This is both my personal learning project and my contribution in the struggle to confront the ongoing Republican/ libertarian assault on rational science and constructive learning, as manifested in their malicious strategic Attacks on Science ~ A collection of articles, scientific resources, plus my own essays and indepth critique of various presentations from unidirectional-skeptics ~ Hopefully a resource for the busy, yet discerning, student who's concerned about the health of our Earth
I came across this freshly released study that highlights the short coming of relying on Tide Gauges for estimating global mean sea level rise. I'm posting this because it reminded me of my Virtual Debate with Dave Burton of NC-20 the North Carolina ocean science denial organization. They are real estate focused folks who wanted the NC legislature to ignore climate science and sea level rise predictions when planning for the future. A stellar example of willful ignorance in action. Dave continues crusading for ignoring the facts at our disposal. He has an obsessive focus on Tide Gauges and he claims that TGs prove that oceanographers don't know what they are talking about when they warn of accelerating sea level rise and it's consequences based on a combination of measurements. Dave has particular contempt for satellite data, but never could explain why, in any meaningful manner. {Dave, here's some more reasons that explain why you are wrong about your sea level claims.}
Tide Gauge Records May Underestimate 20th Century Sea Level Rise
Are long tide gauge records in the wrong place to measure global mean sea level rise? (Thompson et al. 2016)
Abstract: Ocean dynamics, land motion, and changes in Earth’s gravitational and rotational fields cause local sea level change to deviate from the rate of global mean sea level rise.
Here, we use observations and simulations of spatial structure in sea level change to estimate the likelihood that these processes cause sea level trends in the longest and highest-quality tide gauge records to be systematically biased relative to the true global mean rate.
The analyzed records have an average 20th century rate of approximately 1.6 mm/yr, but based on the locations of these gauges, we show the simple average underestimates the 20th century global mean rate by 0.1 ± 0.2 mm/yr. Given the distribution of potential sampling biases, we find < 1% probability that observed trends from the longest and highest-quality TG records are consistent with global mean rates less than 1.4 mm/yr.
Recently over at Center For Inquiry's forum which I frequent regularly, I was confronted with another joker repeating Poptech's conjured description of me as a guilt-riddled strung-out druggie and lost soul. Poptech's slander is his way of responding to my fact checking, critiquing and challenging his claims. Others of his persuasion have been quick to embrace the bull-pucky.
It seems that every few weeks some new joker finds Poptech's article and gleefully grabs his ammunition and blasts aways at me in the middle of some other discussion. That they are dealing with figments of their own imagination matters not one wit to them - it's character assassination they're interested in.
What else is there for someone who consistently misrepresents serious climate science? They sure don't have solid evidence on their side. Nor do they have the requisite intellectual curiosity to learn about the things they don't understand. When something confuses them, assume the worst, with ignorant certitude.
Distraction is their game. Marginalize the messenger and marginalize the message. Spend all your time wrestling with ad hominems and there's no time to talk about our real world situation. Go straight for the jugular of your opponent with anything you can conjure.
There's a certain level of sick humor in reading how these minds can spin facts into tailor-made fictions - but of course, in the end all they want is to destroy any opponent in order to stifle fundamental climate science education - no commitment to honesty, or integrity, or respect for others. Tragically absolutism and paranoia driven resentment seems all their hearts are capable of.
Admitting to and learning from mistakes is treated like blasphemy by the Republican contrarian crowd. Nothing funny about that either.
Still, since they want to get down and personal, I can respond with something personal. Consider it another character reference . . . . . . .
It started as a note to a friend . . .
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Hey D, I never did tell you the end of the story regarding those stairs. As you might remember last autumn I had me a hernia. It took months longer to get repaired than it should have, towards the end of that run I was actually invalided, bed to recliner, no lifting. Innards all funky. Not fun. Feeling every bit of my sixty years and reconciling myself to the end of my sweet vigorous years. Among other dark thoughts was the realization that my carpentry days were totally behind me now. Which they are, but to ponder that I’d never be able to climb walls again, or help set beams and rafters, or one of my favorites building stairs - that's a different thing from choosing not to do it. A proud physical old man wrestles with those realities as the 'diminishing' advances with the years.
