Bishop Hill A rising tide of controversy
Jun 18, 2011 Climate: WG2 I've not followed the sea level rise story closely, but my interest was piqued by Morner's lecture at Cambridge a few weeks back. I don't suppose this news will surprise him very much.
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters -- or about the thickness of a fingernail -- every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
The story seems to be that the land is rising, increasing the carrying capacity of the oceans. This would effectively reduce the amount of sea level rise expected, and we couldn't have that - hence the "adjustment". The effect of the adjustment appears to be small when put against the projected rises, but is certainly material against the actual changes recorded (although these are, per Morner, wrong).
Reader Comments (164)
Before anyone even thinks about tampering with a duck in any way you will be required to pass a CRB check. And ducks live in or around water, so there will be a compulsory H&S day, preceded by (for noephytes) the H&S induction morning. Any of you who need to drive to these courses must complete the speed awareness course and take and pass a breathalyser at two minute intervals for the week preceding and following.
And, of course, anybody who has ever come into contact with a recipe for Canard a l'Orange, even accidentally, is automatically excluded from any duck contact. No excuses.
The fact that ducks float can be observed. Sometimes ducks disappear for 10-20 seconds, following what is allegedly called a duck dive.
Obviously as ducks float it is not possible for them to swim underwater. This goes against the laws of physics.
It is therefore more likely that they temporarily vanish into the space/time continuum, when they are not visible on the surface. I can prove this with a computer model if you pay me £100,000
Geoengineering is still the future. We can combat sea level rises with more dredging. That could prove a useful displacement activity. Scope for displacement trading and offsetting as well. Wonder if we could patent this like the kangaroo cullers have tried for carbon trading?
ermm, I can't help thinking that there is something wrong, possibly naive, about the duck data analysis so far.
Keith Briffa is possibly the best person to ask on this.
I feel confident that;
A. When the thermal properties of the duck are taken into account,
B. Cross referenced with SST's measurements from passing freighters.
C. Appropriate ducks are selected for 'Sea level sensitivity'
The true 'Climate signature' for sea level rise will emerge.
One of admittedly the many apparently corroborating datasets now in use. One of admittedly many datasets with more fudge than Thorntons.
GSW
If you slice a duck, can you extract a past record of sea level? Which species produce the best ducking data, and which produce the ducking worst?
This may all be ducking useless research, but the grant funding is ducking marvellous.
Remember to keep your research notes away from the peeking duck though, because if combined with a revealing bill....
I don't see how uplift can raise the sea level. Look at it the other way round, and imagine that instead of the continents being uplifted, they were instead being eroded and flattened. If that were to happen for long enough, I calculate that a perfectly flat (or rather, spherical) earth would be covered by ocean to a depth of 2.55 km.
"Glacial isostatic adjustment" can only proceed for a while. After a while, erosion processes will flatten it all out, as the sea batters against shorelines, and rivers wash rocks and gravel into the sea. That's the thing to really worry about: when we're all 2.55 km under water.
...
omg... OMG!... OMG!!!!!
@golf charley,
The "Bristlecone duck" is known to be particularly unreliable in this respect ;)
...... ducks live in or around water, so there will be a compulsory H&S day, preceded by (for noephytes) the H&S induction morning.
Jun 18, 2011 at 2:17 PM Latimer Alder
Surely -inducktion morning?
You guys are all F*****g quackers and I haven't laughed so much for ages.
The height the duck floats in the water will depend on the CO2 content of the duck.,
Perhaps we should not be that surprised by all this - remember the GISS temperature fiddle in the US last year.
See Real Science link.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/thermometer-magic/
ps the illustration is NOT a duck !
"Why is the SeaLevel Centre at about 7000 feet up?""
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/psmsl.hel
I think we have a new iconic mascot -- The Skeptic Duck.
As for the "correction", how the hell do you measure a 0.3 mm change in sea level when the ground under the shore line is moving up and down due to tectonic motion? Virtually every shore line is near a tectonic plate junction. As noted, earthquakes happen every day, many many times a day in fact.
I think the boys in U of C have been on a "Rocky Mountain High."
Latimer Alder
I fear you have been misled somewhere. According to your description of the accent you were in a train load of Yorkshiremen who would not, on any account, be supporting Grimsby Town. Neither would any that I know of be seen dead on a train going to Portsmouth!
