Denier reaction to cancellation of Bjorn Lomborg's post at UWA

There’s nothing “smart” about spending $4 million of taxpayer cash on a highly questionable methodology that by design downgrades climate change.

Graham Readfearn

You may have seen in the comments or news that the University of Western Australia has thought better of its decision to provide a much-needed home for the wandering Bjorn Lomborg. The Vice Chancellor, Paul Johnson, has written a convoluted article explaining his reasons, mixed up with various excuses for appointing him in the first place.

While thousands may have died in Typhoon Haiyan, be prepared to "throw up in your mouth" at this article on WUWT

Update: Anthony Watts cannot help himself - see below

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Greg Laden has written an article about Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda, as it's called in the Philippines.  I've already written a comment about the first reaction from deniers at WUWT.  Anthony Watts has surpassed that denial and now posted an article (archived here and here) about which Greg Laden writes (h/t MikeH):

Watts needs to take this offensive and absurd post off of his site. Homewood needs to apologize, and to do so sincerely. But before they do that, go have a look. It will probably make you throw up a little in your mouth.

Maybe 10,000 dead in the province of Leyte

Now that more reports are coming in, there could be as many as 10,000 people who have been killed by the typhoon so far.  And that's just in the Philippines.  According to reports, the typhoon has weakened to the equivalent of a Cat 2 cyclone and is heading for Vietnam.

Anthony Watts chastises "alarmist" media

Paul Homewood makes a token acknowledgement to those killed, but is more concerned about "unsubstantiated claims", writing as his opening paragraph:

Sadly it appears that at least 1000 1200* lives have been lost in Typhoon Yolanda (or Haiyan), that has just hit the Philippines. There appear to have been many unsubstantiated claims about its size, though these now appear to start being replaced by accurate information.

The slant taken by Paul Homewood is bad enough.  What's worse are the opening sentences at the very top of the article, which were written by Anthony Watts himself. What is Anthony Watts concerned about?  He's concerned about "alarmist" reporting.  Here is Anthony Watts' headline and opening lines (archived here and here):

Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – another overhyped storm that didn’t match early reports

Here is the sort of headlines we had Friday, for example this one from Huffington Post where they got all excited about some early reports from Andrew Freedman:

Super Typhoon Haiyan Could Be One Of The Strongest Storms In World History

Super Typhoon Haiyan — which is one of the strongest storms in world history based on maximum windspeed — is about to plow through the Central Philippines, producing a potentially deadly storm surge and dumping heavy rainfall that could cause widespread flooding. As of Thursday afternoon Eastern time, Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, had estimated maximum sustained winds of 195 mph with gusts above 220 mph, which puts the storm in extraordinarily rare territory.

Ah those estimates, they sure don’t always meet up with reality later – Anthony

"Overhyped storm?" and "They sure don't always meet up with reality"?  Well, Anthony, it looks to me as if Huffington Post got the numbers from NASA and the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center.  Not real enough for WUWT?  I'd say the people in the Philippines don't regard one of "Earth's strongest storms ever" as "overhyped" and they certainly met up with reality.

Arguing over numbers and getting it wrong

Anthony and Paul go on to try to argue that everyone got the wind speeds wrong, writing that it really wasn't all that bad:

So at landfall the sustained wind was 235 kmh or 147 mph, with gusts upto 275 kmh or 171 mph. This is 60 mph less than the BBC have quoted.

The maximum strength reached by the typhoon appears to have been around landfall, as the reported windspeeds three hours earlier were 225 kmh (140mph).

Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall “

"Only ranks as a Category 4 storm when it hit land"!!

Paul Homewood is writing to complain to the UK Press Commission about this headline in the Daily Mail (which paper deniers usually love because of it's frequent disinformation on climate science.)  This is the headline that Paul Homewood complained about:

NASA JPL: One of the most powerful storms ever recorded on earth

Paul Homewood objected to the headline describing the typhoon as 235 mph.  But according to NASA that's exactly right.  This is from NASA JPL:

November 08, 2013

New satellite images just obtained from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the Indian Space Research Organization's OceanSAT-2 ocean wind scatterometer provide a glimpse into one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth. 

