tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42764159645317483712023-12-12T13:43:28.360+00:00Climate Hype, Bluster and Lies Exposed - whatever their originForecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.
Yogi BerraMostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-76522747334723221182017-01-21T18:33:00.000+00:002017-01-22T10:50:20.089+00:00Supreme Irony #2 - Mauna Loa and Hawaiian TemperaturesSupreme irony #1 was of course "<a href="http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2017/01/assessing-recent-warming-2017-put-in.html">Assessing Recent Warming</a>" which I posted on the 7th. of this month, in which I pointed out that the temperature at Washington Airport, just across the Potomac river from the capital, home of NOAA and the then president "Halt climate change" Barack Obama, had shown no warming since 1974. This time I start with the Mauna Loa Observatory, home of the "Keeling Curve" of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Here's a superb topographical map of Hawai'i Island, known in the state of Hawai'i as "Big Island", for obvious reasons - its area is greater than all the other islands of the archipelago put together. If you want to save a copy, click on it and right-click "save image as" or whatever your browser uses:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Odq2KU1c2eA/UAFH4EfO00I/AAAAAAAABAw/wgyMCg1gIDMQxNlDzrT-yX596gsGfQ0hACPcB/s1600/2000px-Hawaii_Island_topographic_map-en-loihi.svg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="526" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Odq2KU1c2eA/UAFH4EfO00I/AAAAAAAABAw/wgyMCg1gIDMQxNlDzrT-yX596gsGfQ0hACPcB/s640/2000px-Hawaii_Island_topographic_map-en-loihi.svg.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The red circle marks Lo'ihi, a "sea-mount", an active undersea volcano which will eventually break the surface (in at least decades) as a new addition to the island chain. Mauna Loa is the big brown peak in the middle, and a dirt track leads eastward to the town of Hilo, where there's Hilo Airport, home to an atmospheric weather station. There they record temperature etc, and <a href="https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/ozonesondes/ozonesondes.html">launch radiosondes</a> to measure temperature, humidity and ozone to 30-35 km altitude:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oozTrSgSO9U/WINglPfvGpI/AAAAAAAAC68/yaB6MnS3dP4ByeuoOb0pAfCN6oBUsbJrACPcB/s1600/img_launching_sonde_hilo_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oozTrSgSO9U/WINglPfvGpI/AAAAAAAAC68/yaB6MnS3dP4ByeuoOb0pAfCN6oBUsbJrACPcB/s640/img_launching_sonde_hilo_1.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve about to release a radiosonde. Source: <a href="https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/ozonesondes/ozonesondes.html">NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory</a>.</td></tr>
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Check out the link to <a href="https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/ozonesondes/ozonesondes.html">ESRL</a> - well worth a read, and abstracts of papers on the role of ozone in climate included. The big "hill" in the background is dormant volcano Mauna Kea, at 4205 metres the highest point in the islands. Notice the grey volcanic soil - it took a great deal of work from the 1920s onwards to level the site for the airport, cutting away hard volcanic rock. Read about that <a href="http://aviation.hawaii.gov/airfields-airports/hawaii/general-lyman-fieldhilo-international-airport/">here</a> if you're interested - it's another good read. Happily, all the fixed surface instruments are on grass - I'd imagine that soil would get hotter than tarmac in the sun. OK - enough background stuff - cut to the chase, and the temperature record for Hilo Airport since 1950 - the reason for the start date will become clearer later.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkdzLE4WYEI/WINoimlWtTI/AAAAAAAAC7U/OnB-rxJRh50qDXvKJHsFgUNY3Fguoe45wCPcB/s1600/Hawaii_22692_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EkdzLE4WYEI/WINoimlWtTI/AAAAAAAAC7U/OnB-rxJRh50qDXvKJHsFgUNY3Fguoe45wCPcB/s640/Hawaii_22692_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hilo Airport 1950-2016. Source: <a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=425912850000&ds=7&dt=1">GISS</a></td></tr>
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I've circled 1966 in red - no warming since then until 2015-6. Global Warming delayed by a mere 50 years. Next temperature station to the NW is at Kahului Airport on Mau'i Island:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xM9emCNZu1E/WINrBAZSQ6I/AAAAAAAAC7s/xOMMfcGiFHgQn0jsYn6P7cKYQenucRhFgCPcB/s1600/Hawaii_28274_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xM9emCNZu1E/WINrBAZSQ6I/AAAAAAAAC7s/xOMMfcGiFHgQn0jsYn6P7cKYQenucRhFgCPcB/s640/Hawaii_28274_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kahului Airport, Mau'i. Source: <a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=425911900000&ds=7&dt=1">GISS</a></td></tr>
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No warming at all since 1977 - I can't use a Loess filter because of the gap from 2005 to 2009, so I've plotted a linear trend 1977-2016. It's essentially flat. Skip an island or two with no current data, and we come to Honolulu, the capital city, and of course UHI - Urban Heat Island effect. Has that affected the temperature record? Almost certainly, however:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9CUvlxH8Ro/WINwZwAkHhI/AAAAAAAAC8Q/UXVRqkb31KIux8T5RwEwmeLhwWu6NaYiwCPcB/s1600/Hawaii_19512_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9CUvlxH8Ro/WINwZwAkHhI/AAAAAAAAC8Q/UXVRqkb31KIux8T5RwEwmeLhwWu6NaYiwCPcB/s640/Hawaii_19512_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Honolulu Airport 1950-2016. Source: <a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=425911820000&ds=7&dt=1">GISS</a></td></tr>
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I've circled 1984 - no warming since then. Notice there's no 2015-16 "spike" either, as seen at Hilo. I suspect something has happened there to cause it. I'm checking it out. Last but not least, further to the NW is Lihue, Kaua'i Island:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ftd6SbW75c/WINzjLQt45I/AAAAAAAAC8k/Xbo6iPCQrso4whtntVp5_Gg0NmBdYpdyQCPcB/s1600/Hawaii_6420_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ftd6SbW75c/WINzjLQt45I/AAAAAAAAC8k/Xbo6iPCQrso4whtntVp5_Gg0NmBdYpdyQCPcB/s640/Hawaii_6420_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lihue, Kaua'i, 1950-2016. Source: <a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=425911650000&ds=7&dt=1">GISS</a></td></tr>
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No warming since 1970 (circled). So there we have it - an entire US state with a documented lack of "Global Warming" - it never <b>was</b> global, and there are many places all round the globe showing either a total lack of late-20C warming, or even cooling. If many Sceptics would stop their incessant and negative complaining about GHCN/GISS adjusted and "homogenised" temperature data, and actually use the extensive unadjusted database, there's an Aladdin's cave of debunking material to be extracted and put to good use.<br />
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Why did I start most of the charts at 1950? I found a real little gem from the EPA, "<a href="https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/impacts-adaptation/climate-change-HI.pdf">What Climate Change Means for Hawaii</a>". It kicks off:<br />
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Hawaii’s climate is changing. In the last century, air temperatures have increased between one-half and one degree (F).</blockquote>
Not a very good start - even though my charts above start at 1950, it's clear there's been a rise of around 1°C (almost 2°F) since then, and on full plots as much as 2°C (3.6°F) over the last 100 years. There's even a graphic to illustrate their error:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--3fii0cGlBk/WH68t8C45iI/AAAAAAAAC6U/j3rkv2_M6ZsVzuSQoU901Vn-oYZcCa-ewCPcB/s1600/EPA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--3fii0cGlBk/WH68t8C45iI/AAAAAAAAC6U/j3rkv2_M6ZsVzuSQoU901Vn-oYZcCa-ewCPcB/s640/EPA.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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It's clear that Honolulu (top, brown) has increased from below 76°F to well over 77°F. There's no mention of the fact that even on this confused and confusing spaghetti-chart, it's clear that Honolulu hasn't warmed since the mid-1980s; that Hilo hasn't warmed since the mid-1960s; that Lihue hasn't warmed since about 1970, and that Kahului (grey, barely visible) hasn't warmed since the late 70s.<br />
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After some waffle about ocean warming (they say about 1°F) around Hawaii damaging coral reefs, there's this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Greenhouse gases are also changing the world’s oceans and ice cover. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, so the oceans are becoming more acidic. The surface of the ocean has warmed about one degree during the last 80 years. Warming is causing snow to melt earlier in spring, and mountain glaciers are retreating. Even the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking. Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate.</blockquote>
Errr - CO2 reacts with sea-water, but it doesn't form carbonic acid (H2CO3). The author's using kindergarten science. Even highly-carbonated soft drinks have only very tiny amounts of carbonic acid in them. Most of the CO2 remains as CO2 in solution. Look it up, as I did, whereas this author, in common with many alarmists and their camp-followers, never have. Sea-water is strongly buffered, and the addition of CO2 reduces the alkalinity (negative pH) only a little. Saying that CO2 increases "acidity" is like saying that a reduction in your bank overdraft has "increased your bank balance".<br />
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Warmer air can certainly hasten snow-melt in spring, but it would take decades to centuries for slightly warmer air to have any effect on glaciers and ice-shelves. Air simply hasn't got the heat capacity and therefore content to do it over a few years, despite what glaciologists touchingly believe - they do have very vivid imaginations, and clearly know no relevant physics. A strong negative feedback is that melted surface ice (water!) evaporates, cooling the water. Latent heat of evaporation for water is an order of magnitude greater than latent heat of fusion for ice. Glaciologists also touchingly believe that surface melt-water can "permeate cracks in the ice" to reach the bottom of a glacier and "lubricate the base", so the glacier will advance faster. Ice-cold water can somehow permeate ice which is below freezing point to reach the base? Yeah, right - more "settled science".<br />
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Try heating your bath water using a fan-heater in the bathroom (don't try this at home!). In a well-insulated room, it would take weeks for the water to reach equilibrium with the hot air temperature. Topic for a future post here!<br />
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"Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate." - well it's not. The "great ice sheet" on Greenland was shrinking, but that's slowed in recent years, not accelerated. The only part of the "great ice sheet" on Antarctica to display any melting was at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula - the very tip is even outside the Antarctic circle. Several papers published recently show that the "increasing temperatures" on the peninsula flattened off after 1990, and have been decreasing over the last 10-15 years. Topic for another post!<br />
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Satellite data shows global sea-level to be increasing at about 3 mm/year since 1993, and despite what some Sceptics would have you believe, in general, satellite data agrees fairly well with tide-gauge data. However, a big factor in the 3 mm/year figure was due to surface warming in the western Pacific, that's PDO and ENSO related, and both indices are reversing trend. Also, the satellites sample a lot of sea surface where there are no tide-gauges, and so it's likely that previous estimates of global rise have been under-stating the case for many decades. In general, tide-gauges show no late 20th.C acceleration correlating with atmospheric warming at all. Dozens of mainstream papers document that. I'll finish this post soon, I promise, just one last quote:<br />
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Since 1960, sea level has risen between two and eight inches relative to Hawaii’s shoreline. Sea level rise can make Hawaii’s existing coastal hazards—such as waves, hurricanes, tsunamis, and extreme tides—even worse. Additionally, rising sea level has accelerated coastal erosion, which has resulted in wetland migration and cliff collapse. Chronic erosion has affected more than 70 percent of Kauai and Maui’s beaches over the last century.</blockquote>
"Between two and eight inches" is a pretty wide estimate. Eight inches is the accepted estimate for global rise from 1880. I'll go into that in a post (in preparation) about sea-levels around the archipelago. I accept that many beaches have suffered "Chronic erosion", but I contend that the main reason is steeply-shelving beaches, which are prone to "Chronic erosion" whether sea-level is rising or not. That's well-documented. Have a look at this from the same EPA document:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YbPC67y-dx0/WIOimNSooBI/AAAAAAAAC9Q/Bq_tQ6vy1IkFwyLZPq1GLwixBPTopwEQACPcB/s1600/image+from+climate-change-HI-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YbPC67y-dx0/WIOimNSooBI/AAAAAAAAC9Q/Bq_tQ6vy1IkFwyLZPq1GLwixBPTopwEQACPcB/s640/image+from+climate-change-HI-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Firstly, that pale golden sand is <b>not</b> Hawaiian sand. The islands are composed of very dark basaltic rocks - they're the tops of very large volcanoes. The natural colour is the same as the soil in the "balloon" picture above. The islands are famous for their "<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hawaii+black+beaches&newwindow=1&client=opera&hs=UEN&biw=1234&bih=581&tbm=isch&source=lnt&tbs=isz:lt,islt:svga&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG6sjS6tPRAhUnCcAKHWBwAeUQpwUIFA&dpr=1.1#imgrc=_">black beaches</a>". Secondly, it's easy to see that the bottom shelves steeply down from the beach. This is the flank of a volcano, after all. The beaches aren't threatened by "climate change" but by natural erosion and longshore currents and rip-tides off the beaches - they're well documented too. Currents dangerous for swimmers erode beaches. Rising sea-levels must play a small part, and a gradually increasing part, but these exaggerated claims are just the usual "blame everything bad on climate change" meme. "What Climate Change Means for Hawaii" is just the usual alarmist nonsense, permeated by a few truths. Par for the course,<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-42228743132161058152017-01-08T09:24:00.000+00:002017-01-10T13:50:42.827+00:00Antarctica Larson C ice shelf close to becoming one of biggest icebergs ever - or notReally? The entire ice shelf? It must be true, if the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0106/Antarctica-Larson-C-ice-shelf-close-to-becoming-one-of-biggest-icebergs-ever">Christian Science Monitor says so</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Antarctica's Larson C shelf is about equal to the area to the state of Delaware. Its collapse might be imminent. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JANUARY 6, 2017 —Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey now believe that the fracturing of the Larson C ice shelf from the polar cap is imminent, after a rift in the shelf grew vertiginously in the last month of 2016. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The thread connecting Larson C to the rest of Antarctica is now just more than 65,600 feet long, surveyors from the Britain’s Project Midas say. </blockquote>
Apart from the ice shelf being about equal in area to Delaware, not one of the statements is correct. They're not simply misquotes. The BAS scientists believe nothing of the kind - their article is titled <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/iceberg-calve-larsen-ice-shelf/">Giant iceberg set to calve from Larsen C Ice Shelf</a>, and that the <b>calving</b> is imminent. Surveyors from Britain’s Project Midas believe nothing of the kind either. <a href="http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/larsen-c-ice-shelf-poised-to-calve/">They wrote</a>: (my bold)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Larsen C Ice Shelf poised to calve</b>. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5000 sq. km following further substantial rift growth. After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km during the second half of December 2016. Only a final 20 km of ice now <b>connects an iceberg one quarter the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf</b>.</blockquote>
No one but a moron could fail to grasp what those articles stated and meant. CSM author <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/About/People/David-Iaconangelo">David Iaconangelo</a> clearly isn't a moron, but is what might be euphemistically termed "economical with the truth".<br />
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Grist isn't much better - an editor retitles a "cross-post" and reorders images with <b>captions removed</b> to give a very different impression to the linked <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/large-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-antarctica-21028">Climate Central article</a>.<br />
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"Antarctica’s fourth biggest ice shelf is on the verge of collapse" shrieks <a href="http://grist.org/article/antarcticas-fourth-biggest-ice-shelf-is-on-the-verge-of-collapse/">Grist</a>. However, the picture at the top of the page<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ND5t32Ty6N4/WHHOYWCawMI/AAAAAAAAC3E/CIV_6hlnizsptMQ4GHp9bvH_YT_gLv1LwCPcB/s1600/nasa-ft-image.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ND5t32Ty6N4/WHHOYWCawMI/AAAAAAAAC3E/CIV_6hlnizsptMQ4GHp9bvH_YT_gLv1LwCPcB/s640/nasa-ft-image.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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.... is of the Larsen B disintegration in 2002. There's no caption, nor is it referred to in the text. Below the author's name is stated "Cross-posted from <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/large-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-antarctica-21028">Climate Central</a>". That link is to the article by CC author <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/people/andrea-thompson">Andrea Thompson</a>, titled <b>Large Iceberg Poised to Break Off From Antarctica</b>. Does she, or any of her quoted sources think "Antarctica’s fourth biggest ice shelf is on the verge of collapse"? No, this is just Grist once again changing a word or two, or misquoting a link or two, to push its catastrophic view of anything that might be remotely connected to what they think is the coming apocalypse. Also, that picture has been cropped to remove a distance scale at the bottom, as the Larsen B was about the size of the piece splitting from Larsen C. The scale might give the game away. The one in the CC article, is captioned quite correctly <b>The breakup of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf as it looked on Feb. 23, 2002. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IDQ77ny_kqE/WHH2IFOK8JI/AAAAAAAAC3k/8n3albEc1cUKkMRnqC2WiF6LKgEaYAPiQCPcB/s1600/9_12_14_Andrea_LarsenB_1050_700_s_c1_c_c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IDQ77ny_kqE/WHH2IFOK8JI/AAAAAAAAC3k/8n3albEc1cUKkMRnqC2WiF6LKgEaYAPiQCPcB/s640/9_12_14_Andrea_LarsenB_1050_700_s_c1_c_c.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The breakup of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf as it looked on Feb. 23, 2002.<br />
<strong style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10.85px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Click image to enlarge.</strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "palatino" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.85px; font-style: italic;"> Credit: NASA</span></td></tr>
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It's not a "cross-post" - Grist has altered the title, removed image captions, and reordered images from the CC article, to create the impression that the images are of Larsen C. Removing captions, editing images, and showing them out of context to create an impression not intended by the original author is more than breaking the rules of attribution, it's fraud.<br />
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Unusually, I find the CC article generally factual, informative, and links back up the text, though there are one or two disputed claims.<br />
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Author <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/people/andrea-thompson">Andrea Thompson</a> headed her article with this close-up image of part of the rift:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6ZUAXAks5P4/WHHOYZH1OHI/AAAAAAAAC3E/7B-B0kmzFjMqfXVdvjW9FS0vKjg4IUmhACPcB/s1600/1_6_17_Andrea_CC_LarsenCrift_1050_737_s_c1_c_c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6ZUAXAks5P4/WHHOYZH1OHI/AAAAAAAAC3E/7B-B0kmzFjMqfXVdvjW9FS0vKjg4IUmhACPcB/s640/1_6_17_Andrea_CC_LarsenCrift_1050_737_s_c1_c_c.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A large rift in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf, photographed by NASA's IceBridge mission on Nov. 10, 2016. The rift surged ahead by about 10 miles in late December.<br />
<strong style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10.85px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Click image to enlarge.</strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "palatino" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.85px; font-style: italic;"> Credit: </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/rift-in-antarcticas-larsen-c-ice-shelf" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #0075ae; font-family: Georgia, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10.85px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">NASA/John Sonntag</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
In the Grist "cross-post", that image follows a a paragraph about the disintegration of Larsen B, and has the caption "NASA". The intention is now obvious, and totally unforgivable.<br />
<br />
On a more factual note, the rift is about 500m (metres, not miles) wide, 350m deep in the centre, and is currently about 80km long, according to <a href="http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/larsen-c-ice-shelf-poised-to-calve/">Project MIDAS</a>. Some articles say 80 miles, and if the scale on the graphic below, is accurate, 150 km would be more like it. Not that it matters to you maybe, but I'll check. It's not unusual for genuine mistakes to go unnoticed by authors:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8WpS_qdIeU/WHHKPVXL66I/AAAAAAAAC2k/GxLRsCElPsAmlAKKR_mPXSuY1rfAivD3wCPcB/s1600/rift-map-2017.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="434" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8WpS_qdIeU/WHHKPVXL66I/AAAAAAAAC2k/GxLRsCElPsAmlAKKR_mPXSuY1rfAivD3wCPcB/s640/rift-map-2017.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/larsen-c-ice-shelf-poised-to-calve/">Project MIDAS</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The graphic is of more than a little personal significance - I was born just about where the second "s" in Swansea is located top right (although Wales is a little further north, and a lot warmer than its position on that graphic.<br />
<br />
I've read a few articles that say words to the effect that the rift has just been discovered (where did they get that?), but it's <a href="http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/a-growing-rift-in-larsen-c/">been monitored</a> since 2011.<br />
<br />
Even the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38522954">BBC</a> managed to get it right:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Huge Antarctic iceberg poised to break away </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, scientists say. A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away.<br />
Larsen C is the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica.<br />
Researchers based in Swansea say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.<br />
Larsen C is about 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.<br />
Researchers have been tracking the rift in Larsen C for many years, watching it with some trepidation after the collapse of Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and the sudden break-up of the Larsen B shelf in 2002.</blockquote>
They even end the piece with<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We are convinced, although others are not, that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one," said Prof Luckman.<br />
"We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse - but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable; not that it will immediately collapse or anything like that."<br />
As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels. But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean. This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels.<br />
According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm.<br />
All that is very much in the future. There are few certainties right now apart from an imminent change to the outline of Antarctica's icy coast.<br />
"The eventual consequences might be the ice shelf collapsing in years to decades," said Prof Luckman,<br />
"Even the sea level contribution of this area is not on anybody's radar; it's just a big geographical event that will change the landscape there."</blockquote>
Prof. Luckman is one of the Project MIDAS team, based in Swansea. I like very much "We are convinced, although others are not...". It shows some humility, the acknowledgement that it's a personal team view. A good note to end on.<br />
<br />
UPDATE 10/1/2017<br />
<br />
I've been scanning through articles on the British Antarctic Survey website. I've always thought<br />
the BAS to be a reactionary and somewhat alarmist bunch. I had already noticed this, on the <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/iceberg-calve-larsen-ice-shelf/">page referenced above</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Glaciologist Professor David Vaughan OBE, Director of Science at British Antarctic Survey, said, “The calving of this large iceberg could be the first step of the collapse of Larsen C ice shelf, which would result in the disintegration of a huge area of ice into a number of icebergs and smaller fragments.<br />
“Because of the uncertainty surrounding the stability of the Larsen C ice shelf, we chose not to camp on the ice this season. Researchers can now only do day trips from our Rothera Research Station with an aircraft nearby on standby.”</blockquote>
