Pat Michaels theorises climate conspiracies, at Judith Curry's place

Judith Curry has posted an article by Patrick J. Michaels from the Cato Institute (archived here).  He is wearing his conspiratorial tendencies on his sleeve, and wants Donald Trump to prevent the publication of a report mandated by the US 1990 Global Change Research Act, the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4). The chapter headings of the new report are listed here.

Pat describes his conspiracy theory in the second paragraph, where he believes that US civil servants "portray global warming as alarming" for money. He wrote:

The Assessment Report will be produced by civil servants in the federal government (mainly unfireable GS15’s reporting to Obama Administration bosses), many of whom handle large amounts of climate research money. It has always been in their interest to portray global warming as alarming, and therefore in need of even more federal research dollars.

I call this projection. Would Pat Michaels retain his own job for the Cato Institute if he started to write about climate science in an objective, factual manner? It seems to me he managed to get a job with them because he was a science disinformer.

Pat'n Chip float by WUWT on a cloud of aerosols

Patrick J Michaels and Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger have discovered a new blog article about aerosols. The article is by Dr Nicolas Bellouin from the University of Reading, who specialises in studying aerosols. He wrote about a preliminary estimate of aerosol-cloud forcing of -0.6 W m^-2, which is lower than the estimate in the latest IPCC report, of -0.9 W m^-2, but well within the range in the IPCC report, which is quite wide - from -1.9 to -0.1 W m^-2.

Pat'n Chip grabbed hold of the blog article as though it were precious gold, and published at WUWT (archived here).  Deniers haven't got much to grab hold of right now, so a blog article about a blog article will have to do. The first blog article is not yet a paper. That's promised for August this year. In fact, at the bottom of his article, Dr Bellouin wrote:

I thank Graham Feingold, Johannes Quaas, Annica Ekman, Leo Donner, and Ilan Koren for interesting discussions on current understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions. Note that they do not all agree that aerosol-cloud radiative forcing is weak: some argue that a value of up to −1.2 W m^-2 remains consistent with scientific understanding.

That value of −1.2 W m^-2 is higher than the lower end referred to in the IPCC report (−1.9 W m^-2), so it could be that the range has been better defined in the three years since the AR5 IPCC report.

Desperate deniers Part 9: Patrick J Michael's pathetic, unconvincing WSJ report could have come from WUWT

Pat Michaels has written an article for his employer, the Cato Institute and Rupert Murdoch dutifully published it in the Wall St Journal. I was given a copy and thought you might like to see what he wrote. In my view he didn't earn his pay packet with this one. His article and arguments are pathetic. It's barely above the conspiratorial disinformation you read at WUWT.

Pat does have a bigger vocabulary and a better grasp of the English language than does Anthony Watts. And he does agree the world is warming. Maybe. But it's nothing to worry about.  His article must still be a big disappointment. The arguments are weak, wrong, unoriginal and boring, especially for someone who claims to have some scientific expertise. I'd give him the sack if I was running the Cato Institute. Wouldn't you? :)

Don't forget, Pat's had several months to figure out how to deny the hottest year on record after the hottest year on record. It's not as if he had no warning. Plus he's got a sidekick to bounce ideas off or tell what to do. Yet he couldn't come up with anything but the sort of wishy-washy Gish gallop you'll read any day on any old third-rate denier blog. This is what he should have been preparing for over the past 12 months:

Figure 1 | Global mean surface temperature 1880 to 2015. Data source: GISS NASA

Let me tell you some of what is in his article and you can tell me what you think of it.

California Heat: How Patrick J Michaels can't read a simple chart

Can you spot the difference? (Temperature is in degree Celsius, converted from NOAA/NCDC here.)

Patrick J Michaels can't. He wrote:

What’s different here? Nothing. 

How about we help him out:

I'll not be able to check how many dumb deniers he managed to fool till later today. Gotta go out. If someone wants to do a count, here's the WUWT archive to date.

Addendum - Just for Patrick J.

Just in case Patrick still can't figure out where he's gone wrong, here's the same data presented slightly differently.

A tip for those who have trouble reading charts - the right hand side is the recent temperatures - they are almost all above the 1951-1980 average, whereas the earlier years (to the left) are much colder.

