The Analysis of Sea Levels.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Grin 

I'm not at all skeptical about the concept that we are polluting the only home we have - and that doing so without restraint is stupid.  I am a bit skeptical about some of the prognostication - especially those that are the most alarming, worst case scenario driven. 

There is an element of doomscrolling to a lot of the public facing media pieces that I don't find mirrored in the actual published science articles. 

I've also been pretty open that the way to reach the skeptical is not to keep hammering away at the 'worst case scenario is factual and inevitable' rhetoric. 

... 

I guess reasoned thinking doesn't get as many clicks as certain doom. 

[mikegarrison]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I guess reasoned thinking doesn't get as many clicks as certain doom. 

My problem with your posts is that you actually are not providing any reasoned thinking. Instead, you prejudge whether something is reasonable by whether the outcome is serious or not. Whatever the actual data or evidence is, if it's a bad outcome, you declare that it is nothing but alarmism.

Tell us *why* this is alarmism. Maybe there is not as much ice there as people think? OK, that would be "reasoned thinking". But just to assume, without any evidence, that such statements must be "doomscrolling" is not reasoned thinking.

Edited December 15, 2021 by mikegarrison

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

14 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

My problem with your posts is that you actually are not providing any reasoned thinking. Instead, you prejudge whether something is reasonable by whether the outcome is serious or not. Whatever the actual data or evidence is, if it's a bad outcome, you declare that it is nothing but alarmism.

Without ever providing links, or quotes or articles supporting my thinking.

Yep, that's me.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I'll respond to the ninja edit as well:

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Tell us *why* this is alarmism. Maybe there is not as much ice there as people think? OK, that would be "reasoned thinking". But just to assume, without any evidence, that such statements must be "doomscrolling" is not reasoned thinking.

Please do look back through these pages.  I've laid out my observations and concerns throughout.  Specifically, to the immediate post you are referencing (and yes through snark) I pointed out exactly what I was talking about; not the amount of ice, but rather and specifically the reporter's writing:

Quote

"Global sea levels will rise two to six feet by 2100 on the current trajectory" 

This is the part of the article I criticized.  I even cited an 'edu' site showing why I find that type of overstatement... how did I put it?   oh yeah, 

Quote

I find it counterproductive.

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[mikegarrison]

If you want to see the presentation that the reporters were covering, it is online.

 

23 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

This is the part of the article I criticized.  I even cited an 'edu' site showing why I find that type of overstatement... how did I put it?   oh yeah,

And it was already pointed out to you that the rise has been accelerating, which means your extremely simple "let's multiply by the *current* rate" answer is maybe not terribly relevant.

[SunlitZelkova]

10 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'm not at all skeptical about the concept that we are polluting the only home we have - and that doing so without restraint is stupid.  I am a bit skeptical about some of the prognostication - especially those that are the most alarming, worst case scenario driven. 

There is an element of doomscrolling to a lot of the public facing media pieces that I don't find mirrored in the actual published science articles. 

I've also been pretty open that the way to reach the skeptical is not to keep hammering away at the 'worst case scenario is factual and inevitable' rhetoric.

In defence of this tactic/behavior, sometimes, talking about the worst case scenario- no matter how unlikely- is necessary to make people do stuff (in this case, take climate change and sea level rise seriously).

Take for examples car seats for young children. There are certainly quite a few children out there who go about never getting involved in a car accident in that stage of their life. If I went and counted the number of car accidents involving young children in my state (Oregon), it would be probably be in the hundreds, while there are thousands of young children here. So using a "non-alarmist" logic, a young, cash strapped family would probably forgo buying a car seat, because "it is by no means guaranteed it will come in handy in accordance with the data".

Of course, this is an absolutely horrible way of going about making sure one's child is safe. Even if it actually is unlikely one will get into a car accident with their child according to the data, one still needs to take into account the possibility that they will and deal with it.

Likewise, even if it is not guaranteed X climate change or sea level rise prediction will come to pass, it is still possible it will, and therefore "we" (concerned individuals, organizations, various entities) must bring it up when arguing for action against CO2 emissions and the associated problems they cause.

The scientists themselves will obviously be far more calm and nuanced in their investigations and research. But the policy proposal/activism side of mitigating climate change requires the use of such language and rhetoric. That isn't poor ethics, it's just how human society works, unfortunately.