In 2015 they <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/new-study-shows-antarctic-ice-shelf-is-thinning-from-above-and-below/">said this</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The team, who continue to monitor the ice shelf closely, predict that a collapse could occur within a century, although maybe sooner and with little warning. A crack is forming in the ice which could cause it to retreat back further than previously observed. The ice shelf appears also to be detaching from a small island called Bawden Ice Rise at its northern edge.</blockquote>
"Within a century" - what's changed in the 19 months since that statement? Prof. Vaughan has dramatically changed his view - back in 2015:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Professor David Vaughan, glaciologist and Director of Science at BAS, says:<br />
“When Larsen A and B were lost, the glaciers behind them accelerated and they are now contributing a significant fraction of the sea-level rise from the whole of Antarctica. Larsen C is bigger and if it were to be lost in the next few decades then it would actually add to the projections of sea-level rise by 2100.</blockquote>
On the same page - "within a century" and "the next few decades". However, contradictions like this aren't unusual on the BAS website. Members have very differing views, and careful reading reveals very different "facts" too. The thickness of the Larsen B shelf, which disintegrated in 2002, is given as 200 metres, and on one page a very unlikely and obviously incorrect 1km. That last article I quoted, actually a <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/new-study-shows-antarctic-ice-shelf-is-thinning-from-above-and-below/">press release</a> titled <b>New study shows Antarctic ice shelf is thinning from above and below</b> has this lead-in:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Larsen C Ice Shelf — whose neighbours Larsen A and B, collapsed in 1995 and 2002 — is thinning from both its surface and beneath. For years scientists have been unable to determine whether it is warming air temperatures or warmer ocean currents that were causing the Antarctic Peninsula’s floating ice shelves to lose volume and become more vulnerable to collapse. This new study takes an important step forward in assessing Antarctica’s likely contribution to future sea-level rise. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The research team combined satellite data and eight radar surveys captured during a 15-year period from 1998–2012. They found that Larsen C Ice Shelf lost an average of 4 metres of ice, and had lowered by an average of one metre at the surface. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Lead author, Dr Paul Holland from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says:<br />
“What’s exciting about this study is we now know that two different processes are causing Larsen C to thin and become less stable. Air is being lost from the top layer of snow (called the firn), which is becoming more compacted — probably because of increased melting by a warmer atmosphere. We know also that Larsen C is losing ice, probably from warmer ocean currents or changing ice flow. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“If this vast ice shelf — which is over two and a half times the size of Wales and 10 times bigger than Larsen B — was to collapse, it would allow the tributary glaciers behind it to flow faster into the sea. This would then contribute to sea-level rise.”<br />
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, with a temperature rise of 2.5°C over the last 50 years.</blockquote>
"Air <b>is</b> being lost", "probably because of increased melting by a <b>warmer atmosphere</b>". Here's a plot of the "warmer atmosphere" since 1995:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YZYSVMFr1Rk/WHTi-Df9kOI/AAAAAAAAC4Q/i94SrDdvx1skZ1HbsGgU8qp48U504NyDQCPcB/s1600/Larsen+C_18194_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YZYSVMFr1Rk/WHTi-Df9kOI/AAAAAAAAC4Q/i94SrDdvx1skZ1HbsGgU8qp48U504NyDQCPcB/s640/Larsen+C_18194_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Larsen C - <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=700892620009&ds=7&dt=1">GISS unadjusted data</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
I don't think so. What's amazing, is that many glaciologists and climate scientists never keep up-to-date with the latest data, but rely on published papers, many of which are out of date within a few years. I read something a dated a few weeks ago by a glaciologist, publishing regularly in this field, who cited "the continuing warming on the Antarctic Peninsula". An Ostrich is a large flightless bird, claimed to occasionally put its head in the sand. Some scientists are sightless birds, with their heads continually in the sand. More on the "continued warming" (/sarc off) soon.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-19341048355513580902017-01-07T05:41:00.001+00:002017-01-21T18:38:11.457+00:00"Assessing recent warming" (2017) put in perspectiveScienceMag (AAAS) published a "rebuttal" of the whole idea of any 21st century pause in global temperature increase a few days ago. The Sceptical blogosphere is awash with indignant posts (and comments) claiming data tampering, or "torturing the data until it confesses". I'm reserving my judgement, except to say that the "pause" has been widely acknowledged by climate scientists, referred to in the last IPCC report (AR5), and concerns <b>surface</b> temperature. The <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207.full">Hausfather et. al. article </a>(not AFAIK peer-reviewed, not that that means much these days) concerns <b>sea surface</b> temperature, a wholly different kettle of fish (I really didn't think of that as a pun, honest!).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ABSTRACT </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sea surface temperature (SST) records are subject to potential biases due to changing instrumentation and measurement practices. Significant differences exist between commonly used composite SST reconstructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST), the Hadley Centre SST data set (HadSST3), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SSTs (COBE-SST) from 2003 to the present. The update from ERSST version 3b to version 4 resulted in an increase in the operational SST trend estimate during the last 19 years from 0.07° to 0.12°C per decade, indicating a higher rate of warming in recent years. We show that ERSST version 4 trends generally agree with largely independent, near-global, and instrumentally homogeneous SST measurements from floating buoys, Argo floats, and radiometer-based satellite measurements that have been developed and deployed during the past two decades. We find a large cooling bias in ERSST version 3b and smaller but significant cooling biases in HadSST3 and COBE-SST from 2003 to the present, with respect to most series examined. These results suggest that reported rates of SST warming in recent years have been underestimated in these three data sets.</blockquote>
Here's Figure 1 from the article:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9UpnSPnFII/WHB9S3zHkaI/AAAAAAAAC14/8JBlHUwpz10G0qAglLPEDHyCe1r07OySACPcB/s1600/F1.large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="468" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9UpnSPnFII/WHB9S3zHkaI/AAAAAAAAC14/8JBlHUwpz10G0qAglLPEDHyCe1r07OySACPcB/s640/F1.large.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Fig. 1 Comparison of the different ERSSTv3b, ERSSTv4, buoy-only, and CCI SST monthly anomalies from January 1997 to December 2015, restricting all series to common coverage. ERSSTv4 is shown as a broad band for visualization purposes; this band does not represent an uncertainty range. The series are aligned on the 1997–2001 period for comparison purposes. Spatial trend maps are also available in fig. S1, and a similar comparison with Argo data is shown in fig. S2.<br />
<br />
What it amounts to, is that the authors have found data series which match their agenda, and found reasons to ignore the other data series which don't. Par for the course these days. As it happens, I've been compiling a set of regional temperature records using GISS data (unadjusted of course), since before Christmas. Just to be different, I'm not ignoring data which doesn't match my agenda, I'm concentrating on large areas of the globe which show interesting results on analysis. More in later posts. For the moment, I thought it might be interesting and amusing to look in detail at the temperature record nearest to President Obama's residence (soon to be vacant for a very short period) and NOAA headquarters at 1401 Constitution Avenue, Washington DC. The thermometer is at Washington National Airport, just 5km across the Potomac river from NOAA, just inside Virginia.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IInPNfxmcgE/WHBwS1spQtI/AAAAAAAAC1c/q5CadZgRb3cMT3KngZqL2NU2Sq_dUbwiQCPcB/s1600/Washington_16345_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IInPNfxmcgE/WHBwS1spQtI/AAAAAAAAC1c/q5CadZgRb3cMT3KngZqL2NU2Sq_dUbwiQCPcB/s640/Washington_16345_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1880-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The 11-year Loess filter shows an uptick around the middle 2000s, after a bumpy "plateau" from 1973. No late 20th C warming evident at all. However, the Loess filter works in a way which includes future change (weighted). If the filter range is constrained to 1880-2009, we get:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1a56ZQDGxeI/WHBwdbWW78I/AAAAAAAAC1c/YZnTO9PnPzgB5pdfKj21TlF5xIg5Tda7ACPcB/s1600/Washington_18428_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1a56ZQDGxeI/WHBwdbWW78I/AAAAAAAAC1c/YZnTO9PnPzgB5pdfKj21TlF5xIg5Tda7ACPcB/s640/Washington_18428_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1960-2016, Loess range to 2009</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Warming began in 2010, after a 27-year "pause". Washington itself would undoubtedly show warming, mostly due to the "Urban Heat Island" effect, but the airport is on the west bank of the Potomac, effectively rural and uncontaminated. A little ironic, that a thermometer just across the river from the nation's capital, seat of a president pledged to "halt global warming" shows no 21st C warming until 2010. The plateau runs from 1974, when he was 12yo - he can't claim responsiblity!<br />
<br />
More soon, beginning with Pacific islands. Watch this space.<br />
<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-85684388234823886432016-12-29T01:05:00.000+00:002017-01-21T18:36:49.894+00:00"Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America" - final reality checkLast year I shredded the Sallenger et al. paper "Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America" <a href="http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2015/09/hotspot-of-accelerated-sea-level-rise.html">here</a>. Now, with updated CGPS data from <a href="http://www.sonel.org/-GPS-.html?lang=en">SONEL</a>, I can finally place the headstone on its grave. South of Boston, the coast is subsiding, and subsiding at a generally increasing rate all the way south to Florida. Sandy Hook, a rather inconsequential spot, which all boat traffic in and out of New York harbour pass with barely a glance, had the honour of being one of the few sites along the NW coast with published GPS data. I say <b>had</b>, because SONEL has carried out a massive update of sites worldwide, adding fairly up-to-date data to many. Sandy Hook now has a downloadable record from 1995 to 2013. The record shows that the downward rate has been increasing from less than 2 mm/year in the late 1990s to over 3 mm/year in the three years 2011-2013. I've used the entire record for station SHK5, 2007-2013, which plots at -2.57 mm/year. The SONEL analysis shows -2.65 mm/year, but I've taken account of a few short-term gaps in the data; I assume they didn't. Here's the <a href="http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=1896.php">SONEL</a> plot:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qwetY-NByxM/WGRbWOp-JQI/AAAAAAAACxI/ah39sl2LGhMvi26drpGhWE9gOYUjsSrKwCPcB/s1600/Sandy+Hook+SHK5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="370" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qwetY-NByxM/WGRbWOp-JQI/AAAAAAAACxI/ah39sl2LGhMvi26drpGhWE9gOYUjsSrKwCPcB/s640/Sandy+Hook+SHK5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
And mine:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lYLQx0M4roE/WGRbWPXSHkI/AAAAAAAACxI/2WkhytpeKKkp-0Ep_QqDvGUo0zwS3w3SQCPcB/s1600/Sandy+Hook+GPS_32176_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lYLQx0M4roE/WGRbWPXSHkI/AAAAAAAACxI/2WkhytpeKKkp-0Ep_QqDvGUo0zwS3w3SQCPcB/s640/Sandy+Hook+GPS_32176_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Sandy Hook 1993-2015 (Sea-level satellite era):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NZTZZR4gjJ8/WGRbWP9fb8I/AAAAAAAACxI/gYJa4GHav1sBB-fTnk7bvRYWsLALRY50gCPcB/s1600/Sandy+Hook_1045_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NZTZZR4gjJ8/WGRbWP9fb8I/AAAAAAAACxI/gYJa4GHav1sBB-fTnk7bvRYWsLALRY50gCPcB/s640/Sandy+Hook_1045_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The relative rate (relative to the tide-gauge/land) is 5.36 mm/year. Absolute rate (relative to the Earth/Geoid) is 2.79 mm/year. The subsidence rate is almost half the relative rate.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=2722.php">SONEL</a> plot for New York Battery Park, where both tide-gauge and GPS pillar are located:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EL1Y7BmYqpM/WGRbWJ7LazI/AAAAAAAACxI/xRwvuhRVefIwM7FV4gKXrbihlF2cOXT0gCPcB/s1600/New+York+Battery+Park+NYBP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="372" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EL1Y7BmYqpM/WGRbWJ7LazI/AAAAAAAACxI/xRwvuhRVefIwM7FV4gKXrbihlF2cOXT0gCPcB/s640/New+York+Battery+Park+NYBP.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The rate during the late 1990s was around -1 mm/year. My analysis:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AUaU8xieDmg/WGRbWNCj1yI/AAAAAAAACxI/m2p0sMwOB8kE2cdNFHjK9LSfwyXN-aUYACPcB/s1600/New+York+GPS_8044_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AUaU8xieDmg/WGRbWNCj1yI/AAAAAAAACxI/m2p0sMwOB8kE2cdNFHjK9LSfwyXN-aUYACPcB/s640/New+York+GPS_8044_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The chart for New York (Battery Park) 1993-2015:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-13MgQxOmOtI/WGRbWLzfzOI/AAAAAAAACxI/O5WnZODS3xw-NhFGu_QdxR6azBqT7fOOgCPcB/s1600/New+York_20192_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-13MgQxOmOtI/WGRbWLzfzOI/AAAAAAAACxI/O5WnZODS3xw-NhFGu_QdxR6azBqT7fOOgCPcB/s640/New+York_20192_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Relative rate is 3.92 mm/year; absolute rate, allowing for subsidence of 1.93 mm/year is 1.99. The "Hotspot" isn't one of sea-level rise, but one of subsidence. Sallenger et al. were also being somewhat disingenuous when they claimed that the rates of subsidence along the coast "were almost constant", and therefore didn't affect their complex analysis or results. They weren't constant when the paper was written, and the rates are generally increasing over the last 20 years; some very little, some like New York and Sandy Hook, significantly increasing. The "Hotspot" was an artefact of questionable and almost impenetrable analysis, ignoring the inconvenient past, and coastal subsidence.<br />
<br />
Note also the obvious cycles which appeared in the record after 1970 - large and small alternating. Sallenger et al. used <a href="http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/">PSMSL</a> annual average data, and so they wouldn't have been obvious. Take some data and torture it using complex and (to me, impenetrable) statistical techniques I imagine most sea-level experts and authors couldn't fathom, and get the answer you want. What I do know is that those techniques aren't suited to relatively small datasets, which is what you have if you use annual average data. Also PSMSL omit years from annual data, even if just one month is missing. The annual data Sallenger et al. used had quite a few years missing, shrinking their database even further.<br />
<br />
Something else Sallenger et al. failed to mention is that a comparable rate of rise occurred before the mid-1950s. Somehow their "long-term" analysis wasn't quite that long:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kdx7_FaL--M/WHvDYbX6qAI/AAAAAAAAC48/qvKABWdSBGgPxx13vMil9w4gtJBOi90rACPcB/s1600/New+York_31798_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kdx7_FaL--M/WHvDYbX6qAI/AAAAAAAAC48/qvKABWdSBGgPxx13vMil9w4gtJBOi90rACPcB/s640/New+York_31798_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trend, in mm/year for 30-year sliding window, end year on x-axis.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
The red circle marks 2009, the end year for the "Hot-spot" analysis. It's easy to see the rate of increase was much higher prior to 1953. If the whole record shows an inconvenient truth, just analyse part of it.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-89407394265796538202016-12-27T02:56:00.004+00:002016-12-27T02:56:56.111+00:00Vanuatu - something unusual and somehow encouragingI'm busy updating spreadsheets for Pacific islands, mainly those in the Pacific Sea Level Project of the Australian National Tidal Unit - the straight-up and factual branch of the BOM. I updated Vanuatu last of all, as I'm working in alphabetical order. Here's the chart for the full record from 1993 to last month (November 2016):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VaEjagrMczM/WGHQ-NvmZSI/AAAAAAAACvY/FRjlDlYvqRQFEN9-EjYv1kZZTG4fXMeIwCPcB/s1600/Vanuatu_11630_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VaEjagrMczM/WGHQ-NvmZSI/AAAAAAAACvY/FRjlDlYvqRQFEN9-EjYv1kZZTG4fXMeIwCPcB/s640/Vanuatu_11630_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The level has dropped to almost exactly what it was in 1993, from a peak in 2008-9. It seems to be a combination of SOI dropping from its high in 2009-10, a drop in sea temperature from 2008, and a rise in barometric pressure after 2011. A change of 1 hPa (=millibar) results in a change of 1cm in sea-level. Higher pressure, lower sea-level, and vice-versa. "Storm-surge" is due to low pressure (and high onshore winds) in a storm system. This is SOI to November 2016:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N3NfLpLYzX0/WGHSYFsGhkI/AAAAAAAACvw/gqsjwgWYcrUsyXNlwZLXOcucGgImjmzRwCPcB/s1600/SOI_10609_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N3NfLpLYzX0/WGHSYFsGhkI/AAAAAAAACvw/gqsjwgWYcrUsyXNlwZLXOcucGgImjmzRwCPcB/s640/SOI_10609_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
I'm checking on nearby (well, relatively) stations to see if there's anything remotely similar. I've already checked CGPS station data; here's that for Port Vila; the tide gauge is about 1 km away at the Cruise-ship port.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OpbKmAuWNes/WGHVQ8ICABI/AAAAAAAACwQ/Nu0ESoyXBwkNsoXkJPLk4m--6PLfGPrqgCPcB/s1600/Vanuatu+PVTL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OpbKmAuWNes/WGHVQ8ICABI/AAAAAAAACwQ/Nu0ESoyXBwkNsoXkJPLk4m--6PLfGPrqgCPcB/s640/Vanuatu+PVTL.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=3369.php">SONEL</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Although the red velocity analysis on the left says "Not robust", there's little change. More later maybe.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-3855749136616170172016-12-23T21:10:00.000+00:002016-12-27T06:40:59.416+00:00The Road to Solar - No, it's a Solar Road!The sheer stupidity of some people is a constant source of amazement to me. Some bureaucrats and politicians (national and local) have their heads so far up their backsides they can't see the bleedin' obvious. There are quite a few stories on news sites over the last two days, about a project, a very expensive project, to install a "Solar Road". The best quote is from a "green" techno-site <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/22/a-french-town-just-installed-the-worlds-first-solar-road/">engadget</a> -<br />
A French town just installed the world's first 'solar road'<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2d32; font-family: "guardian textegyp" , serif; font-size: 18px;">The tiny town of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France no longer has to worry about how it will power its street lights. </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/22/solar-panel-road-tourouvre-au-perche-normandy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">The Sun will handle that</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2d32; font-family: "guardian textegyp" , serif; font-size: 18px;">.</span></blockquote>
The link is to a guardian article. There are similar articles in the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4058752/France-unveils-world-s-solar-panel-road-0-6-mile-stretch-provide-energy-power-entire-village-s-street-lights.html">Daily Mail</a>, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2016/12/21/en-normandie-une-route-solaire-au-banc-d-essai_5052352_3244.html">Le Monde</a>, and hundreds of others across the world. Street lights - they come on automatically at dusk. Dusk - when the sun has dropped below the horizon. When Solar panels <b>aren't producing any electricity</b>. Not one of the journalists, nor the many commenters on those pages, some of whom were critical of the relatively vast cost of the kilometre-long solar array spotted that it won't be generating any electricity when the street-lights are due to switch on. Simply amazing<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-24155577326982747062016-12-23T14:18:00.000+00:002016-12-23T14:18:15.843+00:00Australia's "Poster Children" updated and analysedI read a great deal of absolute rubbish on the 'net about sea-levels. Someone speaking at the American Geophysical Union meeting recently claimed that Miami was suffering more frequent flooding due to sea-level rise. Ignoring for a moment that much of Miami was already below tidal high-water before it was built, proper examination reveals that the rate of subsidence is greater than the rate of sea-level rise. At Cape Canaveral, further north, the measured rate is just over 5mm/year, but CGPS (Continuous GPS) data shows the land close to the tide gauge to be sinking at 2.8mm/year - the greater part of the rise is due to subsidence along the coast.<br />
<br />
A couple of years ago, I read what I considered to be an outrageous claim - that the Tidal Unit (formerly National Tidal Centre) of the BOM was publishing "exaggerated data" in the ABSLMP (Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project) series. Worse, that the data was "homogenised". Well, it's impossible to "homogenise" tide-gauge data. Each gauge uses a different base-line for measurements, referred to as "Tide Gauge Zero". It's a "virtual" reference level, referenced to a physical benchmark (the TGBM or "Tide gauge Bench Mark") at the gauge site, one of a set, the remainder being on the adjacent dockside or land.<br />
<br />
I'll relate the full story in a later post, but for now just let's say it concerned the record for Sydney, and that for Port Kembla, some 64Km to the south. Here's the full chart for Sydney, to October 2016.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IcahLo0LqRU/WFVkqZTBCaI/AAAAAAAACpg/zhtNCV1dhBEWB58_fuFNtiB62e1INoqFACPcB/s1600/Sydney_24594_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IcahLo0LqRU/WFVkqZTBCaI/AAAAAAAACpg/zhtNCV1dhBEWB58_fuFNtiB62e1INoqFACPcB/s640/Sydney_24594_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney 1914-2016. Source: BOM</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
While the long-term rate for Sydney is 1.02 mm/year, it's easy to see that any short-term rate depends entirely on the start point. Start in 1997 or 1998, when there was a "dip" due to the 1997-8 El Niño, and you get a very high trend; start in 1990, a much lower rate. I've plotted the rate for a 20-year sliding window, using annual average data:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EQ3r7GWfKYE/WFZkCLc7M2I/AAAAAAAACrE/KAF1QMhjvKgnrmIbtiVyY9_BNDVwBmCggCPcB/s1600/image004.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EQ3r7GWfKYE/WFZkCLc7M2I/AAAAAAAACrE/KAF1QMhjvKgnrmIbtiVyY9_BNDVwBmCggCPcB/s640/image004.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rate (mm/year) for 20-year sliding window; end year on X-axis.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Port Kembla (an ABSLMP station), installed in 1991:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B4KlmxqqCf8/WFVkqdvTyOI/AAAAAAAACpg/1qtkRsKh44UZ4FF_nQOH2ufXjnaAD3oOwCPcB/s1600/Port+Kembla+PSMSL_5527_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B4KlmxqqCf8/WFVkqdvTyOI/AAAAAAAACpg/1qtkRsKh44UZ4FF_nQOH2ufXjnaAD3oOwCPcB/s640/Port+Kembla+PSMSL_5527_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Port Kembla 1991-2016 Source: BOM</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Sydney 1990-2016 for comparison.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o8ZppAimczs/WFVkqapHdnI/AAAAAAAACpg/Ghu_2I7fjEsR8-aa_Qj7B8pceiLPh81XgCPcB/s1600/Sydney_6131_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o8ZppAimczs/WFVkqapHdnI/AAAAAAAACpg/Ghu_2I7fjEsR8-aa_Qj7B8pceiLPh81XgCPcB/s640/Sydney_6131_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney 1990-2016 Source: BOM</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Both together, after Port Kembla data adjusted by +58mm - the offset due to the different "Tide Gauge Zero" benchmarks.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5ZITSTy8ig/WFVkqSoNFsI/AAAAAAAACpg/-BMifdvXVr0WyrizuWunVzjaL-enN_wigCPcB/s1600/Port+Kembla+PSMSL_13424_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5ZITSTy8ig/WFVkqSoNFsI/AAAAAAAACpg/-BMifdvXVr0WyrizuWunVzjaL-enN_wigCPcB/s640/Port+Kembla+PSMSL_13424_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney & Port Kembla compared; 1991-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The claim of "homogenistation" is egrarious bullshit, invented by the morally, evidentially and statistically challenged. Put even more forcibly, it's a lie.<br />
<br />
On to Fremantle, another source of claims and misinterpretation. The full plot first:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4i9Ly3FN5Y4/WFZceGhlWpI/AAAAAAAACqo/PkeuvAQ5LGEAoE848_diC4-vUSD4-1LnQCPcB/s1600/Fremantle_7205_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4i9Ly3FN5Y4/WFZceGhlWpI/AAAAAAAACqo/PkeuvAQ5LGEAoE848_diC4-vUSD4-1LnQCPcB/s640/Fremantle_7205_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fremantle, WA 1897-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This is the chart for Hillarys (Boat Yard), on the far side of Perth from Fremantle, to the north.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vc7ACjOJhgk/WFZceGrBFCI/AAAAAAAACqo/DPMBbHlA3hQn8jjuvrPMvjWsqhvq-2c9wCPcB/s1600/Hillarys_12795_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vc7ACjOJhgk/WFZceGrBFCI/AAAAAAAACqo/DPMBbHlA3hQn8jjuvrPMvjWsqhvq-2c9wCPcB/s640/Hillarys_12795_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hillarys, WA 1992-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Fremantle 1992-2016 for comparison:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qr_W56gTQG8/WFZceF-JPLI/AAAAAAAACqo/-7tIvRHLm2gQTLsIpbTy2bNZglqztopGQCPcB/s1600/Fremantle_9232_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qr_W56gTQG8/WFZceF-JPLI/AAAAAAAACqo/-7tIvRHLm2gQTLsIpbTy2bNZglqztopGQCPcB/s640/Fremantle_9232_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fremantle, WA 1992-2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
