Tasteless and ignorant at WUWT: A repugnant combination in denial of rising sea level

Anthony Watts sense of humour would not be shared by most decent people. It might even shock. Today he has copied an ugly cartoon that he said was posted by Rick McKee on Anthony's WUWT Facebook page (archived here). To save you looking, I'll describe it.

The cartoon pictures seven bearded men dressed in gear the colour of the garments worn by Buddhist monks, all wearing a crucifix around their necks. Bearded Christian Buddhists? The men are all kneeling in front of a puddle of water. Behind them is a large figure in black wielding a large knife and wearing a full face mask. That figure is probably meant to signify an ISIS militant. To the right is what I think is meant to be a caricature of President Obama, talking to the kneeling bearded men (I think they are meant to represent journalists brutally beheaded). Underneath is the caption: "I just want you to know I'm throwing the full force of the U.S. military behind stopping the horror of this rising sea level!"

The word "horror" is highlighted in red and underlined.

Anthony thinks this is funny. Seriously. He thinks the brutal murder of journalists in the middle east is cause for mirth and mockery. He put his cartoon under the headline and text:

Friday Funny – the horror of rising sea levels in context

As many know, Mr. Obama made some wild claims about climate at the recent U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement.

For example:

“The world’s glaciers are melting, pouring new water into the ocean.  Over the past century, the world sea level rose by about eight inches.  That was in the last century; by the end of this century, it’s projected to rise another one to four feet.

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.

What is the difference between Anthony Watts and an elephant?

Sometimes Anthony Watts mocks science.
Often Anthony Watts mocks science.
Usually Anthony Watts mocks science.
Almost always Anthony Watts mocks science.

There is at least one attribute that Anthony Watts has in common with an elephant.  Neither can understand science (though I can't positively vouch for the elephant in that regard).  I'd be tempted to say neither are good at arithmetic too, but the elephant is probably better at numbers than is Anthony Watts.

Where they differ is that an elephant never forgets.  Anthony Watts on the other hand...


Today he shows that on very rare occasions, Anthony Watts likes a scientific paper.  He posts an article about a paper that discusses the role of soot in the recession of glaciers in Europe soon after the beginning of the industrial revolution.  Anthony has a headline with a question: (article is archived here):

Black Carbon Soot shrank the 19th century glaciers – but why isn’t it listed as a culprit today?

From the University of Colorado at Boulder comes this press release and accompanying photo. The photo, showing hazy pollution laden air in the Bernese Alps, makes me wonder why they don’t attribute current glacier ice loss issues to soot. Asia in particular, is a leader in soot production, right next to those Himalayan glaciers that the IPCC erroneously told us would be gone by 2035.

But it is and "they" do, it's just that Anthony forgets his own articles...

Anthony forgets his own articles so quickly.  Here is just a sample (all links from archived versions):

• From WUWT in December 2009 - soot in the Himalayas, courtesy NASA
• From WUWT in November 2008 - soot in Asia, again courtesy NASA
• From WUWT in January 2013 - soot on ice generally, courtesy JGR-Atmospheres
• From WUWT in November 2010 - an article that includes a discussion of the impact of soot in the Himalayas

...and many more.

Thing is, almost every time Anthony writes an article about soot he pretends it's he who discovered the impact - and afresh.  He wouldn't know about soot or carbon if not for the scientific research that he usually mocks.  Yet he also hates organisations like the EPA that regulate the amount of pollution.  He is anti-soot but rejects attempts to control it.

Full of contradictions as well as having a very bad memory, as well as taking credit for things he wouldn't be able to do in a pink fit, or understand.

HotWhopper readers also know that although Anthony Watts has been mocking science for a few years now, particularly climate science, he's yet to open and read an IPCC report.  If he had, he'd have read about soot or black carbon and it's impact on snow, ice and albedo, for example - here as well as in the diagram showing radiative forcing in Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 here:

Source: IPCC AR4 WG1

And now for the science...

Here is the abstract of the PNAS paper by Painter et al, which Anthony writes about this time (my para breaks):

Glaciers in the European Alps began to retreat abruptly from their mid-19th century maximum, marking what appeared to be the end of the Little Ice Age. Alpine temperature and precipitation records suggest that glaciers should instead have continued to grow until circa 1910.

Radiative forcing by increasing deposition of industrial black carbon to snow may represent the driver of the abrupt glacier retreats in the Alps that began in the mid-19th century. Ice cores indicate that black carbon concentrations increased abruptly in the mid-19th century and largely continued to increase into the 20th century, consistent with known increases in black carbon emissions from the industrialization of Western Europe.

Inferred annual surface radiative forcings increased stepwise to 13–17 W⋅m−2 between 1850 and 1880, and to 9–22 W⋅m−2 in the early 1900s, with snowmelt season (April/May/June) forcings reaching greater than 35 W⋅m−2 by the early 1900s. These snowmelt season radiative forcings would have resulted in additional annual snow melting of as much as 0.9 m water equivalent across the melt season. Simulations of glacier mass balances with radiative forcing-equivalent changes in atmospheric temperatures result in conservative estimates of accumulating negative mass balances of magnitude −15 m water equivalent by 1900 and −30 m water equivalent by 1930, magnitudes and timing consistent with the observed retreat.  

These results suggest a possible physical explanation for the abrupt retreat of glaciers in the Alps in the mid-19th century that is consistent with existing temperature and precipitation records and reconstructions.