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MarkR at 20:38 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Arkadiusz Semczyszak: As well as Riccardo's point, conservation of mass tells us that it's not nature that's causing the CO2 increase. With atmospheric CO2 going up by about 15bn tons/yr, and human emissions at ~30bn tons/yr, nature MUST be absorbing more than it's giving out. This has been detected in the oceans with declining pH, for example. -
CBDunkerson at 20:21 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Just a minor issue on the source of one bit of data. The article cites ice core records as indicating that CO2 levels are now the highest they have been in 15 million years. Actually, the ice cores go back just under 1 million years. The longer record is from proxies, mostly ocean sediment analysis. The cited source used changing ratios of boron and calcium (which are impacted by ocean pH... which is impacted by atmospheric CO2) from microorganisms called foraminifera. Recent foraminifera based studies have shown very high correlation with the ice core and modern instrumental records and greater granularity (smaller timeframes between data points) than the ice cores. -
Riccardo at 19:24 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Arkadiusz Semczyszak, the characteristic response time of CO2 to warming is not the same as that of warming ro increasing CO2 forcing. Past climate and the physics teach us that the former, the one you suggest is operating now, takes centuries. Also, to get the level of CO2 we are experiencing now the temperature should be several degrees above current. We can safely and easily rule it out. -
Doug Bostrom at 19:20 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
RSVP at 18:54 PM on 26 February, 2010 What's your point? -
Pierre-Normand at 19:06 PM on 26 February 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Thanks to Tom Dayton for the reminders. I myself wrongly assumed that those spectra ought to be consistent with the fact that total OLR must (almost) balance solar input and hence not vary much. But while this must be true globally, the measured spectra aren't global averages. And the Earth doesn't warm uniformly, neither does the stratosphere cool uniformly. There should be no a priori expectation that total OLR flux in the observed area should behave the same as they do globally. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:02 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Our surplus is up to 0.5 ppmv C02/years -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:01 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
"The empirical evidence that global warming is happening and that humans ..." - this sentence is a large group of researchers. But not all. Using Bayesian Statistician may well prove the reverse sequence of events: the natural increase in temperature - an increase in the concentration of water vapor and CO2 (soil respiration) in atmosphere. Just look at this picture: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/Jan% 20Pompe_co2% 20and% 20temp2.gif. Here you can see that the increase in pCO2 - is a function of temperature. Volcanic eruptions - is the smallest (http://i30.tinypic.com/2uzxe0k.jpg). A reduction in the TSI as quickly responds only to the soil. Our surplus is up to 0.5 ppmv C02. -
RSVP at 18:54 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
There does seem to be an official line put out by the EPA... http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/epa_report2.pdf ...the demeanor of which is astounding. In reference to Milankovitch cycles, for example (p46), "There appears to be something which has prevented the Earth from getting even colder than it has during ice ages or warming more than it has during interglacial periods. It is far from clear what these somethings are, but this asymmetry appears to have existed for at least 3 million years." (Hmmm, just around the time some apes discovered fire.) Ironically, NASA and the EPA are both government agencies. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:25 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
One other thing really bothers me about Senator Inhofe and for that matter what appears to have become a campaign of harassment (see the Competitive Enterprise Institute's recent volley of FOIA demands launched far and wide) against scientists. Although the scientists I know are in general a stubborn lot, very much subject to their sense of curiosity almost without regard to worldly matters, distractions of the kind that Inhofe et al are creating are likely to play a negative role in recruitment and retention for outfits such as GISS etc. Practicing scientists-- particularly academics-- are generally overcommitted persons with many demands on their time stretching beyond the numbers of hours available in a day. I'm don't think many rejectionists understand how irritating it is for these people to waste their time on redundant requests for information already available or irrelevant to scientific progress. For that matter, come to think of it, swerving undeniably bright and productive researchers into wasting their time on political matters that won't affect research results is a sorry waste of human talent. I look at this whole sorry affair and a picture of sand being poured into a clockworks is what comes to mind. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:56 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
