New science upsets calculations on sea level rise, climate change

New science upsets calculations on sea level rise, climate change

www.theregister.co.uk

ce sheet melt massively overestimated, satellites show

A new analysis of data from dedicated satellites shows that one of the main factors predicted to drive rising sea levels in future has been seriously overestimated, with major implications for climate talks currently underway in Doha.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.pnas.org

While I maintain that mankind needs to be a more responsible stewards of this planet... and I don't deny that our science still struggles with the data; and the assumptions brought to it... this appears to be the kind of "news" that I had anticipated.

I don;t think that because this data shows otherwise, that we needn't worry about emissions and deforestation, or pollution of the oceans, I do think that we have to be very careful in the future of allowing political and economic expedience drive scientific dialog about what's happening... and more importantly, how we can endure what we cannot control.

The new methods involve filtering out noise from the data produced by the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft, sent into orbit with the aim of finding out just how much ice is melting from the world's ice sheets and glaciers. Such water then runs off into the sea, providing one of the main potential drivers of sea level rise - which is itself perhaps the main reason to worry about climate change.

Some salient points to take away from this research:

While overall ice loss on Greenland consistently increased between 2003 and 2010, Harig and Simons found that it was in fact very patchy from region to region.

In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year.

I suppose the camp which buys the carbon-trade scheme will not like losing one of their more powerful fear-porn elements.... rising sea levels which decimate the populated areas of the earth...

At current melt rates, the Greenland ice sheet would take about 13,000 years to melt completely, which would result in a global sea-level rise of more than 21 feet (6.5 meters).

Whew... between the backtracking on the Himalayas and this... we may have some opportunity to adjust our ways before it's too late.

Put another way, in that scenario we would be looking at 5cm of sea level rise from Greenland by the year 2130: a paltry amount. Authoritative recent research drawing together all possible causes of sea level rise bears this out, suggesting maximum possible rise in the worst case by 2100 will be 30cm. More probably it will be less, and there will hardly be any difference between the 20th and 21st centuries in sea level terms.

Sadly, the pro-industrial-exploitation camp will see this as a license to continue their unsustainable ways.... I hope we can avoid that.... there's enough to worry about already without having to consider wanton corporate excesses and profit taking at the expense of our environment.



www.theregister.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Just another example of the AGW supports cherry picking bits of data to fit their fairy tale.

Sea levels are not rising.

I noticed this week on Al Jazeera a piece about the city of Venice which was inundated with sea water. The reporter mentioned sea level rise as part of the problem Everyone knows that Venice is sinking and has nothing to do with rising sea level.

It's a non stop onslaught of misinformation from these boys.

I'm not sure whether this has been posted - but it makes an interesting addition to the thread, I think.

New science: SEAS WILL RISE due to CO2 ... but not for centuries

Originally posted by bigyin
Just another example of the AGW supports cherry picking bits of data to fit their fairy tale.

These are no supporters of AGW.... and the cherry picking may have been an honest (if not politically expedient) example of "outcome bias" on the part of naturalists and "experts" who are aligned with the idea of ringing the alarm bells for the world.

The bottom line is; we still don't have definitive proof either way.

The only thing I know for sure is that buying carbon credits won't do a thing except create another "market" to be manipulated by greedy middlemen.

reply to post by Maxmars


It is my opinion based on all the scandals and falsifying of data, hell even the proposed "cure" (tax everything), that AGW is a load of old non-sense...

But hey, we don't need to fight (not saying you are, I can clearly see you are not)... There is a middle ground for us or rather a different angle to take that can appease everybody and if you are a AGW believer actually offers a better solution...

Come at it from the FREEDOM angle... Now let me explain... All you need to do is promote energy independence, or "off grid" living... Who wouldn't want to stick it to the energy companies? I know I do! So here is what WE do... We promote things such as the "sun oven"



Especially in places where it is really sunny, it doesn't even NEED to be hot, as shown in this video...

Also things like the "rocket stove" which you can get commercially...



Or build yourself...



There are other things like parabolic mirrors...