Finally, in case young Patrick J. is still a bit puzzled, here's a decadal chart:

More double standards at WUWT: Not one person asked to see the data from Pat'n Chip

It looks as if Anthony Watts is getting his marching orders from the CATO Institute this week. First there was Paul Driessen wanting to "bring back smog". Now we've got the disinformer duo, Patrick J. Michaels and his sidekick, Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger - affectionately known as Pat 'n Chip (archived here). What this pair is trying to tell us is that what the IPCC report said about a "hiatus" is reflected in science papers about the so-called "hiatus" in global surface temperatures. They are in essence claiming the IPCC was correct. (Actually, to sell their story to the deniers, Pat'n Chip made up stuff about what the IPCC report actually said, pretending it said something different so they could argue the point. It's called building a strawman.)

What pause? There is no pause in global warming!

Remember, a "slow down" (or even the poorly named "hiatus") in global surface temperature does not in any way signify a pause in global warming. The earth continues to warm up. This year even the global surface temperatures are setting new records.

Data source: NASA GISS - including average year to date to October 2014.

Heat kills! Pat'n Chip argue for survival of the wealthiest at WUWT

Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels (Pat'n Chip) keep plugging away at their weird notion that no matter how hot it gets, humans will adapt and fewer will die from heat-related causes.  Here is part of what they write at WUWT (archived here):

The cause of the observed decline in the sensitivity to extreme heat in the face of rising heat is likely found in a collection of adaptations including increased access to air-conditioning, better medical care, improved building design, community response programs, heat watch/warning systems, and biophysical changes. There is no reason to think that such response measures won’t continue to exist and be improved upon into the future.In our recent study summarizing the findings on declining heat-related mortality trends in both the U.S and Europe, we made this observation (Knappenberger et al., 2014):

Credit: Plognark

So everyone who lives somewhere that's affected by heatwaves, make sure you upgrade your air conditioner and try to find one that will work at 47°C plus. (I picked that number because I once had to drive my car in 47°C heat for half an hour or so to try to get the air conditioner fixed. I don't know how I made it without passing out. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one whose home air conditioner is only rated to 43°C, the best we could find at the time.)

Not that your air-conditioner will do you much good when the power goes out because either it's broken down or can't cope with the stress on the system, caused by the heat wave. Heat can kill hundreds of people in a single heat wave. Maybe Pat'n Chip live in a very mild climate.

Make sure your local hospital is equipped to cope with the influx of people who get caught in future heat waves (those that don't collapse and die on the spot). And don't forget to boost your paramedic services. Hospitals won't help if you can't get there.  Stuff more insulation in your ceiling space and walls and don't go outside, whatever you do. Even if that means you get the sack from your job or your sports team (see also here).

I really don't know why Pat'n Chip keep beating this dead horse. Where I live there is a big spike in the number of deaths in a heat wave. Horrid heat is not something you want to inflict on anyone, unless you're like Pat'n Chip who don't care about those suffering the heat in India or South America or Australia or elsewhere.

Although it hasn't happened yet, as the world warms it's conceivable that large areas could become uninhabitable. That's not because of heat alone. It's because when temperatures soar enough alongside humidity then it exceeds the physiological tolerance of humans. This was described by two researchers a few years ago. Stephen Sherwood from the University of New South Wales and Matthew Huber from Purdue University did the maths and this is documented clearly and succinctly in their abstract:

Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wetbulb temperature TW, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.

So although it would be quite a few decades before global temperatures rise 7 °C, there will still likely be parts of the world where those conditions could arise for short periods of time later this century. Particularly if we don't reduce carbon emissions enough.

Heat waves don't just kill people directly. They also affect the ability to supply electricity, they spark fires and cause them to turn into catastrophic killers, they dry up bodies of water and exacerbate drought. Heat is very pleasant in moderation. Too much of a good thing will kill.

I consider people like Pat'n Chip a menace to society.

From the WUWT comments

Eve doesn't give a rats for people who die in the heat and says:

June 20, 2014 at 7:36 pm
I have been freezing in Canada since I returned from the Bahamas. I have not had the quilt off since I arrived, plus having to wear long pants, long sleeves, no heat wave, just cold. Where is Obama that he is so hot? Tell him to turn down the heat.