I know that as a North Britisher all accents south of Berwick sound the same to you but I assure you there is a difference between Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
On the subject of ducks ... remember that only if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck can it properly be described as a duck. Since the object in question is not giving any evidence of an ability to waddle, a decision on its provenance must be deferred for further research.
Such research could prove costly but I am prepared to sacrifice some of my free time to undertake this
totally pointlessvitally essential work.Cheques should be made payable to ...
IPSS: International Panel of Sceptic Scumbags
Mike Jackson,
"if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck" it is a clear indicator of a warming planet. Please stay on message
Josh,
you might equip the duck with Plimsoll line. Include the 0.3mm increase.
toymodel duck?Excellent golf charley!
We may be in danger of becoming victims of "Groupthink" though.
This is a very important issue. Its about the credibility of observational data. What they have done is to take observational data and then adjust it so that it isn't observational data anymore. Its something else. What is now reported is not sea level rise .. it is something else .... maybe akin to water volume ... but certainly not sea LEVEL. A simple thought experiment demonstrates how ludicrous the adjustment is. Just imagine that the GIA effect was 10x larger. Then we would have the bizarre situation that sea LEVEL would actually be falling, but they would still report a 3mm per year rise.
Let me repeat .... this is a very important issue. Sea level is the most visual of the alarmist stories. The truth is that it has not risen in line with the alarmist models. If one of the most prestigious suppliers of the data is now quoting sea level rise, but actually giving numbers that report something different, then they cannot be relied upon for observational truth. They are quite simply making it up.
Mike Jackson. No evidence required. GSW agrees, that equals a consensus!
Agreed.
Too late for AR5 do you think?
@mike jackson
I recollect clearly that one of their number, indeed it may have been he of the 'Ee bah gum' quip. confessed to coming from Hull. Perhaps he had been kidnapped by gypsies at birth or something.
And the Mecca of Football to which this happy band were headed is in Aldershot, not Portsmouth.
They are quite simply making it up.
Jun 18, 2011 at 4:43 PM | ImranCan
Yes Imran, they always make it UP. Sea levels, temperatures, hurricanes, tornados, floods, drought etc. It is always UP, never down..
You do however, get down from a duck
"if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck"
But will it float like a duck? That will have to be modeled for sure. :)
Don Pablo
This flotation issue may be complicated by historic and wholly unfounded notions about what happens when water comes into contact with a ducks back.
Flotation=causation and all that stuff
"Why are people in COLORADO concerned about sea level changes ?" --Jack Hughes
When I lived in Denver, there was a Coast Guard unit there. Prepared, they are.
"I think we can call this what it is. Boulderdash!" --Sundance
Excellent! But you can rest assured it's robu**s**t boulderdash.
I'm down with the duck too.
On the data adjustment - sea level is a relative measurement, against the adjacent land mass. Any sort of 'adjustment' of that number to try to make sea level a proxy for absolute subsurface volume sniffs of fraud to me.
If they want an ocean-volume number then they should publish one, and be prepared to defend their measurement methods.
I thought that buoys tethered to the sea floor were now being used to measure sea level, and it is falling or
does it mean that the sea bed is rising, along with all land, meaning that in the centre of the earth, where temperatures are millions of degrees hot (Refer to Al Gore), matter is being created contrary to the laws of physics and the planet is expanding?
Nah! Sea levels are falling, my duck told me
Jack
Did you use an approved oceanographic duck?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/lost-at-sea-on-the-trail-of-mobyduck-2226788.html
Speaking of ducks:
A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain’s beaches, according to an American oceanographer.
For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.
Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are expected to reach Britain after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Imrancan,
Yes it is very important/serious. It is yet another example of the usual checks and balances characteristic of the scientific endeavor being overcome for the sake of a better "Climate Change" story.
They can pretty much distort the data in any way they like with impunity, from some quarters even being applauded for doing so.
I to would be interested to hear what Sir Paul and Bedders have to say about the relative merit of a "Sea level" measurement vs value added "Sea level plus" statistic. They claim to be standing up for the integrity of science, whilst those around them seem to be hellbent on turning it into some kind of long running pantomime or standing joke.
I don't think there is the remotest possibility that either of them ever visit this blog, it would make it harder to keep a straight face whilst talking about climate issues in public, but if you do - how about a few words in support or otherwise for your climate colleagues?
Jun 18, 2011 at 6:39 PM | Frank Davis
No plastic ducks have ever made it across the Arctic Ocean before now.
Another clear indicater of a warming planet
My toilet duck said: "no comment"
We can combat sea level rises with more dredging, says atomic hairdryer.