Which can be made on your own pretty easily...

And fernel lenses...



These are just for starters... I don't know about you but these things really appeal to me and if I could even cut down on my energy bill and become more independent that would be awesome...

Hope you can see what I'm saying?

How come the BBC News are right now as I type putting out the exact opposite story to this one.

They are telling us the ice is melting faster.

This is outstanding news...

Does it do any harm to the argument of the massive global warming conspiracy that a study like this would even hit the public realm? Wouldn't our Agenda 21 masters prevent any release that compromises their scheme?

I really think a lot of people and scientists were freaked out by the initial CO2/temp correlation to the point of believing and spreading this belief in the name of saving the world.

This may be more a case of many people being wrong than many people being manipulative.

But, agree with the OP completely. If more science does emerge to discredit manmade climate change, let's not let that be an excuse for neglecting the environment and alternative energy development.

reply to post by Maxmars


IMO the AGW crowd can't sell global warming.

The problem is that the effects are not immediate and only slightly provable.

If you really want to improve things we need to focus on pollution control.
That is something you can quantify.
Especially the human element. Like kids born with birth defects in China due to pollution.

Global Warming is dead.

The article is patently drivel - at one point it quotes Princeton:

While overall ice loss on Greenland consistently increased between 2003 and 2010, Harig and Simons found that it was in fact very patchy from region to region.

In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year.

and the very next paragraph:

The rate of loss of ice from Greenland is estimated at 199.72 plus-or-minus 6.28 gigatonnes per year. So the possible acceleration of losses is only barely larger than the margin of error in the readings: it's very difficult to tell the supposed loss curve from a straight line.

fundamentally misuses the statistics - you cannot compare the error of an AVERAGE to an increase in the rate of acceleration.

It is cherry picking and then fitting unrelated statistics together simply because they have a similar numerical value, regardless of wehat they are talking about.

In short it is either ignorant or dishonest.

and then to write:

If the Greenland ice losses aren't accelerating, there's no real reason to worry about them.

Is just mindbogglinly stupid - even IF teh loss rate was not accelerating the fact of hte loss itself should still be a worry!

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


Once again, you visit a thread to pour derision on the article.. but haven't bothered to read the research.

Free token. Try again.

I re-read the article referred to in the OP.
The scientists have a new way of filtering the noise in the data from GRACE.
Basically that means they are changing the definition of the problem to meet their desired solution outcome.
I wouldn't put any more faith in this report than any other, especially since the scientists are claiming that their filtering technique separates the 'noise' from the "true" data. Without seeing the actual statistics in both studies it would be impossible to determine which is more accurate. On the ground measurements of sufficient quantity and precision over sufficient time would affirm which filtering techniques are most accurate. Given the source data is all extrapolated from various sensors in the satellite, there could be flaws in the data collection methodology. And finally, post processing the data for trending and prediction is another set of processes which may or may not have contributed to the differences in the resulting models.

I'm no expert in environmental science, but I've decades of experience constructing forecasting models in a wide variety of application areas including seismic, space and AI.

ganjoa

Originally posted by Maxmars
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

Once again, you visit a thread to pour derision on the article.. but haven't bothered to read the research.

Free token. Try again.

Ding ding - it's still rubbish for the same reasons - but thanks - feel free to discuss the evidence some time

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


it seems as though he invited you to discuss the evidence. All you want to do is call it "patently drivel", write it off, then scoff at anyone who would question you to explain what, exactly, is patently drivel.

reply to post by Maxmars


I hope this will work

I found the full article from Princeton PDF 6+ Mb

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

fundamentally misuses the statistics - you cannot compare the error of an AVERAGE to an increase in the rate of acceleration.

My apologies but where in that phrase does it say average? It says "So the possible acceleration of losses is only barely larger than the margin of error in the readings" in other words the possible mass loss and the possible error in the data are within the same scope and therefore to all intents and purposes the difference is flat.

Helps to actually read things you know.

