any observations of your own yet?"
Hint, you could try Al Gore or Tim Flannery. I understand they are currently into regular SL obs these days.
Yes David B
It is always a good idea to read the caveats.
It is there we discover a level of certainty.
It is also where they refer to which variables or forcings have been isolated and used.
From your link:
"For the twentieth century, the models used observed changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and other climatic forcings while, for the twenty-first century, they used greenhouse-gas emissions from the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES).
It should be noted that there is no firm theoretical or observational basis for this scaled-up ice sheetdischarge. The AR4 explicitly states that larger rises cannot be excluded and its projections for sea-level rise do not give a best estimate or an upper bound.
Note that since publication of the AR4, Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is "physically untenable," and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible."
For a little bit of contrast, here is some information from the 1970's.
I am just old enough to remember these alarming reports and I also remember being very concerned about them and wondering why nobody was doing anything about it.
Just to put my own caveat on this piece, I do not like the overall sarcastic tone of the piece but I did enjoy reading and thus reminiscing over the old reports.
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3213/Dont-Miss-it-Climate-Depots-Factshee…
And finally,
I am surprised that people who claim that they understand basic physics cannot understand what spangled is trying to explain to you.
Water follows the laws of gravity. It does 'aggressively seek equilibrium'.
If there was alarming SLR it should first appear noticeable in areas like the area spangled is describing.
They are low lying coastal areas.
chameleon --- Alarming? Ask anybody in low lying areas of New York City.
God you are thick, Chammy and Clammy, the pair of you. The wilfully stupid simply will not be educated. Boring.
David B,
Do you mean because it was hit by hurricane Sandy?
Of course that was alarming.
Any major storm that approaches a heavily urbanised area anywhere in the world is alarming and they can cause much damage to human infrastructure.
That is not a new phenomenon and not relevant to my comment above.
The fact that councils, governments, developers etcetera have not sufficiently planned for these inevitable major storm events is not a new phenomenon either.
I will hazard a guess that people who are in low lying areas in spangled's area will rightly get very alarmed when cyclones are approaching and that surges from major storms cause them grief as well.
No Chameleon, it would be an insult to idiots to label Drongo's argument as idiotic.
Why not pay attention to what the qualified expert professionals are telling you.
And BFPM, you're no better. Keeriste - 'sure, the data shows the oceans have risen, but I'm not seeing any effects at this arbitrary point I rather like for that reason'!
How frickin' dumb can you be? The oceans rise 200mm on the way to 2m, and this lot moon around complaining that 'well, I haven't seen any sign of the kind of impacts you'd expect from 2m of sea-level rise'. And then fold their arms and smirk as though it was someone other than them who was the drooling loboto-beast from Planet Dim!
Well, don't sweat it, Sunshine, because, as has been pointed out multiple times we are now locked in to SLR for centuries, including a substantial rise this century, and eventually no-one anywhere will be in any doubt as to the impact, cherry-pick and look the other way as they may.
I intend to link back to precisely this discussion to show what grotesque and insouciant foolishness we had to contend with.
Look Bill, in the case of local obs, I am not arguing anything about what tide gauges show, nor am I arguing about what long term trends might be.
I am just observing that after 150 years of SLR as evidenced by the graphs on this original post, and bearing in mind we are told that this rise is accelerating, I am asking a simple question.
Can you point to a single case of effect on the Australian coastline that confirms tide gauge data trends? I'm NOT saying there isn't. However, from what I can see with my own eyes, nothing much has changed. SD observes the same with something a little more concrete. We may be quite wrong.
But it's a simple enough ask. Where are your real world obs of sea level against a land based benchmark over say the past 100 years that backs up the graphs and trends shown in this post. Because it's actual effects against land based structures that count in evaluating past trends and impacts and help inform about the future.
How hard can that be?
Vince,
Did you notice what the qualified expert professionals were telling you in the '70's from my link above?
All the current work points out in the caveats that they are not accountable for the future climate or future SLR.
They are observing trends using various methodologies and increasing access to data bases.
They do not claim those observed trends are infinite or indefinite.
Trends have a historical tendency to reverse or change in nature and climate. Hence such things as the LIA and the Holocene.
(IMHO), in varying ways, Spangled D and BoltFPM are referring to the very well known physical relationship between water and gravity.
Even ordinary, everyday people understand that relationship and how it works.