But what can we do about the 19 ft difference between the two coasts of the Isthmus of Panama? that could be a big, expensive job, AH!
Reminds me of Lew Grade's rueful comment on his expensive flop of a film, "Raise the Titanic". "It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic".
Tee hee.
I wonder if ZDB will be able to take a nice quiet bath with her rubber ducky again :)
My toilet duck said: "no comment"
Jun 18, 2011 at 7:06 PM | RETEPHSLAW
Proof that ducks can talk. This has not happened before
Another clear indicator of a warming planet
Sea level measurement is so debatable that it means that that is where all the liars congregate... ;)
I must be missing something here ... we can safely add a few tenths of a degree to the recent land surface temperature record because, compared to the expected IPCC 6 degC, a few tenths is nothing
It will, of course, fuel the "Sea level rising faster than we thought" headlines in our moronic media but, hey, we'll let it pass. Just like we let the "hottest year ever" (by 2000ths of a degree) pass once we allowed a little data "adjustment" to pass un-commented. But "scientists" are neutral and its all been "peer reviewed" so that's OK.
Liar, liar, planet on fire...
If we're on to the transarctic migration of rubber bath toys (see Frank Davis's posts), here's the treatment of the story from The Register:
Ghostly plastic bathtoy flotilla nears Cornish coast
Greed-crazed salvage junk bonanza mob frenzy brewing
Still a favourite of mine, as I visualise ransacked thesauri lying agape on the author's desk...
So what we have now is not a measurement of the relative sea level rise, but rather what the relative sea level rise would be if the last ice age hadn't happened.
However, since the sea level rise would actually be much smaller if the last ice age hadn't happened (since there wouldn't be glacial any ice to melt) what we actually have is a figure for what the sea-level rise would be if the last ice-age had consisted of weightless ice. Somehow this does not strike me as very useful information.
By the way, that figure for GIA (0,3 mm/yr) is little more than guesswork, since we have no reliable actual figures for the isostatic adjustment except in coastal areas of Europe and North America. Ultimately we will have better data through the use of high-pecision GPS measurements over an extended period of time, but unfortunately there is no way to do this in areas covered by ocean or ice (about 75 % of the Earths surface). So how is that figure arrived at? Simple - by modelling of course.
Golf Charley
Now this is how warmists develop theories and GCMs.
The duck will sink a little when you chop off its legs?
This presumably its legs had buoyancy, been made of collagen (or plastic PET) , so this loss of buoyancy will make sink the main body a little deeper into the water.
Re its 10secs dives under the water
This does not violate the laws of physics as energy is exerted by the ducks muscles.
a freshly deceased duck should only float at least for a while, but a live one can sink.
Even fly, come to think of it.
no its is quite difficult to make from a duck a rising ocean levels detecter.
A research venue would be to measure the time it wades before it waddles , coming on shore.
Being habit creatures they'll set themselves a post before they start to wade on the shore. But then the ocean level rises so they actually start to wade to soon , This making their wading time longer.
One has to measure duck wading times on smooth rising shores.
Difficult in UK, but there are some ideal beaches on the Fiji's (me! me me! i was first!)
@mike jackson
A few hundred Yorkshire folk made it down to Fratton Park a few years ago to witness their Leeds United side humbled 6-1. They all returned home as sick as ducks.
@golf charley
Please post if you ever do see the tide lapping Fratton Park. I've not made it down there for a few years, but it would be useful to know in advance if it's necessary to bring wellies.
How did ducks get around before the Internet?
Because they can't have had Webbed feet.
Re marchesarosa
re Duck's ability to sink, float and fly. Obviously this is due to their ability to move mass between dimensions and adjust their bouyancy. I have computer models to prove this and also explains the missing heat problem. Obviously ducks cannot move mass without energy and this energy change produces waste heat. Duck populations have been rising in line with environmentalists banning game shooting, so global temperatures have increased in line.
As further proof of a duck overlord conspiracy, obviously they're behind the environmentalists campaigning to save their bretheren. It also explains why penalties for ducks dieing in tailing ponds are far more severe that for raptors being killed by wind turbines. Raptors eat ducks, so it's obvious why this is.
ps.. orange crop failures, that wasn't climate change, that was the ducks as well. No more duck a l'orange.
99 comments, and most of them about ducks! What the... :)
BTW, you have to look at this find:
1911 : Climate Experts Said That Wireless Communications Are Destroying The Climate Of Southern California
It has: