Hello Jen,
Our national broadcaster, the ABC, has struck again with a new low in responsible journalism.
In 'PNG - That Sinking Feeling', broadcast last night as part of the 'Foreign Correspondent' program, reporter Steve Marshall has trashed any credibility the ABC had left on environmental reporting.
The unambiguous message in the documentary and all the introductory material was that here was firm "evidence" of rising sea levels producing climate refugees.
The most powerful scene was of one islander and the reporter standing waist deep in water where the islanders father had once had his veggie patch. The implication being that sea levels had risen by close to two metres over recent decades.
The only problem with this is that the Carteret Islands are only a short distance from Bougainville where no such sea level rise has been reported. Moreover, the area is only 500km from some very serious recent volcanic activity at Rabaul and form part of an active volcanic chain through the Solomon Islands.
The Islanders appear to have been convinced that they are the victims of rising sea levels and global warming, no doubt from a procession of publicly funded planet ponces.
But if Marshall and the program managers at 'Foreign Correspondent' had been able to deal with more than one variable at a time they would have drawn the inescapable conclusion that the islands are sinking.
Instead they appear to have manufactured a piece of green propaganda that neatly dovetails with Al Gore's thoroughly discredited claim that Pacific Islanders are already being displaced by rising sea levels?
What I find most offensive is the way a group of islanders who are confronted by a serious problem appear to have been exploited.
If the ABC can get something this simple completely wrong, then what does that tell us about the veracity of their reporting on much more complex issues elsewhere?
Regards,
Ian Mott
Thankyou all for your advice and thoughts! Yes I have noticed 'contempt' in some of the responses Ian. Luke it must be nice to be so certain of your stance! Do I have a problem if i do not believe? No, I don t think so, if I seem confused I haven t expressed myself clearly. I m not confused I am sceptical, the only position anybody should have on this issue!! Its just a question of the degree of uncertainty.
Interesting article in the Australian on sat.
Hydroclimatologist Stewart Franks says "We cannot explain natural variability ....or the when and why of cloud formation.....its clear we do not understand enough of the physics of climate to understand natural variability but I dont expect climate change from c02 to be particularly significant at any point in the future"
And "You don't appeal to consensus if you have a scientific argument" ...clearly the science is not settled because like it or not there are still many scientists who do not accept the co2 hypothesis.
And on models " They all get clouds hugely wrong and a small change in clouds has a much bigger effect than doubling co2"
SJT I know we can build a 747, I know we can get to the moon, would I try it and do it myself, obviously not. BUT since most people agree we do not understand our world as well as we would like it seems reasonable to keep questioning/ looking. You say "Apart from a few outliers, and professional pontificators with no actual current scientific knowledge" thats a bit harsh on the scientists who do have the guts to say what they actually think.
When you go looking for 'something' its easy to find "it", just ask Rosenthal and his rats....(The self fullfilling prophecy or pygmallion effect)
http://www.accel-team.com/pygmalion/prophecy_02.html
Confused..no, interested...yes. Religous ...no/ agnostic yes
cheers, Toby
Ian: Before the encore we must recognize the symphony. We can do this a number of ways for Toby’s sake on or off topic but it depends on Jennifer’s wish to let us indulge in further discussion either way on practice or “best practice” if we want modern jargon.
Let’s start with this confession; I have no science qualifications what so ever to defend however I doubt that I need one for even the loftiest on this next little digression. It’s all about seeking anomalies to prove uncertainties in general though.
I recall Luke’s link in the Canberra Storm thread to NOAA’s current hot spots in the Pacific sent Ian off chasing chills anywhere he could find one. I made the guess then that waters were quite warm around Bass Strait after many years of storm watching in the region
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/hotspotese.gif
Jennifer: I was going to branch off onto assessing the values in historical measurements re climate etc after the Daly / Port Arthur thing but this is also important. Hey; did you notice nobody picked me up on using human hair hygrometers (beastly unpredictable things). Our vision looking back today is clouded by such history but this is why I say we can still read between the lines. Trends come only from comparisons made with wide experience and limits in the bounds of our ignorance. Sorry Ian. That’s the wise factor.
http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~whocking/p103/instrum.html#tagg
I did a lot of work for people interested in stream flow, laminar differentials, turbulence etc. Unfortunately we don’t hear enough about “turbulence” in say bushfires or other reactions where rates of change are critical in determining outcomes nor do we hear much about things like tone, system fatigue or shock on this blog.
