Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'

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Right. I was looking at the graph and applying the answer to my question : why does the raw data have such wide variance. The answer given was precipitation.

scary

Right. Still scary.

Except for water table loss, pollution and a few drawbacks I would agree that agribusiness gets its ground wet. But I assume all the habitat is losing in the long run - especially if all of the variance in sea level in 1900 has now added to the mean sea level. Loss of ice reduces stream and river replenishment, and whereas ice used to be the storage mechanism, after it loses capacity there will be droughts, I presume, as a new and regular occurrence, as spring melt gets scarcer.



Maybe I'm reading too much into the graph.

 

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Just one of the many reasons though.

The other reasons for the variations is the main reason for the tides themselves, the Sun & Moon and local weather (mainly wind direction and air pressure). It takes over 20 years to run through all the normal large orbital variations. Then depending on the location of the sea level meter, there are specific Oceanic cycles that run in periods of several years to several decades (such as the Pacific Decadal Osscilation with about a 30 year period) that add or subtract to the orbital ones.

Net is measuring sea level via surface measurements requires a long period of observation to allow all the natural cycles to even out.

 

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Well of course they are.
The IPCC hasn't been at it that long and so in the short run the projections are fairly narrow and so that's exactly what one would expect.

No it's not "expected".

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (4AR) projected sea level rise of 18 to 59 cm by 2100.

That was published in 2007, based on data up to about 2006.

Nothing has significantly changed since then.

Here's the sea level since then:

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Nothing to suggest any acceleration.

(skeptics don't go nuts yet about the recent downturn, as Trippy explained they think thats mainly a El Nino/La Nina effect, at least give it another year before even chilling the champagne)

Certainly nothing to suggest 1 meter in 38 years.

To put that in perspective, that's a trend of 26 mm per year.

The trend, as seen in the chart is steady at about 1/10th that rate.

So what about Greenland?

In a very recent update to the IPCC data used in 2007 for Greenland, where the IPCC models suggested a 1 to 10 cm rise due to Greenland by 2100, the latest report suggests a 0 to 17 cm rise due to Greenland.

The high end, slightly higher than the IPCC report, but nothing like the exaggerated claims being made by Vermeer and Rahmstorf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/042184718016m363/fulltext.pdf

Arthur

 

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

Despite the reassurances from Arthur, there's nothing to suggest that the IPCC have anything more than a conservative estimate based on rapidly outdated information. There's nothing convincing from the IPCC to suggest that future sea level rise will follow the same trend it has for the last century.

Except for people like Arthur who, it seems, have access to information the rest of us don't.

 

Actually the latest IPCC estimates are lower than the previous estimates as the Third Assessment Report in 2001 said sea level was projected to rise by 10 cm to 90 cm by 2100, so they lowered the max rise by 31 cm in the Forth Assessment. Indeed what is clear is that the more they learned about sea level rise the lower the high predictions became.

I also published the link, a 2010 paper which specifically refutes Veemer and Rahmstorf's 2009 simple analysis via a much more detailed analysis, and it is that simple analysis which is the source in the literature you cite.

Though I am aware that there are people who make these predictions and even update Wiki with them, I prefer to stick to the review process that produced the IPCC projections since then we know they are not being overly influenced by politics and personal agendas.

Nothing you linked to even suggests 1 meter in 38 years though.

More to the point, the actual trend that we measure isn't even going the right way, it's been flat to slightly negative for some time, not increasing by a factor of 10 over what it had been for the last several decades, as would be needed for your prediction to pan out.

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I don't expect that decline to continue, indeed I expect the trend to return to a positive number, but just to reach the middle of the range of the latest IPCC estimates by 2050 (~38 cm) that same slope we have been seeing for the last two decades (~+3 mm/yr) would have to increase by over 3 times the rate it has been.

Even that would be a HUGE change.

And since we aren't seeing any increase in the trend at all in the nearly 5 years since the IPCC AR4 came out, meaning the current path would fall on the lower side (~+10 cm by 2050) I think it's reasonable to not start claiming the IPCC middle estimate is wrong until the annual rise in Mean Sea Level gets and stays at least 3 times more than it has been for a decade.

Arthur

 

Water expands when it freezes by about 10%. While the average depth of the oceans are about 12,000 feet. As such, if we froze the oceans all the way to the bottom, sea level would rise about 1200 feet. Freezing the ocean will raise sea level because ice expands. As we slowly melt these frozen oceans, the sea level would drop.

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

 

I you agree the Earth is warming, then it's certain the oceans will rise. It's just physics.

