Sea level rise is accelerating

Mankind actually benefits from both warm and cold which balances the biosphere. But when warm and cold take more abrupt changes in shorter periods of time, to potential levels which can negatively effect mankind, both colder and warmer extreme temperatures can be an issue. Neither warm or cold has more merit than the other. Whatever either of them present us is what we MUST respond to in a timely fashion...

 

What makes you think that any changes occurring now are 'abrupt' other than the alarmism you see in the media? The longest temperature record in existence only shows a 0.03C rise per decade.



The US shows virtually no rise at all.

 

Again we agree, only idiots politicize climate change and that is exactly what is happening in the AGW movement. This whole load of crap is politics not science and is about the UN dictating to the world and America paying reparations for its success. Climate change is a hoax and if you follow the dollars you will see so called climate scientist running to the government feeding trough to get their share of the dollars being passed out to those who play ball.

You claim you have taken steps to be a better steward of the earth but I'm positive my so called carbon footprint is a fraction of yours. Imagine a "denier" like me growing most of his own food, hunting or raising all his own meat and living off grid in a solar home that he built himself with trees off his own land. I did and do this stuff because I like that life style not because I have any grandiose illusion that I'm saving the planet.

 

It is indeed unfortunate that you are unable to recognize (like everybody else does) or admit that "politicizing climate change" is precisely your way of denying the scientifically confirmed reality of human caused global warming and its consequent climate changes. You try to pretend that the entire world effort to deal with the climate change crisis is all (an evil 'librul') political conspiracy linked with (an impossibly large) worldwide scientific conspiracy and then you act surprised when people call AGW deniers 'conspiracy theory crackpots', or outright insane. You ignore the evidence that the fossil fuel industry deliberately 'politicized' what should be a straightforward scientific issue, in an attempt to delay action and protect their profits and assets, with a propaganda and disinformation campaign that is very similar to what the tobacco companies did decades ago to delay the appropriate regulations and health warnings on tobacco smoking long after the health risks and costs were completely clear to the medical community.

Classic rightwingnut paranoid conspiracy theory nonsense.....AND their very obvious way of "politicizing climate science". It is a large part of the denier cult's way of denigrating, denying and ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the reality of human caused global warming/climate change and the similar testimony of both virtually all of the world's climate scientists, and the very large majority of the entire world scientific community.

Scientific opinion on climate change

The other part of the crackpot rightwingnut conspiracy theory that was created by the propagandists working for people like the Koch brothers and EXXON. This one appeals to those in the Republican base who are ignorant, uneducated, know nothing about science, don't particularly trust science ('cause of Darwin), have no idea how the scientific process actually works, but are nevertheless so sorely afflicted by the Dunning-Kruger Effect that they mistakenly believe that they are smarter and more knowledgable than all of the real scientists in the world.

 

Again you prove that this is political for you instead of scientific even using falsehoods like 'all of the real scientists' which in your world would mean only the politically correct scientists. Typical.

 

You need to think in geological time and not your short periods of time...

 

Global climate change potential is not a hoax or about dollars? When you say these things you are politicizing science.

It's great that you do better than average in your personal footprint but if you're not asking the world to do better in parallel then everything you have done will be a moot point...

 

Short periods of time are all AGW is about, basically from 1950 on which the warming from the 70's to the end of last century has been attributed to by the IPCC. No warming this century. I think you need to think in geological time and not such a short scale as CO2 attribution.

 

Here is an example of the 'Sea level rise is accelerating'.

 

It is the true believers that have politicized science. Any dissent by any scientist is ignored and the offending scientist are mocked and ridiculed..




