The stupid: a prediction fulfilled at WUWT (and sea level)

Deniers at WUWT can be really funny sometimes - if you enjoy laughing at the stupid.

The Stupid It Burns Credit: Plognark

It doesn't happen very often, but there is the odd occasion when a prediction made at WUWT will be fulfilled. Such was the case today.

Sea levels are rising faster now compared to last century

The topic of the original WUWT article was a press release that Anthony Watts copied and pasted under one of his "claim" headlines. As usual, Anthony didn't link to the press release but a Google search found it in the Harvard Gazette.

Scientists at Harvard and Rutgers have worked out that sea level rise in the twentieth century was most likely not as great as previously thought. The implication is that seas are now rising faster than previously thought. Here is some of the press release:

The study, co-authored by Carling Hay, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), and Eric Morrow, a recent Ph.D. graduate of EPS, shows that calculations of global sea-level rise from 1900 to 1990 had been overestimated by as much as 30 percent. The report, however, confirms estimates of sea-level change since 1990, suggesting that the rate of change is increasing more rapidly than previously understood. The research is described in a Jan. 14 paper in Nature.

“What this paper shows is that sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,” Morrow said. “It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”

“Scientists now believe that most of the world’s ice sheets and mountain glaciers are melting in response to rising temperatures,” Hay added. “Melting ice sheets cause global mean sea level to rise. Understanding this contribution is critical in a warming world.”

Previous estimates had placed sea-level rise at between 1.5 and 1.8 millimeters annually in the 20th century. Hay and Morrow, however, suggest that from 1901 until 1990, the figure was closer to 1.2 millimeters per year. However, everyone agrees that global sea level has risen by about 3 millimeters annually since that time.

You can also read the press release in full at ScienceDaily.com. Wondering Willis kindly added the abstract to the WUWT article, but no link to the paper itself. You can read it here on Nature (subs req'd).

Justin Gillis has also written about this in the New York Times, which is worth a read.

The prediction that came true

The prediction that came true was in a comment. Sir Harry Flashman wrote very shortly after the article was posted:

January 14, 2015 at 12:17 pm
I look forward to the standard WUWT protocol:

1. Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.
2. Someone writes contradictory post on WUWT using data culled from the internet and and graphed in home office.
3. All commenters chime in to engage in mutual congratulation on how much smarter they are than everyone else.

And follow the standard WUWT protocol they did. At the time of archiving WUWT-ers had managed to come up with 204 separate, often irrelevant, thoughts. Of that 204, 48 were responses to Sir Harry's comment or to responses to that comment (not counting a couple from Sir Harry Flashman). dbakerber was the first to fulfil the prediction writing:

January 14, 2015 at 12:25 pm
Your assumption (1) is faulty. Most often, it is more accurately described as a climate scientists manipulates models until the cry uncle in order to prove his or her pet theory, and gets it pal reviewed into a climate journal. Your (2) is correct, because typically the real world assumptions made in (1) are so obviously wrong any semi-educated high schooler can identify the problem.

Deniers really don't like it very much when someone points out their Dunning-Kruger tendencies. Some go for the vulgar, for example Eric Sincere

January 14, 2015 at 12:41 pm
harry, my dog is smater than you. He sniffs the post before he pees on it.

Others opt for accusations of trolling, like mpainter

January 14, 2015 at 12:43 pm
You have made a no worthwhile contribution with such a comment. You are nothing but a sneering troll, Flash man. 

Some (most) comments were immensely stupid, like the one from dbstealey:

January 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm
SHF,
That is what some folks say when they have no evidence to support their Belief. 

I saw no evidence that falsified Sir Harry Flashman's prediction, and dozens of posts that supported it. Deniers at WUWT are so predictable.

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Carling C. Hay, Eric Morrow, Robert E. Kopp & Jerry X. Mitrovica. "Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise." Nature, January 2015 DOI: 10.1038/nature14093