Flew through the sky Saturday
Now no internet.
Ok. Not no internet but it’s been very spotty. (I don’t know what will happen when I hit post.) I don’t have phone service.
I phoned ATT on my cell and drove to the library to report the problem. Supposedly I’ll have service by Wed. We’ll…. see.
Open thread!
Hi Lucia,
I live in terror of being without Internet service…. outages (while rare) seem always to happen when you most need service. After a couple of really bad experiences, I settled on a backup broadband wireless service, which I can also use when I travel within the USA. About 256 Kbit up and 1 megabit down. Not blindingly fast, but serviceable for most needs, and way better than nothing.
“flew threw” – typo or poetic licence?
Lucia, I would be interested to know what you think of Tamino’s “How not to analyse tide gauge data”? He was criticizing the recent Watson paper on sea levels in the Australian region.
dlb–
I haven’t read it. I haven’t been online….
Annabelle–
I’m not sure now. I was typing fast and hoping I could post!
I’m not in terror. But some of the other threads are long and gone astray. So I wanted to create a thread for people to comment.
Obviously, I’m on now…. We’ll see how long this lasts. My IP keeps changing. . . =
I have an iPad back up, but I did have a rather frustrating experience a while back when my service went down. My phone call was transferred to a technician who put me through the hoops of doing things (many of which I had already done) in order to analyze the problem. After what seemed a considerable amount of time he questioned me about my geographic location and then calmly said your internet connection is down and should be up in a couple of hours. He was doing his job I guess so I did not bother to ask why he did not check the connection first.
Actually my grandson sometimes invades my computer room and makes little changes that I have to correct and that is what supected this time and never thought it was a service outage. In fact it was the first one I ever experienced with this service provider.
I do depend a lot on the internet as I do all my bill paying, banking and investing online. In the past I have gone to our library also in a pinch to conduct online business or send a critical email.
Kenneth
The closest thing to any hint I have of what’s wrong is that when I called, ATT said they had heavy call volume.
That said: I talked to a neighbor three houses east and 3 north whose phone is not down. So, it’s not the entire block. I haven’t gone knocking to learn who else’s phone is down. Anyway, the neighbors across the street are on vacation. So, I can’t ask them!
It would be nice to hear something back from ATT! But, at least I think this comment will get through to the blog.
‘Fore!’ and Tiger’s fist pump
Gatorade, suburnt head
Golf Outing
Andrew
@DLB
I don’t you think you should spend any time with Tamino. He’s a coward who screens all of his comments so you can’t even really ask him any challenging questions.
lucia,
I’ve had a problem with corroded contacts in the outside junction box causing problems with both the phone line and DSL. It might be worth unscrewing, cleaning the wires and the washers and putting the connection back together. Simply tightening the screws was not good enough for me. A good spray of electrical contact cleaner wouldn’t hurt either.
Also, have you tried taking a phone to the junction box outside and plugging it in there? That will tell you if you have a problem with the wires in the house.
lucia, Kenneth,
I can understand that the person you talk with at the internet provider is usually not the person who knows the details of what is really happening. Since providers have to deal with lots of people who have only a local problems, often something they did themselves to screw up their connection, I can understand the laundry list of (obvious!) questions they always ask.
.
Still, it is terribly frustrating when you don’t know what is happening, and they either can’t or won’t tell you. Reminds me of sitting in an airplane on the tarmac for a long time with no explanation for the delay from the pilot. I guess the technical types who are struggling to get the service back in operation don’t want to spend time explaining what is actually happening to the customer contact representatives, even if they know what the problem is… and they often may not know what the problem is.
dlb: “He was criticizing the recent Watson paper on sea levels in the Australian region.”
Tide Gauges have demolished sea level rise claims, thereby demolishing claims of global warming. Sea level rose more pre-1960 than post-1960 meaning it is actually warming slower than pre-1960 (or possibly cooling) , which means any perceived warming in the instrumental record is UHI.
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fremantle0.jpg
http://i.minus.com/idAw6Y.gif
Bruce, tidal gauges show a sea level rise, even based on the plots you linked. So where does that leave your argument?
carrick: “tidal gauges show a sea level rise, even based on the plots you linked. So where does that leave your argument?”
It mean IPCC scare tactics about warming and sea level rise are bogus. A scientific fraud foisted on the public to scare them.
A little natural warming post LIA is probably slowing down and we are left with one conclusion – the global temperature record is a fraud.
Slogan for this century: ‘Just disconnect.’ Apologies to E.M. Forster…
Steve F–
I tried connecting all day. 5 minutes ago 14 emails came through. So, I probably have my 5 minute window.
On the issue of person I talked to: I didn’t talk to any person. I dealt only with automated machines. I did stay on hold 10 minutes yesterday and again today. But there is a limit……
Kenneth– I’ll try connecting to the outside box etc. At least then I’ll know if it’s inside or outside. That’s useful. (I do think it was the storm though. I think the reason I haven’t spoken to a person is AT&T is flooded with calls.)
Bruce, I don’t follow your logic. Why does the fact that tidal gauges do show an increase demonstrate that “IPCC scare tactics about warming and sea level rise are bogus”?
