Antarctica and rising seas, plus querying Holocene temperature trends

Worrall's up with that?

I was beginning to think that Anthony Watts had sold off his blog to Eric Worrall, who is a nobody, just another also-ran denier who comments a lot on various blogs. He is big on opinions and very short on knowledge. (Most of his articles are shallow and silly. I've written about them on occasion, like here and here and here.) I was starting to think that because of a rash of nothing articles by him filling up the daily WUWT quota. Turns out it's just that Anthony has been travelling or working or something or the other, and his normal workforce wasn't coming up with anything he could blog. Except for Tim Ball. But he's a complete write-off and I've already spent way too much time on his conspiracy theories.

Given that WUWT has been so boring the past couple of days, I'll write about two new science papers instead.

Antarctic melt will raise sea level by 1 to 37 cm this century

First there's a new paper from scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which estimates sea level rise this century from the melting of Antarctica. If you were hoping for an estimate to the nearest centimetre, be prepared to be disappointed. The research team came up with a range from one centimetre to 37 centimetres this century. That seems not terribly helpful until you learn that the upper limit is quite a bit higher than what was projected in the latest IPCC report. From ScienceDaily.com:

For the first time, an international team of scientists provide a comprehensive estimate on the full range of Antarctica's potential contribution to global sea level rise based on physical computer simulations. Led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the study combines a whole set of state-of-the-art climate models and observational data with various ice models. The results reproduce Antarctica's recent contribution to sea level rise as observed by satellites in the last two decades and show that the ice continent could become the largest contributor to sea level rise much sooner than previously thought.

"If greenhouse gases continue to rise as before, ice discharge from Antarctica could raise the global ocean by an additional 1 to 37 centimeters in this century already," says lead author Anders Levermann. "Now this is a big range -- which is exactly why we call it a risk: Science needs to be clear about the uncertainty, so that decision makers at the coast and in coastal megacities like Shanghai or New York can consider the potential implications in their planning processes," says Levermann.

The scientists analyzed how rising global mean temperatures resulted in a warming of the ocean around Antarctica, thus influencing the melting of the Antarctic ice shelves. While Antarctica currently contributes less than 10 percent to global sea level rise and is a minor contributor compared to the thermal expansion of the warming oceans and melting mountain glaciers, it is Greenland and especially the Antarctic ice sheets with their huge volume of ice that are expected to be the major contributors to future long-term sea level rise. The marine ice sheets in West Antarctica alone have the potential to elevate sea level by several meters -- over several centuries.

According to the study, the computed projections for this century's sea level contribution are significantly higher than the latest IPCC projections on the upper end. Even in a scenario of strict climate policies limiting global warming in line with the 2°C target, the contribution of Antarctica to global sea level rise covers a range of 0 to 23 centimeters.

Right now the contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise is minimal. This paper shows that could change in the near term. Going by other studies that's pretty likely. I've written before about a raft of studies that came out a few weeks ago, particularly looking at West Antarctica - here and here and here.

Was the surface temperature rising or falling in the Holocene?

Another interesting paper was challenging the prevailing view that global surface temperatures were falling during much of the Holocene. The question is referred to as the Holocene conundrum, which I've never heard of before. Maybe you have. The paper was by an international team of researchers, with the lead author being Zhengyu Liu from the Nelson Center for Climatic Research and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Some excerpts from ScienceDaily.com:

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, Liu and colleagues from Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the University of Hawaii, the University of Reading, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Albany describe a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene, our current geological epoch, counter to a study published last year that described a period of global cooling before human influence.

The scientists call this problem the Holocene temperature conundrum. It has important implications for understanding climate change and evaluating climate models, as well as for the benchmarks used to create climate models for the future. It does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century.

"The question is, 'Who is right?'" says Liu. "Or, maybe none of us is completely right. It could be partly a data problem, since some of the data in last year's study contradicts itself. It could partly be a model problem because of some missing physical mechanisms."

Over the last 10,000 years, Liu says, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating. These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm, even as regions of the world experienced cooling, such as during the Little Ice Age in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The three models Liu and colleagues generated took two years to complete. They ran simulations of climate influences that spanned from the intensity of sunlight on Earth to global greenhouse gases, ice sheet cover and meltwater changes. Each shows global warming over the last 10,000 years.

Yet, the bio- and geo-thermometers used last year in a study in the journal Science suggest a period of global cooling beginning about 7,000 years ago and continuing until humans began to leave a mark, the so-called "hockey stick" on the current climate model graph, which reflects a profound global warming trend.

In that study, the authors looked at data collected by other scientists from ice core samples, phytoplankton sediments and more at 73 sites around the world. The data they gathered sometimes conflicted, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.

Because interpretation of these proxies is complicated, Liu and colleagues believe they may not adequately address the bigger picture. For instance, biological samples taken from a core deposited in the summer may be different from samples at the exact same site had they been taken from a winter sediment. It's a limitation the authors of last year's study recognize.
"In the Northern Atlantic, there is cooling and warming data the (climate change) community hasn't been able to figure out," says Liu.

With their current knowledge, Liu and colleagues don't believe any physical forces over the last 10,000 years could have been strong enough to overwhelm the warming indicated by the increase in global greenhouse gases and the melting ice sheet, nor do the physical models in the study show that it's possible.

"The fundamental laws of physics say that as the temperature goes up, it has to get warmer," Liu says. 

I wonder who wrote that last sentence? Press releases often put words into people's mouths without their knowledge.

I expect the other paper they are referring to is the Marcott study, which was a detailed estimate of global surface temperature trends for the entire Holocene. I don't know what the reaction is from the rest of the paleo community. If you come across comments on the paper, or (informed) blog articles about it, I'd be interested to see them.

Update

Richard Telford has a blog article about the Zhengyu Liu paper, at his blog Musings on Quantitative Palaeoecology. (H/t Steve Bloom).
[Sou  - later in the day on 16 August 2014]

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A. Levermann, R. Winkelmann, S. Nowicki, J. L. Fastook, K. Frieler, R. Greve, H. H. Hellmer, M. A. Martin, M. Meinshausen, M. Mengel, A. J. Payne, D. Pollard, T. Sato, R. Timmermann, W. L. Wang, R. A. Bindschadler. "Projecting Antarctic ice discharge using response functions from SeaRISE ice-sheet models." Earth System Dynamics, 2014; 5 (2): 271 DOI: 10.5194/esd-5-271-2014

Zhengyu Liu, Jiang Zhu, Yair Rosenthal, Xu Zhang, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Axel Timmermann, Robin S. Smith, Gerrit Lohmann, Weipeng Zheng, and Oliver Elison Timm. "The Holocene temperature conundrum. PNAS", August 11, 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1407229111

King tides, storm surges and rising seas are anathema to WUWT

WUWT has an article about a paper in Geophysical Research Letters last month (archived here). The paper was called: "Sea level anomalies exacerbate beach erosion", which is self evident, given that in most places (but not everywhere) sea levels are rising relative to the coastline. (In some places the land is rising more quickly than the sea, so effectively sea level can fall in some places even while globally seas are rising.)

The lead author was a PhD candidate, Ethan Theuerkauf from the Institute of Marine Sciences at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He's had quite a few papers published on similar topics. I don't know if he's been awarded his PhD yet, but he's been publishing for several years now.

A lesson in statistics with E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister at WUWT

In a variation of the denier memes "CO2 is only a trace gas" and "it's not happening", Anthony Watts has a silly article about ice. Actually it's an article about "trillions of dollars", which is at the heart of most denier protests about global warming. (Archived here.)

Many deniers take the position that we can't afford to stop the sixth major extinction and we can't afford to make the world bearable for future generations. What they really mean is that they've got a lot invested in fossil fuels and they don't want to shift to clean energy.