------

Note- this is merely an argument in defence of such tactics. My intention is not to change your opinion, but merely explain why this happens. You are, of course, entitled to your opinions/criticisms/concerns 

[FleshJeb]

[All bolding mine]

Ray's NBC source:

Global sea levels will rise two to six feet by 2100 on the current trajectory, driven mainly by melting in Greenland and Antarctica, according to NASA satellite data. However, scientists have warned that projections underestimate the impact of climate change on sea level rise.

From that link:

 

If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100 

"This is almost certainly a conservative estimate," Nerem said. "Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that's not likely."

Additionally:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level

Along almost all U.S. coasts outside Alaska, the 2017 projections indicate that sea level rise is likely to be higher than the global average for the three highest sea level rise pathways, thanks to local factors like land subsidence, changes in ocean currents, and regional ocean warming. 

Regarding rates:

 

• The rate of sea level rise is accelerating: it has more than doubled from 0.06 inches (1.4 millimeters) per year throughout most of the twentieth century to 0.14 inches (3.6 millimeters) per year from 2006–2015. 

From here:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating-future-sea-levels

That growing knowledge base is why scientific organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are publishing sea level rise projections with increasing levels of confidence. In its 2019 report, the IPCC projected (chart above) 0.6 to 1.1 meters (1 to 3 feet) [(sic) 0.6m = 2ft] of global sea level rise by 2100 (or about 15 millimeters per year) if greenhouse gas emissions remain at high rates (RCP8.5).

I look at tidally-influenced hydrology and flood-resistant infrastructure fairly frequently. This is what the cross section looks like when you have to raise a 10-foot levee by 2 feet:

Anyway, I'm tired of dealing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law for the night.

[kerbiloid]

It's always bad to make 100 year long prediction based on 50 year long observations.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

tc-2021-181.pdf (copernicus.org)

ICESat-2 reveals seasonal thickness change patterns of Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers for the first time

[FleshJeb]

On 11/25/2021 at 4:14 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

From the paper cited by the above article:

'a survey of the recent literature shows that our knowledge primarily hinges on subpolar Atlantic records, while, due to the paucity of Arctic records, polar dynamics still remain elusive'

'Controversy still remains on the relative impact of natural versus anthropogenic forcing on the North Atlantic system' 

'Our results combined with existing reconstructions demonstrate a rapid and early Atlantification of the eastern Fram Strait at the onset of the 20th century'  [FleshJeb's bolding]

'These findings highlight a potentially important model-data discrepancy that begs for improved historical and preindustrial simulations with better constraints on the freshwater budget of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Resolving these modeling issues will be crucial to improve the accuracy of projected Atlantification in response to future Arctic warming.'

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946

 

I did at least THREE hours of research on this at the time, but I ran out of energy to actually respond. Apologies that this is all from memory.

Pertinent facts:

• The methods they used have funny names and they're hard to google. The broad category is called a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer
• They took a grand total of ONE core sample of the sea bed.
• What they're looking at is the preserved concentrations of chemical/isotope compositions of various species of microbes, as well as the radiocarbon dates of the slices they take.
• The concentrations reflect how many of that microbe was alive at the time, and that number is reflective of the water temperature.

My issues with their methodologies:

• The error bars for one of the methods is +/- 4deg C, but this requires extensive cross-correlation with multiple cores from the same geographic region, because it's species/environment dependent. A similar experiment in the South China Sea did something like 300 cores, another one well over 100. They DID cross-correlate with other temperature data, and other people's cores, but not nearly to that magnitude.
• IMO, large error bars on the derived temperature are better suited to looking at long-term (1000s of years) climactic trends, but they're applying it to a very short timespan (120).
• In addition they used fairly thick core slices (IIRC representing 5-10 years of sedimentation). This affects the time-resolution of the data.  So with both these dimensions they're looking at some pretty broad error ellipses.
• The  microbe species concentrations are very sensitive to freshwater inputs from nearby land, and they took that core fairly close to the coast.
• I measure the things outdoors for a living. The data I collect is fairly simple, and there's still a quite a bit of nuance with when, how, and how much I take that data: I would have taken at least THREE cores, spaced out by a few kilometers, and checked those against each other. I don't care how good their collection, lab, and analysis procedures might be, nature can always throw you a serious anomaly on one sample.

Neutral note:

• The research institute that did this study is underwritten by a bank. I spent some time looking for obvious biases or conflicts of interest in the organizations, but I didn't find any.

