Global Warming: Are Sea Levels Rising?

Alex

Administrator
By now you're probably tired of hearing me heap praise on Rick Archer and his fantastic, paradigm-shifting show Buddah at the Gas Pump. So I won't bother to tell you that his 350 interviews with leading spiritual seekers are stunning, and unlike anything that's ever been published on spirituality or consciousness... and that his show has been instrumental to my understanding of consciousness science as well as my inchworm advances in spiritual awareness.

But the intersection between spirituality and mundane "consensus reality" topics like Global Warming continue to be hot topics of conversation between Rick and I (310, 234). And since I feel there's a lot to explore in this area, I was glad Rick poked me one time too many about Global Warming and sparked the creation of this thread. Here's the email exchange that started it (I'll spare you the dozen earlier exchanges and jump in midstream):

Rick Archer:
to me:
One thing that’s been bugging me since yesterday is that you don’t address these points directly. For instance, the subject of this email: “Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year”. Do you think solar activity is causing this? (Debunked). That it’s not getting warmer and there’s a vast conspiracy among scientists to make this stuff up?

A bid by an Alaskan village to be declared a disaster area because of melting permafrost due to climate change was just turned down by the Obama administration. Some South Pacific nations won’t exist soon due to rising sea levels. Some islands have already had to be evacuated. This is just the beginning.

Alex Tsakiris:
to Rick:

hey Rick... below...

One thing that’s been bugging me since yesterday is that you don’t address these points directly.
-- happy to... it just takes some work... like last time. I'm up for it if you are (as mentioned, some of the related issues are central to my Skeptiko process).

Some South Pacific nations won’t exist soon due to rising sea levels. Some islands have already had to be evacuated. This is just the beginning.
-- this would be a great topic to start with because I'm pretty sure the sea level rise thing is a classic example of bad-science/misinformation bullshit... but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

-- if you want to pursue this I will start a thread on the skeptiko forum and invite some folks (on both sides) who have researched the topic.
 
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here's why I'm doubtful of the "alarming sea level rise" claim: https://judithcurry.com/2016/02/23/is-sea-level-rise-accelerating/

my biggest takeway from this article are:
- it's really hard to measure sea level
- there's a known/understood 17-year cycle of sea level fluctuation that needs to be considered
- the most reliable data we have does not support the "alarming sea level rise" claim

=======
sea-level.jpg

Figure 3.14 18-year trends of global mean sea level rise estimated at 1-year intervals. The time is the start date of the 18-year period, and the shading represents the 90% confidence. The estimate from satellite altimetry is also given, with the 90% confidence given as an error bar. [AR5 WGI Figure 3.14]

Global sea level has been rising for the past several thousand years, owing to the retreat of glaciers from the last ice age. The key issue is whether the rate of sea level rise is accelerating owing to anthropogenic global warming. It is seen from the figure above that the rate of sea level rise during 1930-1950 was comparable to, if not larger than, the value in recent years. The challenges to determining global sea level rise, particularly over the past 100 or 1000 years, are substantial.

...The key issue is whether the sea level rise during the past 50 years reflect an acceleration in sea level rise. The IPCC figure 3.14 suggests that there is no acceleration, given the large rates of sea level rise in the first half of the 20th century. Until we have an understanding of variations in decadal and multi-decadal sea level rise, we can’t make a convincing argument as to acceleration.

---------
Questions for Rick:
- are Curry's sources correct... are IPCC figures the best we have?
- is she right about the levels of increase between 1930-1950 (i.e. comparable to current rate of increase)?
- is she correct about the variations in sea level measurements due to normal fluctuation (i.e. measurement problems)?
- is her claim that the data for the last 50 years does not support the "alarming acceleration" claim? if you disagree, then find someone with a better analysis of the same data (or a better data set).
 
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other stuff beyond the data:
- following the data is the only way to go, but it rarely changes minds (i.e. this thread will probably not have any effect on Rick's position).

- we're facing a number of really, really serious environmental challenges. we have to totally change how we treat/live-with the planet or we will destroy it. this is a massively hard problem with a zillion different angles.

