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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 123551 to 123600:

  1. The 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.
  2. Misinterpreting 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.
  3. Misinterpreting 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.
  4. Jeff Freymueller at 06:56 AM on 26 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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.
  5. Jeff Freymueller at 06:52 AM on 26 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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.
  6. Misinterpreting 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.
  7. Misinterpreting 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.
  8. Misinterpreting 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.
  9. Berényi Péter at 04:25 AM on 26 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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.
  10. On 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.
  11. Misinterpreting 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.
  12. Misinterpreting 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.
  13. Misinterpreting 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.
  14. Berényi Péter at 23:37 PM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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
  15. Misinterpreting 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.
  16. Misinterpreting 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.
  17. Misinterpreting 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.
  18. Have 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.
  19. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:49 PM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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.
  20. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:38 PM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting 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.
  21. Misinterpreting 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!)
  22. Misinterpreting 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.
  23. Misinterpreting 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.
  24. Misinterpreting 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.
  25. Dikran Marsupial at 19:16 PM on 25 February 2010
    What 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.
  26. Misinterpreting 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?
  27. Mars 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.
  28. A brief history of our iPhone app
    I have a Nokia N97 - will a similar app be available for that in the future?
  29. Have 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.
  30. A brief history of our iPhone app
    Great job - this iPhone app is an excellent example of how to translate a desktop website effectively for the small screen. John, I suggest you suggest to the developers that they look into PhoneGap - it's an open source development framework which takes a web application (html/css/js, including JS interfaces to native mobile features) and compiles native apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian/Nokia, etc.
  31. Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
    Doug_Bostrom #70 - "Gary, I think you're getting a bit lost trying to deal with comments while still leaving John's issues unaddressed. Could you go through John's remarks on your article point-by-point here, just so everybody's on the same page?" i think that is an outstanding suggestion. Allow me a day or so to go through that and hit the bullet points and post something. i am no different that the rest of you on here in that i have a family and job that takes a higher priority so we all understand that this 'conversation' is a bit like one between an earthling and someone on Neptune. And i'm way out here, all alone on Neptune and i have 20 people on Earth sending me questions! but i'm not complaining, this is fun and i'm flattered that all here have willingly expended some of their valuable time in a conversation about this topic. i echo Ned's comments (#75) very frequently about the more you learn, the more you realize you didn't know. and that is what makes it fun. i also need time to, like Jesse Fell (#68) stated, to huff and puff through some of the exellent replies today. i would like to make this request though. in regard to John's article here and other postings here related to my A) apparent misrepresentation of the author's conclusions and B) leaving out graphs/data that is in opposition to my position. i feel i have clarified my position on those justified arguments in these posts, in my article revision and on the subsequent post on that article (in AT). i took full responsibility for that misconception due to my words in the article, apologized and i will not bother addressing those points either in John's article or posts here. remember that my article was written for American Thinker which is a blog which i also go to daily to get fresh takes on current topics and the editor's there thought my article was a fresh take that had not been put forth to a wide audience and they gave me that audience. for that i'm grateful and as an unpredicted consequence a fruitful conversation has sprung up here. it was an article expressing my opinion and i tried to support that opinion in the article and i am continuing to elaborate more on that in this forum which is better suited for the detailed science. it was an article, not a peer reviewed paper (although i seem to be getting plenty of that review now!). but i still want to get my position and facts right even though it is not a peer reviewed science paper. my name is on it and i wouldn't have written about that position if i didn't believe i was right. for the record, the peer review process is robust and i feel that is the right way to do things in science as long as the review is open, honest and unbiased toward the science. one more comment on the other half of your post Doug relating to the part of my article regarding Lindzen and Choi. of course you are correct that they evaluated the entire OLR spectrum and didn't have granularity into the spectrum that CO2 absorbs. let me explain why i made that statement in my paper. In Lindzen and Choi, the made the statement in the concluding remarks (section 3[14]) that ERBE differed significantly with models and showed that OLR increased with SST but the models showed it decreasing. And again, in the Ramanathan paper, 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 but i feel that even the statement of Lindzen and Choi make my statement not incorrect. although, like you, i'd prefer to draw conclusions on CO2 by just looking at the spectrum that it absorbs. and one more point that is sort of on that topic and this was the main theme of why i wrote the article. from 1970 to 2006 the global temperatures rose by 0.73C and looking at the percent increase of IR using Stephan-Boltzmann i get a 1.02% increase (comparing 288K with 288.73K). by my estimates CO2 concentration went up 18% (from the mauna loa data). So shouldn't this much larger increase in CO2 have swamped out the increase in increase in overall OLR from the SST (which is the point i think Ramanathan was making in his paper)? I would've expected clear drops in OLR in the CO2 absorption spectrum even on the actual measured data even without compensating for SST. at best we are squinting and arguing over deltas that have values of 0 to -1K BT in the CO2 absorption spectrum. -1K of BT change equates to what with regard to predicted temperature increase? i don't know, my grossly simplistic calculation above is all i have to go on so that is why i'm here to ask the experts. ok, i'm sorry that is all i can respond to tonight but i'll plan to provide what you asked for later tomorrow night.