Scientists arguing that global warming is primarily caused by natural processes


Graph showing the ability with which a global climate model is able to reconstruct the historical temperature record, and the degree to which those temperature changes can be decomposed into various forcing factors. It shows the effects of five forcing factors: greenhouse gases, man-made sulfate emissions, solar variability, ozone changes, and volcanic emissions.[61]
These scientists have said that the observed warming is more likely to be attributable to natural causes than to human activities. Their views on climate change are usually described in more detail in their biographical articles.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov, astrophysicist at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences[62][63]
Sallie Baliunas, retired astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics[64][65][66]
Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg[67][68][69]
Robert M. Carter, former head of the school of earth sciences at James Cook University[70][71]
Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa[72][73]
Chris de Freitas, associate professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland[74][75]
David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester[76][77]
Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University[78][79]
William M. Gray, professor emeritus and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University[80][81]
William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy; emeritus professor, Princeton University[82][83]
Ole Humlum, professor of geology at the University of Oslo[84][85]
Wibjörn Karlén, professor emeritus of geography and geology at the University of Stockholm.[86][87]
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology[88][89]
David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware[90][91]
Anthony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri[92][93]
Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa[94][95]
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.[96][97][98]
Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of mining geology, the University of Adelaide.[99][100]
Arthur B. Robinson, American politician, biochemist and former faculty member at the University of California, San Diego[101][102]
Murry Salby, atmospheric scientist, former professor at Macquarie University and University of Colorado[103][104]
Nicola Scafetta, research scientist in the physics department at Duke University[105][106][107]
Tom Segalstad, geologist; associate professor at University of Oslo[108][109]
Nir Shaviv, professor of physics focusing on astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem[110][111]
Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia[112][113][114][115]
Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics[116][117]
Roy Spencer, meteorologist; principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville[118][119]
Henrik Svensmark, physicist, Danish National Space Center[120][121]
George H. Taylor, retired director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University[122][123]
Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, professor emeritus from University of Ottawa[124][125]

Scientists arguing that the cause of global warming is unknown

These scientists have said that no principal cause can be ascribed to the observed rising temperatures, whether man-made or natural.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.[126][127]
Claude Allègre, French politician; geochemist, emeritus professor at Institute of Geophysics (Paris).[128][129]
Robert Balling, a professor of geography at Arizona State University.[130][131]
Pål Brekke, solar astrophycisist, senior advisor Norwegian Space Centre.[132][133]
John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports.[134][135][136]
Petr Chylek, space and remote sensing sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory.[137][138]
David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma.[139][140]
Ivar Giaever, professor emeritus of physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Nobel laureate.[141][142]
Vincent R. Gray, New Zealand physical chemist with expertise in coal ashes[143][144]
Keith E. Idso, botanist, former adjunct professor of biology at Maricopa County Community College District and the vice president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change[145][146]
Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists.[147][148]

Scientists arguing that global warming will have few negative consequences

These scientists have said that projected rising temperatures will be of little impact or a net positive for society or the environment.
Indur M. Goklany, science and technology policy analyst for the United States Department of the Interior[149][150][151]
Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change [152][153]
Sherwood B. Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University[154][155]
Patrick Michaels, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and retired research professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia[156][157]

Dead scientists

This section includes deceased scientists who would otherwise be listed in the prior sections.
August H. "Augie" Auer Jr. (1940–2007), retired New Zealand MetService Meteorologist and past professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming[158]
Reid Bryson (1920–200, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a 2007 magazine interview that he believed global warming was primarily caused by natural processes:[159]
Robert Jastrow (1925–200, American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a leading NASA scientist. Together with Fred Seitz and William Nierenberg he established the George C. Marshall Institute[159] to counter the scientists who were arguing against Reagan's Starwars Initiative, arguing for equal time in the media. This institute later took the view that tobacco was having no effect, that acid rain was not caused by human emissions, that ozone was not depleted by CFCs, that pesticides were not environmentally harmful and it was also critical of the consensus view of anthropogenic global warming.[160] Jastrow acknowledged the Earth was experiencing a warming trend, but claimed that the cause was likely to be natural variation.[161]
Harold ("Hal") Warren Lewis (1923-2011), Emeritus Professor of Physics and former department chairman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2010, after 67 years of membership, Lewis resigned from the American Physical Society, writing in a letter about the "corruption" from "the money flood" of government grants.[162]
Frederick Seitz (1911–200, solid-state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...tream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

 

Again...think in geological time;

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-last-time-co2-was-this-high-humans-didnt-exist-15938

 

Maybe you should spend a few weeks in Beijing to help you understand the effects of mankind and industrialization?