On occasion I've pointed out examples of well meaning, but frankly, piss poor climate science communication. Experts doing more to enable confusion peddlers than helping to educate and clarify our rather straightforward situation. For example,
Recently a visit to John Englander's risks and impacts of rising sea level educational blog reminded me of an article he posted earlier this year that I had wanted to highlight and add to my collection over here at WUWTW. Never got to it then, but I am doing so now. The rest I'll leave to John Englander whom I thank for giving me permission to repost and share his informative articles.
NASA - good science but terrible communication about Sea Level Rise
I really like NASA. As nearly everyone agrees, they do great science — both about the cosmos and about our home planet. Having gotten that well deserved compliment out in front, I am screaming mad at something they just published.
Headlines from the very reputable SCIENCE magazine, to the climate change denying tripe are carrying the headlines such as:
"Thirsty continents are slowing down expected sea level rise, scientists say"
There are dozens of variations. In SCIENCE magazine it was slightly more refined:
"A decade of sea level rise slowed by climate-driven hydrology”
Some of the climate-denier or "skeptic" media were much more aggressive, suggesting that NASA says that climate change would not cause rising sea level — but I will not even support those disinformation sites with a link.
Here is what the actual NASA story says, and where it is INCREDIBLY misleading, to the point of being irresponsible.
•Essentially it says that global warming (a/k/a climate change) — warmer than in centuries — has dried the soils so that they are absorbing more water.
•That water would have gone to the ocean, raising sea levels.
•Overall the effect is about 20% of the average global sea level rise.
Those facts are fair and decent science. But the way it's all presented, leads most readers to believe that climate change could slow rising sea level which is just flat out WRONG! [sound the Buzzer.]
Looks like we've got a debate doing after all. Dave Burton has challenged me with a series of questions. It's in the comments section after Dave Dewitt's "The Changing Carolina Coast: Managing The Threat Of Rising Water," at http://wunc.org/post/changing-carolina-coast-managing-threat-rising-water#stream/0 As these things go it's gotten confused and convoluted in a hurry. That's another tactic, Gish Gallop, tons of distracting questions that offer nothing, so far a learning is concerned, more like playing catch the ball with a dog, but using a bucket full of balls. Though I'll admit Dave was kind enough to come up with 5 "straight forward" questions. In this retelling I've been able to add a little more information.
either here or on my web site.{Perhaps that has more to do with your lack of introspection and inability to admit being wrong and learning from said mistake.} But do feel free to try, Pete. Please be specific. I suggest that you start with my list of five things which are surprising to many climate alarmists:
1. Do you dispute the fact that the new NC Sea Level Rise Reportabandons the 2010 Report's erroneous claim that sea-level rise has accelerated due to global warming?
2. Do you doubt that the Obama Administration's Dr. Steven Koonin has acknowledged that sea-level is rising no faster now (at ~400 ppmv CO2 & 1.8 ppmv CH4) than it was 70 years ago (at ~310 ppmv CO2 & 1.1 ppmv CH4)?
3. Do you dispute the fact that incremental increases in atmospheric CO2 levels have a diminishing effect on temperatures?
4. Do you doubt that Scientific American called anthropogenic CO2 "The Precious Air Fertilizer," because it is so dramatically helpful for agriculture?
5. Do you question the fact that most of the apparent rise in sea-level at Duck, NC is because the land near the southern Chesapeake is sinking, rather than because the sea is rising?
Can you answer "yes" to any of those questions, Pete, or do you acknowledge that I am correct about all five?
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Please note, how NC-20 Dave’s response has devolved this into a lawyerly word game. Tossing down carefully crafted misdirections cloaked in questions, and demanding only a simple Yes/No answer. No details please. That’s how political games work. But, that is not how any of us learn anything, nor how science works.
These global warming dialogues, exchanges, debates (whatever you want to call them) should be about constructive learning experiences so I’ll try to make some lemonade out of the lemons NC-20 Dave dropped at my feet.
What I'm doing here is dissecting and documenting the contrarian debate. I share these experiences because I believe rational students and others who want to communicate serious science and engage in a constructive learning debate, (as opposed to the political circus debate), should become aware of what they are dealing with when trying to rationally dialogue/debate with Republican/libertarian characters as they endlessly parrot their bankrupt jingles and ignore everything you try so hard to explain.
It will help younger students and scientists to be aware that every marginally effective communicator of serious science will find themselves under the sort of malicious venomous attack by dogma driven zealots that I've walked into. The particulars will be different, but just as disconnected from actual reality. Oh and yeah, they will toss every descriptive back in your face - though they never show the integrity to actually support their labeling with thoughtful arguments or real world facts.
