Discussion > A Debating Motion- Sea level rise is a threat.
Entropic man
So why post links to well known warmer periods when sea levels were also known to have been higher which was all natural without any human influence? I don't think anyone here really disputes what you've shown in your links. It seems a bit of a red herring/diversion tactic rather than anything useful. As you say it happen twice (at least) quite naturally in the past it could happen naturally again in the future and humans would be powerless to do anything about it.
Seems to be the end of that bit of the discussion.
SandyS
…I default to anthropogenic warming.Good. As there has been none, we are safe, then. Phew! What a relief!
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
It's all down to the vanity of mankind, the greatest and most influential creature that ever lived.
SandyS
well guys & girls thanks for an interesting debate/knock about :-) learned plenty about SSL etc...
missed the start post (Xmas & all) but have just read thru the comments.
Latimer wins hands down for me, calm,composed & makes his points well :-)
EM fails badly for me in this debate/knock about & the Charlatan comment made me question his sanity (i will let it go as stress can make people say/do funny things).
dougieh
ps - just to be cheeky :-)
is 'Latimer Alder' your real name ? unusual if so, i remember you from the old Guardian blogs, happy days them :-)
dougieh
Hi Dougie
Thank you for your kind remarks
Yes, I am indeed the Latimer Alder you remember from the Grauniad. But - like so many others - I was made an unperson at Komment Macht Frei by an anonymous censor for some unspecified 'crime'. It was in the time of regular moonbat so maybe I disagreed with him too much. Or got too many 'likes' from the CAGW unconvinced.
I still post occasionally here, and at Judith's. But mostly nowadays on Twitter.
PS I wonder if, following the Charlie Hebdo events, the grauniad censorship team have been told to tone down their propensity for banning things? Or if they're just the same old bunch of hypocrites they always have been. They support 'free speech' as long as it doesn't trouble their articles of faith.
Latimer Alder
Information on erosion sediment arriving in the ocean
Radical Rodent posed the question to what extent land erosion contributed to sea level rise.
In trying to track down an authoritative estimate of the mass of sediment displacing the sea each year I said:
I have sent a question to the National Oceanography Centre via their website: Hello, I want to find an authoritative estimate of the mass of mineral matter that moves from land into the ocean annually. Please tell me who I should contact for this information. Thank you. Martin A
I received an answer from a member of the scientific staff. He told me:
James Syvitski at Uni Colorado is the main player in this area. His homepage has a publications list that may provide further material for you:
http://instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-syvitski/
and he pointed to two of JS's papers:
Predicting the terrestrial flux of sediment to the global ocean: a planetary perspective
James P.M. Syvitski, Scott D. Peckhama, Rachael Hilbermana , Thierry Mulder; The Journal of Geology, 1992, volume 100, p. 525-5441
The papers are frank about the difficulty of obtaining a precise figure for the sediment that reaches the ocean
What Is the Sediment Flux to the Sea? This question really has two parts: how much sediment is carried by rivers, and how much escapes the present-day land/estuarine environment? The answer to both is more or less the same-we don't know.
Their overall method is to estimate the sediment from large rivers (Missisippi, Amazon,...) from measurements and to add statistical estimates for the sediment for small rivers based on the climatic conditions,. drainage areas and other factors.
At the end of the discussion, they say
...Adding undocumented rivers larger than 10,000 km2 probably would add another 1-2 bt. The combined total suspended discharge conservatively might be 20 bt.
I think that is as near as we are likely to get for an authoritative estimate of the total sediment reaching the ocean annually. This corresponds to an annual sea level rise of around 0.03 mm - too small for even EM to get excited about (I assume).
The papers are full of interesting information.
* Agriculture increases sediment loss to the ocean but dam construction reduces it.
* During 18 yr of monitoring, more than half the total sediment transported by the Santa Clara River (Southern California) was carried in three floods, lasting a total of seven days.
* Sediment loads may have increased by a factor of 2-10 since humans began farming.
Martin A
Yo Entropic!
Fancy a debate about 'ocean acidification' next week? Similar rules and format?
Anybody else?