According to the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Typhoon Haiyan had maximum sustained winds of 195 mph (314 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 235 mph (379 kilometers per hour) shortly before making landfall in the central Philippines today. That would make it one of the strongest storms ever recorded. Weather officials in the Philippines reported the storm, known locally as Typhoon Yolanda, came ashore with maximum sustained winds of 147 mph (235 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 170 mph (275 miles per hour). 

I'm finding it hard to imagine winds of 235 kph let alone gusts of 379 kph.


Anthony Watts is also objecting to these lines from newspaper reports, writing:

UPDATE4: Kent Noonan writes in with this addition -

CNN has had several articles stating the same numbers for wind speed as BBC and Mail. I saw these numbers first last night at 10PM Pacific time.

Today’s story: “Powered by 195-mph winds and gusts up to 235 mph, it then struck near Tacloban and Dulag on the island of Leyte, flooding the coastal communities.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

If these “news” agencies don’t issue a correction, we will be forever battling the new meme of “most powerful storm in world history”.

Notice the "it then struck", which shows that it is entirely consistent with what NASA JPL reported.


(If any reader wants to play the numbers game, here is a list of tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.  Typhoon Tip led the scoreboard in terms of wind speed until Haiyan, with sustained wind speeds at its maximum of 305 kph, a bit less than Haiyan, which is reported to have had sustained wind speeds of 314 kph.  But Tip was much weaker than Haiyan when it reached land.)

What is really disturbing...

Anyway, what I think is really disturbing is that while maybe 10,000 people perished in the Philippine province of Leyte, all Anthony Watts is worried about is whether the newspaper reports have the wind speed right.  He is so focused on denying global warming that he cannot lift his brain out of the slime.

Thing is that, despite what Anthony Watts would have his readers believe, the science is not yet clear on what global warming will mean for tropical cyclones.  It is expected that the proportion of fiercer storms will rise but whether there will be more tropical cyclones or not has not yet been clearly established.

Vietnam is next in its path

Here is the current image from the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center (click to enlarge):

The winds are currently at 85 knots (157 kph) gusting to 105 knots (194 kph) and expected to weaken to 60 knots (111 kph) as it approaches Vietnam, with gusts to 75 knots (139 kph).

From the WUWT comments

Tim Walker says it's sad, but people die in cyclones all the time:

November 9, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Trying to correct (mistakes – SARC) after the MSM informs the public will make very little difference. The public’s perception is made by the first news articles. It is a very sad situation we are in. The deaths and trouble in the Philippines are sad, but this kind of thing happens each year in different places of the world. What the MSM does in creating false perceptions is worse, because the clowns the public elect based on the false perceptions are causing worse problems. The future is very grim. Good luck to one and all.

albertalad says he's busy telling the Canadian media they are over-reacting:

November 9, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the information – I used your info to correct two newspapers in Canada – The National Post,m and the CBC – which of course wen crazy as usual with hopes of the Philippines themselves being wiped off the face of the earth as THE global warming event they all desperately needed to be that destructive. It never ceases to amaze me how excited the global warming ghouls are with something like this – they really cheer for death and destruction.

Jimbo says back in 1882 there was one tropical cyclone that was as bad.  (Jimbo's link is bad - try this one.):

November 9, 2013 at 2:33 pm
But what about the past? [H/t Steven Goddard]

Oct 22, 1882
“Observatory says lowest barometer at 11.40 a. m., 727.60 ; highest velocity wind registered, 144.4 miles an hour. Unable to measure greatest velocity of typhoon as anemometer damaged.”

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38278695
more typhoons from the past in the Philippines.

Paul Homewood says the wind speed reported was "strangely exact".  Well, Paul - maybe that's because they reported "exactly" what the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported:

November 9, 2013 at 3:01 pm
The “mistake” of the Mail seems apparent, but I wonder if it is their source of information that is to blame? The BBC are well known for attempting to convert everything into metrics to make us “more European”.

Their “379 kmh” seems strangely exact. Have they also seen the “235″ figure and assumed it is mph (just as the Mail did) and then decided to convert it to kmh to get to 379kmh? Indeed, it suggests the original source, whatever it may be, is where the original error crept in.