- our role in "fixing" these problems is unclear. everything we might do has unintended consequences on many levels (maybe including spiritual... does God need our help?). we gotta remain really leery of leaders who want to invade countries and kill millions in order to "fix" things (e.g. Iraq, Libya, Syria...).

- there are larger forces at play and these are heavily influencing the "science"/data we see. The Climategate science scandal and the fake 97% consensus (which still remains on top of the NASA website) are clear examples re Global Warming (as is the re-spin of Global Warming into "Climate Change").

- separating policy decisions from scientific data is a good way to expose the Global Warming fakery (i.e. it reveals it to be a sham designed to promote carbon trading or some other hidden purpose). the policy being offered re global warming is to cut worldwide emissions 20-30% (for starters). of course, this is a insanely unrealistic given the projected carbon footprint of rapidly industrializing, high population countries like China (who we're practically at war with) and India and others... more on this later.
 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterfe...larmists-global-cooling-is-here/#63d665e369bb
Those ocean temperature cycles, and the continued recovery from the Little Ice Age, are primarily why global temperatures rose from 1915 until 1945, when CO2 emissions were much lower than in recent years. The change to a cold ocean temperature cycle, primarily the PDO, is the main reason that global temperatures declined from 1945 until the late 1970s, despite the soaring CO2 emissions during that time from the postwar industrialization spreading across the globe.

The 20 to 30 year ocean temperature cycles turned back to warm from the late 1970s until the late 1990s, which is the primary reason that global temperatures warmed during this period. But that warming ended 15 years ago, and global temperatures have stopped increasing since then, if not actually cooled, even though global CO2 emissions have soared over this period. AsThe Economistmagazine reported in March, “The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” Yet, still no warming during that time. That is because the CO2 greenhouse effect is weak and marginal compared to natural causes of global temperature changes.
 
https://thefederalist.com/2017/01/18/nyt-hid-numbers-hottest-year-record/

Why NYT Hid The Numbers For The ‘Hottest Year On Record’

They should have been in the first paragraph, but at least they’re in the third paragraph: “This puts 2016 only nominally ahead of 2015 by just 0.01C—within the 0.1C margin of error—but….” There’s stuff after the “but,” but it’s just somebody’s evaluation. Even this report can’t give us a straight fact and leave it alone.

For the benefit of science reporters and other people who are unfamiliar with the scientific method, let me point out that the margin of error for these measurements is plus or minus one tenth of a degree Celsius. The temperature difference that is supposedly being measured is one one-hundredth of a degree—one tenth the size of the margin of error. To go back to sports reporting, that’s like saying that the football is on the 10-yard line—give or take a hundred yards.​
 
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/12/the-global-warming-fraud-explained.php
...
DECEMBER 4, 2016
...
The climate alarmists assert that various positive feedbacks, principally an increase in the main greenhouse gas, water vapor, will amplify that scientifically-defensible one degree increase into something like six degrees.EVERY SINGLE THING you have ever read about the supposedly baleful effects of CO2 is based on that unproven assumption. Actually, the net feedbacks–clouds are the great unknown–may be negative rather than positive.
...
The February 2 testimony by John Christy included comprehensive satellite data of global temperatures covering 37 years (from December 1978 to the end of 2015) of the atmosphere from the surface to 50,000 feet. These data demonstrated that a speculated, pronounced warming of the atmosphere from water vapor does not exist.

After over 35 years of speculation, 25 years of IPCC reports, multiple US government reports, and US government estimates that it spent over $40 Billion on climate science since 1993, and it spent over $150 Billion on activities to “fight global warming”; it is past time to produce physical evidence that the amplified atmospheric warming from increased water vapor exists. If the evidence is not produced, the hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 will cause dangerous global warming is as obsolete as peak oil theory, or that the sun is immutable, unchanging.
 
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I think part of the problem with belief in global warming is that people tend to accept what scientists say on trust, so it is relevant to this thread to point out that there is a huge crisis in the reliability of scientific reports that the average person is not aware of.