Tom Harley is deluded about southern Australia. It can get much hotter down south than it does in the tropics. He says:

June 20, 2014 at 9:21 pm
Majormike1 is right, here in the tropical north of Australia, thousands of climate refugees are towing their camper vans, trailers and wotnot all over the region, clogging up the roads, hotels, resorts and camping grounds, just to get away from ‘the cold’ in the ‘Southern Australian States’.
Those of us who have lived here long enough, hate to leave here, even in the summer.
If you want your cold, you can keep your cold. Stay away Mr President. Bring global warming back, now. 

Eric Worrall suggests everyone move to beautiful Hervey Bay and says:

June 20, 2014 at 9:28 pm
I’ve got good news – when it gets too hot, here in Sunny Hervey Bay, 25 degrees south of the Equator, we wear shorts and t-shirts.
Hervey Bay has a lot of retired people, because of the year round pleasant climate, a lot like Florida. So far, heat related mortality does not seem to be an issue. 

---

Sherwood, Steven C., and Matthew Huber. "An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 21 (2010): 9552-9555. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0913352107

About face at WUWT - backing off from denialism

The last couple of days have seen a few contradictions at WUWT. Or more properly, about faces. Par for the course for the denialati.

About face number 1 - Neukom2014 is "good science"

First up, I noticed that WUWT-ers at first didn't like the recent paper of Neukom et al which reconstructed surface temperatures of the southern hemisphere over the past 1000 years. Anthony tagged it as "bad science".  Wondering Willis wrote a couple of articles where he decided it was all wrong because Steve McIntyre said it was all wrong, and Willis agreed.  Their argument seems to have been that in their opinion, proxies are more reliable than modern thermometers, which seems a bit silly to me. If a potential proxy didn't reflect temperature as measured by a modern instrument then I'd be inclined to go with the modern instrument - wouldn't you?


It doesn't matter anyway because now Anthony Watts has done an about face. Neukom et al is no longer "bad science". It's very good science. The WUWT about face (archived here) is because of an article in Nature Climate Change by Kim Cobb, which is based on Neukom et al. Anthony Watts' headline is:

New paper finds climate sensitivity to CO2 is lower than previously believed, strong natural variability in Southern Hemisphere

Going by the excerpts published at WUWT, the article doesn't make that finding. It does suggest that climate sensitivity calculations based solely on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions may err on the high side.

If the new reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature is accurate, then estimates of climate sensitivity — the response of global temperature change to a given amount of external radiative forcing — may be lower than those calculated based solely on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions10.  

Given that Anthony has now embraced Neukom et al, which said pretty much the same thing as Kim Cobb wrote, what does that mean for deniers? In particular, does it mean they will let go of their obsession with the medieval warm anomaly, which wasn't in much evidence down south? Does it mean they'll accept estimates of climate sensitivity that are based on global (as opposed to NH only) temperature reconstructions?

This is Figure 3 from the Neukom paper showing extreme warm and cold decadal temperatures. The third chart from the top is the combined northern and southern hemispheres. It's getting mighty hot:

About face number 2 - people can afford climate control

In what is a second about face by the denialiati, it's no longer the case that people will all die of cold when an ice age cometh.  I deduce that from Anthony being co-author of a comment to a paper about deaths from heat extremes in Stockholm County in Sweden. (I wrote about that paper several weeks ago.) Anthony and his co-authors are apparently arguing that people will adapt to hot weather by spending up big on air conditioners, therefore they won't die, unlike people in my home state of Victoria. (More people do die in heat waves in my home state. Anthony's only talking about Sweden. Perhaps people in Sweden are tougher.) And in any case, they argue, what about Urban Heat Islands.

The WUWT article is archived here. Pat'n Chip and Anthony's published comment can be read here. Anthony doesn't link to the reply by Åström and colleagues so I will - you can read it in its entirety I think on Readcube.

The main arguments of Pat'nChip and Anthony are:

• Stockholm temperatures aren't the same as global temperatures - which is an odd argument because the scientists didn't ever claim it was. It's irrelevant. They threw in "what about UHI" for good measure.
• People adapt to heat by getting cool.