-----

So, while it WAS extremely interesting to learn about, I didn't find that the broad conclusion bolded above was well-supported at all.

This is why your links royally liquid me off sometimes, Joe.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

This is why your links royally liquid me off sometimes, Joe.

I appreciate your taking the time to write this.  I really do.  I also appreciate your posting links and information - even (and perhaps especially) if only to refute the stuff I write.  I read through all of it and learn from it.

Now, you did drop a 'Brandolini' on me, which I don't think is apt.*  Were I to choose an appellation for me in this context it would be heterodox.**  Mike, apparently, would label me heretic or worse.  (However, Mike - I do appreciate your linking the video above!)

So in these pages, I've tried to lay out - at times - why I don't accept the orthodox view (to the extent that orthodoxy requires acceptance that the worst is happening and virtually inevitable, or more charitably, not accept that the acceleration models are 100% correct and that all land-locked ice is going to flood into the oceans in a matter of decades).  Readers might notice that my sources are not Fox News-esque, but rather actual science papers or other respected sources referencing studies.   I would hope that lends a bit of credence to my skepticism of the 'worst case scenario' position that a lot of media likes to indulge in.  SunlitZelkova tries to explain that tactic as 'we are not getting through to some people, we need to be louder'.  I've also explained why I think that's not working.  I'll go further with a political example: shouting at a Trump supporter that they're stupid and he's stupid and bad does not change their opinion - it solidifies it.  The same is true of the Climate Denier. 

Words are a weird thing - and a Climate Skeptic should be recognizably distinct from a Climate Denier (skeptics can be educated and swayed) - and both should be recognizably distinct from someone who recognizes anthropogenic pollution is adversely affecting the planet - but who does not quite accept the most alarming interpretations of the data and prognosticating models derived therefrom.  Thus, one would hope that I'm not lumped in with the outright climate deniers, and accept that an anti-pollution focus is a valid heterodox point of view for someone concerned about the health of the one planet we live on... even if I don't accept the runaway acceleration predicted by some models that the orthodox seem enamored with.

 

 

...

 

 

9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

I did at least THREE hours of research on this at the time,

Now - you sent me down my own rabbit hole (although, to be fair, I'm in this hole a lot) with this:

14 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Global sea levels will rise two to six feet by 2100 on the current trajectory, driven mainly by melting in Greenland and Antarctica, according to NASA satellite data.

I started digging around into what the IceSat-2 data is showing.  From what I gather, it's largely preliminary and not yet conclusive.  They do, in the interim "Brief Communication" linked above state that atmospheric forcing isn't quite what many expected:

Quote

Our results reveal little regional coherency in seasonal dynamic thickness change patterns, indicating that atmospheric circulation patterns are not the likely driver of differences in patterns among glaciers. While we do find small clusters of similar patterns, we do not observe similar patterns across larger ice sheet regions. If atmospheric forcing were the primary driver of seasonal dynamic thickness changes, we would expect to see coherent patterns of seasonal changes across each region. However, we do not find this to be the case, indicating that other factors that differ from glacier to glacier within each region

https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2021-181/tc-2021-181.pdf

This certainly does not imply that atmospheric forcing is not affecting the glaciers (double negative, sorry)... but it reads as a caution against presumption.  Its one of the reasons I like the science: professionals are really working hard in this arena - and are careful themselves to try to report what the data shows and interpret from there... rather than find data to support what they 'already know'.

The thing is that Climate is a really complex  topic and sometimes the affirmative assumption made 5 years ago based on available data is not always supported by data acquired more recently.  Sometimes researchers do find more data supporting being alarmed... and sometimes they find data saying 'hey, I'm not sure we are looking at this correctly'.  As I've explained several times - this is why I'm pollution focused rather than future-harm model focused.  

 

 

 

 

*  As I understand it, Brandolini presumes the perpetrator is intentionally slinging BS - and using no, or only tenuous and easy sources with little to no actual, factual or in this case scientific support for their assertions.  Were I dumping alt-right, or 'Q' or conspiracy nonsense - you would be absolutely correct in applying that label.  

**

Quote

Heterodoxy is a doctrine at variance with an official or orthodox position. As the opposite of orthodoxy, heterodoxy is naturally defined by those who consider themselves to be orthodox. The term heterodoxy thus came into general usage in the struggle of "orthodox" Christians against theological views they considered to be false. In a non-religious context "heterodox" refers to a scientific, social, or other opinion which goes against a prevailing norm ...