Most published research findings are false:
http://www.economist.com/news/scien...w-institute-has-you-its-sights-metaphysicians

Bad Science Muckrakers Question the Big Science Status Quo: "... inherent biases and the flawed statistical analyses built into most 'hypothesis driven' research, resulting in publications that largely represent 'accurate measures of the prevailing bias.'"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfre...ckrakers-question-the-big-science-status-quo/

Linus Pauling: "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them." -Linus Pauling PhD (Two-time Nobel Prize winner)."
http://nationalpress.org/images/uploads/programs/CAN2009_Marshall.pdf

"The Lancet": The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1.pdf

"Nature": "Ridding science of shoddy statistics will require scrutiny of every step, not merely the last one, say Jeffrey T. Leek and Roger D. Peng."
http://www.nature.com/news/statistics-p-values-are-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-1.17412

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers: "The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense."
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763

The New England Journal of Medicine: "In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website.1 The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason."
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1512330

realclearscience.com: "A study that surveyed all the published cosmological literature between the years 1996 and 2008 showed that the statistics of the results were too good to be true. In fact, the statistical spread of the results was not consistent with what would be expected mathematically, which means cosmologists were in agreement with each other – but to a worrying degree. This meant that either results were being tuned somehow to reflect the status-quo, or that there may be some selection effect where only those papers that agreed with the status-quo were being accepted by journals."
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2016/01/11/why_cosmology_is_in_crisis_109504.html

University of Oxford: "Half the world's natural history specimens may have the wrong name."
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-11-17-half-worlds-natural-history-specimens-may-have-wrong-name

NYTimes.com: "Dr. Prasad and Dr. Cifu extrapolate from past reversals to conclude that about 40 percent of what we consider state-of-the-art health care is likely to turn out to be unhelpful or actually harmful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/s...g-medical-reversal-laments-flip-flopping.html

Retraction Watch
http://retractionwatch.com/

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800

"Der Spiegel protested all of this discussion with the statement, that what they hear is that 'journalists want to earn money, whereas scientists are only seeking the truth.' This brought loud guffaws from all three [professors]. 'Scientists,' answered Dr. Fischer, 'want success; they want a wife, a hotel room, an invitation, or perhaps a car!'"
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/der-spiegel-discovers-the-truth-from-science/

The History of Important Scientific Discoveries Initially Rejected and Ridiculed.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-history-of-scientific-discoveries.html
 
I think part of the problem with belief in global warming is that people tend to accept what scientists say on trust, so it is relevant to this thread to point out that there is a huge crisis in the reliability of scientific reports that the average person is not aware of.

Most published research findings are false:
http://www.economist.com/news/scien...w-institute-has-you-its-sights-metaphysicians

Bad Science Muckrakers Question the Big Science Status Quo: "... inherent biases and the flawed statistical analyses built into most 'hypothesis driven' research, resulting in publications that largely represent 'accurate measures of the prevailing bias.'"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfre...ckrakers-question-the-big-science-status-quo/

Linus Pauling: "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them." -Linus Pauling PhD (Two-time Nobel Prize winner)."
http://nationalpress.org/images/uploads/programs/CAN2009_Marshall.pdf

"The Lancet": The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1.pdf

"Nature": "Ridding science of shoddy statistics will require scrutiny of every step, not merely the last one, say Jeffrey T. Leek and Roger D. Peng."
http://www.nature.com/news/statistics-p-values-are-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-1.17412

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers: "The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense."
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763

The New England Journal of Medicine: "In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website.1 The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason."
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1512330

realclearscience.com: "A study that surveyed all the published cosmological literature between the years 1996 and 2008 showed that the statistics of the results were too good to be true. In fact, the statistical spread of the results was not consistent with what would be expected mathematically, which means cosmologists were in agreement with each other – but to a worrying degree. This meant that either results were being tuned somehow to reflect the status-quo, or that there may be some selection effect where only those papers that agreed with the status-quo were being accepted by journals."
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2016/01/11/why_cosmology_is_in_crisis_109504.html

University of Oxford: "Half the world's natural history specimens may have the wrong name."
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-11-17-half-worlds-natural-history-specimens-may-have-wrong-name