Are you talking about the flattening off in the last 10 years?
carrick, one of the core tenets of AGW is an acceleration in sea level rise. There is no acceleration. There is a deceleration in sea level rise.
AGW believers have clung to the satellite record (which now shows a deceleration) and have proclaimed that tide gauges also were in synch with the satellite record.
The recent US study shows a sea level deceleration in long running US tide gauge records. As now does the Australian tide gauge record.
Fremantle, for example, shows sea level lower than the early 1960s (and if I was feeling generous about the same level since the 1960s).
The other url has graphs that show no acceleration.
AGW sea level claims can now be deemed false, thereby falsifying AGW itself.
I would sum it up in one word lucia, UK-phone-hackers-connections-to-climategate.
As all things technical DSL connections can go wrong.
It is a ancient technology anyway; cable seems faster and more reliable (where aviable) and the future belongs to fibre.
As an alternative to cable I have a connection via cellular which only costs me something when I use it (about $6 per day).
At my current location (in the boonies) I use satellite; one expects regular problems if it rains.
Bruce, I think I understand what you are trying to say, and it does relate to the apparent flattening of the sea level rise over the last decade. I’ll restate my opinion: It isn’t safe to look at short-period trends in climate that don’t account for the influence of short-period climate noise. So either you don’t use short-period trends (I limit myself to 30+ years) or you try and do something like Lucia does to remove the influence the effects of the short-period climate fluctuations.
Remember these are fairly small trends so short-period climate noise can easily overwhelm them.
It’s important to understand what the theory is saying and its implications (rather than what is claimed by overheated rhetoriticians), if you want to say the theory (rather than overheated rhetoric) has been falsified.
Taminio did happen to show that it’s at least plausible that the long-term trend is accelerating. I thought it was a really crappy analysis from an overheated rhetoritician so I didn’t bring it up, but I’ll mention it to point out that there are other interpretations of the data than yours.
carrick … so 1960 to 2010 is too short for you? 50 years is too short?
Or are you suggesting AGW did not start until 1990 or later? When do you think AGW started?
carrick, the thing about those tide gauges. They all date back to 1900, and two date back to 1850 or 1860.
Isn’t 110 years or 150 years or 160 years long enough? What is long enough?
Bruce, 1960-2000 definitely shows a larger rate of change in sea level than say 1920-1960. See Tamino’s analysis. According to his analysis 2000-2010 is larger than any other decade (though I think what he did was wonky, but that’s another issue—the main point is that we have been experiencing an increase in sea level height and measured over multiple decades the rate of increase has been increasing—according to the tidal gauges).
Also Bruce… leaving aside Tamino’s reanalysis of Watson (as I said he’s spot on regarding the anomalization issue, what he did with the estimation of acceleration is the part I found a bit risible), the question with respect to AGW models is what they would have predicted, and whether the data agree with, or more to the point, sufficiently contradict the models to toss the models out.
In that sense nothing is very clear cut here. We have a number of effects for tidal gauges: thermal expansion of the ocean, change in ocean mass through land ice melting/expansion, isostatic changes in the ocean basin volume, continental isostatic rebound from melting glaciers, continental subsidence, surface deposition and/or erosion, persistent changes in ocean circulation (which cause “piling up” or depletions of sea water near land masses)….and probably others that I have missed. For some of these factors (isostatic rebound, thermal expansion, surface ice melting) there are long time constants associated with them, so there shouldn’t be a one-to-one correlation between sea level change and temperature.
The way you get away from some of these problems, is to first anomalize the data, then average globally. This has been done. [Figure is from Church and White 2006.]
Note that this also shows a larger rate of sea level rise in the most recent decades, than measured previously and a larger commensurate acceleration in sea level rise. From their abstract:
Carrick, nice cherry pick.
Douglas 1992, Global sea level acceleration: Finds no acceleration, in fact slight deceleration.
Holgate and Woodworth 2004, Evidence for enhanced coastal sea level rise during the 1990s: Sea level rise was largest in the 1950s.
Church and White 2006, A 20th century acceleration in global sea level rise: finds acceleration of sea level.
Holgate 2007, On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century: Sea level rise greater in first half of 20th century than second.
Woodworth et al 2009, Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales: finds deceleration in mid-late 20th century.
Houston & Dean 2011: Finds small deceleration.
Watson 2011: Finds weak deceleration.
Now, can anybody guess (don’t look it up yet), which of the above authors has been selected by the IPCC, to be coordinating lead author of the chapter on sea level rise for AR5?
PaulM, nice negative insinuation as a way to start a rational argument.
I started with the IPCC AR4, so it should be easy to figure out where I found my reference. They at least look at multiple modalities (C&W 06 agree with satellite measurements where available…making it pretty unlikely that there isn’t an acceleration from say 1960 to 2000).
You didn’t look at Tamino’s link, or you’d realize that Watson’s own analysis showed the opposite conclusion to his stated one (Watson apparently doesn’t know how to take a second derivative).
I also thought it logical to start with the most recent analysis if we’re comparing trends (using data that stops in 1992 doesn’t even make sense) and I am not surprised not to find sources more recent than the IPCC when looking at the IPCC.