 

Think in geologic time.

Man is as old as 7 million years and is at least 2.4 million years and came about when CO2 levels were much higher.

 

I suggest you spend some time reading the following about the author of your graph;

https://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/an-exercise-in-how-climate-denial-works/

 

I understand one needs to go to an alarmist blog to find the usual dismissal of scientists that provide inconvenient science.

 

Regardless that sea level is rising, there is virtually few things if any that we can do to significantly stop this. What we must do is react to it by not allowing old structures to be rebuilt and new structures to be built that are too close and not high enough to survive a rise in the ocean or hurricane.

 

Holy cow, all your data is destroying the warmists, its like a mass killing of AGW fanatics in here, soon there will be calls for a ban on science or at least universal background checks before posting.

 

Nice subject change as your "all the scientist" myth is debunked.

 

As I said earlier, any dissent from dogma gets you filled with arrows by the cult.

 

Sea level rise is relatively minor and easily (though expensive) to deal with, though moving New York might be a bit of a pain.

 

You are correct but no one cares since we've known about sea level rise potential for a long time now yet the fastest growing areas of the US continue to be along the coast lines, particularly the east coast and Gulf states. We even rebuilt New Orleans! I don't know if the collective we are just stupid, or arrogant, or in denial but whatever the behavior nothing has changed or will change. Americans won't do anything until their asses are on fire and then they will whine to government and others to bail them out...

 

Ask yourself if you know why sea level is rising faster on the East coast. Ask yourself why there was a sudden increase in sea level going from one set of measurements to a new set of measurements. For instance, tide gauges do not show an acceleration in sea level rise. When they changed from tide gauges to satellites data, there was a sudden upward shift going from the old data to the new.

East coast sea level has risen due to a change in the Atlantic Meridian Oscillation (AMO). Sea level has been rising for over 200 years, long before the current craze about CO2.

 

I don't care why it is rising. I only care that we pay attention to the data and our projections and to take preventative steps if and when they are appropriate.

I also don't care about older data, newer data, and future data because data is seldom static. Our knowledge, our collection, our technology, our methodologies, etc. are not static so why expect data and/or projections to be static?

We already have people and economic issues along our shorelines due to sea level elevation, tidal changes, hurricanes, etc. and anything that will negatively contribute to these current issues will only exacerbate those issues.

Excerpt;

Hurricane Sandy, a historic storm, makes landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey with 90 mph winds. This storm was unusual because it was a late season hurricane combined with a Nor'easter at high tide during a full moon, producing long-lasting and devastating results not seen in generations. The largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin, wind gusts topped 100 mph in some parts of the New York Metropolitan area. Sandy caused a record 14.41 foot storm surge at Battery Park, New York City, flooding various parts of Lower Manhattan including various tunnels and subway systems, making them inoperable for weeks. Some are still damaged. The immediate aftermath included widespread flooding, massive power outages and a system-wide disruption of mass transit service. Sandy had a significant effect on the digital world: 1/4 of cable, Internet, and wireless providers were unable to properly operate following the storm. Over nine million customers were without power, including 90 percent of Long Island and most of Manhattan below 49th Street, some for several months. Many low-lying neighborhoods in NJ and NY were completely destroyed. Thousands of homes and businesses were demolished by the record storm surge.