Stuart Lynne says it's because they are poor:

November 9, 2013 at 3:31 pm
As always this disaster is based on the poverty of the area. Populations living in areas that are inadequately prepared for whatever natural events that may occur where they live because they do not have adequate financial resources to do so (or like Katrina) where the resources are misapplied.

eric1skeptic comes up with all sorts of "reasons" and builds a straw man in the process:

November 9, 2013 at 4:04 pm
The satellite presentation was basically perfect at landfall. There is little doubt this was the strongest possible storm given the physical limits of storms that size. Typhoon Tip in 1979 was much larger but did not have such good symmetry. Tip only brushed land and many similarly strong storms never hit land or weakened before landfall.

The point that will be lost on the alarmists is that the near-perfect symmetry of Haiyan is only possible with nearly perfect weather conditions surrounding the storm. If anything isn’t perfect then the storm becomes asymmetric and can’t achieve top strength. That kind of weather will have no correlation to warning. Furthermore the (theoretical) decrease in the lapse rate will work against any increase in SST’s The SST’s provide better evaporation but the lapse rate provides the condensation which releases latent heat and causes the convection.

Anthony Watts has convinced people like pokerguy who, being misled by Anthony Watts, complains:

November 9, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Meanwhile, someone competent ought to get into Wikipedia and fix things…Currently they’re saying this in first sentence:

“Typhoon Haiyan of November 2013, which is known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda, is one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.”

Rob Honeycutt calls them out and says that WUWT "should be ashamed":

November 9, 2013 at 5:14 pm
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.

You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.

gregladen says:

November 9, 2013 at 5:57 pm
“Check reuters for the latest numbers,” is a citation of a source. Please do not add stupidity to your callousness. One locality is now citing 10,000 via the governer’s office.

Let me ask you this but you better answer quick because the ground is sliding from underneath you as I type this. How important is 1,200 vs. tens of thousands? If it turns out to be tens of thousands instead of 1,200 will you STFU forever? Please?

Let me know right away, I want to watch.

To which Anthony Watts, underlining his callous self-serving attitude, piously replied with the pathetic excuse "the problem with early estimates is what this post is about".

No it wasn't Anthony.  You posted it in "Alarmism":

Your article was about "alarmism" and news outlets getting "over-excited":

REPLY: its an estimate from a meeting last night. Since it was too hard for you to make a link, I searched. See here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/philippines-typhoon-casualty-idUSL4N0IV00F20131110

“We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,” Soria told Reuters. “

The problem with early estimates is what this post is about. We’ll wait until something more concrete than an estimate from a late night meeting is given.

The Red Cross in the Phillipines says 1200, I trust them more than government officials making estimates. If it turns out the number is higher, I’ll report it. In the mean time feel free to be as upset as you wish.- Anthony

And in true conspiracy ideation, Anthony writes that he trusts the Red Cross more than "government officials".

And true to his policy of censoring posts from those he regards as "warmists", Anthony Watts is now busy deleting comments (latest archive here).

Update

Now Anthony Watts has trotted out his third article making light of the super typhoon.  He's picked up a comment by Bjorn Lomborg arguing that global warming means that while cyclones may get more fierce with global warming, they might not happen as often.  And by the end of the century people will be able to better afford the worsening tropical cyclones. (Archived here.)

All while people are still in turmoil in the Philippines and Vietnam is waiting.

Sickening and bizarre behaviour at WUWT.

11:39 pm 10 November 2013

WUWT readers are too scared to read about rising sea levels in National Geographic

I've added an update in the body of this article.

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I don't have much time today, so this item is short.  Which is a shame, because there have been a few articles lately at WUWT that are worthy of HotWhopper.  Hopefully I'll get to some of them later - like Pat 'n Chip's latest tripe (archived here).  But not right now.

Today I'll just make an observation.  I do find it interesting how often Anthony Watts and his readers say they are scared of being scared.  Quite a few of Anthony's readers say they have unsubscribed from National Geographic because they find it too hard to accept (and probably too difficult to read) articles about climate change.  That seems to be in line with research that shows that the conservative brain is hyper-sensitive to fear.  Who wants to be living in perpetual fear?  It's debilitating.  That's one of the main reasons why sites like WUWT are so popular.  It exists as a placebo for people who are scared; telling fearful people not to worry because "all the science is wrong".

Some of you might remember how back in August 2013, Anthony Watts protested an article in National Geographic about rising sea levels.  Anthony seemed to believe that ice doesn't melt as it warms.

Now Anthony Watts has posted another article on his blog (archived here) about another article in National Geographic about sea level rise.  He and his readers cannot cope with the thought that Miami may well not survive much longer than a few more decades.