Finally, the acceleration was greater in the first half than the second (or followed any other pattern), you’d still have to compare it to what a model would say. It could be that the land ice melt from that period had a larger contribution to the total sea level change than it did for the second half.
Carrick
Just look at the TOPEX data. Sea level rise rate has been decelerating. And Bruce is correct: run-away sea level rise is one of the cornerstone “horrors” awaiting us according to IPCC/Gore AGW/ACC gospel, and is yet another prediction that has fallen apart.
Now all we have to do is wait for the official release of the CERN cloud experiment data -which in all likelihood will confirm Svensmark’s theory and by extension support Spencer’s thinking on the role of clouds in the equation. Once that is in, the coffin is pretty much nailed shut.
PS: Also have a look at the recent Loehle and Scaffetta paper on the “A” component of global temperatures over the past 50-60 years.
tetris:
.
All eight years of it! :p
.
If you include the Jason data, that gives you a whopping 16 years, in which you can clearly see a whole lot of nothing (link) – except that the rates are much higher than in the early 20th century, as seen in pretty much all the papers helpfully cited by PaulM.
@Tetris
You’re wasting your time, man. I’ve been telling everyone here for years that the global warming grand dragons are overestimating everything and they are using faulty numbers. The radiative forcing numbers are wrong. The sea level numbers are wrong. Nils Axel Morner is the most experienced and most qualified to speak on sea level and he says it ain’t going up. Now, since he’s an expert and he has published leading theories on sea level in 3 separate decades, everybody here will ignore him.
Think about how stupid the IPCC is. H.H. Lamb founded the CRU and said that it was extremely important that we understand past temperatures, without human influence. His dying wishes have been shamed by the IPCC. Currently, historic temperatures must be played down, in some cases hidden or falsely edited (see NASA cheat and adjust their temperatures, see Michael Mann cheat and erase the medieval warm period, which H.H. Lamb had in the first IPCC reports) It’s truly amazing to see such a rotten dismissal of history. But then again, global warming is a child of the left wing so forgetting history is standard procedure.
carrick, before we go any further, when do you think evidence of AGW should start being apparent? 1950? 1960? 1970?
Second … Tamino? Ha ha. Very droll.
toto, there were no satellites in the early 20th century and the satellite sea level diviners have gotten a bit desperate lately with the GIA adjustment etc.
Bruce,
GIA is real. Satellite altimetry agrees with GRACE mass measurement. See Cazenave, et.al. The rate of increase has slowed a little recently from ~3.1 mm/year to 2.5 mm/year because thermal expansion has nearly stopped since 2003, ~1.5 mm/year to ~0.3 mm/year. But the other components contributing to sea level rise have increased enough that the decrease in rate is less than the decrease in thermal expansion rate. The thermal expansion anomaly can be found here.
tetris, toto is correct here. You need to look at longer term trends if you’re going to make any conclusions about sea level changes.
Bruce, if you see a problem with Tamino’s analysis, please feel free to discuss it. I think you’re being a bit over enthusiastic about what sea level change tells us about the AGW hypothesis.
bruce
“carrick, one of the core tenets of AGW is an acceleration in sea level rise.”
Core tenet? I don’t think so. there are a couple CORE tenets, acceleration in sea level rise isnt CORE.
Core tenet.
1. Adding GHGs to the planet will warm it.
2. Probably the amplicfication tenet.
sea level rise is not core.. it is given as evidence that the core is true.
If sea level rise decelerated nobody would throw radiative physics out the window. they would search for ways to explain why that observation wasnt correct.
That’s how you distinguish core from non core.
which beliefs are the last to go. radiative physics is the core.
All – I have written (coincidentally) a guest post with what I think is a credible analysis of sea level rise. Unfortunately I have lost the information I need to log on to wordpress… waiting for that info from Lucia, who seems to be without email. Zeke: If you know to, send to me at ‘sfitzpa at comcast dot net’.
Mosher
Tenets is the wrong word. Markers would be better, because it is the increasing hurricanes, increasing sea levels, increasing droughts, increasing floods, melting glaciers, etc., etc., etc. that we have been told for soem 20 years that are supposed to be the markers/harbingers of our hydrocarbon energy burning sins. It’s just that the catastrophy is not unfolding as told from upon high.
Yes, radiative physics do play. Most of us understand that by now. But they are not the deterministic be-all that your mantra keeps on making them out to be. There is nothing, but absolutely nothing linear about the climate system, that should be abundantly clear by now. So repeating as nauseam that the more GHGs you put into the system MUST automatically will make things warmer is simplistic nonsense.
Meanwhile, have a look at the Loehle and Scafetta paper [PDF] that you can find at WUWT today. It’s in interesting quantification of the “A” component in the equation over the past 50-60 years [long enough period for everyone, I hope]. And have a look at Spencer’s blog. There’s some very compelling thinking there too.
It’s not the GHGs per se that are the key, as much as the AGW/ACC industry [and you] keep on telling us that. Its sensitivity. The more we learn [PNAS’s pathetic efforts to block Lindzen’s paper notwithstanding] the more it is becoming evident that the climate system is considerably less sensitive than the IPCC dogma would have us believe. And high climate sensitivity is a core AGW/ACC tenet, because absent high sensitivity the entire GHG driven storyline collapses.
carrick, before we go any further, when do you think evidence of AGW should start being apparent? 1950? 1960? 1970?