The main response is (verbatim):

• The observed [temperature] changes are the result of natural processes, including regional climate variability, and anthropogenic influences, including urbanization.
• Our data indicate that there is no adaptation to heat extremes on a decadal basis or to the number of heat extremes occurring each year. Although another study observed a reduction in the population health impact of hot and cold extremes over the twentieth century, this decrease should not be confused with adaptation to climatic change.... 
• Whether future development pathways will continue to increase resilience will also depend on many factors other than climate change. Importantly, it is not appropriate to assume that historic trends will continue, with or without climate change.

There's more in the reply.

Anthony doesn't say what Swedish people do when it gets too hot for the air conditioners to work.  Or what happens when the power companies ration power because there isn't enough to go around with everyone running their new air conditioners full blast.

Anyway if, as Anthony maintains, poor people can afford to buy and run air conditioners when it gets too hot to handle, then they can presumably also afford to buy and run heaters in cold weather.

One thing is that everyone, including Pat'nChip and Anthony Watts are accepting the fact that Sweden is getting hotter. This regional warming is, needless to say, consistent with global warming.

---

Cobb, Kim M. "Palaeoclimate: A southern misfit." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 328-329. doi:10.1038/nclimate2219

Neukom, Raphael, Joëlle Gergis, David J. Karoly, Heinz Wanner, Mark Curran, Julie Elbert, Fidel González-Rouco et al. "Inter-hemispheric temperature variability over the past millennium." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 362-367. doi:10.1038/nclimate2174

Åström, Daniel Oudin, Bertil Forsberg, Kristie L. Ebi, and Joacim Rocklöv. "Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in Stockholm, Sweden." Nature Climate Change 3, no. 12 (2013): 1050-1054. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2022

Knappenberger, Paul, Patrick Michaels, and Anthony Watts. "Adaptation to extreme heat in Stockholm County, Sweden." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 302-303. doi:10.1038/nclimate2201 (full text here)

Åström, Daniel Oudin, Bertil Forsberg, Kristie L. Ebi, and Joacim Rocklöv. "Reply to'Adaptation to extreme heat in Stockholm County, Sweden'." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 303-303. doi:10.1038/nclimate2202 (full text here)

Recycling Pat 'n Chip disinformation on WUWT brings out denier weirdness

There are a couple of deniers who hang out at Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT, from time to time.  This pair go by the names of  Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels.  I don't know if they are denialists themselves or not, but they are known for spreading disinformation wherever they can.  They are from the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank/lobbying organisation, initially set up by "coal" Koch, that promotes denial of climate science.

This time they have recycled an article from the Economist and are putting a lot of weight on climate sensitivity studies (Bayesian approaches) that tend to the lower end of the suite of projections.  Pat 'n Chip are writing as if all studies are showing lower climate sensitivity, which is not so.

First up, I'll point out as have others, that the Economist article was based on something it says is in the working group on mitigation, not on the physical sciences.  So it means zilch.

Secondly, climate sensitivity is important to know, but it doesn't have to be known precisely.  What is more important to my mind is behaviour.  If we double or treble the amount of atmospheric CO2 or worse, we'll definitely turn up the heat to more than we can handle.

I did a quick search of Google Scholar for climate sensitivity studies in the past couple of years.  There are swags of them.  The only ones that Pat 'n Chip want their readers to know about are the ones that come in at the lower end of the spectrum.  But there are many recent studies that come up with the same sort of numbers that the IPCC came up with in the past.  It's just that the media hasn't picked up on them.  Probably because they are the norm rather than the exception.

Here's a sample from the first few studies that come up in a Google Scholar search:

• Equilibrium = 3.2˚C; transient 1.72˚C

Bitz et al (2012) Climate Sensitivity of the Community Climate System Model, Version 4, J Climate DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00290.1

• Equilibrium = 2.2 - 4.8˚K

Rohling et al (2012) Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity, Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11574  (Thanks to BBD for the link to the full paper).

• Equilibrium = 2.1 - 4.7˚K

Andrews et al (2012) Forcing, feedbacks and climate sensitivity in CMIP5 coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models, GRL

• Equilibrium = 1.9˚C (1.2 to 2.9˚C); transient = Using observational data up to and including year 2010 gives a 90% C.I. of 1.0 to 2.1˚C, while the 90% C.I. is significantly broader ranging from 1.1 to 3.4 ˚C if only data up to and including year 2000 is used.