Actually, in his normal fashion, the article isn't by Anthony himself.  He just added a couple of charts at the bottom.  It's an article about an article by Bjørn Lomborg about an article in National Geographic.  So I suppose this is an article about an article about an article about an article in National Geographic:)

The WUWT-ers took particular offense at the interactive graphic in National Geographic, which showed how coastlines would change if all the ice on earth were to melt.  The graphic is interesting.  I don't know how accurate it is, but it's fairly clear that cities will have to shift inland over the coming decades to centuries to millenia.  And that's all down to us pouring waste CO2 into the air now.  I expect that's what WUWT readers cannot cope with.  The idea that what we are doing today will have such a strong influence on future societies.

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Update

In the comments, Ryan suggested looking at the work of Jerry Mitrovica on the unevenness of sea level rise.  Click here to read Mitrovica et al (2009) "The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse" in Science (subs req'd), or here for an article in Harvard Magazine, and here for a discussion in SkepticalScience and there's a good article by Michael Lemonick at Yale e360 - or use Google, or better yet, Google Scholar.

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One of these days I'll do an analysis of WUWT to see what aspects of global warming scare fake sceptics the most.  I'd say rising seas are fairly high up the list.  Maybe a big proportion live in Florida or on the east coast of the USA.

If you're interested, here again is a graphic showing the time frames involved in the different parts of the carbon cycle.  It shows the time period relating to ice sheets as multiples of thousands of years, which is longer than the ocean component (click for larger view):

Source: RealClimate.Org

The Emissions Gap Report 2013 says we have to do much better

According to the newly released The Emissions Gap Report 2013, we've got to change our energy sources more quickly if we're to stay safe:

Total global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, the last year for which data are available, already stood at 50.1 GtCO2e, highlighting the scale of the task ahead....

... In order to be on track to stay within the 2° C target and head off the negative impacts outlined above, the report says that emissions should be a maximum of 44 GtCO2e by 2020 to set the stage for further cuts needed-to 40 GtCO2e by 2025, 35 GtCO2e by 2030 and 22 GtCO2e by 2050. As this target was based on scenarios of action beginning in 2010, the report finds that it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet this goal.

From the WUWT comments

Here is a small sample of the protest comments from the illiterati at WUWT.  There are heaps more archived here.

omnologos isn't the only WUWT commenter who said:

November 5, 2013 at 10:58 am
When I discovered about the stupid issue with the statue of liberty, I have sent a letter personally to the Editor via snail-mail.

Zeke says "it's a nefarious plot!" (excerpt):

November 5, 2013 at 11:29 am
In many sea girt countries a majority of the people live near the coast. When these unscrupulous scientsists threaten the coasts, they are bidding for increased legislation, regulation, and control of the habitable land.

Bob Diaz seems to be unaware of the step-wise nature of the melting of ice sheets and says - let our descendant's deal with it:

November 5, 2013 at 11:31 am
Let’s do the math, they said a rise of 216 feet over 5,000 years. That comes to about 1/2 an inch per year or 4 feet 4 inches per 100 years. Even if we accept the number and there’s no reason to believe it, the rise is so slow that people have more than enough time to adjust to it.

Doug says global warming has caused the decline of National Geographic.  (Is that a variation on the creed of the Pastafarians?):

November 5, 2013 at 11:57 am
I grew up in a house where Science, Scientific American, and National Geographic were treasured. Their decline is a true catastrophe from AWG.

Andyj is wrong.  Earth won't be getting colder probably for at least 50,000 years.  He says:

November 5, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Haha. The title says “in 5,000 years”.. That will be right in the middle of the next ice age.
How uneducated are these politically motivated media types?

Newty demonstrates the (questionable) value and purpose of WUWT.  It's to allay fears of those who can't hack the facts about the warming world.  He says:

November 5, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Seriously though I was terrified before I first started coming here. I’ve recently become a father and we did question bringing children into the world when the threat of global warming seemed so certain and so imminent. I work with children and many of them are seriously anxious as a result of just this kind of article that sits in the school library. It reminds me of how I worried about nuclear war years ago. Fear is damaging our young who should grow up with optimism and hope.