The other common theme that you'll find on denier blogs is a fear of fear. Studies show that people in the USA who vote conservative are more likely to be hypersensitive to threats. In extreme cases like you'll find with inhabitants of denier blogs, they'll do anything to avoid what they perceive as threatening, even rejecting facts. (Judging by the number of articles denying melting ice and rising sea levels that Anthony Watts posts on his blog, the thought of it scares him more than anything else. Maybe even more than an increase in taxation.)

To cut to the chase, WUWT "guests", E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister wrote an article under the title "Lying with Statistics: The National Climate Assessment Falsely Hypes Ice Loss in Greenland and Antarctica"

What they are pretending is that it doesn't matter if the ice keeps melting and sea levels rise by one or two metres this century, and six to ten metres in coming centuries. All the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is tiny compared to the size of the world, didn't you know?

Actually, it's not quite that. What these two are arguing is that more ice won't melt as the world heats up. They reckon that ice will only keep melting at the same rate as it's melting today - or should I say, as it melted last century. They are rejecting basic physics. I expect they are surprised every time ice cubes melt in their bourbon.

Here are two charts they put up to PROVE the scientists are "lying with statistics":

See - in nine years the ice melted as a percentage of total ice was miniscule and "nothing to worry about".

Even NASA knows that if all the ice melted it would barely bother anyone (as long as they didn't live in Bangladesh or London or the Netherlands or China or Florida or anywhere near the coast). And NASA scientists, as every WUWT-er knows, "don't know nuffin'". The image below is not just all the water currently bound up in ice. It's all the water at or near the surface on earth - compared to the size of Earth.

Source: APOD NASA

Compared to that, what's the point of complaining about the ice melting? Even if it all melted it would only raise sea levels by 66 metres (216 feet). What's to worry about?

Nothing to worry about

That's only about 0.6% of the depth of the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench. It's like health fanatics (such as the guvmint) arguing that if you ingested 0.00029% of your body weight in arsenic it'd kill you. What do they think we are? Stupid sheeple?

Think about how "warmists" try to scare the poor little dears at WUWT about rising temperatures. Here's a chart to prove that a piddly rise of 6C wouldn't hurt a fly. Heck, the temperature here can change by more than that here in 12 hours.

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Needless to say you shouldn't trust the above temperature chart. It was obviously tampered with to make the oldest temperature readings colder and the later temperatures hotter! Here's another one. Not quite six degrees:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Oops! How did that chart get there?

Anyway, here's a couple of charts to prove that a sea level rise of sixty six metres is nothing at all. If all the ice melted it might take 5,000 years - that's what I've put in the chart.  First of all let's see how those deceiving scientists would probably portray it, just to scare the folk at WUWT:

Deceptive "scientific" chart

Now look at how it really should be presented:

True "statistical" chart - WUWT-style

Think about that for a while, scientists!


E. Calvin Beisner is not a climate scientist. No, he's an orthodox presbyterian elder and a member of the pseudo-religious cult, the Cornwall Alliance. His denial of science is to be recognised by the Heartland Institute, so we've been told.

J.C. Keister Jr is also associated with the Cornwall Alliance. He claims a PhD in something or other but I guess he gave that up for his crank religion.

The Cornwall Alliance forbids its members from accepting climate science. It's probably a mortal sin. Not sure about evolution - that might be forbidden too. At least one of its members, Roy Spencer, rejects biological science.

From the WUWT comments

Bernd Felsche says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:07 am
Alarmism is a characteristic of having lost a sense of proportion.

nickreality65 doesn't like it when someone tickles his amygdala and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:21 am
Now do the same w/ 100,000 years of co2 plotted next to keeling. And scores of temps, sea levels plotted w/ exaggerated scales to maximize the fear factor.

Dave confuses sea ice with land ice and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:36 am
How can Antarctica be losing ice if it just recently reached an all time greatest extent?

UnfrozenCavemanMD says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:05 am
Thus my maxim:
“Anyone who is giving you numerators without denominators is trying to deceive you.” 

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Schreiber, Darren, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons, Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler, and Martin P. Paulus. "Red brain, blue brain: Evaluative processes differ in Democrats and Republicans." PloS one 8, no. 2 (2013): e52970. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052970

WUWT wonders why no mention of the Eemian at the Guardian?

Eric "eugenics" Worrall has posted a "guest essay" at WUWT (archived here). Eric might be a guest at WUWT, but he didn't write any essay. What he did was copy and paste some extracts from an article at the Guardian. The article itself was a generalist piece about surface temperatures and climate models. Nothing new in it that I could see, but you may be interested. It's written by Stuart Clark and you can read it here.

Here is Eric's "guest essay", or guest question. He wrote:

The inconvenient fact that sea level was around 6 metres higher during the Eemian Interglacial, and around 2 metres higher during the Holocene Optimum, 5500 years ago, was not mentioned in the Guardian article.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/ericg/kap_paper.pdf

Update: It turns out that Eric wrote the four paragraphs before his question as well (after the Guardian quote), but there was a formatting error that made it look as if it was part of the Guardian article. I still wouldn't call it an "essay". The updated/corrected archive is here. [Sou: 3:50 pm Sunday 15 June 2014]

The paper Eric linked to was published in Geology back in 1998. It looks as if Eric didn't read the paper. What it's about is a "detailed history of middle to late Holocene sea level" provided in part by an emerged coastal bench and associated fossil beach on Kapapa Island (Oahu), Hawaii. The authors are figuring out how much uplift there's been. Contrary to what Eric thought, global sea level was by no stretch of the imagination higher than it is now by two metres during the Holocene Optimum. It was higher relative to the land in Hawaii - but as discussed in the paper Eric mentioned, those islands have been rising rather than the sea falling by such a huge amount.

As to the first part of Eric's question - the Eemian, yes, seas were a lot higher than today way back then. In the northern hemisphere it got hotter, too. Globally by not that much if at all. I wonder if Eric understands the implications? That if seas were a lot higher back then, it means that it doesn't take much of a rise in global temperatures to melt ice at the poles. Seas are going to rise a lot more before the next few centuries are done.

It's kind of odd for Anthony to allow Eric's "guest question" through, given all his protests against rising seas. You can read the WUWT comments and a bit more by clicking the read more link.

Dennis T. Avery cycles toward an ice age; Anthony Watts senselessly ignores the ice @wattsupwiththat

They do have some funny ones at the Heartland Institute and doesn't Anthony Watts love 'em. This one's called Dennis T. Avery and apparently he's been an ice age comether for some time. He even scored a Wikipedia entry to prove it :)

Not only that, but he scored a ClimateProgress post all to himself when he couldn't tell the difference between growth and growth rate. And a SourceWatch entry. Now he's really hit the bigtime with a HotWhopper entry - but it's not all for himself. Ice age comethers are a dime a dozen at WUWT.

Dennis used to work for the government - the US Department of Agriculture. (Deniers forgive him because he's one of them.) I wonder how it feels to be a laughing stock among his former colleagues. It's easy to infer from his WUWT "guest essay" (archived here) that he doesn't accept the greenhouse effect. He was writing about an article by Geoffrey Parker in the NY Times. The article itself was about how climate change contributed to wars and social unrest in the past and postulated that it may well do the same as the world warms and food production is affected.  Dennis wasn't buying it. I think he figured that droughts only happen when there's a cold spell or something like that. He wrote:

Almost all past agricultural and cultural collapses occurred during “little ice ages,” not during our many global warm periods. 

Now I don't know if that's right or wrong but I do know that the way things are going, humans will never have experienced a global warm period like the one we're heading towards. The blue line in the chart below covers the period since civilisation. The red line is what's projected over the next few decades. Probably before this century is out.