How can we have a discussion about sea level and tide gauges when your side refuses to answer such a simple question?
As for Tamino, his joke of a graph showing a fast rise post 2000 when the Fremantle tide guage shows a dropin sea level post 2000 is a very sick joke. How can you be so gullible? Desperation?
GIA is a fake adjustment. Others have gone into greater detail why it is bogus.
mosher: “Adding GHGs to the planet will warm it.”
And therefore sea level rise should accelerate. If sea level rise decelarates, then the planet is not warming. Sea level rise predictions are part of the core SRES. If sea level rise has not accelerated, the global warming is not happening at a measurable level. In fact, if sea level rise decelerates, the earth may be cooling … and only the bogus adjustments to thermometers make some think the planet is warming.
Carrick, if you get your info from AR4 and Tamino, no wonder your view is distorted. As pointed out by Bruce, the IPCC comparison of a short term satellite trend with longterm tide gauges is completely bogus – a common IPCC trick.
I wonder how you deduce from my list of refs that I haven’t looked at Tamino’s ‘analysis’. Rational argument indeed.
PaulM, I never said my only source of information was the IPCC. Not sure where you got that. Rational argument indeed?
You are nothing but emotional appeal.
“I never said my only source of information was the IPCC”
Carrick,
No but you tend to appeal to them frequently, as if they were some kind of authority.
Andrew
bruce:
If you mean this seriously, I’d say circa 1975 for temperature. I don’t particularly disagree with tetris that the IPCC overstates the severity of the risk of AGW and of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in general. But I do think their projected 30 cm rise for the 21st century is probably conservative.
Again the emotional appeal, when the logic breaks down. Tamino is using Watson’s own analysis (done correctly) to show what Watson’s analysis would imply if done correctly. (I don’t have a very positive relationship with Tamino and am many of the one’s banned from posting to his website, so if you think I am an ardent follower of his, this is just yet one more unfounded assumption on your part.)
I think further discussion between us is pointless as you’ve clearly made up your mind and don’t want to be confused by the facts. I will endeavor not to confuse you.
Andrew_KY:
They are an authority… on what climate scientists think and believe. Can you name a more authoritative source than that?
The problem with PaulM, Bruce and yourself is you make up complete nonsense about what the IPCC says (or as bad, repeat nonsense published in the media or on blogs), shoot down the nonsense and think you’ve said anything about what the climate scientist says.
The first step in deciding whether you agree with a viewpoint should be to understand that viewpoint. It shouldn’t be marshaling your arguments against it, without having actually made any substantive effort to understand that viewpoint.
For anybody who’s interested here is a figure from Ramstorf and Vermeer (2011) which compares the predicted to measured sea level rise. (This paper is a criticism of Houston and Dean.)
IMO, any discussion of whether the models are off need to start with figures of this sort, not just pulling “facts” out of ones hat about how much sea level rise one should expect.
Tamino: “Close inspection of the graph (click on it for a larger, clearer view) suggests that there may be an annual cycle. ”
Well … duh! Its a graph of sea level. Of course there is an annual cycle. After that the analysis goes totally weird and useless.
Essentially Tamino is saying: “Who are you going to believe … me or your lying eyes.
Tamino has no credibilty … only sycophants.
As for Ramstorf and Vermeer … unconvincing.
Arrr! It is torturing me that I can’t remember how to log into WordPress and put up my post of a sea level model… it addresses most every issue being commented on here.
Re: Bruce (Jul 26 11:23),
Nice assertion with no evidence whatsoever. Since you’re arguing from authority here, you need to cite that authority. ‘Others’ won’t cut it.
A quick search found this link on the first page:
That’s not what I call a reliable source.
Re: SteveF (Jul 26 13:17),
I can give you the link to the login page here. Presumably you have your id and password. I think I’ve been delisted or I’d offer to post it for you.
Bruce, Tamino is correct that Houston and Dean didn’t anomalize their data before analyzing it. Failure to anomalize was a bone-headed thing to do. What you need to concentrate on, though, is H&D’s numerical screw up in their computation of sea level acceleration.
SteveF:
I think I’ll wait and see your post before commenting anymore then. My main issues with the critics is they haven’t exactly pulled out model to data comparisons showing the amount (or lack) of agreement. I’d hope your post includes this, as well as a discussion of the fact that the sea level isn’t level, and how this influences tidal-guage based measurements.
carrick, just look at the damn data. No acceleration. Deceleration post 1960. Quit beclowning yourself.
As for GIA … where is there proof that every square kilometer of the ocean floor is rising .3mm every year … and only since satellites (that have an accuracy measured in centimeters) have
been in the air?
“Faced with the embarrassing fact that sea level is not rising nearly as much as alarmist computer models predict, the University of Colorado’s NASA-funded Sea Level Research Group has announced it will begin adding a scientifically unjustified 0.3 millimeters per year to its Global Mean Sea Level Time Series.
