Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement - 3

Who dunnit?

Several times over the years I have discussed court cases concerning Oil-Qaeda (The War of the Warms;  Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement, 2; A Case of Big Oil vs. Climate Change; What Next, Mass Depraved-Heart Murder?, 2; Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law).

In an ongoing case in a federal district court, the judge has set a hearing on the merits of the case:

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is hearing a suit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco against five big oil corporations, ordered a historic tutorial in which both parties will have a chance to present their view of the science behind climate change, the McClatchy Washington Bureau reported March 7.

"This will be the closest that we have seen to a trial on climate science in the United States, to date," Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the Bureau.

The hearing marks the most recent novel development in an already groundbreaking lawsuit. As EcoWatch reported, San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change when it filed with Oakland against the five largest fossil-fuel producing corporations in September 2017.

The cities claim the companies named in the suit—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell—"have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings." They are therefore suing the companies for the costs of adapting to the climate challenge, such as the building of sea walls.

(Court Case Climate Change). I will try to get some more data (briefs, transcript, and the like such as NOTICE RE TUTORIAL).

Meanwhile, I am still wrestling with the data issues in bottom pressure record usage, and hope to post on it soon (The Ghost-Water Constant - 10).

UPDATE: "As climate litigation heats up, a judge’s climate science tutorial puts the fossil fuel industry in an awkward position with the science deniers it once funded"   (The Climate Is Changing For Climate Skeptics).

The previous post in this series is here.

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On March 7, 2018 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s “drastic and extraordinary” petition for writ of mandamus ...

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The Ghost-Water Constant - 10

Fig. 1 Ocean Bottom Pressure (OBP) format

I thought I would surface a bit to update regular and irregular readers about progress and the lack thereof.

This new realm of using bottom pressure records has promise.

After all, it (bottom pressure science) was used to bust the Ghost Water that Dredd Blog went on and on about for quite a while (NASA Busts The Ghost).

Yes, regular readers know that the Ghost Water was discussed here on Dredd Blog for a long time before NASA did the gotcha on it (The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

I am using a new graph format (Fig. 1) for discussing this particular type of discovery.

So, I want to elaborate on it, because it has certain efficiencies that could be missed without careful consideration.

The dearth of long-term bottom pressure data means that we must use more short term volume in a lot of cases.

Fig. 2

That means hourly or daily granularity of measurements instead of annual.

So, this type of graph stacks monthly data vertically (round dots) while running the annual data horizontally.

The annual orientation lines go from and to the month-oriented-stacks of measurements.

They enter and exit from different months sometimes, meaning the sea level (depth) or bottom pressure went through changes during the months of that year.

Some scientists believe that a single bottom pressure gauge station could tell us more than satellites or coastal tide gauge stations, in terms of cm or mm (tiny) size changes in sea level.

I now have over 1,400 stations and data ... but have not processed some of the data from some of those stations ... and I have 50 or so more stations to integrate into data_ville.

I have a raw data SQL table which is used to store and access hourly and daily measurements from those stations.

From that I have made a mean average table which has monthly granularity, as the graph at Fig. 1 shows.

Oh ... and I am using the TEOS-10 toolbox to generate P (water pressure) from in situ depth measurements.

And that is the stuff which a good sea level change (SLC) detection technique (of this type) is made of.

The previous post in this series is here.

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On The More Robust Sea Level Computation Techniques - 9

Tight Rope

I mentioned a while back that "In Tamisiea & Mitrovica scientists pointed out that bottom pressure gauges, not limited to coastlines, would be a valid source for detecting sea level changes accurately" (Very Breezy).

That they considered bottom pressure records to be the better way of determining sea level rise in the deep ocean far from tide gauge stations on the coasts was enough to get me going.

Next came a read of (mbars to sea level and 2008 and 2011).

Twenty some million rows later (in the new bottom pressure SQL database) and we are going to check that all out closely because it is the more robust way to keep an eye on that area (On The More Robust Sea Level Computation Techniques, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

You know that using the better ways leads to the better results.

The curve ball thrown at anyone attempting this bottom-pressure data-records collection feat is that the data formats vary to a significant degree.

I like the WOD format for bottom pressure records, but it is at variance with the other sources of records.

So, it takes a lot longer to build twenty million (plus) records, because they have to be merged in this case.

Anyway, another "forging forward" promises to bring yet another new tool into our toolbox.

In this case, we aren't about changing reality, we are about observing it with as much accuracy as possible.

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

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