This "well, the evidence wasn't working for us, let's attack the scientist themselves" business concerns me as almost as much in terms of collateral damage to science in general as it does in terms of dealing with climate change. Senator Inhofe in his efforts to discredit climate research is unleashing a degenerative force akin to the cliche movie monster that slips its chains and runs amok. As others have commented, Inhofe's assault will be integrated into the thinking of people for whom scientific research findings are an "inconvenient truth" and they'll use this particular matter to dismiss whatever facts stand in the way of their particular agendas. "Oh, those scientists, you can't trust them." I'm not completely sure but I also think Inhofe's exact method is without precedent. In any case, now that a man of seemingly respectable position has stooped this low, we can be sure it will not be the last time we'll see this technique used. For any conflict pitting industry against research findings in a matter of sufficiently high stakes, this now could well be the outcome. More and more, I find myself wondering if we were to discover the CFC or tetraethyl lead or acid rain problems in this modern era, would we have been able to tackle them? Tetraethyl lead took a few decades to address, but CFC and acid rain dispersal were fairly crisply dealt with via public policy. I fear that's not possible any more, not in this climate. -
Tom Dayton at 17:28 PM on 26 February 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Gary, you wrote "according to the paper by Ramanathan...'an increase in greenhouse gas such as CO2 will lead to a further reduction in OLR.... Notice there is no clarifying statement about having to use model simulated graphs to 'correct' for surface temperatures and water vapor before seeing that OLR reduction." And you wrote "he made the general statement that OLR would decrease with increased CO2 in the atmosphere. i could be reading too much into the Ramanathan paper." Yes, Gary, you are reading far, far too much into that statement. That statement was made in a journal for climate scientists, who know perfectly well that the total effect on OLR depends on all the mechanisms that come into play when CO2 is increased, and on mechanisms independent of CO2 that come into play nonetheless concurrently. It is so well known that it need not be stated for that audience. Indeed, if the author had stated it, the editor probably would have insisted it be removed to shorten the article and reduce clutter. Professional journals are not like textbooks, Science News or Scientific American, let alone a newspaper or the American Thinker blog. Journals rarely need or want "clarifying statements" about rudimentary knowledge, unless the editors strongly expect that the audience will include substantial numbers of people outside the normal, professionally specialized, audience of that particular journal. What if the authors had tried to make a "clarifying statement"? Hmmm.... Given the complex set of variables involved in determining the precise amount of OLR in response to the CO2 increase, they would not have been able to give a single answer, because the answer varies across situations, depending on the precise details of the situation being predicted, and there is an infinite number of situations. Instead they would have to, let's see... construct a model that they and others could run separately for each situation. They and others also would use that same model as a component of models for predicting temperature responses to increased CO2. But responsible scientists would want to verify that model's OLR predictions against real world observations! They would have to run it, then show its results...say as a graph line...maybe displayed underneath a graph line of the observed OLR over the same time period. They might even label that graph Figure 1.b and c. Gary, nobody is taking issue with you for not knowing all that. You would have if you had spent significant time writing articles for professional scientific journals in any field, even as a mere grad student. But you don't have that experience, so no foul. What people are taking issue with, is your quick leap to very public and strong proclamation before investigating sufficiently. When faced with your own "obvious" conclusion that flies in the faces of thousands of professional, specialized scientists who have spent many decades researching that topic, the stronger your feeling of certainty is, the more you should suspect that you, not they, are missing a fundamental piece of knowledge. And the harder you should dig to verify your own conclusion. That's what I do. That's what John Cook does. That's what most of the commenters on this blog do. Sometimes (and sometimes often) we don't dig deep enough to verify our opinions, and so write a comment that is wrong. But we write a comment, not a whole, highly publicized blog post. And we usually prefix our comment with "I think I'm missing something, but it seems to me...," and other folks correct us. Often not gently. That difference between your behavior and our typical (not perfect) behavior is what the Dunning-Kruger effect is about. -
gpwayne at 17:16 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
I agree John, it's the science that matters. As a regular contributor to the debate in the UK's Guardian newspaper, I've become increasingly concerned that the paper is not giving the science its due, in favour of the distractions which of course do garner sensational headlines. Science is not the tool of politics and its findings cannot be determined by vote or popularity. We need to concentrate on the evidence, and luckily, as we have taken to saying as we shoot down the zombies - we have an app for that :) -