Human civilization readily adapted to the seven inches of sea-level rise that occurred during the twentieth century. Alarmists, however, claim global warming will cause sea level to rise much more rapidly during the coming century. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gives a mean estimate of 15 inches of sea-level rise during the twenty-first century. High-profile alarmists often predict three feet. Some even predict 20 feet.
Satellite measurements show global sea level has risen merely 0.83 inches during the first decade of the twenty-first century (a pace of eight inches for the century) and has barely risen at all since 2006. This puts alarmists in the embarrassing position of defending predictions that are not coming true in the real world.
The University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group is coming to their rescue. The NASA-funded group claims glacial melt is removing weight that had been pressing down on land masses, which in turn is causing land mass to rise. This welcome news mitigates sea-level rise from melting glacial ice and shows another of the Earth’s remarkable self-adjusting processes.
However, it is very inconvenient for alarmist sea-level predictions. Therefore, instead of reporting the amount by which sea level is rising in the real world, the Sea Level Research Group has begun adding 0.3 millimeters per year of fictitious sea-level rise to actual sea levels.”
http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/article/29954/3_Sinking_under_Their_False_Sealevel_Predictions_Alarmists_Change_the_Data.html
Re: Bruce (Jul 26 14:58),
Heartland? That’s your authoritative source? Oh please. That’s just your confirmation bias talking. The rebound on land has been measured with high precision using a GPS network. The Antarctic under the ice cap is well below sea level due to the pressure of the ice above it. If the land goes up (down), the sea floor must go down(up). That’s not to mention the 120 foot increase in sea level from the glacial maximum. That’s an increase in pressure of about 60 psi for every square inch of the sea floor.
And 0.83 inches/decade is 2.11 mm/year which is still higher than 20th century average of 1.7 mm/year without adjustment.
Bruce. The dude forgot to remove the annual cycle. Just admit that and you might have a chance attacking tamino on other grounds.
Who would you believe.
if willis told you you had to remove it? would you believe it?
mcintyre?
Lucia?
spencer?
a textbook?
monckton?
heartland?
He should have removed the annual cycle. he didnt. His bad.
That fact doesnt make tamino a pleasant person. Neither does tamino’s occasional unpleasantness make him wrong. Your unpleasantness doesnt make you wrong. failing to acknowledge the mistake makes you wrong. Changing the subject, makes you annoying. That’s ok, too.
So; Should he have removed the annual cycle? yes or no?
your credibility is on the line. can you post a simple comment. yes or no. just one word.
DeWitt Payne
Based on your comment about Heartland, am I to conclude that you consider those who present at their yearly climate conference to be clowns? Maybe you will want to have another look at who presented there over the past years. Because if Carter, Spencer, McIntyre, Lindzen, etc., etc., etc. are clowns in your book, we are definitely on seperate sides of the fence.
And why does land going up imply seafloor going down? Or the inverse? Sweden is still rising. Does that mean that the seabed in the Baltic is dropping? If so, i would like to see the data. The Netherlands are still sinking. Does that mean that the North Sea seabed is rising. If so, i would like to see the data. I would really like to understand that, because until I hear a somewhat more convincing explanation, the 0.3 mm [that is 3/10,000th of a meter, something you would need specialized instruments for to measure on a physical object, and thereof the question how do you spell “fly-f…..g”] alarmist “add-on” to sea levels is a pitifull exercise in grasping at straws [very small ones, at that] to show that the dogma somehow holds.
tetris.
Do you believe that the sealevel goes up and down UNIFORMLY at every location? yes or no or you dont know.
That’s the threshhold question. if you can answer than then we can continue?
here this has nice pictures tetris.
http://web.vims.edu/GreyLit/VIMS/sramsoe425.pdf
Re: tetris (Jul 26 16:31),
He’s quoting a press release from Heartland with a lot of assertions but no data, not a formal presentation or paper by someone who actually knows what he’s talking about. The statement that sea level “has barely risen at all since 2006” is simply wrong. The GIA correction is ~0.3mm/year. The corrected satellite altimeter derived rate is 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year. The GIA correction is less than the total uncertainty.
With anything from Heartland it’s caveat emptor. The author of the Heartland piece, James M. Taylor, a lawyer by training, certainly qualifies as a clown.
If you want to actually learn something about GIA, there’s lots of information and links on the University of Colorado sea level page.
I’m sure Steve will have more to add, so here is one chart of sea level in the satellite era (I have others). Clearly, there is no acceleration and there is more likely a deceleration. Not much change in sea level in the last several years and a very large 10 mm decline in the last 18 months.
http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/1269/sealevelsatellitesmay11.png
Re: Bill Illis (Jul 26 17:33),
Your graph is why I don’t trust the ocean heat content/thermosteric anomaly graphs found here. The rapid increase in heat content/thermosteric anomaly, if real, from 2002-2004 should have been reflected in the sea level graph. My guess is that the heat content prior to ARGO has been underestimated and the actual rate of increase is much lower than shown in the linked graph.
Bill, I thought it was that last figure that Bruce was referring to initially.
Of course, there is short-period climate noise in sea surface height too, so it is perilous to draw conclusions in the variation of the second derivative of a measured variable (a highly noisy operation) without any attempt to assess the uncertainty introduced by that short-period noise.