Skeie et al A lower and more constrained estimate of climate sensitivity using updated observations and detailed radiative forcing time series, Geophysical Research Abstracts


Pat 'n Chip would have the scientists exclude all the higher estimates and only publish the lower estimates.  Many if not most of the lower estimates seem to come from Bayesian analysis, while the higher ones more commonly come from analysis of past climates (paleoclimatology) or climate models - which are based on physics.

The reason seems to be that they want permission to continue to pollute the atmosphere for a while longer yet.  Obviously they don't give tuppence for what happens to humanity, society or any other life on earth in the future.  Otherwise they'd be arguing that regardless of whether equilibrium sensitivity was 2˚C (which Pat 'n Chip favour) or 3˚C or 4˚C or higher, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels soon climate change will get much worse.

Thing is, equilibrium sensitivity won't mean zilch if we don't stop at doubling CO2.  No-one will be any the wiser about what it would have been.  Humans will have to wait until equilibrium does occur for however many multiples of CO2 we pour into the air, which will take thousands of years as illustrated here. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: RealClimate.Org

From the WUWT comments

I was curious to see how the deniers at WUWT would react.  After all, Pat 'n Chip are arguing that climate sensitivity is 2˚C.  Many deniers at WUWT think CO2 doesn't have any effect on surface temperature.  Some even think that we are about to enter an ice age - any day now - and have thought that for quite some time.  (They are very patient.)

Pseudo-science gobbledegook from Konrad

The response was a mixed lot with people mostly talking past each other.  Here is some classic pseudo-science from Konrad, who says pre-industrial CO2 is fictitious, that "LWIR" (does he think there is such a thing as SWIR I wonder?) doesn't affect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool - presumably evaporating because of cooling?  And radiative gases cool the earth, not heat it!

July 26, 2013 at 5:32 pm  “Climate sensitivity” to a doubling from fictitious “pre-industrial” levels would be around -0.00000001 C. To arrive at this figure you of course have to ignore all the evidence that temperature drives atmospheric CO2 concentration at all time scales. Next reduce those ludicrous figures for DWLWIR slowing the cooling of the earths surface by 71percent. LWIR doesn’t effect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporativly cool.
Now as the troposperic lapse rate created by convective circulation is near the adiabatic limit, there is little need for ajustment here. However speed of convective circulation and mechanical energy transport from the surface should be increased for higher radiative gas concentrations.
The ERL argument can be safely ignored as it is junk science. In a moving atmosphere, warm air masses are transporting energy high above the level of maximum IR opacity, where they always radiate more than the air at the altitude they are rising through.  You should find that radiative gases act to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.  The IPCC however should continue to do static atmosphere calculations and assume surface IR absorption based on emissivity. Otherwise they won’t get paid.

Asian aerosols caused global warming and incomprehensible quackery from AlecM

This one is a new one for me.  AGW was caused by aerosols!  (Most aerosols reflect sunlight and have a cooling influence.)  This from AlecM:

July 26, 2013 at 11:39 pm My view is that the atmospheric control system that damps out natural fluctuations is near 0 K CO2 climate sensitivity. There has been AGW, from Asian aerosols reducing the albedo of low level clouds. This led to the 1980s and 1990s heating but has now saturated. It lead to the ocean temperature rise What we are seeing now in the reduction of TPW and the turn down of OHC and air temperature is the effect of operation of other parts of the control system. CO2 is automatically eliminated from the temperature effects.

The Other-Andy hasn't looked at a temperature chart since 1979

From where on earth does the Other_Andy get his information?

July 27, 2013 at 3:05 am  So, according to the warmists CO2 (And positive feedbacks) controls the Earth’s temperature. As CO2 goes up so does the temperature.
Between 1979 and 1996, CO2 increases by 25 ppm (More than 7% increase), there are several El Ninos and the temperature stays the same. What is their explanation?

The Other_Andy's close enough with the CO2 increase, but he says temperature stayed the same between 1979 and 1996?  Not so:

Data Sources: NASA and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Making a meal of Pat 'n Chip on WUWT ...or...Don't shoot the messenger

Anthony Watts and Patrick J. Michaels had a miss on WUWT yesterday, so they are trying again.  This time with the help from Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger.  Once again it's tactic of appealing to the fear factor that by all accounts is one of the main causes of disability of science deniers.