Berényi Péter at 17:14 PM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Looks balanced, puts things into perspective, makes you feel small (a good thing). Unfortunately it's behind a (mild) paywall. Oxford Companion to Global Change Sea Level By Michael J. Tooley http://www.mywire.com/a/Enc-Global-Change/Sea-Level/9517794/ -
robrtl at 17:03 PM on 26 February 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
co2 continues to rise but according to phil jones there hasbeen "no discernable warming over last 15 years". que pasa ? could greeen house theory need clariicationResponse: Its imperative that we obtain our understanding of our climate from peer-reviewed science and not media headlines. However, if you are going to insist on sourcing your science from the media and not from scientists, then at least read the full article and don't just go on the headline. -
RSVP at 16:07 PM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Berényi Péter Thank you. On the http://hpiers.obspm.fr home page, the graph, "Excess of the Length of day for the last years", it is interesting to see the deviation on the order of what appears to be nano seconds. This is kind of humbling. -
garythompson at 14:55 PM on 26 February 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
In taking Doug Bostrom's advice (#70), let me try and address John Cook's issues with my article one by one. i have gone through the article and attempted to summarize them into the following 3 categories: 1 - i misrepresented or missed the authors' conclusions in all three papers i cited. 2 - i was not forthcoming in showing all the graphs on those papers. 3 - i 'eyeballed' the graphs and there was no actual data analysis performed to reach my conclusions. as i stated before #1 and #2 has been addressed ad nauseum so i'll focus on #3. on the paper that John's article focused on (Harries 2001) he noted that i didn't include the second figure that showed the actual delta so i didn't have to "eyeball" it. in a previous post, i made my position known that even on the graph that John shows, the top graph, actual measured data, doesn't show a decline over the majority of the spectrum where OLR is absorbed by CO2. In fact, it appears that OLR has increased for most of that spectrum. To rectify this in my AT article i added the actual delta graph for the third paper and my commentary on that new graph is in the AT article and it follows the same line as my commentary in the pervious sentences. but back to the Harries 2001 paper, Figure 2 in John's article still shows, on average, that the CO2 absorption didn't decrease but rather oscillated around zero for the actual measured data. Minor point for John, I think the caption should read 1970 to 1997 (instead of 1996). once the models removed water vapor and SST, then the drop in CO2 was more pronounced. So, based on the data without model manipulation, i made my conclusions about this graph (which was my figure 2) that there was no change in OLR in the spectrum that is absorbed by CO2. I have stated before why i believe the SST and water vapor corrected graphs shouldn't have more value than the actual data (18% increase in CO2 vs. 1% increase in IR due to SST) but there is another reason i feel comfortable drawing that conclusion about Harries 2001. remember i had three papers cited in my article but we've only focused on #2 and #3. paper #1 also included harries as an author and the same time intervals (1970 vs. 1997) as Harries 2001. Since i don't have a membership to Nature i couldn't download the actual paper #2 cited in my article and it was the only one i didn't read. But paper #1 appears to have come first since it doesn't site other work by Harries on this dataset. i also think the difference is that Harries 2001 focused on the Central Pacific and this first paper i cite focused on the East and West Pacific. those who know the answer to this please correct me and fill in the gaps. anyway, please go take a look at that paper here (http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/24874.pdf) and look at figures 1, 3 and 4. Figure 1 is actually 2 graphs showing delta BT measured for east and west pacific (1997 vs. 1970) and this corresponds to the figure 1 in my article. it's pretty obvious from this graph of raw data that the delta BT is at or above zero for the spectrum where CO2 absorbs (for both the East and West). It gets more interesting even when you bring in the model to compensate for temperatures and water vapor. on the top graph in figure 3 (east pacific) the delta BT is still at zero and i'd say it is above zero for most of that spectrum associated with CO2. the west pacific graph is shown in figure 4 (top graph) and again for the spectrum range associated with CO2 absorption there is no reduction in OLR. so i looked at all these graphs from paper #1 and #2 and concluded that CO2 is not decreasing in both of these papers and i can even make the case in the measured data in paper #1 that the OLR associated with CO2 absorption increased. -
datn at 14:09 PM on 26 February 2010Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
Thanks for making this app. Here's another Android supporter! -
Jeff Freymueller at 11:50 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
If the function you fit to the sea level height is h0 + v*t + (1/2)*a*t^2, then you need to report that your function had that form so that your coefficient can be interpreted. Otherwise, if you just say you fit a quadratic function the assumption would be h0 + v*t + a*t^2, that is, straight polynomial coefficients. "Fit an acceleration" leaves an ambiguity. -
Berényi Péter at 10:55 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#56 RSVP at 06:25 AM on 26 February, 2010 "With all that mass moving off the poles, the Earth should slow down a little to conserve angular momentum. Days should get longer" Part of the reason it does. Moon is a major player (tides, friction, angular momentum transfer). You can find everything & much more here: IERS (International Earth Rotation & Reference System Service) http://www.iers.org http://hpiers.obspm.fr Stuff GPS is based on. -
Berényi Péter at 10:20 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#59 kwinters79 at 07:15 AM on 26 February, 2010 "not 20.4 cm" s(t)=a/2*t^2, v(t)=s'(t)=a*t Kinematics, uniform acceleration. You've forgotten to divide by 2. Linear component is trivial, does not add much, depends on place. No accelerating acceleration (i.e. no jolt, snap, crackle, pop, etc.), no scare. In the long run (>> 100 years) even this tiny acceleration can't possibly persist. Also, in a century, if some silly war or neoluddite takeover would not kick us back to stone age, climate engineering is quite possible. I did the average, this is the 10 micron/yr^2 figure. However, Klaipeda, Lithuania looks like an outlier. Something must have happened to the tide gauge during the war. According to docu old name Memel (used to belong to Third Reich). http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/pubi/rlr.annual.plots/080161.gif http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/pubi/docu.psmsl/080161.docu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Memel Black sea (e.g. Poti, Georgia - not the one enduring general Sherman's March) also problematic. See comments for Bourgas http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/pubi/docu.psmsl/295021.docu You can look up any PSMSL station here: http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/psmsl_individual_stations.html -
Tom Dayton at 10:17 AM on 26 February 2010The sun is getting hotter
batvette, the severities of the up parts of the cycles are irrelevant, because the down parts of the cycles cancel them. More precisely, the degree to which the up and down parts of the cycles do *not* cancel each other is reflected in irradiance statistics that filter by 11 years by one or another method. Those filtered statistics are the ones that show either flat or slightly down trend since 1950. -
batvette at 09:28 AM on 26 February 2010The sun is getting hotter
Climate lag is precisely the reason I would argue it is fallacious logic to assume there should be a pronounced cooling trend anytime soon after the peak around 1950. Indeed, your own link cites 25 to 50 years. Since the peak was nearly right at 1950 and it was of unprecedented in amplitude over the 400 year period since accurate count began, it should be prudent calculate the residual effect, or lag, should have a duration of 50 years per your own reference, not 30. Even if one accepts a 30 year lag the 4 cycles following it still saw the second, third and fifth most active cycles in the 400 years so should be expected to have continued the warming trend- not cooling. It is furter notable that if you look carefully at that chart you see the bottom swings of each cycle actually became more active than they had been around the 1950 peak, so observations would be skewed as well because the (low) cooling years which countered the unpredented high would not have been as much as had been seen before. To expect any significant cooling after 1980 you'd have to show a cycle or even two which had significantly lower activity than the 400 year average, not merely compare it to an unprecedented high that just occurred and whose residual effects would affect the assumed cooling cycle.Response: Note that climate lag doesn't mean there is a delayed response to a change in forcing. Climate responds immediately to forcings. The climate lag refers to the time it takes for the climate to reach equilibrium.
If the sun cooled, the effect on climate would be immediate, a drop in temperature - but it would take years to decades for the climate to eventually reach equilibrium at a stable lower temperature.
We are not observing this. There is no negative energy imbalance gradually reducing to equilibrium. Instead, we're observing a positive energy imbalance that is gradually increasing over time. We're moving further and further away from equilibrium. The increasing CO2 forcing is causing an increasing positive energy imbalance. -
kwinters79 at 07:22 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
I wrote: "In the year 2100 (x = 244) you'll get ... This is 328 mm above the 2008 level" I should have noted that this 32.8 cm estimated rise by 2100 falls within the IPCC range for all 6 emission scenarios. -
kwinters79 at 07:15 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Berényi Péter (53) wrote: "Finally let me confess I've made an error in calculating sea level rise acceleration for New York and Stockholm. The acceleration of sea level rise is actually positive for both places." You have my respect for that correction. "The average acceleration of sea level rise across stations is a better candidate for being a global indicator. In this timespan it was 0.0102 mm/yr^2. It is 20.4 cm in 200 years. From 2006 to 2100 it means an additional 14.7 cm sea level rise." 0.0102 mm/yr^2 x (200yr)^2 = 408 mm, not 20.4 cm But this only deals with the x^2 component. There's also a significant linear trend. Using the New York guage as an example, the trend line I calculated was: y = 0.0036x^2 + 2.2337x - 5.087 {Note: I adjusted all the data so that 1856 was year=0 and level=0} The trend line in 2008 (x = 152) shows: y = 0.0036(152^2) + 2.2337(152) - 5.087 = 417.61 mm (above the 1856 level). In the year 2100 (x = 244) you'll get: y = 0.0036(244^2) + 2.2337(244) - 5.087 = 754.3 mm This is 328 mm above the 2008 level (which is 426 mm above the 1856 level). If I take this out another 100 years to 2200 (x = 344) I'll get a sea level of about 1.189M above the 1856 level. But as you pointed out, some of the guages show a much higher rate of acceleration than the New York one. So I would have to conclude that if I averaged the trend-lines of the 32 tide guages you posted, the increase would be higher. -
Jeff Freymueller at 06:56 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#56 RSVP, yes. Search for "Earth Orientation Parameters" (EOP might do). Both rotation pole and rate (length of day) are monitored, and most variations are well explained. Also, the shape of the earth changes (although glacial isostatic adjustment may be the bigger factor). Search on "J2" or "J2 + oblateness" or "J2 dot" to find information about how the oblateness of the earth is changing. -
Jeff Freymueller at 06:52 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#53, Berenyi Peter, your last post shows you are making progress. In particular, you fixed your computational error that gave you the wrong sign, and you are averaging over many tide gauges. Now it gets a bit harder. Some general advice: Not every acceleration estimate is going to be equally good. You need to weight them appropriately. A simple way would be based on the formal uncertainty of the quadratic fit, scaled by the misfit of each quadratic fit. You should also assess the statistical correlation between the linear and quadratic terms so that you can determine whether that needs to be considered in weighting the quadratic terms. A more accurate measure of the uncertainty in the quadratic terms would explicitly estimate the temporal noise character of each time series. You'll have to carefully pore over the station history information, just to make sure that there are no discontinuities in the series (PSMSL should note that), or anything else (earthquakes, etc) that might affect the series. Some of your extreme values might be outliers due to something other than sea level changes, or they might just be far from the mean due to random variations. You might then be able to refine your estimate. You also need to determine the uncertainty in your estimate, and evaluate how that projects into the range of sea level rise you would predict. This last bit is a little trickier than you might think, because you have to combine your acceleration estimate with the appropriate linear rate, and you have not addressed that yet. But all in all, I suspect by going through this process you will get a range of rates fairly similar to the IPCC AR4 projection. In projecting to the future, you are assuming that nothing will happen in the 21st century that is fundamentally different from the 20th century. That may or may not be true, and to assess that you need to consider projected future temperature trends, and some glaciology. So your next question should be, is your assumption that you can extrapolate correct? If temperature rises faster in the 21st century, will your extrapolation still be valid? Will rising temperatures trigger the beginning of new processes affecting sea level that were not captured in your analysis of (mainly) 20th century sea level? Look more carefully at the work of people like Rahmstorf and Vermeer to get at the first question. (And I mean carefully, skeptically, not with a "what are these guys trying to pull on me" attitude). Go to a library and look things up when they reference papers you can't get online -- most university libraries I have been associated with do allow you to enter even if you are not a student, and there are xerox machines so "paywalls" are not really an issue because you can copy journal articles for personal research use like everyone had to do when I was a student. For my second question, John has postings on this site that deal with the recent significant increases in mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica. I'm betting his postings are quite good, and will point to the original sources. Fact is, both Greenland and Antarctica have started to lose significant mass, and this is a recent change (within the last decade). This appears to be dominated by the speedup of glaciers. Finally, your two numbered points near the end of the post are not very accurate, and you really just need to do some more reading and research to learn more about those topics. Starting with the sources on this website is a good way to go. -
RSVP at 06:25 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
With all that mass moving off the poles, the Earth should slow down a little to conserve angular momentum. Days should get longer. Ocean salinity should also decrease just a tad. -
shdwsnlite at 04:57 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Interesting. As i am trying to understand all this and follow the conversation it appears to me a sort of an example of a peer reviewed process has happened. In #18 Berényi Péter provided data and his conclusion. In a later post he gave his process for coming to that conclusion. Someone else reviewed that process and found an error. Berényi Péter acknowledged the error and came back with a revised and expanded conclusion. If i am in error or simplifying too much please correct me. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:50 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Berényi Péter at 04:25 AM on 26 February, 2010 Thanks for doing all that work. Was that the result of hand calculation, or something you could conceivably pour downloaded data into? Finally let me confess... I wouldn't term it a "confession", or at least I hope you don't feel mournful about it. You're putting more effort into this than a lot of other folks. Me, for instance. -
Berényi Péter at 04:25 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#43 AndrewY at 21:14 PM on 25 February, 2010 "Returning to the topic, it does seem the Siddall abstract is very easy to misinterpret (unless you are careful to find the definition of sea level response)" The issue is not made less difficult by the fact that "definition of sea level response" is nowhere to be found in Siddall 2009 either. However, usege is consistent with that found in retraction letter. "Over the twenty-first century, projected sea-level rise reaches a maximum of 0.82m in response to warming from the upper estimate of the A1FI emissions scenario (6.4°C)" http://geo.oregonstate.edu/files/geo/Siddall-2009-NatureGeo.pdf Finally let me confess I've made an error in calculating sea level rise acceleration for New York and Stockholm. The acceleration of sea level rise is actually positive for both places. I have found 32 tide gauges in the PSMSL database, having data for the 1900-2006 interval. To make up for my error, I have calculated sea level rise acceleration for each, including the two above. First column is acceleration in mm/yr^2, then latitude, longitude and name of station. -0.0152 43 18 N 05 21 E MARSEILLE -0.0128 51 27 N 00 45 E SHEERNESS -0.0065 57 26 N 10 34 E FREDERIKSHAVN -0.0059 55 00 N 01 26 W NORTH SHIELDS -0.0034 54 34 N 11 56 E GEDSER -0.0034 48 23 N 04 30 W BREST 0.0002 40 42 N 74 01 W NEW YORK 0.0010 53 58 N 10 53 E TRAVEMUNDE 0.0023 53 54 N 11 28 E WISMAR 2 0.0035 55 34 N 09 46 E FREDERICIA 0.0041 45 53 S 170 30 E DUNEDIN II 0.0044 55 20 N 11 08 E KORSOR 0.0048 64 00 N 20 55 E RATAN 0.0058 54 11 N 12 05 E WARNEMUNDE 2 0.0074 55 17 N 10 50 E SLIPSHAVN 0.0077 37 48 N 122 28 W SAN FRANCISCO 0.0102 56 09 N 10 13 E AARHUS 0.0108 57 22 N 17 06 E OLANDS NORRA UDDE 0.0109 57 36 N 09 58 E HIRTSHALS 0.0117 30 41 N 81 28 W FERNANDINA 0.0129 55 28 N 08 26 E ESBJERG 0.0142 65 02 N 25 25 E OULU/ULEABORG 0.0145 59 19 N 18 05 E STOCKHOLM 0.0165 55 41 N 12 36 E KOBENHAVN 0.0166 47 36 N 122 20 W SEATTLE 0.0169 58 45 N 17 52 E LANDSORT 0.0194 56 06 N 15 35 E KUNGHOLMSFORT 0.0221 56 06 N 12 28 E HORNBAEK 0.0307 60 09 N 24 58 E HELSINKI 0.0328 53 52 N 8 43 E CUXHAVEN 2 0.0425 42 10 N 41 41 E POTI 0.0490 55 42 N 21 08 E KLAIPEDA Looks like at some stations sea level has got rather large upward acceleration. But even 0.049 mm/yr^2 at KLAIPEDA means less than 1 m in two centuries. The average acceleration of sea level rise across stations is a better candidate for being a global indicator. In this timespan it was 0.0102 mm/yr^2. It is 20.4 cm in 200 years. From 2006 to 2100 it means an additional 14.7 cm sea level rise. Of course, there is a steady linear rise as well due to geophysical processes (like glacial rebound), but it can hardly be more than 10 cm/century. To get a sea level rise during 21st century substantially higher than 25 cm, not only rate of rise should increase, but acceleration as well. In other words, there should also be non-vanishing third or higher derivatives of sea level. It can happen, if the underlying dynamics is exponential. However, a dynamics like this makes the system very unstable. Not likely scenario. With no major icesheets left on Northern continents, sea level has not changed much during last eight millenia. Ice albedo feedback must be weaker than during deglaciation for two reasons. 1. Remaining ice sheets are closer to poles, don't get much sunshine anyway 2. No long ice sheet margin on land exists Substantial sea level rise can only come from land ice melt, not sea water thermal expansion, since latter requires almost a hundred times more energy to produce same rise. I would rather watch out for black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. It accelerates ice melt by a well understood process (makes it dark). Also, it is WAY cheaper to filter it out from industrial smoke (it is done in Europe). Not only cheaper, possible as well. -
Tom Dayton at 02:03 AM on 26 February 2010On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
The professional statistician Tamino has proven two skeptic claims to be false: "1st, that the dramatic reduction in the number of reporting stations around 1990 introduced a false warming trend; 2nd, that the adjustments applied to station data also introduce a false warming trend." Tamino made those proofs by...analyzing the actual data! What a concept! The skeptics have had access to the same data, but have not bothered to do the analyses, only to make the claims. -
dhogaza at 01:15 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Yes, I am evil. I have quoted Siddall 2009 on the IPCC thing in a disguised form.
The fact that Sidall came up with numbers consistent with the IPCC AR4 was coincidence. AR4 left out any enhanced contribution by glacial melt altogether, as was pointed out near the top of this thread. Siddall didn't, yet got similar numbers. This immediately raises "sniff test" questions about the validity of the paper's result. -
joseph449008 at 01:10 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
As satellite measured recent sea level rise is faster than estimated 20th century average, it is often cited as proof of acceleration.