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Dennis doesn't accept that we're warming the world. People in the future will probably feel heat like humans have never felt before. Ever. Not in all the time since we evolved. Dennis wrote:

The danger is the cold, chaotic weather of the “little ice ages” themselves. That will shrink agricultural zones and shorten growing seasons. Another such icy period is inevitably coming, though not likely in the next two centuries, if past cycles are an accurate guide.

Regardless, for the next 20-25 years, humanity will likely be in another cooling period, caused by the sun’s reduced energy output and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. We are about 150 years into the modern warming. Since the shortest of these warm periods during the Halocene was 350 years, and they generally last 350 to 800 years, it is unlikely that we will enter another Little Ice Age for a couple more centuries. 

That's it. He's doing climate by numbers - and not very useful numbers at that. He thinks that there are some sort of long term cycles lasting between 350 and 800 years - which is a nice wide margin for him, isn't it. He offers no evidence for his claim and it's not one I've ever come across before.

He's wrong of course. We aren't due for a major glaciation for around 50,000 years and as for mini ice ages, only if there's a few supervolcanic eruptions or an all-out nuclear war.

Anthony thinks that ice doesn't melt in the heat - again

Meanwhile, Anthony Watts has written another silly article (archived here) about how ice doesn't melt when it gets hot. Oh, he doesn't say so in so many words. What he does is claim that seas won't rise over the coming decades, or not by much. He reckons that the rate of sea level rise is currently linear (he's wrong) and that it won't change as West Antarctic ice slips into the ocean.  Anthony decided on the following senseless headline:

Making sense of senseless sea level scares in Norfolk Virginia – 60% of the rise is from subsidence, the remainder from landfill settling

It was Anthony's own article that was senseless, not the fact that seas are going to rise quite a lot. He didn't manage to make much sense, as usual. I've written enough about his fantasies on that score already (such as here and here and here and here) so I'll send you over to Tamino's excellent take down.

Before you go - or afterwards, if you want to see a couple of very good videos about sea level, try these two.

From the WUWT comments

Just a small selection today. First Goldie discusses the impending ice age that won't cometh for a very long time and says:

June 2, 2014 at 12:22 am
That sounds about right. But at the moment we have a group of people who are determined to blame everything on too much Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. I suspect the North Atlantic will freeze over and this group will still be trying to assign it to Carbon Dioxide. The reality is of course that these people belong to an interesting cabal who are anti any form of carbon based energy and instead would prefer to have half the population of the planet freeze to death whilst trying to use so called renewables. Indeed their thinking is so odd that they would probably prefer it if half of the population froze to death. 

ffohnad is writing about sea level rises and says:

June 1, 2014 at 8:46 pm
Do these people actually believe the ice caps could melt while the temperature remains far below freezing even with the 3 degree worst case projection ? It appears that only the dumbest portion of our population are hired by the media. 

Unstoppable meltdown in Antarctica - and at WUWT, with a doozy of chart

Anthony has taken another trip to Antarctica. This time he is complaining about an article in the Guardian, written by Suzanne Goldenberg. What Anthony seems to be complaining about is that the time scale of the projected total collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheets isn't in the headline, which reads:

Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn

So there is an indication of time - it's already started. Anthony's upset though. He reckons his deniers will only read the headline and get too scared to read any further. He's really scared that deniers won't read as far as the fourth sentence in the article, which is about the resulting four metre rise in sea level:

But the researchers said that even though such a rise could not be stopped, it is still several centuries off, and potentially up to 1,000 years away.

Abused by buried facts

Anthony thinks that if you have to read beyond 75 words of an 880 word article, then the next few words can be regarded as "buried".  He wrote:

Truly an abuse of the headline. Buried below the headline in the article, there is agreement with Revkin:

Anthony was referring to a five-year old article in DotEarth, which was about two papers published in Nature early in 2009. At the time (March 2009), Andy wrote about a paper in Nature, which modeled the West Antarctic ice sheets and reported that:

In this simulation, the ice sheet does collapse when waters beneath fringing ice shelves warm 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit or so, but the process at its fastest takes thousands of years. Over all, the pace of sea-level rise from the resulting ice loss doesn't go beyond about 1.5 feet per century.

Obviously as far as Anthony Watts is concerned, some models are good!

Collapses to the West and the East

What Suzanne Goldenberg was writing about in the Guardian today was a new paper by Eric Rignot and colleagues. This is the same Eric Rignot that Andy Revkin quoted five years ago (in Anthony's preferred 2009 article) writing:

Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory cautioned that the new findings were based on a single, fairly simple simulation and said that while the results matched well with the seabed evidence, they lacked the precision needed to know what will happen over short periods.

"This new study illustrates once more that the collapse of West Antarctica and parts of East Antarctica is not a myth." he said. "It happened many times before when the Earth was as warm as it is about to be. In terms of time scales, I do not think the results of this study are relevant to what will be happening in the next 100 years and beyond. The problem is far more complex. But this is a step forward."

Western Antarctica has already started to collapse, but it will take time

The long and short of it is that in denier land, it's an "abuse" to have a factual headline about new research findings:

Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn

That Guardian headline was mild compared to the NASA headline about the paper, which was:

West Antarctic glacier loss appears unstoppable

Anthony, for a change, not only included the title of the paper, which is:

Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011.

...he even copied and pasted the abstract. Though he didn't go as far as providing a link to it. (My paras & bold italics)

We measure the grounding line retreat of glaciers draining the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica using Earth Remote Sensing (ERS-1/2) satellite radar interferometry from 1992 to 2011.

Pine Island Glacier retreated 31 km at its center, with most retreat in 2005–2009 when the glacier un-grounded from its ice plain.

Thwaites Glacier retreated 14 km along its fast-flow core and 1 to 9 km along the sides.

Haynes Glacier retreated 10 km along its flanks.

Smith/Kohler glaciers retreated the most, 35 km along its ice plain, and its ice shelf pinning points are vanishing.

These rapid retreats proceed along regions of retrograde bed elevation mapped at a high spatial resolution using a mass conservation technique (MC) that removes residual ambiguities from prior mappings. Upstream of the 2011 grounding line positions, we find no major bed obstacle that would prevent the glaciers from further retreat and draw down the entire basin.

Below is a map showing a couple of these glaciers. (Click to enlarge it.)

Source: Rignot13, Science

Anthony Watts doesn't usually go beyond newspapers and press releases. Scientific papers are a bit too deep for deniers. Anyway, he was comforted by Andy Revkin's 2009 headline, made especially for the scaredy cats like Anthony Watts and other science deniers:

Study: West Antarctic Melt a Slow Affair

Andy's latest headline on the subject was similarly aimed at calming the scaredy cats:

Consider Clashing Scientific and Societal Meanings of Collapse When Reading Antarctic Ice News

He's right of course. But deniers go way too far in the other direction.  They don't realise that only a couple of centuries from now, there could be a massive collapse causing a big rise in sea level. It might be later (I guess it might be sooner, too.)

Rabbet Run has the scary science

Eli Rabett has written about the study and what it means. It means that sometime in the next few centuries - maybe as soon as 200 years ahead (that is, it could be the children of your children's children who have to cope), the ice in West Antarctica could, over a matter of decades, cause a sudden large rise in sea level. Not something you would wish on your children or theirs.

Where are all the fake sceptic fact-checkers?

I don't know where all the fake sceptic fact-checkers have gone. They are quick off the mark if they see a similar mistake here, but a worse mistake at WUWT eludes them.  See if you can spot it.  Anthony wrote the following and put up a chart:

And there’s not any significant warming over the entire continent, as it is nearly flat as well (from 70S to the pole):

Source: WUWT

I think annual averages allow you to see the trend a bit better than monthly charts.

Data source: RSS

Did you see the main problem? Of course you got it. Anthony plotted a chart of the lower troposphere from the outer edge of Antarctica upwards to the equator. Antarctica is more like 70 south to 90 south. RSS doesn't show lower troposphere temperatures below 70S.