By way of introduction, research suggests that the fear factor prevents some people from rational thought. There is a strong association between this impediment and conservatism.  Fear causes cognitive dissonance which is only allayed by allaying the fear.  That becomes the priority.  When threatening facts can't be refuted then anyone who misrepresents the facts and lowers the fear becomes the new messiah.  It doesn't matter how wrong they are.  The fact they've reduced the fear is sufficient for the professional disinformer to be hailed as a hero.

Strike One: Unveiling The Strawman

First the build up.  Pat and Chip lead in with this, referring to Dr James E Hansen:

Specifically, he believes global average sea level will rise some 15 to 20 feet by 2095.

The question is, does Dr Hansen really believe this as a foregone conclusion?  Pat and Chip refer their readers to this book chapter by Hansen and Sato¹.  Even a cursory read shows that the authors are not at all categorical.  What the authors maintain can be read in the abstract (my bold):

Gravity satellite data, although too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century

He believes vs implying the possibility of.  What Pat and Chip have carelessly done is build a strawman.

That's easy to do for the WUWT crowd who thrive on their disdain of climate science and especially of climate scientists and most especially of three or four climate scientists in particular.  James Hansen and Michael Mann are at the top of their list.  But the strawman really wasn't necessary.

Indeed the entire article wasn't necessary.  One word would have sufficed.

Pat and Chip - all you have to do is write the single word "Hansen" and the deniers go rigid with rage, their faces twisted into a slathering snarl, the words on the screen melt together in a blur and their hands are clenched so tightly they can barely unbend their fingers to type in the WUWT comment box.  The relief after clicking "Post Comment" is profound, and surges through their body. They take a deep breath and wait avidly for someone, anyone to acknowledge their intense feelings expressed variously as - "only in it for the money", "activist", "gravy train", "CAGW", "hoax" and "scam". (Yes, a bit of a let-down, isn't it :))

Don't believe me?  I wrote the above in advance of any responses to the article - now go check the comments.

Strike Two: Geography Fail

After that little diversion, back to what Pat and Chip did.  The straw man is built, now they try to knock it down.   I won't bore you with details of "another scientist said something therefore Hansen is wrong about everything", which is the basis of their argument.  I will point out that they are not crash hot at geography or logic.  Here is how I know.  Pat and Chip quote this passage from the Hansen and Sato chapter (with a couple of words changes for some reason):

However, the primary flaw with the kinematic constraint concept is the geology of Antarctica, where large portions of the ice sheet are buttressed by ice shelves that will not survive BAU climate scenarios. West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) illustrates nonlinear processes coming into play. The floating ice shelf at PIG's terminus has been thinning in the past two decades as the ocean around Antarctica warms Shepherd et al., 2004). Thus the grounding line of the glacier has moved inland by 30 km into deeper water, allowing potentially unstable ice sheet retreat. PIG's rate of mass loss has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade (Wingham et al., 2009) and may account for about half of the mass loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is of the order of 100 km3 per year(Sasgen et al., 2010).

Okay.  This paragraph follows from a discussion of Greenland.  Hansen and Sato are pointing out that West Antarctica is very different to Greenland.  (These are the two locations of greatest concern in the near future in regard to near term sea level rises.  That is, of the order of decades to centuries.)

Pat and Chip write the silliest thing.  They say:

While West Antarctica may be losing ice mass, East Antarctica appears to be gaining, as higher sea surface temperatures lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which leads to greater snowfall there.

Even if they were correct about East Antarctica gaining some, what the heck has snowfall in East Antarctica to do with the potential risks of glaciers melting in West Antarctica?  That's like saying people in San Fransisco don't need to be concerned about earthquakes because there's not much risk of a major earthquake in Boston.  Look for yourself.  Note the scale at the bottom and the mountain range separating east from west. (Click to enlarge):

Source: NASA via Wikipedia

If Pat and Chip make such a big deal about the Pine Island Glacier not being a problem because it's pretty darn cold in the middle of the high mountains in East Antarctica, then what else are they so wrong about?