Heterodoxy can also be used in non-religious sense. Scientific theories are sometimes called heterodox when they go against the prevailing academic consensus, or when they diverge from the view of a specific institution.

 https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Heterodoxy#Non-religious_use

 

Of note here: the Heterodox Christian would still call himself a Christian - even if the Orthodox would deny him his faith.  So too, here, I'm pointing out that while I am not a Climate Denier or Skeptic... I'm not Orthodox, either.  So if you gotta call me something: Heterodox would work - but Brandolini?  Troll?  I'd like to think those terms inapt.

Edited December 15, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[mikegarrison]

58 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Mike, apparently, would label me heretic or worse.  (However, Mike - I do appreciate your linking the video above!)

Joe, my issue is that you consistently assume all results that don't seem moderate enough to you must be exaggerated. Not because you look at the data, not because you read the papers or look at the models or do the math and come up with different answers, but just because you prejudge that all valid results must be moderate, and so, without evidence, reject and even ridicule any that don't seem moderate enough to you.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

43 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Joe, my issue is that you consistently assume all results that don't seem moderate enough to you must be exaggerated. Not because you look at the data, not because you read the papers or look at the models or do the math and come up with different answers, but just because you prejudge that all valid results must be moderate, and so, without evidence, reject and even ridicule any that don't seem moderate enough to you.

I've gone back through my posts... and there is some merit to this critique.  I'll work on my tone.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Water conservation plan looks to reverse Lake Mead's historic decline (nbcnews.com)

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tropical-forest-recovery-ecosystem

Trees grow back 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Not exactly sure where to drop this, so I'm putting it here: 

 

Videos like this make me wish I was an aquatic archaeologist.  Nautical archaeology is likely to find places people lived (given that we tend to like the littorals) way back when.

Given the period of time he's talking about was pretty long, and population was small... Still, the best stone age sites are likely submerged today.

For those who catch the temperatures of the interglacial period being higher than today: Eemian - Wikipedia (It was probably during this time that some of those land-locked coral reefs formed)

 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/17/politics/lithium-mining-energy-climate/index.html

climate advocates and environmental groups against each other

[DDE]

 

[mikegarrison]

You can shoot a shotgun at a paper target, put the target on X-Y axes, and then have a computer find the best linear fit. It will find something.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

 

So... whether its warmer or colder, American cities are going to underperform, more often than not?

 

[NFUN]

[FleshJeb]

I think it's important to note that: If one were to apply the same critiques to the science of economics that one applies to the science of climate change, economics would (IMO) come out looking a lot worse.

Points of interest:

• Ideological motivation of the practitioners.
• Quality of assumptions made.
• Quality of data and the size of the error bars on that data.
• Quality of the methodology, and whether it properly takes into account all external confounding factors.

Not attempting to get into politics or economics here, just drawing a parallel as food for thought.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

science of economics

Isn't a phrase that makes sense.  

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Frankly, this concept is relevant: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cio.com/article/190888/5-famous-analytics-and-ai-disasters.html/amp

I think the obvious counter-arguments are here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right.amp

The problem lies in hidden bias. 

Watched a fascinating piece about the limits of machine learning, focusing in part on the work of Joy Buolamwini

If you've not heard of her:  https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/media-lab-student-recognized-for-fighting-bias-in-machine-learning/

The thing is, with the sciences you can hope for and expect a measure of reliability on the data.  

Can the same be said of social constructs like economics and psychology?   With economics we already run a risk of self fulfilled prophetic AI driving changes in the markets - which, while not classical manipulation, still results in artificial behavior. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[SunlitZelkova]

On 12/27/2021 at 4:19 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Can the same be said of social constructs like economics and psychology?   With economics we already run a risk of self fulfilled prophetic AI driving changes in the markets - which, while not classical manipulation, still results in artificial behavior.

IMO, no, as they exist only in our minds. We can make up whatever we want.

"Economic science" is like playing with a five year old and expecting some sort of rules to be in place for the battle between the action figures or whatever.

On the other hand, even if psychology is not perfect, it is still a useful tool in mental health. Proper mental healthcare as a whole is rather hit and miss and varies by person, but psychology can be useful in finding solutions.