Excerpt;

Now, as the one-year anniversary of Sandy arrives on October 29, officials in Mantoloking and surrounding Brick Township are finalizing plans to build a massive $40 million sand dune, anchored by a four-mile (6.4-kilometer) steel seawall. The steel will climb 16 feet (5 meters) above the beach and will be piled high with sand, paid for by federal and state dollars.

Brick Township was one of the spots hardest hit by the so-called superstorm, largely because it lacked the beach and dune systems that helped protect other towns along the Jersey Shore.

But the impulse to minimize risk from future superstorms and hurricanes, even amid the rush to rebuild from Sandy, is not unique to Brick or the Jersey Shore. Up and down the eastern seaboard, coastal communities that took Sandy on the chin have transitioned from urgent disaster response to thinking about how to build more resilience into disaster preparedness and infrastructure, especially in the face of increasing threats like climate change and sea level rise.

Days after the storm, as water was still pumping out of New York City's tunnels and while much of Long Island still lacked power, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was among the chorus of public officials saying that Sandy marked a turning point.

"There is a wake-up call and a lesson to be learned here," he said at the time. "There is a reality that has existed for a long time that we have been blind to. And that is climate change, extreme weather, call it what you will, and our vulnerability to it."

The government's responsibility, Cuomo said, is not to debate climate change's causes, but to prepare for its consequences: "How do you do your best to make sure it doesn't happen again or reduce the damage if it does?"

Cuomo's call to action was echoed by leaders nationwide.

"Sandy was a wake-up call, and not just for the eastern seaboard but for communities all over the country that we need to start preparing for climate change now," said Brian Holland, Climate Program Director at ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, an environmental association of cities and counties.

 

LOL, for one, unofficially known as "Superstorm Sandy" since it wasn't a super storm. By the time it hit the east coast is was only a catagory 2 hurricane. It has been over 10 years since a category 3 hurricane has hit the US. You can say we are seeing a hurricane drought. Hurricane levels are at a 45 year historical low.

Yet hurricanes are supposed to be more intense due to AGW. You are falling for a false narrative.

 

Almost all of the world's climate scientists (over 98%) affirm the reality of human caused global warming/climate change. There are hundreds of thousands of these scientists. You came up with a listing of pretty much ALL of the one percent or so of actual scientists who deny, to some extent or other, the reality of human caused GW/CC. You denier cultists are so brainwashed and delusional that you believe these corrupt and/or retired and senile science-whore AGW deniers and idiotically ignore the vast, vast majority of the world's climate scientists who affirm the reality and dangers of human caused global warming and its consequent climate changes and dusruptions.

Let's look at two of them who are typical. Willie Soon and William Happer have both been busted for taking bribes from energy companies to produce bogus papers and bogus testimony.

Willie Soon, an astrophysicist who is embarrassingly associated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been found to have taken bribes from the fossil fuel industry to write bogus papers and 'deliver' bogus testimony to Congress. The money that these fossil fuel industry corporations paid to that corrupt science-whore Soon went directly to him and constituted his only 'salary'. He is not an employee of Harvard, and has only a part-time un-paid position at the Smithsonian Institution, and receives no salary from them. In communications with the oil and coal corporations that paid him, he referred to the papers he wrote and his various performances before Congress as "deliverables" that he was to be paid for.

Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher
The New York Times
By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZ
FEB. 21, 2015
For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.

But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.


Document: Funding That Climate Researcher Failed to Disclose

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as "deliverables" that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents.

The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.

The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.

Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding

Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden..

"The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate," said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of "Merchants of Doubt," a book about such campaigns. "Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater."

Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.

"What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.

Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.

"I think that’s inappropriate behavior," Dr. Alcock said. "This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally."

The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon’s funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.

Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington.

Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oilrefining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.

As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon’s correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Though often described on conservative news programs as a "Harvard astrophysicist," Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.

Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.

Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.

Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.

"The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless," Dr. Schmidt said.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon’s findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.

Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.

Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon’s papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. "We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they’re basically being honest," said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.

"I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue," Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon’s papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.

More on William Happer in next post.