Most of us ordinary folk got the basics of that one figured out as small children when we played with hoses and buckets, made sand castles on the beach and various other games with water :-)
Yes - for the SLR claims that are made from them. As has been explained to you a dozen different ways already.
What you dispute is the careful rigorous data collection on the basis of anecdotal retrospective recollection, which is foolish on a number of levels. Human recall - for one thing - is notoriously unreliable, especially for very slow changes.
But instead of looking at the broader data you keep right on foolishly focusing on your own anecdotes. It's almost like you don't care about being right as long as you get to claim that your existing point of view isn't actually challenged...
You've ALREADY been presented with evidence of SLR around Australia - and in other places. There's no indication that you are capable of recognising "putting up". And logic isn't your strong suit either:
No.
Ponder the reason why "[past] actual effects against land based structures" are not necessary and not anywhere near as informative as, well, actual science.
Some Doltoids are convinced that if their collective boat is aground and stuck they can refloat it with their talked-up SLR.
I suppose if that's all that's needed to float their boat, you can see why their brains are prone to levitation.
FEATHERWEIGHT, I think is the description.
You can verbal people but you can't verbal the ocean.
Water doesn't move instantaneously and therefore there is no such thing as water reaching level "agressively".
"That is not a new phenomenon and not relevant to my comment above."
The storm was new.
After the hurricane season.
Huge.
Turned back by the effects of AGW on summer ice in the Arctic.
It is entirely relevant to your comment above because Sandy did more damage than it would have done without 40cm of mean sea level rise.
"Can you point to a single case of effect on the Australian coastline that confirms tide gauge data trends?"
We could.
But you've just changed your demands for the third time at least.
You can go look for yourself.
Look at what low lying land is now inundated.
But you aren't saying anything, are you.
So why are we supposed to listen?
"They do not claim those observed trends are infinite or indefinite."
Nobody other than you has ever mentioned them being infinite or indefinite.
Meanwhile you claim they are nonexistent.
There is someone entirely wrong here and that someone is you.
"You can verbal people but you can’t verbal the ocean."
This hasn't stopped you three stooges from trying, though, has it.
I dunno. Water moves according to Euler's equations. Are those aggressive?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_equations_%28fluid_dynamics%29
They're aggressively different from the fantasy-land water that the cloud cuckoolanders three apparently live on.
There the oceans are completely flat, not deviating a fraction of a mm.
Ah, the classic denialist trope! Whodathunk chameleon would resort to another one of those?! ;-) Anyone wanna take bets on the next one to surface?
Pretty much everyone here already knows why this claim is hokum, so I'll urge chameleon to go to that link, read and comprehend, and then start exploring the "Further Reading" links.
Amusingly it illustrates the problems with relying on personal anecdotes - the science of the day never came to a consensus predicting an imminent ice age, even though (with the "help" of people like Morano and the fact that there were a few low quality media stories back then) people reckon they remember it doing so. It also illustrates the severe asymmetry in chameleon's arguments - citing completely unreliable sources like Morano as "support", but worse still citing caveats on present day evidence she doesn't like, but completely eliding the much much larger caveats from evidence she uses as "support".
But while we're here let's look at Morano's first example from "A Small Sampling of 1970's Reports Warning of Global Cooling" to see how Morano sucked in gullible people like chameleon:
The first thing one would expect someone with unspecified "academic science qualifications" to note is that Morano claims this is an example of a "report warning of global cooling", when his quote says no such thing. No, really, it does not! Go, read. I'll wait.
You see it now, don't you? It is a quote about a scenario that might or might not eventuate, but there is no prediction of it happening any time soon. It's not even about whether it will eventuate, but about the consequences (if it were to happen) due to impacts on global food supply and population locations.
Surely you'd think if he had a case that his very first example would clearly support it? And surely you'd think the average reasonably smart reader would pick this up - and begin to suspect that Morano was at the very least heavily gilding the lily? A reasonably smart reader might then use Teh Google to see if there were other opinions about the claims being made, and weigh up which were better supported. They might end up here where there's an article surveying the science of the day (and a link to the author's website on the topic).
The second thing one would expect someone with unspecified "academic science qualifications" to note is that Morano does NOT even support his claim by citing the 1975 NAS report! He instead links to a copy of a mainstream media article (Newsweek)! Wonder why? Well, no doubt he's keen that readers do not discover this quote from it:
For chameleon's benefit, that quote directly refutes the claim Morano is making. Chameleon, you are far too gullible to be lecturing other people on what the science says or doesn't say - or said or didn't say.