  32. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    To be fair to Berényi Péter, the word 'overestimation' also led me to ask upthread if that meant sea-level rise had been overestimated.
    It had me wondering, too. You and I investigated. Berényi Péter said it means there'd be less sea level rise than predicted. That's a qualitative difference some folks might learn from ...
  33. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    To be fair to Berényi Péter, the word 'overestimation' also led me to ask upthread if that meant sea-level rise had been overestimated. Only having access to the abstract, I didn't know what 'response' referred to, and I did wonder. Thus I asked a question rather than pretended to an authoritative view, which is hardly warranted if you haven't read the whole paper. My query was satisfied by following the trail pointed out by others here. No acceleration upward at Stockholm, Sweden either. I could download the entire PSMSL dataset and compute acceleration for each tide gauge, but I can't believe it is not done already. Sea level change and rate of change is different even within a few hundred kilometers. As far as I'm aware, the tide gauge record from 1870 shows an accelerated increase. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
  34. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Response to #34 and #35 I'm not even sure that is a climate skeptic blog it looks like a rightwinger mainly concerned with slamming Obama from the list of entry titles. I just think if you are going to lead with a title that suggests skeptics are using this retraction to say sea-levels aren't rising you shouldn't use an obscure rightwing blog to make your point. After all in the final paragraph you seem to tarnish all skeptics with this one mans opinion. This is not the skeptical concensus from the look of things.
  35. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Uh, HumanityRules, the lawyer in question got corrected in the comments. That's not quite the same as suggesting that his blog post isn't arguing that sea levels won't rise. His only post in the comments section suggests he didn't quite understand the implication the first time his error was pointed out (he suggests it means that the *lowest* estimate can't be established, and says nothing about the upper). And least he did try to understand the correction. I'll give him points for: 1. Letting posts through showing his interpretation was wrong. 2. Not showing the kind of stubborn attachment to a misinterpretation that a Certain Someone on this blog is showing. 3. Being such an unknown blog that the corrections weren't immediately screamed down by a horde of the typical denialist trash. We'll see whether he'll state something showing he actually understands the full depth of his misunderstanding .
  36. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    I'm not sure that the blog you linked to is really arguing that sea levels won't rise. The title and first line maybe a little tongue in cheek but generally they are reporting the facts of the situation. Similarly a more (dis)respected skeptic blog WUWT reported this mentioning the Vermeer and Rahmstorf estimates as you do. Seems like you are setting up a paper house to knock down.
    Response: Some will report it accurately, others lead with headlines like 'Now You Can Forget About Those Rising Seas'. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to respond to the lowest common denominator.
  37. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter, your chance of regaining credibility here would probably go up a bit if you acknowledged your interpretation of Siddal's comment about "overestimating the sea level response" was incorrect. I didn't go to all the trouble of making that post just to see you ignore it.
  38. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    David: 'Hard to see any winners this time around.' As a highly technological society, we are vastly more adaptable then hunter-gatherer societies. Moreover, extinctions are neither good nor bad - were there no extinctions, there would be no evolution. Extinctions (like the poor) will always be with us. So too with change. Not that we want to accelerate extinctions (or increasse poverty) if that can be avoided. The real issue relates to the priorities we set for our resources. If we try to do this as rationally as our limited knowledge permits and avoid emotive value judgments, we are likely to emerge with better outcomes.