And both together, with Fremantle adjusted down by 64mm:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EBBQa83t4f8/WFZceLrumaI/AAAAAAAACqo/giwPNzqdMV8ZA90ADb8IviTxn0N3fIuZACPcB/s1600/Hillarys_15720_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EBBQa83t4f8/WFZceLrumaI/AAAAAAAACqo/giwPNzqdMV8ZA90ADb8IviTxn0N3fIuZACPcB/s640/Hillarys_15720_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hillarys/Fremantle over-plotted; Fremantle adjusted down by 64mm</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Hillarys starts somewhat lower than Fremantle, but they plot together from 2002 onwards. It's easy to show such correlation between adjacent stations around Oz, even if they're several hundred Km apart. Even if it were possible to "homogenise" gauge data, the tides do a perfectly good job already.<br />
<br />
Data is sourced from The main <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/ntc/monthly/">BOM Tidal Unit</a> for Sydney and Fremantle, and from the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/abslmp/data/monthly.shtml">AMSLMP project</a> for Port Kembla and Hillarys.<br />
<br />
NOTE: I've just discovered that <a href="http://www.sonel.org/-GPS-.html?lang=en">SONEL</a> have updated with data for many Oz stations. The CGPS pillars are often very close to tide gauges. At Hillarys they're co-located, and the <a href="http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=1918.php">latest plot </a>shows a drop of 2.78 mm/year:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kqGP_Ds0biI/WF0sl01utTI/AAAAAAAACtA/THjfRhomGHUc_zdZpROa7Pv3NrjLxUEWgCPcB/s1600/Hillarys+GPS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="368" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kqGP_Ds0biI/WF0sl01utTI/AAAAAAAACtA/THjfRhomGHUc_zdZpROa7Pv3NrjLxUEWgCPcB/s640/Hillarys+GPS.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=gps&idStation=1918.php">SONEL</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Updates include data for many of the Pacific islands, including Sceptic poster-child Tuvalu. Watch this space.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-38456918553985478132016-12-17T05:26:00.000+00:002016-12-28T00:51:25.058+00:00There are none so blind....A couple of days ago, I was chatting to a friend in our local watering hole - Yates' in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. I'd been telling him how BBC documentaries had become un-watchable for me, mainly because of the constant and intrusive background music."Don't you watch Attenborough?" he asked "Now there's a guy knows what he's talking about." I nearly choked on my beer, but said nothing. "It's really getting bad in the Arctic - the polar bears are becoming extinct". I asked why that was. "The ice is melting, and the bears can't catch the seals they feed on". "What do the bears eat in the summer, when there's no ice?" I asked innocently. "They live on the body fat they got in the winter, from eating seals in the winter", he replied. I followed up with a low blow - "Where are the seals in the summer?". "I don't know, on the land, I expect". I had him on the ropes - "Where are the bears in the summer?". He pondered a moment - "they must be on the land too?".<br />
<br />
"Then what's the problem - seals on land, bears on land - bears catch seals, bears eat seals, period?". "It's not as simple as that" he parried. "Why is that?". "You're not an expert!" he said. "I don't need to be an expert, just be able to use my brain and think!", He was silent. "You'll be telling me next that penguins in the Antarctic need the ice to catch fish?", His eyes showed a glimmer of triumph - "Yes, they do!". The coup de gras from me "How do they catch fish in the summer, when there's no ice?". He was on the ropes again, and getting desperate "This argument is getting nowhere!".<br />
<br />
He just wouldn't see that his "factual" documentaries were only telling half the story, pushing a message of starvation and extinction, climate change and global warming; in fact pushing against the truth. I didn't bother pointing out that polar bears are omnivores, and will eat anything - rotting whale carcasses, fish (yes - they can catch fish!), berries, small mammals, leaves and grass. We still chat regularly. I don't bring up any contentious subjects, and I think he's relieved I don't.<br />
<br />
UPDATE: In case anyone thinks I'm talking out of my posterior, here's some <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.2030/full">current research</a> debunking the idea that reduction in Arctic ice will spell doom for the iconic polar bear:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.2030/full">Demographic and traditional knowledge perspectives on the current status of Canadian polar bear subpopulations </a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Abstract<br />Subpopulation growth rates and the probability of decline at current harvest levels were determined for 13 subpopulations of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) that are within or shared with Canada based on mark–recapture estimates of population numbers and vital rates, and harvest statistics using population viability analyses (PVA). Aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) on subpopulation trend agreed with the seven stable/increasing results and one of the declining results, but disagreed with PVA status of five other declining subpopulations. The decline in the Baffin Bay subpopulation appeared to be due to over-reporting of harvested numbers from outside Canada. The remaining four disputed subpopulations (Southern Beaufort Sea, Northern Beaufort Sea, Southern Hudson Bay, and Western Hudson Bay) were all incompletely mark–recapture (M-R) sampled, which may have biased their survival and subpopulation estimates. Three of the four incompletely sampled subpopulations were PVA identified as nonviable (i.e., declining even with zero harvest mortality). TEK disagreement was nonrandom with respect to M-R sampling protocols. Cluster analysis also grouped subpopulations with ambiguous demographic and harvest rate estimates separately from those with apparently reliable demographic estimates based on PVA probability of decline and unharvested subpopulation growth rate criteria. We suggest that the correspondence between TEK and scientific results can be used to improve the reliability of information on natural systems and thus improve resource management. Considering both TEK and scientific information, we suggest that the current status of Canadian polar bear subpopulations in 2013 was 12 stable/increasing and one declining (Kane Basin). We do not find support for the perspective that polar bears within or shared with Canada are currently in any sort of climate crisis. We suggest that monitoring the impacts of climate change (including sea ice decline) on polar bear subpopulations should be continued and enhanced and that adaptive management practices are warranted.</blockquote>
The researchers point out that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Polar bears evolved from a common ancestor with the brown bear. The range of estimates for the age of polar bears as a species ranges from 4 million years based on deep nuclear genomic sequence data from both paternal and maternal linages (Miller et al. 2012) to 120 thousand years based on the mitochondrial genome (matrilineal) (Lindqvist et al. 2010). If polar bears have existed for the last 4 million years, they would have emerged during the mid-Pliocene approximately 1.25 million years before the onset of northern hemisphere glacial cycles (Bartoli et al. 2005). If polar bears emerged any time prior to or during the previous glacial cycle, they would have persisted through the Eemian interglacial period. During the Eemian interglacial, mean annual temperatures were 4°C warmer than the current interglacial (Holocene) for northern latitudes (Müller 2009), and some northern locations reached temperatures as high as ~7.5°C warmer than the mean temperature for the same area over the last thousand years (Dahl-Jensen et al. 2013). Both scenarios suggest that polar bears are able to mitigate impacts from sea ice decline to an extent not fully exhibited in modern times. Currently, the IPCC predicts globally averaged temperatures to warm ~2°C by 2100 and considers warming of ~4°C by 2100 to be possible although unlikely (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013). Reduction in the heavy multiyear ice and increased productivity from a longer open water season may even enhance polar bear habitat in some areas (Stirling and Derocher 1993, 2012; Derocher et al. 2004; Rode et al. 2014). The majority of Canada's polar bears inhabit the Canadian Arctic archipelago (Obbard et al. 2010), where 5 of 13 subpopulations are currently and historically ice-free in late summer and early fall (Lunn et al. 2002; Aars et al. 2006; Obbard et al. 2010). Given the persistence of polar bears through the current and previous interglacial periods, and their ability to accommodate extended retreats onshore and based on the empirical observations of climate and sea ice change (S7), it seems unlikely that polar bears (as a species) are at risk from anthropogenic global warming. However, some subpopulations may experience diminished range, reduced productivity and subsequent decline in numbers if sea ice declines occur as predicted (Stirling and Derocher 1993, 2012; Derocher et al. 2004). While there are many projections of climate change that suggest a nearly ice-free Arctic to occur in the warmer months (i.e., September) (IPCC 2007, 2013, Durner et al. 2009; Amstrup et al. 2010; Mahlstein and Knutti 2012; Overland and Wang 2013), there are currently no global climate model (GCM) projections of climate change that suggest a totally ice-free Arctic in any season or month.</blockquote>
.... so there.<br />
<br />
I'll diversify for a moment, because I've never posted anything personal, or connected with where I live. Wycombe is a somewhat "frayed around the edges" town in the Chiltern Hills, designated an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". Here's Yates' pub - well-managed, good cheap food, good beer, relaxed, friendly and hard-working staff, and a correspondingly relaxed clientèle.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tVEcelPerEA/WFTHmoZfD6I/AAAAAAAACnk/F22Igc7q7iIqTTa0FHpMh8Zub2nrL_kwQCPcB/s1600/image+from+535393055Final+Brochure+-+Yates+High+Wycombe-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tVEcelPerEA/WFTHmoZfD6I/AAAAAAAACnk/F22Igc7q7iIqTTa0FHpMh8Zub2nrL_kwQCPcB/s640/image+from+535393055Final+Brochure+-+Yates+High+Wycombe-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yates', Frogmore, High Wycombe</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This is Wycombe High Street, a pale imitation of what it might have been if the local borough council had constrained development and preserved several much older shops and houses.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DXTitmssWDg/WFTH3AiWPMI/AAAAAAAACnw/SoQ1VAcz42gBQxqjC3fvI0CE46Gg1LTJQCPcB/s1600/High-Wycombe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DXTitmssWDg/WFTH3AiWPMI/AAAAAAAACnw/SoQ1VAcz42gBQxqjC3fvI0CE46Gg1LTJQCPcB/s640/High-Wycombe.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">High Wycombe High Street</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
There's a street-market on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. High Wycombe borough was originally "Chepping Wycombe", Chepping being a corruption of the Old English "Ceapen" meaning a town market. I can't find a pic of the whole market, but here's a colourful corner, situated centre-right in the pic above.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RV4NslK_Xr4/WFTJrIEtYxI/AAAAAAAACoY/gl84FPieBxkLXFKu5OLxGUAR82w4SHzDACPcB/s1600/5250087732_15b3f1a879_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RV4NslK_Xr4/WFTJrIEtYxI/AAAAAAAACoY/gl84FPieBxkLXFKu5OLxGUAR82w4SHzDACPcB/s640/5250087732_15b3f1a879_b.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wycombe market - a historical remnant of a prosperous past.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
And a couple from the surrounding beechwoods and countryside.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OamZE-r_8Ss/WFTJrLBeWbI/AAAAAAAACoY/EMnVsH-4MnIA__cyBLDhVB0do5Lkft_1ACPcB/s1600/chiltern_woodland-chilterns_conservation_board_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OamZE-r_8Ss/WFTJrLBeWbI/AAAAAAAACoY/EMnVsH-4MnIA__cyBLDhVB0do5Lkft_1ACPcB/s640/chiltern_woodland-chilterns_conservation_board_0.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An ancient "dyke" or boundary ditch in the beechwoods about 10 miles from Wycombe.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fojCPLFPw0Q/WFTJrG_MddI/AAAAAAAACoY/Bq9qCZWrBwsfS-Qs1VlfIjfW3uJx7SFHQCPcB/s1600/chiltern-hills.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fojCPLFPw0Q/WFTJrG_MddI/AAAAAAAACoY/Bq9qCZWrBwsfS-Qs1VlfIjfW3uJx7SFHQCPcB/s640/chiltern-hills.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bluebell carpet in the spring</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DnyDi9BxrZE/WFTJrIrB6KI/AAAAAAAACoY/30VSPVmnU7YVmk-lEW7iVtLP0xON5YUbACPcB/s1600/windmill-813426_1920-1024x683.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DnyDi9BxrZE/WFTJrIrB6KI/AAAAAAAACoY/30VSPVmnU7YVmk-lEW7iVtLP0xON5YUbACPcB/s640/windmill-813426_1920-1024x683.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture-postcard windmill on a windy ridge.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That'll do!MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-83127623234215990792016-12-16T21:48:00.001+00:002016-12-16T21:48:56.484+00:00Australia's B.O.M & "Homogenisation" - they must think we're stupidAustralian scientist and blogger <a href="http://jennifermarohasy.com/jenns-blog/">Jennifer Marohasy</a> has been leading a small but vocal group campaigning for the Bureau of Meteorology to explain and defend "homogenisation" of temperature data for Australian stations. Their new, improved, value-added and of course, scientifically and mathematically sound database has, in most cases, turned a long-term static or cooling trend into a warming trend. They call it ACORN-SAT. You and I might call it GHCN/GISS outback style - if the present isn't warming to suit their meme, then by god, they'll cool the past, and "prove" local and global warming.<br />
<br />
In most cases, the process leads to lowering past temperature data in a series of steps, supposedly corresponding to breakpoints in the series due to station moves, claimed station moves, statistical "discontinuities", or undocumented and therefore unjustified adjustments. Now this was something I could really get my teeth, and my Excel 2000 skills into. Yes, it's the 2000 version - if it ain't broke, don't spend money on a newer version.<br />
<br />
I started several draft posts, downloaded shedloads of B.O.M. data, unadjusted GHCN/GISS data, PDF documents, bookmarked scientific literature, created new spreadsheets, chart graphics, googled for images of towns, cities, weather stations. The B.O.M. got very defensive when challenged a couple of years ago. Jennifer and her small group were tilting at a very big and huffily self-righteous windmill. The B.O.M. actually produced some documentation. What right had these upstarts to question their methodology and intent?<br />
<br />
Then, a couple of days ago, I had an epiphany; I'd clearly missed something, something very important. The fact was, the B.O.M. has never, ever made the adjustments they'd claimed were necessary! If there's a documented station move, for example from a town out to a rural site, a small temperature change would be expected. In this case, likely to be downward because of the removal of the "urban heat-island" effect. They've identified and quantified such steps in the record at many sites. They believe an appropriate adjustment should be documented and applied, in this case an upward adjustment. The ACORN-SAT database appears not to contain any such adjustments, despite what the B.O.M. has documented, and everyone, until now, has believed.<br />
<br />
I'd been looking at the "Station Adjustment Summary" for Amberley, Queensland. There was just one significant adjustment, forward from 1980:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2. 1 January 1980—breakpoint detected by statistical methods.<br />
• Night-time temperatures started to appear much cooler relative to surrounding stations.<br />
• No accessible documentation for Amberley in 1980, but a breakpoint of this size would normally be associated with a site move.<br />
• Min T adjusted by -1.28 °C; no detectable impact on Max T so no adjustments made.</blockquote>
Adjusted by -1.28°C - wouldn't they apply an <b>increase</b> if temperatures "started to appear much cooler relative to surrounding stations"? You'd expect so, but that -1.28°C adjustment was correct - applied to data <b>prior to 1980</b>, thus leaving the "much cooler" data from 1980 onwards unchanged! The shape and trend of the resulting "homogenised" plot becomes identical to what would have resulted from a positive adjustment, but shifted down by the amount of the reversed adjustment. This is the plot of the change to average minimum temperatures for Amberley; for all my graphics, click to see a larger version, or right-click and "save as" to save them:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4e8uwQ_KnpI/WFRAEP7aXHI/AAAAAAAAClc/ejJcUgZTwjsY1MZbGQoLAbLrq4_K5gl6QCPcB/s1600/Amberley+Min.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4e8uwQ_KnpI/WFRAEP7aXHI/AAAAAAAAClc/ejJcUgZTwjsY1MZbGQoLAbLrq4_K5gl6QCPcB/s640/Amberley+Min.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">From the Station Adjustment Summary for Amberley.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The first thing to note is that the "difference" is positive because the author has subtracted adjusted from raw data. If you're comparing A with B, the correct way is to subtract B from A, not vice-versa. Compare 10 with 8, and the difference is 2, not -2. There's no change to raw data after 1980; if post-1980 data was "much cooler relative to surrounding stations", then it remains so. I've plotted ACORN-SAT adjusted against raw for Amberley:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l1Bj2WkYkO0/WFRAEKgH2dI/AAAAAAAAClc/CF0XCvqQ1EAiFzQguLoj2Bl1u6BF9d6qACPcB/s1600/Amberley_12328_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l1Bj2WkYkO0/WFRAEKgH2dI/AAAAAAAAClc/CF0XCvqQ1EAiFzQguLoj2Bl1u6BF9d6qACPcB/s640/Amberley_12328_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raw data series (blue) versus ACORN-SAT (red); difference (black)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The raw and adjusted series track together from 1998 rather than 1980 because a second, undocumented adjustment was made after 1996; a 2-step change. From 1980 to 2016, raw minimum trends flat. That's right - no change since 1980. The B.O.M. has what might be termed a "positive attitude" to temperature series; they like to see upward trends - flat or negative has to be "corrected".<br />
<br />
Average annual minimum or maximum series are no good metric for measuring or tracking anything, yet they're what the Bureau uses exclusively, and to my knowledge, no other large private nor state-funded meteorological organisation does this. I'll back my up assertions in a future post. In the meantime, here's a plot of monthly average minima for 1978-1983, which spans the Bureau's "breakpoint":<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D-T8LTQAjpA/WFRXEhvsliI/AAAAAAAACmI/a573JCu9yNMck2P0XY3la99xHEM9MAaVgCPcB/s1600/Amberley_3713_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D-T8LTQAjpA/WFRXEhvsliI/AAAAAAAACmI/a573JCu9yNMck2P0XY3la99xHEM9MAaVgCPcB/s640/Amberley_3713_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Monthly average minimum temperatures</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There's no "step change" evident in 1980. The dip in winter 1982 was caused by a record cold June & July. Minima generally "drifted" down <b>after</b> 1981 to around 1998 - which point coincides with the undocumented adjustment.<br />
<br />
Jennifer's campaign focussed on the record for Rutherglen; the story's the same there, though more complicated:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0uqmwLMNGpY/WFRddurHFII/AAAAAAAACnA/WmyTtAYcGCYvCvoO4BI9Jr7wfTHR9fmCQCPcB/s1600/Rutherglen_10290_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0uqmwLMNGpY/WFRddurHFII/AAAAAAAACnA/WmyTtAYcGCYvCvoO4BI9Jr7wfTHR9fmCQCPcB/s640/Rutherglen_10290_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Raw data series (blue) versus ACORN-SAT (red); difference (black)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Raw average minimum and ACORN-SAT adjusted track together (minor differences) from 1974. There's no net upward change due to the claimed adjustments in the Adjustment Summary. I've checked the other Adjustment Summaries, and a few other sites which should show adjustments. In every case, the changes resulted in raising or lowering previous temperatures, not those from the adjustment point forward. The B.O.M. isn't in the business of correcting anomalies to create ACORN-SAT; they're in the business of changing the past to suit an agenda.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-24829684243934854092016-11-20T04:21:00.000+00:002016-11-20T04:22:15.265+00:00Green Elites, Trumped?Her's an amazing article from <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/green-elites-trumped-1479254147">The Wall Street Journal</a>. I've reblogged it, without further comment, from <a href="http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/">Greenie Watch</a>. It's by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Who he? His profile and list of WSJ articles is to be found <a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/J/holman-w-jenkins-jr/5469">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Green Elites, Trumped</span><br />
<br />
The planet will benefit if the climate movement is purged of its rottenness.<br />
<br />
Hysterical, in both senses of the word, is the reaction of greens like Paul Krugman and the Sierra Club to last week’s election. “The planet is in danger,” fretted Tom Steyer, the California hedge funder who spends his billions trying to be popular with green voters.<br />
<br />
Uh huh. In fact, the climate will be the last indicator to notice any transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. That’s because—as climate warriors were only too happy to point out until a week ago—Mr. Obama’s own commitments weren’t going to make any noticeable dent in a putative CO2 problem.<br />
<br />
At most, Mr. Trump’s election will mean solar and wind have to compete more on their merits. So what?<br />
<br />
He wants to lift the Obama war on coal—but he won’t stop the epochal replacement of coal by cheap natural gas, with half the greenhouse emissions per BTU.<br />
<br />
He probably won’t even try to repeal an egregious taxpayer-funded rebate for wind and solar projects, because red states like this gimme too. But Republican state governments will continue to wind back subsidies that ordinary ratepayers pay through their electric bills so upscale homeowners can indulge themselves with solar.<br />
<br />
Even so, the price of solar technology will continue to drop; the lithium-ion revolution will continue to drive efficiency gains in batteries.<br />
<br />
Mr. Trump wants to spend on infrastructure, and the federal research establishment, a hotbed of battery enthusiasts, likely will benefit.<br />
<br />
In a deregulatory mood, he might well pick up an uncharacteristically useful initiative from the Obama administration. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission quietly is revisiting a scientifically dubious radiation risk standard that drives up the cost of nuclear power.<br />
<br />
What a Trump election will do is mostly dismantle a green gravy train powered by moral vanity that contributes nothing to the public welfare.<br />
<br />
A phenomenon like Trump, whatever its antecedents, is an opportunity—in this case to purge a rottenness that begins at the commanding heights. The New York Times last year published a feature entitled “short answers to the hard questions about climate change” that was notable solely for ignoring the hardest question of all: How much are human activities actually affecting the climate?<br />
<br />
This is the hardest question. It’s why we spend tens of billions collecting climate data and building computerized climate models. It’s why “climate sensitivity” remains the central problem of climate science, as lively and unresolved as it was 35 years ago.<br />
<br />
Happily, it only takes a crude, blunderbussy kind of instrument to shatter such a fragile smugness—and if Mr. Trump and the phenomenon he represents are anything, it’s crude and blunderbussy.<br />
<br />
As with any such shattering, the dividends will not be appropriated only by one party or political tendency.<br />
<br />
Democrats must know by now they are in a failing marriage. Wealthy investors like George Soros,Nat Simons and Mr. Steyer, who finance the party’s green agenda, have ridden the Dems into the ground, with nothing to show for their millions, and vice versa.<br />
<br />
On the contrary, the WikiLeaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails only dramatizes what a liability they’ve become, demanding attacks on scientists and even loyal Democrats who don’t endorse their climate-disaster scenarios. Their anti-coal, anti-pipeline, anti-fracking stance especially hurts Dems with union households, which turned out in record numbers for Mr. Trump.<br />
<br />
It was always crazy to believe in an unprecedented act of global central planning to wean nations away from fossil fuels, but equally idiotic not to notice that our energy economy is ripe slowly to be transformed by technology anyway.<br />
<br />
One greenie who is beyond the need for handouts is Bill Gates, who has made himself non grata by saying the current vogue for subsidizing power sources that will always need subsidies is a joke—an admission of defeat.<br />
<br />
Honest warriors like Mr. Gates and retired NASA alarmist James Hansen insist real progress can’t be made without nuclear. Why haven’t others? Because the Tom Steyers and Bill McKibbens would sacrifice the planet 10 times over rather than no longer be fawned over at green confabs. That’s rottenness at work.<br />
<br />
There’s a reason today’s climate movement increasingly devotes its time and energy to persecuting heretics—because it’s the most efficient way to suppress reasoned examination of policies that cost taxpayers billions without producing any public benefit whatsoever.<br />
<br />
The theory and practice of climate advocacy, on one hand, has been thoroughly, irretrievably corrupted by self righteousness—blame Al Gore, that was his modus. Yet, on the other, it has allowed itself to become the agent of economic interests that can’t survive without pillaging middle-class taxpayers and energy users—exactly the kind of elitist cronyism that voters are sick of.<br />
<br />
Without attributing any special virtue to Mr. Trump, he represents a chance for a new start. He might even turn out to be good for the planet.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-63319831080265935622016-11-12T07:08:00.003+00:002016-11-12T07:08:42.812+00:00NASA scientist makes a booboo<div class="tr_bq">
Back in 2012, when so-called "Superstorm" Sandy was current news, there were lots of dire predictions of "What is to come".