What happens near the surface is much more important

The other thing of course is that it's the temperature of the ocean that plays a very big role in melting the ice in West Antarctica. Probably much more so than the temperature of the lower troposphere.  There have been other papers about that. A reduction in snow cover can also speed up melting rather a lot.

From the WUWT comments

John Boles is optimistic and thinks the collapse will happen later rather than sooner, and says:

May 12, 2014 at 2:41 pm
It might be worse than we thought, well maybe in the distant future, our models suggest that it could happen perhaps in 1000 years.

Justthinkin doesn't do any thinking at all (or reading) and says:

May 12, 2014 at 2:49 pm
So what’s the problem? She writes a piece full of BS,gets paid,and doesn’t give a hoot about what others say. Until you take away her paycheck,same old,same old. And scientific or un-scientific facts will not stop that. And just what the heck is “several centuries” or a thousand years? To me,several could be 20,000years from now.

Martin C is relieved that the seas may not rise quite four metres until after he's six feet under and says:

May 12, 2014 at 2:51 pm
I think it’s great to see these extremely ‘alarmist’ headlines, followed by a bit less alarmist in the text. People will continue to see the ‘alarmism’ for what it is. And likely continued to get turned off by it. Especially when the same ‘journalists’ keep printing this crap. 

pablo an ex pat has been misled by Anthony, who recently made a big fool of himself, and doesn't realise how big Antarctica is (it's about twice the size of Australia ie around twice as big as contiguous USA), or that there are lots of mountains separating east and west, and says:

May 12, 2014 at 2:53 pm
So in two alarmist stories reported during the space of on one day on WUWT the Antarctic is getting colder and warmer all at the same time. It’s both gaining ice and it’s losing ice. And both these occurrences are issues that needs us to do something right now. What exactly ?

Ed P is not good at assessing relative risk but he values money, and says:

May 12, 2014 at 2:53 pm
Yellowstone could explode or meteors might wipe out most of humanity before the sea rises that much. All that is certain is that governments will steal your savings long before you need a boat. 

Jeff in Calgary doesn't have a clue what the new paper is about and yes, he's missing something:

May 12, 2014 at 3:22 pm
Isn’t this about a floating ice sheet? How is a floating ice sheet melting going to raise sea levels? Am I missing something? 

sadbutmadlad is sad and deluded and doesn't realise that climate is changing in the here and now, and says:

May 12, 2014 at 9:53 pm
The narrative works. Lie first, lie big. Just watching a BBC Breakfast item on the newspapers at 5:50am and they talked about not being able to do anything about global warming as its already here. No mention of the 1000 years, everything was couched in terms of immediacy. Even journalists don’t read the small print and are fooled by the article. Ultimate scaremongering

In all the 97 comments over 13 hours I didn't see one that picked up on Anthony's gaffe with his RSS temperature chart. There may have been one or two that discussed the science. The rest were pure unadulterated wails of denial.

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E. Rignot, J. Mouginot, M. Morlighem, H. Seroussi, B. Scheuchl. "Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011".. Geophysical Research Letters, 2014; DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060140

Rignot, E., S. Jacobs, J. Mouginot, and B. Scheuchl. "Ice-shelf melting around Antarctica." Science 341, no. 6143 (2013): 266-270. DOI: 10.1126/science.1235798

Peter Kuipers Munneke, Stefan R.m. Ligtenberg, Michiel R. Van Den Broeke, David G. Vaughan. "Firn air depletion as a precursor of Antarctic ice-shelf collapse". Journal of Glaciology, 2014; 60 (220): 205 DOI: 10.3189/2014JoG13J183

Huybrechts, Philippe. "Global change: West-side story of Antarctic ice." Nature 458, no. 7236 (2009): 295-296. doi:10.1038/458295a

Naish, Timothy, R. Powell, Richard Levy, G. Wilson, R. Scherer, Franco Talarico, L. Krissek et al. "Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations." Nature 458, no. 7236 (2009): 322-328. doi:10.1038/nature07867

Abrupt climate change at #AGU13 but still no reporting @wattsupwiththat from Anthony Watts

I made time this morning to watch some of the talks at the AGU Fall Meeting.  There was a particularly interesting segment on abrupt climate change.

Sea level rise with Richard Alley in Greenland and Antarctica

It started with a talk by Richard Alley who manages to be forceful about the need to take note of the science in a very engaging way.  (He's also recognised as the only climate scientist who can use the Comic Sans font and get away with it.)

Richard Alley spoke about the potential for abrupt sea level rise, particularly if the ice in Western Antarctica breaks down.  He pointed out that with the pace of change we're forcing, we're in unknown territory.  It reminded me of the Hansen et al paper in PLOS that was published earlier this month.

Richard Alley impresses with his message, like when he spoke of Hurricane Sandy and said in his slow understated way: "So when it comes fast, it's a bad thing." And then said how the sea level rise has not been fast - yet. Later on he put up these sea level projections - with some estimates a bit higher than in the IPCC report:

Richard Alley took a shot at economists who underplay the problems, too. I'm sure they know who they are. Then he got to the big question: What will the ice sheets do?

Thermal expansion alone will result in about 0.4 m (a foot) per degree Celsius.  But that, he said, is a "thousand year problem" because it takes a long time to warm the ocean.  It's the ice sheets that are the biggest problem in the near term.  As Richard Alley said, the uncertainty is "lopsided on the bad side".  In short, the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers in Antarctica are flowing quickly but they've got to get through a narrow neck.  If that neck gets unblocked then we're in unknown territory. The ice there represents around 3.3 metres or 10 feet of sea level rise.  It's "jammed up behind a narrow mouth".  Richard said if it retreats "we get into physics that we don't really know what to do with yet".  Ice exhibits tipping behaviour.  Nothing happens for a while then all of a sudden....

Megadroughts and food shortages

There were some other excellent talks in the session on abrupt climate change, including a session on megadroughts - which can occur with or without AGW which is a big worry.  It's like we're daring nature to do her worst.  And a talk about food security and the sort of perils we are likely to have to deal with on that score this century, including the fact that we're soon going to be calling for genetic modification because conventional plant breeding just won't produce the results we need in a changing climate quickly enough.

All up a very informative day and all from the comfort of my home.

How did Anthony Watts fare?

Well, after Day Three there is still no evidence that Anthony Watts has seen anything he's capable of reporting on at the AGU Fall Meeting.  He did manage to muscle a handshake with a real scientist and passed another one he recognised in the corridor.  And he got to ask James Hansen a question, but we don't know the answer.

I get the feeling that Anthony Watts wants to be acknowledged in some way by "famous climate scientists". It might even be the reason he went to AGU13.  On the other hand he has to keep up his image with the denialati and maintain his rage at climate science and his mocking stance towards those same "famous climate scientists" - like his tweet about a slide from Richard Alley's talk this morning.

Given Anthony hasn't been able to produce any actual reporting or commentary like he promised, and he's had no luck getting any attention from anyone who's at AGU for the science, I wonder if this is the last time he'll venture into the lions' den or was it a den of thieves?

Of course he might surprise us and, using the video camera he has in a box, provide some polished in-depth interviews with some of the world's leading scientists who attended AGU13.  I won't hold my breath.

(I just watched Sharknado which, as everyone knows, was caused by climate change.  It was at least as credible as most of the comments at WUWT!)

A new disinformer at WUWT writing wrongs about rising seas: Robert W. Endlich

Anthony Watts has a bee in his bonnet about sea levels.  He keeps denying that seas rise as the planet warms and ice melts.  His latest is a copy and paste from other denier blogs of an article by a science denier called Robert W. Endlich. (Archived here.)  This chap is described on WUWT as follows:

Robert W. Endlich served as a weather officer in the US Air Force for 21 years and a US Army meteorologist for 17 years. He was elected to Chi Epsilon Pi, the national Meteorology Honor Society, while a basic meteorology student at Texas A&M University. He has degrees in geology and meteorology from Rutgers University and the Pennsylvania State University, respectively, and has studied and visited the ancient sites of Rome, Ostia Antica and Pisa.