Update: to prove my point that Newty's comment demonstrates the purpose of WUWT as giving false comfort to scaredy cats, Anthony Watts has since elevated his comment to an entire article - and made it Quote of the Week.  The comments show that it's not the children who are being scared, it's the parents who can't hack the facts. (Archived here.)


charles nelson says:

November 5, 2013 at 12:42 pm
One often wonders if the entire staff and contributors of publications like National Geographic believe this crap or is it just a handful of people in key positions pushing their own agenda.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of people associated with NG are quietly cringing in shame at the hijacking of their once prized brand.

Harry van Loon is succinct in his dismissal and says:

November 5, 2013 at 12:43 pm
What absolute BS

J Martin is quite ignorant about atmospheric CO2, writing that "there is only 3Gt of CO2 in the atmosphere".  I'll let someone else do the arithmetic.  Suffice to say J Martin is out by at least two orders of magnitude; and if Crispin in Waterloo were correct (I haven't checked), the 23 Gt only equates to what we toss into the air in a matter of months:

November 5, 2013 at 1:04 pm
Crispin in Waterloo said that if all the ice melts then it can absorb 23 GT of co2 but there is only 3 GT of co2 in the atmosphere. So does that mean when the planet enters the next hot house period all life becomes extinct ? But equally the warmer temperatures should mean that the oceans will hold less co2 so maybe life survives. As the world would have to heat up before the ice melted that would release extra co2 which would then be reabsorbed by the melting ice. Could make for an interesting graph.

Stephen Skinner isn't familiar with the carbon cycle and says:

November 5, 2013 at 1:41 pm
If it takes more than 5,000 years to melt all the worlds land ice, if we carry on as we are, then that assumes we have 5,000 years worth of oil, coal and gas? I thought we are about half way through or somewhere near peak oil or is that not the case?

jono1066 says:

November 5, 2013 at 1:45 pm
looks ok to me,
looking at the maps I see a very small and acceptable percentage change in land area,
especially as the new land of the antarctic and greenalnd etc would be `new land` and you cant suggest that just because some inland areas would be below see level they would automatically be filled with water, and why would there be less vegetation with all that heated water around ?
I dont see the big problem (apart from who would believe that we could influence the earth to do something it wasnt going to do anyway)

Billy Liar says:

November 5, 2013 at 1:48 pm
I don’t believe that earth can possibly lose its ice as long as there is land at the South Pole.
Wake me up in a 100 million years time when Antarctica has drifted away from the geographic pole.

Antonia says:

November 5, 2013 at 1:50 pm
I’ll believe this crap when I see prestige waterfront properties in Sydney going for a song.
I cancelled my son-in-law’s gift subscription a few years ago. You’d think the head honchos at NG would wake up to themselves with all the cancellations. The fools probably blame the internet.

sophocles fakes being bored (yawn) then proceeds to write a very long post, which belies the yawn and says "it can't happen" (excerpt):

November 5, 2013 at 2:13 pm

Yawn.

So what? It can’t happen. As others have pointed out, there isn’t enough
sequestered FF (Fossil Fuel) to create enough CO2 to melt all the ice.
If we tried, the plants would just love it and all the little beasties in the seas
which created all the lime-stones and chalks would soon soak it all up.
But no, won’t happen. We’re not in control despite what the Witch Hunters
think. We’re in an Ice Age. To be a wee bit more precise, we’re in the
Holocene Interstadial (about the 17th or 18th Interstadial) of the Quaternary
or Pleistocene Ice Age.

The Ice Age is about 2.5 MegaYears old, It’s very young, as Ice Ages go.
It’s got another 60 or more MegaYears to run before this planet returns to
ice-free conditions.

papiertigre says:

November 5, 2013 at 2:14 pm
In all seriousness though, lets ask the question “what if…?”
First thing to observe is water is heavier than ice. So if all this extra water is compressing the Pacific basin, the land around the edges (Oregon California Peru Chile Japan Russia) is going to be pushed up. Spectacular earthquakes and eruptions will occur as the ocean plate is subducted by the coastal plates, but the net effect will be slim to no change in apparent sea level.  On the bright side: San Francisco’s death grip on California politics will be shaken up.

Rising seas - maybe one or up to two metres this century

What do "a lot of scientists" think about sea level

If we're going to plan infrastructure for the next few decades, should we plan for the minimum projected sea level rise or the maximum?  I'd argue for the maximum.  It's fine if it doesn't happen but if it does we don't want to get caught out.