Big notes I see almost everyday. Today it was a former “apprentice of the year” who reckoned on fixing the split face of badly restored antique Italian violin. Us retired “jack of all trades” feared to anticipate what another “handy man” could do.
My contribution to the group conversation was the story of my former metal trades master who retired into the glib art of “faking” in restored heirlooms. Perfection at best is an illusion. Need I go on?
Several of my old masters gave their best to a railway workshop during the ww2 effort. One taught me how to “ring” a big steel shaft with a ceased roller bearing with a 14lbl sledge hammer. The faker above was obliged to create optically flat and ridged test surfaces in heavy cast iron slabs by hand.
After months of detailed scraping two out of his three “standards” stuck together in “marking” (dye) tests near completion. Another pair had to be cast in haste and completed on the original schedule. It was his experience that got me “apprentice of the year” and started a life long interest in creating gauges for measurements and testing systems the other way.
Not standing back in industry while some Uni physics team tests your creation or maintenance is satisfying enough. As I have so often stated the science comes later.
"is their impatience with or contempt for the person asking that question" .. .. hmmm .. .. fasinating - noted.
Of course Toby might note that a technique by radical activists is just to keep yelling and asking 1,001 stupid questions that never lead to a discussion. The basic anti-AGW propagandist's tool is to convince the public that's it's very scientifically uncertain. As admitted by the Republican's chief strategist at the time. Just keeping pounding away on the uncertainty or keep up the perception of uncertainty.
Thanks for the feedback, Toby, and thanks for the questions. The most powerful intellectual weapon in anyone's armory is the willingness to ask a simple, even silly question.
And the first defence of those bent on misleading others is their impatience with or contempt for the person asking that question. Use it well and use it often.
And don't worry about Gavin, he doesn't have an encore, just a regular stream of off-topic ramblings that are sometimes mistaken by undergrads as the voice of wisdom.
Toby
"Why has it warmed, well it could be co2 from humans....or it might not be. I don t think we understand enough about the planet to be able to make this claim with any degree of certainty."
We certainly don't, as laymen, have that ability. We couldn't go out and run a synchrotron, design a 747 or launch a moon shot. That's why these days there are specialists for everything. It's just a limitation of being human. Apart from a few outliers, and professional pontificators with no actual current scientific knowledge, the answer is known, with a good degree of confidence.
My blunt message to others is to depend primarily on direct observation then follow your instincts as science is just a luxury. Even more of a luxury is exploiting our ability to procrastinate.
In my winners and losers game, the only experts are the ones picking the right trends. Like the pokies, I don’t put two bob on random events unless it’s for charity.
We had more rain overnight but it was another thunderstorm where lightening hitting the ground triggered the downpour. Two mature cats shut out on the veranda reckoned it was freaky stuff and are both still under my bed today.
Although we had heavy rain and the creek was up early I bet it’s down again as I cant hear the flow measuring weir.
This week John Ives a former CSIRO scientist was on ABC 666 radio comparing this drought with the one in 1944 -45 by soil our moisture & evaporation records over the 118 year period.
Worst in history is a subjective thing.
Moisture and evaporation rates were my thing in industry. I sometimes write to authorities now about tree stress and sudden shock based on my experience with cellulose. Subtleness in structural timber is also subjective.
I once used long strands of human hair to find due points and many other things to do with drying regimes.
Hey that’s why Toby should examine what’s between his toes from time to time
Toby: I often use indirect methods to get people thinking about issues for themselves. That’s how I have campaigned for decades.
It goes back to when I was a kid and did a lot of reading on the subject of brainwashing and various counter techniques. My local C of E minister got a few of us going in High School RI class because he himself was a wiz. BTW there was no standing room in those classes cause all the rest from other doms were near empty.
Embarrassing hey.