Writing Wrongs!

Given his reported background I'd say Robert W. Endlich is not a denier, he's a disinformer.  He must know that what he writes has a lot of wrongs!

For example, in this article he claims that in regard to storms like Sandy and Haiyan and, presumably Katrina, "the lost lives and property have little to do with the storms’ sheer power".  No?  He blames it on those silly people who chose to remain on planet Earth instead of getting out of the way.

As with many deniers and disinformers, his motives are not hidden.  Robert writes (my bold italics):

The alarmist cries are not meant to be honest or factual. They are intended to generate hysterical headlines, public anxiety about climate change, and demands for changes in energy policies and use.

What Robert Robert W. Endlich is trying to claim is that sea levels dropped in the Little Ice Age and haven't risen back to the levels they were before that.  I don't know if that's the case or not, but I doubt it.  Robert gives some examples of towns that are further inland than they used to be.  He waves away other reasons for their apparent shift inland writing, for example: "Some historians erroneously claim “river silting” caused the change, but the real “culprit” was sea level change." His examples are:

• The ancient city of Ephesus - Wikipedia refers to the silting up of the natural harbours
• Ruins of the old Roman port Ostia Antica - Wikipedia states that "At the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was Rome's seaport, but due to silting the site now lies 3 kilometres (2 miles) from the sea."
• Pevensey Castle in England's south - Wikipedia talks about the longshore drift that cut the bay off from the sea

So firstly Robert W. Endlich's examples aren't related to general sea level rises and falls.  And I wonder why he ignores all the towns that haven't shifted inland and those that have fallen into the sea for one reason or another (usually subsidence or earthquakes).

Secondly, quite a few of the readers of WUWT aren't buying his spiel.  Here are some comments:

Keith Willshaw writes about Pevensey and says:

December 2, 2013 at 4:44 am
Interesting article to which I have one minor caveat.

The case of Pevensey Castle is a little more complex than just declining sea levels. The entire South East coast of England was radically changed by the Great Storm of Feb 1287. This was no mere blow like so called Superstorm Sandy but a mass killer. Some ancient towns like Old Winchelsea were wiped off the map, The spot where it used to stand is now over a mile offshore.

In other cases such as Pevensey and New Romney great banks of gravel were dropped leaving them a mile away from the new sea front. The River Rother changed course and now emerges over 15 miles from its old outlet. Worse was to come in December 1287 when another huge storm roared down the North Sea , breaking the dikes in Holland and killing more than 50,000 people.

The inhabitants of Pevensey (and New Romney) saw the disaster as an opportunity and filled in any breaches in the new gravel banks thereby reclaimimg the land for agriculture. To this day much of the land between New Romney is below sea level and protected by dykes and has warning sirens that are sounded if the sea wall is breached.
Keith

tty writes about land changes around the Mediterranean and says:

December 2, 2013 at 6:22 am
Several errors here. “Wisconsin” as a name for the last Ice Age is only valid in North America, it has other names in other places. And Wisconsin is a name for the whole 100 000 year cycle not just the “deepest part”. That is normally known as the Last Glacial Maximum, LGM for short.

Also using sites around the Mediterranean as examples to show sea-level change is very risky. It is more often land-level change. Most of the Mediterranean Basin is tectonically active, and it is just as easy to find sites that “prove” that the sea level was lower during the Roman Period, Cumae near Neapel for example, or Serapis where there are marine mollusks on the temple pillars several meters above sea-level, showing that the relative sealevel has gone up and down since the roman period.

That said there is no doubt that the sealevel was slightly higher during the climatic optimum, particularly in the Pacific Basin.

tty is a regular denier so can get away with his criticism. However Warren seems to be a newcomer so he gets lots of abuse for writing:

December 2, 2013 at 5:09 am
I don’t understand why this article should carry any scientific weight whatsoever. It’s argument is that “sea levels have been rising and falling throughout history, so the proposition that mans activities is warming the planet and causing sea level rise is ridiculous”. Same goes for the oft seen argument that “earths temperature has risen and fallen throughout history, so AGW is false, QED.” I hope none of the forums readers buy this ‘argument’ that the existence of natural patterns means there cannot be an increment caused by man.

Francois isn't impressed by the article and says:

December 2, 2013 at 7:01 am
The whole piece is not very scientific : feet, miles (statute or nautical?), why not degrees F, fluid ounces (or not fluid?), pounds, grains, stones, and the like? Are we still in the eighteenth century?

Ideology can warp the brain

Just as he started by displaying his ideologically-based denial, Robert W. Endlich finishes up by referring to Mother Nature, taxation and politics.

Since the Little Ice Age ended about 160 years ago, tide gages show that sea level has risen at a steady rate – with no correlation to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Sea level is a dynamic property in our planet’s climate cycles, which are closely linked to changes in solar energy output and other natural factors. It is unlikely to change in response to tax policies that make energy more expensive and economies less robust – no matter what politicians in Washington, Brussels or the United Nations might say.

Much to their chagrin, Mother Nature doesn’t listen to them. She has a mind of her own.

What's happening to the sea

Sea levels are rising - not from changes in solar energy but from natural factors like melting ice and water expansion as it heats up because of the unnatural emissions of carbon dioxide continue unabated.  Here's a chart of the sea level rise of the past twenty years:

Source: University of Colorado

Sea level for dummies - a video by MinutePhysics

Update - I've added a longer sea level video below - from a Melbournite Melburnian :) - Jerry Mitrovica now at Harvard University . (h/t metzomagic)

This makes a change.  In recent months Anthony Watts has posted several articles claiming that over coming decades, seas cannot possibly rise any faster than they did last century.  This is despite the fact that Earth will continue to get hotter as we keep using our precious air as a garbage dump for waste greenhouse gases.  He thinks that ice doesn't melt as it heats.  He's a bit of a plonker is Anthony Watts.

Today Anthony has done something special.  He's posted a video explaining sea level.  Not rising sea level.  Just about sea level itself. (Archived here.)

Anthony got the video via Gavin Schmidt of NASA and realclimate.org, who retweeted it from Joe Hanson who saw it in a tweet from Henry Reich @minutephysics.  Isn't Twitter wonderful :)

I'll resist the temptation to make any snide remarks about cartoons being the best format for WUWT readers and just post the video.  (Oops - did I write that out loud?) It is very good.

Next time you come across someone who wonders how seas can be rising at different paces at different times in different places, this explains it rather nicely and more besides.

Update

Courtesy of metzomagic in the comments - thanks! It's a longer video on sea level.  Jerry Mitrovica debunks some common denier myths.

From the WUWT comments

Eric ah may not have any conception of just how vast the ocean is compared to the size of a supertanker and says:

November 26, 2013 at 1:00 pm
I read somewhere (Daily Telegraph I think) last week that at any one time there are 100,000 ships at sea. With increasing trade and increasing sizes of ships I wonder what effect their displacement of water has had on sea levels. Any mathematicians out there willing to do a “back of the envelope” calculation?

Pippen Kool responds and says:

November 26, 2013 at 2:49 pm

Eric ah “With increasing trade and increasing sizes of ships I wonder what effect their displacement of water has had on sea levels.”

2.15 billion cubic meters divided by the surface area of the oceans equals about 6 microns (0.006 mm).

http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/

But the article goes on: you don’t have to worry about that six-micron sea level drop. The oceans are currently rising at about 3.3 millimeters per year due to global warming (through both glacial melting and thermal expansion of seawater).

stuart L might not know about satellite measures and thinks three dipsticks might be enough to monitor changes in sea level.  He says:

November 26, 2013 at 4:39 pm
Hmm We want to know if the sea level is rising and how much, so why measure it all over different places, if we took just three measurements in places that were not affected by gravity, isostatic rebound etc, like one in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific and one in the Indian ocean. wouldn’t that be more representative of true sea level rise.