There has been quite a bit of interest in sea levels lately.  On WUWT today Anthony Watts has posted an article by Bjørn Lomborg who is scoffing at Justin Gillis on NPR. Bjørn Lomborg wrote the following, presenting it as if it were a direct quote (which it wasn't) as:

Justin Gillis tells NPR how much sea levels will rise:
“experts believe sea levels will rise at least 3 feet in the next century, and that number could be as much as 6 feet.”

The links in the WUWT article all went to some facebook pages but I figured it would be worthwhile seeing what Justin Gillis actually said in that interview.  So I googled  and found that the supposed quote was from a summary of an interview on NPR from 21 March this year - and it wasn't a direct quote.  Here is what NPR reported:

Gillis says experts believe sea levels will rise at least 3 feet in the next century, and that number could be as much as 6 feet.

A pretty serious problem

So then I went to the interview transcript to see what Justin Gillis actually said and came up with with this.  Note the section I've printed in bold italics.

DAVIES: So the melting of the land ice will contribute to sea level rise, unlike the melting of the ice in the ocean?

GILLIS: No question about that, and in fact the ocean is rising already. Many people know this. It's gone up about eight inches or so in the last century. That doesn't sound like much, but if you can imagine a very gently sloping shoreline, even eight inches of sea level rise has meant a whole lot of erosion. And in fact people have spent billions of dollars along the coastlines of the United States battling erosion already.

Now we're trying to understand, well, how much more sea level rise are we going to get over how long a period? The essential question is really how fast will this unfold. And a lot of scientists lately have been coming to the conclusion that we could fairly easily see three feet or so of sea level rise in the coming century and, you know, possibly as much as six feet.

So if we get that much, that's going to start to become a pretty serious problem.

The context: "The essential question is really how fast will this unfold."  and "we could fairly easily see three feet or so...". There is no "at least three feet" in the transcript.  That was what NPR said, not what Justin Gillis said.  See how in the various repeats a nuanced but informed speculation is turned into a bald certainty by NPR and then presented by Lomborg as a direct quote from Justin Gillis?  And the denialists call people who accept mainstream science "alarmists"!  It does pay to do your own research.

Now Lomborg insists that Justin Gillis is wrong (in what he didn't say) -  and refers readers to a recent AR5 draft, which I think he's arguing Justin Gillis should have seen back in March when he did the interview.  Time travel is no barrier to contrarians and lukewarmers.  Lomborg writes:

So, Gillis tells us the one end of the spectrum is 3 feet and the highest 6 feet, while the the UN says 1 foot to 2.7 feet. His *lowest* estimate is higher than the *highest* of the UN Climate Panel’s new, higher estimate.

Well, no he didn't tell us that.  You are wrong there, Dr Lomborg.  What Justin Gillis reported was "a lot of scientists have been coming to the conclusion that we could fairly easily see three feet or so of sea level rise in the coming century..."

The one bit of progress at WUWT is that they are touting the IPCC as the 'bible' on climate, for a change!

CSIRO confirms that we could see one to two metres by 2100, but probably no higher

What does Australia's CSIRO have to say on the subject?  I found this report, which reports "recent progress in understanding sea-level rise and also clarify confusion around interpretations of the IPCC sea-level projections".  The CSIRO report is not definitive.  For example:

Recent interpretations of geological data suggest that at the time of the last interglacial (~125,000 years ago), when sea level was close to today’s value, there was a period when “...the average rate of sea-level rise [was] 1.6 m/century.”14 This demonstrates that sea-level rise of 1 m or more by the year 2100 is plausible. (page 8)

...There is increasing concern about the stability of both the Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheets leading to a more rapid rate of sea-level rise. While our understanding of the relevant processes is limited, it is important to recognize that the uncertainties are essentially one-sided. That is, the processes can only lead to a higher rate of sea-level rise than current projections. (page 9)

The CSIRO booklet has a lot more information and sets out the factors affecting sea level quite well.  The main message is that ice will melt and seas will rise and they won't stop rising at midnight on 31 December 2099.  The other main message is that we have the power to limit the sea level rise, should we feel inclined to do so.  There is more on this page on the CSIRO website:

The AR4 explicitly states that larger rises cannot be excluded and its projections for sea-level rise do not give a best estimate or an upper bound. Note that since publication of the AR4, Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is "physically untenable," and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible.