At the time, I bookmarked several newspaper, blog, and other articles. While I was sorting out my links, discarding purely alarmist, inaccurate, and dead pages, I came across <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/superstorm-sandy-and-sea-level-rise">this one</a>, and spotted something significant I'd missed at the time.
Titled "Superstorm Sandy and Sea Level Rise", an interview with Cynthia Rosenzweig, "a climate impacts expert at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and director of the NOAA-sponsored Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast.". Wow - she must really know her stuff? She certainly appears to, here's her response to the question </div>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: steelblue; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What kind of sea level rise has New York Harbor seen over the past century?</span></strong>We’ve had roughly a foot of sea level rise in the New York City area in the past century. That’s measured at a tidal gauge near Battery Park just off the southern tip of Manhattan.<br />The majority of the sea level rise in the New York City region is due to global warming: primarily, because of thermal expansion of ocean water as it warms and secondly, melting of land-based ice sheets.<br />Land subsidence [sinking] in the New York City area has been roughly 3-4 inches per century, which is primarily due to the Earth’s crust rebounding* from being compressed by massive ice sheets that covered Canada and the northern U.S. about 20,000 years ago near the end of the last Ice Age. Local variations in ocean surface elevation associated with the strength of the Gulf Stream has played a small role as well.</blockquote>
That's fine, but later<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: steelblue; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How does sea level rise in New York Harbor compare to other parts of the U.S.? What about the global average?</span> </strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Sea level isn’t rising evenly throughout the world. On average, global sea level has risen about eight inches since 1880. So, the New York rate of sea level rise of nearly one foot is higher than the global average rate.</span></blockquote>
Just a cotton-picking moment, she said that land subsidence in the New York City area was 3 to 4 inches over the last century. That makes true sea-level rise at New York 8 to 9 inches, compared with the global rate of 8 inches since 1880. There was very little if any rise anywhere in the world between 1880 and 1912, a hundred years back from when this article was written. 12 inches is certainly much higher than the 8 for global, but the true comparison is between 8-9 inches and 8 inches. I hope this was a simple mistake. For now, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.<br />
<br />
MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-28908456986834266592015-09-29T08:53:00.002+01:002016-04-05T20:50:44.490+01:00Is there liquid water on Mars?<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150928-mars-liquid-water-confirmed-surface-streaks-space-astronomy/">National Geographic</a> thinks that there is, based on a <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2546.epdf?referrer_access_token=neNBWNOniRxgs4tSNl1vKNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PDgo3lQUDL4ARJHnZcnZ5ak-bWgDCktb9VsIXLcWBhmOsmhmfjpWVLjQ7XZRIcp6zLRPksFlmpOR6Quen1haf5QlOwawZ_qu_zVbsmBHPO8d87a23Zg3cfpXGXSbwoXkGtwAJ--1Halax_lo6f8CEo2hr4bN0lDtcmUqoOSd6Z5676O0HNjoGeksKvr8zZ6t0Yp7b4RwWKgisnOoThpNjG&tracking_referrer=news.nationalgeographic.com">paper</a> published by a NASA scientist and seven others. Before going into details, first a few facts about <a href="http://marsnews.com/the-planet-mars">conditions on the surface</a>. The maximum surface temperature is 20°C in direct sunlight, and the minimum is 140°C near the poles. The atmospheric pressure is less than 1% of that on Earth, at about 0.007 bar, or 600 pascals against 101.3 Kpa on Earth. I note that the paper, titled <b>Spectral evidence for hydrated salts in recurring slope lineae on Mars</b>, doesn't mention pressure at all, but does mention temperatures which might allow the presence of liquid water. Let's get this straight, despite media hype, the authors didn't find evidence for liquid water on Mars, but as their paper title says, hydrated salts. They <b>hypothesise</b> that there may be evidence for highly-saturated solutions of salts in the seasonal dark streaks observed on the slopes of Gale Crater. They say "These results strongly support the hypothesis that seasonal warm slopes are forming liquid water on contemporary Mars, but also say "The origin of water forming the RSL is not understood". RSL (Recurring slope lineae) are the "seasonal dark streaks" observed from orbiting satellites.<br />
<br />
The strange thing (or is it?) is that several of the authors and other scientists seem to be far more certain of compelling evidence in interviews than is evident in the published paper. As I said earlier, the paper mentions atmospheric pressure absolutely nowhere. At a pressure of ).007 bar, the <a href="http://www.trimen.pl/witek/calculators/wrzenie.html">boiling point of pure water</a> is 2°C, and <a href="http://marsnews.com/the-planet-mars">temperatures can reach 20°C</a> on the observed crater slopes. Even strong salt solutions would evaporate water at temperatures well below 2°C, and ice (which would be pure water of course) would sublimate - evaporate without melting.<br />
<br />
The jury is definitely out on this one, but the press and media are having a field day, presenting what I see from actually reading the paper to be a rather thin hypothesis as confirmed fact.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-33277951355060863362015-09-29T00:50:00.000+01:002016-03-11T21:33:39.329+00:00All you need to know about glaciers, or maybe notI could dedicate an entire separate blog to rubbishing Guardian articles about the environment, climate change and the like. But for now, it amuses me to just pick the worst articles for this blog. Take <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/28/glacier-melt-climate-change-tipping-point">today's article</a> for instance, by one Wendell Tangborn. Who he? The Guardian has a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/wendell-tangborn">mini résumé</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Wendell Tangborn has worked with glaciers for 55 years, beginning with South Cascade Glacier in Washington in 1960. Currently, his main interest is mass balance. He has developed a computer model that calculates a glacier's mass balance from routine weather observations and has published over 40 papers in glaciology. He lives on Vashon Island in Washington State.</blockquote>
He's "worked with glaciers"? I'll let that one pass, but it conjures up all sorts of strange images...<br />
I don't doubt he's published over 40 papers in glaciology, but a <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Tangborn++wv&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C5">Google Scholar search</a> reveals that most of them concern the North and South Cascade Mountains that stretch from just over the Canadian border west of Vancouver (Canadian Cascades), through Washington and Oregon and into northern California. He is <b>not</b> an expert on glaciers worldwide, as the record of his published papers shows.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Glacier melt shows a climate change tipping point. We must pay attention</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fossil fuel burning must taper off dramatically and be replaced with renewable sources of energy if we are going to survive as a species on this planet </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mountain glaciers and humans have coexisted for roughly 200,000 years, but that long idyll appears to be ending. The earth’s 190,000 glaciers, sentinels of climate change that appear to be more sensitive to the climate than are humans, are disappearing at an unprecedented pace, the canaries in climate change’s coal mine.</blockquote>
There is evidence for many glaciers worldwide being in retreat, and there are estimates, but no one actually knows how many. Wendell's being rather less than truthful by implying here that all are in retreat. To cap it all, the "canary in the coal mine" appears here too. That coal mine must have hundreds of canaries in it by now, put there by many dozens of claims about climate, sea-level rise, coral reefs, glaciers - the list goes on and on. They can't <b>all</b> be "the canary in the coal mine".<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is all being driven by human activities, and it has been happening for three decades. The fate of both humans and glaciers will depend on drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions during the next decade. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most of the world’s glaciers began changing in the late 1980s from relative stability to negative mass balances. Mass balance is the difference between growth from snow accumulation and shrinkage from snow and ice melting. The relatively abrupt change to negative glacier mass balances strongly suggests a climate tipping point, when the climate changes from one stable state to another.</blockquote>
Total rubbish - it's been happening at an increasing pace since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the mid 19th. century. The <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g01130_glacier_inventory/">World Glacier Inventory</a> says that systematic glacier monitoring on a large scale began in 1894. The World Glacier Monitoring Service published a comprehensive report in 2008 titled "Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures" available <a href="http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/">here</a>. On page 14 of the pdf is shown this figure:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-heTudqSS9aM/Vgm7rWN1FpI/AAAAAAAACcQ/pnwHfIFUh30/s1600/Glaciers+mass+balance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-heTudqSS9aM/Vgm7rWN1FpI/AAAAAAAACcQ/pnwHfIFUh30/s1600/Glaciers+mass+balance.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"> Fig. 5.9 The cumulative specific mass balance curves are shown for<br />
the mean of all glaciers and 30 ‘reference’ glaciers with (almost)<br />
continuous series since 1976. Source: Data from WGMS.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It should be obvious that "Most of the world’s glaciers began changing in the late 1980s from relative stability to negative mass balances." is baloney. There was no "relatively abrupt change" at all, hence no "climate tipping point". This is not science at all - it's politics. Perhaps it's true of some, or even all of the glaciers <b>he's</b> studied - the list isn't very long, judging by the abstracts of his papers, and certainly far, very far, from global.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are other compelling signs that a climate tipping point has been reached. One of the most critical is the loss of the floating sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. In 2014, the late-summer extent of sea ice in the north polar seas was the lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979. Before 1979, evidence based on shipping and whaling charts suggests it has not been this low for at least hundreds of years. Paleo climatologists believe that Arctic sea ice cover last melted completely during summers about 125,000 years ago, during a warm period between ice ages.</blockquote>
More rubbish - in fact there is plenty of evidence pre-1979 that large parts of the Arctic <b>currently</b> under ice were ice-free in late summer; newspaper articles and reports from ship's captains, whalers and explorers.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Reduction of northern-hemisphere sea ice means that more incoming sunlight is absorbed into darker ocean water instead of being reflected by ice and then re-radiated into the atmosphere as heat. This, in turn, reduces the extent of the annual northern-hemisphere snow cover, which further accelerates global warming. A related effect that could be even more environmentally devastating is the release of methane from permafrost and seafloor hydrates as the ocean warms. Another tipping-point indicator is the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which have shown signs of disintegrating during the past two decades. Just partial melting of these ice sheets will raise sea level several meters.</blockquote>
There is evidence that the warmer ocean water actually freezes quicker next winter precisely because it does radiate into the atmosphere, but not as heat, Wendell, but as long-wave infrared. He really knows his stuff, this Wendell.<br />
<br />
He then says "Just partial melting of these ice sheets will raise sea level several meters". Depends just how much "partial" means, don't it? I've found out a little more about our Wendell - try this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://crosscut.com/2013/03/wendell-tangborn-glacier/">Tracking glaciers the Tangborn way</a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Wendell Tangborn thinks he has invented a better mousetrap. He's still waiting for the scientific world to beat a path to his door. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sitting in a cramped home office overlooking the (rising) waters of Puget Sound, Tangborn talks about his plan to monitor 200 glaciers around the world to see whether or not — and, if so, how quickly — they're melting away. He has already done detailed reports on seven, including Juneau's incredible shrinking Mendenhall Glacier. He's working on 40 more, and hoping one or more foundations will supply enough money to hire the three people he'd need to keep track of all 200. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
People often cite the waxing or waning of glaciers to prove that the earth is or is not getting warmer. But according to Tangborn, no one is looking systematically at a large number of glaciers so that trends become obvious and the glaciers which are behaving contrary to the trends can be seen clearly as outliers.</blockquote>
What? "No one is looking systematically..."? The man's an ostrich with his head in the sand, or perhaps in a glacier crevasse. So in 2013 he'd reported on just <b>seven</b> glaciers out of his target 200. That target, using his own figure above of 190,000 would be just 0.1% of the total. Just how does he do it with his "better mousetrap"?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Basically, he uses temperature and precipitation data from fixed weather stations to calculate a glacier's "mass balance" — that is, the difference between the winter accumulation of snow and the summer melting of snow and ice. A positive balance means the glacier is growing; negative means it's shrinking. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The program must be customized for every glacier. Tangborn must take account of the topography and total area of the glacier's surface. Once he plugs that into the program, he can sit in his office and get information that's as reliable as the data produced the old-fashioned way — the way he did it for many years — by climbing around on the ice with probing rods and shovels. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For each glacier, Tangborn has to find a weather station that produces results in line with actual observations. That isn't necessarily the weather station right next door to the ice. Austrian scientists can't believe that Tangborn's using a weather station in Innsbruck to monitor the Vernagtferner glacier, which is 100 kilometers away, rather than a station close to the site. But, says Tangborn, somehow local weather phenomena keep the closer station from producing useful numbers.</blockquote>
This is clearly his "mass balance model", but he doesn't always use local weather data, but scratches around until he gets a fit with reality, or his reality at least. Innsbruck's elevation is 574m, the lowest point (the snout) of the Vernagtferner glacier is <a href="http://www.glaziologie.de/vernagt/vernagt_E.html">2790m above sea level</a>. He's using a weather station 100 km away, and more than 2000 metres lower, because "local weather phenomena keep the closer station from producing useful numbers". But it's the "local weather phenomena" which directly affect the glacier; no other weather phenomena can possibly affect it. Remember "He's still waiting for the scientific world to beat a path to his door.", and they haven't. I wonder why. Perhaps you can work it out for yourself.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-14030363649519256552015-09-26T14:16:00.000+01:002016-11-12T04:27:57.315+00:00Huge, I mean HUGE rally for "Climate Justice" in WashingtonI've absolutely no idea what "Climate Justice" means, I suspect most people don't, and I suspect many who claim to support it don't know either. Back in August, WaPo (The Washington Post) <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/08/25/for-pope-franciss-d-c-visit-environmental-rally-of-up-to-200k-planned/">breathlessly told us</a> that "For Pope Francis’s D.C. visit, environmental rally of up to 200K planned".<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Several environmental groups are planning a major climate rally that will draw hundreds of thousands to the National Mall on Sept. 24, the day Pope Francis speaks to Congress and is expected to address the public afterwards. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The permit for the gathering — which will make the moral case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming — is for 200,000 people. The Moral Action on Climate Network, along with the Earth Day Network, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and other groups, have timed the rally on the Mall the same day of the pope’s speech. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the pope “has expressed an interest” in making an appearance on the Capitol’s West Front.</blockquote>
Wow - "hundreds of thousands" that must have been some sight last Thursday! Well no, apparently "Climate Justice" is such a burning issue on a nice, warm day in Washington that "hundreds" turned up, or so ThinkProgress estimated - "<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/24/3705248/climate-justice-rally-pope-francis/">Pope’s Visit To D.C. Inspires Hundreds To Rally For Climate Justice</a>".<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rPlcAEy1nIA/VgaPPhjnkCI/AAAAAAAACa4/mqct3BKmT7g/s1600/DSC_1445-1024x682.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rPlcAEy1nIA/VgaPPhjnkCI/AAAAAAAACa4/mqct3BKmT7g/s640/DSC_1445-1024x682.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/24/3705248/climate-justice-rally-pope-francis/">Think Progress</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On Thursday morning — as Pope Francis prepared to make history by addressing Congress — hundreds of activists gathered on the National Mall. Holding signs, petitioning for signatures, and offering spirited remarks to an expectant crowd, the activists represented a spectrum of causes and religious denominations, from young evangelicals to Black Lives Matter leaders.
And they all came together for a common purpose: to demand action on climate change.
“We realize that climate change is the upstream issue, and that downstream, it affects all of us. It is a global an issue as you’ll ever want to encounter. If you’re concerned about immigration, then you realize climate change creates so many climate refugees. If you’re a person who is interested in protecting animals, then you realize that if we didn’t eat animals, we’d be reducing our carbon emissions by almost as much as the entire transportation sector,” Lise Van Susteren, head of Moral Action on Climate Justice, the organization responsible for the rally, told ThinkProgress. “Each group recognizes that we have so much common ground, and that if we put our energies together, that we can see some real differences.”