Peter Miller doesn't know anything about how sea level change is worked out either. Or how by taking readings via satellite sweeps and making various comparisons and corrections with various checks and balances, the change can be measured with great precision.  And he's wrong with his 0.01 mm.  At the University of Colorado, the uncertainty in annual global mean sea level trend is +/- 0.4 mm.  The precision is to one decimal place not two.  (The trend is currently stated as being 3.2 mm +/- 0.4 mm / year.  He says:

November 26, 2013 at 11:49 pm
And to top everything, we rely on sea level measurements, using the speed of light, from satellites in decaying ellipsoid orbits.

Then there are also these factors to consider: wave heights, currents, tides, winds, isostatic rebound, tectonic movements and seasonal changes in ocean temperature.

And we believe we can measure changes in sea levels to an accuracy of 0.01mm!?!

Various other people comment about what is not covered by the video, sometimes with reasonable observations and sometimes with less reasonable (archived here).  No-one seems to be finding much fault with it though, which makes a nice change for WUWT.

Anthony Watts finds more 'reasons' to fight against the rising seas

In another futile objection to the ever-rising seas, Anthony Watts, who runs a pseudo-science blog known colloguially as WUWT (among other things I'm too polite to mention), wastes a lot of his blog protesting the fact that national sporting bodies in the USA are taking action to help mitigate global warming. (Archived here.)

National sporting bodies in the USA do their bit to mitigate global warming

Anthony refers his readers to a press release from Senator Whitehouse, in which national sporting bodies have outlined some of the actions they are taking:

Highlights from the letters from the leagues released by the Task Force include:

    •    NBA:  The National Basketball Association supports EPA “standards to reduce the carbon pollution from electric power plants.”  The NBA also supports current action taken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to set more stringent fuel standards and additional clean energy research and development investment.  See letter.

    •    NFL:  The National Football League is engaged in a number of projects that help mitigate climate change and was “the first professional sports organization formally to assess the environmental impact of [its] marquee events.”  The NFL measures the greenhouse gas impact of the Super Bowl and uses renewable energy offsets to green its power usage and mitigate team travel emissions.  At last year’s Super Bowl, the NFL conducted solid waste management and recycling at all major Super Bowl facilities.  See letter.

    •    NHL:  The National Hockey League notes, “Hockey’s relationship with the environment is unique.  Our sport was born on frozen ponds, where – to this day – players of all ages and skill levels learn to skate.  For this magnificent tradition to continue, it is imperative that we recognize the importance of maintaining the environment.”  The NHL’s member clubs have pursued a range of energy efficiency improvements and other environmentally friendly initiatives, including the installation of HVAC systems and on-site renewable energy.  See letter.

    •    MLB:  Major League Baseball “[recognizes its] responsibility to be part of the national effort to preserve our environment.”  Multiple MLB stadiums have adopted solar panel systems (AT&T Park in San Francisco, Chase Field in Phoenix, Fenway Park in Boston) or wind turbines (Progressive Field in Cleveland) to generate energy with a lower carbon footprint.  Since 2008, the purchase of certified renewable energy credits also helps offset the energy use of MLB All-Star Game events.  See letter.

Serengeti here we come!

Needless to say, Anthony glosses over the fact that it is the national sporting bodies themselves that are proposing climate action. Anthony as usual adopts the Serengeti Strategy of isolating Senator Whitehouse and trying to ridicule him.  He quotes from CNSnews.com, which has a video in which Senator Whitehouse says:

"Without cold enough weather for frozen ponds, the kind of hockey that you play out of doors with your friends gets a little bit harder to achieve.

"I took my kids skiing at Yawgoo Valley ski slopes in Rhode Island. The New York Times recently reported that we can expect all the ski slopes in Connecticut and Massachusetts to be gone. Obviously, given Rhode Island's location, if that's true of Connecticut and Massachusetts, that will also be unfortunately true of Rhode Island. 

"We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of - of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change, and so this is an issue that really affects many of America's favourite pastimes."

Anthony picked out this bit: "We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of - of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change..." and then makes an even finer selection, proceeding to do a long article about sea levels.  He spent a heap of time preparing lots and lots and lots of tide gauge charts and photos of sporting stadiums.

Anthony is fixated on rising seas.  He just cannot believe that when ice melts it turns into liquid water and insists that in future seas will only rise at the rate they have in the past.  (See here and here and here and here for other examples.)

Not only that, but Anthony neglects to mention the other aspects to which Senator Whitehouse referred, like storms.  Probably because Anthony usually ignores adverse weather events (unless he is downplaying them).

The impact of adverse weather on sports

For example, it was barely a week ago that the Chicago Bears game had to be suspended for two hours because of an unusual storm, which spawned a series of tornadoes much farther north than usual.  As Jeff Masters reported at Wunderground.com:

A rare and deadly late-season tornado and severe weather outbreak blitzed the Midwest U.S. on Sunday, killing at least six people and leaving widespread significant damage. A tornado preliminarily rated as a violent EF-4 touched down in New Minden, Illinois, east of St. Louis, carving a path of destruction three miles long, killing two people, and blowing semi trucks off of I-64. The twister was one of only twenty EF-4s to occur in the U.S. in November dating back to 1950, and was the third most northerly November EF-4 ever observed, according to data from the Tornado History Project.

Now I'm not buying into the question of whether or not there will be more or fewer tornadoes as global warming kicks in this century.  That's yet to be resolved.  What's clear is that global warming affects all weather.  There is more energy in the earth system because of all the extra greenhouse gases.  Anthony Watts doesn't want his readers dwelling on that fact, which is why he protests the science and instead fills his blog with a lot of pseudo science quackery.

For another picture - what about the stadium in Calgary Alberta after the devastating floods in June this year, when it was reported that:

A Calgary Flame stepping from the tunnel onto the Saddledome ice Saturday would have required scuba gear.

Credit: The Canadian Press
Source: CityNewsToronto

As for the sports that rely on snow and ice - how can we forget the problems in Vancouver when it staged the Winter Olympics?  And snowfields in the northern hemisphere are having to cope with less snow in spring as climate change kicks in:

Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab 

In regard to the impact of excessive heat on sports, I expect that delaying games for an hour will be the least of the concerns of sporting bodies.

From the WUWT comments

The fake sceptics at WUWT mostly meekly complied and behaved just as Anthony instructed them to. Quite a few of the commenters are like Anthony Watts.  If it hasn't happened yet it won't happen in the future.  Others take the view, "so what - deal with it when it happens, don't try to prevent it".  Here is a small sample - archived here.


Charles Stegiel says:

November 24, 2013 at 11:51 am
It is of interest perhaps that the Science Museum in San Francisco is all about warning of major sea level rise from global warming. To my knowledge the Warriors stadium moving to the waterfront has not been impacted by these concerns.

markstoval says:

November 24, 2013 at 11:59 am
Dumbest ever? Hmmmm. That is a high bar indeed. I can’t answer that one because there are so many worthy competitors in climate “science”.

I will say that there are plenty of structures world wide that are close to the sea’s edge and have been there for decades on end. These places show no danger of being covered by the sea. And if a sports stadium were to be lost to this mythical sea rise — so what? Should we destroy the industrial economies of the world to save a few sports stadiums? Give me a break.

Sean says:

November 24, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Remember, the Superbowl will be played in MetLife Stadium this year. It looks to be a colder than normal winter on the east coast and a pattern is developing that might bring nor’easters up the coast this season. The NFL and some green groups are conspiring to spread climate alarm and a few well placed ads coupled with a little help from Mother Nature might make for some interesting messaging about climate change and sports stadiums.