10 years is dubious for attempting to compare trend to model, anything less than 2-years is risible.
By the way, apropos to this discussion, from Steven Mosher’s reference. It’s for one site (I think), but global averaging doesn’t save you from noise that is correlated over the entire globe.
Mosher
No. It doesn’t.
Just like the world’s oceans don’t have the same salinity, temperature, life forms or not that much else in common for that matter, other than that they are water in various configurations, and by extension don’t “acidfify” [= down from 8.20 to 8.10 on “average” over the past century – based on best evidence – [acidity officially starting below 7, for those no versed in the matter] uniformly either. Just to get that red herring out of the way as well .
Trenberth has spawned a good number of travesty-of-science propositions over the past few years, but there is one key thing he has said that does fit the scientific mould: there is no such thing as a “global” measure for anything. If we are to understand whatever is occuring, we must measure and understand at the regional level. If so, that applies to the contention about sea level vs. seabed as well. Don’t you think so? And 0.3 mm is so f… little that if that is meant to explain/justify/prove anything about the “A” portion of the equation whatsoever, it qualifies as the “grasping at straws” red herring of the year by any measure.
And by the way, pls spare me the ” here are some nice pictures” [you cretin] put downs.
Also by the way, you have not responded to explain -on the basis of verifiable data- your fixation with the linear “extrapolations” of GHG based radiative phsyics. In the face of exponentially growing CO2 emissions that are not mirrored by the projected increase in temps based on your radiative physics explanation, please provide evidence for the proposition that when you continue to add CO2 [and other GHGs for that matter] you obtain an increase in warming that presupposes as its crucial component, a [IPCC] sensitivity factor that -based on most recent data – [ref Spencer, for instance] is some 3x over what is supported by empirical findings.
DeWitt Payne
Sit back and think about the “assertions but no [verifiable, my note] data” part of your comment about Heartland. Don’t let your politics get in the way.
Apply the same yard stick to GISS, CRU data and all the other IPCC “data” and “findings” in general, and you might come to realize that when you pass that through your very same seive, there isn’t all that much credible/verifiable “data” to back up the “radiative physics” CO2/GHG based AGW/ACC hypothesis [so dear to Mosher] as we have been asked to take for a fact for the past decades.
Like e.g. Steve Mc, I come from the the private sector, all-data-on-the-table-or else-you-have-no-credibility [and dead if found out to have fudged] find-the-fatal-flaw due diligence world. Based on some 30 years of experience from all sides of the table, I will take the findings and thinking of e.g. Lindzen, Spencer, McIntyre, Loehle, Allegre, Plimer and a good number of other skeptics over anything that has come out and continues to come out of the [$100 billion over 20 years in the US alone] AGW/ACC “machine”.
Based on what we know today, in venture capital due diligence terms, you wouldn’t be able to raise a nickel for a foreseeable future based on any “AGW/ACC” based “business plan”. The scientific questions around the case are so troubling and the flaws flagged to date so compelling, “management” is simply not credible because it has terminal conflcits of interest in multiple ways, the overall economic/social/business case is full of holes and the markets are collapsing before our eyes. Even if the science -against my expectations- turns out to be stellar and gas tight [no pun intended] 20 years from now, and we turn out to be headed for the + 2.5C by 2100 forecast by the IPCC, Homo Sapiens, ever so inventive, will have moved on, learned as we go and found ways to adapt to and remediate whatever the issues [and while the neo Malthusians will of course deny this to their dying days, we in fact have a remarkable record in that department. It in fact is one of the defining characteristics of our species].
A 0.7 C increase in temperatures over a century or more that is by and large not inconsistent with geological trends? A 0.3 mm adjustment in sea level increases that are by any measure not stampeding away? There are a few quite more pressing matters in this world to lie awake about.
tetris, I personally believe that a sensitivity anywhere in the range 1.5-3°C/doubling of CO2 is consistent with the data (at 95% CL). I don’t think anything that Spencer says really contradicts that, even if he personally favors a number closer to 1°C/doubling.
This range overlaps with the values given by the IPCC says, but where I would personally differ, is I don’t think the high-end tail (e.g., 9°C/doubling at the 95% CL quoted at one point) is supportable, and likely strongly contradicted at this point by available data.
The point is of course, 3°C/doubling for example, isn’t particularly threatening to our climate, 9°C/doubling (for example) is. By expanding the uncertainty of the upper tail of the sensitivity distribution, the IPCC is IMO playing political games with the intellectually nebulous “precautionary principle”.
IMO we don’t need to invoke (what is in fact) exotic theories such as proposed by Spencer to keep the climate from warming at say 2.5°C/doubling. We just have to hold the IPCC’s feet to the fire of their own data, and not allow them to stretch the tail of the uncertainty to ridiculous extremes.
Regarding the 0.3mm/year “correction”, I believe it is nonsensical, because it converts a measurable quantity into something that isn’t directly measurable. If one wants to discuss the change in the volume of the ocean basin over time that is fine with me, but strapping it onto a linear measurement like seal level is just … weird. My objections have nothing to do with whether it might appear to make the problem of sea level rise worse or better, it has to do with the fundamental practice of science, and the elimination of policy-based decision making as to what science is acceptable and which isn’t. (Steven and DeWitt are still right that the correction is by and large irrelevant from a policy perspective, which just makes it look doubly stupid.. a policy driven decision that changes nothing.)