</blockquote>
<br />
WaPo was a little more generous with an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/25/for-pope-cheering-climate-rally-a-modest-crowd/">estimate of 2,000</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>For pope-cheering climate rally, a modest crowd.</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The faith-based climate rally that took place Thursday in Washington drew a much smaller crowd than anticipated, though organizers say they still managed to convey their message. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Moral Action on Climate Justice network, which worked with the Earth Day Network, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club. Friends of of the Earth and other groups to organize the event, originally asked the National Park Service for a permit for 50,000 attendees. But Park Service countered the permit should be closer to 200,000, organizers said, given the popularity of Pope Francis. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the end, according to several observers, the overall attendance was closer to 2,000. Think Progress — which is published by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress — estimated there were “hundreds of activists” on the Mall for the event, which started early Friday.</blockquote>
Apparently, erstwhile supporters were put off by "traffic".<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
According to Moral Action on Climate Justice’s head Lise Van Susteren, crowds were deterred by media reports and government warnings that downtown traffic would be snarled by road closures related to the pope’s visit.<br />
“Everybody was saying it was going to be traffic armageddon,” she said in an interview Friday. “Traffic armageddon was the tornado.”<br />
But Van Susteren said the fact that 100 journalists were credentialed for the event, and disparate groups including evangelical and Black Lives Matter activists came together on stage is what matters.<br />
“It’s not how many people are on the ground, really. That’s like how many people come to my birthday, party,” she said. “The issue is people who do count are there.”</blockquote>
Silly me thought that it was <b>precisely</b> "how many people are on the ground" which mattered to the organisers and the press and media for a rally or public protest. Lise continued:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The point is to bring in evangelicals” into the climate debate, Van Susteren added. “You’ve got to show it’s a big tent.”</blockquote>
Indeed, and the metaphorical "big tent" was almost empty. The article ends:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Van Susteren declined to disclose the total cost of the rally, which was shared among several environmental groups, but said the Park Service required organizers pay for a range of costs on the assumption that nearly 200,000 people would come. That included one portable toilet for every 300 people, multiple jumbotrons, security fees and insurance.</blockquote>
Now lemme see; estimated 200,000, one portaloo for every 300 attendees, which makes a total of 666 toilets. One for every three of the estimated 2,000 who turned up. Taking the piss is so easy and hygenic with so many portaloos on the ground.<br />
<br />
Just one last soundbite from ThinkProgress by someone called "Moby", who's a Vegan (who woulda guessed?)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Any other issue that’s important to anyone, be they progressive or conservative, pales in comparison to climate change. Nothing else that we care about can exist if the climate changes. If there’s no food and there are hurricanes with 250 mph winds, and if half the world’s population is displaced, and if political systems start to fail, everything else we care about just falls by the wayside,” he told ThinkProgress. “It’s almost like we have to fix climate change and then get back to all the other issues that we care about.”</blockquote>
"Nothing else that we care about can exist if the climate changes" - well no, it matters more than just a jot <b>how much</b> the climate changes, and in which <b>direction</b>. Don't these muppets realise the climate is always changing and has always changed? Into and out of ice-ages is a <b>lotta</b> change, and early humans managed to survive the last glacial, without apparently too much trouble. "If there's no food..." - then we'll all be dead. If there's no food, there won't be half the world's population to be displaced, and no political systems either. All dead, including of course the 198,000 "traffic refugees" who cared so much about "Climate Justice" they couldn't be bothered to turn up on a nice sunny day in Washington.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-81890257399216837972015-09-26T10:14:00.000+01:002016-03-17T17:51:48.635+00:00The Big Freeze, or How I Learned to Love Big OilWith a number of predictions that the Earth might be heading into a temperature minimum, rather than a much hotter future, I thought I'd reprint a Spoof article of mine from 2012:<br />
<br />
This January of 2051 marks the 30th anniversary of the start of the "Big Freeze" which began in the winter of 2020-21.<br />
<br />
We know now, and have known for more than two decades, that it was the misguided campaign of "Big Green" in the late 20th century and early this century which led to this near-catastrophe for the world. Only this week, The International Panel for Carbon Combustion (IPCC) published its fourth assessment report. In the Summary for Policy Makers, the message is clear. The Earth is cooling and mankind is to blame. From their headquarters in Beijing, China, their chairman Bernie Oyle (also chief executive of Athabasca Oil Corp., president of Friends of the Keystone Pipelines, and editor of Nature, Fracking News) said "The message is Burn, Baby, Burn!, and if I can make a few yen out of saving mankind, who's to blame me?". World leaders are due to meet next month to ratify and sign the Alberta Protocol, which commits nations to a 10% year-on-year growth in greenhouse gas emissions. China is so far the only nation meeting its obligation in advance of the summit, to be held on one of the huge BP oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.<br />
<br />
97% of climate scientists who can stop their teeth chattering have said that the evidence for Anthropogenic Global Cooling is irrefutable. The slowing of growth in greenhouse gas emissions in the second decade this century, reinforced by a reduction in cosmic rays and solar radiation triggered a "tipping point", after which global temperatures plummeted. Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere declined further as the oceans cooled, and they absorbed even more of the trace gas essential to life on Earth. Several forms of geo-engineering are already widespread, including "cloud-seeding" to induce precipitation and thin the cloud to "let the sun shine through". NASA has already deployed two giant mirrors in space to reflect solar radiation onto northern and southern extremities of the Earth. Twenty more are planned, with five already in construction.<br />
<br />
Worldwide, government subsidies for production and sale of electric vehicles have been increased after it was discovered that they indirectly cause more CO2 emissions than any other form of transport, and are the least efficient in energy use. In the US, the EPA is lobbying the Black House (formerly Disneyworld, Florida) and Congress to introduce legislation to further reduce fuel efficiency below the current 10 miles-per-gallon enforced. Corn and other grain-based generation of CO2 was stopped in 2029, as world food production declined with decreasing CO2 levels, but the growth in cellulistic (plant-matter) use has increased, as forests are felled for burning, and more land is cleared for food production.<br />
<br />
The iconic Polar bear is under threat. Populations in Maryland, northern California and Britain are said to be in decline as the sea ice is too thick for them to dig holes to catch fish and inattentive seals. Plans to use Air Force planes to bomb holes in the ice were abandoned after it was realised the bears are difficult to see against the ice. There is some good news - Penguin populations in Australia are doing well, after numbers declined during the long trek from Antarctica 20 years ago.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it's fitting to end with a round-up on "climate refugees", and with news of one of the smallest nations in the world - Tuvalu. The 30-metre drop in sea levels has been a disaster for the people of Funafuti, which used to be an atoll with a central lagoon, but is now a large island with a depression in the middle. The port facilities are high and dry, and tourists shun the island, especially the capital, where they face a 10-minute taxi ride to the sea in one direction, and an hour-long ride in the other. To highlight the plight of the islanders, the president recently held a cabinet meeting on the top of Mount Fongafale, a 34-metre-high hill in the centre of the capital. He is in negotiation with the president of Bangladesh, which has increased in area by more than three times, to send incoming climate refugees to Tuvalu, to attempt a similar strategy to that employed on Guam. There, the combined weight of several hundred thousand refugees and their vehicles has resulted in the island sinking by 10 metres, allowing several of the fishing ports to be dredged to operate at high tide.<br />
<br />
Cuba has recently erected a 10-metre-high fence across the land bridge to Florida, to help stop climate refugees entering the country illegally. The fence is fronted by the existing 50-metre-wide shark-infested moat. The Coast Guard patrols the northern shores to intercept and turn back "boat people", mainly from Texas and Louisiana. Mexico has reinforced its border with the states of California, Arizona, and Texas. Regular patrols by the Mexico Immigration Force in trucks and helicopters are backed up by unmanned drones. These are fitted with infrared cameras said to be able to detect a "greenback" (as illegal immigrants from the USA are known there) from 20 km at night. "Using GPS, the drone locates the greenbacks precisely, and we can activate a ring of land-mines around them" says Eduardo Chavez, senior MIF commander. "If they heed the warnings broadcast by the mines, we go in and pick 'em up for deportation. If they don't we just replace the mines they set off".<br />
<br />
Finally, a campaign I support totally, and which, in a small way, can "make a difference" - Earth Hour. Citizens of the world should do their bit to support the campaign, by together turning on all the lights, electrical and gas appliances in their houses, and running their vehicle engines. After all, it's only once a week, and energy is cheap, so remember each Friday between 8 and 9 PM - Earth Hour!<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thespoof.com/spoof-news/magazine/10537/the-big-freeze-or-how-i-learned-to-love-big-oil">http://www.thespoof.com/spoof-news/magazine/10537/the-big-freeze-or-how-i-learned-to-love-big-oil</a>MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-23543660056616741172015-09-23T15:07:00.001+01:002016-11-12T04:43:00.784+00:00"Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America" - finally laid to rest. RIPThere's been some discussion about sea-level rise on the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. in the comments on the recent "Doubling up the sea level scare for Paris using the old ‘one-two punch’ line" post at <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/21/doubling-up-the-sea-level-scare-for-paris-using-the-old-one-two-punch-line/">WUWT</a>. I posted a couple of charts there, and I intend to return to the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n12/full/nclimate1597.html">Sallenger et al article</a> in this post's title. They used windows of 60, 50 and 40 years for their analysis, and showed this chart for New York; incidentally the only time-series chart in the entire article - rather surprising since they analysed dozens of gauge stations around North America.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y5rjjGFFe18/VgKXoBCxRiI/AAAAAAAACZE/oQv_vAENwvM/s1600/nclimate1597-s1-21b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="508" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y5rjjGFFe18/VgKXoBCxRiI/AAAAAAAACZE/oQv_vAENwvM/s640/nclimate1597-s1-21b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Supplementary Figure S7. New York City annual average sea level data with three<br />
regression results used in this study for the most recent 60-year subsample (1950-2009).<br />
The mean elevation of the annual NYC sea level data (1893-2009) was removed and time<br />
t = 0 was set at year 1950 (t = year – 1950) for these regressions.<br />
<br />
I'm in the habit of using a variety of techniques to analyse gauge records, especially long ones like New York, as I did in a <a href="http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/between-rock-and-wet-place-usgs-creates.html">previous post</a> about the "Hotspot". Those two 30-year regression lines above prompted me to plot a 30-year sliding window for New York, using the data from 1893-2013, slightly longer than Sallenger et al, who used PSMSL annual average data to 2009 - I've used annual averages calculated from monthly data. Their data had three recent years missing because a few monthly data points are missing, and PSMSL exclude such years. I suspect the differences are small though.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KAX-rNXzxC0/VgKXd6btzzI/AAAAAAAACYw/wXoaOgeAM8w/s1600/New+York_31798_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KAX-rNXzxC0/VgKXd6btzzI/AAAAAAAACYw/wXoaOgeAM8w/s640/New+York_31798_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Data from <a href="http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/12.php">PSMSL</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The first thing that's obvious is that 30-year periods ending in the 1950s actually had rates higher than the 1980-2009 period shown on their chart above. So the modern acceleration is nothing new; in fact the earlier acceleration was more rapid. It also shows that projecting a 30-year rate forward to 2100 is both unscientific and ignoring history completely. I certainly don't expect future years to mirror the big fall in rates after the mid 1950s, but I do expect something of a drop. Sallenger et al just didn't look for any cyclical pattern in the gauge data. They mentioned it was possible that there were such patterns, but their analysis was effectively designed to mask it by comparing <b>differences</b> in rate between adjacent windows. If that was plotted, the 1950s peak above would be a trough! Why do I expect a gradual drop in rate? Because it's already underway!<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-raysh1Noulw/VgKlxYgCNxI/AAAAAAAACZ0/v5qko5GoCq8/s1600/New+York_10310_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-raysh1Noulw/VgKlxYgCNxI/AAAAAAAACZ0/v5qko5GoCq8/s640/New+York_10310_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rates (mm/year) for 10 year (121 month) sliding windows.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Note how irregular peaks "kicked in" at the end of the 1960s; the latest peaked after Sallenger et al's 2009 end date, in 2010/11. Sandy Hook is an island S of the entrance to NY harbour. A more up-to-date (to 2014) plot shows the descent from the last peak more clearly:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aLmWyrNbAk/VgZuSyXcUAI/AAAAAAAACag/cJLSOdE9O5A/s1600/Sandy+Hook_22244_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aLmWyrNbAk/VgZuSyXcUAI/AAAAAAAACag/cJLSOdE9O5A/s640/Sandy+Hook_22244_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Rates (mm/year) for 10 year (121 month) sliding windows.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Finally, here's the rate evolution, Rates are computed from 1950; the final point is 2014. When I've time, I'll update all my NY charts to date, and replace any above that need it.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F29iLaSbCao/VgKvrXVFIhI/AAAAAAAACaM/VLyZV2MNjfQ/s1600/New+York_17189_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F29iLaSbCao/VgKvrXVFIhI/AAAAAAAACaM/VLyZV2MNjfQ/s640/New+York_17189_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<p>In 2009, the rate was still rising; now it's levelled off. Sallenger et al's projection is already out-of-date. RIP</p>MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-52366512794228593932015-09-21T14:45:00.000+01:002016-11-12T04:49:02.080+00:00The 2015 El Niño and some super-hype from a couple of niños in the Grauniad<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've taken an unannounced</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> break from blogging; the reasons I won't bore you with. I've decided to restart with a post about the current El Niño. First an update of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_ngN5wY6EF0/Vf_87KVQImI/AAAAAAAACXw/vdZU3hREb_I/s1600/SOI_10609_image001.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_ngN5wY6EF0/Vf_87KVQImI/AAAAAAAACXw/vdZU3hREb_I/s640/SOI_10609_image001.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">SOI 1990 - Aug 2015 (Source data <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi2.shtml">BOM</a>) Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As you can see, the index has dropped from a high in 2010/11 into a strong El Niño (data to Aug 2015). However, there's some doubt as to the likely duration and strength. A couple of people are quite certain, however, as in this <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/21/el-nino-weather-save-california-destroy-tropics">Guardian article</a>. Please read it - it's either going to make you laugh (as I did) or cry, or both.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>El Niño: a global weather event that may save California — and destroy the tropics</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The last time a really large El Niño occurred was during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter of 1997-98. Droughts, floods and outbreaks of infectious diseases plagued villages across Africa. Floods inundated Peru. Megafires rampaged through Indonesia. Fisheries collapsed off the coast of South America. Crops failed across much of the tropics and global food prices rose. Civil conflicts broke out in Africa and Asia.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Today, in all likelihood, we stand about a month away from another major El Niño. Current state-of-the-art <a href="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf">forecasts</a> tell us that an event similar to 1997-98 is likely to return this winter. Our own research on the human toll of El Niño suggests that households in the tropics will begin to feel the heat as early as September.
</blockquote>
Do those <a href="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf">linked forecasts</a> tell us "that an event similar to 1997-98 is likely to return this winter"? No they don't - they don't mention 1997-98 anywhere, because they're <b>forecasts</b>, which are predicting a strong El Niño. The authors are hyping it up - to forecast doom and gloom, death and destruction, floods, drought and pestilence (I added in the pestilence myself - what's sauce for the goose....), and "the destruction of the tropics" apparently. Last time I heard, the tropics were still there after the 1997-8 El Niño, though a little frayed round the edges in one or two places.<br />
<br />
Who are the authors of this apocalyptic treatise? They are Kyle Meng, who is "assistant professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.", and Solomon Hsiang is "associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He coauthored Economic Risks of Climate Change (just published) the analysis behind the Risky Business report by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson & Thomas Steyer.".<br />
<br />
Not climate scientists, nor meteorologists, but economists. Economists who actually understand less about El Niño and its effects and consequences than I do. Not only that, they manage to contradict themselves in their lurid and doom-laden article. Read it and spot the contradictions for yourself. An El Niño creates weather and climate disparities in the Pacific both east-west and north-south, and not just in the tropics, as these two economists-with-an-agenda would have us believe. Their linked forecasts (do they want us to actually read them? I did, most won't) make those disparities in temperature and precipitation quite clear.<br />
<br />
Try this quote for a schoolboy howler "The fundamental physics of El Niño and its unequal effects have been around as long as civilization.". Really? and I, in my ignorance thought that the causes and effects were only recognised in the late 20th. century, and only begun to be fully understood as a result of the intensive recording and study of the 1997-8 event. You really are a couple of niños (Spanish for kids, children) aren't you? Stick to economics, guys, you may even be able to make a living out of it.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-17173298334281220532013-08-20T10:12:00.000+01:002013-08-20T10:14:03.888+01:00Somewhere ElseSomewhere is always warmer than somewhere else.<br />
Somewhere is always colder than somewhere else.<br />
Somewhere is always wetter than somewhere else.<br />
Somewhere is always drier than somewhere else.<br />
Somewhere is always sunnier than somewhere else.<br />
Somewhere is always cloudier than somewhere else.<br />
<br />
<br />
Somewhere else is where you live.<br />
<br />
Right now.<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-29962935925611539352013-08-08T11:01:00.001+01:002013-08-08T11:01:55.640+01:00Shifting the truth southwardThe Sydney Morning Herald featured an article a few days ago titled <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/marine-life-on-the-move-20130804-2r7pz.html" target="_blank">Marine life on the move</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The first global snapshot of marine life shifting under climate change has found it is on the move towards the poles at a rate of about seven kilometres a year. Fish and other marine creatures are seeking cooler habitat much faster than terrestrial life, according to an international study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.</blockquote>
Can't stand the heat, huh? Not exactly - not at all exactly in fact, as the article actually informs us, but right at the end of course, well to the south, where the truth has shifted to, well after the preceding and misleading statements have sunk in.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The leading edge or 'front line' of a marine species distribution is moving towards the poles at the average rate of 72 kilometres per decade," Dr Poloczanska said. "This is considerably faster than terrestrial species moving poleward at an average of six kilometres per decade . . . despite sea-surface temperatures warming three times slower than land temperatures."</blockquote>
So it's the "leading edge" of species distribution moving poleward, not the entire distribution. In other words, the "trailing edge" is staying where it was, and the species are extending their range. They're not moving away from warmer water "seeking cooler habitat", but extending into previously cooler waters.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dr Poloczanska, of the University of Queensland, and 18 international colleagues found no doubt about who was responsible for the greenhouse gas-related warming of the ocean's upper layers. "Global responses of marine species revealed here demonstrate a strong fingerprint of this anthropogenic [caused by humans] climate change on marine life," the paper said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dr Poloczanska said in Australia's south-east, tropical and subtropical species of fish, molluscs and plankton were shifting much further south through the Tasman Sea.</blockquote>
But they're not "shifting much further south through the Tasman Sea", they're being found further south, as your study actually found, Dr Poloczanska.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A 2010 CSIRO study found that warm surf-zone species such as silver drummer were more abundant, while the range of others such as snapper and rock flathead has increased.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the Indian Ocean, a southward distribution of seabirds has been detected, as well as a loss of cool-water seaweeds north of Perth.</blockquote>
Several studies in recent years were reported as indicating a "poleward shift" of species, whereas in every case, a closer examination reveals not a shift, but an extension of range. Shifting the truth, to fit an agenda. Good science distorted by a totally misleading summary, and by one of the authors too.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-64233175871038119702013-08-05T01:28:00.001+01:002017-01-16T09:47:02.556+00:00Plagiarism, Lies and Bullshit - Part 2, the "Straw Man" exposedIn Part 1 I summarised results for 85 australian stations over the period 1990-2010, which the authors of <a href="http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/jaeger/Moerner_Parker_ESAIJ2013.pdf" target="_blank">"Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case"</a> appear to think comprises 20 years.<br />
<br />
For anyone who thinks I'm just moaning about a few "little mistakes" that Mörner & Parker have made (it's actually <b>written</b> by Mörner alone, as I'll explain later), I'll state what I've found in this "paper" - all that's in my post title. Mörner lies about his results; not selective reporting or creative statistics, simple straightforward lies. Lies that are very easy to disprove; anyone with access to the internet and with no knowledge of statistics is able so see they're lies. Disinformation, and its partner in crime, unadulterated bullshit, is present throughout, like some constant and annoying in-store muzak. The whole point of this rotten pamphlet is to attack a "straw man", aided and abetted by blatant plagiarism.<br />
<br />
Anyone perpetrating a fraud, the representation of fiction as truth, cannot maintain a consistent story without inadvertently revealing apparently small but significant contradictions and disconnects; this "paper" contains many such. I will detail some of the most obvious, which seem to have escaped the notice of surprisingly un-sceptical and credulous "sceptics", both bloggers and comment posters who would delight in tearing apart any paper or blog post from those on "the other side" which contained so little in the way of actual results. This paper contains not even one, so I'll provide them in a full analysis of the entire 86 (actually 85) stations which Mörner and Parker claim to have analysed over the 21 years 1990-2010, which they appear to believe spans 20 years.<br />
<br />