John M says:

November 24, 2013 at 12:42 pm
So while these welfare-queens-in-luxery-boxes (owners) were sucking up to this two-bit pol, did any of them actually promise to keep their taxpayer subsidized digs in place for more than 25 years?

What’s the big deal? They’ll just have to make sure the next taxpayer fleecing is used to build a new stadium/arena on higher ground.

Aussiebear says:

November 24, 2013 at 12:52 pm
I read this story in my daily Global Warming/Climate Change Google News feed on Friday. Wow. Just Wow.

Jimbo says:

November 24, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Did we need an IPCC style organisation to ‘tackle’ sea level rise between 1800 to 1987? Did we make it? Yep. Why are these bastards wasting our time and spending our taxes? Holland anyone? Polders? Concrete? Thames flood barrier? Accretion? Coral Island atolls rise?
It’s time to call the police on this fraud.

jbenton2013 says:

November 24, 2013 at 3:48 pm
God, I thought we had some stupid, inept politicians in the UK but even we can’t compete with this level of stupidity.

Michael Jankowski says:

November 24, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Well if these dire predictions are true, some existing beach volleyball nets are going to be in trouble.

Mike Smith says:

November 24, 2013 at 4:04 pm
We the people should be scared. But not about global warming and sports stadiums under water.

We need to be scared (and outraged) at the stupidity of certain political leaders. It’s truly frightening.

Barbee says:

November 24, 2013 at 4:44 pm
He’s the perfect politician!
Representing the people, emphasizing the most crucial priorities and handling those crises most urgent in the minds of his constituents.
A man who is really ‘in touch’ w/ the average citizen!
Ten more of him and Congress can go skiing all year long!

Pamela Gray says:

November 24, 2013 at 4:44 pm
Can we just collect all the missing village idiots into one fancy building, give them desks with their names on them with a little lamp on the corner, and let them play? Oh wait…

TeaPartyGeezer says:

November 24, 2013 at 7:27 pm
Sheldon Whitehouse is the guy who stands up in the Senate, every week, for a 15 minute rant during which he rails against Republicans for denying the theory of AGW. He’s the one who condemned Republicans as ‘disgraceful, polluters, and extremist lemmings’ after the tornado hit Moore, OK in May 2013 … except he called it a ‘cyclone.’

ECK says:

November 24, 2013 at 7:42 pm
Wow, what a response to such drivel from a Senator (given that that’s what most of what emanates from such is so). Glad to see most of us consider such persons ignorant, if not practical morons, but, sadly not irrelevant.

Denier weirdness: Anthony Watts protests physics - ice doesn't melt in the heat? Get real!

Seas could rise dramatically in the next several decades if we don't cut carbon emissions

If we don't rein in carbon emissions, seas could rise by two metres by the end of this century, and won't stop rising there.  Within three hundred years, sea levels could be more than four metres higher than they are today!  Bye bye many coasts, towns and cities of the world.  I wonder if Richard Tol and Bjorn Lomborg have worked out how much it will cost the world to move Mumbai (pop 17m), London (8.5m), New York (20m), most of Florida, half of Jakarta (26m) and so on.

Anthony Watts once again rejects the notion that when ice gets hot enough it melts.  Yes, really.  He does.  He's done it before - here and here and here.  Today he boldly states that the world's leading experts are not "working in reality".  (Archived here.)

What causes seas to rise - in reality?

What happens when there is a rise in greenhouse gases?  Earth gets warmer.

What do you think happens when it gets warmer?  People who know about ice figure that more ice melts when it gets warmer.  They will tell you more than that, if you listen politely and don't scoff about "reality".  The ice experts will tell you that when ice melts it turns into liquid water.

People who know about liquid water on land, like from melting mountain glaciers, will tell you that when there is lots of water it usually finds its way into the sea.  People who know about ice sheets will tell you that as they get warmer their flow to the sea will often speed up.  If the water hasn't already melted by then it soon will once it's in the sea.

People who know about sea level will tell you that when there is more water in the sea, sea level rises.

A survey was done of experts in sea level, who'd listened to the experts in ice, who'd listened to the experts in atmospheric physics.  These experts contributed their knowledge of sea level.  It's not as straightforward as I wrote above.  There are large uncertainties.  From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:

Projecting sea-level rise, however, comes with large uncertainties, since the physical processes causing the rise are complex. They include the expansion of ocean water as it warms, the melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps and of the two large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and the pumping of ground water for irrigation purposes. Different modeling approaches yield widely differing answers. The recently published IPCC report had to revise its projections upwards by about 60 percent compared to the previous report published in 2007, and other assessments of sea-level rise compiled by groups of scientists resulted in even higher projections. The observed sea-level rise as measured by satellites over the past two decades has exceeded earlier expectations.

“It this therefore useful to know what the larger community of sea-level experts thinks, and we make this transparent to the public,” says lead author Benjamin Horton from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “We report the largest elicitation on future sea-level rise conducted from ninety objectively selected experts from 18 countries.” The experts were identified from peer-reviewed literature published since 2007 using the publication database ‘Web of Science’ of Thomson Reuters, an online scientific indexing service, to make sure they are all active researchers in this area. 90 international experts, all of whom published at least six peer-reviewed papers on the topic of sea-level during the past 5 years, provided their probabilistic assessment.

The survey finds most experts expecting a higher rise than the latest IPCC projections of 28-98 centimeters by the year 2100. Two thirds (65%) of the respondents gave a higher value than the IPCC for the upper end of this range, confirming that IPCC reports tend to be conservative in their assessment.

The experts were also asked for a “high-end” estimate below which they expect sea-level to stay with 95 percent certainty until the year 2100. This high-end value is relevant for coastal planning. For unmitigated emissions, half of the experts (51%) gave 1.5 meters or more and a quarter (27%) 2 meters or more. The high-end value in the year 2300 was given as 4.0 meters or higher by the majority of experts (58%).

While we tend to look at projections with a focus on the relatively short period until 2100, sea-level rise will obviously not stop at that date. “Overall, the results for 2300 by the expert survey as well as the IPCC illustrate the risk that temperature increases from unmitigated emissions could commit coastal populations to a long-term, multi-meter sea-level rise,” says Rahmstorf. “They do, however, illustrate also the potential for escaping such large sea-level rise through substantial reductions of emissions.”

B..b..but ice can't melt wails Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts protests.  He reckons ice can't melt in the heat because it hasn't all melted yet.  He puts up various charts of sea level rises and says: Look it hasn't happened yet so it's not going to happen, even if we burnt enough carbon to heat the world by six degrees!

He doesn't use those exact words, but that's what he's arguing - archived here.  Rising seas really bug Anthony.  His little brain cannot cope with the fact that seas rise and fall as ice melts and freezes.  Anthony writes:

So, neither tide gauges nor satellite measurements suggest acceleration is occurring. Even if we use the worst case value, 3.2 mm/year cited by CU in a linear calculation……we get this:

years left 2100-2013= 87 years

3.2 mm/year * 87 years = 278.4mm  or 0.2784meter…about a quarter of the 1 meter (or more) claim made by Rahmstorf.

Rahmstorf isn’t working in reality.

Anthony thinks that 90 of the world's leading specialists from 18 different countries are not "working in reality".  He is also trying on the Serengeti tactic of ignoring 89 of the 90 experts and focusing in on one expert, Stefan Rahmstorf - with mild success as the comments show (the worst comments are not repeated below).

Anthony Watts knows all about unreality...

Working in WUWT "reality"...