Well, one could always check
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#Australian_sea-leve…
Looks to be SLR around Oz to me...
BFPM - precisely how much 'effect' could you expect at 200mm? Therefore it, what, hasn't happened? Well, there's Sandy, the Pacific Islands, Florida, etc., but you're going to use the time-worn denialist tactic of demanding to see an effect precisely in those areas where one has not been clear to date!
And you can doubt the future trends because you can't see your effect despite the rise so far? Are you seriously denying that when it hits 500mm or a metre, then local variation will not be able to overwhelm the overall signal?
At that point no-one will be in any doubt as to what's happening, and they will have zero chance of doing anything about it because complacent ninnies chose to play these games back in the time we could have!
Do you have any functional capacity to assess a risk, do you suppose? It's like the joke about the guy being swallowed by an anaconda, complacently announcing when it reaches his knees 'I'm alright so far'.
It's actually hard to believe that adults who can stand upright, pay their utility bills, figure out their mobile phones, and make their way to the polling booth could be so mind-numbingly dense!
Speaking of mind-numbingly dense - there's Spangly. Spangly, could you calculate your own dimensions scaled down to fit your billiard table, please, and then tell us how frickin' flat the felt and table would look from there?
And, completing the Unholy Triumvirate of the Obtuse, we have Chammy, who indulges in a little of the swaggering low-brow triumphalism that comes so easily to those who imagine that the 'revelation' that 'no-one can know for sure exactly what is going to happen in the future' is, like, abstruse philosophy, y'know, available only to the really-brainy elect, and an unchallengeable trump at the same time! And then we get the folksy wise-woman crap about buckets and spades...
The scary thing is you really all do imagine that you're clever, don't you? No wonder we're in the position we're in!...
Yes.
The qualified experts weren't saying what you claim they were saying, as my previous comment indicates.
Assuming by "not accountable" you mean "are not reliable predictors of", then no. ONE of the "current works" does so. Logic really isn't your strong suit, is it? ONE is not ALL.
You clearly haven't read much - if any - of the literature and I doubt you've read the IPCC summary of the literature either.
I suspect you don't have much understanding of the idea of confidence intervals either, as you seem to frame things in black or white terms rather than "what our best understanding is and how confident we are of it".
No.
People here understand what SD is claiming. They simply reject it - and for very good reasons, some of which are based on fairly basic physics.
Like low lying coastal areas around Manila and Miami, as pointed out up thread? You appear to have a read-only brain as well.
Dunning & Kruger will never have a shortage of potential test subjects.
Ummm Lotharsson?
Did you perhaps miss the caveat I put with that link?
I didn't make any claims.
Also, you also seemed to have completely forgotten me commenting that I learned some time ago that playing at arguing academic semantics is a waste of time.
So you are sort of wasting your time trying to make me play that game. It's boring as in Zzzzzzzzzzz.
I think I also mentioned that I don't regard you as my lecturer or teacher and that I don't require you to hand out pass and fail marks so you're sort of wasting your time there too.
But if you're enjoying it, please don't let me stop you.
But you are definitely wasting your time with that one.
I am guessing that Vince or Bill or Wow etcetera can actually answer their own direct questions if they want to BTW.
When I have an actual question for you, I'll make it clear it was for you :-)
"People here understand what SD is claiming. They simply reject it – and for very good reasons,"
Ya mean Lothe, like:
1/ They have no observations of their own to refute it with because they don't look out the window and
2/ It doesn't float their boat.
Earlier on this never ending thread I worked out an approximate 36 mm/K of SLR due to thermal expansion of the oceans. Warming is about 0.02 K/yr, giving about 0.72 mm/yr of SLR due to thermal expansion alone.
Here's a direct question for you Lotharsson,
If you're rejecting what Spangled is claiming, does that mean you deny that water and gravity have a very strong and overriding physical relationship that causes water to aggressively seek equilibrium?
Because that was what I understood spangled was claiming from a large number of spangled's comments.
And here we go on the observations.
Precisely where we'd expect to see them first.
Now watch the pathetic and grubby backsliding.
Jeebus, what a dishonest idiot! What, you had your bloody fingers crossed?