Carrick
As long as you think that Spencer [Lindzen] or Svensmark or any of the other “skeptics” have “exotic” theories, you remian prisoner of the IPCC “consensus” thinking/dogma.
The history of science is explicit in teaching us that our fact based [scientific] knowledge and our understanding of the nature of things, is the result of two things only: healthy sceptiscism and the acceptance of intellectual conflict. Historically, when one or both of those two elements have been suppressed or irradicated – think the Middle Ages for 1000 years or modern forms of totalitarian systems [ Fascism or Socialism/Communism] for 25 to present- these processes not only stop but at times what has been gained is lost [sometimes only temporarilly, as evidenced by the Renaissance].
The “consensus” around the IPCC view of things is manufactured. That should be pretty evident by now. Follow the money: $100 billion over 20 years of publicly funded “climate science” in the US alone [add same for the rest of the OECD countries]. This consensus does not exist in any proper scientific sense of the term, and any true progress in our understanding of what is occuring in the earth’s climate system, at this juncture, is entirely dependant on listening to those not part of the “machine” and crucially more or less shielded from the pressures of the peer reviewed funding process. Think Maghealhan vs. the “flat earthers” and Copernicus via Brahe and Keppler to Galileo vs. the Catholic Church. Think Koch and Pasteur against the medical “establishment” of their day. Think Einstein, and why not Gates and Jobs for that matter. But certainly not the “Team”, the IPCC or anyone even remotely associated with their cottery. There is nothing to be learned from that camp any more. Only the art of obfuscation and obstruction.
Re: tetris (Jul 26 19:06),
I agree with Pielke, Sr. that greenhouse gases are not the only way, and right now probably not even the most significant way, that humans affect the global and regional climate. I also agree with Pielke, Jr.’s ‘Iron Law’, that we’re not going to do anything that costs a lot of money. Mitigation on the scale that is bruited about, reducing emissions by 80% by 2050, for example, is not going to happen absent some major breakthrough in technology or global disaster. I don’t think climate models do a very good job, and the scenarios that are used to drive them are even worse. Garbage in, garbage out definitely applies.
What bothers me is that entirely too many people who think of themselves as climate change skeptics or some such concentrate their efforts on denying radiative transfer calculations or that the greenhouse effect exists at all. These are effectively bullet proof. They pick up garbage like G&T or Miskolczi and run with it because of confirmation bias. It makes it easy to ridicule everyone who disagrees with the ‘consensus’ position. If I weren’t so contrary, I’d actually be a warmer because the level of discourse from the other side is, in most cases, so embarrassingly bad.
Fremantle PSMSL Annual Data
Decadal Changes
Y1 Y2 Dif/Year
1909 1919 -11.7
1919 1929 14.5
1929 1939 6.9
1939 1949 1.8
1949 1959 -5.6
1959 1969 -4.6
1969 1979 4.1
1979 1989 8.8
1989 1999 9.6
1999 2009 -7
25 year changes.
Y1 Y2 Dif/Year
1904 1929 0.72
1919 1944 5.92
1944 1969 -0.72
1969 1994 1.36
1984 2009 1.6
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/111.rlrdata
Dewitt: “The GIA correction is ~0.3mm/year. The corrected satellite altimeter derived rate is 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year. The GIA correction is less than the total uncertainty.”
GIA is additive. At the bottom of this url is an attempt by one person to figure out the net. http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/10-of-sea-level-rise-is-due-to-land-rising-too-got-that/
Re: Bruce (Jul 26 21:04),
If you actually read the University of Colorado page I linked to above, you would see that they recognize that by including GIA they are not measuring sea level per se. They are effectively measuring the total volume of water in the ocean.
DeWitt, Huh?
The graph says “Global Mean Sea Level Time Series” and the y axis is labelled “DeltaMSL”.
Carrick, I was going to say IPCC is not a source of what scientists think…but now that I think about it, maybe they are. And I don’t make up anything about what IPCC says, contrary to your silly claim that I do.
Andrew
Andrew_KY:
Well it’s certainly a baseline for what the scientists who endorse the IPCC think. Lots of nuances in science, and the science changes over time. Which is why they frequently update the IPCC findings with new volumes (e.g.,. the upcoming AR5). As to silly, who is getting their comments throttled and why?
tetris:
I think they are exotic, in the sense that they either posit physics that seem not to exist (e.g., iris effect) or require almost a conspiracy of nature to achieve (the two main effects are classic GHG effect and water vapor feedback, both of these set a baseline response well above what Spencer in particular tries to argue as plausible).
Regarding the AR4, I stick to the physical science sections, I agree some parts are especially heavily influenced by (desired) policy responses and are untrustworthy in defining any consensus view.
Beyond that I think you need to keep straight what the IPCC says (to the extent that it relates to a consensus viewpoint) rather than why it got there.
Science progresses by understanding another “camps” arguments and deciding which parts you agree with and which you don’t. You don’t have to go into conspiracy theories for how a published document became what it was to understand what it says and whether you agree with it.