So based on the best information I can find from CSIRO, seas may well rise by 3 feet (one meter) and could go as high as six feet (two metres) by 2100 but are not likely to go higher than that this century.  But they will keep rising over the coming centuries.

Many of you will have read the following on The Conversation or at RealClimate.org or elsewhere.  It is more confirmation that we cannot be complacent about sea levels.  Dr Levermann also talks of an upper limit this century of around two metres, same as Justin Gillis reported the 'experts' as saying and the same as reported by the CSIRO.

The inevitability of sea level rise

By Anders Levermann, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Small numbers can imply big things. Global sea level rose by a little less than 0.2 metres during the 20th century – mainly in response to the 0.8 °C of warming humans have caused through greenhouse gas emissions. That might not look like something to worry about. But there is no doubt that for the next century, sea level will continue to rise substantially. The multi-billion-dollar question is: by how much?

The upper limit of two metres that is currently available in the scientific literature would be extremely difficult and costly to adapt to for many coastal regions. But the sea level will not stop rising at the end of the 21st century. Historical climate records show that sea levels have been higher whenever Earth’s climate was warmer – and not by a couple of centimetres, but by several metres. This inevitability is due to the inertia in the ocean and ice masses on the planet. There are two major reasons for the perpetual response of sea level to human perturbations.

One is due to the long lifetime and warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Once emitted carbon dioxide causes warming in the atmosphere over many centuries which can only be reduced significantly by actively taking the greenhouse gas out again. This is because both the amount of heat and carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb is reduced, and so the temperature stays up for centuries or even millennia. Of course, not cutting emissions would exacerbate the problem even further.

The other reason is that both the ocean and the ice masses are very big and a warming of the surrounding atmosphere will only penetrate slowly, but inevitably, into them. As a consequence their sea level contribution continues even if the warming does not increase. Sea level rise over the last century has been dominated by ocean warming and loss of glaciers. Our recent study indicates that the future sea level rise will be dominated by ice loss from the two major ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica – slumbering giants that we’re about to wake.

Sea level rise contributions over 2000 years from: 

ocean warming (a), mountain glaciers (b), 

Greenland © and Antarctic (d) ice sheets. 

The total sea level commitment (e) is about 

2.3m per degree of warming above pre-industrial.

It is easier to understand a future world that has adjusted to a new equilibrium of higher temperatures than it is to understand the dynamic (perhaps rapid) transition from today’s world to a warmer one. That is why we used physical models for the ocean, the mountain glaciers and the big ice sheets to compute how the systems would be different if the world was warmer.

What we found was that for each degree of global warming above pre-industrial levels the ocean warming will contribute about 0.4 metres to global mean sea-level rise while Antarctica will contribute about 1.2 metres. The mountain glaciers have a limited amount of water stored and thus their contribution levels off with higher temperatures. This is over-compensated for by the ice loss from Greenland, so that in total sea level rises quasi-linearly by about 2.3 metres for each degree of global warming (see figure).

How fast this will come about, we do not know. All we can say is that it will take no longer than 2,000 years. Thus the 2.3 metres per degree of warming are not for this century. They need to be considered as our sea level commitment – the sea level rise that cannot be avoided after we have elevated global temperatures to a certain level.

Ben Strauss of Climate Central has considered the different possible future pathways that society might take and computed which US cities are at risk in the long-term. He poses the question as to what year, if we continue with greenhouse emissions at current rates, we will have caused an inevitable sea level rise that puts certain cities at risk.

According to his analysis, within the next few years Miami in Florida will be committed to eventually lie below sea level, while our future actions can still decide on whether we want to one day give up cities such as Virginia Beach, Sacramento, Boston, Jacksonville or New York City.

This is a decision society has to take for future generations. We will need to adapt to climate change in any case, but some things we will not be able to adapt to. Society needs to decide whether we want to give up, for example, the Tower of London, or to put the brakes on climate change so that we don’t have to.


Anders Levermann does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

And if you're not sick and tired of reading about sea levels, there was another article by Justin Gillis recently in the NY Times - you can get it here.  In it he talks about a new paper by O'Leary et al on the possible catastrophic collapse of ice sheets in the last interglacial - as a warning of what might happen this time around - though not immediately.

And if you want more still, you may be interested in this new article by Andy Revkin on Dot Earth.