There's clear confusion throughout as to what constitutes periods of 10 and 20 years - a kind of "date dyslexia". The date ranges which are claimed to have been analysed are given as 1990-2010, 1990-2000, and 2000-2010. These are periods of 21, 11, and 11 years respectively, though the text mentions "20 years", "the last 10 or 20 years", the introduction "the last two decades", and the caption for the only chart included says "for the last 10 and 20 years". The short ranges are not consecutive; they overlap at 2000. With such confusion evident, one might ask exactly which periods were supposed to have been analysed - were they analysed?<br />
<br />
<b>Exaggeration - but by whom?</b><br />
<br />
First, I'll rebut the the accusation of "exaggeration" in the "official Australian governmental value" of 5.4 mm/year. You won't find that figure anywhere but in this paper, or in blog posts discussing it. Google it if you will. It's a simple average of the individual ABSLMP station trends to June 2011 which were tabled in an ABSLMP report (June 2011, published Sept. 2011, no overall average included), and as such cannot be "exaggerated". It may not be exactly relevant to the long-term sea-level change around Australia, but that's another matter entirely, one which I'll cover later.<br />
<br />
Two stations in South Australia are uniquely close to one another; Port Adelaide and Port Stanvac (an ABSLMP station) are just 20 km apart. The latter was dismantled after Dec. 2010, when the adjacent oil refinery was closed and decommissioned. Their records, over the period of overlap, differ by an average of 190mm, due to different "tide-gauge zero" benchmarks in use. All tide-gauges have local benchmarks; the gauge readings are not absolute but relative to the local benchmark. Across Gulf St. Vincent, about 60 km to the west is Port Giles, though you won't find it on any map; it's a jetty and a few buildings. Its gauge record differs from Port Stanvac by some 50 mm. Using the Port Stanvac ABSLMP record (from June 1992 to Nov, 2010) as a baseline, I've plotted the adjusted record from Port Adelaide (Jan 1990 to Dec 2010) on the same chart. I repeated this for the shorter Port Giles record, Sept. 1994 to Dec. 2010.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pvHL4KClSI4/Uf7rd4std_I/AAAAAAAAB6E/epv9xoglsVU/s1600/Port+Stanvac-Port+Adelaide.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pvHL4KClSI4/Uf7rd4std_I/AAAAAAAAB6E/epv9xoglsVU/s640/Port+Stanvac-Port+Adelaide.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2PAST2rXk_M/Uf7rd8lf7LI/AAAAAAAAB6I/0w39Y6Ki81M/s1600/Port+Stanvac-Port+Giles.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2PAST2rXk_M/Uf7rd8lf7LI/AAAAAAAAB6I/0w39Y6Ki81M/s640/Port+Stanvac-Port+Giles.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
The degree of overlap and correlation is remarkable, I'd say, much better than I'd expected. Two things are evident - that the ABSLMP station very closely reflects sea-level at the two other Gulf stations, and that the rate for Adelaide greatly exceeds the long-term rate of about 2.3 mm/year. I say "about", because an NTC report gives it as 2.2 mm/year to 2009 (more , much more, later), and the latest data to 2012 gives 2.35 mm/year; here's the chart.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2ScFkFjzjBU/Uf7rd3-UgMI/AAAAAAAAB6M/XctDjvSDcZw/s1600/Port+Adelaide+1940-2012.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2ScFkFjzjBU/Uf7rd3-UgMI/AAAAAAAAB6M/XctDjvSDcZw/s640/Port+Adelaide+1940-2012.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Three things are evident; the moving average shows sea-level at Port Adelaide rose only a little between 1965 and 1990, there was a dip to about 1996, and after that rose more sharply than the overall trend. That's a general profile for most Australian stations, though to a greater degree for many, and to a far lesser degree for some. The rate for the 1990-2010 period for Port Adelaide is not much greater than the average for all stations, as you'll see. Here's the chart fo Fremantle, WA to 2012. The profile 1940 to 2012 is almost identical; it's the Australian story over that period, and both charts blow the "no acceleration" meme apart. The acceleration isn't due to melting glaciers or AGW in general, it's simply returning Oz sea-levels to above "normal" after decades of ENSO-induced variations, including the early-mid 1990s "dip", the result of two El Ninos; 1991-2 and 1994-5.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hJCwbYp_b_M/UbYn66veXuI/AAAAAAAABnU/jPWO3tCwtFk/s1600/Fremantle%252C+WA+1897-2012.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hJCwbYp_b_M/UbYn66veXuI/AAAAAAAABnU/jPWO3tCwtFk/s640/Fremantle%252C+WA+1897-2012.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Much greater distances separate Wyndham, Western Australia, from Broome (ABSLMP), and from Darwin, Northern Territory (also ABSLMP); about 500 and 800 km respectively, I'd say. I've repeated the exercise for these three stations - the necessary adjustments are shown on the charts.<br />
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It's said a picture's worth a thousand words; a well-chosen moving average is worth any number of "2nd. degree polynomials", because it focusses on what's been (and is) going on.<br />
<br />
It's now clear where the "exaggeration" originates - Mörner & Parker, henceforth referred to as "M&P". It's also clear that their claim of "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year" (which would have to include these three stations) is totally demolished (although they do that rather well themselves - more later!). Of course, as the 3rd. Viscount Monckton of Brenchley might say (and has done, many times) "Don't believe a word I say" - check for yourselves; I provide NTC and PSMSL links for all stations I've analysed. His instruction also applies to M&P of course - why do so many otherwise (apparently) intelligent people believe everything they say without checking anything? Do they (particularly Mörner), have some sort of "free pass", which makes what they say and write immune from scrutiny? Isn't that kind of chauvinism both unscientific and un-sceptical, in short, partisan, exactly what sceptics criticise "the other side" for? Surprisingly, the noble lord is a great fan of Mörner's; perhaps he should pay more attention to what he instructs others to do, and be a little more sceptical himself. Rant put on hold - now for some more real data.<br />
<br />
<b>The actual and factual analysis</b><br />
<br />
A number of stations have so little data for the relevant period they don't bear any analysis. One station has its record duplicated on the NTC page for Queensland. Strange therefore that these inconvenient facts weren't mentioned. Neither mentioned is that the remaining 85 stations include 6 which are thousands of km away from Australia; one is halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica, 4 are on the Antarctic coast, and one (Cocos Islands) is best described as being half-way between Darwin and Sri Lanka, in the Indian Ocean, and closer to the Maldives than Darwin. Relevant? Of course not.<br />
<br />
My analysis in <a href="http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2013/08/plagiarism-lies-and-bullshit-part-1.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a> is open, comprehensive, detailed and checkable, but does it prove anything about future trends in sea-levels around Australia? No, it does not; the period 1990-2010 starts at a low point in the record. M&P missed that, but it should, and would, have been obvious to anyone who'd charted the data and added meaningful moving averages. Sea-levels generally <b>declined</b> between the 1960s and 1993-4; any trends calculated from the early 1990s to present reflect the ENSO-driven rebound from that low period. Over the next 5-10 years, both the decline and sharper recent rise will "average out" as the record lengthens. There has indeed been an acceleration in rates in the last two decades; anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenuous at best. Anyone who claims that this unrepresentative period "proves" that the acceleration is caused by anything other than ENSO-induced change superimposed over a relatively constant underlying trend is being more than disingenuous. <br />
<br />
In a <a href="http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-effect-of-enso-on-sea-level-in.html" target="_blank">recent post</a>, I showed the correlation between the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and sea-level at two Australian, and several Pacific island stations; I could have cited a number of other examples, both from Australia and Pacific islands. I even attempted to remove the ENSO effect, and succeeded IMHO. At least all the "lumps and bumps" (and dips) were evened out. ENSO is the "big player" in the Pacific - underlying rates of rise are swamped by the ENSO signal. Anyone who ignores ENSO (as measured by the SOI) are fated to draw entirely wrong conclusions about what has been happening, or is happening, or will happen wrt sea-levels in the Pacific in general and around Australia in particular, in the context of this and my last post.<br />
<br />
If I seem to be "going on a bit" about ENSO, and "over-egging the pudding", I don't apologise - it's important, very important in this context, and not just a few dips and bumps in the records.<br />
<br />
<b>Major disconnects in M&P's "results*</b><br />
<br />
Here's the list of claimed analyses and results for Australian stations:<br />
<br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 1990-2010, linear trends: average 0.1 mm year<br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 1990-2000 linear trends: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 2000-2010: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
16 ABSLMP stations 1990-2010 linear trends: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
All 86 stations 1990-2010, linear trends: average 1.5 mm year<br />
and "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year".<br />
<br />
Now if 86 stations produce an average of 1.5 mm/ year, and 70 stations an average of 0.1 mm/year, it should be clear the 16 ABSLMP stations must have contributed rather a lot to the average; they comprise only 19% of the total. To boost the average from 0.1 to 1.5 they <b>must</b> have averaged very much more than 1.5. Remember "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year"? That average is central to M&P's claims, yet we're not informed what it was? However, it's easy to work out the missing value for the 16 ABSLMP stations:<br />
<br />
86 x 1.5 gives a cumulative total of 129; the 70 stations give a cumulative total of 7, so the 16 stations contributed 122, giving an average of 7.625 mm/year. The apparently "exaggerated" NTC average quoted was just 5.4 mm/year - where does the 7.625 figure come from? I thought "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year"? Both station averages are fiction - the ABSLMP average to 2010 (from the NTC 2010 December report) is 4.9 m/year, and if that were used, the 70 stations would have an average of (129 - 78.4)/70 or 0.72 mm/year. In the Discussion section, Morner says<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
From this comparison it seems obvious to us that the Australian governmental value of 5.4 mm/year must be significantly exaggerated. The Australian data analysed by us provide a range from 0.1 to 1.5 mm/year. The same over-estimation seems to apply for individual sites when comparing our values from Darwin (their 8.6 versus our 2.2 mm/year) and from Stony Point (their 2.6 versus our -2.1 mm/year).</blockquote>
So the "Australian governmental" value is "exaggerated" at 5.4 mm/year, but his average figure is 7.6? I remind you that my properly derived average is 4.35 mm/year - that doesn't mean that the NTC figure is incorrect, as their trends were calculated to June 2011, rather than to Dec. 2010, start in various years from 1990 to 1993, and have a residual of a half-year of the annual cycle. Mine were calculated over the full 1990-2010 period, and so include earlier data for the 14 gauges which replaced existing installations.<br />
<br />
And do we get some actual results at last? No we don't - the "comparisons" are sleight-of-hand - smoke and mirrors. "Their" figures for Darwin and Stony Point are for the entire length of record, not 1990-2010, and it's worth while pointing out that longer-term records for the 14 of the 16 stations contain ABSLMP data - the gauges were replaced. The other two are all ABSLMP data, so there can be no difference there either. The NTC simply extended the 14 stations with data from the new gauges. <br />
<br />
Links to sea-level data for all charts can be found on the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/tides/monthly/" target="_blank">NTC data page</a>.<br />
<br />
I'll update this post with charts for Darwin and Stony Point, and direct links to data later - I wanted to get some actual charts displayed, to confirm that the "exaggeration" claim was false, and that the "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year" was also false. Watch this space<br />
<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-11036083377657524172013-08-04T20:08:00.000+01:002017-01-16T09:47:34.837+00:00Plagiarism, Lies and Bullshit - Part 1Back in April this year, Anthony Watts gave prominence to a "paper" by Nils-Axel Mörner & A. Parker - <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/26/australian-sea-level-data-highly-exaggerated-only-5-inches-by-2100/" target="_blank">Australian sea level data highly exaggerated, only 5 inches by 2100</a>. It's clear that neither he, nor any of the commenters on that post actually appear to have read the "paper", or if they did didn't do so with a critical or sceptical eye. Are they all sceptics in the general sense, or not? I'm an AGW sceptic, and I'm also a sceptic in the general sense - I believe nothing I read until I've checked out its conclusions, claims, methodology, and sources in detail. I've done all those checks on the "paper" (I use inverted commas deliberately), and have found all that this post's title implies. The "paper" is titled "Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case", and can be found <a href="http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/jaeger/Moerner_Parker_ESAIJ2013.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Mörner & Parker claim that the Australian government, aided and abetted by Australia's National Tidal Centre. a branch of the Bureau of Meteorology, have adopted an "exaggerated" figure for recent sea-level rise as "official". None of their cited sources contain the figure, nor statements of recent acceleration as claimed - it's a "straw man". Indeed, the NTC takes pains to stress the short-term nature of the trends reported for its 16 SEAFRAME stations managed by their Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Programme (ABSLMP), and warns against placing reliance on the data at present. There's a term which describes making unsupported claims, as M&P have done here, especially when the cited sources actually say just the opposite.<br />
<br />
Astonishingly, this "paper" contains no data whatsoever to support its "conclusions". Despite having claimed to analyse "86 stations", there is no list of any stations analysed, no tables of results and just one chart for Fremantle, which in fact neatly refutes one of the claimed results (and more besides). Several "analyses" are claimed to have been carried out, but aren't mentioned again, and so no results or summaries are given. Not a single station trend for any relevant period is quoted.<br />
<br />
Even more astonishing is not even a list of the 16 "ABSLMP" (Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Programme) stations, which are supposedly central to the "paper" is given. The reader is left in the dark; reproducibility, a central requirement of published papers, would be impossible without a deal of research on the part of anyone attempting the process. I'm not in that position however - I've been studying all aspects of Australian sea-levels in some depth over recent years. Because of that knowledge, and the spreadsheets and charts to hand, I knew instantly that the claimed summary results were fiction. How much of a fiction will be seen below. The author(s) appear to believe that 1990-2010 spans 20 years, a figure they mention several times.<br />
<br />
This is their claimed methodology:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We fit linear and 2nd order polynomial lines to the sea level data recorded along the coasts of Australia in order to assess the accelerating trends and to compare with the reconstruction of Church and White[12]. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If Y is the mean sea level (MSL) and X is the year, then clearly the sea level rise is SLR=dY/dX and the sea level acceleration is SLA=d<sup>2</sup>Y/dX<sup>2</sup>. The linear fitting gives the average SLR over the observation period. The 2nd order polynomial fitting gives the average SLA over the observation period.</blockquote>
There's no further mention of any "2nd order polynomials" at all. "The 2nd order polynomial fitting gives the average SLA over the observation period." - no it doesn't, it gives the equation for a curve.<br />
<br />
What about "rebutting" several prominent authors on sea-level rise?<br />
<br />
Out of this highly variable spectrum, Douglas [16] selected 25 records and arrived at a mean sea level rise of 1.8 mm/year, Church et al. [11] selected 6 records and arrived at a value of 1.4 mm/year, and Holgate [20] selected 9 records and arrived at 1.45 mm/year.<br />
<br />
The word "selected" is meant to infer some kind of "cherry-picking". However, two of the three cases, you won't find the claimed figures for number of stations "selected", and in none the claimed statistic. Comparing Australian data to global data puts it in context, and no more.<br />
<br />
Douglas didn't "select" anything. There were only 23 (not 25) long-term stations available to analyse, and his result was global. Douglas didn't estimate a figure for overall sea-level rise. Peltier (2001) used Douglas's data, corrected for GIA, and came up with 1.84 mm/year.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-011-9119-1">Church & White</a> (hardly "et al." at all) used 290 stations, and don't mention a set of 6 stations in any context. You'll search in vain for the "1.4" figure, their figure is 1.7 ± 0.3 mm/year.<br />
<br />
Amazingly enough, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028492/full">Holgate</a> <b>did</b> actually select 9 stations for analysis; his intention was to test whether a small set of high-quality, continuous (no gaps) records to "composites" of many sets of world-wide gauge data of varying lenght and quality. His estimate was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/year, and not 1.45.<br />
<br />
Here's a list of claimed analyses, and results given for the Australian stations:<br />
<br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 1990-2010, linear trends: average 0.1 mm year<br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 1990-2000 linear trends: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
70 "non-ABSLMP" stations 2000-2010: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
16 ABSLMP stations 1990-2010 linear trends: <b>none</b><br />
2nd. degree polynomials for same: <b>none</b><br />
All 86 stations 1990-2010, linear trends: average 1.5 mm/year<br />
and "No fitting produces a sea level rise in excess of 1.5 mm/year".<br />
<br />
Those last two claims alone demonstrate that the "results" aren't results at all. - they're fabricated. If the average of the 86 is 1.5 mm/year, then some must have been lower, and some higher, but we're told none was higher than 1.5 mm/year. Therefore they must have all been identical at 1.5 mm/year, yet we're told that 70 of the 86 averaged 0.1 mm/year. Also, of the 70 stations that averaged 0.1 mm/year, some must have been higher, and some lower, with many negative. Now that would have been remarkable, in the scientific sense - news to broadcast. M&P haven't even realised the implications of their laughable "statistics".<br />
<br />
Check out that last claim against my analysis of the "86 stations" - actually 85. Six stations are so remote from Australia they aren't relevant at all - thousands of km away. I've included them however, to get overall statistics to compare. I've started my list beginning on the north Queensland coast in the Gulf of Carpentaria, progressing clockwise via Tasmania to Milner Bay, Northern Territory, which is also on the Gulf, ending with the remote and decidedly non-Australian stations.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p8RcADFCrE0/Uf6c4JY_-OI/AAAAAAAAB5Y/Ucbww-UHS60/s1600/NTC+Stations+1-43.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p8RcADFCrE0/Uf6c4JY_-OI/AAAAAAAAB5Y/Ucbww-UHS60/s1600/NTC+Stations+1-43.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Station 32 is Sydney, which we're told had a "negative trend", though we aren't informed what it was - details later.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wYFvXhY9i-s/Uf6c4D-ju4I/AAAAAAAAB5c/yct41OQplpM/s1600/NTC+Stations+43-85.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wYFvXhY9i-s/Uf6c4D-ju4I/AAAAAAAAB5c/yct41OQplpM/s1600/NTC+Stations+43-85.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Stations 65-79 are on the W and NW coasts; 66 is Fremantle, 77 is Darwin. 80-85 are "off the map" and very distant. Spaces on the charts indicate that no meaningful analysis for those stations was possible because of very limited data for the period. There were no zero trends, and none was negative.<br />
<br />
Full station details are shown in the table at the end of this post.<br />
<br />
The average for all stations is 4.05 mm/year, with standard deviation 2.51, minimum 0.17 mm/year, maximum 9.38 mm/year. The average for the 16 ABSLMP stations is 4.35 mm/year (not quoted by M&P, though central to their theme), and that for "non-ABSLMP" stations is 3.90 mm/year. Contrast those figures with the claims of M&B-P, 0.1 mm/year for the "non-ABSLMP" stations, and 1.5 mm/year overall.<br />
<br />
There's a claim that the trend fo Sydney was negative over this period, but In fact it's positive over 1990-2010, and more positive over the actual 20 years 1991-2010. Here's the proof, with both trends: <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GPz53Z5i50I/Uf6c4C4cwwI/AAAAAAAAB5g/hQGtcqQ9HvM/s1600/Sydney+1990-2010.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GPz53Z5i50I/Uf6c4C4cwwI/AAAAAAAAB5g/hQGtcqQ9HvM/s1600/Sydney+1990-2010.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trends for Sydney, 1990-2010 and 1991-2010 Data Source: <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70000/IDO70000_60370_SLD.shtml" target="_blank">NTC</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Strangely no trend figure is given for one of the most analysed stations worldwide, though perhaps not so strange because it must by now be clear that M&P haven't analysed <b>any</b> Australian stations over "20 years", nor over 21 years either. I intend to keep this post reasonably short and to the point, but what about the "plagiarism" and "bullshit"? Disinformation, and its partner in crime, unadulterated bullshit, is present throughout, like some constant and annoying in-store muzak. Here's a glaring (and hilarious) example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The sea level changes along the Australian coastline have been measured at many locations starting in the late 1800s. In the early 1990s, the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project was designed in order to monitor the sea level changes around Australia and to identify decadal trends with respect to the enhanced greenhouse effect. A sequence of SEAFRAME[36] stations (SEA-Level Fine Resolution Acoustic Measuring Equipment) was installed on 16 South Pacific islands to measure the sea level and to record meteorological parameters (both at stations previously covered by standard tide gauge equipment and stations previously not covered by tide gauges). The vertical stability of the gauges is surveyed by State organizations using GPS.</blockquote>
That's novel, installing tide-gauges on <b>Pacific Islands</b> to measure sea-level around <b>Australia</b>. This gives "telemetry" a whole new meaning. I'll poke around in some more ordure in Part 2 which will follow very shortly. What about plagiarism? surely not? On page 3 is stated (my bold):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Previously , the National Tide [sic] Centre analyzed all tide gauge data from stations having more than 25 years of recording. This survey <b>ended in year 2003</b>, and was replaced by the ABSLMP data set containing the measurements restricted to the 16 ABSLMP stations. Nowadays, NTC neglects all the data previously measured at these stations as well as at other sites, <b>many of which exceed 25, and sometimes 50</b>, years of recording.</blockquote>
The NTC replaced the National Tidal Facility of Australia (NTFA ) in January 2004. Why is he scolding the NTC for ceasing the issue of reports at all? Why is he bemoaning the loss of reports with linear trends? Trends which he says are "misleading"? His charge against the NTC is that they produced a "misleading statistic" concerning the ABSLMP stations. They did not, and would not have done, as I'll explain later - his citations are fake - they don't contain what he claims, nor anything remotely resembling what he claims.<br />
<br />
The reason for his charge of "neglect" will soon be clear. Figure 1 in the "paper", is said to represent the full-record rates for 39 stations with "long-term" (25 years or more) of data in <b>2009</b>. If data was available to end 2010,<b> y</b>ou might ask as I did, why<b> </b>quote the number of such stations for <b>2009</b> if you had data for "all stations" to <b>2010</b>? Also why analyse that data to 2009 - a long-term station in 2009 is also a long-term station in 2010. "many of which exceed 25, and sometimes 50, years of recording" - doesn't he know how many in each category? In fact it's most, not many which exceed 25 years in 2010, and it's just two which exceeded 50 years - Fremantle and Sydney.<br />
<br />
Here's Figure 1, with the legend "AUSTRALIA" in large friendly letters, in case anyone might be unable to identify what it represents.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--I6_1Wdjcuk/Uby7xKu9zfI/AAAAAAAABuw/k_LKF0yBeHQ/s1600/Morner-Parker+Fig+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="662" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--I6_1Wdjcuk/Uby7xKu9zfI/AAAAAAAABuw/k_LKF0yBeHQ/s640/Morner-Parker+Fig+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