The thing to realize is that constructively engaging with others seems anathema to the new Republican/libertarian types. Ridicule, marginalize, demonize seems their only response to challenging facts. As for learning about what our society and we ourselves are doing to our Earth's biosphere and climate system, which enables that life-support system our society is dependent on - there, confusion and stupefaction is their goal.
Now to the funny, but sick, irony I want to share.
As predicted I might add. Rather then engaging in a good faith dialogue (or dispute if you like) Dave went running to his echo chamber to complain about what a nasty character I am and Poptech was happy to provide a stage.
He posted the following comment at his blog, after marching over to that Republican/libertarian climate science attacking crowd to do his whining. With their typical nasty brand of barroom derision, they are having a field day piling it on. That it's contrived bull-shit purely intended to demean the messenger and self-justify their willfully ignoring the substance of the information I've confronted him/them with, goes over their heads. They seem to feel oh so holy, not a doubt in their minds.
But that is one of the big tragedies, these people won't even honestly listen to what one is trying to explain to them. They simply cannot handle crediting anyone they disagree with, everyone who opposes their self-certain fantasy, becomes the enemy and is open to any and every attack. They reframe every fact to suit their faith-based conviction. It's like they've created their own fantasy world from start to finish, one founded on their political dogma and paranoia - one frighteningly devoid of all basic awareness/appreciation for the physical world we depend on.
My bias is understanding and appreciating this planet and I stand prepared to engage in a constructive debate with any climate science "skeptic-contrarian" type who has the intellectual integrity to actually listen to what his opponent is saying! And then to respond directly to those points, without juvenile meaningless distractions. As for my character references, what can I say? http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2016/05/considering-character-references.html)
As promised earlier here is a reposting of a recent article written by Sou over at HotWhopper.com. In it she takes a closer look Dave Burton's statements and then clearly explains how he's manipulated facts to fabricate his lying talking points.
Over at WUWT, deniers are clutching at straws to continue to reject science in the face of all the "hottest evers". They really, really liked the last big El Nino in 1997-98, but they really, really dislike this current El Nino of 2015-16. It means they'll have to wait a while before they can start pointing to a drop in the surface temperature although Anthony Watts keeps jumping the gun and is excitedly telling his readers that a La Nina is just about here.
Here is some of what they got up to today, with a moan and lots of misdirection from a WUWT regular commenter called Dave Burton about another bane of deniers' existence - rising seas (archived here). But first, what's been happening...
This visualization shows total sea level change between 1992 and 2014, based on data collected from the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, and Jason-2 satellites. Blue regions are where sea level has gone down, and orange/red regions are where sea level has gone up. Since 1992, seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches.
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It's not a trick - sea level rise is accelerating
Dave Burton is complaining about a NASA web page on sea level. The chart at the top on the right hand side is from satellite readings. Remember, deniers love satellites in areas where the readings are difficult and have wide error margins, like lower tropospheric temperature. They don't like satellite readings when the error margins are smaller and the results don't suit their purpose, like sea level change. Here is the chart Dave didn't like:
NASA also showed a chart of sea level derived from tide gauge analysis from John Church and Neil White of the CSIRO, and didn't put up a big sign saying what the trend was. What Dave Burton didn't point out and maybe didn't even see, was that the chart only showed data to 2000. (I don't know why there isn't a plot using the most recent data.) Anyway, Dave probably missed seeing that because he didn't read the label in big letters, and didn't look at the x axis which was from 1870 to 2000:
So there's an entire article at WUWT all complaining that there wasn't a little sign up the top of the tide gauge data (to 2000) when there was a little sign about the satellite record (to 2016). Dave Burton's whiny WUWT article starts off with this piece of conspiracy theorising:
NASA’s tricky sea level newsletter
Anthony Watts / 6 hours ago April 7, 2016
Dave Burton writes:
Those NASA guys are tricky.
Click the “Update: Sea level change / Ocean rising at 3.42 mm per year” link in their latest Newsletter and you’ll see the big, bold “3.42 mm/yr” near the top of the web page, and two very similar-looking graphs of sea-level: one from satellites, and one from tide stations.