The way you advance a counter argument in science is to state what they said, then point out why you think it is wrong. If the IPCC is as choke full of errors as you claim, this should be a relatively simple task.
Too many so called skeptics are just semi-educated amateurs who’ve never even bothered to learn what the IPCC says before attempting to refute it, and who glom onto sometimes completely wacky ideas like Pat Frank’s farcical papers on “error analysis” or imaginary physics like G&T or Miskolczi. This is particularly bothersome, because if you start out with the view that you aren’t going to study the document before adopting a viewpoint that opposes it, then it demonstrates you aren’t a skeptic, but rather somebody with religiously held beliefs.
And it makes it difficult, as DeWitt points out, for people who are really following the critical thinking process of reading, understanding, criticizing because we get painted with the same broad stroke as politically driven undereducated amateurs who assume everybody else is cut from the same whole cloth as them.
“As to silly, who is getting their comments throttled and why?”
I am and I guess liza and shoosh are, but I’m not sure. The exact ‘why’ would also be a guess. I’m sure The Moderator can provide some detail. 😉 -Andrew
Liza, you, shoosh, kim and willard are moderated in different ways and for different reasons. The reasons were explained to each, though I think each might dispute this. I’m not going to devote comment time to explaining moderation merely because you like to argue by asking questions or insinuating them using various rhetorical constructions that insinuate that I am required to engage an issue you wish to have engaged.
Dewitt, it appears they were measuring sea level … until it went down. THEN they decided to measure something else and still claim they are measuring sea level.
Anyway, for now on use of Colorado data is to be considered suspect.
DeWitt:
Which is the problem I have with it. If they want to compute the total volume of water in the ocean, they should compute that, not create a proxy measure for it.
I agree with PaulM, the label on their figure is now erroneous.
Re: PaulM (Jul 27 02:12),
From the FAQ page:
[emphasis added]
DeWitt, from his quote:
True, but it wasn’t a measure of volume before, it was a measure of mean ocean sea level that could directly be related to other measures. Now it measures a different quantity, but using the wrong units….
Wouldn’t the actual total volume of water in the basins be of even more interest and a more relevant measure?
Regardless of the reasons, this still comes across as a mind-numbingly silly way to characterize volume of water in the oceans.
Re: Carrick (Jul 27 10:40),
Mind-numbingly silly seems a bit hyperbolic, but I do agree that calling the measure Global Mean Sea Level is misleading. Apparently, though, it’s always been the eustatic level so even without including GIA, the relationship to actual sea level was tenuous.
Good to see Carrick and I are now in agreement. I absolutely agree with the final para of his comment #79618. Adding in the GIA (which comes from models) and calling the resulting estimated measure of ocean volume “sea level” is silly. It gives free ammunition to the skeptics who would like to claim they are trying mislead people by exaggerating sea level rise. Yes I did read their FAQ page and their page giving their definition [The term “global mean sea level” (GMSL) in the context of our research is the eustatic sea level. The eustatic sea level represents the level if all of the water in the oceans were contained in a single basin.]
I have written to them about this – clearly others have done so too.
Colorado: “it cannot be used to predict relative sea level changes along the coasts.”
IPCC: “You on the coasts are going to drown because satellite sea level says so!”
“Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3 mm yr–1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier decades.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-5-1.html
Hmmm. It appears either IPCC is outright lying … or Colorado is lying.
I vote both.
Clearly, it would be wise for them to simply label their “global mean sea level” “eustatic sea level”. Then their FAQ could just explain what “eustatic sea level” means. This is better than the current practice which comes off like this:
A) Make a graph whose ordinate is labeled “X”.
B) write a FAQ explaining “By X we mean the slightly different thing Y. Y is defined as blah, blah, blah”
We can quibble whether the current practice is mind-numingly silly, merely silly or just likely to result in unncesseary confusion. But “eustatic sea level” is just as short as “global mean sea level”, so I don’t understand why they don’t just use the correct term and be done with it.
DeWitt:
Perhaps if I had said “I found it to be mind-numbingly silly” that wouldn’t be so hyperbolic? 😉
It does describe my reaction.
Lucia:
This would be the least one should do IMO.
It would be better to just convert to units of volume, if that’s what they think they are really measuring. (That’s what I find particularly mind-numbing about this: I can imagine the reaction of a physics crowd to somebody pulling a stunt like this…. it would get ugly really fast.)
Regardless, I do think it’s a serious mistake to use a new measure then use a previously defined term that has completely different connotations to describe it.
lucia, its harder to scare someone when you yell: “look out, the level if all of the water in the oceans were contained in a single basin is rising!
Better to keep the unwashed confused … and ignore the contradiction when you claim eustatic sea level has nothing to do with coastal sea level while also claiming results have been in synch with coastal tide gauges.
Looks like another core tenet of global warming is toast.
” A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.”
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-arctic-scientist-under-investigation-082217993.html
And another.
“NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.”
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
And another …
“The UHI trends are 0.398°C and 0.26°C decade−1. The most substantial UHI effect occurred after the early 2000s, implying a significant effect of rapid urbanization on surface air temperature change during this period.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/new-paper-uhi-alive-and-well-in-china/