Global cooling

[mac]

Tide gauge at San Francisco. El Niño's can be seen. Snipping this data, as Malibu's unnamed source has done, to try to argue that sea level is not rising is fundamentally dishonest--and fully consistent with the Republican war on science and higher education.

[techno900]

So it seems that according to the charts, sea level has been on the rise as a pretty consistent rate for the last 170 years. However, is there a parallel between the sea level rise and mankind generated C02?

Since the rate of increasing sea levels hasn't changed for 170 years, should one assume that the increase in C02 has been just as steady, with no upward or downward or level trends for 170 years?

I guess the question is - If mankind is capable of stopping the increase of CO2, will the sea level rise stop too?

If the CO2 in the late 1800's was causing sea level rise, why wouldn't the same amount of CO2 continue to raise levels today?

If the CO2 in the environment today is so much higher than it has ever been, why is the sea level rise still so consistent?

Just wondering?

Of course, what's happening in San Francisco may have nothing to do with sea level rise around the world (assuming it is actually rising).

[mac]

Well, Techno asked a few sensible questions--before ruining it all with the offhand if it is happening comment. First, the point of copying the graphs was to show that El Niño's are temporary, and showing the downswing after an El Niño is dishonest. Second, examining trends is very complicated. You must both average out anomalies like El Niño's and El Ninas, and then you must account for land changes. Relative sea level is rising in some locations because land is still rising in rebound after the melting of glaciers. Land is sinking in some locations because the soil is compressible or withdrawals of water or oil is causing it to sink. Those factors must be understood, and deniers have used them to argue that sea even is not rising.

Techno is correct that sea levels on the west coast of the US have not shown an apparent increase in the rate of rise--a Question I have asked for years. The answer is pretty complicated, and involves weather patterns that have depressed or hidden relative rises. I retain a bit of skepticism on the issue, but there are a number of papers that show pretty clearly that sea level is rising more rapidly in other locations.

How long will this last is a very complicated question. Slow sea level rise such as seen in the San Francisco gauge well before 1900 is not caused by CO2 increases, but is a trailing signal from the end of the ice age that will persist. (Rapid sea level rise of about 300 feet occurred between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago, when it slowed dramatically.). The impacts of higher CO2 and heat stored in the ocean will persist, perhaps as long as 200 years. So there is a lag between the increased CO2 and sea level rise. The hope is to prevent rapid melting of ice stored on land, which poses the most disastrous potential. Unfortunately, research in Greenland shows very large net losses of ice mass.

For evidence of warming, we look at broad sources of data. No farmer doubts warming--planting and harvesting times have shifted. This data is published constantly--yesterday's news reported that the spring snow melt in the Tahoe basin has moved up 19 days since 1961. Tahoe now sees 26 more summer conditions than it did in 1968--increasing wildfires. You can see the same thing in Europe, both shorter winters and increasing wildfires.

[mac]

Techno--this is actually a pretty good lay version of why sea levels have not risen on the West Coast, and how much water has been melted from the glaciers. http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-0827-oceans-rising-20150827-story.html

I've worked with scientists from Scripps Institute in San Diego for decades, and several of them are among the world experts in measuring coastal phenomena and climate change.

[techno900]

Clearly it's complex, but your graph post just seemed like it contradicted the "the sky is falling" CO2 hype. As always, the anomalies that oppose the global warming hype can be explained, at least to some's satisfaction.

I have always agreed that there is global warming, but I still remain skeptical about how much of that warming is a by product of contemporary civilization.

[nw30]

[mac]

Nothing like an unarmed man in a battle of wits. Wrong, yet again. Scale baffles you and Malibu completely. This is not carpentry.

[nw30]

mac adds a new card to his deck, that being a carpenterist.
It must suck living in a world filled with all sorts of 'ists.

"You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".

[MalibuGuru]

What portion of sea level rise is caused by erosion, volcanic activity, and other natural sources. Underwater and terrestrial volcanos and lava flows. Day after day, week after week. The collapse of highway 1 added 16 acres to California.

Do the models take this into account?

[mac]

I provided these numbers before, but reading is not a Trumpist forte. Volume of the oceans: 0.3 billion cubic miles. Volume of water melting from Greenland each year: 270 giga tons of water per year, 2011 to 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/aug/25/global-warming-is-melting-the-greenland-ice-sheet-fast

That appears to be accelerating. In the most recent 4 years studied, enough ice melted to raise the world sea level by 2.5 mm, and the rate of melting was double that of earlier studies. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/07/18/greenland_lost_a_trillion_tons_of_ice_in_four_years.html

The factors that Bard mentioned, earlier mentioned by NW, are trivial in comparison. My only question is what denial web site sent you both a link. I already know you are both gullible enough to believe the biggest con man in American history. [/b]