Strike Three: And They are Out

Next Pat and Chip try to tell you that sea levels weren't higher in the Pliocene after all.  Their evidence?  This is what they write (by the way, prefaced with an "oops" -  implying that Hansen and Sato should have read a paper published just two weeks ago, before writing their chapter two years ago):

Oops. Wrong again. Breaking scientific research just published online from the journal Science (Rowley et al., 2013) conclude that the apparent 25 ± 10 meter sea level rise during the Pliocene was probably due to vertical land motions during the intervening 3 million years rather than an actual sea level rise from more water in the oceans from melting ice (Hansen’s mechanism).

Is that what the paper actually said?  By all accounts, no.  You can read the abstract here in Science Express, and the full article if you're a subscriber.  The abstract doesn't say that sea level rise wasn't as high as thought, it says that you can't determine the sea level from that stretch of land because it shifted as a result of mantle flow.  In other words, what is thought of as a "passive" shoreline was subject to movement.  Let's see what the press release has to say:

"The highlight is that mantle flow is a major component in distorting the Earth's surface over geologic time, even in so-called 'passive' continental margins," Simmons said. "Reconstructing long-term global sea-level change based on stratigraphic relations must account for this effect. In other words, did the water level change or did the ground move? This could have implications on understanding very long-term climate change."

This work may change estimates of sea level in the Pliocene or it may not.  It depends on what other evidence suggests.  But it seems to me that it doesn't necessarily negate higher sea levels.  Nor does it tell us about sea levels in other eras when the earth was as warm as we're heading towards.  I would have a lot less certainty than Pat and Chip that sea level rise will be benign - and I live 200 km from the coastline.

Where does that leave us?

What Hansen is concerned about is that people will allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that sea levels will rise only gradually and by 'only' a half metre or so this century.  But glaciers in particular are slippery things - they can slide into the ocean, huge chunks can break off and there could be a sudden larger rise.  Heck, imagine if instead of a twenty cm rise in a century there was a half meter rise in a decade.  Imagine a storm surge or a cyclone.  It's not going to be much comfort to inhabitants of coastal cities to say, sorry - we knew it was possible but we didn't think it was likely so we kept on burning fossil fuels.

Maybe the seas won't rise two meters this century.  Maybe it won't happen for another 120 years.  That would foist the problem onto our children's children.  What will they think of us, knowing we could have prevented a sudden rise?

And what will half a meter rise in sea level mean?  We might have only a few decades to relocate thousands of cities and billions of people to higher ground.  That's an enormous undertaking.  (Think of large infrastructure projects that can take anything from ten years to thirty years to completion.)

Here are the closing paragraphs from Hansen and Sato.  Their projections are on the high side for the Business as Usual scenario.  Does that mean we should ignore them in favour of projections that are less uncomfortable just because we prefer the latter?  Surely that would be another logical fallacy - that of personal incredulity. (My bold and italics for emphasis.)

BAU scenarios result in global warming of the order of 3-6°C. It is this scenario for which we assert that multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale are not only possible, but almost dead certain. Such a huge rapidly increasing climate forcing dwarfs anything in the peleoclimate record. Antarctic ice shelves would disappear and the lower reaches of the Antarctic ice sheets would experience summer melt comparable to that on Greenland today.

The other extreme scenario, FFPO, does not eliminate the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise, but it leaves the time scale for ice sheet disintegration very uncertain, possibly very long. If the time scale is several centuries, then it may be possible to avoid large sea level rise by decreasing emissions fast enough to cause atmospheric greenhouse gases to decline in amount.

What about the intermediate scenario, EU2C? We have presented evidence in this paper that prior interglacial periods were less than 1°C warmer than the Holocene maximum. If we are correct in that conclusion, the EU2C scenario implies a sea level rise of many meters. It is difficult to predict a time scale for the sea level rise, but it would be dangerous and foolish to take such a global warming scenario as a goal.

The upshot is that sooner or later ice is going to melt and seas will rise.  That is certain.  The question is over what time scale.  How long do we have and will it be sudden or gradual.  Will there be sudden shifts over a few years.  Do we want to take the risk?  How lucky do you feel?  How lucky will your grandchildren be?

Whatever we do, we can't shoot the messenger.  Their message might be the most important one we'll ever get.


1. Hansen, J.E., and Mki. Sato, 2011: Paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change. In Climate Change: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects. A. Berger, F. Mesinger, and D. Šijači, Eds. Springer.