One has to wonder how you can say "In short it is either ignorant or dishonest." given your apparent lack of understanding.

reply to post by ganjoa

On the ground measurements of sufficient quantity and precision over sufficient time would affirm which filtering techniques are most accurate.

I guess they probably do that. Summit Camp slap in the middle of the ice cap at 10500 ft. Fascinating watching the temperatures there. My better half has been collecting the data pretty much daily for well over a year now.

I myself am a believer in climate change...not the "doomsday-end of the world" kind...but just plain change.

I have lived the bulk of my 47 years along the same longitude-lattitude and the weather is just different. I have never been sold on "man made global warming" but my eyes, ears and "skin" tells me that things are different than they were 40 years ago.

Is it the "end of the world"? Prob not. It, however, does not mean that we pay no attention. I do believe that weather patterns shift and this can cause problems. IF the current cycle is going to be a long term proposition, then we might ought to consider some infrastructure to deal with mid west droughts. I have been trumpeting this since early last summer. We had heavy spring rains and then...nothing. The spring rains caused flooding and then they were gone and we had drought. IF we had reservoirs, water retention ponds and aqueducts...we could alleviate the flooding and have resources available to deal with summer drought. Just a thought.

There are a lot of people that think that it is "either-or" and it is either going to be catastrophic or nothing at all will happen. For myself, I just see challenging changes. We have it well within our capacity to address these kinds of things if we collectively choose to do so. Has nothing to do with carbon caps or taxes.

Whew! That takes a load of worry away. I guess that I now don't have to worry about this:

"A vast expanse of permafrost in Siberia and Alaska has started to thaw for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago, marked in dark blue on the map. It is caused by the recent 3+°C rise in local temperature over the past 40 years - more than four times the global average. Peat bogs cover an area of a million square miles (or almost a quarter of the earth's land surface) to a depth of 25 meters. Those in Siberia are the world's largest."

external source: planetextinction.com...

wow, the next bit was interesting as well:

"This has the potential to release vast quantities of methane trapped by ice below the surface - billions of tonnes of methane. World-wide, peat bogs store at least two trillion tons of CO2. This is equivalent to a century of emissions from fossil fuels."

Actually, there is some sort of conference going on in Qatar. Oh hang on, it's got to do with the UN, you know the big bad guys of the world.

external source : www.abc.net.au...

"If the permafrost thaws, the organic matter will thaw and decay, potentially releasing large amounts of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.

Thawing permafrost could emit 43 to 135 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2100 and 246 to 415 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2200."

Yeah, that's right, GW is a scam. Or maybe, just maybe, it is actually happening and some smart people have decided to accept it and instead of running around screaming that "the sky is falling and now I can't make money", to find opportunities and move towards fixing the problem. No, I am not smart enough or ruthless enough to be one of those smart people, my mind can't seem to do business very well. so I'm just one of those hanging in there, hoping that this mess of a subject turns out ok for my kids.

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

fundamentally misuses the statistics - you cannot compare the error of an AVERAGE to an increase in the rate of acceleration.

My apologies but where in that phrase does it say average?

It does not use the word "average" - but it says -

The rate of loss of ice from Greenland is estimated at 199.72 plus-or-minus 6.28 gigatonnes per year.

That is a statement of an average because the rate os loss is not actually a constant - it has increased over hte years - any statement that it is any given rate "per year" can only be an average.

Actually - you have a point - it could be a lie too.

"Both ice sheets appear to be losing more ice now than 20 years ago, but the pace of ice loss from Greenland is extraordinary, with nearly a five-fold increase since the mid-1990s," Ivins said. "In contrast, the overall loss of ice in Antarctica has remained fairly constant, with the data suggesting a 50-percent increase in Antarctic ice loss during the last decade."

-NASA on the GRACE data

It says "So the possible acceleration of losses is only barely larger than the margin of error in the readings" in other words the possible mass loss and the possible error in the data are within the same scope and therefore to all intents and purposes the difference is flat.

Helps to actually read things you know.

Yep.

One has to wonder how you can say "In short it is either ignorant or dishonest." given your apparent lack of understanding.

Oh the irony!!