  39. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter (22) wrote: "Fitted least squares parabola to data (960121.rlrdata), coefficient of x^2 negative. " That's quite odd, because when I do that I get a positive coefficient for x^2. 0.0023, if I use the interval from 1883 - 2008 (skipping the 1878 - 1893 gap) or 0.0036 over the entire 1856 - 2008 period. But the acceleration becomes even more obvious when you plot a series of 30-year linear trend lines. 1900 - 1929 slope = 1.6723 1940 - 1969 slope = 2.8465 1976 - 2008 slope = 3.983
  40. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Based on some back/forth I'm seeing in these posts, I see a fallacy that the so-called "skeptics" use. They mis-apply the "appeal to authority" fallacy - which in itself is a fallacy. First, any reasonable person knows no one person can possibly know the minutiae of every detail about climate change. Like any scientific discipline, it's a collective (peer-reviewed) process. Second, because of the first point, we MUST, at some point, defer to other experts. The so-called "skeptics" then claim this is the "appeal to the authority" fallacy. Not. So. Fast. If that were true, we'd all be guilty of that, each time we visit the family Dr. After all, we don't know all there is to know about medicine, but we do "appeal to the authority" when it comes to medical advice. Here's a link that explains that at times it is reasonable to appeal to the RIGHT authority. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html So for me, I am perfectly happy deferring to the collective knowledge of the climate scientist, as much as I am happy to take the advice of my family Dr. :-) As I said in my earlier post - being a bit off on the predictions about the timing of the effects of climate change, does not change the fact that ACC is indeed happening. There are, and will be, consequences.
  41. Berényi Péter at 11:22 AM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    #24 Albatross at 10:58 AM on 25 February, 2010 "there is not a diconnect between science and "logic and truth" as you suggest" Right. This is the way it is supposed to be. Unfortunately ideals are not always met. #25 JMurphy at 10:59 AM on 25 February, 2010 "observed local sea level trends may differ greatly from the average rate of global sea level rise, and vary widely from one location to the next" Of course. But right now we are not talking about speed of rise/sinking but acceleration.
  42. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    "It's also a flooded river valley carved out aeons ago before a massive sea level rise. One river valley lost - one beautiful harbour gained." just a tiny missed point here Chris. The period from the river valley to the flooded harbour was long, and the people being affected by it had a highly mobile small population, no permanent infrastructure, and a hunter-gatherer economy that was just as happy fishing in a harbour as hunting in a valley. None of that applies to 21st century Australia or indeed any other modern country. And by way of warning - the last time Australia's climate switched from cool and wet to hot and dry (essentially the modern climate although a bit drier), dozens of large animal species went extinct, unable to deal with vegetation zones shifting outwards over a period of a few thousand years. If this scenario is repeated over a time span of a hundred years or less there are going to be massive extinctions of flora and fauna, and the agricultural communities of regional areas. The only "winners" at the end of the Pleistocene were a few desert species like red kangaroos. Hard to see any winners this time around. Certainly no human winners.
  43. Berényi Péter at 11:09 AM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    #21 Jeff Freymueller at 10:48 AM on 25 February, 2010: "Whether or not you can detect an acceleration in a single tide gauge record is really beside the point" No acceleration upward at Stockholm, Sweden either. I could download the entire PSMSL dataset and compute acceleration for each tide gauge, but I can't believe it is not done already. Any pointer? However, acceleration of even a single tide gauge (or the lack thereof) is remarkable, provided the record is reliable and there is no vigorous tectonic activity in the region. As satellite measured recent sea level rise is faster than estimated 20th century average, it is often cited as proof of acceleration. However, satellites need calibration, must be faulty if no acceleration is detected at ground level.
  44. Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
    I just want to say that this thread has helped me understand some things that I not only didn't understand before but didn't realize that I didn't understand. Thanks!
  45. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    John Russell: Was it Ghandi who said, "first you'll be ignored; then you'll be laughed at; then they'll fight you; and finally you'll win"? Gather strength everyone; it's always darkest just before the dawn. I don't know what Ghandi actually said. However, he was a politician with an idealistic vision, not a scientist. I live near Port Jackson (aka Sydney Harbour) - one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. It's also a flooded river valley carved out aeons ago before a massive sea level rise. One river valley lost - one beautiful harbour gained. Climate change brings winners and losers like any process in nature. It's helpful to discern likely outcomes - we can try to modify them or adapt to them. However, we have to learn to accept the uncertainties inherent in scientific discourse about highly complex systems and perhaps our own limitations in the face of processes incorporating variables as yet unknown to us. This requires humility - a quality sadly lacking in many advocates on both sides of the climate change divide.