Since only one rate of sea-level rise is shown, the casual observer is likely to think that the same 3.42 mm/yr rate applies to both graphs. Here’s a screenshot:
Under the chart, Dave Burton says to "Look closer at the scales, and do the arithmetic". Pity he didn't take his own advice. The rate of change of the top chart is the rate of change for the period from 1993 to 2016. The rate of change of the bottom chart, or what Dave said he estimated, was for the period from "the late 1920s" to 2000. Those are different periods. Dave wrote:
Since the late 1920s it shows a slope of about 1.8 mm/yr, with no evidence of acceleration. But those tricky NASA guys scaled it to look like the slope is about the same as the first graph. It’s pretty obvious why they didn’t show a rate of sea-level rise for that graph.
Dave Burton's tricks
Dave Burton ranks highly on the conspiracy theory meter thinking NASA is out to trick deniers who don't know how to read a chart. What about the data? What tricks is Dave Burton trying to pull? :D
From the late 1920s to 2000 or so, the slope is 1.8 mm/year. From 1993 to 2016 the rise has been 3.42 mm/year. That means Dave is wrong. There is evidence of acceleration.
While deniers like to claim that the rate of sea level rise hasn't increased, if you go by what Dave Burton is saying, he's accepting there has been an acceleration of sea level rise. It used to be less than 2 mm a year and now it's up to 3.42 mm a year.
The paper by Church and White (2006) used tide gauge data through to 2001, with the data downloadable from the CSIRO website. In that paper the authors look at the data in different ways. For example, because there is a slope change, they wrote that you could: "do linear regressions on the two halves (1870– 1935 and 1936 –2001) of the record. The slopes are 0.71 ± 0.40 and 1.84 ± 0.19 mm yr 1 respectively". That 1.84 mm / year is close enough to Dave's estimate though the periods are slightly different.
The other thing is that Dave complains about adjustments to the tide gauge data. He wrote:
What’s more, the second graph is not really just from tide gauge data; it’s from tide gauge data inflated by a +0.3 mm/yr GIA “adjustment,” to subtract off the rate by which the sinking ocean floor is hypothesized to reduce sea-level rise.
He reckons that this is wrong and that "The real rate of coastal sea-level rise from averaged tide gauge measurements is only about 1.4-1.5 mm/yr (under six inches per century), and that rate hasn’t increased since the late 1920s." He quoted from the website of some denier who referred to a NOAA tide gauge website, which reported "the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year". That looks to be in need of an update. But more importantly, Dave saw fit to subtract the GIA adjustment from the NOAA data when it wasn't applied in the first place. He's a double adjuster.
There's sea level rise and there's sea level rise
There are at least two main reasons for people wanting to know about sea level rise:
Coastal planning and management
Monitoring global climate change
The thing is that for coastal planning, what people want to know is how much and how fast the sea will encroach on the coastline. They need to know the sea level relative to the local land. That will vary depending on where you are. The NASA website Dave was moaning about is for global climate change. (In case you missed it there's a big clue on the top left of the web page.) In that case the information needed is how fast are the oceans filling up? How quickly is ice melting. How quickly is the warmer water expanding? That's a different purpose and scientists need to have an indication of the change in the total volume of water in the world's oceans. That's why they allow for glacial isostatic adjustment.
Dave doesn't want to adjust the global tide or other sea level data to allow for glacial isostatic changes? What about barometric adjustments - does he approve of that? What about slippage where the tide gauge sinks or rises relative to the land surface? Does he want that adjusted for? Why doesn't he just pull a number out of the air and claim that the seas are falling? I think that probably what is happening, apart from Dave wanting to reject any and all climate science, is that he is mixing up the data and the purpose for which the data are used.
If he's concerned about the coast where he lives, then he'll need local information more than global. Different coastlines have markedly different rates of rising and sinking relative to the sea level. There's been a lot of research into what happens around the world.
On the other hand, John Church and Neil White were researching global change in their more recent 2011 paper (as in previous papers). In the introduction they explain:
Correctly estimating historical sea-level rise and representing global ocean heat uptake in climate models are both critical to projecting future climate change and its consequences. The largest uncertainty in projections of sea-level rise up to 2100 is the uncertainty in global mean sea level (GMSL) and thus improving estimates of GMSL rise (as well as regional variations in sea level) remains a high priority.
The fact that they were looking at global change, not local change, is why they allowed for glacial isostatic adjustment, and wrote:
Here, the ongoing response of the Earth to changes in surface loading following the last glacial maximum were removed from the tide-gauge records using the same estimate of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA; Davis and Mitrovica 1996; Milne et al. 2001) as in our earlier study (Church et al. 2004).