Funny thing is that deniers are the first to argue that just because global temperatures have been rising dramatically doesn't mean they'll continue to do so.  Anthony Watts has, with a completely straight face, posted articles that predict that earth is about to cool dramatically.  Like David "funny sunny" Archibald's prediction that earth will suddenly get cold.  Colder than it was in the little ice age.  Colder than it was in the entire Holocene.  And all this within seven years!  :

Source: Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

From the WUWT comments

I don't think any normal person bothered to comment on the article at WUWT, probably because of Anthony's silly take on the matter and his rejection of the fact that ice melts when it gets hot enough.  Some WUWT-ers accept the fact that seas are rising but don't want to do anything to slow it down. Others are like Anthony Watts and reject the science of water phase changes.  (Archived here)


phillipbratby says "experts don't know nuffin'":

November 22, 2013 at 8:17 am
Oh no, not more expert projections. How many times have these “experts” been correct?

Doug Proctor says "it's a falicy":

November 22, 2013 at 8:27 am
The linear fixation is based on either a belief in or a refutation of the linear effect of rising CO2 concentrations. That is the falicy that needs to be beaten down. All fall from that.

Bob B. says hopefully that global warming might suddenly come to a complete standstill in January 2100:

November 22, 2013 at 8:49 am

“While we tend to look at projections with a focus on the relatively short period until 2100, sea-level rise will obviously not stop at that date.”

Do we really know with any certainty that it will not stop at that date? It has to stop at some point. I guess the word “obviously” is meant to squelch that question.

son of mulder idly wonders if any of the world's leading experts have studied rising seas in any details and says:

November 22, 2013 at 9:03 am
Is there a quantified breakdown into the magnitude of the different components that make up the predicted one meter rise. eg thermal expansion, melting glaciers, melting Greenland, melting Antarctic, what else? Which are the big contributors? It would then be interesting to look at the evolution of the history of each component so that necessary changes in rate can be pinned down and the underlying expected components more deeply examined as too root cause of change. It will be far more interesting than holding a poll.

Pete Smith sez 'we've put a man on the moon' and asks are we men or mice? Adapt or die (excerpt):

November 22, 2013 at 9:14 am
...We’ve put a man on the moon. We’ve got a 30 year old space probe at the heliopause, at the edge of our solar system. We’ve got telescopes in space that can analyzer the atmospheres on planets hundreds of light years away. There is a nuclear powered partially autonomous robot tank trundling around another planet FGS.

And they’re worrying about a 1m rise in sea level.

What are we? Men or Mice? Our forebears colonised a hostile world, and some of us are losing sleep over the fact that in 3 centuries, the sea may be very slightly higher than it is now.

Adapt or die people.

Colin agrees with Pete Smith says (excerpt):

November 22, 2013 at 9:59 am
...Thanks Pete – very well put. Adapt or die…….our ancestors did. Why are we such timid creatures all of a sudden?

I guess Pete Smith and Colin eschew silly things like fire extinguishers, seat belts and life jackets.


Despite landing on the moon and all the other achievements lauded by Pete Smith, 1sky1 says "there aren't 90 people in the world who know about oceans and ice":

November 22, 2013 at 11:00 am
The fact of the matter is that there aren’t 90 persons in the world who are truly expert on the complexities of sea-level variations. But that becomes immaterial when the myopic standard of recently published papers is used as the criterion of expertise. It flies in the self-indulgent, make-believe world of academia.

Mike Maguire thinks that if we burn all the fossil fuels the impact will suddenly stop and everything will go back to the way it was.  He hasn't heard of the carbon cycle or know anything about geology, physics or probably any science.  He thinks looking ahead 300 years is way too long. (I wonder how he copes with using light years in astronomy?)  He suffers from "short-termism" disease.  He says:

November 22, 2013 at 9:14 am

“Overall, the results for 2300 by the expert survey as well as the IPCC illustrate the risk that temperature increases from unmitigated emissions could commit coastal populations to a long-term, multi-meter sea-level rise,” says Rahmstorf”

Projecting out to the year 2100 has an extreme amount of uncertainty. Going to 2300 is totally absurd. The world will have run out of fossil fuels to burn centuries earlier. There will either be a new source(s) to replace it or humans will have long since run out cheap energy and the rapidly diminishing supplies cost multiple times what we pay now and only the rich can afford, the small amounts left. This should play out well before the end of this century.

The “results for 2300″ and “expert survey” are a contradiction. No authentic expert (knowledgeable of factors mentioned above) in this field would project to the year 2300. This is 200 years beyond outlandish.

By contrast with Mike Maguire, noaaprogrammer says we should be looking ahead more than 300 years. [Sou: if we look ahead far enough seas will rise much higher]:

November 22, 2013 at 10:52 am
Why do they stop at the year 2300? If we go far enough into the future with their 1st-grader straight line reasoning, we will have global inundation. Is that what Noah, I mean NOAA wants?

Bruce Cobb is another one who uses his common sense to say that ice can't melt in the heat and says:

November 22, 2013 at 9:26 am
“Expert assessment: Sea-level rise could exceed 1 meter in this century”
Common sense assessment: SLR, which has been rising at about 6″ per century for centuries will probably continue to do so, or even decline slightly due to expected cooling.

Jim G can't make up his mind about whether science is right or not and, in a very mixed up comment, says:

November 22, 2013 at 9:28 am
Sea Level! And so, since there is nothing we could do about it, even were it true, and even were it due to activities of people ( which it is not) as opposed to naturally occuring events, and since China and India are not going to change their ways, WTF? Most of us do not live on the coast, in any event, and the costs of even trying to change it in terms of human suffering are probably greater than any potential benefits, assuming one could do anything about it. Forgetaboutit.

tadchem says - who cares about the next generation?  It's all about me in the here and now:

November 22, 2013 at 10:03 am
The “high-end estimate below which they expect sea-level to stay with 95 percent certainty until the year 2100″ translates to “they are 95% sure sea level rise will be LESS than that.”
It makes no sense to worry about the sea level in 2300 before 2200 at the earliest; that will still be beyond the lifetime of anybody able to think rationally in 2200.

JimS says bravely "I'm not scared.  No, really - I'm not scared...not scared...not scared..refuse to panic...":

November 22, 2013 at 10:50 am
The warmist alarmists use projections as scare tactics, like the result of what rising sea levels will be or could mean. They are like a lion roaring at you from a close distance, but when you look into the lion’s mouth, it has no teeth. Regardless, the lion’s roar will scare you, and some even into a panic mode.

TRM is down deep in denial, even by WUWT "standards" and says:

November 22, 2013 at 10:55 am
What if the whole idea that CO2 will heat the Earth up is WRONG? Oh we never thought of that because we know that isn’t true. What happens to ocean levels when the Earth cools? Uhhh …..

As much as I hope Dr Libby was wrong I’m thinking it will take another ice age to get rid of these ID10T types.

Anymoose says:

November 22, 2013 at 11:36 am
The whole sea level rise bogey man is a bunch of B.S. There are hundreds of ports around the world with docking facilities, some of which have been in use for centuries. Who has ever heard of one of them being abandoned because of sea level rise?

Sou:...any decent planner will make sure new ports are being built higher these days.


Mike Dubrasich takes a pollyanna approach and says:

November 22, 2013 at 12:01 pmHooray for rising sea levels.

MarkW has what he thinks is an ingenious solution and says:

November 22, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Few if any of the buildings currently in existence will still be in existence in 200 to 300 years.
Long before the seas take these buildings, they will have fallen down on their own from old age.
The simple solution is to let these buildings age away, and then not replace them when they do.
A no cost solution to rising tides and cities.

John W. Garrett is very relieved to have a science denier like Anthony Watts telling him what to think and says (excerpt):

November 22, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Thank god for WUWT and Mr. Watts, eh? It’s my “go to” source for information.

Chuck L decides there should be a poll of science deniers to see how sea levels will change:

November 22, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Hey, I have a great idea! We have many scientists, engineers, and other experts posting here. Let’s take a poll of people’s estimates of sea level rise and get it published. It would be at least as valid as Rahmstorf et al’s paper, and most likely, more so.