To think we are going to lose so much of the magnificent richness of this tiny planetary oasis because of the over-fed complacency of such as these is the very definition of appalling...
chameleon --- As I have repeatedly pointed out, water responds to the vector sum of all the forces. Gravity is not the only one in the oceans.
And as I have also pointed out at least twice, it does so as indicated by the Euler equations.
Nope.
But even if I had, demonstrating that your sources are bullshit - and the claims you are trying to introduce whilst denying you are "making claims" - is worthwhile. It shows (again) that you don't know what you're talking about and are almost completely unable to distinguish crap from gold. It also shows to anyone who's uninformed but interested in what's true that the claims in your link are bullshit.
Yet another instance of the (attempted) plausible deniability gambit, analogous to the JAQing off tactic.
Would you prefer if I said "you introduced claims (that are bullshit)"? I'd be very surprised if you even grokked the distinction, given that you normally run roughshod over other people's nuance. Or would you prefer if I said "you apparently didn't realise that you made some claims"?
And then there's this where you use the link as part of at least one claim:
Feel free to elaborate on what specific claims you had in mind when you wrote that comment, because based on what you wrote I can think of several that range from disingenuous to mendacious. And even in the most charitable reading of your comment you were trying to make a point that can and should be made using a fair representation of scientific thought. So why did you choose a particularly bad example?
I have not forgotten. It's certainly foolish to think that you are interested in learning, but that's not why I'm doing it. It's not all about you.
In addition, dubbing something "academic semantics" doesn't make the problems with your comments go away, or make them irrelevant. Does that actually work on people you normally converse with? And how many times are you going to try it before you realise it doesn't work here, and neither does telling people that (you'd very much like them to stop deconstructing your crap and you hope they'll find it persuasive if you say) "because it's a waste of time"?
Shorter Spangled Drongo: if you didn't personally observe it, it didn't happen.
Bill, are you actually saying that king tide flooding is an indicator of SLR?.
The thing is, bill ya gotta have a bit of data to go with that.
Like what the levels were over the years leading up to those current king tide levels.
There are lots of places where king tides flood residential areas.
Even in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. But that's always happened.
And here in the Torres Strait their main problem seems to be erosion, not SLR.
And deck space, not freeboard.
Like Tuvalu, Kiribati etc.
It's interesting that they are a little nervous of an investigation:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839.2012.716405
.
I am aware of that David B,
And I read your links.
Of course there are other influences. And when other influences operate they can temporarily alter what water levels will do.
But nonetheless, gravity is the major influence when it comes to water levels.
That includes the gravitational influence of the moon.
On your point of thermal expansion, do your figures also account for evaporation?
That is another well known physical relationship between water and the atmosphere.
Where I am today the thermometers are reading over 45 C.
The bodies of water around us are definitely not rising due to thermal expansion, they are rapidly decreasing due to evaporation.
And Bill,
A caveat is a caveat. Scientists use them all the time.
I actually quoted one from David B's CSIRO link above.
I gues you could say it's like crossing your fingers behind your back, but it's a perfectly acceptable practice to qualify and/or put a caveat on something.
I see you have failed to comprehend my several detailed comments on why SD's claims about global SLR are not justified by his observations. Once you demonstrate that you have understood those I'm quite happy to answer questions such as these - but once you achieve that understanding you may find the question is moot, and perhaps even embarrassing.
Failing that, you might want to take a crack at figuring out how a phenomenon of "aggressively seeking equilibrium" refutes any - ideally all - of those reasons for rejection.
Or if that's too much like hard work, ask SD to precisely define the undefined term "aggressively seeking equilibrium". Hint: if his definition is unquantifiable you might want to consider how he can make quantifiable claims based on asserting the phenomenon's existence. Similarly, if his definition is only quantifiable in relative terms, you may wish to ponder how he can make quantifiable claims in absolute terms.
...which is also a predicted consequence of SLR.
Hmmmmmmmmm.........
True, but I suspect on this point you're conflating short term effects with long term trends. You (might?) also be referring to relatively small water sources rather than the global ocean.
To investigate your question you might want to look at where evaporated water can go, and for how long, before returning to the oceans. Are there any long term trends in the volume of water in those other places? How do the changes in volume compare to the changes in ocean volume due to expansion?
But more simply go back and figure out how David calculated a rough thermal expansion coefficient. I'm pretty sure his procedure answers your question.
"if you didn’t personally observe it, it didn’t happen."
Not just me Lothe love, The whole effing city including the coastal engineers and scientists.