The Warming Science Commentariat - 11

Fig. 1 San Francisco; PSMSL Stn. # 10

I. The Senseless Background

Some bitchy little scientists at JPL, who have a vested interest in satellites, are in a tizzy evidently because of the success of tide gauge station records (PSMSL).

They have helped to write a whiney little paper that is devoid of relevant facts.

But it is rich in casting of aspersions imagined by their unprofessional emotional reaction to a reality which those types of scientists have missed for over a century.

Some locations in the blogosphere squeal with delight when they parrot these bogus papers and come out all cockeyed to splash them on their posts with glee.

This does a disservice to the realities of climate change and sea level science, and to the competent scientists who labor in that field.

Mature blogs should be aware of the science and the Oil-Qaeda manipulations contrary to the science (Smoke & Fumes).

And, they should be exposing Oil-Qaeda, not glossing over Oil-Qaeda propaganda.

They should be exposing ignorance and propaganda as Dredd Blog does (The Warming Science Commentariat - 10).

For example, a recent post somewhere in the warming science commentariat begins:

"A new NASA and university study using NASA satellite data finds that tide gauges -- the longest and highest-quality records of historical ocean water levels -- may have underestimated the amount of global average sea level rise that occurred during the 20th century.
...
It's not that there's something wrong with the instruments or the data, said Thompson, but for a variety of reasons, sea level does not change at the same pace everywhere at the same time.
...
As it turns out, our best historical sea level records tend to be located where 20th century sea level rise was most likely less than the true global average."

(Desdemona Despair). The quote ends with an utterly stupid sentence containing the phrase "true global average" as if that is the holy grail that sea level science is supposed to attain (it has led scientists "astray for the last hundred years" - Professor Jerry X. Mitrovica, 1st video below).

To top that off, the clueless writer indicates that some of the tide gauge stations are located where sea level change is not the same as everywhere else.

This is tantamount to claiming that thermometers are problematic because they are in locations where the temperature is less than at other places.

That is utterly senseless (they should do this Naval Academy exercise).

Equally scientifically senseless is the associated sentence "for a variety of reasons, sea level does not change at the same pace everywhere at the same time" (as if that has anything to do with where tide gauges are located).

Furthermore, that "not the same" has been known since at least 1888:

To our knowledge, Woodward (1888) was the first to demonstrate that the rapid melting of an ice sheet would lead to a geographically variable sea level change. Woodward (1888) assumed a rigid, non-rotating Earth, and therefore self-gravitation of the surface load was the only contributor to the predicted departure from a geographically uniform (i.e. eustatic) sea level rise. This departure was large and counter-intuitive. Specifically, sea level was predicted to fall within ∼2000 km of a melting ice sheet, and to rise with progressively higher amplitude at greater distances. The physics governing this redistribution is straightforward.

(On the West Side of Zero, quoting Mitrovica 2011). The content of that basic Woodward (1888) paper has been improved upon in the past decade.

Especially by Dr. Mitrovica et alia:

"Data from global tide gauges stretching back a century have confirmed differences in the rate of sea-level rise from one place to another. Mitrovica’s work not only explained why this is so, but showed how the signals from each melt source—the pattern of progressively higher rates of sea-level rise at locations farthest from an ice sheet—could be disentangled to infer how rapidly Greenland’s ice sheets, or those in Antarctica, are melting. Among the places distant from both poles that will be hit hard are the east and west coasts of North America."

(Harvard Magazine; cf. video below). Intuition can be an enemy of scientific understanding from time to time.

II. The Sense of Reality

The photo in Fig. 1 is a picture of the real thing:

"On June 30, 1854, the United States Coast Survey, the oldest federal scientific agency, installed a self-recording tide gauge in San Francisco Bay. This station has measured the rise and fall of tides continuously ever since, making it the nation’s oldest continually operating tidal observation station. This location also has the longest continuous tide record in the Western Hemisphere. The gauge even survived the earthquake of 1906.

The San Francisco tide station plays an important role in navigation, ocean science, and climatology today as it has throughout its 150-year history. Besides guiding mariners to safe passage, the station monitors sea level change and tsunamis and helps measure the effects of the El Niño and La Niña global climate phenomena on sea level. Soon after its installation in 1854, the gauge measured tsunami waves generated by an earthquake in Japan. This helped to estimate the average depth of the Pacific Ocean.

The station is part of the National Water Level Observation Program, which consists of 175 continuously operating water level measurement stations along the U.S. coasts and the Great Lakes regions."

(NOAA, emphasis added). And, there is this:

"The global sea level record from tide gauges is an important indicator of the evolution and impact of global climate change. Tide gauge data also capture a variety of local and regional phenomena related to decadal climate variability, tides, storm surges, tsunamis, swells, and other coastal processes. Tide gauge data are used to validate ocean models and to detect errors and drifts in satellite altimetry."

(NCAR UCAR, emphasis added). It is not difficult to get the picture if one is really inclined to honestly try to get it.

III. The Dangers of a Sleeping Commentariat

The second video below (Professor Wilkerson) indicates why it is very important for civilians to stay vigilant on climate change matters that relate to sea level.

In fact, he explains why it is "extremely dangerous" for civilians not to grasp the security ramifications.

A Forbes article confirms Wilkerson's characterization of the Military's serious concerns about climate change (Does Our Military Know Something We Don't About Global Warming?).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

---

08:00 "the global average ... what seems to be a very logical thing to do has led us astray for the last hundred years ... the mainstream way of doing this ..."

---

"The Military is the lead federal agency on climate change ... and that is ... extremely dangerous ... we may lose the republic ..." - Professor Wilkerson (ret. colonel)

---