Latimer Alder
Latimer
Do you think Prof Telford will join in?
diogenes
Diogenes: if he does, his second paragraph will probably be a direct contradiction of his first, so whichever you agree with, he will pick you up for disagreeing with him!
Radical Rodent
R R
That is an amazing thread in many ways.
diogenes
Yes, Diogenes. What truly frightens me is that he and his cohorts all think that they are being scientific, pouring scorn and ridicule on any who question their avidly-held beliefs. What annoys me is that I am involuntarily contributing to their salaries, yet they treat me with such disdain.
Radical Rodent
One interesting point, Latimer Alder, appertaining to one of your posts on Mr Telford’s site – what on Earth is an “observationalist”?
Radical Rodent
RR
Observationalist is like those Soviet smears against empiricists. Believe the models not reality.
diogenes
@RR
'Observationalist' is a neologism (courtesy of moi).
It's like 'experimentalist' ...one who sets great store by real data and not so much by theory. But for the topic of 'deep ocean temperature change', we couldn't really do any 'experiments'. There are no variables that we can practically control. But we could observe.
Hence 'observationalist'.
Latimer Alder
For those kind enough to have been following the stuff over at Telford's, here's my final thoughts on the matter
https://quantpalaeo.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/not-phraud-but-phoolishness/comment-page-1/#comment-2180
...for now at least. But I have a funny feeling we'll be back to this topic again and again....
Latimer Alder
Martin A
Again thanks for your research, if nothing else has come out here at least there is something where we can say it's a known unknown.
SandyS
Yes, a known unknown.
I was struck by how the words from one of the papers would be hard to imagine coming from a 'climate scientist':
What Is the Sediment Flux to the Sea? This question really has two parts: how much sediment is carried by rivers, and how much escapes the present-day land/estuarine environment? The answer to both is more or less the same-we don't know.
Even though analysing sediment flow is fundamentally simpler than predicting future climate.
Martin A
Maybe your final thoughts, LA, but I still feel the need to counter BBD’s outrageously stupid comments.
For that reason, you shall remain on my hate list (where you're still in good company, by the way). Next time you find a hornets’ nest to stir, try not to tell me.
Radical Rodent
@RR
Thank you for your support in my endeavours to get to the unsubstantial foundations of the castles in the air of 'ocean acidification'.
I will view being on your hate list as a compliment. (I think ;-) )
Latimer Alder
Don’t be too sure of that – when I can get these wax dolls I bought on E-bay to work, you are going to suffer!
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent
As an early reader here at Bishop Hill and being familiar with his style whenever I see BBD commenting I tend to skip over what he says, but made an exception in this case which confirmed that I should have continued with previous policy.
SandyS
Thank you, SandyS. It is a policy I have followed with quite a few others who appear on this site, too; it is just that my understanding is that BBD is – or at least considers himself – a scientist. I just like to highlight that his scientific credentials he displays are completely at odds with whatever scientific qualifications he may hold. In the article in question, he continually makes references not to what someone has actually stated, but what that someone would have stated, had they followed the mental model of that character that BBD has constructed – in other words, here is a “scientist” whose models trump reality, each and every single time. What galls me even more is that he is likely to be on the public pay-roll – in other words, I am being forced to pay him to pour his scorn on me.
Radical Rodent
Messenger draws our attention to this:
https://royalsociety.org/events/2015/01/cafe-ocean-acidification/
I've just registered. Anyone else? And a pint afterwards?
Latimer Alder
Watching this post is like watching the tactics of the Generals in WW1, they keep to the same old tactics, despite all the previous failures but still they command the troops to go over the top in the same old way and express amazement when the results are unchanged.
From his last post.
'Amplification from reduced albedo, CO2 and methane from permafrost decay, and methane from sediments and clathrates are all likely to accelerate the rate of temperature change and the consequent rate of sea level rise.'
Is all unproven conjecture, doom laden 'could be's' that have no basis in evidence
This thread is like a dead parrot is is best closed and buried as it is.
Its only purpose is to demonstrate yet again
'Is that all you have got'
EM when you discover some tanks come back, until then just go.