Some acceleration is to be expected, simply because the density of water decreases with temperature in a way that is not linear. I found a calculator for the density of water given temperature and salinity here: http://www.csgnetwork.com/h2odenscalc.html One divided by density will give you relative volume. I've put that in a graph already. Here's a formula that gives near-1.0 correlation coefficient: V = 3.96E-3 T^2 + 8.36E-2 T + 973 V is volume of 1000 Kg of water (salinity=3.5%) in liters. T is temperature in Celsius. -
Riccardo at 00:45 AM on 26 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Berényi Péter, no need to argue on this, a linear extrapolation over one century has no bases whatsoever. -
Berényi Péter at 23:37 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#48 rocco at 22:55 PM on 25 February, 2010 "you fail at quoting, among other things" Yes, I am evil. I have quoted Siddall 2009 on the IPCC thing in a disguised form. Had been curious if anyone noticed. "Our model [...] estimates 4–24 cm of sea-level rise during the twentieth century, in agreement with the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" http://geo.oregonstate.edu/files/geo/Siddall-2009-NatureGeo.pdf BTW, IPCC AR4 WG1 5.5.2.1 says "we assess the rate [... ] for the 20th century as 1.7±0.5 mm/yr". It is 12-22 cm. One can argue ad infinitum about if it is "in agreement" with a 4-24 cm model output or not. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch5s5-5-2.html -
rocco at 22:55 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Berényi Péter: "Since observed sea level data are taken from IPCC AR4 WG1 where twentieth century sea level rise is estimated to be 14±10 cm" The Church and White (2006) paper, used by Vermeer & Rahmstorf (2009) and the IPCC, estimates 20th century rate of sea-level rise at 1.7 ± 0.3 mm/yr, so, unfortunately, you fail at quoting, among other things. -
Riccardo at 22:54 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
AndrewY, "I am surprised the authors did not see the potential for that misunderstanding". I can see your point, but you shouldn't be surprised. After all they're writing on a scientific journal and readers are supposed to know the science. -
CBDunkerson at 21:50 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
RSVP, 'skeptic' is a term that those individuals have chosen for themselves... not a 'prejudicial label' applied to them by others as you suggest. Indeed, I consider it (along with the also self-chosen label of 'realist') a highly inaccurate description for the vast majority of the people who claim it on this issue. I'm not aware of any self applied label for the 'other' group... which I suspect is because we see ourselves as individuals separately evaluating the facts, rather than some sort of political/cultural movement. As to curbing CO2 emissions being a "whimpy" solution... if it is such a tiny step, why such resistance? Eventually it comes down to the simple fact that the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere the worse the problem will get. If we could somehow replace fossil fuels with clean energy today global warming might even be a net positive... sure, we'd still end up flooding alot of coastal areas over the next few centuries, but a slightly warmer planet would actually be beneficial in many ways. However, the human race obviously isn't going to give up fossil fuel addiction that easily... so it becomes a question of how bad the situation will get. Your suggestion of population control, even if it weren't impossible, wouldn't help at all if we continued fossil fuel use at current levels. -
Pierre-Normand at 21:49 PM on 25 February 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
In my post #72 I misstated Ramanathan's definition of OLR. The 'reduction' in OLR Ramanathan speaks of is conceived as the difference between longwave flux from the surface and total longwave flux from top of atmosphere (wherever this is being emitted from). With increased CO2 concentration, when steady state is achieved, the 'reduction' is larger than is was just because surface emission is larger. OLR does not change one bit, since it must still balance the same solar flux. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:49 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
The mass of ice, the extent of glaciation from the last interglacial period (125.000 years ago), were higher than during the last glaciation. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:38 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
"It stood 4-6 meters above the present during the last interglacial period, 125,000 years ago, but was 120 m LOWER [...] at the peak of the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago." - "Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today" (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/). Post-glacial isostatic rebound, and it also should be included ... Much better to compare (here) is an early Holocene optimum. -
AndrewY at 21:14 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
RSVP @39/42, I am a reader and do not represent the views of the people that maintain this site, but I don't think it is very meaningful/constructive to divide the people that post here into opposing camps labeled "skeptics" and "others" (your question seems to be "what are the "others" called?)... I think doubt lies at the heart of the scientific method, so in that sense everybody here is a skeptic. It seems to me that the purpose of this site is to shed light on/expose those arguments that either misinterpret, misunderstand or misrepresent the current body of scientific research (ideally the focus should be on the arguments, not the people). Returning to the topic, it does seem the Siddall abstract is very easy to misinterpret (unless you are careful to find the definition of sea level response), I am surprised the authors did not see the potential for that misunderstanding (especially as they were withdrawing a paper). Unfortunately, climate scientists are working in a very politically charged field and need to take extra care to be completely clear about their findings, especially in the abstract and conclusion. It is no longer just an academic audience that is reading their papers and in the age of the internet a misunderstanding can spread like wild fire and can be very difficult to reverse (there are lots of examples of that!) -
RSVP at 19:48 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
#40 The answer to my question requires just one word. I dont see your reply as answering my question (at all). It is characteristic in circles or prejudice to consider those within the group as "normal", and only have labels for those outside the group. -
RSVP at 19:42 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Also, as a practical matter, one normally applies the branch of science that best fits the problem to be solved. When dealing with a global problem such as global warming, it would seem that simple thermodynamics could give you most of the answers one needs when it comes to analyzing energy balance. After that, the problem is either regarded acute/drastic, or subtle/minor. According to all the predictions, supposedly the situation is fairly acute/drastic. Acute/drastic problems, require acute/drastic solutions, and yet it seems that the very folks that take their work so seriously here are the same that are only able to prescribe whimpy solutions such as curbing CO2 emissions and looking for "alternative" energy sources that in end also have their own thermal footprints. If the problem is indeed linked to humans activity, it is not because of what a few people are doing. It is a problem of big numbers. And if there being so many people is creating a problem, the issue is about dimensionality. This then calls on other scientific disciplines that naturally fit the problem, such as behaviorial psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. -
Pierre-Normand at 19:23 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Skepticism denotes one main component of epistemic virtue. Everyone is for virtue. So, everyone claims to be advocating true skepticism. I can hardly find a more polite way to refer to people who expresses a level of doubt that seems to me unwarranted than to call them skeptics -- in relation with some position that seems well established, such as AGW -- when they usually claim the title for themselves. I'd rather not call someone a denier when I wish to engage in dialogue with him/her. -
Dikran Marsupial at 19:16 PM on 25 February 2010What would happen if the sun fell to Maunder Minimum levels?