  46. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter, please see : http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentslc.html "In the United States: Sea level has been rising 0.08-0.12 inches per year (2.0-3.0 mm per year) along most of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The rate of sea level rise varies from about 0.36 inches per year (10 mm per year) along the Louisiana Coast (due to land sinking), to a drop of a few inches per decade in parts of Alaska (because land is rising)." Also : http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.shtml "Depending on the rates of vertical land motion relative to changes in sea level, observed local sea level trends may differ greatly from the average rate of global sea level rise, and vary widely from one location to the next."
  47. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter @14 "I care neither for reviewers nor the scientific community, but I do care for logic & truth." That statement is not consistent with you posting here in a science forum. Also, there is not a diconnect between science and "logic and truth" as you suggest. Whether you like it or not, the research in question has been undertaken and reviewed by scientists who are experts in the field. You should care what they have to say b/c they have invested infinitely more thought and effort on this problem than anyone us here. "Appealing to authority is NOT the way science is done. Not even scientific authority is competent in this respect. As long as you are able to understand stuff, you are self sufficient." I'm not appealing to authority, and I am very familiar with how science is done. There is nothing wrong with acceptingand acknowledging that soneone is an expert whether they be a cosmologist, oncologist or climate scientist. I do not know to which "scientific authority" you are referring. As for understanding stuff, dhogaza and others have explained to you why you do not understand as much about this complex problem as you might think. And that is not a slight, we here are all in pretty much the same position in terms of level of understanding and, for reasons stated earlier in this post, we should be very cautious about being cavalier or simply dismissing the science. Science is, whether you like it or not, remarkably good at self correcting. It also advances if someone, like you who is critical of the methods and analysis, is willing to invest the time and effort to improve upon previous work and address the perceived weaknesses, rather than simply poking holes in someone elses work. I, for one, don't care what your credentials are, so long as you can undertake solid research which survives the rigour of peer-review and subsequent critique by the collective expertise in the field, then you have advanced the science. Like it or not, the science is converging towards the higher end of the expected range of increase in SLR. A recent study by SCAR projected that sea level will increase by as much as 1.4 m by 2100-- and SLR will not magically stop rising in 2100. Just as an oncologist is not paid to ignore unfortunate diagnosis and plausible outcomes/prospects for recovery (or not), nor are scientists paid to avoid telling us about the threat of potentially serious scenarios. That is not being "alarmist" is is being prudent and responsible.
  48. Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    Berényi Péter writes: I am prone to err as anyone, correction is welcome. However, in this topic I have not seen a valid one yet. You must have missed dhogaza's comment here, which did a nice job of correcting your misunderstanding about the meaning of the expression "an overestimation of the sea-level response". What was overestimated was not the rate of rise, but the time scale of the leveling off in rise once available land ice has nearly all melted. That's something that won't happen until nearly all the ice is gone, so the implication of this is clearly that Siddall's paper underestimated 21st century SLR.
  49. Berényi Péter at 10:49 AM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    #21 shdwsnlite at 10:41 AM on 25 February, 2010: "What was the process?" Fitted least squares parabola to data (960121.rlrdata), coefficient of x^2 negative.
  50. Jeff Freymueller at 10:48 AM on 25 February 2010
    Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
    #18 Berényi Péter, their model sea level includes a response time in the differential equation that they solve. This deals with the fact that the response to a step increase in temperature would not be a step increase in sea level, but instead sea level would start to rise for a while, then level off after some time. It looks to me like they estimated this constant based on the fit to the last 22,000 years of post-LGM sea level rise (the details are in the supplementary material, not the main paper). This means that if there was no change in temperature starting in 1900, for example, you would still expect sea level to rise for a while because of past temperature changes, but the rate of rise would go down with time. So the 'new rise' is the response to the temperature changes of the 20th century. I find Rahmstorf's approach easier to understand, but the way, and it is probably more useful to discuss that approach. (Another time, at least for me, I need to log off here and get some work done). As for acceleration of sea level rise, you can see from Figure 3 of Vermeer and Rahmstorf that the rate of global sea level rise has increased with time (and this rate is faster than the average over the last few thousand years). Whether or not you can detect an acceleration in a single tide gauge record is really beside the point, as I said a few days ago.

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