There's already a problem - Mörner&Parker (Parker is actually Alberto Boretti, more in Part 2) couldn't have analysed the 39 stations on that map; one of them (Port Adelaide Inner Harbour) ceased operation after 2008, and since the data was virtually identical to Port Adelaide Outer Harbour (hardly surprising!) the NTC pulled the record from the data webpage in 2010, well before M&P say they accessed the data. How do I know that the station is represented on the map? Is my knowledge of Oz stations encyclopaedic? Yes and no, it's extensive (ahem!), but I know exactly which stations that map shows, because as it happens, I have a copy of the map myself, a nice crisp and unfuzzy one, along with a table of station results, in a <b>July 2010</b> report produced by the NTC. It's a report which M&P (or just Mörner?) took pains to claim (above) <b>wasn't produced after 2003</b>, and is titled "<a href="http://www.conscious.com.au/docs/new/128.21_AustMSLsurvey2009(2).pdf" target="_blank">Australian Mean Sea Level Survey 2009</a>"; the graphic is on page 8:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wRCuQTN_lp4/Uby7wd08VgI/AAAAAAAABus/Y5Y-UCrJG0U/s1600/128.21_AustMSLsurvey2009+Fig+2+p8.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="718" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wRCuQTN_lp4/Uby7wd08VgI/AAAAAAAABus/Y5Y-UCrJG0U/s1600/128.21_AustMSLsurvey2009+Fig+2+p8.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
Note the caption - Mörner's map is captioned<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Figure 1 : Distribution of tide gauge station [sic] in Australia. Location and average rates of the 39 tide gauge stations in mainland Australia having a period of recording of at least 25 years. The mean rate of all 39 stations is 0.9 mm/year.</blockquote>
That caption implies by omission that the 39 figure is the most recent, though it applies to 2009 only, as the text states. Ignoring the fact that "mainland Australia" on the map includes three islands (Tasmania's hard to miss, and the names "Booby Island" and "Lord Howe Island" are a bit of a give-away). Mörner's graphic is fuzzy, with degraded colours and showing all the signs of having been taken from a screenprint, with aliasing artefacts in the image. I'll compare sentences (in sequence) from the two paragraphs preceding Mörner's map (M&P) with bulleted points from page 1 of the NTC report (NTC) reproduced below. You'll note from the page shown below that the sequence of statements is identical:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSkT03RvYcU/Ub9o5o056pI/AAAAAAAABv8/KqQlH4lbrms/s1600/128.21_AustMSLsurvey2009%25282%2529+p1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="930" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSkT03RvYcU/Ub9o5o056pI/AAAAAAAABv8/KqQlH4lbrms/s1600/128.21_AustMSLsurvey2009%25282%2529+p1.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
M&P: In 2009, there were 39 sites on the Australian mainland (Figure 1), where relative sea levels had been measured for at least 25 years and with the average length being 42 years .<br />
NTC: There are 39 Australian locations where relative sea levels have been measured for at least 25 years. The average length of these records is 42 years.<br />
<br />
M&P: The average trend of all the 39 stations is 0.9 ±1.9 mm/year.<br />
NTC: The average trend from all 39 stations is 0.9 mm/yr with a standard deviation of 1.9 mm/yr.<br />
<br />
Following that statement, the NTC report says<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some of the stations exhibit unrealistic trends due to undocumented datum shifts. A more realistic average trend obtained from 29 stations within 1 standard deviation of the mean is 1.4 mm/yr with a standard deviation of 0.7 mm/yr.</blockquote>
Mörner missed that bit out. I wonder why?<br />
<br />
M&P: The geographical pattern of relative sea level trends around the Australian coastline is fairly uniform (Figure1).<br />
NTC: The geographical pattern of relative sea level trends around the Australian coastline is fairly uniform in general. <br />
<br />
M&P: Parts of the Australian coastline are strongly affected by the ENSO events.<br />
The longest sea level records show quasi bi-decadal sea-level oscillations.<br />
NTC: Annual mean sea levels around the Australian coastline are strongly correlated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal. Annual mean sea levels generally fluctuate in accordance with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). <br />
The longest sea level records show decadal sea-level oscillations with periods of around 20 years.<br />
<br />
NTC: The Australian Mean Sea Level Survey is updated annually.<br />
<br />
There's nothing wrong of course, with using graphics, nor quoting text, from someone else's publication(s), if citations are given. In this case however, Mörner has not only failed to cite the source, he's explicitly said it doesn't exist! There's only one word for that - plagiarism, compounded by a blatant lie to cover his tracks. He's simply pinched the summary stats from the NTC report to <b>2009</b>, including the standard deviation. None of the other claimed results include a standard deviation. Plagiarism is intellectual theft, and when blatant lies are added, the result is fraud.<br />
<br />
Would a "sea level expert" really need to lift almost an entire page from a NTC report? From an organisation he's criticising? The hypocrisy is staggering! Not only that, but the number of long-term stations, and the statistics themselves, which apply to the period to 2009, and aren't exactly relevant here. Data was available to 2010, so why not do the trends and quote results to 2010? Mörner claims to have analysed 86 stations to 2010, so the spreadsheets <b>should</b> have been available. I say "claims", because there's not one scrap of evidence any such analyses were done, in fact just the opposite. <br />
<br />
In a "paper" which claims to have analysed "all 86" Australian stations, 39 overall and 86 over the last two decades to 2010, amounting to some 297 trend analyses and 258 polynomial fittings, you'd expect several tables, a few sample charts, even a list of stations at the very least, wouldn't you? They're supposed to be there to inform the reader, summarise the results, and not least to <b>show evidence</b> that the work's been done, and that the summary results are valid. The sum total is one long-term chart for Fremantle, and a rather small bunch of totally unsupported statements. Statements which don't in fact reconcile. And this heap of crap was given prominence on WUWT, of which a commenter there recently said "Everyone knows nobody gets away with bad science or math here".<br />
<br />
Why on earth try it on to this extent? Mörner's relying on his target audience being uncritical and chauvinistic, generally ill-informed about sea-level in general, Australia in particular, and he's also confident that not one of them will check on anything he writes. None of those characteristics apply to yours truly. I've found evidence that Boretti-Parker is not an honourable man either, inclined to bend truth into fiction. He (as Boretti) is listed on the <a href="http://principia-scientific.org/about/why-psi-is-a-private-assoc.html" target="_blank">Principia Scientific</a> website as a contributor - it's the lair of the "Sky-dragon slayers". Enough said, I think.<br />
<br />
There are other claims in the "paper" - it might have been sub-titled "This paper is bought to you by the number 1.5", including a ludicrous claim to have analysed "all 2059 PSMSL stations". I'll shred that in Part 2. What's really ironic is that along the the Pacific coast of N & S America, tide-gauges do indeed show very low rates of rise, even a fall over recent decades, something Mörner denies. That's a strange contradiction, as he also denies any increase in global sea-levels. Unfortunately, no-one informed all the other tide-gauges worldwide of this "great truth"; for them it's "business as usual".<br />
<br />
The M&P "paper" isn't just bad science - it's a total lack of science backed up by no data whatsoever - science fiction. The clues, in the form of "bad math", inconsistencies and disconnects are evident to anyone with a critical and sceptical eye. Those on WUWT, posters and commenters, who uncritically accepted a "paper" so thin you can read small print through it, need to re-examine their critical and sceptical faculties and motives.<br />
<br />
Part 2, in which I turn over the ordure with a long stick, and explode more Mörner myths, coming very soon.<br />
<br />
<u>APPENDIX</u><br />
<br />
NTC data for all stations <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/ntc/monthly/" target="_blank">here</a>, and PSMSL data and charts <a href="http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/" target="_blank">here</a> - search the page for Darwin; stations are listed clockwise from there. Values are mm/year.<br />
<br />
<div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" style="width: 616px;">
<colgroup>
<col width="24"></col>
<col width="300"></col>
<col width="72"></col>
<col width="110"></col>
<col width="110"></col>
</colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="24"></td>
<td colspan="3" width="400">Averages for all stations, clockwise</td>
<td width="72"></td>
<td width="110"></td>
<td width="110"></td>
</tr>
<tr height="48">
<td height="48"></td>
<td><br />
<b>Station</b></td>
<td width="72"><b>1990-<br />2010</b></td>
<td width="110"><b>Running<br />mean</b></td>
<td width="110"><b>Omiitted<br />value</b></td>
</tr>
<!--Table rows follow-->
<tr>
<td align="right">1</td>
<td>Mornington Island, QLD</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td>8.61</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td>Karumba</td>
<td>7.94</td>
<td>7.94</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">3</td>
<td>Weipa</td>
<td>6.92</td>
<td>7.43</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td>Booby Island</td>
<td>6.25</td>
<td>7.04</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">5</td>
<td>Goods Island</td>
<td>7.67</td>
<td>7.20</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">6</td>
<td>Thursday Island</td>
<td>2.00</td>
<td>6.16</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">7</td>
<td>Turtle Head</td>
<td>6.96</td>
<td>6.29</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">8</td>
<td>Ince Point</td>
<td>8.20</td>
<td>6.56</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">9</td>
<td>Port Douglas</td>
<td>3.85</td>
<td>6.22</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">10</td>
<td>Cairns</td>
<td>1.83</td>
<td>5.74</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">11</td>
<td>Mourilyan Harbour</td>
<td>1.40</td>
<td>5.30</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">12</td>
<td>Lucinda</td>
<td>3.11</td>
<td>5.10</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">13</td>
<td>Townsville</td>
<td>2.63</td>
<td>4.90</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">14</td>
<td>Cape Ferguson *</td>
<td>2.78</td>
<td>4.73</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">15</td>
<td>Abbot Point</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td>11.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td>Bowen</td>
<td>2.29</td>
<td>4.56</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">17</td>
<td>Shute Harbour</td>
<td>2.33</td>
<td>4.41</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">18</td>
<td>Mackay</td>
<td>2.08</td>
<td>4.27</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">19</td>
<td>Hay Point</td>
<td>1.24</td>
<td>4.09</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">20</td>
<td>Rosslyn Bay *</td>
<td>3.36</td>
<td>4.05</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">21</td>
<td>Port Alma</td>
<td>1.60</td>
<td>3.92</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">22</td>
<td>Gladstone</td>
<td>1.43</td>
<td>3.79</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">23</td>
<td>Bundaberg</td>
<td>0.94</td>
<td>3.66</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">24</td>
<td>Urangan</td>
<td>0.28</td>
<td>3.50</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">25</td>
<td>Mooloolaba</td>
<td>1.52</td>
<td>3.41</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">26</td>
<td>Brisbane</td>
<td>3.19</td>
<td>3.41</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">27</td>
<td>Gold Coast Seaway</td>
<td>3.22</td>
<td>3.40</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">28</td>
<td>Norfolk Island, NSW</td>
<td>7.04</td>
<td>3.54</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">29</td>
<td>Yamba</td>
<td>0.93</td>
<td>3.44</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">30</td>
<td>Lord Howe Island</td>
<td>3.41</td>
<td>3.44</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">31</td>
<td>Newcastle</td>
<td>1.66</td>
<td>3.38</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td>Sydney</td>
<td>1.25</td>
<td>3.31</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">33</td>
<td>Botany Bay</td>
<td>2.45</td>
<td>3.28</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">34</td>
<td>Port Kembla *</td>
<td>1.6</td>
<td>3.23</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">35</td>
<td>Eden</td>
<td>1.23</td>
<td>3.17</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">36</td>
<td>Stony Point, VIC *</td>
<td>1.71</td>
<td>3.13</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">37</td>
<td>Lakes Entrance</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">38</td>
<td>Hovell Pile</td>
<td>5.31</td>
<td>3.19</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">39</td>
<td>Melbourne</td>
<td>2.38</td>
<td>3.17</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">40</td>
<td>Point Richards Channel</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td>5.14</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">41</td>
<td>Geelong</td>
<td>2.29</td>
<td>3.14</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">42</td>
<td>Point Lonsdale</td>
<td>0.35</td>
<td>3.07</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">43</td>
<td>Port Welshpool</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">44</td>
<td>Queenscliff</td>
<td>2.93</td>
<td>3.07</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">45</td>
<td>West Channel Pile</td>
<td>2.30</td>
<td>3.05</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">46</td>
<td>Lorne *</td>
<td>2.46</td>
<td>3.03</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">47</td>
<td>Portland *</td>
<td>2.84</td>
<td>3.03</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">48</td>
<td>Devonport, TAS</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">49</td>
<td>Low Head</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">50</td>
<td>Spring Bay *</td>
<td>3.11</td>
<td>3.03</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">51</td>
<td>Hobart</td>
<td>0.17</td>
<td>2.96</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">52</td>
<td>Granville Harbour</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">53</td>
<td>Burnie *</td>
<td>2.98</td>
<td>2.97</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">54</td>
<td>Victor Harbor, SA</td>
<td>2.02</td>
<td>2.94</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">55</td>
<td>Port Stanvac *</td>
<td>4.52</td>
<td>2.98</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">56</td>
<td>Port Adelaide</td>
<td>5.08</td>
<td>3.02</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">57</td>
<td>Port Giles</td>
<td>4.40</td>
<td>3.05</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">58</td>
<td>Wallaroo</td>
<td>2.53</td>
<td>3.04</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">59</td>
<td>Port Pirie</td>
<td>6.96</td>
<td>3.12</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">60</td>
<td>Whyalla</td>
<td>0.59</td>
<td>3.07</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">61</td>
<td>Port Lincoln</td>
<td>3.34</td>
<td>3.07</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">62</td>
<td>Thevenard *</td>
<td>3.34</td>
<td>3.08</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">63</td>
<td>Esperance, WA *</td>
<td>4.10</td>
<td>3.10</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">64</td>
<td>Albany</td>
<td>4.50</td>
<td>3.12</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">65</td>
<td>Bunbury</td>
<td>3.47</td>
<td>3.13</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">66</td>
<td>Fremantle</td>
<td>5.27</td>
<td>3.16</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">67</td>
<td>Hillarys *</td>
<td>7.84</td>
<td>3.24</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">68</td>
<td>Geraldton</td>
<td>6.12</td>
<td>3.29</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">69</td>
<td>Carnarvon</td>
<td>5.69</td>
<td>3.33</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">70</td>
<td>Exmouth</td>
<td>6.42</td>
<td>3.38</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">71</td>
<td>Onslow</td>
<td>6.93</td>
<td>3.44</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">72</td>
<td>King Bay</td>
<td>6.83</td>
<td>3.49</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">73</td>
<td>Cape Lambert</td>
<td>7.43</td>
<td>3.55</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">74</td>
<td>Port Hedland</td>
<td>8.12</td>
<td>3.62</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">75</td>
<td>Broome *</td>
<td>9.32</td>
<td>3.71</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">76</td>
<td>Wyndham</td>
<td>9.38</td>
<td>3.79</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">77</td>
<td>Darwin, NT *</td>
<td>7.78</td>
<td>3.85</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">78</td>
<td>Gove Harbour</td>
<td>5.69</td>
<td>3.87</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">79</td>
<td>Milner Bay *</td>
<td>7.54</td>
<td>3.92</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">80</td>
<td>Cocos Islands *</td>
<td>7.86</td>
<td>3.98</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">81</td>
<td>Macquarie Island</td>
<td>6.84</td>
<td>4.02</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">82</td>
<td>Casey, ANT</td>
<td>6.22</td>
<td>4.05</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">83</td>
<td>Commonwealth Bay</td>
<td colspan="2">Insufficient data</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">84</td>
<td>Davis</td>
<td>2.29</td>
<td>4.02</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">85</td>
<td>Mawson</td>
<td>5.59</td>
<td>4.05</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>All stations average</td>
<td>4.05</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>ABSLMP average</td>
<td>4.35</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Other stations average</td>
<td>3.90</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Standard deviation</td>
<td>2.51</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Minimum</td>
<td>0.17</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Maximim</td>
<td>9.38</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-80940759918292636242013-08-02T17:52:00.001+01:002014-10-28T15:06:07.764+00:00The effect of ENSO on sea-level in the South-western Pacific and AustraliaIn a previous post, I explored the connection between ENSO ((El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation) and sea-levels at Darwin and Fremantle on the west coast of Australia, in particular, the remarkably close correlation between smoothed monthly average levels and a smoothed, trended multiple of the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index).<br />
<br />
It had already occurred to me that if the correlation was so convincing, that perhaps it might be possible to adjust monthly average data by the multiple of SOI to remove its effect and reveal the underlying pattern and trend of sea-level change at such strongly-affected locations. First attempts showed that the tenfold multiple I'd used to show correlation was too high, and that a multiple of 7 was "just right" for ENSO adjustment. Lower multipliers didn't reduce the variability ("lumpiness") sufficiently, and too high a value increased variability in the opposite direction. Lucky 7 turned out to be the "Goldilocks" factor. Here's my revised chart for Darwin:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jfBNqzxhfWI/UfvJJlOmLdI/AAAAAAAAB3E/DOZEjYq1nZ4/s1600/Darwin_SOI.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jfBNqzxhfWI/UfvJJlOmLdI/AAAAAAAAB3E/DOZEjYq1nZ4/s1600/Darwin_SOI.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
... and with 7 times SOI subtracted from monthly values<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PpE52ojDMvQ/UfvJq-3T9tI/AAAAAAAAB3c/FEupWeUvdDg/s1600/Darwin+SOI+removed.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PpE52ojDMvQ/UfvJq-3T9tI/AAAAAAAAB3c/FEupWeUvdDg/s1600/Darwin+SOI+removed.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The revised chart for Fremantle for the same period<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xMfu_7Frmck/UfvJRPRZoBI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/Q2kwyWK0Jo4/s1600/Fremantle%252C+SOI.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xMfu_7Frmck/UfvJRPRZoBI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/Q2kwyWK0Jo4/s1600/Fremantle%252C+SOI.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
... and with 7 times SOI subtracted from monthly values<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fEAci_OdrJ8/UfvJ4knWBzI/AAAAAAAAB3o/Fl0qVug26dU/s1600/Fremantle+SOI+removed.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fEAci_OdrJ8/UfvJ4knWBzI/AAAAAAAAB3o/Fl0qVug26dU/s1600/Fremantle+SOI+removed.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
Those two removals are quite convincing, I'd say - "extreme ironing" indeed. Note that the trends for both removals are slightly higher than the originals, despite the post-1990s upticks having been removed. It's because the earlier trend from the mid-1970s was down, which effectively pulled the trend-lines down.<br />
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High rates of rise in the western Pacific (as shown by satellite sea-level maps) have been a thorn in the side of some sceptics for some time. They conveniently ignore the fact that sea-levels along the Pacific coasts of the Americas show low or negative rates on the maps, supported by tide-gauge data, and that the high rates in the west are also supported by tide-gauge data, when <b>exactly the same time-spans as the satellite maps</b> are compared. They also ignore the reasoned, researched and informed voices which explain that both phenomena are effects of ENSO.<br />
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The island of Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia) is in that western "hotspot", and using PSMSL data for the two tide-gauges covering the period I've been able to recreate the record from 1974-2012.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qBXxLTKZq7Q/UfvXmVq5gkI/AAAAAAAAB4A/pO_TaDCiNLA/s1600/FSM+Pohnpei_1974-2012.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qBXxLTKZq7Q/UfvXmVq5gkI/AAAAAAAAB4A/pO_TaDCiNLA/s1600/FSM+Pohnpei_1974-2012.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
The "ENSO profile" being clear, I went ahead and adjusted the monthly data as before.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t6HW6Ztsv6Y/UfvXmbrbHmI/AAAAAAAAB4E/w_fHYfpu_qQ/s1600/FSM+Pohnpei+SOI+removed.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t6HW6Ztsv6Y/UfvXmbrbHmI/AAAAAAAAB4E/w_fHYfpu_qQ/s1600/FSM+Pohnpei+SOI+removed.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
Majuro atoll is in the Marshall Islands group, and I've extended my previous reconstruction to end 2012, and added the SOI plot. Note that sea-level is lagging SOI on the extreme right.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2HLGVcvRCqM/Ufu4ZN_gqTI/AAAAAAAAB2c/Lb2cZd_Rl64/s1600/Marshall%252C+Majuro+SOI+correlation.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2HLGVcvRCqM/Ufu4ZN_gqTI/AAAAAAAAB2c/Lb2cZd_Rl64/s1600/Marshall%252C+Majuro+SOI+correlation.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
Kwajelein is also in the Marshall Islands, not that far from Majuro. Sea level is clearly leading SOI on the right.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QgSY3B5j-1g/Ufu6rfXdW-I/AAAAAAAAB2w/Yygrnbt0DQ0/s1600/Kwajalein%252C+M+I+SOI+correlation.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QgSY3B5j-1g/Ufu6rfXdW-I/AAAAAAAAB2w/Yygrnbt0DQ0/s1600/Kwajalein%252C+M+I+SOI+correlation.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
The uptick is the subject of a couple of recent posts on wattsupwiththat.com, ENSO not being very high on the list of possible reasons under discussion. Nils-Axel Mörner thinks it's due to subsidence because of recent building, but then he would, he doesn't understand ENSO and the magnitude of its effects. Here's the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70052/IDO70052SLD.shtml" target="_blank">latest data to June 2013</a> for Majuro from the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xqkW4bv5aOo/Ufvc9XxdTFI/AAAAAAAAB4c/Ru2jGYX6Gxw/s1600/Marshall+Islands+%2528Majuro+-+Uliga%2529_1993-2013.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xqkW4bv5aOo/Ufvc9XxdTFI/AAAAAAAAB4c/Ru2jGYX6Gxw/s1600/Marshall+Islands+%2528Majuro+-+Uliga%2529_1993-2013.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
As you can see, the uptick has now reversed, following the SOI back to zero.<br />
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Pago Pago, American Samoa, shows a less-satisfactory correlation overall, but it's still reasonably convincing. It also shows the sharp recent uptick.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UtmYM2lIa60/UfvgIWlKpKI/AAAAAAAAB40/8NTIoaqt3Oc/s1600/Pago+Pago_SOI.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UtmYM2lIa60/UfvgIWlKpKI/AAAAAAAAB40/8NTIoaqt3Oc/s1600/Pago+Pago_SOI.gif" height="404" width="640" /></a></div>
I've had a look at correlation on the eastern side in California, but it's less clear. California is well north of the equator, and ENSO is the <b>Southern</b> Oscillation after all. I'll see if I can find an SOI widget (or make one) for my sidebar. I'll add captions with source data links very soon.<br />
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<br />MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-89995176226429472312013-06-22T18:05:00.000+01:002013-06-22T18:05:10.067+01:00A dash for wood and wind - two medieval technologies, and "picking losers"My headline is quoting Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, FRSL, FMedSci, DL, better known to us proles as Matt Ridley, author of "The Rational Optimist" and other worthy reads. <a href="http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/comment-on-very-hairy-dutchman-richard.html" target="_blank">Greenie Watch</a> has posted a <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhansrd/text/130618-0002.htm#130618112000114" target="_blank">speech he made in the House of Lords on 18th inst.</a> I disagree with John Ray, the brain and fingers behind Greenie Watch, on a few topics, but I'm mostly in either agreement or sympathy with his sentiments. On this occasion, he has chosen not to comment on the speech, and I follow his lead; any comment is superfluous.<br />
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<b>Viscount Ridley</b>: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest in coal-mining on my family’s property, as detailed in the register, but I shall not be arguing for coal today but for its most prominent rival, gas, in which I have no interest.<br />