Cowboy @ 86 Fossil fuel use is highly taxed, and thus quite well accounted for. As a result our estimates of fossil fuel use are sufficiently accurate for there to be little question of the validity of the mass balance argument. This is helped by the fact that the annual increase in atmospheric concentrations is less than half annual fossil fuel use emissions, so estimates would have to be wrong by a factor of two before there would be any doubt. The error bars simply are no where near that big. So to return to our example, if you knew that you put in $1000 per month, with a random month-to-month variation of $100, and took out nothing, but your monthly balance only rose by an average of $500 a month (plus or minus $100), you would still know that Mrs Cowboy was a net drain on your finances and you were a net source. You would know that (assuming basic numeracy) without needing actual exact transaction receipts (tags) or a ledger over a statistically significant time (note we have excellent records of emissions and the growth rate for at least 50 years), and that would be true if she were putting in $1 or $1,000,000 or $1,000,000,000 a month. Now if you can provide some evidence that our fossil fuel use has been over-estimated by a factor of two, rather than the error bars supplied with the data, then lets hear it. -
RSVP at 19:04 PM on 25 February 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
"Skeptic" is the operative label at this website for those that doubt or even question IPCC conclusions. For all my reading here, I am still not sure what the correct term is for non skeptics. Would anyone know the answer to this question? -
SaganGathering at 18:59 PM on 25 February 2010Mars is warming
I'm not going to address the data directly just now, because there's another problem with the "other planets are warming" argument. Here it is. We have a handful of probes on Mars and an orbiter. Mars is the planet we probably know the most about besides Earth. And even with that equipment we can only get the faintest idea of what's going on with the temps there on Mars. Or other planets for that matter. We have laughably few samples of temps on other planets as compared to the astounding array of data on our own Earthly climate trends. It's absurd to claim with any confidence that we know for certain that other planets or moons are warming or cooling, when we have relatively little data about them -- all the while ignoring our vast armada of land and sea-based temperature probes right here on Earth (not to mention orbiting satellites). Should we dismiss the data we have on our own planet's temperature trends because of a smattering of temperature measurements on any other planet? Which data-set do you think would be more reliable? The one we have here at home, of course. Because we have many, many more sources and samples, and over a longer period of time. We know far more about the temperature trends on our own planet than on any other planet, and yet certain people use highly questionable speculations about other planets' temperatures to try to dismiss the dta trends we see here at home. To use this data (or records from other planets) as reliable evidence of anything more solid than the temperature sampling we have for Earth, is on its face absurd. I would also like to say that there's too much attention paid to Earthly CO2 alone. Methane and Nitrous Oxides may be at least as problematic. Most of this comes from livestock production. Certainly, getting them under control first will give us more return on investment, and quicker too. -
mothincarnate at 16:26 PM on 25 February 2010A brief history of our iPhone app
I have a Nokia N97 - will a similar app be available for that in the future? -
Pierre-Normand at 16:05 PM on 25 February 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
The SST temperature is an increase in surface temperature but the longwave energy (roughly 90%, if I recall) is being emitted from high in the stratosphere mostly in wavelengths that the atmosphere is opaque to. This emitting layer has cooled, not warmed. This is where the "swamping" occurs, because of the cooling that itself is the result of increased CO2 (and water vapor) concentration that shielded it from the warmer layers below. It needs not occur in the GHG bands only, as you seem to assume. And the total effect must be small if the system is close to being in radiative balance. Solar input did not vary (much), so neither does total emissions from both the top of the atmosphere and all the layers below.
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