NC20 Burton a glimpse of reality sir.

I still have a number of drafts of responses to various Dave NC20 Burton arguments laying around unfinished.  But it's lost its interest and other things are going on.  He's likewise lost interest in our debate and stepped out the backdoor.  But, I do want to give him an official good-bye (barring interesting developments).  I'm even going to keep my opinions to myself and allow an oceanographer to explain what the real world looks like.

NC20 I challenge you to point out flaws or misinformation in the following from John Englander.   Bet you can't do it.  

Til the next time.   ;- )

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Deadly floods - Maryland to China - have surprising connection to rising sea level

By John Englander | August 4, 2016

Risks and Impacts of Rising Sea Level blog

http://johnenglander.net/Ellicott-City-Floods

Climate Change / Ocean Impacts Blog

Last Saturday night when many had planned a nice evening out for dinner in quaint Ellicott City, a devastating flood occurred, largely destroying the downtown. Six inches of rain in just two hours caused the record water mark in that historic Maryland community.

Flash floods, monsoon rains, and rivers overflowing their banks are becoming common headlines.  Ellicott City joins the rapidly growing list of deadly deluge that in the last month spans West Virginia, Texas, France, Germany and China. All of these inland floods resulted from extreme rainfall. 

Shining light on NC-20 Burton's devious distortions

In this post I'm getting back to looking at Dave 'NC-20' Burton's narrative.  We've been having a bit of a debate over at the comments section of WUNC's article by Dave Dewitt titled, "The Changing Carolina Coast: Managing the Threat of Rising Water."   Dave jumps around a lot so I'm focusing on specific quotes.  In this case I want to answer some of his responses to my previous post.  

In that write up I included many links to sources indicating observed accelerating sea level rise, but NC-20 keeps trying to drag attention back to the last century and what he fancies "insignificant" sea level rise.  He also makes much of "no coastal Sea Level acceleration," but he leaves out all the details since they would undermine his claims.  I chose to look at those details and learn.  In this post along with my commentary I'll be sharing authoritative sources so the interested can learn and decide for themselves.

Consider our Earth as a real physical entity, it's cryosphere (glaciers, sea ice) have been in a stable condition for the past few thousands of years, since the end of the last ice age.  The documented warming of the past century acted to soften up and fracture that ice mass, like a block of ice left on a warm sidewalk.  Of course melting (and water contribution) is slow during these initial phases of warming!  That's no cause for ignoring what is happening this century. 

An Introduction to Changes due to Glaciation and Current Conditions

by Ralph W. Tiner

Perhaps his biggest deception is making an issue of the stately rate of sea level rise during the last century, then pretending it's a guide to this century.  Such deliberate misperceptions needs to be confronted.  

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NC-20  Burton writes:  Thank you, CC  for the links, and for verifying what I told you, even if you apparently didn't read it.

I wrote, "DavidAppell, do you now agree that that graph (of sea-level at Brest, France) shows "no apparent acceleration" since the turn of the 20th century? However, if you use the data all the way back to 1807, there is acceleration, because the rate of sea-level rise accelerated slightly in the late 19th century. Here's the spreadsheet ... Here's the chart …"

For comparison, here's a quote from the Wöppelmann et al paper that you cited:

"Both instrumental records show a roughly coincident increase in the rate of relative sea-level rise around the end of the 19th century."

As you can see, we agree.

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"accelerated slightly" - slightly???

In NC-20's cartoon world-view this rather dramatic shift in sea level trend makes no impression at all.  An example of how the bias-filter alters the perception of reality, since it wouldn't do to recognize how dramatic that acceleration actually was.  

Also, please notice, it was no up-tick followed by a drop.  It's been relentlessly uphill ever since.  Thus NC-20 is left with nit-picking the "acceleration rate"  during the previous century with all his might.  All the while doing his best to ignore the observed acceleration in our 21st century.

26:00 min. - GRAPH - Global Trend Sea Level, (Reconstruction from EMD residuals)

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-reveals-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise-20055

NC-20 Burton Why Do You Deliberately Misrepresent the Brest Tide Gauge Data?

Dave NC-20 Burton repeatedly claims he's never been shown to be wrong, he also loves claiming that sea level rise has not accelerated over the past century and that Tide Gauges are the gold standard.  One of his favorite Tide Gauges is at Brest, France which dates way back.  With graph in hand Dave claims “As you can see, there's been no apparent acceleration in sea-level rise there in the last hundred years.”

Interestingly when one looks at that graph through a slightly different filter, 

it's not so clear cut at all.  

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1.php

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Here's what happens when scientists do the numbers:

0.42 ± 0.18 mm/year Brest -1800s

1.14 ± 0.18 mm/year Brest -1900s

0.39 ± 0.17 mm/year Liverpool -1800s

1.22 ± 0.25 mm/year Liverpool - 1900s

Tide gauge datum continuity at Brest since 1711: France's longest sea-level record

Guy Wöppelmann, Nicolas Pouvreau, Alain Coulomb, Bernard Simon, Philip L. Woodworth

Now that I've given the punchline, let me back track and focus on one of the important differences between Dave Burton's approach and my own "process".  

I love to learn, I want to learn from my mistakes, I thirst for more and better information to help develop my overall understanding of this Earth I love and that we depend on for everything.  On the other hand, NC-20 Burton is into repeating agenda focused PR soundbites and refusing to listen to anything anyone else is trying to explain.  Never allowing new information to percolate and be incorporated into his overall world view.  
We'll start with Burton's spiel:

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Dave Burton to citizenschallengeAE • 12 days ago

By far the greatest part of the anthropogenic contribution to GHG levels has occurred since the 1940s. What matters for validating or falsifying the hypothetical causal relationship between GHG levels and sea-level rise is what happened to the rate of sea-level rise in response to the addition of all that CO2 & CH4.

The answer is, nothing at all. Increasing CO2 from under 310 ppmv to ~400 ppmv, and increasing CH4 from 1.2 ppmv to 1.8 ppmv, has caused no increase at all in the rate of sea-level rise.