In my heyday I practiced on unwinding sales recruits and international religious teams frequently trained in the biggest pyramid opps college in Melbourne. It’s a small world when it comes to making subjects for submission enterprises. Oddly my last caller is also a scientific instrument maker so he got the reverse message too this week.
Toby: Given I was either making up or making work the greatest range of instruments, recorders and controls this country had in the post war years starting long before most posters here could pull on their socks I could cry at much of the stuff written in response to fresh questions about our environment and its management. Even a few old timers have no idea how modern technology fits in and my judgement on that applies to their understanding both models and real systems.
Interacting inputs can be tested in many ways. Essentially we rely on initial observations then calibrations to zero in on results. Complex system design, also calibration of models for is a special branch of engineering and physics. In my early days our learned masters frequently got either their sums or their initial assessments wrong. However they could each swear to a perceived certainty in their particular work. Demonstrating errors in a non destructive way sometimes required a great stretch of the imagination.
Toby: We each live by our wits (as always) in this cluttered modern world.
Does the new data indicate that Greenland ice melt will take longer or not, Luke?
Longer of course.
Ian's nose grows longer by the day. Just keep spinning Ian.
There is a current imbalance measured and calculated as a present day situation - don't try it just blur the whole paper into a future issue.
The second paper shows that the "accelerating" ice discharge issue is more variable than we thought and the authors argue for much further work to pin all this down.
I actually said in my post "In other words it can vary, each glacier system is unique and we're in the middle of finding out. Is it short term variation or the real deal. Gee we don't know do we. Needs some more that big pot of moolah and Y2K climate dudes to do some monitoring eh?
Does this sound like someone who's claiming we have the definitive answer and it's all over. Ian a smarty pants would have given you paper number one but not two and claimed more. A sophist would also have not given you John's Church's paper of BoM's measurements showing modest sea level rises.
Ever thought why I've given you more than just the abstract in paper #2.
Gavin's point was about the instability in these systems and our lack of understanding of all the dynamics. A point of future concern and worth some research effort. We clearly don't understand the cyrosphere near enough.
So this saga illustrates your inability to read and comprehend what's been written in toto.
Note how Luke has this heightened capacity to miss the point in his own copied posts. The key point in his long quote was
"In both continents, there are suspected triggers for the accelerated ice discharge—surface and ocean warming, respectively—and, over the course of the 21st century, these processes could rapidly counteract the snowfall gains predicted by present coupled climate models".
Now lets just have a brief journey into basic comprehension for the three stooges, shall we?
"Over the course of the 21st century" (got that now?) "these processes could" (possible but not certain) "counteract the snowfall gains" (that is, they might merely counteract the gains from snowfall)
And if these gains from snowfall are counteracted then the actual ice mass will begin to decline, but very very gradually.
Note that the paper merely refers to the potential for the marginal gains from snowfall to be rapidly counteracted. (over the next century) It does not refer to the whole damned ice sheet.
Please also note that the Shepherd1 and Wingham2 paper estimates total annual loss of ice from both Antarctica and Greenland at 125Gt or 125Km3. But the number I have been using for Greenland alone was 129Km3/year per NSIDC.
But this number was based on earlier work that has now, thanks to Lukes second paste, "Rapid Changes in Ice Discharge from Greenland Outlet Glaciers", Ian M. Howat 1*, Ian R. Joughin 2, Ted A. Scambos 3 been revealed to have been a surge that has subsequently slowed down.
But even at that larger melt rate, the 2.5 million Km3 greenland ice sheet will still take 19,380 years to melt. This latest data suggests we have even longer.
It is also worth noting that the Pittocks of this world appear to have only retained the part of the title that refers to, "Rapid Changes in Ice Discharge from Greenland Outlet Glaciers", but have failed to grasp that these rapid changes refer to rapid reductions in discharge as well as equally rapid increases in discharge.
And this allows your garden variety Climate Cretin to assume that the rapid changes apply to the entire ice sheet volume and, of course, that all rapid change is negative.
The pathetic thing about all this is that Luke actually thought he was showing us a hand full of trumps for his own rudimentary grasp of the situation. But thanks for the paper anyway, Luke.