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I thank my noble friend the Minister for her courtesy in discussing the Bill and welcome the fact that the Government have grasped the nettle of energy policy, especially on the issue of nuclear power, after the deplorable vacuum left by the previous Government. However, I am concerned that we are being asked in the Bill to spend £200 billion, mainly on the wrong technologies, and that we will come to regret that. We are being asked to put in place a system that will guarantee far into the future rich rewards for landowners and capitalists, while eventually doubling the price of electricity and asking people to replace gas with electric space heating. That can only drive more people into fuel poverty.<br />
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We have heard a lot about the needs of energy investors and producers. We have not heard enough about consumers. If the industry gets an 8% return on the £200 billion to be spent, just two offshore wind farms or one nuclear plant would be declaring profits similar to what British Gas declares today. That will be an uncomfortable position for the Government of the day.<br />
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The Bill is a dash for wood and wind—two medieval technologies—and it is twice as big as the dash for gas of the 1990s. Between 6 and 9 gigawatts will have to be built a year for the next 16 years, compared with 2 gigawatts a year during the dash for gas. I am not sure it can be done, let alone affordably. In the case of biomass, the only way we can source enough is by felling trees overseas. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, Drax will soon be taking more than 40 trains a day of wood pellets from North America. That is not energy security.<br />
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Under the Bill,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“‘low carbon electricity generation’ means electricity generation which in the opinion of the Secretary of State will contribute to a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases”.</blockquote>
Shades of Humpty Dumpty: a word means just what I choose it to mean. We are being asked to pretend that the most carbon rich fuel of all, wood, is not a source of carbon. According to Princeton University, trees used for biomass electricity generation increase carbon dioxide emissions by 79% compared with coal over 20 years and by 49% over 40 years, even if you replant the forest. We are through the looking glass.<br />
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Offshore wind, meanwhile, is a risky technology with a track record of engineering problems, sky- high costs, disappointing lifespan and problems of decommissioning. At the moment, we generate less than 1% of total energy, or 6% of electricity, from wind, despite all the damage it has already done to our countryside and economy. We are to increase that to something like 30% in just a decade or so, may be more if nuclear is delayed. It is a huge gamble, and if it fails, the only fallback is carbon capture and storage, a technology that has repeatedly failed to meet its promises at all, let alone affordably, a point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell.<br />
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Even if this wood and wind dash is possible, under the contract for a different system proposed in this Bill, while better than the renewable obligations that preceded it, the subsidy to renewable energy will quadruple by 2020. That is only the start. On top of that, there are system costs for balancing the unpredictability of wind; transmission costs for getting wind from remote areas to where it is needed; VAT; the carbon floor price; not to mention the cost of subsiding renewable heat and renewable transport fuels. Hence, at a conservative estimate, the Renewable Energy Foundation thinks that we will be imposing costs of £16 billion a year on our hard-pressed economy for several decades.<br />
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Why are we doing this? We are doing this because of four assumptions that were valid in 2010 but, as my noble friend Lord Lawson pointed out, are no longer valid to the same extent. First, we assumed we would not be acting alone, so we would not damage our competitiveness. Instead, not only is there no longer a Kyoto treaty, but China is planning to build 363 coal- fired power stations; India 455. On top of that, the European trading system has collapsed to less than €5 a tonne of carbon. Our carbon floor price is more than three times that: £16 a tonne, rising to £32 a tonne in 2020 and £76 a tonne in 2030. Acting unilaterally in this way does not save carbon emissions. It merely exports them and the jobs go with them. Northumberland’s largest employer, the aluminium smelter at Lynemouth, has closed with the loss of 500 jobs, almost entirely because of carbon policies.<br />
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The second assumption behind the Bill was that the cost of gas would rise, thus making the cost of energy rise anyway. The Committee on Climate Change said recently in a report that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Consensus projections are that gas prices will rise in future”.</blockquote>
This remark has been described by the utilities team at Liberum Capital as “genuinely amazing” in the light of recent events. Now that we know that gas prices have plummeted in the United States to roughly one-quarter of ours, thanks to shale gas; now that we know that Britain probably has many decades worth of shale gas itself; now that we know that enormous reserves of offshore gas near Israel, Brazil and parts of Africa are going to come on line in years to come; now that we know that conventional gas producers such as Russia and Qatar are facing increasing competition from unconventional and offshore gas; now that we know that methane hydrates on the ocean floor are more abundant than all other fossil fuels put together and that the Japanese are planning to explore them; in short, now that we know we are nowhere near peak gas, it is surely folly to hold our economy hostage to an assumption that gas prices must rise.<br />
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We will need the gas anyway. The intermittent nature of wind means that we will require increasing back-up and we cannot get it from nuclear because it is not responsive enough to fill the lulls when the wind drops. Far from replacing fossil fuels, a dash for wood and wind means a dash for gas too, only this time we will have to subsidise it because the plants will stand idle for most of the time and pay a rising carbon floor price when they do operate. Having distorted the markets to disastrous effect with subsidies to renewables, we are now being asked, under the capacity market mechanism, to introduce compensating countersubsidies to fossil fuels.<br />
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The third assumption was that the cost of renewables would fall rapidly as we rolled them out. This has proved untrue and, indeed, as the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has shown, the cost curve for renewables inevitably rises as the best sites are used up, not least in the North Sea. I am told by those who work in the offshore wind industry that, at the moment, the industry has every incentive to keep its costs up not down, as it sets out to strike a contract with the Government. They will not have to try very hard. Even at low estimates, offshore wind is stratospherically expensive.<br />
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The fourth assumption on which this Bill is based was that the climate would change dangerously and soon. Once again, this assumption is looking much shakier than it did five years ago. The slow rate at which the temperature has been changing over the past 50 years and the best evidence from the top-of-the-atmosphere radiation about climate sensitivity are both very clearly pointing to carbon dioxide having its full greenhouse effect but without significant net positive feedback of the kind on which all the alarm is based. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and the noble Lord, Lord Stern, both mentioned Professor Myles Allen and they will be aware, therefore, of his recent paper, which found significantly reduced climate sensitivity. If that is the case, the dash to wind and biomass may well continue to do more harm to the environment as well as to the economy for many decades than climate change itself will do.<br />
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However, leaving that on one side, as my noble friend Lord Lawson said, the argument against subsidising wind and biomass does not depend on a benign view of climate change. It stands powerfully on its own merits, even if you think dangerous climate change is imminent. In 1981, my noble friend Lord Lawson, ignoring the prevailing wisdom of the day, as he sometimes does, decided against the predict-and-provide central planning philosophy and instead embraced the idea of letting the market discover the best way to provide electricity. The result was the cheapest and most flexible energy sector of any western country.<br />
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We have progressively turned our backs on that. Under this Bill, the location, the technology and the price of each power source is determined by one person—the omniscient Secretary of State. Recent occupants of that position have an unhappy history of not making wise decisions. Remember ground source heat pumps? They do not work as advertised. Remember electric vehicles? They have been a flop. Remember biofuels? They have caused rainforest destruction and hunger. Remember the Green Deal? Must we go on making these mistakes?<br />
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We have returned to a philosophy of picking winners, or rather, from the point of view of the consumer, of picking losers. Not even just picking losers, but hobbling winners, because of the obstacles we have put in the way of shale gas. America has cut its carbon emissions by far more than we have, almost entirely because of shale gas displacing coal. By pursuing a strategy that encouraged unabated gas, we could halve emissions and cut bills at the same time. Instead, I very much fear we will find we have spent a fortune to achieve neither.
MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-12810194126139830162013-06-22T13:08:00.000+01:002013-06-22T13:08:11.798+01:00Where Have all the Real Scientsts gone? Wise words from John A. KnaussWho on earth is John A. Knauss? He was an oceanographer and was NOAA administrator between 1989 and 1993. It was his foresight which ensured that the effects of the intense El Niño of 1997-8 were adequately measured and analysed.<br />
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He added a foreword to a book which I have, written by Bruce C. Douglas and others titled "Sea Level Rise: History and Consequences", published in 2001. Its 270-odd pages are well worth a read if you're interested in a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the mechanics of the tides, and measurement of them. I'll try and find a download link and insert it here. I'll reproduce his foreword without comment apart from saying that he strongly emphasises the problem of uncertainty in understanding and quantifying the effects of the many factors which influence sea level measurement and prediction. One particular sentence of his stands out and is worth quoting right at the start.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why is the volume of the oceans increasing? Do not expect to find an unambiguous answer in this book.</blockquote>
... and this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We now believe that the ocean volume has been increasing since the middle of the 19th century at a rate equivalent to raising sea level almost 2 mm/yr, a rate considerably faster than that for the previous thousand years, although how much faster is subject to some uncertainty. That this increase in the rate of sea level rise began well before the rise in our mean atmospheric temperature of recent years gives pause to those who wish to assign its cause to anthropogenic-driven global warming. </blockquote>
I'll repeat my title question - where have all the real scientists (including him) gone?<br />
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<strong>Foreword to "Sea Level Rise: History and Consequences"</strong><br />
<br />
This book describes both clearly and in detail the complexity behind the deceptively simple subject of sea level rise, a topic of considerable scientific interest and increasing economic importance. The concept of sea level rise is quite straightforward. Some 97% of all the water on Earth is now in the oceans; most of the rest is found in glaciers, much of it in Antarctica and Greenland. Some 20,000 years ago at the peak of the last ice age, much more water was in ice and the sea level was more than 100 meters lower than it is today. The glaciers began to melt, the oceans began to fill, and the shorelines were pushed back as the sea level rose. The process continues, and the results are obvious. Archaeologists don aqua-lungs and explore the ancient port of Alexandria. Closer to home and more recent in time, St. Clements island in the Potomac River was a heavily wooded 160 hectares when first occupied by Virginia colonists. Today, some 350 years later it is about 16 hectares and has little in the way of vegetation. Pictures of battered beach houses and hotels eroded by waves after a particularly vicious winter storm moves up the east coast of the United States are a regular feature of our television news.<br /><br />In the early 1980s when the issue of global warming first grabbed the headlines, I was in Washington as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. One of NOAA's tasks is to predict the tides and maintain this nation's vast array of tide gauges. What effect, I was asked, will global warming have on the change in sea level? It was embarrassing to admit that we really could not say much more than is in the above paragraph. Yes, sea level has risen in the past; we assume it still is rising, but uncertainty remains about how fast it has been rising recently, and thus we are not in a very good position to estimate how fast it might rise in the future. As this volume attests, there continue to be a number of perplexing issues. There is still uncertainty in some areas, but we do know so much more, not just about the changing volume of the ocean, but about yearly and regional variations in sea level and the reasons for them. Even more exciting, the technology now available suggests that we will soon know very much more. <br /><br />We now believe that the ocean volume has been increasing since the middle of the 19th century at a rate equivalent to raising sea level almost 2 mm/yr, a rate considerably faster than that for the previous thousand years, although how much faster is subject to some uncertainty. That this increase in the rate of sea level rise began well before the rise in our mean atmospheric temperature of recent years gives pause to those who wish to assign its cause to anthropogenic-driven global warming. <br /><br />Tracking the changing volume of the waters of the ocean, as distinguished from measuring local sea level, is not a simple task. Many traps lie in wait for the unwary, and not long ago many who had examined the problem were skeptical that we would ever achieve useful quantitative information. It has not been easy. Do not expect to examine a half-dozen years of local tide gauge records and derive a useful value. First, at least a 50-year record is required, because there are year-to-year changes (some of which we under-stand, but a number of which we do not) which are likely to bias records that are much shorter. Second, and often more difficult to resolve, the land bordering the sea also moves up and down. In much of Scandinavia the local sea level is dropping because the land is rising (several millimeters a year in places), continuing to rebound from the heavy weight of the glaciers removed several thousand years ago. But isostatic adjustment in those areas formerly under the ice requires some form of viscoelastic compensation in those areas away from the former ice sheets. For example, even if there were no change in the volume of the oceans, we now believe that the sea level would be rising along the east coast of the United States at about 1.4 mm/yr because that is the rate the earth is sinking in this part of the world. As a consequence the actual rise of sea level in this region is nearly double that caused by the change in the ocean volume.<br /><br />Why is the volume of the oceans increasing? Do not expect to find an unambiguous answer in this book. Perhaps it is the melting of the last of our major ice fields. That is certainly what many believe, but we do not have sufficient information about the volume of ice on either Greenland or Antarctica, let alone its rate of change, to give an unambiguous answer. Perhaps the ocean is getting slightly warmer. If it is, then seawater will expand, and the volume of the ocean will increase although its mass will remain unchanged. An increase of the average ocean temperature (top to bottom) of only a few hundredths of a degree per year is all that is required to raise the sea level a couple of millimeters per year, but we do not have the kind of historical ocean temperature records to either prove or disprove such a possibility. <br /><br />There may be better data on why humankind's activities of the last half century should be driving sea level lower. We have a good record of the number of dams built in the last half century and the amount of water they control. These dams change the historical flow of water from land to rivers and on to the ocean, and one can make educated guesses whether this should either increase or decrease the rate at which water reaches the ocean. Apparently, the largest single effect is the loss of water from behind the dam which leaches out of the bottom and back into groundwater. This water never makes it to farmland, homes, or industry, nor does it evaporate, later to fall as rain. This water completely bypasses the ocean. A strong case can be made that the rate at which the volume of dammed water is increasing, and thus the rate at which this water is bypassing the usual cycle, is equivalent to a decrease in sea level of possibly many tenths of a millimeter per year. <br /><br />The rate of change of sea level varies from year to year and place to place. Evidence of past El Niños can clearly be seen in the long-term tidal records of San Diego and San Francisco. Year-to-year changes in the intensity of the wind-driven circulation in the North Atlantic are captured in the yearly changes in mean sea level recorded by tide gauges along the U.S. east coast. With the significant increase in tide gauge accuracy, not the least of which is the removal of the earth movement problem with the availability of GPS, one can expect tide gauges to contribute to an ever-increasing array of geophysical problems. <br /><br />And finally, if sea level continues to rise, if it is indeed rising at a more rapid rate now than it was a century ago, and if, as some suggest, that rate of rise will increase as a consequence of global warming, what effect will this rising sea level have on society? To those who live in the Ganges delta of Bangladesh, on coral atolls in the Pacific, or below sea level in The Netherlands, this subject holds special interest. One estimate has some 100 million of us living within one meter of sea level. I expect they will be among those most interested in the latest news on this subject. <br /><br />John A. KnaussMostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4276415964531748371.post-7360623328230808212013-06-20T12:41:00.001+01:002013-07-08T12:42:19.086+01:00Sea-level in Australia and the Southern Oscillation IndexI've read a fair bit about the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) over the years, about how much ENSO (El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation) affects sea-level in the Pacific. I've noted effects, particularly the El Niño "dip" in the western and central Pacific, and the corresponding "spike" in the east (especially the US Pacific shore). However, my impression was that it was just the extremes, El Niño and the less-well defined La Niña that had any real effect on Pacific sea-level. Before I continue, it's worthwhile quoting what Australia's Bureau of Meteorology <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/soi.shtml" target="_blank">has to say about the SOI</a>; it's succinct and informative:
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Southern Oscillation Index, or SOI, gives an indication of the development and intensity of El Niño or La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean. The SOI is calculated using the pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sustained negative values of the SOI below −8 often indicate El Niño episodes. These negative values are usually accompanied by sustained warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, a decrease in the strength of the Pacific Trade Winds, and a reduction in winter and spring rainfall over much of eastern Australia and the Top End. You can read more about historical El Niño events and their effect on Australia in the Detailed analysis of past El Niño events.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sustainted [sic] positive values of the SOI above +8 are typical of a La Niña episode. They are associated with stronger Pacific trade winds and warmer sea temperatures to the north of Australia. Waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become cooler during this time. Together these give an increased probability that eastern and northern Australia will be wetter than normal. You can read more about historical La Niña events and their effect on Australia in the Detailed analysis of past La Niña events. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The ENSO Wrap-Up includes the latest 30-day SOI value, as well as other information on indicators of El Niño and La Niña events.</blockquote>
The graph below shows monthly values of the SOI in recent years.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AIJg1Oy3lFM/UcLgmZ8laeI/AAAAAAAAB00/oFvfgIzkM6g/s1600/soi.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AIJg1Oy3lFM/UcLgmZ8laeI/AAAAAAAAB00/oFvfgIzkM6g/s640/soi.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"> Source:<a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/soi.shtml" target="_blank">BOM</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi2.shtml" target="_blank">following page</a> they have links to data tables; Wanting to create a spreadsheet of monthly SOI values (from 1876!) I was dismayed to find the table to be structured as years down and months across. However, using Excel's Copy and Paste-Special/Transpose functions I was able to do it, laboriously year by year. Here's the result for 1959 to May 2013. The reason for the not-so-obvious start year will become obvious very soon.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-am5M-BynnJ4/UcLglQStnDI/AAAAAAAAB0o/Bs4rOGnQXvc/s1600/SOI+1959-2013.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-am5M-BynnJ4/UcLglQStnDI/AAAAAAAAB0o/Bs4rOGnQXvc/s640/SOI+1959-2013.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">SOI index 1959-2013 Data source: <a href="ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/sco/soi/soiplaintext.html" target="_blank">BOM</a></td></tr>
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I've added a 25-month (2 year) centred moving average to smooth out the spikes without suppressing the signal. A 13-month MA would seem to be more appropriate, but gives too "lumpy" a trace; a 37-month MA smooths just too much. Like Goldilocks' porridge the 25-month MA is "just right".<br />
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Comparing the SOI plot with a sea-level plot is easy, but I wondered if I could add the SOI to a sea-level chart in some way. One problem is that the signal is relatively small, and the other is that it varies around a (flat, obviously) zero value. I hit on the wheeze of "magnifying" the SOI signal, and normalising the start of the SOI moving average with the start of the sea-level moving average, incrementing the magnified SOI by the monthly sea-level-trend increment. I tried a factor of 10 for magnification, on the basis that the SOI signal is based on air pressure at sea level, and one hPa change leads to a 10 mm sea-level change (in the opposite direction). My assumption may not have had much maths behind it, but the "porridge effect" operated and it was "just right". Here's the result for Darwin:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ze0vCNymmQ/UcLglVNkLkI/AAAAAAAAB0k/T8xAnzwl06A/s1600/Darwin+SOI.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ze0vCNymmQ/UcLglVNkLkI/AAAAAAAAB0k/T8xAnzwl06A/s640/Darwin+SOI.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Darwin complete sea-level record 1959-2012 Data source: <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70000/IDO70000_63230_SLD.shtml" target="_blank">BOM/NTC</a></td></tr>
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I don't now what you think, but I'd call that a rather good correlation, especially over the right-hand half of the chart. Here's one for Fremantle over the same period.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Y61T-BewsU/UcLglQT2leI/AAAAAAAAB0w/EobQNn8eDwo/s1600/Fremantle+SOI.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="click to enlarge"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Y61T-BewsU/UcLglQT2leI/AAAAAAAAB0w/EobQNn8eDwo/s640/Fremantle+SOI.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Fremantle sea-level 1959-2013 Data source: <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70000/IDO70000_62230_SLD.shtml" target="_blank">BOM/NTC</a></td></tr>
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For both Darwin and Fremantle, note that the recent (since 1994) sharp upward trend has begun a downward reverse, more clearly predicted on the SOI chart which extends to last month (May 2013). The large and broad downward bulge around 1983 corresponds with the intense (some would say most intense on record) El Niño of 1982-3. It shows up well on the 25m MA sea-level plot for Darwin (and most Australian stations), but sea-level <b>rose</b> at Fremantle during that event. All the other El Niños show up on both charts; the broad low during the early 1990s (1991-2 and 1994-5 El Niños, with just 1993 between) and the intense but shorter 1997-8 El Niño. The 2010 El Niño was a more subdued affair.<br />
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I think it's clear that the SOI doesn't just affect variations in sea-level, it drives them, at least on the west coast of Australia. In a future post I'll look at other Oz stations for correlation, and where correlation is poor, explore possible reasons.MostlyHarmlesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058940884892720332noreply@blogger.com0