 

For mitigation and planning purposes though it's nice to have a decent handle on how much and how fast.

If for instance governments of the world actually thought it was going to rise 100 cm by 2050, their plans would be quite different, and much more immediate, than if they think it is more likely to continue at our 3 mm per year rate and be more like 10 cm (~4 in) in 2050.

 

If the oceans were frozen, I suppose that would have something to do with what is being discussed.

 

The graph in #9 showing sea level - the wispy stuff in the background which looks like raw data... when I saw it, I assumed it was mean sea level from which tidal variations had been averaged out. It would seem so, since it is plotted over a century. Otherwise the data is faulty. I was assuming the data was valid.

Given valid data, if there are excursions of roughly +/- 5 cm about the mean, with an average frequency of one to several times per year, it would seem that this reflects sea water that has been transported elsewhere, either as ice, or as fresh water, probably both.

My point was to notice that this volume of water - about 10 cm peak to peak, had been transported into the oceans by 1965, starting at the reference point of around 1900.

That to me is phenomenal. It says that the entire global precipitation that falls, on average, worldwide, has been lifted out of the habitats and dumped into the sea, in a span of about 65 years. It tells me we the world today is in a perpetual drought as compared to 1900. This water deficit can never be replenished without some catastrophic monsoon era, and/or the so-called nuclear winter.

Again, if the data is wrong, then rewind this discussion and I'l give it a go with a fresh set.

 

Is this supposed to mean we should assume Wikipedia is influenced by politics and personal agendas? This part, possibly: "A literature assessment published in 2010 by the US National Research Council described the above IPCC projections as "conservative," and summarized the results of more recent studies.[12] Cited studies suggested a great deal of uncertainty in projections. A range of projections suggested possible sea level rise by the end of the 21st century of between 0.56 and 2 m. "

And you're still happy with "nothing to suggest" a 1 metre rise by 2050 is a possibility?

 

Again, it's not just precipitation causing the variation.

 

Yes

Because those studies are invariably based on these scenarios:

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And the highest ones are based on the hottest models running the very hot and very unrealistic A2 scenario.

And as you can see though, in those, the vast majority of the warming occurs AFTER 2050, ie 50 years averaging about 3 C warmer than today, as compared to the first 50 years averaging about 1 C warmer than today. (150 degree years vs 50 degree years)

So if the MAX rise anyone can come up with (~4 X the low end) is 2 meters then the vast majority of that would occur after 2050.

But feel free to post one if you can that supports your 1 meter by 2050.

Arthur

 

It goes like this:

If: "A range of projections suggested possible sea level rise by the end of the 21st century of between 0.56 and 2 m. "
then: it's possible that there will be a rise of 1 m before the end of the 21st century, perhaps by 2050. I don't know what the possibility is compared to some other possibility, but I know there is one given the range of predictions.

 

No that is not a logical conclusion.

Dividing the max rise by 2100 by 2 and saying it could happen by 2050 doesn't work.

To get to the MAX rise it is based on the max warming and ~three times as much warming occurs after 2050 as before.

Arthur

 

Maybe you and I are talking about something different. I was just looking for mean sea level for the whole planet. If that number were to drop - ignoring subsidance for the moment - would you not agree that the amount of the decrease will be transported somewhere?

Again, a "true" mean would have averaged out all variations, right?

 

I have great respect for Dr. Morner. I've known him for many years - here is a picture of me with him in the field in Sweden in 1972:

Sorry, can't figure out how to post pictures here.

 

Why doesn't dividing the maximum predicted rise by 2 work?
Who or what doesn't it work for?
I said that, given the prediction: sea level could rise (from today's levels) by 2m by 2100, then it's possible (actually there's a probability attached, but you need a formula, and some statistics--oops) that before 2100 there will be a rise of 1m.
That's perfectly logical.

As to how much warming will occur and when--news flash--there are a number of uncertainties. Your "3 times as much warming" is based on how much uncertainty?

How confident can anyone be that there will be a gradual change rather than a sudden change in climate over the next century? What should this confidence be based on, the IPCC?

To reiterate: I find it interesting that despite the predictions, the admissions of large uncertainties and what is or isn't known about possible mitigation, there are people who want to believe everything is safely predicted, and we have plenty of time.
That just isn't true, unfortunately. The reality is that we just don't know enough about climate sensitivity; all the predictions are based on best guesses.

I would advise ignoring people like Arthur because he doesn't really know either, but appears to be keen to project the idea that he does. All you have to do is read what some climate scientists are saying about the uncertainty to see right through him and others with similar arguments.