NYTimes.com: "Dr. Prasad and Dr. Cifu extrapolate from past reversals to conclude that about 40 percent of what we consider state-of-the-art health care is likely to turn out to be unhelpful or actually harmful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/s...g-medical-reversal-laments-flip-flopping.html

Retraction Watch
http://retractionwatch.com/

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800

"Der Spiegel protested all of this discussion with the statement, that what they hear is that 'journalists want to earn money, whereas scientists are only seeking the truth.' This brought loud guffaws from all three [professors]. 'Scientists,' answered Dr. Fischer, 'want success; they want a wife, a hotel room, an invitation, or perhaps a car!'"
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/der-spiegel-discovers-the-truth-from-science/

The History of Important Scientific Discoveries Initially Rejected and Ridiculed.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-history-of-scientific-discoveries.html
And yet the planet overall averaged warmer still.
Tsk tsk, quoting Linus Pauling. He was the fellow advocating massive doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold which is a dubious claim in the least to support your contention all science is suspect to be false until proven true. Included are the other links.

Here's my suggestion to you and anyone else that thinks humans can't change the global environment. Educate yourself why climate researchers say what they say.
 
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They should have been in the first paragraph, but at least they’re in the third paragraph: “This puts 2016 only nominally ahead of 2015 by just 0.01C—within the 0.1C margin of error—but….” There’s stuff after the “but,” but it’s just somebody’s evaluation. Even this report can’t give us a straight fact and leave it alone.
Yes - this is crucial - the climate change crowd seem to ignore the most basic principles of statistics - I mean imagine discussing a 0.01+-0.1 difference in any other context! All this "hottest year ever" stuff is just reporting noise on what has been a flat curve since about 1998. Also "hottest year ever" should be restated as "hottest year since detailed records began" possibly 1880. The rise since then has been 0.8 C.

The other thing to mention is that land temperatures are hugely unreliable because they are based on a fixed, arbitrary set of measuring stations that got out of action (and are replaced by computer estimated values) or become urbanised so that the data requires adjustment to compensate for this effect (known as the Urban Heat Island effect) which will cause recorded temperatures to rise spuriously.

The fact that all this garbage science is not called out for what it is - rubbish - tells me that the whole concept of CAGW is bogus.

Maybe I am over-optimistic, but I do wonder if when President Trump is in office, a few (more) senior scientists will stick their heads above the parapet and call CAGW what it is - crap!

This could produce a real crisis in science, because it will draw everyone's attention to absurdities like reporting 0.01 +- 0.1, and the obvious question will be how so many senior scientists could have ever endorsed this rubbish.

I'd just like to point out that the fact that these 'scientists' seem to ignore basic rules of science, means that I have little time for the rest of their argument - where the truth is shrouded in elaborate computer models. Imagine that you sat on a jury and the lawyer for the defence started out by observing that "You only have to look at the defendant to know he is guilty!". One piece of very weak evidence delivered in all seriousness undermines everything that follows

David
 
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Worthwhile looking at the Vostok ice core temperature anomalies for the last 400 odd thousand years (from Petit et al. 1999)

tempplot5.gif
 
So I honestly don't understand how anyone who claims to think critically whatsoever can look at the "the Earth's temperature has risen theee straight years" and immediately be persuaded that that is direct evidence of man made global warming. I mean that is just hilariously debatable, as Jim pointed out earlier, given that Earth has, many times during its history, gone through phases of hearing and cooling.

To be clear, I fully believe humans have impacted Earth's climate, though I'm not certain to what degree that is (though I'm confident it is not to the level that climate alarmists would have you believe). I think it's important to regulate what we can as far as pollution goes, and to continue to make a conscious effort to find and utilize renewable resources. But even as someone who thinks there's no point in fighting this ridiculously politicized fight between two sides that have insanely morphed into "there's no climate change at all" and "climate change is the biggest issue and most pressing problem and if you disagree with me you're a science denier", I just can't understand why something like the Earth heating marginally for 3 straight years means anything. Additionally, El Niño was this past year which slightly increases the temperatures worldwide. Not saying that's a major factor, but it's something.