John Church and Neil White know what they are doing. They tested for all sorts of things and added that they even tested for the impact of the changes in dam storage, writing:
We tested the impact of correcting the tide-gauge measurements for terrestrial loading and gravitational changes resulting from dam storage (Fiedler and Conrad 2010). For the large number of tide gauges used in the period of major dam building after 1950 (mostly over 200), the impact on global mean sea level is only about 0.05 mm year−1 (smaller than the 0.2 mm year−1 quoted by Fiedler and Conrad, which is for a different less globally-distributed set of gauges). Tests of similar corrections for changes in the mass stored in glaciers and ice caps, and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets show that these effects have an even smaller impact on GMSL.
Glacial isostatic adjustment
If you're wondering about glacial isostatic adjustments, there's some information on the U Colorado sea level page. What it is is the mantle is still responding to the reduction in ice cover from around 20,000 years ago. Ice is heavy. When it melts, it means that some land surfaces pop up higher and the bottom of some oceans are falling relative to the Earth's centre. In other words, the oceans are getting bigger. If it wasn't for global warming, the sea level would be falling if there were no change in the actual volume of sea water. The CU Sea Level Research Group said in 2011 that "Including the GIA correction has the effect of increasing previous estimates of the global mean sea level rate by 0.3 mm/yr."
Meg Rosenburg submitted a video to the 2013 AGU student contest on the subject of glacial isostatic adjustment, which will give you some idea of the cause and effects:
AGU Student Video Contest: Rebound: An Earth Story
Description: My submission is an education video about glacial isostatic adjustment, why we have glacial and interglacial periods, how we can reconstruct climate history, and how the Earth is responding to the retreat of the continental glaciers. I found that this topic brings together a lot of different areas of study relevant to AGU, from geophysics, to orbital mechanics, to geochemistry.
If you have the time, there are 17 videos from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level 80th Anniversary Workshop on Sea-Level Science, including one specifically on glacial isostatic adjustment, by Giorgio Spada.
How much has the volume of ocean water changed?
You can see the chart in Figure 1 up top to see how much the volume of water in the ocean has changed in recent years. On the CSIRO website there's a data update of Church and White (2011), which goes up to 2013 for tide gauges and 2014 for satellite (altimeter), and is plotted below. The data are available at different levels of detail. I've just plotted the annual data. The faint grey lines are the upper and lower error margins for the tide gauge data. I've added linear trend lines for different periods as shown in the legend and on the chart. (Hover over the chart to see more detail):
It's obvious from the above that the rate of sea level rise has been increasing. However the CSIRO website has a caution and a reference to a workshop. I'm not sure what it means, but I'll copy it below:
We are currently attempting to more thoroughly evaluate the methodology and to improve the reconstruction so that it better represents the variability (Legresy et al., Workshop on Global and Regional Sea Level variability and change, Mallorca, Spain, June 2015).
Dr John Church’s record in sea-level rise research, with CSIRO colleagues, the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, and international climate science agencies, has helped generate a new benchmark in understanding the science and issues of sea-level rise.
Dr Church is coordinating lead author of the Sea Level Change chapter of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. As the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation, Michel Jarraud, highlights in his foreword: 'The findings in this book will help set priorities for research and for observational activities over the next decade that will contribute to future assessments of the IPCC. In turn, improvements in these assessments will better inform governments, industry and society in their efforts to formulate sound mitigation an adaptation responses to rising greenhouse gas concentrations and sea level, and their economic and social consequences.'
More about sea level changes
As well as the videos I talked about earlier, there's the 2011 video with Jerry X. Mitrovica of Harvard, in which he addresses some of the false claims by fake sceptics. (He also says what many of us have found, that by investigating denier's claims, you can learn much.) I recommend these two Mitrovica talks, fascinating and eye opening.
Postmodern Geophysics and Ice Age Climate
Published on May 14, 2014
Lecture given at Oregon State University on May 9, 2014 by Jerry X. Mitrovica
What do ancient eclipse records kept by Babylonian, Chinese, Arabic and Greek
scholars, and fish tanks, built by wealthy Romans during100BC-100AD, contribute to our understanding of modern climate change? Dr. Jerry X. Mitrovica will describe the important role these archaeological treasures have played in the understanding of sea-level rise and how they help scientists both "fingerprint" sources of recent sea level changes and make more accurate projections of future sea levels.
Jerry X. Mitrovica, Ph.D., is a Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and the Director of the Earth Systems Evolution Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