Either way I do not understand people's angry fervor with which they argue about this issue. It's become so political that the facts are obscured and in many cases not even looked for to base opinions off of.
 
"Global Warming: Are Sea Levels Rising?"

Yes and it has nothing to do with CO2.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/03/the-2013-ipcc-ar5-report-facts-vs-fictions/


Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
...

Sea level rise over the past century has varied from 1-3mm/yr, averaging 1.7mm/yr (7 inches/yr)from 1900-2000 (Fig.8.) Sea level rose at a fairly constant rate from 1993 to about 2005 but the rate of rise has flattened out since then (Fig. 9). What is obvious from these curves is that sea level is continuing to rise at a rate of about 7 inches per century, and there is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. Nor is there any basis for blaming it on CO2 because sea level has been rising on for 150 years, long before CO2 levels began to rise after 1945.

clip_image025.jpg


More from the same article:

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clip_image011.jpg

 
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Yes - this is crucial - the climate change crowd seem to ignore the most basic principles of statistics - I mean imagine discussing a 0.01+-0.1 difference in any other context! All this "hottest year ever" stuff is just reporting noise on what has been a flat curve since about 1998. Also "hottest year ever" should be restated as "hottest year since detailed records began" possibly 1880. The rise since then has been 0.8 C.

The other thing to mention is that land temperatures are hugely unreliable because they are based on a fixed, arbitrary set of measuring stations that got out of action (and are replaced by computer estimated values) or become urbanised so that the data requires adjustment to compensate for this effect (known as the Urban Heat Island effect) which will cause recorded temperatures to rise spuriously.

The fact that all this garbage science is not called out for what it is - rubbish - tells me that the whole concept of CAGW is bogus.

Maybe I am over-optimistic, but I do wonder if when President Trump is in office, a few (more) senior scientists will stick their heads above the parapet and call CAGW what it is - crap!

This could produce a real crisis in science, because it will draw everyone's attention to absurdities like reporting 0.01 +- 0.1, and the obvious question will be how so many senior scientists could have ever endorsed this rubbish.

David
Malf thoughtfully provided a link showing global average temperatures. You'll obviously notice the greatest temperature changes have occurred where there are no urban heat islands. Such places a the territories of Canada, the Artic, Russia for example.
 
And yet the planet overall averaged warmer still.
Tsk tsk, quoting Linus Pauling. He was the fellow advocating massive doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold which is a dubious claim in the least to support your contention all science is suspect to be false until proven true. Included are the other links.

Here's my suggestion to you and anyone else that thinks humans can't change the global environment. Educate yourself why climate researchers say what they say.
Steve the issue isn't whether humans can change it. It's how much humans are actually impacting it and how (not) catastrophic it is. The planet overall averaging warmer temps over a three year period is not remotely indicative of man made global warming. It could be, but it also very much could not be. And someone who says that it is isn't possible for Earth to be in the midst of an ordinary warming period are not willing to think about the issue from a realistic perspective. Your confidence in this is alarming.
 
"Global Warming: Are Sea Levels Rising?"

Yes and it has nothing to do with CO2.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/03/the-2013-ipcc-ar5-report-facts-vs-fictions/


Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
...

Sea level rise over the past century has varied from 1-3mm/yr, averaging 1.7mm/yr (7 inches/yr)from 1900-2000 (Fig.8.) Sea level rose at a fairly constant rate from 1993 to about 2005 but the rate of rise has flattened out since then (Fig. 9). What is obvious from these curves is that sea level is continuing to rise at a rate of about 7 inches per century, and there is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. Nor is there any basis for blaming it on CO2 because sea level has been rising on for 150 years, long before CO2 levels began to rise after 1945.

clip_image025.jpg


As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen stated, “The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence—it is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.”


clip_image009.jpg


clip_image011.jpg

So Jim, where does some of the heat energy go? Let me tell you. Some is radiated back into space. What is not radiated away makes its way into the oceans. As most of us know heating materials makes them expand including water. Ocean levels are also rising because of glacial melting, Greenland's ice melt which comes back rising air temperatures. By the way that graph stops at the year 2000; it is missing 17 years of record keeping.
 
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